Psychic Eclipse (of the Heart)

by Amie Gibbons

  “I’ve heard when you kill the object of a ghost’s obsession, you kill the ghost too,” the Fae said mockingly. “Think that’ll work with you? You may as well be a ghost for how haunted you are by your feelings for him.” She winked, little hands caressing the frozen man’s neck. “Let’s find out.”

  “You kill him, you condemn yourself,” AB said in that same cold tone that’d rival Grant’s. “You kill him, and I swear to you, by the time I’m done with you, you’ll wish I’d only killed you.”

  “Real scary coming from someone locked in a cage. You’re not going anywhere.”

  AB paused, then said words that chilled me down to my bones.

  “They can’t keep me alive forever.”

  My head snapped toward her and when I looked back, Emily’s smug look actually waivered before snapping back after a moment.

  “What!” I said.

  Her gaze didn’t move from the Fae across the portal.

  “You kill him,” she continued, slow and precise, “and I don’t care whether we get out of here or I die in here, I will come after you as flesh and blood or as a ghost. You kill him, and I will get you.”

  AB paused. “And in case you didn’t notice, I have friends, very powerful friends. When I get you, because I will get you, I will have my friends bind your magic, and then I will start on you.

  “What are you afraid of, Emily?”

  Her voice was still so even.

  Cold and calm as the sky before a tornado.

  “Because I have a friend who will put you into a coma, trap you in the astral plane in your mind, and torture you, taunt you with your fears, give you hope of escape, trick you into thinking you had, before starting it all over again… for eternity.”

  AB stared unblinkingly.

  Letting it sink in.

  “Oh, I’m so scared,” the Fae scoffed.

  But I could see the fear behind her eyes.

  “Look into my eyes,” AB said, “and you tell me if I’m bluffing. He dies, you go to Hell. And here I mean that literally. So I suggest you let him go and slither back to whatever swamp you came out of.

  “Because I’m what they call a situational sociopath. You aren’t a person to me. You are nothing. I could kill you and not lose a wink of sleep. I can torture you just as easily.”

  “Strong words from a woman locked in a dungeon,” Emily said.

  “Like I said,” AB said, “you kill him, and even death won’t stop me from coming after you. And I will not make it quick, I can guarantee you of that. You called me obsessive? You’re right, I am.

  “So how stupid would you have to be to make yourself the object of my obsession? He is mine. He is one of my people, for better or worse, so you kill him, I will do worse than kill you. You have my word on that.

  “Walk away, Emily. Walk away.”

  Emily’s eyes flicked away and her smug smile slipped again.

  But then it came back, and she met AB’s eyes.

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  And she snapped the frozen Thomas’s neck, smiling as he crumpled to the floor, head slamming to the plush carpet, leaving his blank eyes staring through the portal at us.

  Chapter TEN

  The window snapped closed without my prompting, and I knew somehow Emily had done it.

  She may not have been able to open a window or door into other dimensions but, at least with my power bound up in the gris-gris, she could close it.

  Wait, could they make spells that tugged powers outta another person and use it like that?

  I was pretty sure they’d been trying something similar last year at Carvi’s conference, so that’d be a yes.

  “She still didn’t tell us why,” Ed said, voice nearly a whisper.

  I would’ve jumped if I had any adrenaline left.

  I’d forgotten he was there, honestly.

  “I know,” I said. “But it can’t be for anything good. They wanted me here specifically.”

  AB stared straight at the wall where the hole had been.

  “AB?” I asked.

  I didn’t want to.

  She’d just watched the man she’d loved, obsessed over, hated, and all at once…

  She’d just watched that man get murdered by the woman he’d decided to have sex with instead of her.

  The woman who had clearly tricked us all.

  Some psychic I was.

  “After this, I’m gonna start screening my clients,” I said.

  “Like we’re going to get out?” AB asked, voice hollow.

  “AB, we can’t give up hope,” I said. “We-”

  “No,” she cut me off, voice as hard and cold as the shards of ice in her mental landscape we’d seen earlier.

  Perfectly logical.

  Perfectly rational.

  The sociopath she said she could be peeking through.

  “We will get out,” she said. “You opened that window. Open another into a different area. If there’s a layer like glass over it, break it. We get out. We do it now.”

  Ed sucked in a breath.

  I was right there with him.

  I’d never seen this side of AB.

  “Are you okay?” I asked stupidly.

  Of course she wasn’t okay.

  “I am for now,” she said, voice still so cold and crisp. “I’m not feeling anything. I like it here. I’ll stay here and rational until we get back there.”

  I shivered at the tone.

  “And then, when I have her, I won’t be rational anymore,” AB said in a tone hinting at the things she planned to do.

  I gulped.

  I had my own sociopathic side.

  And I could be cruel and vicious if needed.

  Definitely efficient.

  Even if I wasn’t always okay with that side of myself.

  Somehow, I’d thought AB didn’t have that in her.

  Right now, she did. And there was no power in this dimension or any other that’d stop her.

  I believed her on that.

  “One dimensional portal coming up,” I said calmly, focusing on the wall again.

  Nothing.

  I blew out a breath of frustrated air.

  “Hello,” made me jump and whirl.

  A woman, not the last one, stood at the bars.

  She was average height, with the pretty features of a mixed Asian and Caucasian, slanted blue eyes, high cheekbones, narrow chin and nose.

  And she glowed with power.

  I was beyond caring about the nausea by now.

  Practically used to it.

  But it still made me want to puke to look at her.

  “Who are you?” AB asked.

  Clearly done playing the shrinking violet.

  Clearly done playing at all.

  She’d declared war on the Fae, and they would all pay.

  I could feel it.

  “Interesting portal,” the Fae said.

  Of course they’d seen it. Their creepy crawly internet still swarmed the floor of our cell.

  If we’d been able to get out, it wouldn’t have been a big deal.

  Now though?

  They knew what I could do.

  Crap!

  “Thanks,” I said, unable to put any perky in my voice. “You want something from us?”

  “From you, yes,” she said plainly.

  “I figured. What?”

  “Oh, lost that Southern politeness?” she drawled in a decent Southern accent.

  “I just watched someone I know get murdered. I’m all outta polite,” I said.

  And I was.

  Rules of catching more flies with honey and all that be damned.

  I was fixin’ to go to war right there alongside AB.

  “Too bad,” the Fae said. “I wanted to see how long you could keep that fake sweetness up. It was funny to watch. You threw the guard off.”

  “I know,” I said, crossing my arms and staring her down.

  She stared back.

  “You don’t know,�
�� she said, “do you?”

  I ground my teeth together. “Fine, I’ll play. Know what?”

  “What you are. What you can do. Why you’re here.”

  “Yes, figuring it out, and ditto.”

  She smirked. “You got guts, little girl. I’ll enjoy eating them.”

  “Let me guess, with some fava beans?” I raised my eyebrows at her. “Bring it on, bitch, I got no problems taking your butt down on my way outta here.”

  She burst out laughing.

  “You have no idea what you are, do you?” she asked.

  “Um. A psychic? Or witch, I guess, considerin' my other powers. Why?”

  “You, my dear, are an aberration. A confluence of the impossible and extreme circumstances that makes you biologically unique.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her.

  I didn’t have the patience for this ‘I know something you don’t know’ game.

  Not after what’d just happened.

  “I don't know what like half of that means,” I said.

  Wait, maybe we could get outta here by me singing and entrancing the Fae!

  Would have to get the cage unlocked first.

  Maybe singing would somehow control her to get her to unlock it?

  She stared at me, slitted eyes narrowing.

  “Do you know how Fae human hybrids came about?” she asked.

  “Your parents never have the talk with you?” I said.

  AB snorted, but the woman just stared.

  “A woman was created. An aberration born of necessity and shaped by powers beyond mortal comprehension. But this creation had an unforeseen side effect. She was a human who could hold a Fae baby. From her came the first crosses, and then those could mate with either Fae or human, and it went from there. Same with demons and gods. One fluke is all it took to cross into the human population.”

  “Holy shit,” AB whispered.

  I shook my head. “No. I know I can birth demon spawn, but that’s not news. That’s how we have half breed demons.”

  She laughed. “I don’t mean demons or gods or Fae, though you could mate with them all, technically.”

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “Tell me, did you feel a little sick maybe two weeks ago? Have a heavier period... maybe a little late?”

  I paled and fell.

  My knees hitting the stones with a crack I didn’t feel.

  “I'd start using protection with my vampire lover if I were you,” she said. “I mean, if you do manage to pull off that miraculous escape you think we didn’t know you were trying. Otherwise, next time, you might not miscarry, and you’re a little immature to be a mother.”

  She walked away while my brain was still stuck on freeze.

  “That was a lot of info for like five minutes,” Ed said after much longer than that had passed.

  AB hadn’t moved from her cot, just stared straight at the wall where the hole had been.

  She was in sociopath mode, sure, but for now, until we had a plan, I think she was just gonna sit there in shock.

  “Yeah,” I said, finally pushing up from my knees.

  “Fae lie all the time, Ari,” Ed said. “Just because they said you can have vamp babies doesn’t mean you can.”

  “True,” I said, the word feeling like a mouthful of hedgehog on my tongue. “But I was a little sick about two weeks ago. I was late and had a heavy period. It’s consistent with what I remember about early term miscarriages. Most women don’t even know they miscarry when it’s that early.”

  I didn’t know how to feel about that.

  Had I been pregnant?

  Even for just a few weeks?

  I couldn’t deal with any of this right now.

  So AB’s tactic of denial until we were out sounded pretty good right now.

  “They know we’re trying to escape. Probably saw the whole thing,” I said.

  “Oh, we did.”

  At this point, I didn’t even have it in me to jump and whirl.

  I just sighed and turned, sitting back on my cot as I looked at the man on the other side of the bars.

  “Why do y’all keep sending new people?” I sighed.

  What were they looking for?

  “And you want what, exactly?” I asked.

  He stared at me blankly.

  No reaction to my rudeness.

  He was average in every way.

  Light brown skin that was a generic, could be mixed or just from a less dark part of the equatorial zone tone, brown eyes, plain features, short brown hair, average height, average build, wearing black slacks, black loafers, and a white button down.

  You wouldn’t be able to pick this guy outta a line up in Nashville if the life of someone you loved depended on it.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  Fear pierced through the protective cold blanket of shock, and I shoved it down.

  “Gonna have to open the door for that,” I said.

  “Do you know the story of The Little Mermaid?” the Fae asked.

  I jerked my head back. “Huh?”

  “Did you know it was based on real events? But it wasn’t a mermaid who lost her voice at the chance of a human soul. It was a Fae who wanted to be human, to have a human soul, to be free from the magic she could see all around here. She said it was evil, it made her ill to watch it.”

  I gulped.

  Boy, did that sound familiar.

  “She made a deal with a powerful Fae on our side, a royal,” the Fae continued, “to give up her voice to her, which was magic and beautiful and could enchant any Fae who heard it, in exchange for a human soul. A human conscience. And a one-way ticket to the human world.”

  He paused, and I stared at him.

  She could see magic and sing well.

  Yep, sounded a lot like me.

  But multiple vamps and gods had told me there wasn’t a drop of Fae in me. So it wasn’t like that was where my magic came from.

  Right?

  “What she didn’t anticipate,” the Fae said, “was the pain that came from having a human soul. From having feelings like humans do. From guilt whenever she did something that hurt someone else. She couldn’t take the pain, so she performed a spell to reach back to this side, and begged for her soul to be taken, for her to be Fae once again. Didn’t even care if she got her voice back. Just wanted it to end.

  “The Fae witch said she would change the soul again, in exchange for the soul of another human. There was a man our Fae had met and had feelings for, and was great friends with, and she had fallen in love with him, but not he with her.”

  I flinched. I knew how the original Little Mermaid ended.

  “She was given a knife that could capture souls, and told to kill the man with it. You see, souls hold great power, and when they are contained and channeled, they can be used for the most powerful of magics, until they are depleted.”

  AB made a small sound.

  We’d seen last year what kind of magic a used soul could power.

  And what happened to the soul when it did.

  It was the ultimate death. Nothing left of the person to move on or anything.

  “She took the knife and went to her love’s house, and she wasn’t able to do it. She stood over him, staring at him as he slept, then went downstairs.

  “She wrote him a letter declaring her love and left it on the table.

  “When she left, she figured she’d live as a human. Just learn to deal with the pain, see if he said anything about her letter. What she didn’t know was, the witch’s knife came with a price. She wasn’t allowed to merely let the knife lie. It had to have souls. It was programmed to take souls.

  “So that’s exactly what it did.”

  I shivered.

  “It seeped into that soul she’d suffered so much to earn,” he said. “When she didn’t hear from her love after a few days, she went back to his house, only to see him in the arms of another woman. She flew into a jealous rage and slaughtered them both. But the deal ha
d been for that first night only, so it didn’t count for her deal to become Fae again.

  “She was doomed to walk the earth as a human, killing when the knife’s bloodlust became too much for her, dying of guilt the rest of the time. She killed herself less than a year later, but by then, it was too late. Her soul was tainted. She’d wanted to be human and had sentenced herself to a human Hell.”

  Nice dramatic finish to the story.

  As the daughter of a writer, I had to appreciate a good ending.

  “What happened to the knife?” AB asked after a moment.

  “Lost to history,” he said after giving her a considering look. “It’s theorized the knife has reappeared here and there, causing madness and war in its wake. It’s been blamed for everything from the Salem Witch Trials to World War Two. It has never been recovered. Those souls trapped in there for eternity, until someone who knows how to use it finds it.”

  “Is that what you’re trying to do?” AB asked.

  I was keeping my mouth shut. The second he opened that door, I was gonna start singing. I had a fantastic voice, even without every day practice. I could enchant Fae.

  Hopefully.

  Just needed him to open that blasted door already!

  “Find the knife?” He threw back his head laughing. “Oh, no. Many have tried. From Fae to humans to gods. They all have failed. It’s the Holy Grail or the Philosopher’s Stone. Most are convinced it’s a myth. I know it’s not, but whoever got a hold of it after that Fae hid its magic so well, even we can’t find it.”

  “Why?” AB asked.

  “Possibly to use it for himself. Or in the hopes that it would never be used for evil again. We’re not sure.”

  “I meant, why are you telling us this story?”

  “Oh.” He grinned wide and met my eyes. “To distract you.”

  My mouth fell open and AB and I exchanged a look.

  “Had to make sure the little songbird didn’t get any ideas while we worked the spell on her.”

  “Any ideas about what?” I asked.

  But nothing came out.

  I strained my throat trying to form the words, grabbing at it.

  The Fae’s smile was nasty as he held my eyes. “You think we don’t know everything about you? We have been working on this trap for months, ever since we heard about you. Watching you. Learning about you. How do you think Emily knew what story to feed you to guarantee you’d take the job? We know you’re a singer.”