by Jayne Faith
“I know your coven isn’t official yet, but if you think the group is ready for this kind of challenge, I trust your judgment,” I said. “I’ll support you any way I can. I dealt with the last Baelman, so I’m the logical choice for backup. Unfortunately I’m going to have to loop in Supernatural Crimes, but I’ll figure out how to keep them from interfering with you.”
My mind was spinning ahead, planning. I was babbling a little, and it took me a second to notice the look on her face. It was something between amusement and triumph, and the darkness in her eyes made me want to draw back.
The air changed as something trickled through the room and silently scratched across my senses like a dry branch across a window pane. At first I thought she was reaching for her magic again, but this was different.
“You owe me a favor, Ella Grey.”
Her voice was pitched low, with a melodious quality that was anything but pleasant. The image of a snake charmer flashed through my mind’s eye.
“I gave my aid when you were in need, and to this trade you freely agreed,” she incanted. “With the universe as witness to the promise you made, join my coven and your debt is paid.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but the words seemed to stick at the back of my throat like tar and die there. My hands tightened into fists as I struggled to fight it, but I only achieved a weak strangled sound. With my lips curling back as I threw all my effort into my attempt to speak, and sweat popping out on my forehead, I strained to voice my refusal.
The corners of her mouth stretched in a little smirk of a smile that made my blood turn cold.
I lurched to my feet, bumping the stool back. It toppled and clattered onto the tiles.
She gave the tiniest shake of her head. “No use resisting.”
My breaths grew ragged as my mind raced to look for a way out. But I had no experience with verbal magic. There had to be some loophole or counter to what she was attempting to force upon me, but I had no idea how to challenge her demand.
Chapter 18
MY ALARM BEGAN to dissolve after a few seconds, transforming into churning hot anger as Lynnette and I stared each other down.
“I agree . . . you scheming bitch,” I finally ground out through clenched teeth as every four-letter-word laden phrase I’d ever heard screamed through my mind.
Whatever power had held me captive disappeared with my next breath. I whirled, nearly running into the fallen stool. I stomped out of Lynnette’s house, got into my truck, and slammed the door so hard my ears rung.
I’d allowed her to trap me. I knew how powerful she was, and I should have guarded against her manipulation. I should have been better prepared. I no longer even trusted that she and Jennifer had developed some sort of rip-magic charm that might help me.
What had she said about the charm? It all depended on her exact words, but I couldn’t remember. A strangled noise swelled at the back of my throat. What did it matter? Either the charm wasn’t ready, or she was withholding it for some reason. Regardless, I was locked in to her scheme.
I wanted to slam my hands against the dash and throw back my head and yell, but I knew she was watching, and I refused to give her the satisfaction. Instead, I jammed the key into the ignition and drove away, but a few blocks away I had to pull over.
My stomach was still roiling with unspent tension and the infuriating knowledge that I was backed into a corner. Something else was bubbling up, too—rapidly heating to a raging boil. The yearning to reap, the urge that constantly gnawed at the middle of my stomach, was exploding into blinding need. Lynnette’s verbal magic incantation had somehow slashed at my control. The soul hunger was emerging so strongly within me, and for a terrifying second, I felt like an observer in my own body.
For a minute I considered going back in, begging for her help. She was powerful, and she might know what to do. But I didn’t trust her. And in my agitated state, the reaper might feed on my anger and force me to take her soul. With my head spinning, I gripped the wheel hard and pulled away from the curb. I needed to get home. Damien should still be there, and if anyone could help me, he could.
I struggled for a few seconds to free my phone from my pocket, and finally dialed him with shaking fingers.
“You’re at my place?” I asked when he answered.
“Yeah, how’d it go with Lynnette?”
“Could’ve been better,” I said. “But that’s not my biggest problem at the moment. Something’s happening. With the reaper. I don’t know exactly what.”
My words were starting to come haltingly, as if I’d forgotten how to smoothly link them together in a sentence.
“She used verbal magic on me. When we were trying to save Roxanne’s brother.” It was like my vocal chords had lost interest in working, and my voice had taken on a strange, guttural tone. “I didn’t know it until later, but she roped me into a favor. She called it in just now. I th—think it triggered—”
I winced as a surge of dizzying disorientation swept over me. I felt like I was drowning. Or dissolving. My heart lurched and then sped.
Was this it? Was the reaper finally consuming me?
The phone slipped from my hand and fell to the floor as the world paled, transforming into the misty gray of the in-between. The other cars on the street turned ghostly, colorless and silent as they pushed through the fog and left curling eddies in their wakes. Somewhere in the back of my mind I realized the vehicles appeared driverless here in the realm where souls waited and reapers freed them.
In fact, there were no other people in sight.
I looked down at my hands and saw nothing more than delicate bones clutching the steering wheel.
Some of my panic lessened when I realized I was still there, too—my frantic thoughts, my observations. Ella had not been pushed out completely, not yet. But I was no longer in control. The reaper had taken the wheel in every sense.
Damien’s alarmed voice had cut off when I entered the in-between.
We were heading toward downtown, and it seemed the reaper had been paying enough attention to understand the rules of the road and how to operate my truck. It creeped me out, thinking of the foreign presence within me silently observing, taking it all in, probably waiting for the moment to make its move. I wondered what I looked like to the people in the regular world as the reaper drove us along. Maybe just a zoned-out woman with a thousand-yard stare.
Hope leapt in my chest when the reaper steered onto State Street, and I realized we might be heading back to my place. But instead of taking a right into my neighborhood, we went left on 15th.
Just as we made the turn, I noticed the sensation surging in my middle. It was the bone-deep, consuming hunger, the soul craving I’d felt when I’d come upon Amanda’s spirit, still tethered to the body it used to inhabit. I let out a small, high sound of dread.
I knew where we were going: the ghost house.
The reaper shifted my right foot to apply the brake, and we stopped at the curb.
We’d arrived at the very place the reaper had taken me weeks ago, when it had commanded me in the middle of the night and marched me from my apartment to here. Loki had followed and somehow knocked the reaper’s control loose, and I’d awakened scratched and bruised on the very sidewalk where I now stood.
The house was still surrounded by chain link and no trespassing signs. Even though it was full daylight in my world, you’d never know it by the ever-present fog of the in-between. The ghost house looked even more decrepit here, with ugly, jagged holes gaping through the walls and a roof that looked like it was molding away. The Ella part of me shivered at the sight of movement within—the stirring of the souls that still resided there. But the reaper looked on hungrily.
With quick movements that felt jerky and foreign, the reaper took us around to the left side, forcing me through the overgrown bramble of bushes and unkempt trees growing along the edge of the property next door.
The reaper and I both seemed to spot a way in at the same time—a pla
ce at the base of the fence where the chain link had been distorted to create a small gap underneath. Just enough space for me to drop to the ground and pull myself through.
When I stood up inside the perimeter, it struck me that it wasn’t just the reaper. Our desires had become mingled, and I couldn’t truly separate them. Some part of Ella-me knew I should be horrified by this, but instead we looked upon the house like a starving woman would drool over a loaf of bread.
Movement in the nearest first-floor window drew our attention, and any thought of resisting what was about to happen fled from my mental grasp like dandelion fluff in a windstorm.
I went up a set of steep concrete steps to a side door. A tattered, barely recognizable scrap of police tape had snagged on the skeletal, leafless bush next to the steps. Odd that police tape would be present in the in-between, but I didn’t yet know the rules of what carried over here and what didn’t. A rattle of the knob proved the door locked, but it seemed flimsy and looked as if it had been broken into and repaired before.
I moved back as far as the small concrete landing would allow, took aim, and jammed my heel at the spot just below the knob. Something snapped but the lock still held. I kicked again, with gray mist stirring in my movements. The third kick freed the door and it gaped wide, inviting us in.
I’d vaguely wondered what I’d find inside, how the souls would look. With Amanda, her soul had still been near her body. Here, of course there were no bodies. Maybe I expected the souls would appear decrepit, as if they’d decayed along with their long-removed physical remains.
But there was no soul decay, only hologram-like specters of the children who had died in this house years ago that stared vacantly at me—three of them visible from where I stood. The house was like some sort of macabre photography display that captured the tragedy. The children’s souls were still attached to their mortal forms, or whatever was left of them, by cords stretched hairline thin off into the distance to some unknown point where their remains must have ended up.
The filament of a doe-eyed girl of maybe twelve sang to me as if an invisible hand plucked it in a siren song. I sucked in a breath as the reaping blade appeared in my right hand and the cloud of trapped souls in my left.
The ecstasy that flowed from the little points of light in my left palm rushed through me in a heady wave. I squeezed my eyelids shut, groaning through clamped teeth. The reaper wanted me to keep the little girl’s soul, to add to the collection.
I jerked my head from side to side, trying to resist.
I tried to force my blade hand forward, but the reaper refused. Sweat sprang out on my forehead as we battled over control.
“We reap,” I growled. “We set them free.”
I pushed against the presence inside me, my eyes fixed on my blade hand. It was my hand. This was my body. I had been born into it. In my twenty-four years in this body, I’d nourished it and tested it and learned to live in the world in it. It displayed features handed down to me from my parents. It bore scars from missteps I’d taken as a child. Miscalculations I’d made as an adult. It was a living flesh sculpture of my DNA and my life.
The reaper had consumed more of my soul, but this body was still mine to command.
Mine!
With one final mental shove, I took control. The blade sliced the thread.
We reaped until every soul in the house was free.
When I came out of my stupor and found myself sitting on the cold concrete step outside the side door, I felt hollowed out and nauseous. I wasn’t sure if the sick feeling was my human reaction to what I’d just done or the after effects of so much time in the in-between.
I wondered how the souls could have remained for so many years unreaped, but I didn’t have time to get cerebral.
Two cars pulled up to the curb, bookending my truck. They both jolted to abrupt stops as if the drivers were in a rush. One was Damien’s Lexus. My stomach dropped as I recognized the other as Detective Lagatuda’s unmarked Supernatural Crimes vehicle.
Chapter 19
GREAT. HOW WOULD I possibly explain my presence here to my new Supernatural Crimes partner-slash-babysitter?
I started to trudge toward the fence to meet Damien and Lagatuda but then remembered how I’d gotten in.
“Ella!” Damien grabbed the chain link, looking half ready to scale the barrier. “Are you okay?”
Not wanting to further pique Lagatuda’s suspicion, I waved and tried to smile, hoping Damien picked up on my silent plea to downplay my frantic call to him.
“Yeah, I’m super!” I chirped then winced. Too much forced enthusiasm. Even I wasn’t convinced. I pointed off to the side. “I’ve gotta go through, uh . . .”
I trailed off and sidled toward the opening at the base of the fence. At least there was some coverage provided by a scruffy overgrown hedge to block my indignity of slithering under the fence like some delinquent garden snake.
On the other side, I brushed myself off, straightened my coat, and squared my shoulders.
Lagatuda stood with his arms crossed, peering at me while his jaw muscles worked.
“Your partner lost contact with you and called me in a panic,” he said.
Shit. This was the second time Damien had called in SC when I went off air. At least it was only Lagatuda this time.
I tried not to look at Damien, but I couldn’t help a slight widening of my eyes. I understood why he’d been so worried. I just wished I didn’t feel like we were a couple of naughty kids who’d just been caught by Dad. Damien winced and sent me an apologetic look, but then had to smooth his expression when Lagatuda half-turned to glance at him.
I cleared my throat. “We got cut off mid-conversation, and I wasn’t able to get him back on the line.”
“So you came here?” Lagatuda made no attempt to hide his skepticism. He glanced past me, and I wondered if he knew the history of what had happened in the house.
“I was following up on a hunch, but it turned out to be nothing,” I said brusquely. I pushed my hair back from my face. “Speaking of, I’ve recruited some associates who should be able to help us at the new moon.”
“Oh? Who are they, and what qualifies them for involvement?” Lagatuda looked interested, but I could tell he was still trying to figure out what was really going on and why the three of us were standing in front of an abandoned house.
“The witches the Baelman was targeting. They’re in the process of forming a coven, and the leader believes that collective magic is the safest way to deal with the threat.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Supernatural Crimes already has covens we contract with for collective magic services.”
“I don’t doubt you’ve got superb resources at your disposal, but these witches are the targets. They’re the bait and the solution wrapped into one,” I said. “And their collective magic services include, uh, me. Seeing as how I’m the only one who’s managed to kill a Baelman it makes sense, don’t you think?”
“I’ll have to run it by Barnes,” he said. He seemed to dismiss the matter as something out of his purview. Then his forehead creased in concern. “Have you spoken with your friend Deb today? I meant to check in with her.”
I felt one brow lift the tiniest amount. “You’re checking up on Deb?”
He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. He was actually wearing jeans, the first time I’d ever seen him in something other than a suit. Damien must have caught him off duty.
“She seemed a bit rattled last time we spoke. I just wanted to make sure . . .” He trailed off and cleared his throat.
I pressed my lips together to avoid the knowing grin that was threatening to call him out.
“Right, right,” I said. “I haven’t talked to her this morning, but I’ll give her a call and I’ll be sure to let her know you were very concerned about her well-being.”
I started toward my truck, but not before I saw the beginnings of a blush on his cheeks.
“I’ll be in touch soon with more inf
ormation about the coven’s plans for the Baelman,” I said, my hand on the driver’s side door.
“Right,” Lagatuda echoed, and headed toward his own vehicle.
I gave Damien a silent tip of my head, indicating I hoped he’d follow me home, and he nodded.
Five minutes later, I was back at my place with Damien crowding in through the door right behind me.
“What the hell happened?” He burst out as soon as we were inside.
I swiped my hand across my forehead, blinking hard as I tried to take stock of the past couple of hours. Suddenly lightheaded and off-balance, I knew I needed to get off my feet before I toppled into something.
“Sorry,” I said, my equilibrium reeling. I went to the sofa and sat down. With my elbows propped on my thighs, I held my head in my hands. “Give me just a sec.”
“What is it?” I heard him moving to my side, and his weight made the sofa dip gently next to me. “Ella?”
I raised my head and peered at him. “It’s . . . gone.”
Hope brightened his face. “The reaper soul?”
“No, that’s still there.” I pressed my fingers to my temple. I could still feel the faint thump in my head, the presence of the reaper. “But the crazy hunger, the preoccupation with reaping. Right now I can’t feel it at all.”
His expression sobered. “How many souls were in there?” he asked quietly.
I shook my head, looking down at the threadbare rug in between my boots. “I don’t know. I can remember parts of it vividly, but I was very focused on—”
I halted, thinking of how to explain the pull of collecting the souls rather than setting them free, but not really sure I wanted to go there.
“Focused on?” he prompted.
I sat back, slouching into the cushions. “The reaper . . . my reaper . . . I don’t think it was a, uh, good one,” I said slowly. “I think it kept souls instead of cutting them free. When we come upon a soul, there’s a very, very strong temptation to keep it instead of to cut it loose. It’s hard to explain.”
