by Tate James
“Hey!” I snapped, putting my palm over her lips with one hand and pointing at myself with the other. “Half-angel over here. Just hearing somebody use a word with an extreme negative connotation makes me lose a feather.”
“Oh, please,” Jas said, pushing my hand away from her full red lips and smirking at me as I tried to rub her makeup off on my breeches. “That's a myth and you know it. Air told me that when you were kids, he used to chase you around the castle saying damn and bastard and the like, just to see if you'd lose any feathers—you didn't.”
I narrowed my eyes on her as she turned and headed up what was once an impressive flight of marble steps, now cracked and chipped like an old beggar's teeth. I shivered and followed after her, examining the red stain on my palm that stunk like copperberries. A lot of women painted their mouths with the stuff, but to me that fragrant floral scent was tinged with a metallic sting, like copper. Like blood. Thus, the name—copperberries.
As I hurried up the steps, I kept my eyes on the decaying black facade of the manor, all its intricate moldings and details stripped away by time and rain, the harsh winds that curled across this part of the kingdom in summer.
“Let's do a quick walkthrough and see if you can't sense any residual energies,” Jas suggested as I set my black leather satchel on the floor and knelt beside it. The ground around me was littered with debris—leaves, twigs, bits of crumbling plaster, a dead mouse.
“Oh, that's flubbing sick,” I whispered as I caught sight of the creature's spirit hovering nearby, its furred sides almost completely translucent as it took long, heaving breaths. Of course, the mouse didn't need to breathe anymore, but it didn't know that.
I pulled a dagger from the sheath on my belt—please Goddess, don't actually ask me to use this thing in combat—and prodded at the mouse's body with the jeweled hilt.
Fresh blood stained the white leather pommel and made me shiver.
“Jas,” I started, because a long dead carcass was one thing, but a fresh one? Hell's bells—since Hell was an actual place it didn't count as a curse word so no lost feathers for me—but I hoped it was just a cat that had taken the rodent's life and not … something else.
“Brynn, you need to see this!” Jas shouted and I sighed, wiping the mouse's blood on the already dirty leg of my breeches and tucking the knife away. Before I stood up, I clasped the silver star hanging around my neck with one hand and reached out to touch the mouse's spirit with the other. The poor thing was too scared to even shy away, its soul becoming briefly corporeal as my fingers made contact with its fur.
“Goddess-speed and happy endings,” I whispered as the image of the mouse morphed and shivered, turning as silver as a beam of moonlight and fading away until there was nothing there but the warped and rotted boards of the old floor.
I stood up, leaving my satchel where it was on the ground and rubbing my shoulder as I followed the sound of Jasinda's voice. The road up to the manor was riddled with broken cobblestones, weeds, and the skeletons of long abandoned carriages. It was too rough for any sort of pack animal to make the trek, so we'd had to carry ourselves on foot, lugging all the equipment that a spirit whisperer—that's me—might need to exorcise a ghost or two or ten.
“Jassy?” I asked as I moved past the formal foyer with its double staircases, and down a long receiving hall that would've been used by servants in times past. The wallpaper was peeling like old skin, leaving behind water stained walls and flaky plaster. At some point, thieves had come in and stripped the old place of its wood moldings, sconces and chandeliers; they'd left nothing but a skeleton behind.
“In here!” she called out, drawing me through an empty archway where a swinging door might've once stood and into the kitchen. As I moved, I was conscious of keeping my wings tucked tightly against my back. My clumsiness was not limited to my feet. I was notorious among the castle staff for breaking things with the feathered black wings that graced my back. As a kid, they used to call me Pigeon Girl because I caused ten times as much damage to the royal halls as the flying rats that plagued the old stone building.
“What is it?” I asked as I leaned against the wall outside a small servant's room—a tiny square that would've belonged to the head cook. “Jas, there was a mouse—”
“Flub mice,” she said, only she didn't actually say flub but I wouldn't lose a feather even thinking about the F-word that famously rhymes with duck. As a half-angel, my powers were bound to the Light Goddess and she was a serious stickler for avoiding words with negative connotations. I supposed I couldn't blame her; the very words I spoke held power. The more positivity and light I imbued those words with, the more powerful I was. “Look at this, Brynn. There's a distinct spiritual signature written all over this room.”
The room itself was so small that with the collapsed remains of a small bed and a sagging dresser, there wasn't space for us both. I waited for Jas to step out, pushing her long dark hair over her shoulder, sapphire blue eyes sparkling with a scholar's excitement.
“Brynn, this could be it,” she said as I took a deep breath and stepped into the room. “Our big break.”
Jas was always looking for that one case, that one unique spirit that we could exorcise that would prove our worth to the scholars at the Royal College. In just two weeks, I'd be turning twenty-one and that'd be it; that was the cutoff date for acceptance into the prestigious training facility. It wasn't that Jas cared about the status of being a student there, or the potential for a high-ranking position after graduation, it was the library. Only students and staff of the Royal College were permitted to use the vast, twisting hallways of the Catacombs. There were books there that couldn't be found anywhere else—not to mention ancient artifacts, exemplary professors, and vast resources that could be used for research.
It was Jasinda's dream, even if it wasn't mine. I hoped she was right; I hoped this was it.
I stepped over a small hole in the floor and into the tiny windowless room.
As soon as I did, it hit me, the pressure of an angry spirit, bearing down on me with the cold burn of something long dead and waiting. Waves of icy winter chill tore across my skin like knives, despite the warm evening air that permeated the rest of the building. Whatever this was, it was powerful.
I grasped the silver star at my throat and closed my eyes.
“Haversey,” I whispered, invoking the name of the light goddess.
If I were Jas, I knew what I'd be seeing: a girl shrouded in silver moonlight, her tanned skin pearlescent and shimmering, her hair as white as snow lifted in an unnatural breeze.
I opened my eyes slowly and bit back a gasp.
Every inch of the walls was covered in the word Hellim, the name of the Dark God. What I had originally thought were decorative splotches on the wallpaper were actually his name, written in blood a thousand times over. It had been impossible to see in the dim half-light, but now that I had my second sight open, the letters glowed with a strong, angry spiritual signature.
I started to take a step back when my foot went through the hole in the floor, and the rotting boards around me creaked and toppled into a black pit below.
“Brynn!”
Jas screamed my name as I fell through cold shadow and frost, hitting the soggy wet earth with a grunt and a crack of pain in my shoulder that almost immediately went numb. That was bad, really bad. Pain was one thing, but numbness meant that what'd just happened to me could be really serious.
I tried to stand up, but my arm gave out and I found myself lying in a mound of decaying wet leaves and dirt, the scent of rot thick and cloying in the air.
As I blinked to try and orient myself to the darkness, I felt a cold hand on my shoulder and a gust of icy breath at my ear.
When I turned, I found myself looking into the face of a handsome—and very angry—spirit.
His lips curved up in a smile meant to disarm me.
“Boo,” he whispered as he reached out and pushed my dislocated shoulder back into place.
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White-hot pain crashed over my vision and I passed out.
