CAUSE AND EFFECT

AFTER LUNCH, WE STOPPED BY HOPE’S PLACE to update her. While she talked with Jeremy, I asked to borrow her phone book. I looked up Peter’s son’s name and found a handful of direct matches, plus a lengthy list of possibilities. When I explained to Hope and Jeremy what I was doing, Hope offered to help.

“With all that information you’ve got, I should be able to find him. Just tap into a few databases, unless…” She looked at me. “I don’t mean to jump in.”

“No, I’d appreciate it.”

As I said it, I realized I meant it. Like Eve said, we all have our specialties. Finding people wasn’t mine.

“I’d love to see how you do it, though,” I said. “For next time.”

“Sure.” A watch check. “I’ve got twenty minutes before a meeting, so I’ll boot up my laptop, try a few things. Might not find him, but we’ll try.”

She’d just cleared a spot on the table when my cell phone rang. I answered.

“Speaking of meetings,” I said after I hung up. “It seems I have one. Becky wants me back at the house and she sounds pretty tense.” I glanced at Jeremy. “You stay. I’ll grab a taxi.”

“No, I’ll go with you.”

Hope paused with her finger over the power button on her laptop. “Should I wait on this?”

“Not on my account. If you get a chance to look, that’d be great. If not, we’ll do it later.”

HOPE’S DOOR exited at the rear of the building. As we passed the adjoining alley, Jeremy glanced down it. He tried to be discreet, but the flare of his nostrils told me it was no casual sweep of his surroundings.

I stopped and peered into the alley. “What’s down there?”

“Nothing.”

I stepped into the shadows. “I could have sworn I saw you looking down here earlier too, when we first arrived.”

He hesitated, as if trying to decide whether to brush me off. “I was just…checking.”

“Someone’s following you, aren’t they? Is it a werewolf?”

He walked over. “If that happened, I’d tell you, for your own safety. I’m just being cautious.”

I wanted to press him, but he’d tell me if he wanted to—and wouldn’t if he didn’t. Still, I couldn’t resist walking another few feet into the alley, testing his reaction. But he didn’t grab my arm or call me back. When I glanced over my shoulder, his face was relaxed, meaning there was nothing to worry about.

I took two more steps and glanced back. “Not going to follow?”

He smiled. “Sorry. I was just…watching.”

“Ah. Enjoying, I hope.”

“Very much, though I must admit, it’s igniting a question I’ve been trying not to think about all morning.”

“And that would be?”

He tilted his head, gaze traveling over me, still standing at the mouth of the alley, making no move to come closer. “Whether you’re as…unencumbered by extra articles of clothing as you were last night.”

I laughed, then turned to face him. “I’m afraid yesterday’s outfit wasn’t very undergarment friendly. This one is.” I unbuttoned my blouse and spread it apart. “See?”

“I do.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

His gaze stayed fixed on my raspberry demi bra, the lace thin enough to leave little to the imagination. “I wouldn’t say ‘disappointed’ is the word. Are there a matching pair of…” His gaze dropped below my hips.

“You don’t expect me to show you that too. In a public alley? In the middle of the day?”

“Expect, no. Hope…?” He smiled.

“Well, it would be hard to show you that. This skirt isn’t easy to lift up. It’s too tight.”

“So I see.”

“I’d have to take it off.”

The smile twitched. “Pity.”

I looked around. There was no sign of anyone. I reached around for the zipper—

My cell phone rang. Jeremy let out a curse as I answered it.

“Jaime?” Angelique said. “Has Becky called you? There’s a meeting.”

“Angelique,” I said, with a glance at Jeremy. “Yes, she called and we’re, ah, on our way.”

“Oh, thank God. I think—” A sharp intake of breath. “I think I’m being kicked off the set.”

“What?”

“Will came by my room and asked whether I’d made my plane reservations for home yet or would I like him to do it. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about and he wouldn’t tell me, just apologized and hurried off.”

“I’m sure he’s mistaken. Or trying to spook you. Don’t be surprised if Becky shows up in a few minutes, trying to bully you into agreeing to something—after he’s scared you into thinking you’re leaving. If she does, stall. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

THE SHOOT was over. All of us were leaving.

Grady, Claudia, Angelique, Jeremy and I sat in the living room as Becky explained.

“Mr. Simon thinks we have more than enough footage for the lead-up bits,” Becky said. “We’ll film the Monroe séance live, as planned, but the preshow work here is done.”

We stared at her.

“I had two interviews scheduled for tomorrow,” I said. “I don’t mind staying to do them—”

“Thanks, Jaime. Really. You’re a trouper. But Mr. Simon wants everyone cleared out today.”

“Today?”

I glanced at Jeremy, sitting silently beside me.

I turned back to Becky. “Aren’t there more séances for us to film? You said there were six—”

“I’m afraid they just aren’t going as planned, Jaime. Mr. Simon is pulling the plug.”

In other words, we weren’t giving the kind of reality TV footage they’d hoped for. I argued—we all argued—but it did no good. We’d had our chance.

“I hope you aren’t telling us to pack our bags,” I said finally. “I can’t catch a flight to Chicago until tonight and I’m not going to sit around a terminal all day waiting.”

“We have until the end of the day, I’m sure.” Claudia’s glare dared Becky to argue.

After a moment, Becky said, “As long as you’re cleared out by sundown, because that’s when the staff has been told they can leave.”

WE WENT back to my room. Jeremy closed the door behind him and watched me getting out my necromancy kit. I double-checked, making sure I wasn’t missing or low on anything.

Finally I looked up at Jeremy. “I’m doing the raising now.”

“I see that.”

I studied his expression. Blanker than usual.

“You’re wondering why I practically announced it down there, telling Grady and Angelique I’m going into the garden for a while.”

“The question did cross my mind.”

“I’m setting the stage,” I said as I checked my supply of vervain and hoped it would be enough.

Jeremy frowned. “Setting the stage for the discovery? I’m not sure that’s—”

“Wise?” I finished. “Maybe not. But I’m trying to come up with something worthy of a television event. The spiritualist, summoned to the garden by the restless dead, uncovers their bodies. There’s no way Todd Simon will shut us down after that. It’ll add a whole new dimension to Death of Innocence. The show will go on and we won’t need to leave before we’ve solved the mystery and freed the ghosts.”

After a moment Jeremy said softly, “It could backfire, Jaime.”

“Yep.”

Another quiet moment, then, “It could cost you that TV show you want.”

“I don’t really want it anymore.”

The words startled me at first. Then the sensation settled into one of relief, as I realized I’d given voice to a decision I’d been longing to make.

“I hate television,” I said. “I don’t need the added boost to sell tickets. So the only reason I have for pursuing it is self-satisfaction. To reach a goal I was raised to believe I should want, above all others. Well, I don’t want it. These last couple of days I’ve hated it more than ever, because it was interrupting something I really wanted to do.”

I looked up at Jeremy. “You said you like to help. So do I, but I’ve been fighting it all my life. Maybe I’m not very good at it. And I’m sure I’ll never run around chasing down problems like Paige or Hope. But this is what I want to do—now, not five years from now, after I’ve had a TV show that I’ll hate every moment of. Time to do what will make me happy: stage work and council work.”

“Good.” He smiled, then went sober. “But this could still damage your professional reputation.”

“Yep. It could.” I opened a small tin of grave dirt and sniffed it for freshness. “But what matters right now isn’t the show or my reputation, it’s the children. What’s best for them is to have me here, close by, with all-hours access, working to free them. Whatever the cost.”

“But you can do this without the premonition angle. You happened to be in the garden. You saw something sticking from the dirt. You alerted the guards, who called the police. Their interviews alone will delay all plans to pack up today.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But giving this a spiritualist angle guarantees they won’t pull the plug on the final show, which I suspect they’re considering, despite all the promotion they’ve done. They’ll back out and blame ‘problems on the set’—meaning us. But if I find a body and claim it had something to do with spirit communication? The buzz will be too big for them to cancel it. Personally, I don’t care anymore, but I feel…guilty, I guess. I’m responsible for getting us shut down, and now I may have ruined Angelique’s big shot at stardom and Grady’s chance to pick up a North American audience.”

“We’ll have to handle it carefully.”

“I plan to.”

OUR THEORY about this human magical group was that they were “scientists” of the occult world, trying and discarding various theories and practices, maybe latching onto a ritual or an ingredient that seemed to work, and experimenting until they found just the right combination, the one that did something.

As I prepared to raise a body, kneeling at my altar cloth while Jeremy and Eve kept watch, I pondered on how we—true supernaturals—weren’t much different. There’s no single way to raise a corpse. Every necromancer family has its way—one it swears is better than everyone else’s.

Some use poppets—small dolls stuffed with hair or nail clippings from the target. The O’Caseys prefer a more complicated method, but one that doesn’t require body bits.

As for the ingredients and invocations, again, they vary. Like spellcasters, we use what’s been “proven” to work. As with spellcasters, there are those who say the whole thing is hooey—that we don’t need to sprinkle grave dirt over a chalk symbol, we don’t need to blow corpse dust to the four winds—that the power to raise the dead, as the power to communicate with them, is within us.

But we keep using what works. That doesn’t mean we’re too stupid and superstitious to try without the bits and bobs of ritual. This group had probably done the same—tried sacrificing an adult. Maybe it failed, as did our pared-back rituals. That could be psychology at work—at some level we’re convinced we need ingredient X and therefore we fail without it. Or maybe I was thinking too much to avoid what I was supposed to be doing.

Paige told me once that her mother always said the main function of ritual was that it provided the spellcaster—or necromancer—with a gradual transition from the everyday world to the magical. That the act of concentrating on placing ingredients just so, on drawing symbols, on laying out tools and lighting censers was for focus, to release the brain from thoughts of shopping lists and luncheon dates. If that was the case, I’d probably never needed that refocusing more than I did this afternoon.

It wasn’t thoughts of shopping lists cluttering my mind, but the horror of what I was about to do.

Raising the dead. If you’re a religious person, you call it resurrection and it’s a miracle. If you’re a horror buff, it’s Armageddon at the hands of a flesh-munching mob of shambling corpses. In truth, it’s some of both.

Like miracle workers, we return the ghost—the soul—to the body, conscious and aware. So unless you raise a Hannibal Lecter, the person’s not going to start eating brains. But the body is the dead one, the broken one, the rotting one, just like in a horror flick. So now the ghost is trapped, fully aware, in that broken and rotting corpse. Could anything be more horrific?

Yet every well-trained necromancer is taught to do this. Must practice even. Whether he or she ever chooses to raise a zombie, we know how, should we need that knowledge.

And now I did. To raise a child.