Haints and Hobwebs

by Jennifer Estep

  I’d seen a lot of bad things in my time as the Spider, and I’d done more than my fair share of dark deeds myself. But that turned even my stomach.

  “Can you…can you even do that with Air magic?” I asked. “Tear someone’s soul out of their body?”

  Jo-Jo slowly nodded.

  I rubbed my chest, which was suddenly aching, and glanced over at Tess Darville. The mountain girl floated over and took Bria’s chair. For a moment, her features blurred, and she looked exhausted.

  Just…exhausted.

  I had no doubt that Graves had murdered her and Thomas Kirkwood out of jealousy or spite or both. But I still had so many questions.

  Had the Air elemental vampire really sucked out Tess’s soul? Was that what I was looking at right now? And where was Thomas? Where was his soul or spirit or whatever? If he’d loved Tess as much as she loved him, then why wasn’t he here with her, even if they both had been murdered?

  Tess stared at me, and I could tell exactly what she was thinking.

  See? This is why I’ve been haunting you. Because you’re the only one who can help me. Because you’re the only one strong enough to do what needs to be done.

  Suddenly, I knew exactly what Tess wanted and why she’d latched onto me that day in the cemetery. It was my own fault, really, for telling her who I was and what I did. I should have known better than to open my mouth, even to a haint. Fletcher had taught me to be smarter than that.

  But the old man had also taught me that it was okay to help folks who couldn’t help themselves—and that sometimes the only way to do that was with the point of one of my knives.

  I stared at the mountain girl. After a few seconds, I nodded. Tess blinked at me in surprise for a moment before she nodded back.

  “Gin?” Jo-Jo asked, looking first at the haint, then at me. Since Jo-Jo was an Air elemental, she could see Tess just like Sophia could. “What are you going to do?”

  “What I do best,” I said. “What I’ve done so many times before as the Spider. I’m going to kill that murderous son of a bitch Graves so Tess here can finally rest in peace.”

  Chapter Four

  Jo-Jo gave me directions to Homer Graves’s place. I grabbed a bag of tools that I kept stashed in her house just for these sorts of situations, got into my car, and headed out.

  Normally, I would have been more cautious, would have waited to do some recon at the very least before going in with knives slashing. But there was no time. Not with Bria sniffing around. She’d do the right thing, the cop thing, and get a warrant before she went to question Graves.

  I already knew Graves was a murderer who liked to torture his victims. I didn’t want my baby sister anywhere near him, especially if he was a soul sucker like Jo-Jo thought.

  Besides, Tess had waited so long already. I figured she was anxious to get on with things. Even a haint could only be so patient.

  I got as close to Graves’s rugged, remote property as I could, then pulled my car off the side of the road, shouldered my bag of supplies, and hiked the rest of the way in on foot.

  Tess floated beside me the whole time, her face tight with worry, her hands fisting in the ghostly folds of her gingham dress. I didn’t know why. I was the one sticking my neck out here—hers had already been cut long ago by Graves. Still, her concern touched me.

  According to Jo-Jo, Graves lived at the top of a holler in the mountains above Ashland. I followed her directions up a faint hiking trail, then stopped when I crested a forested ridge and spotted Graves’s house through a screen of trees. Above me, the bare skeletal branches creaked and cracked back and forth as the wind tangled through them. The faint whispers almost seemed to be warning me.

  Stay away…stay away…stay away…

  I pushed my unease aside and used the binoculars I’d brought along to peer at the house in front of me. It could have been a replica of a hundred others I’d seen in hollers like this one—cheap white clapboard that had long ago turned dingy with age, a porch with warped, weathered, sagging boards, and a dull tin roof dotted here and there with black mold. Charming.

  Whatever else he was, Graves definitely didn’t care what kind of disrepair his property fell into. Still, his neglect would make my job easier. It was only around three in the afternoon, and he would have easily seen me creeping through his yard if the grass hadn’t been as high as my waist and choked with winter weeds and black briars.

  Once again, that feeling of unease crept up on me. Maybe it was because the area was so completely lifeless. No birds fluttered in the trees, no rabbits scurried through the fallen leaves, nothing moved at all but the wind, with its relentless whistle of cold air.

  “Okay, Tess,” I whispered, turning to the haint. “Time to earn my pro bono services as the Spider. Where’s Graves most likely to be? I want to do this quick and quiet-like, before he even knows I’m here.”

  Tess bit her lip, then pointed to the left side of the house. Still keeping inside the tree line, I put my binoculars back into my bag and skulked in that direction.

  A small shack was attached to the back side of the house, made of the same dingy clapboard as the main structure. I got down on my belly and left the trees behind, crawling through the grass and masking my furtive movements with the gusts of wind that blew across the overgrown yard.

  Five minutes later, I reached the side of the shack and eased back up into a standing position. I peered in through one of the windows, but an inch of grime covered the glass. All I could see inside was a faint glow, like someone had left a bare bulb burning.

  The windows were too small for me to go through, so I dropped my bag on the ground, palmed one of my silverstone knives, and tiptoed over to the door. And then I waited, counting off the seconds in my head.

  Five…ten…fifteen…

  Five minutes later, I was still waiting, and I hadn’t heard a peep from inside the shack. No rustles of clothing, no soft footsteps, no whispers of movement. Graves wasn’t here.

  “All right, Tess,” I said in a low voice. “He’s obviously not in there. So where to now? The main house?”

  The haint shook her head and pointed at the door. I sighed and started to move away, but she darted in front of me, stomped her bare foot into the ground, and stabbed her finger at the door again. Whatever was in there, Tess wanted me to see it.

  “Getting bossed around by a haint,” I muttered. “Finn will never let me live this down.”

  I hesitated a moment, then reached out and tried the knob. To my surprise, it turned, so I eased the door open and slipped inside. I thought it would take a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the semidarkness, since the windows were smeared with dirt, but there was plenty of light in the shack.

  Hundreds of lights, actually—all trapped in glass snow globes.

  The globes sat on shelves that covered all four walls of the shack from floor to ceiling. A large stone table was set into the middle of the packed dirt floor. Even from here, I could see that the table was crusted with dried black blood, and I could hear the harsh, ragged screams that raged through the stone.

  Bad things had happened on that table—some very bad things indeed.

  This was where Graves had tortured Tess and Thomas and who knew how many other innocent people over the years, including the two bodies the cops had discovered in the rock quarry. This was where he’d cut out their hearts.

  This was where Graves had stolen their souls.

  I’d never given much thought to my immortal soul before. As an assassin, I figured I’d already booked a front-row seat on the express bus downstairs a long time ago. But somehow I knew what was in the globes: souls. It was the only explanation that made sense. The lights were the same pale silver as Tess, the same pale, translucent silver that I’d never seen anywhere else.

  Two of the lights bounced around inside their globes like tennis balls, as if they could somehow knock the globe off the shelf, break the glass, and free themselves. But the others—all the others—had sunk into
the bottoms of their globes, and they barely glowed at all.

  My mother had collected snow globes before she died. It was bone-chilling to see something so harmless used in such an evil way.

  It was one of the most disturbing things I’d ever seen.

  “Graves brought you here and hurt you, didn’t he?” I asked Tess. “Because you didn’t love him like he loved you. Graves kidnapped and tortured you and Thomas because you two were in love. You and Thomas both died, but somehow you kept Graves from getting your soul. Thomas is trapped here somewhere, isn’t he? In one of the globes. That’s why you needed my help. To kill Graves. To free Thomas…and all the others.”

  Tess gave me a haunted look and slowly nodded. She floated over to the back wall and hovered there in front of a globe. Judging from the thick hobwebs wrapped around it, this snow globe had been in the shack longer than all the others. For a moment, the light inside perked up and glowed at Tess’s appearance. Then it settled back down into the bottom of the globe and winked out like a firefly.

  Tess wrapped her fingers around the globe, trying to pick it up, but of course, she couldn’t. She might be able to brush away a few leaves, but something this heavy was beyond the haint’s abilities.

  The longer I stood in the shack looking at all those trapped souls, at all the people Graves had murdered over the years, the angrier I got, until my rage matched what I’d felt when I touched Thomas’s gravestone.

  “That soul-sucking son of a—”

  That was all I got out before I noticed Tess waving frantically. I heard footsteps behind me and immediately whirled around, but I was already too late. I turned my head just in time for someone to smash me in the face with a shovel.

  I was out cold before I even hit the dirt floor.

  * * *

  When I came to, I was strapped down on the stone table that I’d seen when I first came into the shack. Thick ropes lashed my legs and feet, while two more held out my arms as if I was crucified. Not too far-fetched an idea, given what I knew about Homer Graves.

  “You’re finally awake,” a smooth voice said. “Excellent.”

  Footsteps sounded, and a man came into view.

  Homer Graves was not what I’d anticipated. Given the decrepit state of his house and yard, I’d expected a run-down man who wasn’t too big on personal hygiene. But Graves’s black hair was carefully styled and slicked back from his high forehead, and he’d just shaved, because I could smell his lemon-scented cologne. A fitted black suit draped over his thin body, and a silver tie had been artfully knotted at his skinny neck.

  All put together, he looked like an undertaker—mine, if I wasn’t careful.

  “So you’re the big, bad Air elemental vampire who gets his kicks by cutting out people’s hearts and stealing their souls. I thought you’d be taller.”

  I made the words as light and mocking as I could, considering how hard my head was pounding. Graves had whacked me but good with that shovel, and I felt scattered and hollow inside, like a piece of me was already missing. I slowly moved my jaw and blinked my eyes. My vision was okay, but I could taste hot, salty blood in my mouth. I wasn’t in the best shape of my life, but I was still a long way from dead.

  Graves regarded me a moment, then held up something where I could see it—one of my knives.

  I bit back a curse. Of course, he’d searched me while I was unconscious and found them. Two up my sleeves, one in the small of my back, and two more tucked into the sides of my boots. The vampire probably thought he was going to carve me up with my own blades, but I’d be damned if I let that happen.

  Instead of responding to my taunt, Graves smiled, revealing two gleaming white fangs. Then he leaned forward and drew one knife across my stomach. The swift strike wasn’t deep enough to kill me, but it definitely got my attention.

  Blood immediately soaked into my shirt and jeans. Underneath me, the stone of the table started to wail. It knew what was coming next—more cuts, more blood, more pain.

  So much more pain.

  I ignored the stone’s cries, sucked in a breath, and focused on pushing away the burning fire of the cut.

  The vampire cocked his head to the side. “So you’re not a screamer, then. Well, that’s disappointing. Before I kill you, though, I suppose I should ask the basic questions. Who are you? And why did you come here?”

  Despite my precarious position, Graves wasn’t going to be breathing much longer, so I saw no reason not to tell him the truth. Besides, I wanted to rattle his cage a bit. Rattled people often made mistakes, and I needed the vamp to make one right now, so I could cut myself free before he started in on me with my own knife again.

  “Tess sent me. Tess Darville, the woman you murdered in the nineteen twenties.”

  For a moment, Graves’s hazel eyes widened, and he looked as shocked as he could, what with his hangdog face. Then his features smoothed out into a pleasant mask once more.

  “Tess? Tess sent you? Is she…is she here now?” He licked his lips and looked around the shack.

  Suddenly, I knew what he wanted—what he’d always wanted. Tess’s soul, trapped in one of those snow globes along with all the others.

  “That’s why you killed all those other couples, isn’t it?” I whispered. “Because Tess somehow got away from you.”

  Graves shrugged, but he kept staring around the shack, a sharp, sick, hungry look in his eyes now. Since I was tied down, I couldn’t see if Tess was here, but I hoped she wasn’t. I didn’t want Graves to trap her too.

  “I had already killed Tommy Kirkwood,” Graves said. “I left the shack just for a second to go put on a clean suit. I wanted to look my best for Tess before I took her soul. She was special, you see. So special to me. The first woman I ever loved, the first woman I ever killed. But when I came back, she was gone. She’d somehow gotten free. She didn’t get far, though. I found her just inside the trees, but she was already dead, and her soul was already gone…”

  His voice trailed off, and I could tell that he was lost in his memories. A lot of vamps were like that. They lived so long that the past and the present often blurred together for them. After a moment, Graves came back to himself. He looked at me and smiled.

  “You know, I never could lure Tess back in here, not even when I used Kirkwood’s soul as bait. But I’m sure she’ll come for you, since she sent you here in the first place. I’m sure when she hears you screaming, she’ll come running, and then my collection will finally be complete.”

  Graves stepped closer and tightened his grip on my knife. “Tell me, where would you like me to make the first incision? I used to be a doctor during the Civil War, so I always give my patients a choice about where I cut them first.”

  He’d been a doctor during the Civil War? Okay, this was getting creepier by the second. I supposed that explained why Graves liked to butcher people, though, since surgery had been quite barbaric back then. Well, that and the fact that he was just a sadistic son of a bitch.

  Graves brought the knife up again. He gently drew the bloody blade down my cheek, then my neck, before finally stopping the knife right over my heart. He pressed down, and the blade pierced my shirt and nicked my skin.

  I felt the hot blood well up over the knife, roll across my left breast, and start trickling down my side.

  “I think I’ll start with your heart,” he murmured. “Everyone screams during that. It’s sure to bring Tess flying straight to you.”

  Graves drew back, and I tensed myself for what was to come. I’d only get one shot to take him down, and I had to make it count—

  “You’re not going to do a damn thing to her,” a loud voice boomed.

  Graves whirled around just like I had minutes before.

  Owen stepped into the shack, threw himself forward, and crashed into the vampire.

  Chapter Five

  The two men fell to the dirt floor, punching, kicking, and grunting.

  “Owen,” I whispered.

  Soft wonder warmed my heart
at the fact that he’d come for me without my even asking him for help. I let myself revel in the emotion and its heady power for a sweet, sweet second before I pushed it out of my mind. Owen had given me the opening I needed to free myself—something I had to do, or we were both dead.

  Graves had taken away my silverstone knives, but that didn’t mean I was helpless. Far from it.

  I was an elemental, after all, so I reached for my Ice magic. A cold silver light flared in my palm, centered on the spider rune scar there, and a second later, I was holding a jagged Ice knife. I had to bend my wrist at an awkward angle, but I managed to slice through the rope that tied one hand down. I used the Ice knife to cut the rest of the ropes and sat up.

  The wound in my stomach stung with every movement, but I hissed through the pain and used my magic to make a second Ice knife. They weren’t as strong as my regular blades, but they’d do the job.

  I’d make sure of that.

  By this point, Owen was on top of Graves. He drew his fist back to punch the vamp, but Graves brought up his hand. The vampire’s eyes burned like topaz torches in his face, and a blast of wind exploded from his palm and blew Owen off him.

  Owen flew through the air, crashed into the doorjamb, and fell to the ground. The globes on the shelves closest to him rattled like dry bones at the vibration, and the lights brightened, shocked out of their slumber by the sudden bout of violence.

  The spider rune scars branded into my palms itched and burned at the influx of the vamp’s elemental magic, but I forced the sensation aside, hopped off the table, and put myself between Graves and Owen, who was groaning and struggling to get to his feet.

  The vamp saw my weapons and let out a polite, cultured laugh. “Ice knives? Really? Do you really think those pitiful blades will beat me? Silverstone is so much better, so much sharper.”

  I smiled. “That’s the thing about me, Graves. I always make do with what’s available.”

  This time, I was the one who sent out a burst of magic with my hand—but it wasn’t Ice. I was the rarest of elementals, gifted in not one but two areas, and this time, I put my fingers down on the edge of Graves’s butcher’s block and used my Stone magic to shatter the table into a thousand pieces.