Waking The Serpent. Jane Kindred

      He realized he was staring. “They went ahead with the ritual, and I stood in the back of the temple refusing to be part of it.” Gabriel’s pleading had been fresh in his mind, and Rafe had been unwilling to leave, wanting to stop it from happening somehow, to keep his coven from doing to any other shades what he’d done to Gabriel. “You could feel the energy of the shades being drawn into the circle as the ritual began. It was palpable. I couldn’t see or hear any of them like I had with Gabriel, of course. When he came to me, I could see the apparition because we had a blood bond. I’m sure you’ve experienced that with people you’ve known who’ve passed.”

      The terse shake of Phoebe’s head surprised him. “I’ve never had that kind of visitation. Just the step-ins.”

      “Well, these shades weren’t visible or audible, but the energy was like a pulsing wave. It was heavy and oppressive and I couldn’t just stand there any longer and let it happen. As the rest of the coven began the crossing invocation, I raised my voice in objection.” He hadn’t meant to, but he’d called the shades to him, and he and Matthew had been surrounded. He didn’t feel like describing that peculiar moment when the psychic energy in the temple had nearly overwhelmed him. It had seemed for a moment as if the shades were waiting for him to command them.

      “So what happened?”

      “I must have disrupted the coven’s focus. The shade energy dispersed before they could cross them and the ritual was in chaos.” Rafe shrugged. “Most shades, new ones, anyway, aren’t aware there’s a self-appointed afterlife policing effort from the Covent. But they’d drawn in so many with this ritual the word is presumed to be out, and they’ve been having trouble raising any shades at all.”

      “That must be why.” Phoebe looked thoughtful as she sipped her lemonade. “I drove by the temple yesterday. Something drew me there, the presence of a shade that seemed to want to make contact, except it didn’t step in—maybe couldn’t. And the air around the temple seemed full of shades, but none of them tried stepping in, either. Which, well...you probably can’t appreciate how unusual that is. But I got the feeling they were caught in some halfway state. It was unsettling.”

      The idea was worse than unsettling. As much pain as it caused him to think about what he’d done to his brother, he’d hate to think of Gabriel’s spirit being trapped.

      Phoebe regarded him. “So that’s when they branded you an oath-breaker.”

      He nodded. “The Conclave revoked my active status with the Covent and the right to practice ritual.”

      “Which you evidently ignored.”

      Rafe met the twinkle in her eye with one of his own. “Evidently.”

      “But the Covent’s lawyer is still defending you. How’s that work if you’ve been excommunicated?”

      “It’s not quite that severe. It’s more like I’m on a metaphysical ‘time out.’ At any rate, their reputation is at stake if my association with them comes up in a murder trial. And the lawyer is actually my father’s, which he thinks I’m unaware of.”

      Phoebe leaned her elbow on her knee with her chin propped in her hand. “Ione didn’t think you knew.”

      He shrugged as he took a sip of the lemonade. “We all do a lot of pretending, I guess, so everyone gets what they want.”

      “So, after the ritual, you went to the psychic?”

      Rafe nodded. “My apprentice left town without a word right after the ritual. I was worried about him and hoped she could help me find him.”

      “You have an apprentice?”

      “Well, had, anyway. The Covent gave him the boot for not standing against me. Matthew’s a freshman at the University of Metaphysics. He applied to the Covent as an apprentice after a summer internship. But no one there has heard from him since last week.”

      She was staring at him with an odd expression. “Matthew?”

      “Yeah. Why?”

      “I just...heard the name Matthew somewhere recently. It’s probably nothing.” The way she said it gave him a feeling of misgiving, but she didn’t elaborate.

      Rafe finished his lemonade and set the glass on the coffee table. “When I went to see Barbara Fisher, she couldn’t help me with Matt, but she told me there were three souls attached to me, invoked by what I’d done at the Covent’s ritual. She was able to channel them, and the shades appealed to me for help, claiming someone was compelling them to step into unsuspecting hosts.”

      “A necromancer.” It was a label he hadn’t thought to use. The idea was chilling.

      “She could only channel them for short intervals. We had two more sessions, but the last was cut short. Barbara didn’t channel shades the way you do.” Rafe reached for his glass to cover the awkwardness conjured by the unspoken implication before remembering it was empty.

      Phoebe jumped up. “Would you like another? There’s plenty.”

      He accepted, glad of the distraction as she went to refill his glass. “Her method was fairly traditional. Tarot, and similar summoning spells to what I’ve used. So there was no direct communication, just her acting as an interpreter. She said she sensed the shades were being pursued by the man trying to control them. She was trying to get details about who he was, or where he was, but they went silent and she couldn’t raise them again. But we were so close to something. I felt it. The shades had begun to trust me.” Rafe glanced up as Phoebe brought him the lemonade. “I think we would have gotten a name that evening, before whatever spooked them. And I think that’s why someone stopped Barbara from contacting them. Permanently.”

      Phoebe looked as if she was about to say something, but a loud clatter from the kitchen startled them both. A striped Siamese cat scrabbled at the window over the sink, eyes fixed on a large owl perched in the mesquite tree framed in the glass.

      “Puddleglum!” She ran to the kitchen and pulled the cat away from the window, but it was the bird that caught Rafe’s attention. The yellow eyes rimmed with ivory in the dark-brown face stared in at them boldly.

      Puddleglum struggled out of Phoebe’s arms and made a dash for the cat door. A moment later, the owl took off from its perch, the pale breast the only spot of color against the chocolate-brown wings as it flew away.

      Phoebe examined her scored arms. “Dammit, Puddleglum.”

      “Interesting name.” Rafe tried not to show his concern at the visitation by the bird. “He doesn’t look like a marshwiggle.”

      Phoebe glanced up at him with a pleased smile. “You know the books.”

      Rafe laughed. “I don’t live in a cave. Who hasn’t read the Chronicles of Narnia?”

      “Most men, in my experience. At least, not that they’d admit to. I’m more likely to get a positive response to Bilbo Baggins. My theory is the preponderance of strong females in Narnia. Or females at all.”

      Rafe blinked at her. “Wait, how did this happen? I thought we were sharing a nerd moment. Now I feel like I’ve had my feminism card revoked.”

      She cocked her head, setting the ponytail bobbing. “You have a feminism card?”

      “A man can’t be a feminist?”

      “Of course he can.” Phoebe studied him as if she’d just found a new species of his genus. “I just don’t meet a lot of them who look like you.”

      Rafe raised an eyebrow. “Like me?”

      Phoebe laughed. “I think I’m the one being sexist now. Never mind.”

      He couldn’t help wondering what he looked like to her. A Neanderthal? Some kind of machismo-obsessed asshole? But the symbolism of the owl nagged at him, putting his ego on the back burner.

      The owl was the nagual