by Pat Esden
Cold sweat dampened her sides. She glanced at Devlin. “Do you have any pick-a-roos left?”
“I used all of them getting out of headquarters—and half of Chloe’s.”
“Don’t look at me,” Gar said. “I never got any. I vote for blowing the sucker. Between the three of us, we’ve got enough magic.”
As Devlin argued that blowing the door would alert Dux and leave them weakened, Em searched the implements strewn on the floor for something that could be used to pick the lock the old-fashioned way. Her pulse throbbed loudly in her ears, a forceful tempo matching that of her heart. An ancient rhythm of fear, bordering on panic.
An ancient rhythm. Tempo. Em’s pulse sped even faster. She bolted to the cell door.
“Let me try something,” she said. She’d felt the rhythm of the spell Midas used to create the picks. She’d heard its primal song. If she could duplicate it using her own energy, maybe it would work.
She pressed her hand over the lock, closed her eyes, and focused on the sensation of the keyhole against her palm. She brought up her magic and let go of the world around her, moving into a daze like she did when reaching out to contact spirits. But this time, instead of casting out a net of magic for ghosts, she focused on the keyhole and released her energy in time with the fast rhythm of her heartbeat: the oldest song, the first song copied by ancient shamans. Thump. Thump. Thump-thump…
She let herself fall into a daze, her mind going back to the rhythm she’d felt when she used the pick-a-roos, the slightly different heartbeat of Midas’s spell. Thump. Thump-beat, beat.
Heat flooded up her arms and an electric crackle tingled against her skin. Even with her eyes shut, she could see the blue flames flickering against her palm. She could feel the heat. Flares of white light, flooding outward.
“Whoa,” Devlin’s shocked voice said in the distance.
Click.
“Open the door,” she mumbled from her fog. “Quick.”
The push of the door opening threw her off balance and sent her lurching sideways. Gar caught her, steadying her until her senses returned.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “I just need to catch my breath.”
Gar brushed back her hair. He pressed a kiss at the base of her ear and whispered, “You’re fucking amazing. You know that, right?”
His voice snapped her fully back to reality. His comment sent warmth across her skin. He was the one who was amazing. Her sweet, rebel knight.
She laughed and pushed him away. “Takes one to know one.”
Devlin joined them. He handed Gar the dart gun, a knife, and various other weapons. He glanced at Em. “Do you know where Chloe is?”
“No. But the room she was in is above us.” Her fingers went to her sweater pocket, searching for the cloth bundle. She should be able to use it to guide them. Except—
She jammed her hand deeper in her pocket, feeling around again.
The bundle was gone.
Chapter 29
Rip it apart
Tear it to pieces,
Pull down the stars and blow them into dust.
—“Anger” by E. A.
Memory. On the run. 15 years old.
“I lost the bundle,” Em confessed. “It must have fallen out when I went through the floor.” She nodded toward the corridor. “I think we’ll find Chloe if we keep moving up.”
“Okay, then. Let’s get out of here.” Devlin turned on a flashlight and headed for the door.
Em stuck close to him and Gar as they hurried from the dungeon and went into the dark corridor, past the tunnel she’d emerged from and up a steep, winding flight of stairs. When they reached the top, the relentless pump-pump suck-thump reverberated from straight ahead instead of from above.
“You hear that, right?” Em whispered to Gar.
He cocked his head, listening, a movement that was so wolf-like it made Em’s breath falter. He lowered his voice. “Yeah, and I don’t like it. The only thing that bothers me more is the lack of guards.”
Em nodded. “That is weird.”
“Shush.” Devlin raised a hand to quiet them. “I sense magic. What the—”
A high-pitched squeal of magic suddenly joined the relentless pump-suck sound. The noises entwined and sped up, pulsing faster and louder until it began to whistle. The air pressure in the corridor soared, screeching louder than a siren.
Em clamped her hands over her ears. Gar did the same, groaning and hunching down.
The wail of a woman—a ghost—screeched above the other ear-shattering noises, mixing with the relentless pump-suck pump-suck. Struggling and failing, screeching and wailing, trying to break free from the tug-of-war.
“Athena!” Devlin howled.
He streaked forward, past a stairwell flanked by torches and gargoyle statues. Gar raced after him, with Em an inch behind. The heart-wrenching wailing and ear-piercing sounds rang out from a brightened doorway just ahead of them—
“Shit.” Em skidded to a stop as two wraiths swooped out of the room, claws slicing the air. A dart whizzed from Gar’s hand, striking one of the wraiths. Sparks and light exploded outward. Devlin hurled an energy ball, disintegrating the other wraith. Green haze and the stench of rotting flesh fogged the air.
Behind you, Em’s sixth sense screamed.
She wheeled. The corridor behind them swarmed with wraiths, flooding out from the gargoyle-flanked stairwell and streaming toward them. “Look out! Behind us!”
“Get down,” Devlin shouted at her. A fresh energy ball sizzled in his hands.
She ducked, the energy ball whistling overhead as she drew up her magic. Light flashed. The wraiths screeched. She blocked out the sound, focused on the closest surging wave, and shouted, “Be gone!”
Some of the wraiths burst into haze. Others cartwheeled to the floor, snarling and thrashing like netted crocodiles.
“Nice move,” Gar said to her. He tossed a grenade-like canister into the snarling mass. It exploded with a tremendous bang and a flash of light. Em threw her arm over her eyes, blocking out the searing brightness. The smell of moss and mushrooms overpowered the stench of rotting meat. Gar whipped out his dart gun and began taking the wraiths down one after another like skeet at a firing range.
“How many more can there be?” Devlin roared as another half-dozen hazed the corridor. He hurled a small vial at them, purple mist and salt raining from it.
“There aren’t any coming from that way.” Gar gestured at the bright room where the woman’s wail and the tug-of-war sounds still screamed. “If we retreat there, we can ward the doorway to hold them off.”
With Em in the middle, the three of them backed down the corridor and into the room. The place was as hot as a furnace. Everywhere, massive machines thumped and whined. Metal arms lifted and pounded downward. Belts shrieked. Gears clicked and ticked. The suck-pump pump-pump, like a tell-tale heart on steroids, didn’t pause for a second. Neither did the wailing.
Turning her back on the machines, Em stared into the corridor, through the haze and purple mist. She pulled up her magic, focused single-mindedly on the wraiths, and commanded, “Be gone! Be gone!”
Wraiths fell to the ground, first one, then two more. Em stopped focusing on them and joined her energy with Devlin’s as he sprinkled a protective line of salt across the threshold. Killing wraiths was a must. But helping her high priest might just keep them alive.
Despite the gravity of the situation, Em smiled as she realized she’d thought of Devlin as her high priest, and doing so had felt as natural as joining her magic with his—not just to save their lives. What she felt was deeper, something right and enduring. Something worth more than just the few months of safety she’d wanted from the coven. It felt like belonging. Like home. Like family.
“Incoming.” Gar grabbed her, yanking her back f
rom the line of salt.
Snap. Pop! Like a June bug hitting an electric bug zapper, a wave of wraiths collided with the salt ward. Light crackled outwards. Their bodies cartwheeled backward, screeching howls from their gaping mouths. They flew back down the corridor, the click of their claws echoing off the walls as they swooped between the gargoyles and vanished into the darkness of the stairwell. In a swirl of green haze, all the other wraiths followed suit, disappearing into the stairwell until even the sound of their claws vanished.
“Holy crap,” Em said. “Where do you think they’re going?”
Gar gave her a one-armed hug. “Probably to regroup—or tell Dux, though I can’t see how he wouldn’t already know. Either way, I’ll guarantee you they know another way into this room. It won’t be long before they use it.”
“Over here,” Devlin called from behind them.
Em turned, scanning the tangle of machinery. Devlin stood with his hands over his ears beside a spinning metal basin about twenty feet wide. Jointed pistons pounded into it as it spun, their metallic heartbeat muffled by the whining and wailing emanating from the basin.
A clunk sounded from the pistons. They stopped moving and the basin ground to a standstill. Every noise in the room winded to a halt as well.
Em shivered. The room’s quiet was almost more disturbing than the sounds, especially since she could still faintly sense the ghost trying to break free from the tug-of-war.
Stop the Magus, the wailing voice called out to her from inside the basin. But the voice didn’t belong to the spirit she expected. Not Athena. Diamonds. Diamonds for the key.
“Rhianna,” Em murmured. What key? Do you mean the triangle? She cast her thoughts out, letting her sixth sense guide them into the machine and to Rhianna. Rhianna might have wanted revenge on the coven, but now she had a reason to want to bring Dux down as well. Triangle. Key. Diamonds. Witches. What do they symbolize?
No sooner had the thought left her mind than she realized her mistake. The triangle wasn’t a symbol. It was real. She’d seen it upstairs. The witches were real, too.
Em’s breath caught in her throat. Witches. Diamonds. Literally real… When she and Alice had lived at the Royal Palm Playhouse in Tampa, she’d made her living doing readings for the actors and patrons. One woman always wore a necklace with a single blue diamond: a stone created from the remains of her dead husband.
Em walked stiffly to where Devlin stood by the basin. No blood splatter streaked its metal surfaces. No ribbons of flesh. But those things weren’t needed to transform a person into a diamond, at least not according to what she’d learned from the woman in Tampa. The only required ingredients were hair, extreme heat, and pressure. However, trapping a witch’s spirit and magic in a diamond might entail something else. Perhaps the addition of a spell and bone or marrow could create that kind of living death.
Em forced her gaze to travel deeper, into the very center of the basin. She couldn’t see anything other than a glistening plunger, but she could feel Rhianna’s sadness and imprisoned energy pulsing within the machine’s core. Rhianna might not have been the high priestess that Dux wanted, but clearly he had decided to keep her spirit and magic rather than set them free.
Gar’s fingers laced with Em’s, and she squeezed his hand for support. Even if he and Devlin had guessed the truth, she had to say it out loud, if only to drive the truth home in her mind.
“Dux is turning them into diamonds,” she said, her voice husky. “When we were upstairs—where Chloe was—I saw a room off to the side, maybe Dux’s office. There was a gold triangle floating in the air. It’s a key of some sort, I’m certain of that. I’m also certain there were diamonds in two of its corners. Saille and Athena.”
“No. You’re wrong.” Devlin gripped the edge of the basin as if protecting his sister. “I feel Athena here.”
Em gentled her voice. “I’m sorry. At some point, she was in there. You’re sensing that. It’s not current energy.”
Gar growled. “Stolen books. Now this. I can’t believe this Magus Dux never crossed the Council’s radar.”
“I agree,” Em said. “But we can’t waste time thinking about the Council right now. There’s still one diamond missing in the triangle.”
Devlin went pale. “Chloe.”
Chapter 30
closets. cupboards. hotel wardrobes.
under the bed. behind the chair. out of sight.
out of mind. close the door. close the lid.
long. dark. narrow. forever. no fear.
—“In Praise of Hiding Places” by E. A.
“What do you think the key opens?” Em asked as the three of them raced down the corridor to the gargoyle-flanked stairwell.
“Whatever it is, you can be sure it isn’t good,” Devlin said.
Gar hooked his arm around Em as they ran up the stairs. With his help it felt like she was flying, her feet barely touching the treads as she ran. She was extra grateful for that. The air in the stairwell was thick with the wraith’s stench, almost unbreathable.
When they reached the top of the stairwell and went out onto a landing, Em bent over with her hands on her knees as she gulped fresh air. “That smells worse than skunk.”
Gar leaned close to her, his voice hushed. “But it makes them easy to track.”
He took out his gun, motioned for her and Devlin to get behind him, then headed down a hallway with curtained doorways on both sides. In the distance, a voice droned, growing louder and more distinct with each step they took.
Em drew up her magic, keeping it ready as Gar slowed, now inching forward, almost brushing the doorways’ thick curtains as they passed.
They rounded a corner and saw the end of the hallway a dozen yards ahead of them. Beyond its mouth, pillars framed an entry to the circular room where they’d fallen through the bespelled floor, except this time they were on the opposite side of the room.
Gar tilted his head, listening, then veered toward a nearby doorway. He glanced behind its curtain. “Hurry,” he whispered, waving them inside.
Em scrambled through the gap in the curtain, Devlin on her heels. No sooner were they out of sight than the fast clip of high heels on marble sounded, coming out of the circular room and into the hallway they’d just left.
“How many?” Em asked, voice hushed.
Gar nodded and held up two fingers.
Em’s mind filled with images of the Barbie she’d killed. Dear Goddess, when the Barbies discovered what she’d done, they’d be after her blood for sure.
As the clip of heels drew even closer to where they were hidden, Gar flattened himself against the wall beside the curtained doorway. Em did the same, standing stock-still between him and Devlin.
A Barbie’s voice filtered in through the curtain. “… I can’t believe it.”
The other one tsked. “What do you expect from a witch? They’re all liars.”
“I thought Rhianna was different.”
The second woman snickered. “She is now.”
“Yeah, dust to dust—witch to diamond.”
“A shitty, imperfect diamond.”
“Dux said we can finish her transformation once he’s done with the new high priestess.”
“Whatever. As long as we get that machine reset and back up here in time for the bloodletting. I bet that little blond witch will scream like a banshee.”
Devlin tensed and shifted away from the wall. Em readied to grab his arm and hold him back if he headed for the door. She felt horrible for him. She couldn’t begin to imagine how much he was hurting. Still, if he went off half-cocked, it could get them all killed, including Chloe.
“More like a dozen banshees,” one of the Barbies giggled as they passed.
Once the click of their heels faded around the corner, Em scrunched closer to Devlin. “We’re going to get Chloe out of there in time. D
on’t worry.”
“You’re damn right,” he said, low and cold.
“Shush.” Gar silenced them. He motioned for them to stay put, then slipped across the room to a second curtained doorway on the other side of the room. Judging by the door’s location, Em figured it most likely opened into the circular room.
While Devlin nudged the curtain open a crack and peered out, Em took a moment to glance around the room they were in. The place smelled strongly of leather, and she wasn’t shocked to see worktables stacked with books in need of covers and repairs. Her gaze went to a heap of tanned leather. Yeah, she really didn’t want to think too hard about what sort of being it had come from. Animal. Bird. Human.
“Pssst.” Gar signaled for them to come take a look.
Em hurried over with Devlin. But Gar didn’t step aside instantly. With one hand holding the curtain closed, he spoke directly at Devlin, “We have to play this smart.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Devlin pushed Gar’s hand aside and looked out. His shoulders tensed. “Son of a bitch.”
“Put your anger into your magic,” Gar whispered. “Keep it hot and your head cool.”
Em slipped up close to them and glanced out the opening.
Wraiths swooped everywhere, blocking her view of the room as they came and went. Between their passes, she glimpsed Dux pacing along the edge of the raised platform with a phone to his ear. Behind him, Chloe lay on the altar, her arms and legs held down by Barbies.
Panic crushed the air in Em’s lungs. Her gaze dropped to her feet. She could feel the hammer of the needles. Her mother’s hand over her mouth. The bitter taste of her lotion. The fruity smell of Lifesavers on her breath.
Em clenched her teeth, fighting against the memory.
That’s the past. It’s done. Over with, she told herself. This was about Chloe. Not her.
