Bewitched and Betrothed

by Juliet Blackwell

  The scent of smoke grew stronger. From far away came the distant shrieking of a fire alarm. The dungeon was made of brick and stone, which would not burn. But that wouldn’t stop the flames of a demon.

  My mind raced. My magic is real and it is powerful, but it is a brew-alone-in-my-kitchen kind of magic, not a throw-down-with-a-demon-in-a-firefight kind.

  “We have to get out of here, Carlos,” I said. “You hear me?”

  “What’s the rush?” Carlos said, his voice uncharacteristically deep. “We have time.”

  I tried the door—no luck. “Help me, please, Carlos.”

  “Playing coy, my lady?”

  “Just get your keister over here, Inspector, and help me try this door.”

  Grumbling, he joined me and together we heaved. The door didn’t budge.

  My medicine bundle throbbed and hummed in warning. I needed to heed the voice in my head, sounding in my heart. We needed to run.

  I put my hands on Carlos’s shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “Listen to me, Carlos. What you’re feeling right now isn’t real. Do you still have that Raven stone I gave you?”

  “Yeah . . . as a matter of fact, I could have sworn it was vibrating earlier.”

  “Take it out and hold it in your palm for a moment. I’ll explain it all later but at the moment we have to get out of here, okay?”

  Carlos pouted. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Whatever my lady wants,” he said, taking the stone out and palming it. “But how do you suggest we leave? Magic?”

  “There,” I said, pointing to the rusty ventilation grate. “Do you have something sharp, like a pocket knife?”

  Carlos handed me a Swiss army knife. I flipped open a blade and began gouging at the crumbling concrete around the grate until it loosened enough for Carlos and me together to yank it out of the wall. Carlos took the knife from me and started jabbing furiously at the edges of the hole, hacking away at the concrete until the opening looked almost large enough to crawl through.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “I don’t think I can fit in there,” Carlos said. “Let me make it a little larger.”

  “No time,” I replied, hearing voices in the hallway, approaching. Whoever it was, the humming from my medicine bag told me they meant us harm. I held out my Hand of Glory, which promised to open locked doors. Maybe it would help with the opening as well. “Follow me.”

  “Why don’t we just spend a little time here, together?”

  “Carlos—” I stopped and abruptly changed tactics, hoping to motivate him to get a move on. “Come with me now, and I’ll make it worth your while,” I purred.

  He gave me a smoldering look. “In that case, after you.”

  With regret, I shed my wool coat and left it behind, but thrust my woven backpack through the hole first, then squeezed through the small hole myself. My skirt caught on the rough edges, and jagged bits of mortar scratched my arms, reopening the cat’s claw marks. My blood smeared on the sides of the ventilation shaft, and suddenly the passage seemed to open up not just for me, but for Carlos behind me.

  The shaft stank with the rancid, sickening sweetness of death. But at least it wasn’t full of smoke. At least not yet.

  “Can you put the grate back, in case they check the cell?” I whispered.

  Carlos had anticipated me and was already pulling the grate to cover the hole, propping it up with chunks of broken concrete. Still, it wouldn’t take anyone long to figure out where we had gone as there was no other way to escape the cell.

  I stashed my Hand of Glory in the backpack so no one would see its illumination, plunging the passageway into inky darkness.

  We crawled farther down the ventilation shaft, feeling our way. It was pitch-dark but the only other option—to go back to the cell—was not an option. As we inched along, I heard whispers and could feel unsettled spirits fluttering by, pulling at my hair and skirts. I should have worn my jeans on today of all days.

  After several minutes, we came to a slightly wider section and paused to rest. I pulled out the Hand of Glory, and we looked around, peering behind us, then up ahead. Nothing showed in any direction. I used a string and hung the Hand of Glory around my neck, to keep my hands free. Carlos took my backpack and pushed it along in front of him, taking the lead as we progressed down the tight shaft.

  “Lily? I don’t know what came over me back there,” whispered Carlos. “I am so sorry, and embarrassed. I hope you know that I care for you, both personally and professionally, but I would never cross a line. . . . Except that I did, and I am mortified. Please accept my apology.”

  “I get it, Carlos. It wasn’t you, trust me. It was . . . it was the effect of something external to both of us. I felt the same way, and I’m set to marry Sailor, for land’s sakes.”

  “Well, you should put that dang Hand down because I’m pretty sure my face is bright red with embarrassment.”

  “Pretty sure mine matches yours.” I felt Carlos relax a little.

  “So, onward and upward?”

  We continued along through the tight shaft, climbing now, the cold stone walls threatening at any moment to close in on us. I’m no claustrophobe, but this was bad. It felt . . . wrong. The haunting sensation of ghosts surrounding us sure as shootin’ didn’t help matters.

  “This is horrifying,” Carlos voiced my own thoughts as we climbed. “It feels . . . unnatural. Is this the sort of thing you experience all the time?”

  “Sort of. I mean, not every day, but yes, it can be challenging.”

  “You have my sympathies.”

  “There’s an upside,” I said. “I mean, at the moment it’s hard to imagine such a thing, but there really is an upside.”

  Just then, Carlos pulled back, with an “Ahhh!”

  “What is it?”

  “A skeleton.”

  “A skeleton?”

  Carlos turned back to me. “A human skeleton. Let’s . . . leave that for the moment.”

  He managed to crawl around it, then I did the same. Whoever it was had been here for quite some time. The bones were covered in cobwebs, grime, and shreds of rotted cloth, like a quality Halloween decoration.

  As the passageway snaked around a bend, we heard a distant crying.

  “Do you hear that?” Carlos asked. “The ghost of a prisoner?”

  “Maybe. But . . . it sounds female, doesn’t it?”

  A spirit—or a spider?—reached out from the wall, trying to grab my ankle. I batted it away, mumbling a charm.

  “I see something up ahead,” Carlos said.

  “A patch of light?”

  “More like a patch of not dark.”

  I heard a grunting, then some kicking and thudding, then a loud clang as a grate fell to the stone floor.

  “That should do it.” Carlos squeezed through the hole into what looked like a small storage room, then turned and helped me out of the shaft. “This way,” he whispered as we headed out the open doorway into the smoky corridor.

  Coughing, we ran away from the worst of the smoke. Turning a corner, we saw a bundle of clothes on the ground in front of a barred cell door. Gray and green.

  A National Park Service uniform.

  “Wait, Carlos—”

  Heedless, Carlos rushed to grab the iron bar locking the cell. He wrenched it upward and flung open the door. Inside, shivering in the corner, clad only in her bra and underwear, was a woman.

  Elena.

  * * *

  • • •

  She was handcuffed to the cell’s ventilation grate, armed with a stick she had found who knows where. In the shadowy darkness illuminated only by my Hand of Glory, she didn’t seem to recognize us and lashed out, poking at Carlos as he approached, scratching him.

  “Go away!” she screamed. “
Leave me alone! Leave me alone. . . .” She dissolved into tears.

  “Elena?” Carlos said in a fierce whisper. “It’s Carlos. I’m here with Lily. It’s Carlos, Elena. You’re okay. We’ll get you out.”

  “Do you have a handcuff key on you?” I asked Carlos.

  “Never leave home without it,” he replied. As the cuffs slid off Elena’s wrists, she collapsed against him. He quickly stripped off his shirt and wrapped her in it.

  Elena coughed as the cell began to fill with smoke.

  “Now what?” I asked Carlos in a low voice. “The smoke’s getting bad in the hallway. Even assuming the bad guys aren’t waiting for us out there, I’m not sure how far we would get.”

  “I agree,” he said grimly. “That leaves one other way.”

  I looked at the ventilation shaft. I really did not want to go back in there, but didn’t see how we had a choice. I nodded.

  Carlos opened his Swiss army knife and once again pried the rusted old grate out and began enlarging the hole in the wall.

  I closed my eyes and cast over it, mumbling. The concrete gave way.

  “Why don’t I go first?” I said. “Elena can follow me and you follow her, help her along. This isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” he replied.

  I squatted next to Elena, who sat huddled against the cell wall. Her hair was dirty and matted, streaked with what looked like blood and mud, though it was hard to tell in the dim light.

  “Elena?” I said, hugging her and helping her to stand. “We have to go. You can do this. Carlos and I are here.” I slipped an amulet around her neck to lend her strength, tried to cast a comforting spell over her, and led her to the ventilation shaft.

  “We’ve got you,” Carlos said, his voice low and fervent. “You’re okay. We’re okay. We’re going to get out of here.”

  “Through there?” she asked, peering into the hole.

  “Onward and upward!” I said with a cheer I didn’t feel. “It’ll be tight, but we’ll make it. Carlos and I are old pros at this.”

  “You betcha,” Carlos said. “Lily will go first, then you follow her. I’ll be right behind you, okay?”

  “What if we get trapped?’

  “We won’t,” I said confidently, hoping it was true. The smoke from the hallway was intensifying. “Ready?”

  Once again I crawled into the prison’s old ventilation shaft, this time intentionally smearing traces of my blood on the inside walls. The passageway opened wider. At Carlos’s urging, Elena climbed in behind me, and Carlos followed her.

  I began crawling, heading up a sloped shaft, away from the cursed dungeon. It was slow going but we kept up a steady pace, hoping to outrun the smoke and fire. It’s amazing how fast one can move through tight spaces with a flame at one’s feet. Literally.

  I heard Elena breathing behind me, Carlos talking to her softly, encouraging her to go on. As we continued to climb, the air became slightly fresher. I reached a juncture and halted, unsure which way to go.

  “Up,” Carlos said.

  “You sure?”

  “Always up.”

  We continued up, inching our way to fresh air, to freedom. Or so I hoped. At long last I saw blessed sunlight pooling up ahead, and hurried toward it. A broad vertical shaft was topped by a very large metal grate. Carlos boosted me up to a shallow shelf right below the grate, then I reached down for Elena as he helped her up to me. Finally he climbed up to join us.

  Carlos and I did everything we could to lift the grate, gouging at the concrete and pushing with all our might, but it was much larger and heavier than those in the cells below and would not be so easily defeated. We were trapped.

  Still, we gathered around, our fingers clutching at the old metal, breathing deeply as the bay breezes poured in.

  At least we had fresh air.

  “Try your phone now,” I said.

  One arm still wrapped around Elena, Carlos sighed with relief when the call went through. It took a few minutes for him to explain just where we were, and why the rescuers should bring some hardware to undo the ventilation grate, but he hung up smiling.

  “The good guys are on their way. It’ll be a few minutes.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m tuckered out,” I said. We all inched down to sit on the damp concrete ledge. Elena leaned against Carlos and closed her eyes.

  “How’s she doing?” I asked quietly.

  “Breathing’s okay.” He touched her cheek gently, but she did not respond. Concerned, he lifted her eyelids and checked her pupils. “She might have been drugged.”

  “Let me try,” I said, and laid hands on her. “Poor thing must be exhausted. I think she’s just asleep.”

  “That’s probably for the best, all things considered,” he said, grim. “Help’s on its way. Shouldn’t be long now.”

  Carlos fell silent. I assumed he—like I—was imagining what Elena might have gone through.

  “So, quite a day, wouldn’t you say?” I asked to lighten the mood. “Definitely one for the books.”

  “Can’t say I’ve had a day quite like it. Can’t say I’d care to have another.”

  “I suppose all’s well that ends well.”

  Carlos opened his mouth as though to speak, but hesitated. “Lily, about earlier . . . Again, I’m so very sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “A demon, that’s what came over you.”

  He looked aghast. “You’re saying I was possessed? By a demon?”

  “No, no. That’s not what I meant. Demons have a way of influencing humans, bringing out the worst in our nature.”

  “So then there’s a demon here? You saw him . . . or it?”

  “Not exactly. Demons don’t have to be physically present to affect things. I felt him. Or the memory of him being called, more like.”

  “So that really was a ritualistic killing?”

  “I can’t be sure, but I think so. Do you remember what happened at the School of Fine Arts a while back?”

  Carlos looked at me from the side of his eyes. “Are people jumping out of windows again?”

  “No. Nothing like that. At least, not that I know of.”

  “You’re not exactly reassuring me here.” He looked up through the grate, as though willing the rescue to arrive, already. “Last time he was confined to the school, wasn’t he?”

  “There are historical reasons for him to be there, but he’s not bound to the building. He’s not a ghost. If someone opened a portal somewhere else—”

  “Like on Alcatraz?”

  I nodded.

  “Why on earth would someone summon a demon?”

  “Lots of reasons. Wealth, fame, success . . . or, believe it or not, sometimes more innocuous reasons. If it’s the guy I’m thinking of, he’s known to inspire creativity and high-spirited fun, as well as lust, which some people mistake for love. The point is, someone might have summoned him without knowing how to control him, and he could have wrested control from the conjurer.”

  “So how do we find this demon—what’s his name?”

  “I can’t speak his name. Someone with my powers could summon him, just that easily, without even meaning to. I’m still not entirely sure, but if it is the same one, he’s likely to find us. Or me, anyway. He knows me, and I’m the one who bound him last time. It’s possible he’s been drawing me out to Alcatraz on purpose.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” he said with a frown. “And you’re saying my behavior was affected by this creature?”

  “This particular demon is known for inspiring lust. It’s not your fault. Nobody’s immune to it.”

  “Still . . . I’m not sure what that says about my character.”

  “That you’re human? I’d say that’s a good thing.”

  He looked u
nconvinced.

  “Carlos, it had the same effect on me—I was feeling things for you I shouldn’t have been feeling. And I’m engaged.”

  Carlos raised an eyebrow. “Gave you the hots, did I?”

  “Hotter than a stolen tamale, as my mother would say.”

  He laughed and relaxed. “I have an idea: Why don’t we keep what happened between the two of us and never mention it again? It’ll be our little secret.”

  “You’re on.” I sighed and laid on the accent. “Though I will always remember our brief jailhouse romance, a spark that burned brightly but not too well.”

  He chuckled softly. “So, not to turn the talk from demons and all, but . . . what’s Patience’s story?”

  “I knew it!” I said, and we laughed.

  “Sorry if all this chitchat seems inappropriate under the circumstances,” Carlos said, hugging Elena closer. “I’m trying to distract myself while we’re stuck here, waiting. I’m a man of action, not words.”

  “No explanation needed,” I said. “What would you like to know about Patience?”

  “Is she single?”

  “She is, yes. She’s also smart and talented and challenging and, I would imagine, never boring.”

  “I can’t wait to tell her she was wrong to tell us we shouldn’t come to Alcatraz.” He hugged Elena closer. “True, we nearly died and apparently ran across a demon, but we found Elena, after all.”

  “Hey, I have an idea—why don’t you stand up with Sailor at the wedding and I’ll match you two up? She’s a bridesmaid, you’ll be a groomsman. It’s perfect. Everyone gets lucky at weddings.”

  He gave a wry chuckle. “Sounds like trouble.”

  “Oh, yes, I would imagine,” I said. “But trouble can be fun.”

  Just ask Sitri.

  Chapter 16

  Alcatraz was soon swarming with police and emergency responders who had arrived in response to the fire alarm and Carlos’s call for help. Elena was airlifted to the hospital for treatment, Carlos by her side, as was Forrest Caruthers, who had been hit over the head and knocked unconscious in the hallway, and was suffering from smoke inhalation. I eavesdropped as the fire captain on the scene puzzled over the origin of the mysterious fires. The consensus seemed to be that it was a fraternity prank.