by Liz Schulte
“Maybe I like it in the dark. Maybe this is where I always belonged. Or maybe I just like the sound of your fear.”
“Whatever. You get your nails done once a week. You’re hardly tormented.” I opened up the flashlight app on my phone and moved into the darkness. “This spirit you’re housing is a total drama queen, Jess. You should boot her ass out.”
Something flicked her eyes and even the vampire gave half a laugh.
“If you want something from me, you’re going to have to take it,” she said. “You think you’re stronger than me?”
The best defense might be a good offense, but when that fails, it’s a good sense of humor that really matters. “Hell no. Why do you think I brought him? Grab her,” I said to Corbin who was already behind Jess, locking her arms behind her back. I took the final steps to her, cell phone in one hand and knife in the other.
While hair would be easier to get, blood would be stronger. I sat the phone on the floor so the light shone upwards and dug a tissue out of my pocket. “When you’re yourself again you don’t get to be pissy about this even if it leaves a scar.” My hands trembled as I slid the blade across her forearm then covered it with the tissue.
Her black eyes turned to me. “Your days are numbered, witch. Mark my words.”
I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. “Duh. All of our days are numbered, as I’m continually reminded.” I grabbed my phone and headed back to the door. Cheney unlocked it. “You coming?” I called to Corbin. In the next instant he was behind me, we were out of the cell, and it was locked again.
We had everything we needed to exorcise the spirit.
In the archive room everything was exactly as we had left it, though Leslie went immediately to double check the circle she had drawn on the floor. Cheney led Selene to the couch and encouraged her to sit, which she did.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You were supposed to see the doctor.” He glared at her. “You agreed.”
“And I did. The doctor said I was fine so I went down to the dungeon. How was I supposed to know you left?”
“What about the pain?”
She glanced at Corbin before looking back at Cheney. “Jessica’s causing it.”
“It isn’t possible,” Sebastian said. “She couldn’t have gotten through the wards.”
“It has to do with the pole not magic,” Selene said. “Only thing I can think is somehow the pole retained something from me when it healed me. Otherwise only me, Corbin, and Minos knew exactly where I was stabbed. She wouldn’t know where the wound was.”
“Wait,” I said. “Jessica never touched the pole. She only ever touched the book. Only the priestess had the pole.”
Selene bit the corner of her lower lip, then smiled. “I know who’s possessing her.”
“The priestess?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. Charon took her. The three entities I made the deal with in the cemetery were the ones who started all of this to get the pole. They were trapped there between worlds and the pole could free them. They were strong, but even free they wouldn’t have a body so their magic would have been next to useless without a host. I wasn’t thinking. I should have figured this out much sooner.”
“But why Jess?” Leslie asked, looking up from the circle.
“The dark magic,” Frost said. “It opened her to them. We even did the spell at the site.”
Selene nodded.
“Why not you then?” I asked Frost.
“Because Selene didn’t trust Frost,” Corbin said then snapped his mouth shut like he was surprised he’d spoken.
Selene frowned. “Why would that matter? Frost probably has more raw power than Jessica.”
“But I’m flawed,” Frost said. “Trust me. No one wants to live my life.”
I continued to watch Corbin. He was eerily still. He knew something he wasn’t sharing.
“Well, if we’re still casting the spell, the circle is ready,” Leslie said, standing up.
“How are you going to trap the spirit?” I asked.
“The cell should hold it,” Selene said.
“You mean the cell Jessica is currently in?” Leslie said and Selene nodded. “How will we get her out, if the spirit is in the cell? Also in spirit form, couldn’t it just leave?”
“We could make a protection circle in the cell and trap it in that, but that doesn’t help with getting Jess out.” Katrina ran her fingers through her dark hair.
“Okay, let’s think about this logically,” Cheney said. “Before we were involved in all this, the spirits were tied to a cemetery, possibly to one single crypt even, and they couldn’t leave. That’s why they needed the pole, right? So maybe you could bind the spirit to a location again.”
“Where?” I asked. “It would have to be somewhere they won’t encounter someone who can help them again.”
“I don’t think they were tied to a location at all.” Selene stared off, not really seeing any of us. “That cemetery wasn’t normal. When I was walking through it, something felt really off. At the time I thought maybe it was the power or nerves or whatever, but looking back, I don’t think so.” She pressed a finger to her lips, then refocused on us. “I think they were caught between worlds.”
“Great. So how do we manage that feat?” Frost asked.
“We don’t,” Katrina said with a frown. “At least there isn’t a way I know of.”
“Me either,” Selene said. “But I don’t think that would be as permanent as we would like. If we’re going to do this, we need to finish it once and for all.” She looked at Corbin. “We need to send them to the underworld for judgment, which is something we have done. Well, it’s something the rest of you have done.”
“With your grandma and Devin’s help,” Leslie said. “I don’t know if Kat and I could do it alone.”
“Well, this time you’ll have to just make do with me.” Selene flashed a grin.
Cheney cleared his throat. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to expend your energy right now.”
“But you think it’s a good idea to tell me what I can and cannot do?” she snapped.
“Selene—”
“Don’t Selene me. I’m doing this. My magic is plenty strong.”
“It’s not the magic we’re worried about,” I told her. “It’s the toll the process will take on your body.”
A worried line tugged between her eyebrows, but she quickly smoothed it away. “Women have been having children for as long as people have been on this earth. I’ll be fine.” She looked back to the girls with renewed determination. “We’ll do the circle in the cell. Frost can cast the spell you wrote, then Corbin will break the circle and pull Jessica out because he is the fastest. I will close it again and then we can banish it to purgatory.”
“This isn’t my area of expertise, but I wouldn’t open a porthole to purgatory in my house,” Corbin said. “For whatever it’s worth.”
Selene nodded. “He has a point. So we need to get Jessica and the spirit outside.”
“But we need the cell to neutralize her magic,” Katrina said, dropping down on the couch next to Selene. “This is hopeless.”
“We could bind her,” Leslie said.
“It wouldn’t hold her long enough,” Katrina said.
“We could do a hex doll,” Selene said.
“That could kill her.” Katrina shook her head.
“Only if she’s trying to kill us,” Leslie said. “It will only reflect what she sends out back onto her. After the first time, she should be smart enough to stop.”
“What if the spirit tries to kill her to free itself before we can banish it? I don’t like it.” Katrina leaned forward, resting her elbows against her knees. “The whole point is to save Jessica.”
“Fine. Then we can take her magic,” Frost said with a nod. “Jessica survives and is useless to the spirit.”
“But she won’t be a witch anymore,” Selene said. “That’s part of who she i
s.”
Katrina blew out a breath. “But at least she’ll be alive. We might be able to find a way to give her the magic back, but even if we can’t, at least she’s not dead.”
Nothing was ever as simple as unmaking it. Be it magic or energy or a plant, once something existed it never went away. It could change and become something else, but that power was always there. “What happens to the magic?” I asked.
“It goes to the spell caster,” Frost said.
No one said it but everyone knew what that meant. The power stripped from Jessica would go to Frost. None of the other women could cast on a member of their coven, but could they truly trust the necromancer? She wanted to be part of the coven to reverse being a necromancer, but once she figured out how to take one of their abilities, what would stop her from taking all of them?
“Then I guess we have work to do,” Leslie said. “Everybody but witches out.”
Corbin and I headed for the door, but Cheney paused, offering Selene a hand. I stopped, waiting for the fight to ensue and Corbin bumped into me.
“Sorry, mate,” he said moving past me into the hallway.
The internal struggle in Selene’s eyes never made it to her lips as she let him help her up. “Can you guys handle this without me?” she said.
“Go, we’re fine,” Katrina said. “Take care of my godchild.”
Her words pierced me. Another way we were forever bound together. I joined Corbin in the hall and waited for Selene and Cheney.
“She cannot be a part of the spell,” Corbin said flatly. “Cheney needs to take control. She nearly died today.”
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “She doesn’t make concessions and Cheney learned long ago that controlling her will never be a possibility. Selene has a mind of her own. She has to see the harm for herself.”
“Damn right I do,” she said, coming out of the archive, her arm locked through Cheney’s. “I understand your concern—I really do.”
“But?” I asked as we all meandered down the hallway at Selene’s new pace.
“But part of the pain and weakness I’m experiencing is from whatever is inside of Jessica. Once it’s gone, I will be so much stronger. It’s worth the risk.”
“Is it?” Cheney asked.
She pressed her lips together, realizing what she had said. The marriage bond was one most couples in the Abyss didn’t go through. In marriage you magically bonded one soul to another, making them halves of a whole. If one died, the other inevitably followed. “That’s not what I meant. I meant it would give me and the baby our best chance. That’s all.”
“We’ll discuss it more in the morning,” he said.
I held back a grin. After all these years Cheney was finally learning how to deal with her. Rather than blustering and fighting with her until she could dig in her heels, he waited, letting her work through the arguments in her own time. When we reached the great room Selene and Cheney bid us goodnight and headed for their room. The vampire watched them go with an unreadable expression.
“It must not be easy,” I said, watching him.
He stilled. “No.” An eyebrow rose. “Who would have thought I would care for an elf?”
“Who would have thought an elf would care for you.”
At that Corbin did look at me. “Not nearly enough, it would seem.” His stare hardened. “But undoubtedly more than I deserve.”
“Undoubtedly,” I agreed, after all he was a vampire. “Though, you have sacrificed more than most.”
“Are you about to make a point or are you satisfied with telling me what I already know?”
Vampires were notoriously untrustworthy. They did very little without a benefit, hidden or otherwise. Selene kept bringing him into her problems, but I had yet to see the reason for him. “You know what I can’t quite figure out? Why you help Selene.”
“Perhaps I’m sentimental.”
“No. I think you’re playing the long game, vampire.”
“I think you would do best minding your own business, elf.” The heel of his hand hit me square in the chest, knocking me back a step or two. “Before you make me testy.”
Corbin wanted to make me mad. He wanted me blind to whatever he was doing. “Selene is my business, which makes you my business.”
The corners of his mouth pulled back. “I don’t want anything from her.”
I raised an eyebrow. Was I supposed to believe that?
“No one is more surprised than I am about this. Apparently her happiness is all that matters.” He shook his head.
“So you’re telling me you’re in…love?”
“I don’t like it either.”
As much as I didn’t want to believe him, the truth in his words was evident. “She’ll never leave Cheney. Jaron made that mistake once before and paid for it.”
The vampire leaned away. “From what I hear, you know a little something about unrequited love…”
I knew more than I cared to consider.
“Maybe we aren’t so different. Maybe we both lack the courage to take what we want.”
“Perhaps so.” Something was on his mind. For the first time I wished I knew the vampire better. “Care to swap war stories?”
“Did you fight in a war?” Cheney asked behind us. “Sebastian is a hell of a soldier.”
“Several,” Corbin said, glancing at his watch. “Another time, perhaps. I’m afraid I have other commitments this evening. If Selene needs me, call.” He left.
“Do you trust him?” I asked Cheney.
He exhaled and shook his head. “He loves my wife. How could I? Do you?”
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t going to figure it out tonight either. Something was still bothering me. “Why would the spirit take Jessica over Frost. Maximum damage potential would have been higher with Frost.”
Cheney ran a finger over his eyebrow. “Maybe Frost has better defenses against dark magic.”
“Or maybe Corbin knows something. He said Jessica was closer to Selene. Why would that matter? How would we have acted differently had Frost been possessed?”
“We would have killed her,” Cheney said. “They are removing the spirit from Jessica.”
I nodded. “Jessica wanted to be caught. She wanted to be brought here, not to attack Selene or cast a spell.”
“She wanted to be removed.”
What Katrina said earlier replayed in my head. “She wants the baby,” I mumbled. “It didn’t make sense why she would want the child—unless it was a vessel.”
Cheney frowned. “If that’s true why not take her from the start?”
“Selene was too strong. She’s getting weaker. Every time she has an episode, she isn’t fully recovering. By the time they remove the spirit from Jessica, she won’t be able to put up much of a fight.”
“Even if this is true, what would keep us from removing the spirit from the child?”
I shook my head, already headed for the archive. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
“There’s a faster way,” Cheney called behind me. “We just so happen to know an angel who owes us a favor.” He flashed a smile as he pulled out his phone.
An instant later a human woman with wavy auburn hair, wearing jeans and worn T-shirt, appeared between us. I had met her before. Olivia was her name, but she was different now in a way I couldn’t describe. The room was suddenly completely silent and a heavy calm weighed down the air. Flight instincts strongly overpowered my fight instincts, but I stayed rooted to the ground unable to take my eyes off of her. She winked at me then looked to Cheney and smiled. Everything in the room went back to normal.
“You’re taking away from my family time, Erlking. Better make it fast.”
“Why would a spirit want to possess an unborn child?”
“If the child is born with the foreign entity inside it, it becomes part of the child permanently,” she said. “Most ghosts aren’t strong enough to break through the mother’s defenses, however.”
She shook her head, looking a little sad. “Ghosts have chosen their path. I’m sorry. I can’t offer you anything other than information and even that was probably too much. Whatever you are fighting, I’m sure it’s the good fight. Good luck.” The next instant she was gone, leaving no residual trace.
I licked my lips. “You know what we have to do…”
“Kill Jessica.” He closed his eyes. “Selene will never forgive me.”
Yes, she’d be devastated, but…“It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” I said. “Hasn’t that always been Selene’s motto?”
“Do it,” he said.
I went a few steps and said, “She’ll forgive you. You’re protecting the child and her…but if she doesn’t, blame me.”
I’d make it fast. Jessica had been a good ally and friend. If she was still in there, she wouldn’t suffer. I slowed as I approached her cell, pulling a knife from my boot, and reaching into my pocket for the key—only the key was gone. I checked all of my pockets but they were empty.
Racing the last few steps to the cell, I grabbed the iron bars. They moved. I ripped open the cell door. Empty. Jessica was gone.
I stifled a yawn and rubbed my eyes. It was bad enough that I was swollen and uncomfortable, but then disaster struck and robbed me of the little rest I sometimes managed to get on a good night. Jessica had escaped and no one knew how.
“Someone had to help her,” Cheney said to his very sleepy audience: me, Katrina, Leslie, and Frost. Unlike elves, humans and pregnant ladies needed more than a power nap. His eyes lingered on Katrina, making me bristle on her behalf.
“Cheney, you know where everyone was last night. I was trying to sleep and the girls were in the archive working on the spells. Besides, all of us have something to lose by letting her go.”
“Yeah, you know, little things like our lives,” Katrina said.
He opened his mouth and closed it again, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to accuse you. There’s just so much we don’t know and the election is in a matter of days.”
I couldn’t spare a thought for the election. Jess’s disappearance was my sole concern. Her magic wasn’t supposed to work in the cell, so what had happened? Had someone helped her—or had one of us just made an honest mistake. Sebastian, while still vague about why he went to check on her at all, thought he had her plan figured out, but if he was right, why would she leave? I was still here—and the baby was supposedly her target.
