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Authors: Kalayna Price
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touch the Aetheric only with their projected psyche. Beyond those planes were others, but I tried not to focus on them because I had very little control over my planeweaving ability, and no one to teach me.
Instead I focused on the body under the rotted sheet. With so much of my magic filling the corpse, it took only a twitch of my will to form the man’s memories into a shade. It sat up through the sheet, seemingly unaware of its crushed and misshapen head and broken body. I averted my eyes from the mangled mess. Unlike ghosts, which tended to look like how the person had perceived themselves during life, shades always appeared as the body existed the moment before the soul was collected.
With the shade raised, I focused on a new mental shield I’d spent the last month constructing. It sprang up in my mind’s eye like an opaque bubble around my psyche. Immediately the layers of different realities dimmed. They didn’t disappear, and the shield didn’t stop the grave essence, but in theory it helped prevent my powers fromreaching across those planes of reality. Also, from previous rituals, I’d noticed that my eyesight took considerably less damage when my psyche only
looked
across the planes through the shield, as opposed to having an open channel.
Shield in place, I turned back to the shade I’d raised, though I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at its misshapen form.
“What is your name?” I asked. I knew his name, of course, but usually when I raised a shade in the morgue, it was for an official police case, and the shade had to identify itself for the record. It had become habit.
“James Kingly.”
“James, do you remember how you died?”
The shade sat perfectly still, not answering. Shades always answered immediately, unless the question was outside the scope of what the body remembered. His death shouldn’t have been hard to recall.
A bubble of panic built in my chest, pressing against my lungs so it was hard to breathe. Shades were nothing more than memories held together by grave magic and the witch’s will, but my magic had become erratic recently and I’d filled the corpse with a hell of a lot of it.
Then the shade spoke, the delay, which had felt like forever, only a few seconds. “There was blood and pain. Things were broken. I was on my back and then…” He trailed off, which meant that was the moment a collector had freed his soul and the RECORD button on his life had stopped.
Okay, so he’d described the moment of his death. I’d asked that same question to hundreds of shades and most described the events leading up to their deaths, not just the last moment.
Did my grave magic go wrong?
It was the one magic I’d always been able to rely on behaving. My spellcasting sucked, and the whole planeweaving thing was new and a mess, but I’d always been able to raise shades, and I was damn good at it. So what the hell was going on?
“Before the blood and pain, what were you doing?”
No hesitation this time. “Sitting in Delaney’s draining my second beer.”
I stared at the shade, speechless.
That isn’t possible.
From outside my circle Tamara said, “How can he not remember jumping? His blood alcohol level wasn’t near high enough for him to have stumbled over the edge of that building in a drunken stupor. And where the heck is Delaney’s—I’ve never heard of it. I thought shades couldn’t lie.”
“They can’t.” Or at least they weren’t supposed to be able to. They were just memories. All will, ego, and emotion had left with the soul when it was ripped from the body.
“Rest now,” I told the shade, pushing it back into the body. I drew part of my magic out of the corpse, and then called the shade again. It returned, slightly more translucent than before. I asked the shade the same question, and got the exact same answer.
“That’s not possible,” I said, seriously wishing I had a chair inside the circle because collapsing into a seat sounded like a
Instead I focused on the body under the rotted sheet. With so much of my magic filling the corpse, it took only a twitch of my will to form the man’s memories into a shade. It sat up through the sheet, seemingly unaware of its crushed and misshapen head and broken body. I averted my eyes from the mangled mess. Unlike ghosts, which tended to look like how the person had perceived themselves during life, shades always appeared as the body existed the moment before the soul was collected.
With the shade raised, I focused on a new mental shield I’d spent the last month constructing. It sprang up in my mind’s eye like an opaque bubble around my psyche. Immediately the layers of different realities dimmed. They didn’t disappear, and the shield didn’t stop the grave essence, but in theory it helped prevent my powers fromreaching across those planes of reality. Also, from previous rituals, I’d noticed that my eyesight took considerably less damage when my psyche only
looked
across the planes through the shield, as opposed to having an open channel.
Shield in place, I turned back to the shade I’d raised, though I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at its misshapen form.
“What is your name?” I asked. I knew his name, of course, but usually when I raised a shade in the morgue, it was for an official police case, and the shade had to identify itself for the record. It had become habit.
“James Kingly.”
“James, do you remember how you died?”
The shade sat perfectly still, not answering. Shades always answered immediately, unless the question was outside the scope of what the body remembered. His death shouldn’t have been hard to recall.
A bubble of panic built in my chest, pressing against my lungs so it was hard to breathe. Shades were nothing more than memories held together by grave magic and the witch’s will, but my magic had become erratic recently and I’d filled the corpse with a hell of a lot of it.
Then the shade spoke, the delay, which had felt like forever, only a few seconds. “There was blood and pain. Things were broken. I was on my back and then…” He trailed off, which meant that was the moment a collector had freed his soul and the RECORD button on his life had stopped.
Okay, so he’d described the moment of his death. I’d asked that same question to hundreds of shades and most described the events leading up to their deaths, not just the last moment.
Did my grave magic go wrong?
It was the one magic I’d always been able to rely on behaving. My spellcasting sucked, and the whole planeweaving thing was new and a mess, but I’d always been able to raise shades, and I was damn good at it. So what the hell was going on?
“Before the blood and pain, what were you doing?”
No hesitation this time. “Sitting in Delaney’s draining my second beer.”
I stared at the shade, speechless.
That isn’t possible.
From outside my circle Tamara said, “How can he not remember jumping? His blood alcohol level wasn’t near high enough for him to have stumbled over the edge of that building in a drunken stupor. And where the heck is Delaney’s—I’ve never heard of it. I thought shades couldn’t lie.”
“They can’t.” Or at least they weren’t supposed to be able to. They were just memories. All will, ego, and emotion had left with the soul when it was ripped from the body.
“Rest now,” I told the shade, pushing it back into the body. I drew part of my magic out of the corpse, and then called the shade again. It returned, slightly more translucent than before. I asked the shade the same question, and got the exact same answer.
“That’s not possible,” I said, seriously wishing I had a chair inside the circle because collapsing into a seat sounded like a
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