The Magic Read online

  He nodded back, like friends do when they know you’re on the same page. “But there’s all this nothing in between. No matter how hard I try and remember, there’s just nothing.”

  He began rambling on, not waiting for any further assurance. “It was as if I simply woke from a dream and was lying there, just as the sun was rising. I sat up and realized I was covered in grime and dirt and beside a freshly dug hole…grave.

  “And now you two keep looking at me like I’m a ghost and asking how I’m here. Dax said I was dead. If I was dead, how am I here?” He looked at Dax and then me, as if he had more faith in getting answers from me.

  Boy, was he wrong. I didn’t have any answers either. I put my palms up and shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “Was…was I buried there? What happened? How did I end up there?” His voice was getting louder and more erratic as he spoke.

  Oh shit. This was something I could answer, but damned if I wanted to. Still, this was Bookie, and I wouldn’t dodge his questions, no matter how ugly the unburied truth might be.

  “After I brought you to our house at the Rock, you got sicker and sicker. You went to sleep and…you never woke up.”

  His eyes shifted from me to the ground and then around the barn before he took a few more aimless steps, looking as if he were lost and couldn’t quite figure out what direction would get him out of this predicament.

  I didn’t know if he was ready for the truth, but he hadn’t told me to stop. Dax wasn’t saying much of anything, just standing off to the side and watching. I couldn’t take the silence, so I kept going. “I brought you to that spot on Charlie. Do you remember Charlie, the horse Rocky gave me?” How much of your memory did death obliterate? Before Bookie died, he’d been one of the smartest people I’d ever met. If he read something once, he remembered it. Now I wasn’t sure if he’d know my horse’s name.

  “I remember him,” he said.

  Another fear I’d harbored but been afraid to voice disappeared as I realized his brain was intact other than the one gap. Bookie was in no way a zombie. I was never reading one of those apocalyptic books again. Not after this. Cut too close to home. “We rode Charlie there. I knew you loved that spot, so I thought it was a good place.”

  “A good place to bury me?”

  If I weren’t crazy, I’d say he looked almost insulted. “You were dead. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  He suddenly dropped onto the ground in the middle of the barn and sat there, as if he wanted to sink into the earth.

  I wanted to fall down myself, seeing Bookie like this, as helpless as an injured fawn in the woods, but I locked my knees into place, refusing to weaken. I’d be strong for Bookie now the way he’d been strong for me when I’d needed him. This was the person who’d wanted me to hide his deadly sickness to protect myself. I wouldn’t let him down.

  Dax stepped forward. “Bookie, when you woke in that spot, were you alone?”

  My thoughts were still so muddled with the shock of having Bookie back that it took a minute for the implications to hit me. Odds were he hadn’t dug himself out of his own grave. If he had, wouldn’t that be one of the things he remembered? It sure seemed like it would be one of those memories I’d bump into on a bad day.

  “I was alone, just sitting there. I have no idea how I got out of that grave.”

  Had the Wood Mist dug him out? But why would they after making such a big deal over me being the one to dig Bookie up?

  I walked over and crouched down beside him before saying softly, “So what did you do after you…” Came back from the dead? That probably wasn’t the best way to describe it. “Woke up?”

  Bookie got to his feet and started walking about the barn again, as if no matter how tired he was he couldn’t sit still. Bookie was my best friend and the chillest person I knew. He didn’t pace or panic.

  “I walked back to the Rock but I was afraid to go through the gates, since the last time they’d seen me I had the Bloody Death. I knew I couldn’t go back in there, not after what had happened.” The sad look in Bookie’s eyes as he glanced at me told me exactly why he wouldn’t. Yeah, his memory was sound enough to recall everything that had happened before he passed. He’d known they were going to run me out, and burn the house to the ground if that was what it took to do it. “Was it bad?” he asked.

  “It wasn’t a big deal. I choose to leave,” I said, brushing the topic off. I took a couple of steps away from Dax’s direction, as his energy was getting strong again and I couldn’t handle the overflow. I knew he was still mad I took off, but it wasn’t like he didn’t find me again. “Then what happened?”

  Bookie was shaking his head, and then continued. “I went to the place on the wall you’d shown me, the one you used to climb to and look at the stars?”

  I nodded.

  “I hung out up there on and off for a couple of days, waiting to see you, Dax, Tank or Fudge. On the second day, Tiffy spotted me. I thought she was going to scream her head off. Instead, she stood below the wall and pointed at me and yelled, ‘What the hell are you doing up there? You’re supposed to be dead.’”

  He said it in her little-girl voice, and I was already laughing before he finished. Bookie and Dax started laughing too. It was so quantifiably Tiffy that it was hard not to picture the little girl standing there, pointing and bossing him about. I was a little worried that I might’ve been laughing more from hysteria than anything else, but I’d take it. It was the first real glimmer of the Bookie I’d known.

  “She said she thought I was dead and told me that you both had left. She said she didn’t know where.” He slumped a little further. “I knew if things got ugly, sooner or later you both would come back here to the farm.”

  Dax took a couple of steps closer to Bookie. I knew he was trying to get another whiff of his scent. I’d never seen Dax as stumped as I was. Dax wasn’t the type to get in anyone’s space, not unless he wanted to get in their space. At that point, the best option was to run. Bookie seemed too preoccupied to notice the closing distance, or had too much faith in Dax. I wasn’t sure which.

  Dax turned his attention back to me, brows lowered. “You are sure, with no doubt, he was dead?”

  If it wouldn’t upset Bookie, I would’ve screamed, Oh yeah, sure. You can’t figure this one out, so I had to have messed up.

  But I was going to take the road of diplomacy for fear of putting Bookie in more distress. I’d heard it was a nice road. Before I could assure Dax that I wouldn’t bury my best friend alive in the sweetest terms possible, Bookie was mirroring Dax’s look. “Yeah, did you bury me alive or something?”

  That was when I decided the diplomacy road had no place on my map. “I did not bury you alive. That’s an insulting question to ask me.”

  “You sure? Like swear on one of those funny books you like sure?” Bookie asked.

  I knew what books he spoke of, and I was glad the lighting sucked right now. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “You checked his pulse?” Dax asked.

  “He was cold!”

  They both fell silent. As the doubt disappeared off Bookie’s face, I almost wished I’d lied to him to not see the drawn look that replaced it.

  “Shit. Now what do I do? I’m really dead.”

  “You don’t look dead,” I said, trying to help him.

  He was off and pacing again, walking around looking so perfectly alive that I was tempted to tell him that things could be worse, he could still be dead dead, but I kept my teeth locked tightly together. I hadn’t been the one to wake up beside my grave. Still, I couldn’t help feeling that if it had happened to me, I’d be a little happier about the current status of being among the living and less concerned over the past, but he probably needed time to embrace this gift. Who was I to say he was overplaying the drama? Either way, it was never going to happen again, even if I had to lock him in a room.

  “Your heart is beating and your skin is warm. I don’t know what you are, but you aren’t
dead,” Dax said. Maybe he was thinking the same thoughts I was? He was just more tactful? I mean, it wouldn’t kill Bookie to be a touch more optimistic, the way old Bookie used to be. I really hoped Dead Bookie wasn’t a pessimist.

  Bookie stopped pacing. “How do you know my heart is really beating?”

  Hmmm, yeah, Dax, how do you know? I waited to see what he’d come up with to explain how he could hear it.

  “Look at you. You’ve obviously got blood pumping through your veins or your skin would be grey and cold. If you’re dead, so am I.”

  Bookie started nodding, and his fingers went to his wrist, as if reassuring himself he had a pulse.

  I shook my head but kept my tongue still. It amazed me that no one on the farm ever questioned the particulars of Dax, like how he didn’t seem to age, was stronger than normal, and could hear danger coming from a mile away. Sure, there were perks to pretending, but come on. It was like mass hypnosis or something. But I needed to stay focused. Whatever they wanted to believe Dax was, he wasn’t the issue right now. Bookie was, and he looked very alive.

  I drew in a deep breath as possibilities swarmed into my head like an angry hive of wasps. Could I have made a mistake and buried him alive? Horrible thought, but it would make this all so much easier. But I knew I hadn’t. His body had already started to stiffen before I buried him. Live people didn’t get rigor mortis.

  “Maybe I’m some sort of healer?” My voice came out breathy, almost like I was in awe of myself, which I might’ve been at the moment. Could it be possible? Could I be that cool?

  Bookie’s jaw dropped, bless his heart. “How freaking cool would that be!” he exclaimed, and then high-fived me, the sheer awesomeness of the possibility overtaking any panic that he might be the walking dead. This was exactly why Bookie, even a dead Bookie, would always be my best friend.

  “You’re not a healer,” Dax said, throwing day-old rain water all over our I’m so freaking cool party. Dax was always so adult, which I couldn’t decide if I loved or hated.

  “How do you know that?” I asked, afraid I was going to get an answer I didn’t like.

  “I’ve met healers before. There’s a certain energy to them.”

  “Maybe I have a different type of that energy?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yeah, actually, I do.”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it. Dax was way too mature to be around when me and Bookie played what if.

  I looked back to Bookie with a we’ll discuss this later when he’s not around to ruin it look and then switched gears. I looked at every visible part of Bookie. Those were definitely the clothes I’d buried him in. There were spots that looked like he’d tried to clean them, but it hadn’t worked out so well with limited resources. “Do you feel any different?”

  “No. Not even a little. I feel exactly like I did before I died.”

  “Because you aren’t dead,” Dax said. “And don’t tell anyone you were.”

  I took a step toward Bookie. “Dax is right. Nobody knows for sure that you died. I took a covered body out of the Rock in the middle of the night. It could have been a sack of rice for all they know. No one actually saw your dead body, there or here. I left Fudge a note, but it’s not tangible proof. I’ll say I messed up.”

  “What about the person who dug me up?” Bookie asked.

  “We have no idea who that is at the moment, and I doubt they’ll be stepping forward anytime soon.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Don’t worry about them. If it were someone who was going to say something, we would’ve heard already,” Dax answered. “If anyone from the Rock sees you and suspects, they’ll think you’re a Plaguer. Or maybe you never had it at all. If anyone asks, we tell them it was a mistake while we try and figure out what happened. We carry on like normal.”

  Normal? Not so easy when one of you could see the memories in people’s heads, one of you never aged and sprouted fur, and the most normal of the three had just died and come back to life. “Sure,” I said, and neither Dax nor Bookie commented on the fact that the word was steeped in sarcasm as thick as honey in a beehive in August.

  “No jokes about being dead either,” Dax said, looking just at me now.

  He couldn’t be serious. How was I supposed to get past the shock of Bookie coming back to life if I couldn’t make fun of him for it? There was only one option. “You sleep okay last night?” I asked Bookie.

  “I guess, why?”

  “Your neck is looking a little stiff.”

  “That wasn’t even a little funny. It was almost embarrassing in its lack of humor,” Bookie said.

  I sighed and scratched my head. “I know. I’m better when it’s off the cuff and I’m not pressured to get it all out in one shot.”

  Bookie tipped his head in complete understanding, and I wanted to hug him again, afraid he’d drop to the ground and die again, or something equally horrible.

  “So what do I do now?”

  “You walk in the house with us like nothing happened. You were just on an errand for me. I let Dodger use your room, so sleep in Dal’s.”

  “You can take the bed, Bookie. I’ll take the floor,” I offered, figuring he needed it more than I did right now.

  Bookie was nodding, but Dax wasn’t.

  “Dal will sleep in my room.”

  I shrugged, not seeing this as anything worth fighting about. Dax barely slept anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal if I took his room. Okay, maybe there was a tiny part of me that looked forward to sharing a room with Dax again, whether he would be there or not. It was still his room.

  We left the barn as if nothing strange had occurred. We walked past the guards, Dax patting Bookie on the back and laughing at a joke that hadn’t been said. We looked normal. Whatever had happened, water under the bridge, and whatever tales would be told tomorrow hopefully would be softened by the act.

  Dax saw us back to the house and then left out the front door. I didn’t know where he was going, and I wouldn’t ask. It was probably a beast thing.

  Bookie opened the door to the room that had once been Tiffy’s, then mine, and would now house Bookie. It was a good line of possession.

  Chapter 3

  I woke up in Dax’s room alone, which I told myself was a good thing, but I was probably going to have to do some more convincing if I was going to make myself believe it. There were bigger issues to figure out that had nothing to do with whether sleeping with Dax on a regular basis was a good idea. I had a walking dead Bookie to worry about.

  I threw on my clothes from last night, as I didn’t have any of my things in this room, and headed down the hall to find my undead friend. The door to my room was wide open, and I could tell by the silence that no one was in it even before I peeked my head in.

  Don’t panic. Just because he got up before me, like he had done almost every day I’d known him before he died, did not mean he was somehow dead again.

  I took the stairs two steps at a time until I neared the bottom and resumed some sort of decorum. Bypassing breakfast, I raced to the back door. Then I took three steps back, grabbed a handful of greasy bacon, to the disgruntled yells of those currently getting breakfast, and headed out the door.

  A roaring noise came from the barn, the sound of someone revving an engine. Once, twice, three times. Pause. One, two, three… There was only one person who revved like that. At some point, Bookie must’ve taken that three’s a charm thing to heart. He did that every time he was going to leave the farm to go out digging—or more accurately, scavenging through ruins for useful crap to bring home and hoard.

  I’d have to tell him that I’d tried out the three thing last night and it was a dud. First I had to stop him from going out. He’d just come back from the dead and now he thought he should go gallivanting around the Wilds? Over my dead body he would. Somebody was going to end up dead for real this time if they didn’t listen to reason.

  I got to
the barn right as he was about to ride out and parked myself in the middle of the doorway.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Digging.”

  There was only one place you went “digging,” and the ruins weren’t safe right now. Nowhere was safe, not for someone who’d just come back from the dead.

  “No, not a good idea,” I said, and motioned for him to kill the engine.

  He turned the key. “Why?”

  “Dax doesn’t want anyone to leave the farm right now.” And I’d tell him that he felt like that just as soon as I found him.

  “I didn’t hear that.”

  I threw my hands up. “I did, so you should go park your bike.”

  “Well, I didn’t hear it, so I’m going unless someone stops me between here and the gate.”

  I was fairly certain no one was going to have heard about my fictitious decree and throw up a roadblock.

  “Do you think it’s good idea to go running around after what happened?”

  “Dal, since when is going out a bad thing? You love to go running around. And I need to do something normal and clear my head. I figured I’d hit up the library.”

  Gallivanting was a bad idea, but the library? He was going to the library? I loved the library.

  He started up his bike again, and waved his hand in a gesture for me to get the hell out of his way. Short of lying again, which I’d do if I could come up with a good one that might stick, he was going out.

  There was only one choice, as I couldn’t let him go alone. I planted hands on hips, refusing to budge out of the door. “Were you going to invite me?”

  “I thought you might need to stay close to home.”

  My chin dropped down and I shot him my best evil eye. “I should stay close to home but you’re totally cool to go out considering what just happened?”