*****
Over the next couple of days, I developed a daily routine. I spent the mornings with Annie in the morgue, developing my dangerous gifts, and then I spent the rest of the day with Tanya, under the watchful eyes of an angry, sulky Finn. Since the break-in, he’d been forced to step up his vigilance of me, and he couldn’t be less enthusiastic about it. He wasn’t as hostile toward me since the break-in, but he was still far from friendly.
The rest of the compound thought I was a freak that needed to leave. Most of the others wouldn’t even make eye contact with me since word of my setbacks in the morgue had gotten out. Plus, it didn’t help that they knew I was the reason behind the attack on their home. They wanted me gone, and I didn’t blame them one bit.
Tanya went out of her way to make me feel happy and less lonely, and it started to work. The only thing I missed about my old life was Two Socks, but he hadn’t shown up yet. The only other downside to my life at the compound was the nightmares.
They haunted me every single night, and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to fight them off. They weren’t ever as bad as the first one, but they were gruesome, dark, and evil. They always left me breathless, sweaty, and unable to get back to sleep afterwards. The lack of sleep began to show in my lessons.
Drifting off in a morgue full of dead animals did not end well, especially for a necromancer. I’d done it twice so far, and both times I’d accidentally raised half the morgue in the process. Annie worried about me, but after my first week at the compound ended, she stopped asking me what was wrong, and just tried to help me as best as she possibly could.
“What’s the plan for this morning?” I asked, taking a seat on the stool across from the table from her. “More practice on raising a single animal? Or are we just gonna work on finding my power faster?”
“We’re not staying here,” Annie said, grabbing a bag from the table. She strapped it over her shoulder and looked at me. “The three of us are going out to a nearby pet cemetery to practice your exclusion skills. The more animals around you the harder this test will be.”
“Whoa, I’m not ready for that,” I said, surprised that she could possibly think I was. “I still can’t manage to just raise one animal, and that’s when there are only a few dozen in the room with me. How the hell am I supposed to control myself around a few hundred animals?”
She sighed. “This isn’t my call. The Council wants to see some progress from you, and they think the best way to do it is to throw you overboard and hope you don’t drown.”
“This is ridiculous!” I snapped.
The two of us walked together down the halls, and I noticed that people tended to look at Annie almost the same way they looked at me. “I’m sorry, Ronnie, but I’m under orders the same as you are. If it makes you feel any better though, Finn is as unhappy about this as you are.”
“Finn’s going with us? Oh, I’m sure he’ll just love that.”
Annie shrugged, and she pushed open a set of doors that led to the outside world. This was the first time I’d left the compound since arriving, and it was amazing how bright and happy everything looked out here. Everything except for Finn seemed to be enjoying himself, and he scowled at me as we approached.
He slid into the driver’s seat of an old beat-up blue car, and I hopped into the backseat. The drive to the cemetery took only a few minutes, and then Finn parked and Annie and I made our way to the center of the graveyard. I could see Finn leaning up against the car, and he made it a point to not look at the two of us.
“Ok, focus. I want you to find the most recent grave, and call the inhabitants spirit back to its body. Ignore the calls of the others around you. Just focus on this one spirit. If you need to stop, tell me, and we’ll take a break and try again later.”
I closed my eyes and searched inside myself for the power I knew was there. It grew and pulsed when I called to it, and it took less and less time to find it every time I searched for it. When I opened my eyes, I focused them on the nearest grave. It was the freshest one and I tried not to think about the poor animal that was lying in that ground, or the family that had loved it.
I tuned into the spirits around me. There were dozens of them hovering around the cemetery, waiting for something to do, and they eagerly answered my call. As I slipped farther into the grasp of my power, I felt myself fading away, losing focus on my surroundings. I was dimly aware of Annie screaming at me, but I ignored her and pushed harder, trying to raise the animal so I could return to the compound.
A sharp pain in my arm snapped me out of it and when I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw were Annie’s worried eyes staring into mine, and her fingers resting against my arm, which she just pinched. “Ronnie…” she said softly.
Looking around, I saw several freshly disturbed graves, at least twenty of them, and each had an animal of some kind digging its way from their graves. Finn watched a dog that was little more than bones and scraps of fur climb its way to the surface, and he turned to me. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
The look of disgust on his face made me take a quick step back and look away in shame. “I–”
“Ronnie, go wait by the car,” Annie said gently. “Finn and I will take care of this. Just…go.” She waved her hand dismissively, and I could feel the disappointment emanating from her as she turned away from me. She ran her hand through her hair, and I took a deep breath, fighting the urge to cry as I walked back to the car to wait.