“Oh, hello! You’re a Zorya, aren’t you?” she said in a breathless voice. “Just who I need!”
I gave the moonstone hanging from my wrist a quick check. She followed my gaze, laughing as she put a hand on my arm, giving me a little squeeze. “Oh, I’m not a ghost! I’m a real person. I’m Siobhan. Siobhan Gullstein.”
I must have looked surprised at her name, because she grinned. “Mummy is an Irish pagan, and Dad is a rabbi from the Bronx. They’re not quite your typical love match, but they’re happy, so who am I to quibble?”
“Er . . . hi. Pia Thomason,” I said, holding out my hand and trying to remember if I’d met her before. She didn’t look familiar, her dark hair and eyes and rather elfin manner reminding me of Demi Moore at her most dewy-eyed. “How did you know I was a Zorya?”
“I’m a vespillo,” Siobhan said matter-of-factly, as if that explained everything.
“Are you, indeed?” I said politely, trying not to look utterly clueless . Boo, what’s a vespillo?
A vespillo? Why do you want to know?
Because I just met one.
I felt his sudden alertness. Who?
She says her name is Siobhan. Why, what is she? I hate to ask. It seems so rude.
His sudden spurt of concern faded away. I do not know her. She is probably no danger to us. A vespillo is an assistant to a necromancer.
Oh, that’s a lot of help.
Do not speak to her, regardless. I am almost into the building .
Siobhan had been eyeing me with amusement while Kristoff and I had the quick conversation. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but are you new to all this?”
I relaxed a smidgen, giving a wry smile. “I’m afraid so. I know that vespillos are assistants to necromancers, but beyond that I’m a bit fuzzy.”
“Don’t worry. It took me forever to get the terminology down,” she said with another friendly grin, then waved toward the nightclub. “Why don’t we go have a drink, and I’ll tell you all about life as a vespillo.”
“I’m afraid I’m waiting for someone,” I said, hesitating.
“Ah. Gotcha. I’ve got some friends waiting for me inside, but I thought I’d say hi and see if you’re doing anything tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? I’m not sure what we’re doing. We’re probably leaving soon.”
“Really?” Her brow wrinkled. “I thought you were here because of the Ilargi, but I guess I’m wrong. Well, nice meeting you. If you’re still here tomorrow, I’m at the Hotel Reykjavik. Give me a jingle if you’re available to help a poor, overwhelmed vespillo.”
She started to turn away, but I caught her sleeve, stopping her. “Wait a second-you said Ilargi. You don’t mean reapers, do you? The Brotherhood of the Blessed Light?” I wondered if she’d seen Kristjana, although I doubted if the vampires had let her escape their clutches.
“No, Ilargi. You know, the soul suckers?” She squinted a little at me. “You really are new, aren’t you?”
“I think we’d better have that drink,” I said, considering telling Kristoff, but deciding he had enough on his mind trying to determine what was going on with the vampires holding Kristjana.
She grinned. “My kind of girl. We’ll have a quick one at the bar before I join my friends, OK? They’re a good lot, but kind of noisy.”
I followed her into the club and was immediately enveloped in a dark, womblike warmth. Siobhan steered me toward the bar farthest away from the musicians. I ordered a glass of wine, waiting until she returned from checking in with her friends before settling down on a barstool.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” I said, accepting my glass of wine. “What exactly do you do?”
“Well, originally, ‘vespillo’ was the name they gave people who carried out the dead for burying,” she said, sipping a giant stein of beer. “But something like a millennium ago, the name was used by a necromancer’s assistant, and it kind of stuck. Not that we’re mere assistants anymore-we unionized, you see. So now we’re considered sort of a cross between a necromancer and a metal detector.”
“All right,” I said slowly, wondering how I could admit that I was just as much in the dark as ever.
“We find essences of unbound bodies,” she said, evidently noting my lack of understanding. “Hence the metal detector reference.”
“Unbound bodies. Like . . . ghosts?”
“No, not spirits. Everyone has an essence, right?”
“Your soul, do you mean?” I asked.
She made a so-so gesture. “Kind of, but not exactly, if you know what I mean. An essence is something unique to each person. When they die, their soul and spirit are bound together and take off for wherever. Well, that’s where you come in, right?”
I nodded.
“But their essence remains with their body. Think of it as kind of a marker that stays with their bones, and even after, when those turn to dust.”
“And you find that essence?”
She took a sip of her beer and nodded. “That’s what a vespillo does. We can see them. They look like swirly blue glowing things, generally, although sometimes their pattern is weak and hard to see.”
“Why would you want to find the essence of anyone?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Ooh, peanuts. Yum.” She pushed the bowl toward me after scooping out a handful. “Necromancers use us, mostly, since they’re the ones who can really do anything with the essence, but sometimes I get the odd legal request to locate the remains of someone who’s gone missing and presumed banished to the Akasha.”
I searched my mind for any clues as to the purpose of a necromancer. “I realize I’m sounding horribly ignorant, but what does a necromancer do with the essence?”
“Raises them as a lich, of course,” she said, popping another handful of nuts into her mouth. She added around the mouthful, “That’s how you make liches. You raise the remains of a person or, if the body is not present, raise the lich from the essence. It’s easier with a corpse, of course, but a good necromancer thinks nothing of raising from an essence.”
“Ah, liches.” I frowned, trying to remember who’d mentioned them recently. “The . . . er . . . zombie guys, right?”
She took another swallow of beer. “Eve would yell at you for that. Eve’s my girlfriend, and a fourth-class necromancer. We normally work together, although sometimes I get gigs without her. The difference is that revenants aren’t bound to the person who raised them, and liches are. And then there’s that whole magic thing, but that’s really neither here nor there.”
I thought of asking her for more information, but a glance at the clock behind the bartender reminded me that Kristoff was probably going to need my services in a few minutes
Everything A-OK?
I am in the building, but there are several Dark Ones here.
Be careful, I told him before returning my attention to the peanut-munching woman in front of me. “You mentioned an Ilargi in the area. There was one here a few months ago, but I never found him. Have you seen him?”
“Nope, but I gather from the lack of spirits in this area that he’s been really active, sucking back the souls of all the ghosties he could find. I’ve only found one he missed, in fact.”
My skin crawled with horror. “Dear God. The ghost you talked to-was his name Ulfur, by any chance?”
“No, this was an old woman who is parked out in the harbor. She’s afraid to come ashore. Ulfur, you say? Just a second.” She dug through the messenger bag that was slung across her chest and pulled out a battered notebook, paging through it. “Let’s see, new curse I saw in Barcelona, list of wards useful against phantasms, recipe for a whole-wheat challah-” She flashed me a grin. “Dad loves to cook. Oh, here it is.”