Arcane Dropout 6 Read online

  “There’s no way to know for sure, really,” said Tess. “It’s certainly never happened before, even when I was low on essence. I had enough to cast your force spell, so it’s not as though you did anything wrong.”

  She reached a hand out. Lee pulled her onto her sole foot, where she briefly pinwheeled her arms in an attempt to find balance. He felt his heart thudding painfully in his chest as he watched her brush strands of brown hair out of her face and flash a brave smile.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I bet a good night’s rest will bring me back to normal.”

  “Right.” Lee cupped her cheek with one hand and set the other on her waist. He pulled her in for a long kiss, gently tracing the corner of one of her dimples with his thumb, and released his mystic stream.

  She almost seemed normal while in her default, ethereal ghost form. Her missing foot was more of a shapeless fog of blue, and she had no trouble standing upright on it. She grinned at him and looked to the side, her attention fixating on a point within the tree line just beyond the construction site.

  “Um,” she said nervously. “I don’t think we’re alone here.”

  Lee frowned. Tess lifted a finger, gesturing to the place she was staring at. He set his concern for her condition aside as he approached the trees and saw what she was talking about.

  A second ghost was active in the area, and it didn’t take a deductive leap of faith to guess who it had been in life. A bald, overweight man with a ruddy complexion was lying across the ground, hidden mostly by the underbrush, clutching at a wound in the side of his head and moaning.

  “That bitch,” muttered the ghost. “That stupid fucking cunt.”

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you’re Miles,” said Lee.

  “Fucking stupid bitch,” muttered the ghost. “When I find her, I’ll… wait. Who are you? How did you know my name?”

  “A friend of a friend,” said Lee. “How are you, Miles?”

  “My fucking head. Ugh… Call an ambulance. I need… I need…”

  “I’d pull you into my mystic stream, but something tells me it would only make your situation that much more terrifying.”

  “What?”

  “You’re dead, Miles,” said Lee. “I hate to be blunt, but in your case, I think you basically deserved it.”

  “I didn’t deserve shit,” muttered Miles. “She wanted it. She was basically flaunting herself. So what? I threatened her, but she was just nervous. She wouldn’t have remembered once we were done, anyway.”

  Lee raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “No harm, no foul,” said Miles. “I was planning on taking her to the Sahara Base. She obviously fucking belonged there, after how she attacked me. A bit of dream weaving certainly would have done wonders for her personality.”

  “Dream weaving?” Lee frowned and shook his head. “The Order is using dream weaving on new recruits?”

  “We’re using it on anyone who needs it,” said Miles. “What the fuck else are we supposed to do? We need new recruits, even if they come with baggage. The Sahara Base is where we make them a bit more malleable. Remote as fuck, though, that’s for sure. Say, you got any smokes on you?”

  Lee flexed his fingers and took a step forward. He crouched down, staring the ghost full in the face.

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “…What?”

  “Where is the place you’re talking about?”

  “Why the fuck would I tell you?” Miles barked a laugh. “Fuck off. Call me an ambulance or get out of my face. I’m sick of talking.”

  Lee glanced over at Tess, whose expression was worried and unsure.

  “I don’t think he’s going to be cooperative,” he said.

  “I know,” said Tess. “You should… do what you have to.”

  Lee didn’t hesitate. He reached his hand forward, took hold of Miles’ neck, and used his ghost absorption ability. The effect was instantaneous, given how weak the ghost already was. Lee felt a very small amount of essence transfer into him, along with a mixture of memories and basic facts from the man’s life.

  Some of those memories, he would have preferred not to have. Claire wasn’t the only young woman Miles had preyed on. He’d harbored a fetish for control, dominance, coercion, and rape. He’d been a disgusting man who’d deserved a much worse end than the one he’d received.

  He’d also known the exact location of the Order of Chaldea’s Sahara Base, which was all Lee cared about. He shook the rest of the memories off like the remnants of a bad dream and rose to his feet.

  “Zoe is going to want to know about this,” he said.

  CHAPTER 11

  It was late in the afternoon by the time Lee and Tess arrived back at the motel. Zoe was waiting outside impatiently, leaning against the rental car and frowning.

  “Finally,” she said. “I didn’t want to pay for another night until I was sure we’d need it. I take it you still haven’t convinced Claire yet?”

  “Not exactly,” said Lee.

  He quickly gave her a rundown of all that had happened that day with Claire and Willow, and the ghost of Miles, the Order agent. Lee half-expected his sister to fixate on the detail of Harper being somewhere in town as well, but she only blinked at the news.

  “You seriously just let Claire walk away in the end?” asked Zoe. “After all the effort Mira and I put in, in finding her, let alone your work in getting close to her?”

  “It was her choice,” he said.

  “They might very well take her to this base you mentioned. If I’m understanding this correctly, the Order is using the Cropping to mind-wipe people and make them into better soldiers.”

  “I didn’t know about the Sahara Base when I let Claire go. Besides, it’s hard for me to imagine Harper and Willow going along with something like that.”

  Zoe blinked again, and this time, Lee caught the distinct wince of her controlling her emotions. “They might not know the full details. It sounds like the ghost you found was further up in the Order than they are or at least privy to the dirty details. You said you know where the base is?”

  “I could point to it on Google Maps if I wanted to.”

  “Good. I doubt Jack is going to want to pass this up. It’s almost too perfect. A remote base with evil intentions that’s potentially crucial to the Order of Chaldea’s wartime operations. We’ll hit it, for sure.”

  Zoe started the rental car’s engine and began driving them toward their departure point at the public pool. Tess was sitting in the back seat, and as gently as he could, Lee pulled her into his mystic stream and took her hand into his.

  “Zoe, I need your help with something else, too,” he said. “Tess has… an issue. Her foot is fading, as though it’s refusing to hold form anymore. Have you ever experienced or seen that before?”

  Zoe and Tess’s relationship had always been a little fractured, but Lee saw the serious expression on his sister’s face as she considered the question.

  “Honestly, Eldon?” She sighed and gave him a sympathetic shrug. “It’s probably because of your makeshift way of casting spells. Using a pact ghost to absorb essence and hold it in reserve is more of a quirk than a main feature of the pact. You’ve grown to rely on it so much that the sheer act of providing that essence might be degrading her form.”

  “You’re saying I have to stop using arcane magic if I want her to recover?”

  Tess squeezed Lee’s hand. He gently returned her caress with his thumb.

  “I can’t make any promises or say anything definitive,” said Zoe. “That’s my guess. I’d also try to get her a more consistent source for essence since I doubt you’ve been near one while living at the mansion. But with that said, it might be something else. It might just be…”

  She trailed off, and for once, Lee was glad for it. He had his answer and he didn’t need to consider whatever nightmare scenario Zoe had backed away from.

  ***

  It was dark, as
the later time zone dictated, when they arrived through the water teleportation and got back to the mansion. Ryoko seemed to be the only one within the mansion left awake, and she hurried to tend to their needs as they entered the foyer.

  “I can warm you both up some leftovers for dinner if you’d like,” she said. “Or if you’d prefer to take a bath…”

  “A bath would be nice,” said Lee.

  Tess raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you take baths?”

  “It’s for you, not for me,” he whispered. “Maybe relaxation will help your body heal.”

  “It’s more of a general form than a body, but who knows, you might be right.”

  “If there’s anything else you need—food, a back rub, gentle lovemaking—just let me know.”

  “Lee Amaranth,” said Tess with an appreciative sigh. “If I’d known all I had to do to get you spoiling me was let one of my limbs fade off, I’d have considered the idea long ago.”

  Her joke fell flat on his ears. He pulled her into a mystic stream, and then into a hug.

  “I’m going to get you the essence you need, Tess,” he said. “I promise.”

  He walked her to the upstairs bathroom once Ryoko had drawn the water. Tess still had on her ghost replica school uniform, and she wriggled out of it with cute movements perfectly suited for the style of clothing.

  “While I appreciate the extent of your love, you don’t have to wait on me hand and foot,” she said.

  “I wasn’t planning on it. I have an idea I want to explore.”

  He watched her sink down into the bath first, her naked body sinking under the soapy bubbles, a sigh of relaxation that was weirdly hot escaping her lips as the warm water enveloped her.

  Then, Lee got to work. He went first to grab Savoire Solaire from the waterproof duffel bag they’d used to transport their supplies. The saber was warm in his hands, even in its scabbard. He brought it up to the guest room he and Tess shared, unsheathed it, and set it down in his lap.

  The sword was a relic of power. Even through what he could surmise through his sense of touch alone, Lee was fairly sure it held more essence than he’d use up in a year, perhaps a lifetime. If he could find a way to draw from it, Tess would never have to worry about running low again.

  His working theory was that each time he pulled essence to cast a spell when Tess was low on essence, it did damage to her, like a car having its gas tank run down to true empty. If that was the case, then Savoire Solaire could serve as his default fuel source, assuming he could find a way into it. He didn’t plan on using Tess to cast arcane spells except for when it was absolutely necessary, but it would still be helpful.

  Genevieve Laughton, the sword’s original owner, would no doubt be horrified by what he had in mind, but she wasn’t in the room with him, and frankly, Lee didn’t care much for her opinions. He took a slow breath and began to exhale, focusing on his abilities as a mystic.

  His idea was to use dispel on a small part of the sword, focus the ability entirely on the bottom of the hilt in an attempt to jar loose some extra essence from it. If dispel could counter normal forms of casting, then it stood to reason that it could also interrupt whatever binding had sealed Savoire Solaire’s power within the weapon.

  He took another breath, this time making his attempt. Exhaling with the patience of an eastern philosophy monk, he used dispel. He didn’t force it or slam it like he might to counter a spell but used it in a more teasing way. It was almost like lockpicking or searching for an object in the dark, feeling his way through foreign terrain and making the map as he went.

  “There,” he muttered, feeling the spot. He teased it again, probing with dispel, and felt a response that seemed almost urgent. He did it again and again, thrusting dispel in at an ever-quickening rate, feeling the sword’s power shuddering within the hard weapon, until…

  A blinding light erupted from Savoire Solaire, and the saber flipped upward and out of Lee’s hands. He scrambled back from where he’d been sitting on the floor, giving the respect it deserved to the prospect of having the saber land edge-down in his face.

  The sword landed on the carpet with little fanfare, no different from a normal blade. Lee’s attention was fixated completely on the new arrival.

  An entity had appeared in the spot he’d just been in, the ghost of a young, attractive woman. She was on her knees, head dipped forward, and only slowly pulled her gaze up to meet his. A single look into her eyes, filled with vitality and intelligence, was enough to tell him she was an entity every bit as powerful as Savoire Solaire was as a weapon.

  CHAPTER 12

  Lee really hoped she was a calm, reasonable ghost and not a crazy, volatile specter. She was powerful enough that the distinction almost didn’t matter, and he would have to figure out a way to deal with her, regardless.

  “Je suis désolée,” said the ghost. Lee’s French was abysmal, but he knew enough to know the ghost had just apologized to him. On top of speaking French, the ghost had an accent so thick and rustic as to make her nearly incomprehensible.

  “Well, okay,” he said. “This is a bit unexpected. Do you speak any English?”

  She stared at him blankly, giving a small shake of her head more to signify lack of understanding than to answer his question, though it did both.

  Her face was pleasant to look at, soft with expressive eyes and rosy cheeks. Her hair was done up into a bun, and though it was hard to tell with her still in her ethereal form, it looked light in color; reddish blonde, maybe.

  She wore a long chainmail shirt with a belt of silver links around the waist, giving it the appearance of a battle dress, practical but feminine. A black pair of trousers jutted out from underneath, along with thick leather boots.

  There was also a sword hanging at her waist, though it looked more like a medieval fencing weapon than a saber like Savoire Solaire. She was scanning Lee over with scrutiny that matched his own, and after a minute of silence, she pressed a hand to her breast.

  “Joan,” she said.

  “You… are Joan,” he said questioningly.

  The girl gave a hesitant nod.

  “Joan of Arc? As in, the same Joan of Arc whose sword and spirit were said to be imbued within Savoire Solaire?”

  He doubted she’d have given him an answer to that question even if she’d understood it. Lee swore under his breath and ran a hand through his hair, trying to figure out what to do.

  “Lee,” he finally said, touching his own chest. “Lee Amaranth.”

  “Lee… Am…uh…ranth?”

  “Sure. Now, this might be a bit of a loaded question if you can even understand it, but what do you want? Is there anything I can do for you to speed along your afterlife?”

  She stared at him with as much comprehension, or lack thereof, as he’d been expecting. Lee groaned and desperately began to hope he could find a way to deal with the situation without having to involve Zoe, who would no doubt gloat and treat it as a lesson to him.

  “Ah! I feel so…” Tess entered the chamber in her ethereal form, wearing one towel around her chest and one around her hair. “Refreshed? Um, Lee…”

  “Tess, this is Joan of Arc,” he said. “She’s apparently been inside Savoire Solaire this entire time.”

  “Uh, okay,” said Tess. “It’s a… pleasure to meet you? I’m Tess.”

  She extended a hand toward Joan, who recoiled in horror. Lee had seen that before. A significant percentage of ghosts were terrified by other ghosts, a fact he’d always found more sad than ironic.

  “You should pull her into your mystic stream,” said Tess.

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Would you rather have her start wandering the mansion, and possibly the town, in her ethereal form?”

  “Good point.”

  Lee extended his mystic stream, enveloping both Tess and Joan. Tess grinned, while Joan looked surprised. She really was rather pretty, with hair the color of the morning sunrise and full lips. S
he touched her own face, looked at him quizzically, and began repeating something in French.

  “Tess, any chance you speak the language?” he asked.

  “Nope. She’s definitely asking you for something, though.”

  Lee did his best to communicate his lack of understanding, pointing to his ear and then holding his hands up. Joan tried one more time and then let out a huff of frustration. She licked her lips and then began gesturing, tipping clutched fingers toward her mouth over and over again.

  “I think she’s thirsty,” said Tess.

  “I can help with that.”

  There was a water pitcher in the room, and Lee hurried to pour her a glass. Joan was already shaking her head as he made to hand it to her.

  “Thirsty for something stronger, perhaps?” suggested Tess.

  “Of course. Even ancient ghosts want to get drunk.”

  Ryoko had brought them a bottle of wine that they’d never opened a few nights earlier. Lee pulled the cork out and made to pour some into a glass. Joan and Tess took it from him—or at least, an ethereal copy of the bottle—before he could.

  “This might not end up being a complete disaster after all,” said Lee. “If I can just keep giving her what she wants, we might reach a point where she trusts me enough to either follow me somewhere safe or let me banish her.”

  “Or absorb her,” said Tess. “You were trying to pull essence from Savoire Solaire, right? Well, here it is.”

  Lee nodded somewhat reluctantly. It felt strange to talk about a ghost in terms of the potential essence it could provide in front of Tess, but he wasn’t going to let the reality make him uncomfortable if she’d already accepted it.

  He sat down next to Joan, drinking alongside her while she spoke in a language he didn’t understand, perhaps telling stories of grand battles. She smiled a lot, and next to Tess, she had one of the best smiles he’d ever seen.

  She was suitably drunk when she finished the bottle and surprised Lee by hurling it across the room. It shattered against the wall, though luckily it was only the ethereal copy of the original.