Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things That Byte (Dowser 8.5) Read online

  Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things that Byte

  Dowser 8.5

  Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Old Man in the CrossWalk Productions

  Contents

  Author’s Note:

  Introduction

  1. Mory

  2. Rochelle

  3. Jasmine

  Dowser Series Cookbook

  The Adept Universe by MCD

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Author’s Note:

  * * *

  Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things that Byte consists of three novellas narrated by Mory, Rochelle, and Jasmine, and is set in the Dowser series. It is intended to be read between Dowser 8 and Dowser 9.

  The Dowser series is set in the same universe as the Oracle and the Reconstructionist series. While it is not necessary to read all three series, in order to avoid spoilers the ideal reading order of the Adept Universe is as follows:

  * * *

  Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser 1)

  Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (Dowser 2)

  Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (Dowser 3)

  I See Me (Oracle 1)

  Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (Dowser 4)

  Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser 5)

  I See You (Oracle 2)

  Artifacts, Dragons, and Other Lethal Magic (Dowser 6)

  I See Us (Oracle 3)

  Catching Echoes (Reconstructionist 1)

  Tangled Echoes (Reconstructionist 2)

  Unleashing Echoes (Reconstructionist 3)

  Champagne, Misfits, and Other Shady Magic (Dowser 7)

  Misfits, Gemstones, and Other Shattered Magic (Dowser 8)

  Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things that Byte (Dowser 8.5)

  Other books in the Dowser series to follow.

  More information can be found at www.madebymeghan.ca/novels

  Introduction

  The warriors have fallen. And those they previously protected must now band together to keep the invaders at bay.

  Mory, a young necromancer; Rochelle, a pregnant oracle; and Jasmine, a fledgling vampire, will do whatever it takes, whatever the cost, to prevent the fated future from unfolding. Even if that means they must become warriors themselves.

  1

  Mory

  An oracle was strolling along the paved path that cut through the graveyard, heading toward me. Even in the waning gray light of late afternoon, and even without feeling her footfalls resonate with magic through the ground I’d claimed, her practically white, bluntly cut hair was a dead giveaway. A beacon of her otherness.

  Rochelle Saintpaul.

  The late-December afternoon was chilly enough that the oracle should have been wearing a knit hat. At a minimum. I gently tugged four intertwined, variously colored lengths of fingering-weight yarn from my bag, knitting a few more stitches of the marled slouch hat I was working on, even as I tried to remember if I had any dark-gray cashmere yarn in my meager stash. It was an easy guess that the oracle’s favorite color was black, given her choice of clothing — currently an extra-large black hoodie over faded black jeans — as well as her intricate arm sleeve tattoos. But I hated knitting with black. It was too easy to make a mistake, and to miss the error for long enough that I’d then be forced to unravel the entire item.

  The Mountain View Cemetery was huge, stretching over a hundred acres across ten city blocks north to south, and two residential blocks wide. I was perched practically in the very center of all that sprawl, situated on my favorite tombstone. Surrounded by over 92,000 gravesites and 145,000 interred remains. And knitting, eternally.

  The magic I commanded while on the property afforded me a certain amount of protection from the notice of nosy visitors, but it would do nothing to mask the oracle’s presence in the cemetery. Still, even if nonmagicals laid eyes on either of us, they’d most likely assume we were merely visiting the grave of a loved one.

  Though the chances of an oracle being in the cemetery for any other reason than to chat with me were super slim. Even nonexistent. And I didn’t believe in coincidence. Magic tied everything together — every action and reaction all looped together in endless knots, ranging from the simplest constructions to the most intricate lacework, from birth through death and beyond.

  I knew. I was a necromancer. The ‘beyond’ part of that equation, of that design, was my dominion.

  I had spent the previous afternoon and evening with Rochelle, avoiding the witchy chatter at Jade’s bridal shower, eating sushi at the dowser’s apartment, then dancing at Jade’s bachelorette party. Our parting had been swift — with me whisked away accompanied by Drake and Kandy, and the oracle dragged off by her husband, Beau, and Jasmine. The dragging part wasn’t an exaggeration. Trouble had already been brewing in Vancouver. And then the oracle’s magic had been triggered by the appearance of a horde of invading elves.

  I hadn’t questioned being hauled back to Pearl Godfrey’s house and sequestered behind the heavy-duty wards of the head of the witches Convocation. All right, fine. I hadn’t questioned the decision adamantly. I knew Jade wouldn’t have been able to focus on kicking elf ass with me tagging along. The dowser was careful with me. Too careful. Because I wasn’t the teenager with only a dim grasp of her magic who’d gotten herself kidnapped — twice — under Jade’s watch anymore.

  Though just because I could speak to the dead, it didn’t mean I could fight my way out of a paper bag. Not unless I had access to a corpse. And that hadn’t been pertinent in the context of the elf situation.

  And actually, my being able to command the dead wasn’t a particularly well-honed skill. More of an experimental theory, really.

  Late last night — or way too early in the morning, depending on how you looked at it — while I’d been snoozing on Pearl’s couch, Jasmine had shown up with news of whatever had gone down between the dowser’s crew and the elves. Contrary to the orders of her master, Kett, the golden-haired vampire had doubled back after getting the oracle out of danger and on her way home. But that was all the information I could glean before the witches — including Pearl, Scarlett, and Olive, who was in town for the dowser’s wedding — sequestered themselves away in the map room with Jasmine for forty-five minutes. Even Drake, who was a fledgling guardian dragon, hadn’t been able to hear anything through the sealed door.

  Then Drake and I had been sent packing. According to Pearl, a junior necromancer wasn’t in any immediate danger from the elves. Plus, the big guns — aka Jade and her badass posse — were no doubt dealing with the situation.

  I hadn’t heard anything from anyone since. But that wasn’t terribly unusual. Not only did Adepts usually prefer to keep company with their own kind, the warrior types that called Vancouver home often took off for days or even months at a time without notice. Then, out of the blue, Jade would show up back at the bakery to shovel cupcakes down my throat. So I wasn’t particularly surprised that all the tension and the bodily forcing of necromancers and oracles into escape vehicles hadn’t resulted in the end of the world.

  I had no doubt that Jade could handle herself against the elves. I mean, backed by her fiance, Warner, plus a werewolf and an ancient vampire, she was practically invincible. And an actual guardian dragon, Haoxin, had been in the mix as well.

  I was also totally accustomed to how information filtered its way through the ranking Adepts. Vancouver was witch territory, with Pearl Godfrey overseeing everyone. And though necromancers were technically part of the
coven, we were on the bottom of its roster of importance. Jade threw that balance out of whack, though, and I picked up a lot that I probably wasn’t supposed to know through her. And from hanging out at the bakery during my weekly meetings with Pearl.

  So even Jasmine being tight-lipped when she’d commandeered Kett’s SUV and driven Drake to the bakery and me home wasn’t at all unusual. Not that I was particularly chatty either, but Drake was. Usually. The previous night, though, the fledgling guardian had been seriously peeved about being kept out of the information loop. I’d actually never seen him as agitated as he had been before he’d gone home via the portal in the bakery basement.

  As Rochelle spotted me, she stepped off the cemetery’s paved path. It hadn’t rained since the previous night, but the trimmed grass between the mixture of upright and flush-mounted headstones was still damp. All of Vancouver was almost perpetually damp from late October through April.

  At the party, the oracle hadn’t mentioned any pressing need to talk to me. So … maybe there was more going on with Jade and the elves than Pearl Godfrey wanted anyone to know? A cold wash of fear deadened my hands. I dropped a stitch, inwardly cursing but ignoring it for the moment.

  “Is it Jade?” I practically shouted.

  Rochelle didn’t answer me, instead continuing to stride across the wet grass with her hands stuffed deeply into the pockets of her hoodie. She wore her faded black jeans long enough to drag at the back of her sneakers, and the bottom two inches of her cuffs were getting soaked.

  All right, fine. All Adepts, even me, were well versed in the close-mouthed-about-magic-or-magical-happenings game. I shoved the rest of my questions — Has something happened? Is everyone okay? What the hell is going on? — back down and swallowed them. I forced myself to fix the mistake in my knitting before it unraveled through to the slouch hat’s ribbed brim.

  It was always better to appear outwardly calm around Adepts of power, anyway. And though Rochelle was only three years older than me, there was no question that she was powerful. I might not have been able to feel her type of magic when she wasn’t within the cemetery grounds, but I had seen her oracle power streaming from her eyes the night before.

  I finished knitting the row, slipped the skull-shaped marker that denoted the beginning of a new round, then continued. The moonstone stitch marker had been a gift from Pearl Godfrey for my nineteenth birthday last February, along with three skeins of cashmere from Sweet Fiber Yarns, and a set of interchangeable wooden knitting needles. Pearl, the chair of the witches Convocation, had taught me how to knit while she was pretending to mentor me. But in reality, I spent an afternoon every week at the bakery in the company of witches, a dowser, a werewolf, and even the occasional dragon, because every one of them was concerned about me going dark.

  The possibility of my soul having been corrupted when I’d been kidnapped, tortured, and almost sacrificed — twice — by a black witch put them all on edge.

  Because a black witch was destructive but containable. A dark necromancer was an entirely different issue.

  So I went to my weekly meetings, and I tied myself and my magic to the cemetery. I kept my undead turtle, Ed, with me at all times as a focus, as an almost subconscious active strand of my power. Clearly I wasn’t feeling evil yet. And the knitting helped, mostly because it helped me concentrate on wielding my magic precisely. But also because I liked making things. Being productive.

  Feeling calmer, I glanced up. Rochelle had paused a few steps away. She was staring fixedly over the top of the headstones to the south.

  I followed her gaze. A tall, medium-brown-skinned figure was prowling around the far chain-link fence that edged West Forty-First Avenue. The magic he left in his wake simmered at the very edge of my range, which ended abruptly at the boundary to the cemetery. I couldn’t actually see his face from this distance, but there wasn’t a terribly large black population in Vancouver. Which was a pity really, because Rochelle’s shapeshifter husband Beau was really something to look at. With his green-blue eyes and chiseled features, he could have modeled for a living instead of working with cars. Even the three months of gray skies and rain we were suffering in Vancouver did nothing to sallow his complexion.

  The same couldn’t be said for me.

  “You haven’t heard anything more, then?” Rochelle asked, still watching Beau patrolling the perimeter. “Since last night?”

  I wondered if the werecat was always this highly protective of his oracle wife — or whether it was the events of the previous night that had him on edge. “No. You?”

  Rochelle shook her head. Then she pulled her phone out of an army-green satchel painted with boughs of ivy that were reminiscent of the sleeve tattoo the oracle had on her right arm. Not that I could currently see any of her tats. She didn’t have any on her hands or face, and every other section of her skin was currently swamped underneath the too-large hoodie that also covered her rounded belly. The oracle was something like six months pregnant.

  Rochelle glanced at the phone, tapping on the screen a couple of times. Presumably checking that she hadn’t missed any text messages.

  “So Jade or Kandy hasn’t texted you?” she asked.

  “Not yet.” I returned my attention to my knitting, moving from plain garter stitch into a patterned section — knit four stitches, purl four stitches, over and over, slip the marker, and continue for eight rows. “But it’s not like we text every day. And Jade’s wedding is on Thursday. So they’ll be busy with that.”

  Rochelle nodded. “I just thought someone might text this morning.”

  “Because of your vision?”

  “Yeah.”

  She didn’t elaborate further. And it was rude to ask about something so personal as an Adept’s magic. And … well, if Rochelle had seen something yesterday or earlier today that had caused her to seek me out, I honestly wasn’t certain I wanted to know. At least, I didn’t need it blurted out, especially if the oracle didn’t seem inclined to do so.

  The conversation lapsed between us. Again.

  Rochelle glanced around for Beau, apparently finding him over my right shoulder. Though it was difficult to tell exactly where she was looking through the dark-tinted, white-framed sunglasses she wore.

  And I didn’t want to stare. Adepts didn’t like being stared at, including me. But at the nightclub, when Rochelle had been gripped by a vision, her eyes had shone white. A blazing white light that was a physical manifestation of her power. I’d never seen magic like that before, though I’d heard that some witches — and Jade — saw magic as an array of colors.

  Jade wasn’t just a witch, though. And if Rochelle’s presence in the graveyard wasn’t tied to the events that had ended the dowser’s bachelorette party prematurely — before I’d had a chance to ask Drake to dance, which was honestly too bad — I had no idea why the oracle had sought me out. I wasn’t certain how she’d tracked me down at all, really, except for her ability to see the future.

  I shivered, tightening the orange-and-red gradient cashmere scarf I already had cinched around my neck, then zipping up my sweater more tightly. The extra-large Cowichan-inspired sweater, with its skull-and-crossbones design, had been another birthday gift. From Kandy and Jade, knit locally but custom designed.

  “I’d like you to find my mother, if you can.”

  “Um, okay. She’s dead, then?” Stupid question really, since I was a necromancer. But it was always a good idea to be clear about these things. “Like, you know that for certain?”

  “Yes.” Rochelle touched something through her hoodie. The chain of a necklace, maybe?

  I had my own necklace — a magical artifact, really — that had been created for my protection by the dowser herself. Ancient coins of various sizes and shapes hung from a thin gold chain that was woven through the thicker links of a white-gold chain. Jade added another coin and another layer of her magic to the artifact every few months, fortifying a piece of alchemy so powerful that there had been whispers behind my ba
ck about me being the one to wear it.

  There weren’t many secrets that could be kept from necromancers, because there weren’t many secrets to be kept from ghosts. Plus, Benjamin Garrick was writing a chronicle, so he was pretty nosy about anything and everything magical. The younger vampire was still fairly new in town, but he didn’t mind trading information to get his questions answered. His snob of a mentor, Kett, was a total jerk — and also most likely the person who’d been doing the whispering in the first place.

  But then, I really couldn’t blame him. Vampires didn’t trust necromancers any more than we trusted them.

  “So …” Rochelle prompted. “Will you look for her? Her name was Jane Hawthorne, not Saintpaul. Though she would have been cremated as a Jane Doe by the ministry.”

  “Interred at Mountain View? But why would she be … she died in Vancouver?” As far as I knew, Rochelle and Beau had just moved to the city themselves about a year and a half before.

  Rochelle shifted uncomfortably, shoving her hands so deep into her pockets that the fabric strained under the pressure. “I was born here … lived here, in Vancouver, for the first nineteen years of my life.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “My mother was killed in a car accident the day I was born.”

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Yes. And she didn’t have any identification on her.”

  Rochelle stopped talking, letting me piece together and then extrapolate the rest of her background. Different last name … mother dying after — or even while — giving birth … so the oracle was an orphan?

  I knew that just because she hadn’t mentioned a father didn’t mean he wasn’t alive. Though if he was, wouldn’t he have known her mother’s name, so that she wouldn’t have been buried as a Jane Doe?