Free Spirit Ascendancy by E. E. Holmes Page B

reach for one, but then withdrew her hand, looking nauseated. “I don’t think I’m quite ready for food yet,” she said.
    I put the plate on the coffee table and waited.
    “Nothing happened for weeks,” she said in a ghost of a voice. “I started to think I’d been crazy to come here, that no one had been looking for me after all. I don’t know if it just took them that long to find me, or if they were waiting for me to let my guard down before they made their move, but either way, about a week ago, they came.”
    “The Necromancers?”
    “They never said the word, but yes, I believe that is who they must be. I have no idea how they got in, or how they knew where I was, but the moment I walked in the door, they overpowered me. They were both huge, and their heads were shaved and covered in deep blue tattoos. They’d already prepared the casting you found me under. Actually, that was the first thing I’d noticed when I walked in the door; they must have just finished, because the bed was at a strange angle to the wall. I remember thinking, ‘Huh, why would my bed have moved?’ and before I knew what was happening, they had leapt from the shadows, stripped off my clothes, bound me to the bed, and covered me in the runes. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
    She seemed on the verge of crumbling into tears. I squeezed her shoulder gently. “It’s okay. You’re safe now; they can’t hurt you anymore.” This was a blatant lie; nothing, as far as I knew, prevented them from bursting in on us at that very moment, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. “Go on. What happened next?”
    “At first they used ropes, but then they did some sort of incantation, and there was a huge influx of spirit energy. It was like… a storm of spirits. I don’t know how else to describe it. They were being sucked into the flat on all sides, drawn into a kind of vortex that was centered around my bed. And then…”
    She shuddered as she groped fruitlessly for the right words. Beside me, Milo drifted closer to listen, his face transfixed into an expression of horror, unable to look away.
    “One of the Necromancers lit a black candle and the spirits started screaming, louder and louder, pulled into this spinning globe of energy. And when they hit it, they were twisted and pulled, tugged and torn, until they sort of… morphed into a single entity.”
    “What fresh hell is this?” Savvy muttered.
    Annabelle sounded close to tears again. “It was awful. It was like they built the cage out of the pieces of spirits they’d ripped apart. I’d never have believed spirits could be manipulated or destroyed like that, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
    “I don’t understand,” I said, looking at Hannah and Finn. “Is this what the Necromancers are known for? I thought they just wanted to bring spirits back from the other side, to reverse death.”
    “Me too,” Hannah said. “But then I guess we have to ask ourselves, once they bring the spirits back, what do they want to do with them?”
    “Nothing savory, by the looks of it,” Savvy said.
    “The Necromancers have always had a reputation for dark and reprehensible magic,” Finn said. “Based on what we’ve seen so far, I’d say that reputation is well-earned.” He stood up. “Forgive me. I don’t mean to interrupt, but I should walk the perimeter and make sure none of them have returned.” And without waiting for any kind of response, he strode across the room and out the door, closing it quietly behind him.
    I turned back to Annabelle. “Go on. What happened next?”
    “It was like living inside some sort of bubble. Everything was hazy and distorted, because the spirit energy created a barrier between me and the rest of the world. I couldn’t see clearly, couldn’t think clearly. They exerted an actual physical and mental force on me; I was too drained to rise from the bed. And the men who’d trapped me there never spoke to me, no matter what