Wake the Dead

Excerpt

Wake the Dead
Sophie Whittemore © 2023
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

Welcome to Hotel Hell

The world is a chrysalis waiting, desperately, for something to happen. And when things happen, that means chaos follows. And when chaos follows, someone inevitably writes something akin to the Book of Revelations.

The Book of Revelations is nestled between the thumb and forefinger of the wandering priest sitting with one leg crossed over the other in the lobby of the Sweeney Inn. A glass cup beads, crying condensation, at his side. He has stubble he probably dreams will, one day, become a beard.

He really shouldn’t have a beard.

I shouldn’t be thinking like that. There could be a mind reader in this very room. Gamin attracts those types more than most places. It attracts the magical like rats to disease. It’s the magic river that does it, the magic hiding us from the human world. So, case in point, there very well might be a mind reader in this very room.

Hey, asshole, if you’re reading my mind, and I smile as I think this, fuck off.

The round-bellied, redheaded, and altogether-too-good-for-her-own-good witch beside me, Patty, scowls at the priest bearing the Book of Revelations. Specifically, she scowls at the mud caking his shoes. “He’s dragging it all over the place.” She watches the floor, how his legs swing across it. “I don’t care if he’s a priest. If he muddies the ground—” She ties her frizzy red hair back from her round face, making me wonder if she really will sock him. Her absolute kickass attitude never ceases to amaze me, and if fate took other chances, I would not hesitate to make her my dream girlfriend.

“He’ll meet his Maker?” I finish for her.

She smirks, leaning her chubby, freckled arms against the front desk. She’s about to answer when the man gets to his feet and crosses toward us. He’s not too tall, about my height, with dark hair, thick brows, and skin that glows like a penny in the sun.

“Welcome to the Sweeney Inn,” Patty declares, a little glint of pride in her eyes. A businesswoman growing comfortable in her power suit. Her brother, Jason Sweeney, keeps the books. Patty leads the running of this place, and she runs such a tight ship that her orders even make me weary at times.

Together, they run the (Evil) Eye Inc., your friendly neighborhood necromancy corporation and local coven business. Being younger, they’ve moved a lot of the business online with tech-wizard friend Erik Borden doing most of the magical for-your-eyes-only monster coding.

You heard me.

Witches are getting into the Silicon Valley big tech startup business.

What’s the world coming to?

I look around the lobby again and notice a tiny ghost rat scurry in one of the corners, still carrying the piece of poisoned cheese that ended its life.

It’s a work in progress.

“Your name?” I ask the handsome stranger, my pen poised over the check-in book.

He points to the paper and pen. “Really, no computer?” He has crooked bottom teeth, but it doesn’t detract from the glow in his smile.

I shrug. “I’m old, therefore, I’m old-fashioned.”

He leans in a little closer at that statement. The Roman collar, a clerical collar, at his neck peeks out. “You look hardly twenty.”

“Many people have told me that. Well, mostly people.” Patty casts me a withering look at the inside joke. I point to the book. “Name?”

“One room.” He falters at how far I’ve already skipped in the usual check-in process. “And my name is Adam. Adam Way.” He pronounces it “Aadom.”

“Father Way?” I ask.

He nods. “As you say.”

Oh, a poet. I hate poets.

“What brings you to Gamin?” Patty takes the crumpled bills he pulls from his wallet, watching him just as suspiciously as I do. This wouldn’t be the first time a stranger tried to pull the wool over eyes. There was a ghūl just last week who tried to party with a selkie during a bachelors’ party…ugh, the teeth on that one, I assure you it was—

“Training.” He fixes his collar.

“For?” Patty shifts over, pressing his change into his open palm.

“The town’s priest—” I’m honestly surprised this town still has priests considering the string of murders that occurred a few months ago. “—he asked me here for a very special reason. He wants me to become a purifier. No, that’s not quite it. You will think it’s silly, like the movies.”

“I assure you”—and here Patty and I grin in unison—“we’ll believe in anything.”

“I am training to become an exorcist. I’m afraid my family back in Lebanon still hope I can become a lawyer or a scholar or something. Fight for justice. Get married again instead of chasing after some spiritual quest.” He lowers his head and looks conspiratorially at me. “But I’m sure your parents act the same way.”

I sign off on the rest of the book, checking off prepared rooms, and reach for a keycard for him from under the desk. “I don’t have family back anywhere. I came from, well, I suppose now it’s Iran. But I left home a long time ago. My home, the home I knew…it’s long gone. It’s history.”

“You left to go where?”

“Wandering the world. Traveling extensively.” Murdering. Thieving. Gathering an army of the damned, but who’s counting? That was old Lili. Now, I’m changed. I’ve grown soft.

Adam takes his keycard and nods at that. “I’m sorry. Without family, it must be hard.”

I close my eyes and think of the strange little community I’ve recruited here in Gamin. Patty and Jason Sweeney, necromancer siblings. Byron the ghost and his boyfriend, Erik Borden, a techno-wizard (literally). Detective Ikiaq, a shapeshifter as old as I am.

And Jo. Jo Kim. My gangshi, soul devouring partner. Forever asleep because of a mistake I made, chasing after an oracle punk who turned out to be an angry Greek goddess with a murderous chip on her shoulder.

But instead of telling him all that, I say, “I found my family. Eventually.”

He looks another moment into my eyes with his dark ones, his hand matching my complexion, the shade of the sun that made me when I wandered the world as a goddess of Sumer, the demonic opposite to Eve in Eden. His hair’s clipped back, perhaps a deterrent for his sex appeal as a priest, but it does a poor job of it. A gathering of ladies at a bachelorette party nearby whisper about how they’d “want the priest to come to the party before the wedding and not after.”

Even the slight case of sideburns only serves to accentuate his tense jaw, his teeth gritted in nervousness. Everything about him is tightly wound, a watch ticking in a gentleman’s pocket, waiting to spring.

Those are always the most fun to break.

“Of course.” He nods. The gaggle of ladies behind him giggle as he turns around and raises his hand in what could be a wave, a blessing, or both. “We all need family in these trying times. The world seems to be on fire, if you’ve read anything of the news or heard the gossip lately.”

“We didn’t start the fire!” Patty quips, already launching into a half-hearted humming of Billy Joel.

“You act older than me sometimes,” I gripe at her, biting my tongue back as I note Adam’s curiosity. Patty and I may both look twenty-one, but I’ve seen empires fall eons before she even learned they existed. Or before she existed, for that matter.

Adam, smiling, clutches his room key and his Bible in hand, his simple faux leather soles shuffling against the lobby floors as he turns toward his room. “Funny. My room number is 177. One more seven, and I might be considered blessed.” He bows a little toward me, the movement stiff, his eyes a little too curious for my comfort. “But it was a blessing to meet you, Lili.”

As he turns around, I’m cursing beneath my breath. What is he, a mind reader?

“How in the nine Hells did he know my—?”

Patty stops me by pointing at my lapel, where my nametag reads my printed name, “Lili,” alongside “concierge” beneath. “Cool it, Sherlock. Not everything has to be the start of some mystical case file with you. What is this, a TV show?”

She picks up a stack of newly printed Gamin town maps from beneath the desk and goes to restock the sad little pile next to the magazines by the door. Funnily enough, the maps mention town destinations like the riverfront, historic town hall, and hiking in the woods.

The pamphlets say nothing about the dead bodies of sirens, the cursed waters that make you forget your memory, or the string of serial killer murders that, somehow, flew under the radar thanks to a fair bit of magic.

Monsters make great bedtime stories but horrible advertising.

Adam goes off to his room. The bachelorette party goes to get drunk in our brown bar. And us? We shuffle out from behind the desk, wanting to stretch our legs after standing in the same, listless position for so long. Putting maps at the front of the lobby just to give us an excuse to do something. Anything.

“Three,” I say, breaking the silence finally.

Patty glances over, curious. “Three what?”

“Three months, Patty. It’s only been three months since we caught Lethe.” I pick up a map from the pile and leaf through it. I stop at a cheery mention of some no-name diner with fraying booths and too-thick pancakes, too-thin bacon. “And suddenly, everything’s just back to normal again? There could be a copycat killer out there following in Lethe’s footsteps. And Detective Ikiaq might remember how well I did on the last case—”

“You’re not a detective,” Patty tells me.

“But I could be,” I reply.

“You were at the right place at the right time,” Patty huffs, fixing my nametag and pointing to the empty cups that need replenishing by the water coolers. “Don’t consider yourself Gamin’s private eye after happening to catch one killer. You don’t have a license.”

“Not everyone who’s skilled in a profession has a license.”

“No, but they sure make you feel better when the dentist is performing your root canal.” She glances at me with an intense side-eye, a habit she’s adopted from her twin brother, both with the same red-blonde hair, freckles, flushed pale skin, and pesky habit of ignoring their self-preservation instinct. “What’s with the rant, Lil? Have you been dreaming again?”

“Immortals don’t dream. We have memories that we fall back into, uncontrollable visions.” I examine my fingernails, just regular mortal length, clipped and harmless. No talons that could skewer three grown men. No growing to the size of city buildings in my true form. No unleashing of power.

No terrorizing, there’s just fear that I’ll do it again. Lose control.

“Tell me, Lili. I’ll try to understand. What’s been going on?” Her honey-hued eyes bore into mine, trying to find some semblance of my soul, I suppose.

I exhale, thinking of the memories that hurt so much to remember. “I miss her, Pats.” I think on the last vision I had, a week ago, the one I wanted to fall into so badly that I banged my head against a wall for an hour afterward, only stopping when I worried about freaking my neighbors out. “I remember everything about what it was like to see her conscious. Her eyes dancing as they stayed on mine. Holding her in my arms, smelling like hair dye and cigarettes in the bathroom where we first confessed our feelings to each other. Hell, I’d even have her put a hole in me again with that shotgun of hers just to see her living. I’d do it again and again just so I could say, ‘I love you’ and ruffle her short-cropped blue-black hair and drink Bloody Marys with her with the actual blood intact and…”

“Shit!” Patty leans over to pick up a fallen magazine with a sprig of lavender in it to promote household harmony and curses as her phone slips out of her pocket. Beneath the table holding the magazines, Patty’s carved out a small ward to keep guests in good spirits while waiting in line. “Sorry, love, keep telling me about your vision.” Patty’s gaze is filled with—and this hurts to think about—pity, as her eyes stare into mine. “At least… I mean, at least you had Jo Kim while she was…”

“Awake? Alive?” I sigh, digging my thumbs against my eyes, wondering if tearing them out would hurt less. “What is living anymore for a true immortal or reanimated? Existing is hard enough.”

“Better than dying. I’m perfectly content not fearing for my life, thank you very much.” Patty blows a loose curl out of her eyes as I slowly return her smile. “I’m set on wild, crazy adventures for a good, long time. Thank you.”

Patty’s cell phone screen lights up as the ringtone blares, something from that indie college crooner she likes, the one with the androgynous stage persona and the lip-biting habit. The contact reads, “DETECTIVE IKIAQ” with a small smiley face symbol beside it. I pluck the cell phone out of her hand before she can pick it up.

“Hey, don’t you have your own?” Patty grumbles.

I wave my smartphone at her. “The AI thing always cusses me out in Italian. We’re fighting right now.” I angrily switch my own phone off as I steal Patty’s. “Hello?”

A heavy sigh from the other end of the line. “Lili, did it ever occur to you that I might be actually trying to reach Patty?”

I laugh extra loudly, “Ah, detective, you’re so funny.”

“You’re on speaker phone, dumbass.” Patty flips me off as she goes to fetch more maps from the front desk.

I switch the speaker phone off as the detective tunes back in. “Well, you’re lucky that I’m going to need all of you back for this case. We have a murder involving quite a few Gamin reanimated and immortals. The mythical underbelly of this town might talk more freely to you than to me if we need to interrogate them.”

“You mean I’m more intimidating than you.” I gloat.

“You’re reckless and violent, yes,” the detective gripes. “But word travels fast in Gamin, especially about the hotshot demon who tracked down a killer of monsters. The legendary townsfolk respect a legend even more powerful than them.”

“And Patty?”

“The Sweeney siblings have a way of…controlling you, to put it nicely. Last time you went full-on and skewered Lethe with a giant talon, you’d left the Sweeneys behind entirely.”

“A dog without a leash?” I offer. “And my friends are the leash.”

“Precisely. Why do you keep interrogating me like this?” The detective pauses, sipping from his favorite mug of hot chocolate, I’d presume.

“I just wanted to hear you admit that I’m bigger than you, at least in my true form.” I try to contain the smile in my voice, the sick morbid fascination that would get my mind off this sense of ennui. This nothingness of pining over a broken heart, trying to wake someone whose soul was even more lost than mine. “Show me the body.”