Roses and Revenants: A Dark Paranormal Reverse Harem Romance (The House of Mirrors Book 1)

by Cate Corvin

  She had called them. The spirit knew I was coming, probably felt my fear even now. My lungs burned, feeling like they had been stuffed with embers, as I pushed myself ever harder, the spirits lining the road watching me.

  I turned onto Eric’s street, nearly rolling an ankle on a crack in the pavement. His house was the sixth one down, the windows dark, the door closed…

  I sprinted past our van, a white lump under the streetlights, and nearly slammed into the front door. It was locked, rattling under my sweaty palm. I swore, gritted my teeth and spat an unlocking charm at it.

  The bolt groaned and slid as the handle warmed in my grip and popped open. I kicked the entire door open, expecting something to rush at me.

  Nothing. Nothing but silence and darkness.

  I flicked my fingers, sending a tiny ball of witchlight hovering into the air, dancing tentatively in the darkness like a timid star. That was about the most light I could conjure, which wasn’t much.

  It barely illuminated the room, but still nothing attacked. I slid into the house noiselessly, reaching out to feel for the light switch. The lights flickered on and revealed the preternaturally neat living room, not a thing out of place. Nothing indicating a struggle.

  The hairs on the back of my neck were standing straight up, the tourmaline beads around my neck like wearing a necklace of ice chips. The spirit was certainly here in the house with me now…. but where was Eric?

  My stomach ached at the thought of something happening to him. Suddenly our argument seemed so stupid and far away. Who fucking cared if he had to leave me alone, so long as he was alive and well?

  I drew a handful of salt from my belt as I crept through to the kitchen, where I finally found evidence that something was wrong. A pot of water had been left on the stove; several glasses had shattered in a glittering rain across the tile floor.

  I turned around and my heart spasmed as something moved on the far wall.

  But I was looking at myself, a large plain-framed mirror propped against the far wall of the dining room, reflecting me in the room of destruction. Although no other spirits were present in the mirror, it seemed tarnished and dingy, as though the deadside were creeping closer.

  She was playing games with me, and the deliberate placement made me more than a little uncomfortable. I would have to leave this mirror and go upstairs to find Eric. Everything about this spoke of a trap, but I had no choice but to keep going.

  The stairs creaked under my feet as I ascended, and then I saw him. His feet were visible through the bathroom doorway, sprawled in the hallway.

  All other things ceased to exist as I rushed to Eric, rounding the doorway with my heart in my throat. He was sprawled over the floor, drying blood cracked and gleaming over his face in a spiderweb. His skin had gone pale and his hands laid limp on the floor. I shook his shoulder with one hand, refusing to relinquish my salt despite my concern for him.

  “Eric, wake up,” I hissed. I shook harder, the copper taste of pennies strong on my tongue, my hands shaking. Tiny crystals of salt fell over him as I knelt. My fault. The words pounded in my head like drums.

  He groaned, deep in his throat, and I let out a gasp that was nearly a sob of relief. He was alive. He would live to see another day, as long as I finished this here and now. Cecily, or the spirit inhabiting her, wouldn’t let me leave the house with him while she walked the earth. I was sure of that much- but what else did she want from me?

  I instinctively glanced at the space above the sink where the mirror would be. It was still blank wall, but she had left me a message in red marker.

  YOU ARE MINE TOO.

  I felt my lip curl back over my teeth at her sheer audacity. No spirit would ever turn me back, a Bell witch. Mirrorwalking was my life. She was playing against the master of this game.

  I stood slowly, turning to the bedroom across the hall. The door was closed, but I knew what I would find there.

  I snapped another ball of witchlight into existence as I drew another handful of salt, the first mostly fallen on Eric’s prone form. I tried not to think about the fact that I had never mirrorwalked without an anchor before as I kicked the door open with ease, the wood splintering under my boot.

  A gilt-framed mirror faced me, standing against the wall to reflect the doorway. I looked at myself again, my eyes wild.

  Cecily’s body lay on Eric’s bed, her hands folded neatly across her chest. I started only slightly as she sat up, as fluid and light as air. It wasn’t often that spirits actually possessed human beings to this degree, and the result was a slightly sickening uncanny valley.

  “Morena,” she said, smiling a little. Her blue eyes were as vacant as marbles, Cecily’s own consciousness shoved aside to make room for this dead thing inhabiting her. “I knew you would come.”

  My hands trembled and I resisted the urge to fling the salt. While the spirit dwelled inside her body, Cecily herself would be just as vulnerable to my weapons. “Release the woman. You have no right to possess her.”

  She crossed her legs with that same liquid grace, cocking her head to the side as though trying to be coy. It was like watching a human-sized mannequin move. “But I’ve waited so long for this. Why would I leave now?”

  I had no interest in anything the spirit had to say. I kept my gaze level, hoping my silence would convey that message. She would eventually leave Cecily’s body, I knew. She hadn’t set up all these mirrors for nothing.

  “I’m glad you brought the book,” she whispered, her voice almost like a little girl’s lilt. It sent goosebumps rising over my skin. “It would be so much more pleasurable if you had actually read it. Then you might have some inkling of who will be consuming your flesh and soul tonight, but ignorance is bliss to you filthy pigs, isn’t it?”

  Cecily rose to her feet, the spirit directing her body to circle me. I kept an eye on her in the mirror, not daring to turn away from it. When she stood in front of herself in the mirror, her reflection was more than just a human woman.

  “I’d been looking forward to wearing this skin, but it was so easy to fool your servant, it wasn’t even fun,” she pouted, leaning in close. I felt her ice-cold breath on my bare shoulder. “Just flashed a little skin and he was practically begging at my feet.”

  As much as I was trying to ignore her goading, I couldn’t prevent the flash-fire of jealousy that streaked through me like lightning, my cheeks flushing red. Not-Cecily grinned, knowing she had hit me where it hurt. How long had this damn spirit spent watching me? How did she know my deepest secrets?

  “I wanted to have him watch while my mistress dined, but he was so troublesome,” she said, managing to actually sound disappointed. She had at least given me one hint, though: she wasn’t the mastermind here. A mistress?

  Not Rosalind, please, not Mom.

  “Now the only question remains: how far will you go to save this body?” she asked, watching me with those eerie marbles, leaning over the gilt mirror, holding it with one languid arm. “Or will you be selfish enough to save yourself?”

  Before I could even draw breath to answer, Cecily’s body crumpled to the floor, her head smacking hardwood with a sickening crack. The spirit left her body, dragging Cecily’s spirit behind it into the mirror.

  Her body was injured, and it would become a comatose shell without her soul. Even without an anchor to Life, I had to go in.

  This was everything I was made for.

  I didn’t think on her words or heed her warning as I stepped up to the mirror, drawing a circle of salt around myself. In times of great need, I had heard that this was one way, albeit weak, to anchor oneself to the living world. A flame was always preferable. Either way, I was probably lost before I’d started, but I couldn’t just do nothing.

  I took a deep breath and stared into my eyes, not giving myself time to think. Here and now, I needed to save them. I couldn’t have their lost souls on my hands.

  I climbed through the mirror, into the dark and flaking deadside of the world, l
eaving my body behind and hoping against all odds I would return to it.

  The Past: 17 Years Old

  Morena closed her eyes, gripping Eric’s hand so hard it felt like her nails might pierce him, like her bones might snap. The whispers around her mounted and she tried to put up the walls of the fortress as Joss lit the torch she held.

  She wouldn’t hear them. She was stone, without ears, uncaring and hard.

  Somewhere far above her was Bellhallow, but here, in the dark heart of the mountain, there was only silence and ashes and dust. This dark bubble of a cavern was where Sarah Bell had once stood, somehow sinking her power, her magic, and her soul into the very ground, laying the cornerstone of Bellhallow.

  The cornerstone itself was not even attached to the house proper, but it was a solid block of granite, lying alone down here in the darkness. It was the altar where Sarah’s body had been burned, reduced to ashes to feed the manor, just as John and Rosalind Bell would now be cremated as well.

  The covens gathered around the cornerstone, black veils obscuring the faces of some. All were somber, but eyes flickered toward Morena, and she knew they were already dreaming and scheming, wondering how best to leverage her grief to their advantage.

  Her stomach roiled, empty and sore from vomiting, as she thought of the way Melinda Thorne had fussed over her that very morning, offering tidbits to eat and bits of silk to dry her red and weeping eyes, offering Joss to stand by her side… here she was to lay her parents to rest, and all Melinda had thought of was how to make the last Bell her daughter-in-law.

  John had risked his life every day to help these covens and see how they now repaid his memory. She felt their eyes crawl over her.

  The torch blazed like a fiery star and she moved forward to the cornerstone, stepping over the silvery boundaries of the circle of power. Once inside the circle, they stood all around her: the pale and ancient spirits of the Bell coven, a thousand witches standing in the circle, looking down at the newest souls to join them. Sarah Bell herself stood at their head, her lined face serene. They ignored Morena as she approached the cornerstone, focused entirely on the dead.

  They laid so peacefully upon the cold stone, as though sleeping, but she knew better. John’s limbs had been straightened under the suit he wore, the countless fractures in his limbs bound together, his eyes charmed shut. Nothing like the grotesque bulging they had seen in death.

  Rosalind had been unfixable, even by the combined covens. A length of silk covered her body where she lay next to John, obscuring most of her features. Morena looked down at them, her heart thrumming in her chest like a bird, full of bitterness and rage and regret.

  The whispers. Why not let them see? She knew what they were whispering: they’d had it coming. John and Rosalind had finally pushed too far and got what they deserved.

  Her mother was about to be consigned to the flames anyways. Ashes and dust. Let them see what the rumors were about. Let them see what the limits of magic might lead to, what dying a witch truly meant.

  She gripped the silk above Rosalind’s head, peeling it back to reveal the charred and blackened body. No discernable facial features remained; only several strands of chestnut hair remained unburnt. She heard the gasps rise from the covens, the disgust and shock washing over the crowd.

  Morena contemplated them, the sadness of their broken bodies, the senseless violence of it. It was beyond anything even she had imagined. She had cried too much to summon tears even now, feeling as though she walked in a dream.

  Whispers and fear, rumors and resentment. It rose around her, blooming full and poisonous.

  She had to lower the torch now, let their bodies return to the earth. As she lowered it, something caught her eye, and in the second that passed before the flame touched their bodies her gut twisted with a new kind of sickness.

  A tiny patch of new skin had spread over Rosalind’s cheek, unblemished and smooth, as fresh as an infant’s. It hadn’t been there before; of that, Morena was absolutely certain. Her mother’s entire body was burned to cinders, the red cracks of cooked flesh showing through.

  She didn’t move, her stomach roiling as flames reached out and took them, enveloping their bodies in a liquid rush, as though hungry to consume them.

  Morena placed the torch in the waiting iron bracket, where it would remain until lit for another cremation.

  Her cremation, to be exact.

  She hadn’t imagined the new skin, nor had she been mistaken in examining Rosalind. Just as the night she had found them, she knew something was terribly wrong. She almost expected Rosalind’s corpse to begin writhing under the flames, enraged at this ill treatment.

  Rumors or truth? Supposition or lies?

  The body remained still as the fire ate away at it. Morena let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding and turned away, back to the comfort of Eric’s arms.

  He and Joss flanked her until the fire burned low, the heart of the fire becoming embers, the Bell witches once more a part of the cycle. They would replenish their home and its wards. When she opened her eyes again, she was alone in the pitch-blackness. She vaguely recalled telling them to leave her. She’d needed solitude.

  Morena finally walked slowly up the stairs, her limbs as cold as ice. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be a part of this farce, knowing that the whispers might be true, that the gossiping vultures would still come for her regardless of the circumstances. She was forever branded by this and she had no one to turn to who might realize how bad it was.

  Corpses didn’t grow new flesh, Rosalind was dead… and yet.

  Morena bit her lip until she tasted blood, and put it aside for later. She couldn’t breathe now, couldn’t think as she passed under the chandelier, still crooked on its chain-

  Eric gripped her as she fell to her knees, burying her face in his arm. “I need you with me,” she gasped, her throat too dry for sobs. There was nothing left in her. “I can’t stay. I can’t be with them. I can’t be alone.”

  He held her tightly, cradling her like a child. The strangeness that had existed between them for years had melted away now, the distance bridged by inexorable knowledge, as though being the only two left of the coven had cemented the fact that neither could live without the other.

  “I’ll always be with you,” he whispered roughly, his hands gripping her tightly enough to hurt. “Wherever we go, we’ll go together.”

  She pushed aside the old hurt, the knowledge that she wasn’t good enough. It didn’t matter now. It was pale and insignificant. By dying, her parents had bound them tighter than any vow of love could have. Eric would be with her forever.

  It was bitter, but it was true. She’d gotten her wish in the end.

  18

  I stepped into the bedroom, the darkened mirror-image of Eric’s house. The floor creaked under me as I crept forward and drew my sword, acutely aware of the chill. The usual flicker of the flame within my chest was gone. It was strangely disorienting, even though I knew exactly where I was… for now.

  It felt like walking into the belly of a beast, the floor seeming to tilt under me as I moved. I immediately understood why witches always had anchors when they walked on the deadside; a fog seemed to creep up on my mind, making me slowly forget which way I was going, even though I was barely three steps from the mirror I had entered.

  The pit of my stomach was a sea of roiling acid as I turned away from the mirror, looking for any sign of the many-handed spirit or Cecily’s soul. Drag marks had been made in the dust of the floor, but they were already fading away, the deadside returning itself to its usual state of equilibrium.

  As much as I didn’t want to follow the tracks deeper into the deadside, knowing full well the spirit had likely set a trap for me, I didn’t really have any other options. Whoever, or whatever, she was, she had made sure the deadside would descend into a never-ending abyss by setting up two open mirrors.

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to traverse through the next one. I certainly wouldn
’t want to, not without an anchor. I turned around, forcing myself to memorize the location of the mirror in Eric’s bedroom, just in case I truly forgot where I was.

  I had a handful of salt, my father’s sickle, but not much else. Whatever knowledge Eric had gained from the Treatise, it was something I desperately wanted to know. Was Rosalind, my mother, the mistress the spirit had spoken of?

  The memories were galling now, bitter as wormwood. I had known. Despite my willful ignorance, my blind eyes, I had always known in the back of my mind that my mother had done something- something awful that had resulted in their deaths.

  What that something was, I wasn’t sure. But I hadn’t questioned, hadn’t wanted to take on the responsibility, and now I was reaping the rewards of that ignorance.

  A faint hissing reached my ears and I shifted towards the door, prepared for the spirit to burst through. After several heartbeats, when nothing came through, I stepped into the hallway, spitting out a tiny ball of witchlight to light my way.

  Vines were growing up the stairs, as though time had momentarily sped up. They twisted in intricate braids, reaching out to consume the reality of the deadside. Buds formed, grew, burst into full bloom, and rotted away before my eyes, leaving the sharp stench of decay behind.

  She waited for me.

  I was halfway down the stairs, my boots pounding into the softening, rotting vines as I descended, when the spirit slunk into view, creeping across the bottom of the stairs like a snake. She turned her head as she passed, leering up at me with that grotesque mouth gaping open.

  That was all it took to spark the tinder of my rage into flames. I jumped forward, plummeting six feet to crash into the floor with a resounding thud that shook dust from the ceiling. “Fucking Vag Hands. You know what, I’m not sorry I gave you such a shitty name, because you deserve it.”