When Darkness Falls - Six Paranormal Novels in One Boxed Set

by Shalini Boland

  “Morts?”

  “Mortuss Phasmatis. Spirits of elementals who have met their final death but are stuck between this world and the afterlife. The Universe tasked the Ankou with moving these spirits—either to new lives or to the afterlife—but if the spirits remain too long, they sometimes possess humans.”

  “Seriously? Seriously, Charles? Why the heck does it want me?”

  “Likely because you don’t have an aura. That makes your ability to resist possession stronger, but if they succeed, they can take you over completely—not only to use your body but to bind with your spirit as well.”

  “How can you be so calm about this? What am I supposed to do? Could it really possess me?”

  Charles placed his hands on my shoulders. “Calm down. Let’s talk about this. When did you first see it?”

  “It’s a her, and I first saw her when I woke up in Ivory’s room after I was attacked at Club Flesh.” My eyes widened with realization, and I covered my mouth. “Oh shit. She followed me here, didn’t she?”

  “How close is she now?”

  I peered over the ridge of his shoulder, through the window of the kitchen door that led out to my backyard. The young woman with the dark hair now had her face pressed to the windowpanes.

  I shuddered. Her face was pressed to the windowpanes, the blood from her eyes smeared across the glass. A shudder ripped through me and threatened to empty the contents of my stomach. I hadn’t been so afraid of her before. Maybe ignorance really is bliss.

  “She’s right at the kitchen door, literally pressed against it,” I said, my words leaving me breathlessly.

  “I’ll call Adrian,” Charles said. “He’ll advise us on what to do. In the meantime, stay away from the windows and don’t look the mort in her eyes.”

  Thank my lucky stars that Charles knew how to keep calm when I did freak out, though I much preferred my usual state of numbness over such events.

  The only room in the house with no windows was the bathroom. I settled down in there and had Charles bring me every magical references book I owned.

  “Would smudging help?” I called out into the hallway.

  Charles popped his head into the bathroom. “Smudging?”

  “Burning pine needles and sage.”

  He looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Why would that help?”

  “We could use mint or salt,” I offered next.

  Charles just laughed. “I thought you went to school for history.”

  “I did.”

  “Think about it, Sophia.”

  Ah. Right. Mint and salt kills bacteria and germs. That would have helped keep people from getting sick, which would have made them less likely to hallucinate. That might help if I were sick, but not in dealing with actual Morts.

  Adrian arrived shortly before midnight. “She’ll need to do this under nightfall,” he said to Charles. “If you try moving her to another location at night, you’re more likely to draw attention from the Cruor than if you just attract the Ankou to come here.”

  “This is less than ideal,” Charles replied. There was a weight to his voice that unnerved me. “This could risk our location entirely.”

  Adrian frowned in a way that seemed almost apologetic. I could marvel for hours at how that man’s expressions could be so nuanced, how something as simple as a frown could evoke so many different things.

  “There’s no other way.”

  Charles raked his hand through his hair. “Then we better get started.”

  Their genius plan was to use me for bait for all the Morts in the area. Then call the Ankou to come exterminate the problem. My anxiety over the whole ordeal was mounting more and more by the second.

  I kept mostly to the bathroom, but I did peek occasionally to see what was going on. The backdoor kept wrenching open and slamming shut, and I couldn’t help but cave to my curiosity. The thought reminded me of what Marcus had said, that it was my dad’s curiosity that got him killed.

  Had he been somehow involved in this other world?

  Adrian went outside ahead of us and set up a circle of wooden poles in the yard. He returned inside to retrieve a chair from the kitchen, which he placed in the center of his circle.

  I leaned into Charles. “Why did he paint the poles blue?”

  “It’s lime, milk, and pigments that make a blue paint. It’s supposed to look like water.”

  “Ghosts don’t like water?”

  Charles didn’t answer me. Increasingly, the stress in the pit of my stomach could be more readily attributed to Charles’ demeanor, rather than any knowledge that would lead me to feel afraid.

  The spirit of the young woman wandered over to Adrian’s structure, concern etched into her features. Her arms hung limp at her sides. Within moments, two more spirits joined her: a young boy with blond hair and, with him, a tall, thin woman with short, dark-red hair.

  “There’s more than one,” I said nervously.

  Charles wrapped his hand around mine and squeezed.

  A few moments later, Adrian had attached wind chimes to each blue pole. He came inside and wordlessly ushered me out. I opened my mouth to ask what would happen next, but he whispered harshly, “Don’t speak.”

  He seated me in the chair surrounded by the poles and started walking in circles around me, dragging a stick along the wind chimes. He was chanting something in a language I hadn’t heard before. My heart rate picked up, and I couldn’t decide if I was too afraid to close my eyes or too afraid to leave them open.

  Then something blurred the spirits and they burst into black particles that flurried to our feet. Their remains coated the ground in ash that quickly dissolved to smoke and floated off on the breeze.

  Was that it?

  I started to stand up but Adrian shook his head at me as though the simple movement were a reprimand for my actions. I froze, then inched back into my seat. He handed me a chalice full of rose water and I took the hint to drink it.

  “Now we wait,” he said, and he walked inside, leaving me there. He and Charles watched me through window, unmoving. I wondered if my face revealed my fear as much as Charles’ revealed his concern.

  How had my life turned to this?

  Perhaps I’d always had one foot in the supernatural world, but over the last few months, things had been shifting. Now here I was, being thrust further into the darkness, my fingernails gripping helplessly to hang onto these last threads of the world as I’d known it.

  All I could think was how much I wanted to leave the supernatural world behind.

  All of it.

  

  WHAT FELT LIKE AGES LATER, but what my watch revealed had only been one hour, my time sitting alone in the dark was over. Adrian came outside, grinning the full effect of his pride.

  “They won’t be bothering you again for quite some time. We will take you inside now and you will rest.”

  Once I was inside, lying down in the bedroom and completely unable to fall asleep, my heart still pounding in my chest, Adrian left. I was too frazzled to care that no one had explained to me what had just happened.

  Charles came and sat on the edge of the bed. “You all right?”

  “I think one of them killed my mom,” I said.

  “How so?”

  I recapped for him how my mother had died. “Mrs. Franklin thought it was witchcraft, because right after my mom fell to the floor, there was smoke rising from her body. It was just like the smoke outside.”

  Charles’ expression was grave. “It may have tried to take you instead.”

  “Oh no,” I said certainly. “My mom wasn’t really possessed. Mrs. Franklin just thought she was.”

  “Exorcisms are the best way to invite Morts into a home. She might not have been possessed when Mrs. Franklin brought her there, but it’s possible something happened once they began their endeavors.”

  I swallowed around a lump in my throat. “Well, anyway, it doesn’t matter because that was a long time ago.”

&nbs
p; “Sophia,” Charles said in a way that made me want cry, simply by overwhelming me with his compassion.

  “What’s done is done. Can’t change the past,” I added as cheerfully as I could.

  The smile on my face felt so unnatural I wasn’t sure how to sustain it nor how to let it fall naturally from my face. I turned away instead.

  {seventeen}

  JANUARY CAME AND WENT. I would not be returning to work. Maybe I would eventually, but for now I needed to keep my distance. I spent all my newly freed-up time poring over books from Adrian, looking for more answers about my ancestor and how to tap into her gift. I needed to be able to protect myself. Charles couldn’t be there to protect me all the time.

  Adrian’s books provided minimal support. The information on fire scrying—using fire to see visions—was useful, but the books addressing magic of the mind talked about telepathy and telekinesis and other things of little-to-no help.

  Charles and I had been together for nearly six months, though the time felt more like a lifetime. I’d learned some important things from the experience.

  One: I didn’t want anything to do with Charles’ world. Two: I wanted everything to do with him. And three: I couldn’t have it both ways.

  As though my current stresses weren’t enough, the voices had amplified. I contemplated telling Charles. He’d need to know eventually; if not now, when? Was I ready to tell him these things, even at the risk of losing him?

  Charles’ footsteps sounded in the hall outside our bedroom door—footsteps I’d memorized and loved for their reliability. The kind that echoed with a dull, non-threatening thud. His approach replaced my stress with joy, and I bit back a smile.

  Somewhere along the way, we’d ended up sleeping in the same bed. I couldn’t think of any other man I would trust enough to do that with.

  Charles placed a hand on each side of the doorjamb and leaned into the room. “I have a surprise for you.”

  I arched my eyebrows in reply and followed as he led me to the spare room—the room I’d stayed in when I first moved in here. It’d been locked up for over a month now.

  He swung open the door and stepped back, allowing me to enter first. The entire wall to my left had shelves, wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor, packed with books. Beneath the window, candles scattered across the surface of a small desk. I smoothed a hand over the arm of a microfiber love seat near the door.

  “Charles.” I shook my head, smiling. “I can’t believe you did this!”

  A smile tipped the corners of his mouth. “Adrian and my mother donated books to your collection.”

  Charles stepped fully into the room. “Do you like it?”

  “Like?” I asked, spinning back toward him. “Charles, I love it!” I wrapped my arms around him, locking my lips with his. He murmured against the kiss, and I pulled back. “What?”

  “I forgot to tell you—my parents are stopping by tomorrow evening for dinner. They called right before you arrived. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? Of course not. Should I make plans with Lauren?”

  His eyebrows pulled together. “That’s why I was telling you.”

  “To let me know not to be here?”

  “No.” He chuckled. “What are you talking about? They’re looking forward to meeting you.”

  “Oh,” I said. I sunk into the loveseat, and Charles sat beside me. “I’ve never met a boyfriend’s parents before.”

  Actually, I’d never done anything more than date a guy for a few weeks here and there in high school, which had amounted to little more than hand-holding in the school hallways or kissing in the back corner booth at the local ice rink.

  Charles wrapped his arm around me. “You have nothing to worry about.”

  But I did. I had a lot to worry about. I was going to meet Charles’ parents—the people I would be stealing him from if he ever became a pure Strigoi and started aging with me.

  Was it now, more than ever, important to tell Charles about the voices? Or was now the worst time to bring up my secrets? If I didn’t say something soon, should I never say anything at all?

  

  I DECIDED TO TACKLE THE BASEMENT. It was huge and bare—the perfect place to hold rituals. The floor stretched out in an unwrinkled slab of concrete, only chipped in a few places along the walls.

  Charles made a run to the hardware store to purchase some paint. When he returned, he set the two buckets on the bottom step. “You’re cute when you’re determined.”

  Cute. Not a word most women like to be called, but better than crazy.

  Charles cut in the wall edges using the antique white paint, and I rolled out the rest. Within two hours, we’d completed the task, thanks to Charles’ incredible speed.

  We headed to the kitchen for a break, leaving the cellar doors open with a rotating fan circulating the air to dry the paint. Charles served peach cobbler and lemonade, but while the cobbler was warm and sweet, the room was cold and heavy with silence.

  My basement project was a foolish attempt for distraction. Painting over the imperfections did me no good: waiting for the paint to dry forced me back to my thoughts—forced me to think about Charles’ parents coming to visit and whether I needed to open up. There was one major problem with sharing secrets, though. Once the words left my mouth, I could never take them back.

  Charles sipped at his lemonade in a way that seemed almost scripted. “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” I said, poking at a slice of peach on my plate.

  No, just a bunch of frenzied whispering voices assaulting my brain. As usual.

  Not only were they as non-distinct as ever, overlapping and running wild in my mind—Sto. Are y. Bel. Didn’t see th. Shhh.—but now they were accompanied by dread and anger and other emotions that didn’t line up with what I was supposed to feel.

  When the paint finished drying, I returned to the basement and applied a stick-on decal to the wall—a brown tree with yellow and pear-green leaves and a bird cage hanging from an outstretched branch with an orange sparrow inside. In spite of all the brightness and openness of the room, I felt only like the caged bird. Trapped inside myself by the truth I refused to share.

  Leaving the floor a deep, gray color, we moved the old upstairs couch—just a few shades too pale to be lemon—from under the basement stairs to the space along the wall where I’d applied the tree decal. I tossed a couple poppy red pillows on either side, and still I wasn’t happy.

  As if decorating were a substitute for addressing my emotions. But even this realization didn’t stop me; it only made me hate myself more as I continued.

  “Do you mind if I finish up alone?” I asked.

  Charles placed a gentle kiss on my temple. “I’ll start dinner,” he said, and he left me in the drearily cheerful room.

  In one corner of the basement, I set up two wooden chairs I’d painted daffodil yellow and a small table I’d painted avocado green. Beside the couch, I placed a cream-colored cabinet from my grandfather’s house, the only family heirloom I had in my possession. Using the cabinet as a side table, I filled a clear vase with crystal beads and tucked in several silk flowers, creating an arrangement of candy pink gerberas, bright blue hydrangeas, and lime-colored daisies. I spritzed the flowers with a spray that lived up to its promise of crisp rain and traces of fresh mint.

  I stepped back. The bright, airy room radiated a warmth I couldn’t share. To say the room reflected me in any way would have been a lie. This room, this house, was merely a reflection of who I wanted to be. Not who I was.

  I sank into the sofa, dissolving into tears. Guilt became a steady undercurrent to my emotions. Why was it so hard to tell him the truth? I’d told him about the spirit following me, and he’d been able to help with that. He hadn’t thought I was crazy. Even if he couldn’t help with this, there was no reason I shouldn’t be able to open up with him about it.

  I took a deep breath, pulling the air all the way down to the bottom of my lungs, then headed upstairs. Ch
arles was in the bedroom, flipping through his music collection. When I stopped in the doorway, he snapped the binder of CDs shut.

  Despite all effort to remain calm, my breathing was unsteady. “I need to tell you something.”

  His forehead creased. “Anything, Sophia.”

  “I have this thing,” I said. The space from the bedroom door to the dresser where Charles stood extended a hopeless distance. “I hear things sometimes—thoughts that aren’t my own.”

  Charles blinked but said nothing.

  “It started as a hissing noise a few years ago but has gotten worse over the past six months.” Even my voice was shaky. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. I needed to say this. If he didn’t want to be with me because of this, then maybe we shouldn’t be together. “I’m sorry. I’ve been one disaster after the next. I’m complicating your life. If you want me to leave, I would understand.”

  Charles crossed the room and grabbed me by the elbow. “You’re nuts if you think I would want you to leave. This is what’s been bothering you?”

  I shrugged one shoulder, as though that would hide my hurt. “I was afraid to tell anyone. Everyone else I’ve ever opened up with has turned away.”

  “Sophia,” he said, touching my cheek. “I’m not going to turn away from the only person I’ve ever trusted to accept me. Not for anything. You belong to me. If for a moment, then for eternity.”

  “Eternity?” I asked wearily.

  “We’re going to find a way,” he promised. “This is one of many hurdles we will face, but we will overcome this—this and everything else standing in our way. Whatever it takes. We can fight for this, too.”

  “I know, I know. Whatever you do, fight,” I droned. “But I’ve been fighting this for a while now. The voices aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Perhaps they aren’t supposed to. Remember, you’re the descendant of a spirit elemental. If she was telepathic, you might be, too.”

  Charles didn’t understand. I pressed my lips together and shook my head.