by Cate Corvin
All of that had left no time for Eric to start his own family and find a foothold in the human world despite being one himself. He had made a career of serving the Bell witches instead.
Alone with my whirling thoughts, I eventually showered, taking care to wash the dried and flaking blood from my leg. The scratch was already healing.
I wrapped myself in a towel and went to make a hot cup of chamomile. A chill fell over me as I walked through the apartment and stopped still in the center, sensing some lingering energy in the room. The wards were undisturbed, everything untouched…
A pair of foggy handprints were pressed to the glass of my mother’s mirror.
Tea forgotten, I walked closer, eyes open for any movement.
I ran a finger over the glass, but the handprints remained. They were on the opposite side of the glass… from the deadside. I frowned as I pondered it. They were small and slim, the fingers long, distinctly feminine…
The connection crashed over me like a wave, threatening to pull me under and drown me. I sank to my knees on the threadbare carpet, struggling with the idea. The unseen presence, the bright rose in the deadside, the woman’s handprints… it was so clear.
Rosalind. Roses for Rosalind.
I felt blind and stupid for not having seen it earlier. It wouldn’t be the first time a spirit had returned to speak with someone they loved. The symbolism presented by the spirit was so blatantly obvious I deserved to feel like an idiot.
I got to my feet, gripping the edge of the dressing table. “Mother?” I breathed, staring into the mirror. I was the only one reflected in the room. “Mom?”
The temperature remained the same, and the handprints slowly faded from the glass as I stared, willing my mother’s spirit to appear.
When they had faded to nothing, I was still alone.
The insistent chime of my cell phone broke my sleep early the next morning. I fumbled it off the cardboard box I used as a nightstand, burrowing deeper under the threadbare comforter before I flipped it open and mumbled a greeting, not bothering to open my eyes.
“Morning, Mor. Today’s appointment was pushed back two hours. They’ve decided to try a priest first.” Eric’s deep voice washed over me, almost lulling me back to sleep.
I licked my dry lips, regretting the last several beers I’d had last night.
“I’m sure they’ll reschedule when that fails,” I mumbled. My mouth felt like it was full of cotton. They’d inevitably call back when the priest was unable to exorcise whatever was plaguing them. My back was one solid ache and my calf was burning. Somewhere in this apartment a bottle of aspirin was calling for me.
My eyes snapped open and I sat bolt upright in bed. The handprints! “Eric! I have something to show you. Can you come over?”
I could almost feel his eyes roll towards the heavens. “Be there in an hour,” he said, and hung up. I stumbled out of bed and went straight to the mirror. The glass was clear now, reflecting only the room and myself.
I took several strong painkillers and downed a glass of water, feeling completely diminished by the cloud of despair hanging over me. I was so sure it had been Rosalind’s handprints on the mirror, but maybe I was wrong, desperately clinging to threads where there were none to be found.
It wasn’t unheard of for spirits to return to the living, bearing messages or burdens, but they usually made themselves known before almost six years had passed. But the rose, the heavy weight of eyes watching me… perhaps Rosalind’s spirit had dragged itself from the very edges of the land of the dead. It might have been her out there in the mist, struggling to make contact with me.
That didn’t change the fact that I had no idea how she could have found me in Cecily’s house, a place I’d never been before. Spirits also tended to seek familiar territory, and something about the whole situation still rang a bell of discord within me. There was no reason why a spirit in a house as clean and spiritually empty as Cecily’s should have developed the strength to pull itself into the liveside.
Of course this would happen just as I was beginning to feel like I had put it all behind me, when I’d finally climbed out of the pit of anguish… when Joss found me, with a promise of more than just friendship.
I pulled on dark jeans and a black shirt with a low neckline before shoving my feet into my battered combat boots. The tourmaline beads around my neck remained warm, reminding me that the apartment was empty of all souls but my own.
I leaned over the dressing table again, peering desperately into the mirror. “Mom?” I whispered, hoping for any sign. No trace of the foggy handprints remained. I was still the only one in the mirror’s reflection.
Before I turned away from it, a sudden impulse made me spritz myself with the vanilla perfume.
I didn’t allow myself to ask why I wanted to smell good when Eric got here. He’d seen me at my worst, covered in blood and ash. Why should I care what he thought of me anyways?
I’d only bought the perfume because he’d once mentioned that I smelled nice in vanilla.
I was raking my fingers through my curls when the buzzer rang. I nearly flew to answer it, revealing the giant on the doorstep. My protection wards hummed in welcome as he ducked inside.
“I figured it out,” I said, beckoning him inside. “We have a lot to catch up on since yesterday.” He had to duck under the doorway to get through comfortably. It was an apartment designed for shorties like me.
Eric eyed me warily. “There’s more?”
He was stooping, and I took pity on him and offered the ancient couch. “Most important things first, Eric,” I said, sitting cross-legged on the coffee table in front of him. As rickety as it was, perching on it probably wasn’t the best idea. “I figured it out, and I feel incredibly stupid for not seeing it right away. My mother’s spirit is the reason the deadside was acting up yesterday.”
He stared at me, his dark eyes incredulous.
“We both know spirits generally manifest as unseen presences,” I said. “But the presence I felt in Death yesterday was so strong. I’ve never felt anything like it before. The rose left in the vase was my clue: roses for Rosalind. Dad always used to say that when he got roses for Mom.”
He was already shaking his head, about to stop me. I held up a hand before he could interrupt. “When I got home last night, there were handprints on Mom’s old mirror. On the deadside. No one had broken the wards, no spirits, nada. It has to be her. Who else would send roses as a sign?”
I finished in a rush, my hands shaking. Eric cast a suspicious glance at the dresser, which reflected nothing but the dingy apartment. “You’re absolutely sure no one tripped the wards?” he asked quietly. I nodded. “And… you weren’t tempted to mirrorwalk alone last night?”
I glared at him. “No, Eric. I’m not that foolish. Give me some credit.”
He frowned at the mirror, a darkness on his face I’d rarely seen before. “Anything else?”
I twisted my hands together, forcing myself to remain calm as I rose from the coffee table and paced to the kitchen. He would eventually realize that I had to be right about this. “The Black twins found me and invited me to their next Circle meeting. And… Joss Thorne showed up, too.”
I found us some unopened bottles of water. “I told the Blacks I had no interest, but Joss and I have been friends for so long and I didn’t even realize how much I missed him.”
I couldn’t bring myself to mention the kiss, even though I usually confided everything in him. Well, almost everything. Eric probably wouldn’t care that I was dangerously attracted to the other witch, but knowing that he didn’t care would just rankle at me. I wanted him to care.
I leaned over just enough to hand him the water and his eyes rose, running over the tight shirt and my cleavage. He took the water and averted his eyes quickly, fiddling with the bottle.
“Maybe it would be good for you to be around witches again,” he said neutrally. The look in his eye was oddly disturbing to me. “I’ll always be the B
ell servitor, but as you know… I’m not your kind. You need to be around others like yourself, and I can’t be what holds you back from that.”
I tossed the bottle in the trash, sinking the shot from across the room. “I don’t really feel that I need other witches, Eric,” I said. Why didn’t he understand? Eric was the only one who had been with me through all of it… especially the night we’d found my parents. No one else could ever understand that pain. “I have no intention of joining with another coven. I just want to find Mom’s spirit and move on with my life Just because Joss is around doesn’t mean you’re holding me back from anything.”
That wasn’t necessarily true, either. Being around Joss again had made me realize how much I’d missed that sense of belonging, of knowing my true place in this world. I didn’t know how to broach that subject with Eric without making him feel that he wasn’t enough.
On the other hand, maybe he did want me to feel like it was enough. Maybe he was only with me out of a misplaced sense of duty.
He rubbed his chin as he did when he was thinking deeply about something and annoyed by his own thoughts. “Okay. Disregarding the covens for now, we need to cleanse you. If the spirit is Rosalind’s then she won’t be deterred. But we need to make sure you didn’t pick up anything nasty from Cecily’s house.”
That was an agreeable start.
“We need to go to my house,” he said. I raised my eyebrows at him. I preferred to let him have his own territory, untouched by all witches, especially me. It wasn’t healthy for servitors to share all their time and space with their witches. “I have all the materials there, and honestly, your apartment doesn’t have the right atmosphere for a cleansing.”
I peeked at my tiny bathroom, still wet with steam from my shower. No amount of bleach or scrubbing was going to remove the patina of old age and hard use. It probably hadn’t been updated since before I was born. “Fine. But as soon as I’m cleansed, I’m going through to find her.”
Eric stood up, his locks of dark hair brushing the ceiling. “Morena… look. If you mirrorwalk now- against my better judgment, I might add- and find nothing, I want us to go back to Bellhallow. We need to figure out what happened and I’m not convinced it’s Rosalind. They’re both dead and returned to dust by now. We burned them on the cornerstone.”
It hurt that he didn’t believe me and I tried to hide it, pushing my feelings back behind the hard mask. Truth be told, it hurt even more than I thought it would, especially after our argument yesterday. Eric knew how much it would pain me to return. “I can’t go back yet. Please don’t bring it up again, Eric.”
We stared each other down across the living room. He had a good point, but my heart couldn’t handle seeing Bellhallow. Not now, not so soon, no matter what Warden Stone threatened me with.
“And I’m sure it’s Mom,” I snapped, grabbing my backpack and sword. “You don’t have to believe me now. I’ll prove it to you.”
Eric lived several miles away in the cleaner part of Ashville. He owned a neutral little townhouse, painted a tasteful shade of dove gray with cream trim. The garden was neatly pruned, and he had a thriving rowan tree in the front yard, but the porch was bare and the windows empty.
It looked like an empty shell, a façade he used to pretend he was a normal human. It spoke of a life he hadn’t bothered to carve out for himself.
I waited for him to enter first and took off my boots at the door, checking his wards. When he’d first bought the house, I’d buried quartz points in the four cardinal directions around it, but he was perfectly capable of setting his own wards.
The interior was just as spartan, the walls still builder-grade white and the carpet still like new. He had a couch, a television, a coffee table. A neat rug covered the kitchen tiles. The only sign that an actual person lived here was the picture hung on the wall over the couch, a photograph of himself and my father.
I drifted closer to examine it. They had been only twelve when the picture had been taken, the two boys grinning in front of Bellhallow’s doors, arms slung over each other’s shoulders.
My father’s skin was already becoming pale and washed-out from mirrorwalking through Death, his hair a stark sable against his face, his lips turned in a cautious smile. Eric was deeply tanned, his hair curling over his shoulders, freckles sprayed across the bridge of his nose. Together they had been night and day, dark and light. The picture had been taken several years before Rosalind Wicke had entered their lives, creating a nearly inseparable trio.
The water roared upstairs as Eric prepared the cleansing bath. I stared at the picture until the water stopped and finally turned away, blinking back the tears in my eyes.
My father had always been stern and patrician, and was often gone for days at a time, mirrorwalking and banishing spirits for hundreds of miles around Bellhallow. Several townships had relied on him as much as their own priests, particularly towns located near old graveyards. He had also been responsible for the politics between us and the other covens, sometimes aiding their problems as well. The life of a covenhead was a busy one, leaving little time for staying home and raising children.
But he’d always come home to me with smiles and hugs, smelling of incense and pine needles from his forays. Like my mother’s roses, the scent of Dad’s incense and evergreens still comforted me.
When Mama traveled with him to serve as his anchor, Eric had stayed in Bellhallow with me, my ever-faithful guardian.
The bond between witch and servitor was a powerful one, because we often placed our lives in their hands. It was a relationship built on mutual trust and respect, but for a witch to fall in love with her servitor? Unthinkable.
And yet…
I realized he was watching me as I stared at the picture. I dropped my backpack next to the couch and headed upstairs, Eric following close behind. Maybe a little too close.
The bathroom was all white, tealight candles framing the freestanding bath in the four cardinal directions, as well as two I would have to pass through on the way in and out. The water was full of salt and herbs, the green aroma filling the air.
In any other house this might have been a romantic gesture, but for a coven, it was merely ritual.
His hands were warm at my neck as he took my leather jacket and slid it over my arms, and I pulled my shirt over my head and put it aside on a shelf covered with jars of salt and herbs. My heart was in my throat as I reached behind myself, unfastening the hooks of my bra, but Eric’s hands moved mine aside with a gentle nudge.
“Let me,” he murmured, and goosebumps ran over my skin. He unsnapped the hooks one by one as time seemed to come to a halt around us.
His knuckles brushed the skin of my back as the bra finally came loose and I slid it over my arms, laying it on top of my discarded shirt.
I stepped out of my boots and unbuttoned my jeans, keeping my back to Eric as a flush spread over my face. There was no reason to think this was anything other than a day’s work for him.
For me, it was torturous.
I shimmied out of them, my breath shallow, and steeled myself for the next part.
Panties.
They peeled off easily and I dropped the slip of fabric on my jeans and stepped into the bath on rubbery legs.
The porcelain was cool under my fingers as I lowered myself into the steaming water, drawing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around my legs as I settled on the bottom.
Eric knelt behind me, a silver ewer in hand. His fingers ran through my hair, grazing my scalp and sending shivers down my spine despite the heat of the water.
Eric’s hand drifted to my shoulder as he whispered the words of the purifying ritual, banishing any spiritual hitchhikers who might have latched onto me. I leaned my head back against the rim of the bath, my eyes closed, as he poured the water over my head seven times, washing away any lingering spiritual impurities.
The metal ewer clicked as he set it on the tiled floor.
Was it my imagination, or was
his voice rougher than usual? I licked my lips, tasting herbs and salt, and a memory surfaced, the taste of deep red wine, dark curls under my hands and glittering eyes like onyx…
“You okay, Mor?” he asked. I opened my eyes, looking right up at him. I was flushing from more than the hot water.
“I’m fine,” I whispered. The herbs swirled around my arms and legs as I unfurled from the ball I was in, running my hands over myself quickly to finish the ritual.
I stood up, sending sparkling droplets of water over the rim of the bath, and turned to step out of the tub, between the two flickering candles. They went out instantly, coils of smoke drifting through the air as my toes met a plush rug.
I covered my chest with one arm and my pussy with the other, gazing resolutely at anything but Eric. He’d removed the mirror from over the sink, and I couldn’t help but smirk at his foresight.
He held out a towel for me to step into, his eyes lingering on my body. My breathing picked up from the heat in his eyes, nipples hardening under my arm, and I decided to try a little experiment.
I dropped my hands to take the towel, wrapping it around myself with slow, deliberate movements. The flush on my face only grew stronger as his eyes dropped lower, and the bulge in the front of his jeans seemed uncomfortably tight for him. After so long of wishing I could touch him myself, I felt a twisted satisfaction of knowing I could make him lust, too, even if he’d never act on it.
I wrung out my hair with one hand, the droplets plinking into the bath. The building heat between my thighs was almost unbearable as he swallowed hard. “Dry off. We need to do the smoke cleansing, too.”
I toweled myself off and ran my hands through my damp hair before hanging the towel on the hook. Eric lit a bundle of mugwort, the thick aroma of sweet grass filling the bathroom.
My nipples pebbled in the open air, followed by the rest of my skin, and my lungs felt like they were working overtime.
