Author's Notes: Still have been unable to buy Living With the Dead. Stupid bookstore. I hope nothing's too contradictory.

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Chapter 8

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"But we haven't even—" I began to protest. Savannah was still ranting in my head. We had just found the portal. We couldn't leave.

"Now, Miss MacArthur. And be silent," Grant said firmly. I turned to Leech for help, even as I let Grant take the arm Paulson wasn't holding, pulling me back the way we came. The big man didn't protest, just stared at the yellow container a little longer and with another frightened look, followed along.

Grant let go of me once he was sure that I was coming. How they knew which way to go was beyond me—it all looked tall and scary. The pace quickened, as Grant asked Paulson, "Are you sure?"

"There's someone out there," Paulson confirmed. "And they don't care who knows it."

Fear gripped me and I interrupted Savannah. "We have a situation. I'm sorry." And with that I cut that spell. She was going to kill me.

The two half-demons exchanged looks and Paulson turned to say to Leech, "Get close and pick up the pace."

I cast the sensing spell again, surprised how far it extended. Usually the area it covered was much less. I guess stressful situations were helping increase my power. Besides the three men that were currently with me, I could feel more—lots more—people swirling on the outsides of the spell. Beyond the walls—for now.

Paulson stopped moving abruptly, effectively stopping me as well. The other two gathered around him as he carefully motioned something to Grant. I closed my eyes and felt the presence of two humans coming towards us. The guards took out their guns and Leech pushed me up against a container, shielding me with his body.

A voice boomed out in the darkness. I couldn't make out what it was saying, but could guess. Come out, come out, wherever you are...

I rushed past Leech, dodging his grabbing hands. Surprised, they were too slow to stop me. I pressed against the opposite container, lowering myself to the ground while muttering a cover spell. Grant nodded as I disappeared and the three of them back further down the row, trying to put distance between us. I wasn't brave. When the going got tough, I was going to make sure I survived.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the two men finally turn the corner. I wanted to gasp, but wasn't foolish enough to dare. Standing there at the end of the row were honest to goodness knights in shining armour. Each one was clad in chain mail, layers over leather breaches (it was really the only word) and heavy vests. There was protective metal over their chests and elaborate headdresses on their heads. Each carried a broadsword that probably weighed more than I did.

"Witch," they said, staring down the guards. Even their voices sounded strange, accented with something that sounded vaguely Germanic. No, not German. It was Eastern, all right, but too different to be German. It was the teeth that made me think they were more than just lonely men playing dress up. No one had teeth like that nowadays, all crooked and yellow—and was that fungus?

This wasn't good. But the Cabals weren't useless; Grant and Paulson pulled out their weapons and fired quickly. The metal didn't protect them. Two shots. Two dead knights.

"Miss MacArthur," Grant called coming towards me and I hurried to meet him.

Behind them, five more knights emerged. Paulson had already turned around, firing. These knights were closer and moving, and they swung swords around.

The first one caught Paulson in the arm. I don't know how he managed to hold onto the gun, but he did, shooting the culprit right in the visor. The man went down as the other two descended on the trio. Leech was unarmed, but he flung himself at the closest one, barely dodging out of the way of the flashing sword. The two tumbled to the ground, the knight's heavy armour slowing him down. For such a big man, Leech was incredibly fast.

I turned away, not able to watch and spotted yet another group coming from the other side. Because my life didn't suck enough, I now had an entire medieval army coming towards me. I began to cast, letting loose fireballs wherever I could, forcing them back.

"Move out," Grant called. Looking back, I could see why. Even more medieval men began to come around the corner.

"How?" I demanded. I was getting tired—I didn't have the power to fight an army.

He disappeared, right in front of my eyes. Now it was just the three of us—Paulson with his bloody arm, Leech whose powers did us no good, and me, a third-rate witch. Bryce needed to hire better help.

I concentrated as hard as I could and cast, moving one of the storage containers so that it flung outwards, catching the closest group of knights, slamming them into the wall. It wasn't enough to kill them, but some of them were unconscious, and the rest were dizzy at least. There was still the other side to contend with, coming closer and closer as we pushed back into the containers. Leech had picked up one of the swords and was moving it around experimentally. I was more afraid that Paulson would just drop the gun, hands too slick with blood to hold it properly.

Squealing could be heard from the distance and I strained me ears to figure out what it was. Paulson sighed in relief and struggled to stand up right. "Just hold," he whispered, more to himself than to us. "Just a minute more."

More shots and then the gun fell down, empty and useless. No longer scared, the knights advanced. There were about ten of them—and even with Leech's sword, there was no way we could take them.

Sometimes, you were just in over your head. I cast a lightning bolt at the closest one, but that didn't stop his friends from advancing. There went the last of my spellcasting ability. I was actually amazed it had lasted that long.

Around the corner a black car appeared, knocking the knights over like they were tinfoil bowling pins. The sounds of crunching bones and metal hitting metal filled the air. But the car held. The best money could buy was quite a lot. Paulson didn't need to hurry me into the vehicle. I was opening the door even before it had come to a stop.

The two men followed me and Grant slammed the gas before the door had time to close. He was reversing, the way in front of him cut off by the storage container I had moved.

There was nothing I could do about the men, so I took Paulson's arm and began to take a look at it. Blood began to coat my fingers as I muttered a healing spell. I was only barely starting to recover, but the cut wasn't deep and the sword hadn't punctured anything too vital. My spell would slow the blood and knit the flesh back together enough; Paulson would be able to fight back if he had too.

I jerked forward as Grant slammed on the gas, speeding us through the tightly packed warehouse. I could hear parts of the car being scrapped off as he turned too close to the sides, but I wasn't going to complain. I just wanted to get out of there.

The door was already in pieces from where I assumed Grant had driven through. The knights were dropping behind, unable to run quickly under fifty pounds of metal. We passed through the doorway and were gone.

"So...what's going on?" I asked, hoping for some answer.

From the front seat, Leech replied. "I think it might be a time tear."

Paulson laughed outright and even Grant cracked a smile. The younger guard replied, "They don't exist."

"So I imagined the old-fashioned knights? Or do you see them too?" I demanded. That shut him up. But Grant actually had a good point.

"They could have been men in costumes, for all we know. Time tears are the stuff of legends, Miss MacArthur. They don't actually exist."

I leaned forward until I could look at Leech. "But you think it is?"

"It was different from anything else I've ever seen," he said. "And I could feel her inside standing just beyond. It was...incredible. I've never felt that before. It was...I think it was a time tear."

"Okay, then. Even though it's just supposed to be theoretical, you do have an idea how to fix it, right?"

"Theoretically. Plus, she already seems to have half-closed it."

"Okay..." My mind tried to come up with a plan. I longed for Savannah, or even Bryce. They would have figured something out in an instant. But everyone else in the car seemed content to wait while I figured the situation out. "So at least we know what it is, and that Savannah doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Tonight..." I caught Grant's eye and knew that wasn't happening. "Tomorrow we'll get Bryce to arrange a much larger..."

"Task force. Team. Army," Paulson supplied.

"Right." I ignored the fact that bringing in extra help might be impossible if he wanted to keep his sister's involvement a secret. I would deal with Bryce later. "And then Leech can experiment until we get her out."

Silence descended on the car, thick and suffocating. Leech turned to stare out the window. "I can't do that, Gillian."

"It's a necromantic portal, isn't it? I can't close it."

"I'm not..." Lecch turned around to face me. "I'm not quite the necromancer you think I am."

Paulson snorted.

"You see dead people. What other kind of necromancer is there?" I demanded.

"Bryce didn't tell you?"

That was cowards way out and it made me furious. I hated the defeated, half-hopeful tone; I hated it about me. I wasn't about to give anyone else a break. "No. You get to tell me why the hell you can't close a stupid portal. Shouldn't that be easy?"

"You actually have to be quite powerful to close a portal another person opened," Leech explained. "But I...I'm not necromancer anymore. The only thing I can still do is talk to the dead. Everything else...I just can't do."

"Anymore? You can't stop being a necromancer."

"You can if Bryce wants you to." He said it reverently, resentfully, and their relationship suddenly seemed more like a reluctant apostle to an angry god. All the generous favours Leech had done suddenly seemed more like duty than charity. "There are ways."

"Unnatural ways," Paulson murmured.

Ways that were apparently an insult to necromancers. I had never heard of anyone quitting being a necromancer, though I understood why you would want to. Necromancers went mad. Not some of them—all of them. The luckiest ones made it to sixty and kicked the bucket before it got too bad. There were horror stories about teenagers foaming at the mouth, talking to people even other necros couldn't see, but I wasn't sure if they were true or not. No matter. It was an undeniable fact that all of them eventually lost it. That was the price of seeing those in both worlds. Eventually the barriers became too thin and you were swept away.

But to stop the power...I knew you could be blacklisted. I wasn't sure how you would go about doing that, but I knew it could be done. And then the spirits wouldn't talk to you at all, even if you asked. That didn't mean they couldn't talk to you if they wanted to annoy you. But that didn't sound quite like what Leech was talking about. All his power, gone. That sounded much worse than blacklisting.

"Can I do it?" I demanded. Someone had to help Savannah, after all. "Even though I'm a witch?"

"Time tears are things of legend. I don't know what will work and what won't. You might be able to—I don't think they're necessarily necro magic so much as they are bad magic."

"All right then. I'll try and close it tomorrow." I settled back into my seat, plan finally decided on. Who cared if it was only half-formed and rested solely on me, who could mess up walking down the street? Someone had to do it and I was the only option.

"We're going to take you back to home," Grant said to Leech. "If you don't mind."

Leech shook his head and we drove the rest of the way back in silence.

...

We got back and entered the house silently. Paulson informed everyone that Bryce was still on the roof and then Grant headed up there to provide a report. I followed Leech into the kitchen and pulled up a chair at the island while he defended himself against an invisible foe. Savannah wasn't content to yell just at him, and soon Leech was turning to me, repeating her request that I say the communication spell.

But she must have taken out all her frustrations at being left out of the fight at him. When she spoke to me, she was clearly excited.

"How many people do you know who have been in a time tear?" She would have been squealing, except Savannah Levine was too badass to squeal. Still, she was doing a fine approximation.

"Only you," I smiled. "I don't know how you do it."

"I'm amazing," she agreed. "You think you can get me out?"

"I have no idea. Hopefully. Preferably before someone really creepy comes through."

"Did I ever tell you about the time that the werewolves thought they'd unleashed Jack the Ripper?"

I shivered, finding it much less cool than she did. "Did they really?"

"Fuck, no. It was really just some pathetic, power mad sorcerer. Elena tore him in half."

Elena was a werewolf, one of the only females of her kind. Though I wasn't sure—keeping track of Savannah's supernatural contacts could have been a full time job. There was just so many of them. Hell, she babysat for werewolf twins. How many people did that?

"Creepy."

A printout out that had been left on the kitchen counter finally caught my attention. It was just a short article, nothing particularly special. Twenty-one year old Tia Anderson had been dropped her off Friday night at her house after a party and hadn't been seen since. Police were assuming she had never made it inside and were urging anyone with information to call the toll free hotline. They said nothing about the blood on the stairs. No one would ever find her—her parents would never know.

I made it to the bathroom—barely. All of Leech's unique cereal recipe came toppling up in piles of mush. I curled up on the floor; I lacked the energy to pick myself up. The tiles were cool, soothing against my head. I didn't cry. My eyes dripped a little bit, but it wasn't the sadness that was destroying me. Months of keeping my distance had paid off. But I couldn't get off that floor—I was pinned there by the repressive guilt. I could have done something. I should have done something.

Savannah's voice was in my head, trying to tell me it was just a human and anyway, it hadn't been my fault. Just a human...just a witch...just a little girl...I wanted to scream, tired of hearing the same crap my whole life. She wasn't just anyone. Why couldn't they see that? She had been—they were right. What did it matter what she had been? She was dead.

I was lying there, trying to cry and trying not to when Leech entered the room.

The big man picked me off the floor and held me, like I was a breakable little doll. H was nice and warm, something solid to cling to. He held me loosely—no pressure—and stroked my hair as I shook.

"She was your friend?" he asked.

"Like a sister."

And that's when I started to laugh.

I wanted to stop. Hell, I tried to stop. I just couldn't. Because it was too funny, oh so funny, how this always seemed to happen to anyone I gave a damn about. Hadn't I even tried not to care about Tia? I had kept everyone at arm's length for years now and look how well that had turned out. Pathetic, is what it was.

"The bulimia routine again? Doesn't the witch have any other tricks?"

I ignored Bryce, but at least he wasn't showing concern. I couldn't have handled that at all. Leech was saying something, telling him to be more sensitive, but I didn't listen. I just clawed my way out of Leech's arms and back in front of the toilet before the second wave of nausea hit. As I leaned back I could hear Leech's soothing voice, promising it would get better. That stopped my laughter.

Because it didn't get better. I was living proof that in only ever got worse.

But you didn't survive by leaning back and letting men try and comfort you. I knew that too well. Instead, I wiped my mouth and asked Bryce: "Is there a reason you're here?"

"You have to tell me how you want to handle this mess with that girl. Because the cops might want to question you. And then you have to research something that actually doesn't exist."

I started to get up from the floor. Leech helped me when I stumbled, but I pulled away quickly enough. "All right. About Tia—"

Bryce interrupted. "Change first. And brush your teeth. I'll talk to you after."

At least I hadn't got puke on my shirt.

...

I apologized to Leech, who waved away my concern as I played my part of penitent child fairly well. But it didn't seem that he minded much. Guys tended to like that about me. I let them play knight in shining armour all the time. I made a good damsel in distress—no one ever believed I could help myself. Not that anybody had actually been able to save me, but that was a whole other problem.

Once that was done and I had slipped on dry clothing, I went out back to find Bryce. There were a lot of other decisions that had to be made about how to proceed and clearly I wasn't the one who should be making them. When it came to my life, I needed to not be consulted in the proceedings or it would just get ugly.

Bryce was sitting in the gazebo beside Grant as Paulson looked over their shoulders at the computer in Bryce's lap.

"Looking at porn?" I called. "How professional."

Paulson blushed, Grant backed off and Bryce nodded. I was glad he understood—I was fine. Without preamble, he turned the computer around. "Those men that attacked us yesterday? You know how I said they were familiar but not Cabal? I was wrong. They were Cabal. From fifty years ago."

He showed me a picture of a Cabal squad, like the one we had seen yesterday. The photograph was grainy and underneath was the date March 1956.

"That's...not good," I finished.

"Two full squads, twelve men in total, went missing seven months after this picture was taken. My great-grandfather accused the St. Clouds who denied all responsibility. They searched for years, but eventually concluded that they must have just gone rogue. No one ever saw them again. It became a Cabal urban legend."

"Twelve-Thirteen," I blurted out. The old story was familiar to me, my father having whispered it to us one night when mom was out. She hated Cabal stories. But my father insisted we know. Squads twelve and thirteen had been out on a routine (only the Cabals) robbery of some kind. People said they had overstepped their boundaries, had taken what hadn't belonged to them and the demons had punished them, sucking them down to the very depths of hell. Apparently hell was my house. That didn't surprise me at all.

"That's right," Bryce agreed.

"My Dad always said the Nasts killed them and hushed it up, so they wouldn't tell what they had stolen."

"If that were true, I would know. They never got to their destination. They were on their way there before they disappeared."

"Well, that suggests the time tear theory is partial correct at least. Leech is already started looking into it. He said he'd call around, too. I'm going to go help him."

Bryce nodded, closing the laptop and sticking it under his arm. I followed him back to the house, waving goodbye to the guards. He lowered his voice and said, "I'm going to call Sean, though I'm not going to tell him about Dad. He'll...he won't like breaking necormatic law. Will Savannah be okay with that?"

"Yeah. He was actually the one I was supposed to get to help us."

"He knows...is nicer to, more lawyers than I am. He'll be able to sort it out for you." He stopped walking just before the door. "There's one other thing you should probably know."

I waited but when he wasn't forthcoming, I prompted: "What?"

"I tried..." For a moment he seemed almost embarrassed and when he explained I understood why. "I tried casting a communication spell on Savannah while you were gone. It didn't work."

I knew better than to ask why he wanted to talk to the 'she-devil'. Instead I focused on the implications of what he had just said. Savannah had only been able to cast the communication spell on me once I had cast it on her, but he should have been able to cast it on her, just like I was doing. He must have been far more powerful than I was, but he couldn't do what I did.

That left the question of why she could talk to me? I wasn't powerful at all, not for a supernatural. Though in the last few days I had started being a little more impressive than usual. Still, I was never going to be as powerful as Savannah or even her brother. It was a fact of life.

When a witch had her first menses, her powers increased tenfold and on the eighth day a ceremony was supposed to be performed to cement this power boost. The only witch I knew when I had my first period was my mother—and there were plenty of other reasons for hating that bitch, so sufficed to say, she had simply not bothered. The day passed and I was left weak and pathetic and even Paige's later intervention hadn't been able to restore that.

It had been a major problem in my relationship with Savannah. She couldn't seem to accept the fact that I was so extraordinary weaker than she was. If I was going to help her with magic—and I was going to because Paige hadn't bothered teaching me for nothing—then I had to be powerful to do it. We had even done a few spells to try and boost my power. Nothing seemed to help—nothing but adrenaline.

"Do you—that's weird," I said finally. "So you it's either you or it's me."

"We can still be friends with benefits," he assured me and I found myself smiling despite myself. "Ask Sean to cast tomorrow. See which one of us it is."

I nodded and he opened the door, letting me slip under his arm before following me inside. Leech was already spreading out the books. It looked like Bryce was going to be helping today. Research party. My favorite.

I just had one more question... "How did you know her name? Tia, I mean." I asked. Because I don't think I had ever told him her full name. I could barely say it to myself.

"I knew the address. It didn't take long to find out who lived there. You told me her first name, it wasn't hard to figure it out."

"Don't—" I swallowed down the nausea. "Please, don't go poking around in my life. I really don't...please, just don't."

"Mysterious is not a quality I like in a woman."

There was a threat there that was unmistakable. "Ask and I'll tell you. Just don't go poking blindly around."

"So you can lie to me?"

"I won't lie. I promise."

Bryce shook his head and sat down beside Leech on the floor. "Surprisingly enough, that doesn't make me feel much better. Just get to work, Pinocchio."

...