The Licensed Mage

18 Connections

        “I’m sorry.”

        “You could’ve told me you were shaken up about that.”

        Claire shook her head as she turned to him, “I’m not shooken up about what happened. I’m shooken up about what it meant.”

        Raven raised an eyebrow as he watched her, blowing out smoke, “What did it mean?”

        Claire sighed as she leaned back against the bench touching her shoulder with his, “There’s something you gotta understand about Necromancers. Necromancy is not a magic you learn or train for. It’s one of the highest forms of magic there is and it comes with a price. Necromancies are born, they form family lines and bloodlines. They are taught before they can even speak and walk how to control their magic.”

        “So this is someone who beat the system?”

        Again Claire shook her head. She tried to gather her thoughts as she tried to explain what Dillon had told her years ago, “Necromancy comes at a price. Necromancers are torn between both worlds, ours and the World of the Dead. They have a foot in both doors and are constantly being pulled into both worlds. It’s like being asleep and being awake at the same time, their minds are constantly doing two things at once.”

        Raven smoked his cigarette out and grabbed another as he thought over her words, “What does that have to do with what happened in there?”

        Claire stared at her hands as she spoke, “Every Necromancer has a Book of the Dead. It’s something like a journal to them but so much more. One of the duties of a Necromancer is to listen to the ghost of this world so their voices can be heard and they can move on. The ghosts tell them stories, stories of their murders or the murders they committed. They tell of their families and what happened to them. It’s like a radio constantly playing at full volume in their ears. In order to keep sane they put all the emotions of those stories in their Books. They put pieces of their souls in them. Every Book of the Dead is personal to the Necromancer it belongs to.”

        “So we can find out the Necromancer who killed Emily through the book.”

        Once more Claire shook her head, “I felt it Raven. It’s forbidden for anyone other than a Necromancer to read a Book of the Dead because people get sucked in and trapped in the world of the Necromancer’s mind. I should have known it was a Book when I saw it but Emily wanted me to read it. It’s Emily’s book Raven. I felt her screams within that Book. Emily’s the Necromancer.”

        “But you just said Necromancers are born into the family. Her parents aren’t Necromancers.”

        Claire threw up her hands, “I don’t know. Things happen. It could be that she’s adopted and her Necromancy mother gave her up.”

        Raven looked at Claire from the corner of his eye, “The Guild let that happen?”

        Claire shrugged her shoulder, rubbing against his, “Like I said things happened. Usually in such cases the Guild keeps a file on the baby so they can keep track and come to the child’s aid when their magic matures.”

        Raven blew a cloud of smoke into the setting sun as he threw the butt into the ash can, “So the paperwork got lost and this was just puberty gone wrong.”

        He stood and Claire stood with him following him to his car, “No. Something’s not right. From what her mother told me and from what she wrote in her diary this has been going on for months. Necromancers are incredibly connected and they would have felt it when another Necromancer came into their powers. After that first nightmare they would have started looking for her. No one did.”

        Doors where slammed as they climbed into the car and Raven peeled off, “What are you suggesting? Someone screwed this girl to make sure her magic runs wild, killing herself in the end?”

        “It’s possible.” Claire turned to Raven, “Raven, there are mundanes who oppose mages, they’ve even done some extreme cases of killing mages. It’s not too farfetched to say that some kid in her school bullied her to this point.”

        “You’re not seriously suggesting that a teenager killed this girl?”

        “No I just…there’s something going on here. Someone deliberately pushed this girl into a corner.”

        Raven glanced over at her and saw the seriousness in her eyes. He sighed as they pulled into the parking lot, “Fine, I believe you. But we’ve gotta find proof and fast. Once the Captain gets word of what we found he’ll want us to write it off as an accident.”

        They were through the back door when Raven realized something, “Wait a second, what was it you called them back there?”

        Claire turned around surprised, “Mundanes?”

        Raven pointed a finger, “Yeah that. What is that?”

        “Oh,” Claire turned back around and picked up Emily’s journal, “it’s kinda our word for humans.”

        Raven stepped up to her, “Isn’t that racist?”

        “Not really,” Claire looked up as she smiled sweetly, “Everyone’s human but not everyone’s a mage. Mundanes’ just what we call those who aren’t mages.”

        Raven crossed his arms, “Why mundanes?”

        Claire chuckled as she started reading the journal, “Because they live mundane lives.”

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