Misfits 1: Chapter One, Part One

Author’s Note: The Misfits of the Adept Universe series directly follows the events in the final Dowser trilogy. And, in my opinion, it is best read after the Dowser Series, including Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things that Byte (Dowser 8.5). Otherwise … SPOILER ALERT!

I stepped from the cab, lingering on the sidewalk with my satchel over my shoulder and a small duffle bag in hand until the taxi had pulled away. Combined, the two bags held every precious possession I owned, not including the magical artifact perpetually slung around my neck and currently hidden under my bulky red poncho.

The cab disappeared around the corner. But instead of traversing the front path leading to the house that corresponded to the address I’d given the cabbie — because I didn’t actually live there — I veered left. Jogging across the perpendicular street, I skirted the cul-de-sac that abruptly capped East Thirty-Seventh Avenue for vehicles, even as the road continued east for foot and bike traffic. The beads attached to the multicolored fringe of my hand-knit poncho clacked together, seemingly amplified against the fronts of the closely clustered homes of the residential area. 

In another couple of hours, residents would be returning from school or work. But for now, the street was dead quiet.

Practically running — or as close to running as I ever got, at least — I traversed the length of a tall chain-link fence. My heavy boots barely touched down as I crossed through the open metal gates that were all that stood between me and a wide concrete path. A step beyond that entrance, and the magic embedded within every centimeter of the sprawling grounds of Mountain View Cemetery welled up underneath me. 

I shuddered, suppressing a groan of contentment. Eyes closed, partially on my tiptoes, I paused to absorb the sensation. It felt intensified, perhaps due to how long I’d been away.

I was home.

I settled back on my heels, content to simply let the magic roiling under my feet just be. For the moment.

Mountain View Cemetery, spreading some ten city blocks north to south and two residential blocks east to west, might have been owned and operated by the City of Vancouver since 1886. But its magic belonged to me, grounded me. Even sustained me. Over 92,000 gravesites and 145,000 interred remains equaled a shit-ton of death magic. And all of it had been tied to me for over three years now, since a few days before my eighteenth birthday.

Ironically, I had claimed the cemetery — at both the witches’ and my mother’s urging — to keep my path on the side of the light, to balance my burgeoning magic. Everyone had been so worried about me being tainted. Worried about me going dark. And now, upon returning to the city, having completed training the magic that had everyone’s panties in a twist, the cemetery was still my first stop. Even before checking in with friends or so-called family, I’d needed to come to Mountain View. The urge had seized me as the wheels of the plane hit the tarmac, then had only intensified in the time it had taken to clear customs and wait in line for a taxi.

Feeling more settled and still hauling my bags, I took a path that cut through to the center of the property. The headstones were a mixture of raised and in-ground through this section, crafted from different types of stone and metal. A few family plots with larger memorials were randomly scattered throughout. My steps were quiet on the wet pavement, though my beaded fringe still clattered with each step. 

A few joggers traversed the many paths running parallel and perpendicular to me — not that I needed to worry about being seen. The magic that ebbed and flowed under my feet hid me from casual view. If someone didn’t know I was there, wasn’t looking for me specifically, my passing presence was absorbed by the energy constantly emanating from the cemetery. That inherent obfuscation would be the same in any graveyard, for any necromancer. But it was more concentrated at Mountain View because I’d claimed the property. Our magic was connected, almost symbiotic.

It wasn’t raining, but it had been earlier in the day. The headstones, the paved path, and the bright-green grass were all speckled with tiny droplets that hadn’t evaporated yet. Sunlight glinted from the petals of the flowers and the wreaths decorating a number of graves — tokens of grief, celebrations of a life lived, from those who visited their dearly departed.

I stepped onto the damp grass, weaving through a grouping of flush-mounted headstones and passing a three-foot-tall white concrete statue of a woman holding an urn, before I arrived at my favorite gravesite. I stopped there, gaze unfixed, pressing my palm to the top of the tall, light-gray granite headstone. Ignoring the fading name and dates etched into it, I listened. Waiting. Still feeling incomplete, but putting the pieces of myself back together. The pieces that made me the Morana Novak who called Vancouver home, who had claimed Mountain View Cemetery.

The pieces that made me Mory.

The pieces that made me the wielder’s necromancer — and everything that went with that title, that position within the so-called misfits who made up the Godfrey coven. The younger subset of that coven, at least.

I wasn’t the same Mory who had abruptly left Vancouver in the middle of February over a year and a half ago, less than a week after the offer to take specialized training at the Academy had hit my inbox. But I could still collect and keep the best pieces of that Mory before I announced my return. 

Before everything that had happened almost two years ago, I would never have expected to feel the need to do so. But here I was.

I waited to see if the sweet soul who occasionally haunted her gravesite would visit. I didn’t try to summon her or to pull her forth. I was too powerful to play at such things anymore. And if her spirit had finally moved on … well, that was the ultimate goal.

Oh, yes. I was a necromancer. From a long line of necromancers. A soul seer, to be specific. A rare specialty. A frowned-upon branch of magic, because screwing around with souls was as dark as magic could get, even for a necromancer. 

Unless that necromancer was trained and certified by the Academy, then gainfully employed by the witches Convocation.

Which I was.

As of just over twelve hours ago.

I wasn’t the necromancer of the Godfrey coven, though, which claimed all of Vancouver and beyond as its territory. You know, ‘The Necromancer’ in capital letters. That was my mother’s position.

A slight breeze stirred my hair, tickling my jaw and obscuring my vision. That hair was currently deep purple, shot through with shades of pink and a hint of light blue. It pulled my attention back to the present. No spirit or shade arrived or greeted me. I tried to not feel disappointed. 

Instead, I reached into my satchel for Ed, finding my undead turtle tangled up in three strands of yarn. A deep purple, a baby blue, and a multicolored speckle — all merino, silk, and cashmere — were woven around his legs and neck. I’d started a simple knitting project on the plane, and after a fifteen-hour flight from Latvia with a connection through Frankfurt, I was almost at the crown decreases on a marled slouch hat. I was knitting with yarn left over from the shawl I’d completed at the Academy, right before leaving for my final assignment. And yes, it matched my current dye job.

“Ed,” I grumbled. “We’ve talked about you building a nest in my bag.”

The red-eared slider blinked his gray-orbed eyes at me as I set about untangling him. His front legs were the worst. He had managed to weave multiple strands through his long nails. Magic glistened from his carapace — power I could see only because it wasn’t my own, and because it was particularly intense. That power gave Ed supernatural abilities that went beyond simply being the undead familiar of a necromancer. A soul seer.

I’d actually needed to register Ed with the Academy in order to keep him with me while on the grounds, along with the heavy necklace that I never removed, not even while showering. Such secrets were difficult to keep around dozens of Adepts who could feel the power of both Ed and the artifact without even being in the same room as me. And my magic was rare enough that I didn’t need to frighten new acquaintances with my mere presence as well.

Not that officially registering Ed or the necklace had eased that apprehension much. It also didn’t help that I was the only soul seer among the specializing necromancers. And that the Academy hadn’t trained another soul seer in over twenty-five years.

Ironically, the somewhat obsessive reputation I’d inadvertently built at the Academy with my near-constant knitting, along with my penchant for bestowing hand-knit socks, hats, and arm warmers on my fellow classmates, mitigated that tension far more than anything else had. I knit more than I could justify wearing, and almost everyone preferred to have warm toes, fingers, and heads. 

Despite finding myself slightly ostracized for my rare subset of magic at the Academy when I first arrived, I actually couldn’t pick up magic as easily as a witch or a sorcerer could. Being on the grounds of a cemetery allowed me to stretch my other senses much farther than usual, though. If an Adept — a person of the magical persuasion — passed me on the sidewalk of a busy street, I wouldn’t know it. But I’d know the instant anyone with magic in their blood set one foot over the boundary of a cemetery.

Anywhere else, I could sense other necromancers, of course. And spirits in all forms. 

And vampires.

But if an unknown vampire got anywhere near me, I wouldn’t be casually brushing shoulders with them. More likely, I’d be running. Screaming down the sidewalk in question. Even with the protections that I wore literally around my neck, tangling with a vampire wasn’t something any necromancer sought out. The ingrained rivalry between those magical species went back — as in, all the way back. With the vampires the ultimate victors. On all occasions. Being immortal, supernaturally strong, and able to beguile their victims gave vamps the ultimate advantage when it came to slaughtering those of my ilk.

An unknown vampire wouldn’t want to take the chance that I or any other necromancer could control them, bend them to our will.

Ed wiggled in my hands, having spotted the grass. He liked cemeteries as much as I did. He was undead, after all.

Death might be just another beginning — but what it was the beginning of, I couldn’t tell you. I could, however, talk to the parts of the soul that remained on this plane of existence. I could also raise the walking dead, human and animal — under very specific circumstances. I’d never tried it with a fish. They’d probably decompose too quickly.

The eighteen months I had just spent at the Academy had been all about proving that I could work with soul magic — not simply death magic — with a level of accuracy needed to get certified. As of completing my last assignment, in Latvia, I officially worked for the witches Convocation as a junior specialist. I was now a resource for the investigative teams tasked with policing a certain subset of the Adept. And also with cleaning up incidents that might draw the attention of the mundanes, aka the nonmagical people who outnumbered the Adept by a massive amount. Like, a million to one or something.

There were two other necromancers who called Vancouver, British Columbia, home. Danica Novak — my mother — and Teresa Garrick. Neither of them had required certification to prove their worth, though. To anyone. My mother had worked with the Vancouver coven since before my father died. Teresa Garrick’s presence in Vancouver was still relatively recent, but the Garrick necromancers were well-known badass vampire slayers. Or at least they had been until they’d all been slaughtered by rogue vampires twenty-five years ago. Teresa was the only survivor, and she’d been in hiding with the help of the witches until recently.

The Garrick family’s vampire-slaying gig turned out to be seriously ironic. Because one of the only three vampires I wouldn’t run from on sight was Teresa’s son, Benjamin Garrick.

Benjamin was the reason Teresa wasn’t in hiding anymore. He was the reason they lived in Vancouver, under the protection of the Godfrey coven. He was also one of the major reasons I hadn’t returned to Vancouver in over a year and a half, selecting work-study assignments and finishing a three-year program in record time, rather than coming home on breaks.

That and the empty house that would have been sure to greet my return.

Necromancers and vampires didn’t mix.

And they certainly didn’t date.

Or pine for one another.

And certainly not, in this particular instance, when the gorgeous Jasmine also called Vancouver home. Like Benjamin, Jasmine had also been recently remade. With the blood of the executioner of the vampire Conclave reanimating her. And though we’d never spoken of it directly, not in person or by text, Benjamin Garrick was enamored with the golden-haired beauty. And he would likely be so forever. He was epically focused like that.

But unlike Benjamin, I didn’t have eternity to wait for a crush to even think about glancing my way. So I’d left Vancouver and that unrequited crush behind, knowing that life changed so quickly that coming home would be sort of a new beginning.

Or at least that was what I was hoping.

Magic shifted, lapping against my toes from the direction of the cemetery’s main entrance on Fraser Street. An Adept of some power had just stepped onto the grounds. Facing in that general direction, I perched atop the granite gravestone, pulling my knitting out from my satchel. Ed gamboled around in the damp grass nearby, and I made a mental note that I would need to thoroughly dry him off so he didn’t decay. I knew that the power that coated him was more than just mine now, so perhaps that wasn’t even a possibility anymore. But it wasn’t a risk I would take either way. Ed was part of me. He held a sliver of my soul, so I took care of him. And he grounded me — or more specifically, my power — when I was away from Mountain View.

The latent aspects of necromancy couldn’t be turned off or on. My magic was constantly seeking and picking up the dead. The best I could do was mute the intensity, and redirect it. Hence, the creation of Ed. Most necromancers worked with bones or ghosts. Teresa Garrick preferred the corpses of birds. My mother was perpetually tethered to the ghost of her uncle. But being a soul seer, I had Ed, who was continually animated with my own life force.

More magic curled up from the damp ground, slipping up my dangling legs to churn around my hands. I finished straightening my knitting, further untangling the mess Ed had made, and took up my needles.

Sorcerer magic. At best guess.

I’d been away for a while, and though my magic was sharper than it had ever been — focused and full — I didn’t know the magic of the Adept traversing the grounds of the cemetery well enough to identify them.

No one knew I was back in Vancouver. I hadn’t even texted Benjamin or my witch friend, Burgundy, who was out of town herself at a healers retreat. I’d gotten on the first flight I could, but I’d wanted a soft landing. A gentle reintroduction. One that didn’t involve my mother, assuming she was even at home.

It could have been a random Adept approaching. The population of the magically inclined in Vancouver had grown over the last few years. But Benjamin, who made it his business to know such things — like, officially, with a title and everything — would have mentioned if there was a new sorcerer in town. Even though he was one of the reasons I’d left Vancouver, Benjamin and I had texted constantly while I’d been gone. The vampire, aka the chronicler, had maintained that connection, wanting to know every last thing about my training, and about the Academy itself. Vampires were not numbered among the staff or the students.

Thankfully, my weird susceptibility to Benjamin’s inadvertent beguilement didn’t translate through text message. If the vampire had actually wanted me — me, Mory, rather than the decades of knowledge I’d accumulated while passively living among the Adept — I might never have left Vancouver. And I would have been worse off for it. Untrained and jobless, not just feeling out of place like I presently was.

The sorcerer steadily cutting across the graveyard toward me might not have even been looking for me. But what were the chances of that?

He … him … his magic felt … forceful, insistent. Somehow self-assured. And definitely male. Though sex and gender was one of the first things I could intuit about a corpse, whatever point the person who’d become that corpse had occupied on both those spectrums, that level of sensitivity with the living was new for me. Nice.

I laughed quietly, anticipation welling. Tangling my fingers in the three strands of yarn, I began to knit, slipping the moonstone-skull stitch marker that noted the beginning of the round from my left needle to my right needle. I’d memorized the self-designed pattern so thoroughly that knitting it was practically just muscle memory. I had knit the same hat in different combinations of yarn many times, because it was perfect for using up leftovers from other projects.

I was home.

I was more powerful, more focused than ever.

I was ready to confront the next chapter of my life — perhaps even more ready than I’d thought. So maybe I hadn’t needed to gather the pieces of the old Mory at all? Maybe I was still her.

Mory.

Necromancer.

Soul seer.

I could control the dead. I had carved my way through an invading force of mythical beings, using the corpses of the elves the others in my team had killed as an undead shield. Then I’d untangled the soul magic that had powered an other-dimensional portal. A task that only I could have accomplished. Well, without blowing the entire city up, at least. 

I had worn the instruments of assassination, the wielder’s necklace, at her request, for days — while slowly dying. An artifact that powerful would have killed another at first touch. That was its actual purpose, after all.

I had survived.

With my own soul completely intact.

For years, everyone had watched me, waiting for any sign of darkness born from the trauma of my brother’s death and betrayal — yes, in that order.

But I didn’t dwell there.

I lived in the light.

So I smiled in the direction of the interloper on my territory, and I waited. Knitting happily, for ever after.

Let the sorcerer come.

I was ready for whatever request I knew he was bringing with him. Because there was no other reason to visit a necromancer in a graveyard. A dealer of death magic. A beguiler of souls.

Though it was unlikely that the sorcerer in question knew that last part. It was, after all, frowned upon. Even when properly trained and certified.

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New to the Adept Universe? The first book is Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser 1). Or click here for the entire reading order.