“How can you help?” Mark asked, equal parts eager and cautious. If Mark was inexperienced, Riordan was-- No, Riordan wasn’t as simple as that. The man was older, more experienced in the world, but lacking even the foundational shaman training that Mark possessed. What experience Riordan did possess, however, covered esoteric abilities.
Would it be so surprising that Riordan would have a way to allow someone else to see ghosts?
Riordan gestured to the air broadly, shrugging one shoulder. “Daniel’s visible in the spirit realm. I figure you two could talk there easily enough.”
Mark huffed a laugh. “The spirit realm is dangerous. And it’s not as easy as that to go there.”
The last time Mark went to the spirit realm, to be Riordan’s spiritual backup against an encounter with the death mages, Lucinda had been the one to open a pathway for him and Agent Ahlgren had marked the way, using Daniel as a beacon. Mark had practiced existing and operating in the spirit realm, but always under Frankie’s watchful eye and with her opening the way.
“You can do the ‘pop out of your body’ thing, right?” Riordan asked.
Mark knew how to spirit walk, projecting his soul out of his meditating physical body. “Yes.”
“Then it’s not so hard. I’ve got a gateway, after all.”
Right, because of course Riordan did. Mark had seen the strange damage and healing to Riordan’s soul, but knowing someone was capable of being a keyed gateway rather than merely owning a key still boggled Mark’s mind.
Frankie wouldn’t like it. Mark knew that with a surety born of having grown up with the shaman and of being her direct student. Such dangerous activities required experienced supervision. Somehow, Mark doubted Riordan counted.
Frankie would also make Mark wait. He’d have to meditate and work on his emotional state and be very sure that he wanted this before she would let him make such a trip. Never mind that Mark was already very sure and that the trip would be short. Frankie didn’t rush the important things.
Mark knew he should be equally cautious. His intelligent mind observed that Riordan’s gateway would take Mark somewhere specific, somewhere Daniel could also reliably go. Of course, that location was the shielded spiritual domain of a particularly strange greater spirit. That was exactly the sort of location a novice spirit mage should avoid, being tinged with intention from the spirit itself, an intention that would likely be all the more volatile for Riordan’s presence and Mark’s intrusion.
The greater spirit’s presence did not deter Mark as it should. Indeed, Mark thought seeing Daniel in such a place, feeling the peaceful side of death around them, might ease his nightmares all the quicker. Such a reward was surely worth the risk.
“Please,” Mark whispered to Riordan, afraid to speak too loudly lest he change his mind, “I would like that very much.”
Riordan grinned and settled back against his tree, eyes closing. “Alright, then. Do your thing and I’ll see you in spirit form.”
What a quaint and casual way to express the magical act of manifesting one’s soul outside of one’s living body. Mark changed his seated stance to a far more formal meditation pose than Riordan’s relaxed lean, falling into the cadenced breathing that facilitated concentration and therefore magical precision.
Leaving his body always reminded Mark of floating in water the same temperature as his body, a brush of the flow of magic pulling him gently out of his physical body once Mark had consciously loosened the tether that held him there. His connection to his body spooled out slowly and Mark opened his awareness to the metaphysical world.
Riordan stood like a magical warrior above his body, garbed in the mantle of a shaman. Other spirit mages, those who lacked the shifter affinity, might eventually contract a spirit to wear such a mantle, though Frankie said many chose other forms of magical protection instead. But shaman, possessing their linked animal spirit, always looked like some primitive fantasy warrior in Mark’s opinion.
Riordan’s mantle maintained a simple appearance, sleeveless fur-lined leather tunic displaying Riordan’s spiritual tattoos. The silvery flowers and leaves glowed with ghostly light. The black lines that once had been knotted rope deepened, gaining a depth that did not exist physically. His physical and mental strength translated into a solidity and presence that Mark admired, leaning into that feeling, Riordan’s aura somehow both stable as rock and turbulent as a storm.
Mark felt drab in comparison, his own spirit mantle at middle manifestation, a cloak of quills spreading down his back and a porcupine mask covering his face. He normally felt more centered in this form, his inner peace lending gravitas to his shallower magic, but Mark’s shaken emotions undermined that for now, leaving him just… Mark. Just himself. He would be raw and vulnerable if not for his porcupine.
He wondered if Riordan could sense Mark’s vulnerability. The other man’s aura shifted to one that felt kinder somehow. Before Mark could decide if he was grateful or upset for the acknowledgement, Riordan’s hands began to move in the familiar motions of Frankie’s gateway spell.
Watching one of Frankie’s gateway keys, which were enchanted statues, awed Mark. Watching Riordan’s gateway, that nebula-strewn void whirling slowly in his soul breaking through the cover his mantle to open a dark door to somewhere. If Mark did not already know where that keyed passage led, the door offered no indications of its own. Except perhaps implying it would vent their souls into the vastness of space, which Mark really wished he’d never considered because that was horrifying.
“Follow me,” Riordan commanded, his voice oddly resonant.
Mark thought he might have followed him anywhere in that moment, even into the distance of space.
Fortunately, when the gateway consumed them both, it led not to a cold nothingness but to a circle of stones upon the ground, Mark and Riordan standing in the middle. No, not a circle, a prayer labyrinth, the mixed stones laying out maze-like patterns between the center and the surrounding greenery.
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And there, on the other side of the maze of stones, was Daniel.
Mark stepped forward, wanting to go to him, but Riordan stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm. “I need to lead you out of the circle,” Riordan explained, beginning to walk the pattern of stones.
Following in Riordan’s footsteps and covered by his welcome, Mark tried to focus on the calming meditation of the pattern, of his steps and the feeling of the strange spirit-dirt crunching underfoot. Little sparks of light bloomed in and out of existence around them and shadows of light played over them, cast from the interplay of glowing leaves and branches of the tree that dominated this space.
Mark had seen the tree in the spirit realm once before, but he had seen it in what Riordan had referred to as the ‘ritual side,’ where it been covered over in a cloying swamp of stagnant death magic and hung about with ropes like black spider webs.
Here, the tree glimmered in a mix of colored leaves, the vibrant greens of spring and summer mixing with the striking reds of fall. Berries peeked through in places. Mark could only wonder what eating those might do to a person. Everything he saw here wasn’t actually real, after all, but a representation of a much more surreal and alien place, filtered by his mind into something less overwhelming.
The lights drew Mark in, amplified by the aura of enforced serenity in the space. Mark hadn’t realized he’d exited the circle until he stumbled on the sudden grass verge around it.
“Hey,” Daniel said, his voice deeper than his slim frame would have first suggested, “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, please,” Mark replied, as if Daniel wasn’t already visible in front of him. “I keep seeing--”
He cut off, realizing it might be insensitive to bring up a ghost’s rotting flesh in conversation with them. Mark blushed, embarrassed at his lack of social grace.
Daniel laughed, not unkindly. “I get it. I chose to stay away from the recovery operation for a reason, after all.”
“Shit,” Riordan muttered nearby, the curse sounding relieved. Mark jumped at the noise, having somehow forgotten that the shaman was here with them. His presence blended into this place. Riordan continued, speaking more to himself than the pair of them, “I forgot what it felt like here now.”
“It changed?” Mark asked and then shook his head as if to deny the stupid question. “Of course it changed. I assume it was when it became a greater spirit?”
“Yeah,” Riordan agreed. He didn’t exactly relaxed, but he seemed more himself somehow. That distraction and upset that clung to him before slowly dissipated. He glanced over at Mark. “Want company or privacy for this?”
Mark startled. He hadn’t actually considered that. Once he’d learned that he wasn’t going to be gaining the ability to see ghosts himself any time soon, Mark had resigned himself to speaking to Daniel with Frankie’s oversight. The offer of privacy from Riordan touched Mark, though…
“Is it safe for me to be away from you here?” Mark asked.
Riordan paused and then shrugged. “Should be. Just don’t stray into the woods themselves. That’s a barrier spell really. Daniel is just as welcome here as I am, even if he’s not a recognized shaman.”
That wasn’t an unqualified yes, but Mark doubted that anything was that simple here. Still, his desire for honesty did not want an audience. Mark had no idea what nonsense he’d spout once he let himself begin to speak in earnest.
“I would love to speak to Daniel alone for a bit then.”
“Sounds good. There’s a little pond with a waterfall in here somewhere. It shouldn’t have moved too much in the redecorating,” Riordan glanced over at Daniel. “That seems like a good place for you two to talk if you remember the way. I can come get you in a bit. Or you can come find me. I think I’m going to sit and watch the tree.”
Daniel nodded. “I remember the way. Thank you, Riordan.”
Riordan waved off the thanks. “It’s good for all of us. Mark’s good company and you get stir crazy with just me around anyway.”
The shaman didn’t wait for a response to that comment before striding off into the greenery. Which Mark realized was vine-shrouded tomb stones intermingled with overgrown hedges and gardens.
“Did he mean that?” Mark asked, gesturing for Daniel to lead the way wherever in the absence of other direction.
“Mean which? Yes, you are good company.”
Mark shook his head, strangely embarrassed at the compliment. “No, the bit about you getting stir crazy.”
Daniel nodded, beginning to work his way through the cemetery-glade. “It’s lonely being a ghost. When there were a bunch of us ghosts tied to the ritual, we at least had each other to talk to. Now I just have Riordan. And sometimes Quinn, Zeren, and Ingrid if that trio is around. It’s not the same as having dozens of equally bored, if highly traumatized, ghosts hanging about. We were all a bit desperate for company.”
They chatted a bit about inconsequential things as Daniel led Mark past the central glade with its towering tree and into another passage that indeed opened up into a small pond with an equally small waterfall tumbling out of the woods into it before running away in a rivulet. They settled on a mossy bank and Mark tried to ignore the stone angel peeking through the shrouding greenery behind him, its head bowed in peaceful prayer on behalf of some dead soul.
Daniel let his genial chatter fade off into companionable silence before finally asking, “What do you need, Mark?”
Mark flopped backwards on the grass before turning his gaze on the ghost, studying him. Daniel was one of those men who was fairly average, bordering on plain. He looked skinny and a bit dirty and rumbled. Stubble framed his narrow jaw and high cheekbones. Mark’s gaze dropped lower, latching onto the lines that marred Daniel’s arms from wrist to nearly his elbow, visible with his sleeves pushed up.
The wounds looked raw and open, sliced muscle visible inside, but did not bleed. As a ghost, the color of the flesh was reduced to grayscale, losing the urgency of injury in those dull shades.
“Did it hurt? Were you afraid?” Mark asked quietly.
Daniel smiled, the expression transforming his plain face into something charming. “I don’t remember it. The last thing I remember was seeing two men come around the corner at the gas station. I’d been talking to Riordan there, stopping to smoke and wondering if he was traveling in the same direction. I thought him easy on the eyes and he felt strangely safe, despite his gruff ‘leave me alone’ expression. Then one of the men swung a metal pipe at Riordan, hitting his head so hard I was sure it had to have cracked open.”
Daniel’s smile fading, his gaze growing distant in memory. “I was scared then. The attack was so sudden and unexpected. You hear things, you know? About how dangerous it can be to hitchhike or to be caught alone. But I never thought it would happen to me. I’m a guy and I clearly didn’t have anything worth stealing. I wasn’t even alone. The element of surprise meant that Riordan got jumped and I just… froze.”
Now Daniel’s eyes went sad, but he fished up a shaky smile for Mark anyway. “I regret that. It was a matter of life or death and I just froze. The second man grabbed me and had a drugged cloth over my face before I got past that. It was the last thing I remember about being alive. Freezing and letting him grab me.”
“I got knocked down in the fight at the ritual,” Mark offered in return, his own emotions feeling paltry in the face of Daniel’s last memory. “People piled on me. On each other. Feet stepped on me and hands clawed and I couldn’t get up and then I was buried several bodies deep in a writhing crush of people. And in the throes of magical madness, the women next to me cared more about clinging to me like sirens dragging me down to drown than they did about protecting themselves.”
Mark looked up and into Daniel’s washed out eyes. “I never want to feel that helpless again.”