Sin & Surrender (Demigod of San Francisco #6)(37)

Bria felt his pulse. “Slip into that other plane and see if your dad is there. If not…fuck, let’s sing him a lullaby, I don’t know. Want me to light a nice-smelling candle or something? Rub his feet?”

“Be serious.”

“It’s hard when you act like this.”

I fell into a trance, just enough to peek into the spirit plane. I didn’t want to leave my body for any reason, not with Lydia and Aaron hanging around this place and Hades players out in the hallway.

Amazingly, Harding waited in a foggy mist. Since I’d only dipped a toe into spirit, his appearance was gauzy and only half realized, but it was him all the same. I could feel his soul.

Relief flooded me at his presence, immediately followed by fear. He shouldn’t be here! With the Hades Demigods well able to move through spirit, he could easily get found out.

“Oops, you found me. Hello.” He squatted, making his head level with mine. “How are you? You do realize you’re doing something I haven’t taught you yet, right? This is an entirely different plane of spirit, one very few ever use. And here you are. You really do rise to the occasion in a crisis. What a marvel. You’re going to go really far—”

“Yeah, yeah, later.” I quickly told him what I’d done and what was happening.

After I’d finished, he looked at me gravely for a moment.

“Bad news?” I asked, fear kindling within me. Despite what everyone said about accidents, I knew I had less room for error than most. My magic was already scary, and I was undoubtedly seen as a troublemaker. Two of the Hades Demigods had a vendetta against me, and if Demigod Zander ever caught on to who trained me, he’d be wary as well.

I was skating on thin ice, and I knew it.

“Bad news for you? Not so much. For me? A bit.” He looked both ways, although I had no idea what he was seeing. From my perspective, there was nothing but hazy gray. “I’ve been watching you from afar so I wouldn’t be discovered. Dang, lady, I wish you weren’t so helpless and naive and likable and hot, all at once. Move over.”

“Watching me from afar? You’re the…things that are always just out of sight?”

“Yes and no. I said move over.”

I tried to scoot over, forgetting that I was still half in spirit. The act sent me reeling out of spirit. I sucked in a startled breath and nearly tipped over, out of balance.

Harding stepped through the spiritual plane like it was a window, his foot touching down on the spot I had just occupied—the one I’d used to peek through.

Bria’s eyes pulled together and her body went rigid. “What is that, Alexis? Who’s here?”

“Ah, my favorite Necromancer. Fantastic.” Harding crouched down beside me, over the prone man, whose lips had started to turn blue.

“Maybe Zorn pierced his lungs or something?” I asked, hovering my hand in front of his mouth to feel for breath. “Why else wouldn’t he be breathing? Maybe he doesn’t have a blood oath.”

“Zorn knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t have pierced anything vital,” Bria said.

“It’s not his body that’s the problem.” Harding tsked. “Poor Zeus. He thinks he’s so mighty, and yet he’s so easily knocked off his high horse. Egos, you know. When they get too big, they are highly unstable.” He ran his hand down my arm, and it felt, for all the world, like a real hand. I shivered beneath his warm caress.

“What—”

“Shh,” he said softly, wrapping his strong fingers around my wrist to prevent me from pulling away. “Watch. Feel. This is advanced magic. This is the kind of good you can do.”

He guided my hand over the chest of the prone man, our touch warm on his unnaturally cool skin.

“You have literally scared the life out of him.” Harding chuckled.

“Not funny.” My voice was barely louder than my heavy breathing.

“This is what happens when the will to live leaves a person. The soul goes…soggy, for lack of a better term. The body is intact, but the soul has no interest in residing. The good news is you can heal his soul. That is a powerful thing. Do you see how amazing our magic is? You can actually will a person to keep living. You are life and death, all in one.”

With his guidance, I pulled power from the line, twining it with spirit.

“You are a favorite. This magic is a favorite. It will protect you, Alexis, for all eternity, with or without a body.”

He sounded so sweet, so reverent, that I didn’t remind him that he hadn’t been protected in life and still wasn’t safe in death, his presence at this Summit being a prime example. We weren’t favorites—just like Dylan wasn’t a favorite. We were coveted. That fact made us vulnerable.

My hair tingled as a violet strand crawled into existence, connecting my palm with the man’s chest, burrowing deeper until it reached his soul. It was the same sort of string that Lydia had used to siphon energy from spirits, only I would be using it to pump energy in.

“Close your eyes,” Harding whispered, his voice both around and within me, folding over itself like cake batter and sliding across my skin like a ghostly touch. “Surrender yourself to the magic.”

The power of the Line fizzed through my blood, and a substance like quicksilver glinted along the velvet string. It carried something pure and light from me to the dead man—my will for him to live. My will, not his. But as it wrapped around the violet string, strengthening it, bolstering it, the feeling manifested into a desire. Then into an action.