Grim Haven (Devilborn Book 1)

by Jen Rasmussen

  I ran into Asher Glass one day, as I was grabbing a coffee at The Witch’s Brew before heading to the library for another attempt at research. He smiled and nodded, the picture of a courteous small-town policeman, and didn’t say a word.

  The next afternoon, Elise Minnow drove by in her minivan while I was walking down Main Street. She gave me a cheerful toot of her horn and a wave out the window, all friendly smiles.

  It was a little bit terrifying, which I guessed was at least partly the point. I didn’t know what they were up to. I didn’t even know why they’d allied themselves with Cillian Wick in the first place, what he’d told or promised them. But I knew it would boil down to control of Bristol, somehow. That was always what they wanted. And they would not give up.

  I felt like I was watching a dragon, lazily taking a deep breath before it breathed fire all over me.

  I didn’t hear from Cooper again, but I tried not to worry. It had only been a few days, and he was no doubt moving around a lot.

  By the time a week had gone by, I’d exhausted all the obvious resources, and was no closer to any answers about how Letitia had cast her spell. I’d been hoping that if I could get to know her, I might get some clue as to how her mind worked. But she remained a mystery.

  There was one not-obvious resource I might try, though. Letitia had been related to Colonel Phearson, and my hotel was, after all, Colonel Phearson’s old house. I armed myself with the brightest flashlight Ellis could give me, and went up to the attic.

  As a child, it had been a place of wonders for me. It was filled with treasures, not only antiques and mementos of years gone by, but papers, too: old guest registries, blueprints, maps, even sketches of Bristol. In many ways, there was as much of the town’s history in the musty, damp upper reaches of the Mount Phearson as there was anywhere.

  I poked around for more than two hours, and was just about to give up and go get some lunch, when I found it: a rough, hand-drawn map of the Phearson estate, with all its outbuildings, guest houses, and other structures, as it had originally stood upon its completion in 1814.

  The Greyhill house was on there too, which might have explained why I hadn’t found it in the property records on its own. It had once stood on Phearson land. I recognized the house by its location, but the map seemed to have been drawn before it had been—rather pretentiously I thought, for such a less-than-grand place—given a name of its own.

  On this particular map, it was known only as Pierce House.

  I stared at the words, ringed in the glow of the flashlight, motes of dust hanging in the air above it, and I understood where all that residual energy had come from. And why I’d been so drawn to that house, so convinced of its importance.

  It was Letitia’s House. Of course it was.

  I wasted no time—not even to grab the lunch I’d been craving—rushing back out into the woods. My mind was racing, grasping at something that was, for the moment, still just out of my reach. It hadn’t quite clicked yet, but I could feel it falling into place.

  Something that felt an awful lot like an answer.

  Haunted, but not haunted.

  The witch who brokered the deal with the devil. But how did she cast the spell?

  I walked once again into that ruined house and stood in the middle of the soft, rotting wood floor, eyes closed, and felt the energy around me. The sadness, the loss, the bitterness.

  The vitality.

  I’d said it myself, at dinner with the Murdochs, but I hadn’t understood the significance of it. Or the truth of it.

  Not blood magic. More like soul magic.

  I knew how she’d done it. I knew how my half-sister had worked the sanctuary magic.

  I ducked back out into the sunlight, and came face-to-face with Marjory Smith.

  “Verity,” Marjory said, with a tightening around her mouth that showed her disapproval of my presence. I felt like one of the kids who frequented the place, caught in the act of drinking and fornicating.

  Her hair was in its always-severe bun, but in lieu of her usual dress or suit, she wore a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. The effect was jarring, and I realized only when I saw her in such regular clothes that I’d always thought of Miss Smith more like a character from a book—a gothic novel, say—than as a real person.

  “Marjory,” I returned. “Aren’t you a little old to be hanging out here?”

  She laughed, a tight unhappy sound. “I could say the same of you, dear. But I suppose you gave up trying to date the local boys long ago. So how do you explain your presence here?”

  “I don’t,” I said simply.

  “You’re showing quite a preference for the place,” Marjory said. “This is the second time you’ve been here in a week. Or, I suppose it’s eight days, really.”

  “Is that meant to disturb me? Because it doesn’t exactly come as a shock that you’ve been keeping track of me.”

  She ignored that. “Trying to commune with your dearly departed sister? Perhaps ask her advice?”

  “I don’t need advice,” I said. “I’m perfectly able to defend myself and this town from you and your new friends.” Of course, that wasn’t true at all, but I wasn’t about to admit it to her.

  “Defend Bristol?” Marjory raised her too-sculpted brow. “Is that what you think you’re doing? Defend yourself, by all means. If you can. But Bristol does not need the likes of you playing guardian. Your father’s shoes are far too big for you to fill.”

  “But you think they’re about your size, is that it?” I asked with what I hoped was a casual laugh.

  “Madeline and Amias knew what was best for this town,” she said. “Now they’re both gone, and difficult though it may be, their work has fallen to me.”

  “Their work? What work could you possibly think you’re doing with Cillian Wick? He and his clan will destroy us all.” I wondered, not for the first time, what Wick had told her he wanted with Bristol, and whether it bore any resemblance at all to what Cooper had told me.

  “My dear, you are too young and, I’m sorry to say, too stupid to understand what’s happening here,” said Marjory. “You get the stupid part from your mother, I’m afraid. An amusing evening for Amias, I’m sure, but such a burden to the rest of us. Which is exactly why you should never have come back.”

  “You forget,” I said, “that your friend Madeline is the reason I came back. Her will was very clear, as you’ve been told.”

  “Amias had a soft spot for taking care of his children,” she said with a sniff. “Unfortunate, but Madeline tried to respect it.”

  “Well, he may have had a soft spot for me, but the feeling was not mutual. My father was a monster, and I have no use—or time—for his coven. Excuse me.”

  Marjory reached out a bony hand and grasped my elbow as I tried to pass her. At the same moment, the sun went behind a cloud, and the wind kicked up. For a second, I thought I was about to be cursed.

  But she only smiled. Her teeth were terribly yellow, for a woman who was otherwise so fastidious in her grooming. I caught a fleeting smell of rancid breath, although our heads were too far apart for that to be anything but my imagination.

  “You may not have come out here for your sister’s advice, but you’ll leave with mine,” she said. “You will leave Bristol, one way or another. I suggest you do it on your feet and of your own free will.”

  I smiled back, and said with all the Southern politeness I could muster, “Thank you for your suggestion, Miss Smith. You have a lovely day.” Then I wrenched my arm out of her grip—probably a little harder than was necessary—and went on my way.

  When I got back to my suite, I did my best to push Marjory from my mind. I did find it a bit disturbing that she knew all my comings and goings, no matter what I’d told her. But I had bigger things to think about.

  Like sanctuary.

  And my certainty that Letitia had actually given up a piece of her soul, the way most witches would give some of their blood, to work her spell.

  I’
d never heard of such a thing being done, or even being possible. But even so, I was sure I was right. It explained everything.

  Not blood magic. Soul magic.

  That was why her presence was still there at Greyhill. Why everyone thought it was haunted, yet nobody could ever describe any ghost there. A part of her was haunting the place. The part that had worked this magic.

  Which meant that if I wanted to weave my own sanctuary around Bristol, I would have to do the same.

  I thought I had studied place-magic pretty thoroughly, but this brought it to a whole new level. If I did something like this, it would bind me to Bristol in a way I couldn’t even fathom. Eternal. Unbreakable.

  And what would that even mean? I understood that a part of me would be left behind—in the hotel, no doubt—forever, the same way a part of Letitia had been left behind at Greyhill. But what would it mean to me? Would it be like losing blood, unpleasant in the moment, but quickly recovered from? Or when I died and moved on to the next life, would I feel the absence of that bit of my spirit? Would I be forever unwhole? What would that do to me?

  Only a month before, I would have said, fully believing it to be true, that I cared nothing for Bristol’s fate. Now I was considering giving an actual piece of my soul to save it?

  But I wasn’t considering it. I’d already decided to do it.

  You have to connect, you have to engage. And like it or not, that means sometimes you have to fight.

  Cooper’s words, and maybe I was taking them to heart. Maybe I was finally committing to something bigger than myself. To a cause, of all things.

  I didn’t think so, though. I was pretty sure that at the bottom of it all, I would find the same old selfish Verity. It was simple, really: if I could protect this one place, make it impervious to harm, then I would be safe there.

  The Wicks had it in for me. So did Marjory Smith. These were deadly enemies, and despite my own power, I felt vulnerable, exposed. They’d bested me already. And they weren’t about to give up. I remembered Marjory’s words, too, delivered on that phantom current of vile breath:

  You will leave Bristol, one way or another.

  They would kill me, in the end. And maybe they’d kill Cooper and the rest of his clan, too. And then they would plant their sapwood seeds.

  No, a fortress would suit me just fine.

  But while I might be willing to sacrifice what was needed, it would do me no good if I didn’t make that sacrifice for a spell that was more-or-less airtight. There was still the question of wording. How to be specific enough to avoid loopholes, while general enough to protect us from harm from any direction, be it from the Wicks, or allies they made along the way?

  I spent the rest of that day drafting spell after spell—in regular ballpoint pen, for the moment—trying to decide how to do it. I gave up on the idea of starting smaller, with just the Mount Phearson; if I was going to be shredding off a piece of my soul for this, I was going to guard the whole town in exchange.

  It was well after dark by the time it finally occurred to me to use the trees.

  Verity worked the spell, and gave a piece of her soul, to bind it. And when she was finished, Bristol was protected against sapwood trees. No sapwood seed was ever planted there; no sapwood tree ever took root. Bristol went on much as it was, peaceful and prosperous and free from devils, safe from the threat of the feeders.

  When I was happy with it, I copied it over in spell ink, mixed with a little more blood than usual. Then I burned it in a bowl of cedar chunks and sage leaves soaked in cinnamon oil. (A mix that had the added bonus of smelling wonderful.) I’d have preferred to add a little alder wood, too, but I didn’t have any in my supply chest, and it was too late to shop.

  While it burned, I tried my best to open my heart and mind, to give as much of myself as I could, as I willed the spell to work. I hoped that was enough to loosen a bit of my soul.

  I didn’t think it was a bad first attempt. If it didn’t work, I’d try it with a different mix of woods and herbs. And I figured it would be pretty easy to tell; I thought if I lost a part of my soul, I’d surely know it.

  To this day, I marvel at my arrogance, and blame it largely on youth. To think I could so casually part with some of my very spirit, after so little deliberation, and with so little effort. To claim knowledge and understanding of witchcraft, yet be blithely unaware that what I was doing was dark magic, not easily trifled with. I had no idea what I was risking.

  I paid for my ignorance, but I was damned lucky. The price wasn’t nearly as steep as it could have been. You might even say I only paid with a nightmare. And it would certainly give me comfort to believe that was all it was.

  In my dream, I was in bed, in my suite, when I heard someone creeping around in the darkness. She came into my room and stood at the foot of my bed, her face ghastly pale in moonlight that was somehow blue. She wore a dark dress—gray, I thought, and familiar—and an even darker look.

  Madeline Underwood didn’t say a word. She merely stood there, staring at me, until she was joined on her left side by Marjory Smith and Cillian Wick, and then on her right by my father.

  I’d never seen him, but even dreaming, I knew that if I called Phineas and asked for a description, he’d describe the man in front of me. Dark, curly hair, broad shoulders. The blue light exaggerated his features until they were a caricature of a smarmy, grinning devil.

  None of them spoke, but once they were gathered together, they all started breathing more heavily. Sniffing. As if they’d just come into a kitchen where something delightful was cooking.

  “They’re hungry.”

  It was Max Underwood. He stood not at the foot of my bed with the others, but beside me, where the nightstand should have been. Close enough to touch.

  Though I hadn’t made a sound as the others approached, I yelped at the sight of him. He was covered in crawling spiders. Two of them plopped onto my sheets.

  I scrambled backward to get away from them. When I tried to speak, I found I couldn’t.

  “They’re hungry,” Max said again. “You can’t open the oven door like that. They’ll smell your soul.”

  More spiders fell out of his mouth as he spoke. One landed on my sleeve, and as I looked down, shaking my arm frantically, I saw that I was covered in them, too.

  Suddenly my whole body was inflamed in pain. They were biting me, eating me, while my enemies looked on, waiting to devour what would be left, when the spiders had finished with my flesh. My bones. My soul.

  I thrashed around, trying to get them off me, my arms and shoulders and head all banging into the headboard.

  And then the banging morphed into pounding, and I was awake, screaming, weak dawn light just beginning to filter through my curtains. I cried out again, and flailed around, but I didn’t see any spiders.

  The pounding was real, though. Someone was knocking on my door.

  A dream, just a silly, stressed-out dream, I told myself, and pretended to believe it.

  But I knew I would never ask Max Underwood about it.

  “Verity!”

  Cooper.

  I had no idea why he was back, but judging by the urgency in his voice, he must have heard me screaming. I jumped out of bed and ran for the door, rushing to tell him not to worry, it was okay, I’d just had a nightmare.

  But Cooper’s panic had nothing to do with me. When I opened the door and saw him, I screamed again, half-convinced I was still dreaming.

  His clothes were bloody, filthy, and shredded. As was his face.

  He held one hand to his belly, and between his splayed fingers I saw something I couldn’t quite identify, but was pretty sure belonged inside his body, protected beneath layers of skin and muscle.

  “About time you got your door,” he rasped, and collapsed at my threshold.

  Cooper didn’t speak, but he cried out plenty as I tugged and dragged him inside. I had no choice; he was much too heavy for me to lift. I didn’t even consider calling for help. If he’d wa
nted a hospital, he would have gone to one.

  I yanked open the sofa bed and got him onto it as gently as I could. Then I lay beside him and tried to share my vitality, the way I had when Kestrel Wick attacked him. But he didn’t respond, only mumbled something that sounded like crawfish. He said it over and over again. Crawfish. Crawfish. While no energy flowed between us, and I could feel him getting weaker.

  His blood was everywhere. So much of it. A gash in his head. One side of his neck looked like ground meat. And I’d seen his belly. His intestines were on the wrong side of his skin.

  What if even a vital could be injured too badly to heal?

  I bit back a sob and doubled my efforts, concentrating with all my might on pushing my own vitality into him. Willing him to get better.

  Nothing.

  Dammit, Cooper why didn’t you stay here, where you could be safe?

  But that wasn’t my real question, and I knew it. I let the voice in my head loose to vent its frustration on its real target.

  Damn you, Verity, why did you let him go? Alone? He asked you for help. More than once. Why didn’t you give it to him? You have no right to cry over him now, when you refused to help him when you had the chance.

  I was on the verge of giving in to panic and despair when I saw it: a wound in his face slowly closing.

  I gently moved his hand aside and pushed up the tattered remains of his shirt, then braved a closer look. His entire abdomen was cut open—blown open, maybe—and it was all I could do not to retch or faint at the sight (and, I’m sorry to say, the smell) of it.

  But was it as bad as it had been when he came in? Was it getting better?

  I couldn’t be sure. But he was breathing less raggedly now. That much wasn’t my imagination.

  I watched that cut in his face close, and prayed.

  My prayers were answered. These weren’t supernatural injuries, like Kestrel had given him. No matter how nasty they were, they were only physical. He could heal them on his own. And he didn’t need my vitality to do it, because nobody had stolen his this time.