She didn't answer, just stared. "Fuck, you're boring. If you're going to haunt me, at least do something."
She charged and slashed, and Castran was too tangled in the sheets to get away, but it didn't burn this time. "Ha," he said. "Seems that with my blood inside you, you can't hurt me anymore. Guess you let go of that little trick too soon. What a shame."
She moved over across the room to the fire. He could still see the flames through her dress and legs. Something fell off the side of the mantle, crashing into the floor.
"And what have we got here?" he said, raising himself up against the headboard again and crossing his arms. "Did you do that? What are you going to do, break all my things?" he teased.
"Hurt you," she said, her voice sounding distant and flat.
"So you do speak. As for hurting me, you're not really doing much of a job. Meanwhile, I'm reading all about the boy you spread your legs for. James. Ring a bell?" He wasn't entirely sure, but he suspected a frown tightened her brow. "James of the lovely, gentle hands, and I'm sure tiny, but perfectly adequate, cock. With your experience, you would hardly know, would you? How does it feel, knowing you will never fuck again?" He smiled, but got nothing in return. "You're no fun."
He returned to the journal. Lucy had a pregnancy scare. "Really were you stupid enough that you didn’t even know how to protect yourself? Where the hell did you grow up, some backwater community where everyone's related?"
"London," she said.
"And still so clueless? Maybe it's you. Which is probably how you were stupid enough to get involved with this cell. You fell into it, believed all the bullshit they told you, and got yourself killed."
"You killed me."
"No, you got yourself killed," he said fiercely. "The outcome was inevitable."
She was really staring daggers at him now. "Do you always blame your victims?"
"When they are stupid enough to deserve it, yes." He kept staring back at her. If she thought he felt a modicum of guilt over her death, she was sorely mistaken. If guilt was her weapon, she would find it impotent.
With a snort, he returned his attention to the 'lovely' James, who gave her a pendant for Christmas, a red little heart set in silver. It opened and she'd put a tiny picture of him inside it.
"He gave you a necklace. How sweet. Totally pedestrian, but you seem to be into that shit. Where it is now? Your apartment? Bet you'd cry if I destroyed that necklace."
The frown returned. He was certainly getting to her. Not enough to irrationally attack. As an opponent, even dead, she wore her thoughts on her sleeve. It was like taking candy from a baby. "Can ghosts even cry?" he asked, curious.
He continued reading and a servant soon appeared with his breakfast. "Master Tarquin wants a word with you," the man said before bowing and disappearing. Castran groaned. This could only mean that they needed to go out that day, wreak some havoc on people getting above themselves.
"Hear that?" Castran said. "That's how it's done. Time to go enforce the rules. Break the rules and bad things happen. Didn't your mother ever teach you anything?"
"Didn't yours?"
Castran's thought immediately clouded over. His mother had died before he’d really formed any memories of her. She’d gotten sick and died. "She wasn't strong enough," he said with contempt.
"To take the evil you were becoming?"
Castran snorted at the statement and the implication that it was him that had made his mother flounder and weaken. "There is no such thing as evil, only strength," he said, the mantra he had lived by all his life.
"Yet, you do evil every day. I met with evil and I died. Maybe that is what you are, no more than an unfortunate accident that happens to people, that happened to me."
"You certainly are getting lippy. I much preferred it when you stared like some dumb, dead zombie. If either of us needs to get to terms with what we are, it's you. You don't belong here. You played the game and you lost."
"It isn't a game. It is people's lives and families you are toying with, causing misery in your wake. The worst thing that has ever happened. Your mother knew this and made her escape."
"Obviously you have no clue what you’re talking about," he said sharply, uncomfortable discussing his mother. He only had photos of her and the stories he was told.
"How can you be anything but evil? You can't even love your mother."
Castran stared tightlipped as the accusation flowed from her cold, dead lips. He couldn't argue it. He hadn't loved her, had quelled any affinity for the woman who had given him birth. Unwillingly, he had to concede that the dead bitch might have a point. It wasn't normal to feel such lack of anything toward his mother. He did respect his father, but he wasn't sure if it could stretch as far as love. "Love is an illusions the weak tell themselves gives their lives meaning."
"Maybe I have just as much meaning as your life," she said, floating over to the window. He tried to snort it away, but the indelible feeling that he was missing something important asserted itself. If he were honest with himself, he would admit it wasn't a new feeling, just one he very successfully ignored as some lingering human frailty, a reflection of youth and unformed consistency.
Chapter 9:
* * *
Castran sat in a café not far away from the mansion, one that looked out over the Seine, which flowed past, gray and sulky, like her. It was nice to be alone and anonymous in a crowd. People mingled, chatted and whispered around him, oblivious to someone different being in their midst—someone dangerous. He could so easily turn this little scene to carnage, destroy everything and everyone here.
The accusation that he was evil returned to his mind—vacant, empty, meaningless evil. If anyone was vacant, empty and meaningless, it was her. Her journal sat in his pocket. She could move things now and might destroy it if he left it behind. It was leverage he wasn't ready to give up.
Looking around the café, he sighed, now hating that he was alone. It wasn't normally something that bothered him and he could seek out his friends, but he felt distant. Who would understand the problems of a ghost haunting him, and he certainly wasn't in the mood to pretend it hadn't happened.
Pulling out the journal, he opened it. Lucy was introducing James to her mother, having invited him over for dinner at their house, where they ate in the kitchen. He'd brought a bottle of wine and flowers, and he'd been nervous.
Castran could imagine the small house she'd lived in, a carbon copy of all the houses down their street—probably somewhere where they knew their neighbors. Likely the mother was still alive, but the thought of it sent uncomfortable feelings down his spine. Mothers were troublesome—even Tarquin didn't like dealing with mothers.
Maybe mothers highlighted a certain level of evil in their acts, he admitted, the way they saw only the incomprehensible in what had happened. There was no efficacy with mothers—fear didn't rule them in the aftermath, no comprehension that this was a consequence what they had set in motion and that they were ultimately responsible. This made mothers unerringly erratic. They would never concede or understand that this was for the best, a necessary outcome for the general good. That was the thing people like Lucy refused to understand, this was all for the broader good, the stability of their community. It was paramount.
Then there was his own mother, having lived so briefly. Had she been happy in her marriage? From what he’d understood, not particularly. She had spent most of her time in Geneva with the extensive gardens and lake views. She had been happy there, away from them. Would she have viewed his demise as incomprehensible or would she secretly been relieved? She had been weak; it didn't matter what she’d have thought, he reaffirmed angrily. This was not a world where the weak prospered, and that was the way things were.
But then there had been quite a few developments over the last few days, least of all the girl taking blood from him—and it seemed to change her. He needed to find out more about this if he sought to understand what kept her there. The blood seemed to have consoli
dated her, which was in the opposite direction of what he wanted.
That Icelandic woman seemed to know about the link between them; he should have asked her when she’d been there, but the look and smell of her had put him off as she stood in their mansion in her torn woolen sweater and muddy shoes. He should have looked past that and queried her about the bond she spoke of. He still needed to know, now more than ever.
*
The icy wind whipped at his clothes when he walked to the entrance of the woman's cave, which was in the most desolate backwaters in Iceland. The helicopter he’d hired was waiting down the bottom of the mountain and he cursed the woman. Why the hell would anyone choose to live here? he wondered, angry that he had to trek up here to find her. His fingers froze and his clothes were no barrier to the iciness in the wind. For a witch who could choose to live anywhere, this was an incomprehensible choice. Maybe it was just women who were incomprehensible in general.
A twig broke as he walked into the entrance of the cave, getting enveloped in the acrid smell of smoke. Candles lit the space which has cluttered corners and a fire in the middle, set in a ring of bricks. An old picnic chair sat empty by the fire.
"Young Master Chartrice," she said in her thin voice. He heard her before he saw her, and then she appeared in a stained, pink cardigan with only two buttons done, over a thin floral dress. She was woefully underdressed for the cold, but it didn't seem to bother her—which told him in no uncertain terms that she was more than the harmless, old lady she appeared to be.
"I have some more questions."
"I knew you would come before long."
"She drinks from me," he said.
"Then she is growing stronger."
"And weaker. She can't hurt me now."
The woman smiled in the way adults do to children who wouldn't understand. Anger seeped into his blood, and not just for the fact that he had to traipse all the way out here in the middle of fucking nowhere. He bit the anger down and smiled patiently. While he might not appreciate her fashion sense or personal hygiene, he wasn't stupid enough to goad this woman, or even turn his back on her.
"Oh, she can hurt you; she just hasn't figured out how yet."
"How?" he demanded, intently wanting to know.
"She can rip you apart from the inside. But then she might never discover this."
"How do I get rid of her? You said there was a bond."
"Yes, but it comes from her side. You cannot sever it, only she can. It sits in here," she said, pointing close to where his diaphragm was. "I can see it even now."
Castran felt disconcerted knowing there was a bond, metaphysical in the least. None of this was helping him and he felt his anger flare again. Why could no one be useful and actually help? Wasn't there some shaman somewhere who could wave a few sticks and this would all be over? "How do I get rid of her?" he asked, trying to control his voice.
"She must relent. When she is done, she will relent."
"And she wants me to suffer."
"Then suffer."
"This really isn't useful," he said coldly, knowing he had no leverage on her. She could probably trap him in a piece of coal from here to the end of eternity if she wanted to, but he couldn't contain his full disappointment. This had been a waste of time. This woman had no answers. He turned to leave before he actually did make things difficult for himself.
"You know more about her than she does," the woman said. "She does not remember her life and that is perhaps your best avenue. If you want to loosen her rage, then make her remember."
Castran stared back at the woman who stood disheveled, but with a straight back in the center of what she called her home. He still couldn't fathom why someone would choose to live here. Make her remember, he said to himself, feeling a little justified in that he had naturally started down that path. Admittedly, he'd been looking for leverage to hurt her. Fear replacing rage, but he suspected that wasn't what the woman was referring to. He wasn't entirely convinced. If he threatened that boy, James, she might just sever the bond to protect him.
"Make her see her life," the woman called after him as he walked out.
He heard her grumble as he left the cave, but he didn't care that the old bat thought of him. The wind whipped against his exposed face, little particles of ice stinging his cheeks and making his eyes water. He stood for a moment longer than he needed to, wondering about this bond between him and his ghost. It was there now, even as he was so far away. It made him wonder where she was. The bond signified that she existed somewhere, even out of sight, a thousand miles away.
*
He found her in his room when he got back to Paris, still feeling frozen to the bone. She was floating by the fire. He almost wanted her to know what he suffered to deal with her.
"Nothing will make you warm again," he said to her slightly see-through head.
"Your blood does."
So she needed blood again. If he wasn't so frozen, he would probably notice that it was chillier in here than usual. "Getting peckish are you—eager to get nice and close?" He smiled and threw off his jacket. "Such an intimate thing, taking blood." Truthfully, he wasn't quite sure why he was teasing her about it. It just felt right. All her rage and hate, and she needed him, in the most intimate of embraces, and Lucy veered on the prudish side in life. Or maybe it just was to him, because he had never let anyone take blood from him, let anyone inside his body in any way. Sex required some level of intimacy, but it could certainly be done with only regard to mere physical urges. "You can do it in the shower when I'm naked, if you want."
Her complete stillness made him wonder if he was tapping into a bashful streak, or maybe there wasn't enough humanity in her to be bashful. He didn't stick around to wonder, being too frozen to really care. A hot shower was more needed than any concern over her and her surprisingly sharp teeth.
The hot water pelted the floor in the shower as he undressed, and she hadn't followed him into the bathroom, staying away from him entirely. He warmed himself in the water. But she would need to feed from him at some point; he felt the chill more keenly now as he stepped out into his apartments again. Her form was still floating by the fire, and she didn't move when the servants brought him his dinner, which he ate with gusto.
Not entirely sure why, but he felt better. There was a semblance of a plan, to make her remember. "You took that boy to dinner with your mother, remember? You wrote about it in your journal. What did you serve? Did you cook for him? Lovingly prepared a meal?"
She didn't respond or move, but he knew she wasn't completely indifferent. He could annoy her into attacking him, which would probably hurt now that she was in need of feeding. The old woman had said she had the ability to rip him apart, and perhaps he should be wary of annoying her to the point of attacking, but he couldn't help it. Everything in him wanted to needle her.
"Did he stay over that night, fuck you in your mother's house?" he grinned as he took a spoonful of crème caramel. "Bet you never ate anything as good as this. It just melts in your mouth. You remember food, don't you? Warm, filling food. Another thing you'll never have."
* * *
Chapter 10:
* * *
It was the middle of the night when she came to him, her touch icy. It sent a shiver through his entire body and Castran's initial reaction was to fight, his heart racing, but he forced himself to calm. Feeding her was worth it; it removed her claws and also kept the chill out of the air. In some sense, it was pathetic that he was feeding a vengeful spirit just to keep his apartments comfortable, but Adaeus had always tried to teach him to pick his battles.
Iciness moved near him as he lay on the bed, floating closer. He'd know this was coming; it just felt more confrontational being dragged out of sleep for it—but then, were there any cordial ways of doing this?
He closed his eyes and felt her move above him. There were no currents of wind with her movement, just cold as she crept closer, her mouth honing in on his neck. Her bite wasn't as painfu
l as the anticipation made it, but she took her time. What was she thinking in this moment, approaching the hated enemy for nourishment? Was this animalistic, depravedly blood seeking? Did she resent that she was dependent on him for her… existence?
The bite made him gasp as the sting came, spreading iciness into his flesh, but he didn't fight—perhaps out of curiosity more than anything. He felt her lips—felt them warm as his blood started flowing into her mouth. The iciness receded immediately and now he felt her, leaning over him, straddling his thighs, her body along his as she fed. He felt her lips and her tongue to his tender injury. She was warm; she felt solid. Her hand was on his upper arm, clasping him to her, and the tips of her breasts lightly rubbed across his bare chest.
Reaching out, he placed a hand on her thigh where she straddled him and her flesh felt warm and solid. It was like she was really there. Unbidden, heat rushed down his body, making him tighten. She didn't seem to notice his touch, or mind if she did. As much as she hated him, he couldn't imagine her wanting him to touch her. Maybe she didn't feel it—but he did.
Her hair lay by his cheek and he felt an urge to draw her scent in, but there was none. He could feel her, but he couldn't smell her. In a way, he felt cheated, stuck in what could only be described as an intimate embrace, but robbed of the scent of her. It wasn't even something he'd known he sought until that moment. Perhaps an unconscious desire, like taste. He couldn't taste her either, not that he tried, but the urge was there, sitting deep in his brain. Perhaps it was just the intimacy of the act, drawing out his instincts to taste and touch.
His hand stayed on her thigh, feeling her smooth skin, before running up to her side. The material of her dress slid under his hand, over the firmness of her body, which was a mere inch above his. He felt her warmth radiating to his body, but not the weight of her coming down on him.
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