by T J Green
Alex got down on his hands and knees next to Reuben and pushed the stone further back; it scraped across the floor painfully and Avery winced. Reuben flashed his torchlight into the space. Shallow steps led downwards.
Reuben grinned, his face shadowed grotesquely. “Shall we?”
Avery’s skin prickled. “Seriously?”
“You could stay here if you prefer?” he offered reasonably.
“No, thanks,” Avery said, wishing she was still in her warm flat.
“It’s okay, Avery. I’ll follow you,” Alex said. “We’ll be fine.”
Avery followed Reuben down the steps and grimaced as the cold, damp air hit her skin like a clammy hand. She pulled her coat tighter around herself, and sent up a witch light, in addition to her torch.
The steps were steep, but on the right, the wall opened out and they were soon on the floor of another square stone chamber beneath the mausoleum. Two long stone benches ran along either side of the room. In the centre was a crude fire pit, and at the far end was a carving in the wall—images of the Goddess and the Hunter. Beneath it was an altar, made from rough hewn stone. Brass lanterns hung overhead, spaced across the ceiling at regular intervals.
Alex snapped his fingers and each one lit with a bright orange flame.
“Is this a place of worship?” Avery asked, looking around in shock.
Reuben looked just as surprised. “Looks like it.”
“What better way to hide your magical practices than down here,” Alex said, pacing around the room.
“But look at the floor,” Reuben said. “Devil traps and pentacles.”
He was right. Carved into the stone were ornate diagrams and a huge pentagram.
Avery wandered over to the altar. A ritual knife still sat there, next to a goblet and a tarnished silver bowl. “But there’s no grimoire.”
Alex shook his head. “I don’t like this place. I have a bad feeling about it.”
“But the image of the Goddess and the Hunter?” Avery said. “Surely these are good symbols?”
“They should be, but I just can’t shake this feeling,” he said. His dark eyes looked troubled, almost hooded in the light.
Reuben’s face had taken on an almost fanatical gleam. “How long do you think our family used this place for?”
“It must have been built at the same time as the mausoleum, so maybe a couple of hundred years until the Witchfinder General scared them off?” Avery ventured.
Reuben traced the carvings with his hands. “Maybe they continued on their own after your families hid their grimoires.”
Avery looked at Alex, concerned. “Do you think all of our families met here together at one point?”
He shrugged. “I think so. It’s big enough.”
As Avery walked around the room, she realised there were narrow channels cut into the floor, leading towards the altar, and lined with a dark stain. Her heart almost missed a beat. “Oh, crap. Is that old blood?”
Alex dropped to his hands and knees to examine it more closely. He sighed. “It looks like it.” He looked up at Reuben, who was still examining the altar. “Reuben, let’s get out of here.”
He turned. “My grimoire is still in here somewhere.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” he insisted. “I’m not leaving ’til we find it.” He turned away again, his shoulders set.
Alex stood and moved next to Avery. “Let’s make this quick,” he said softly.
A dark feeling of dread crept up Avery’s back. It felt like something was in the room with them. Reuben was whispering spells at the front by the altar as he traced the carvings, desperate to find another mechanism. While he examined the altar, Avery and Alex walked the perimeter of the room, examining the walls for any hint of an opening or a hidden door. The rest of the walls were plain, the thick stones and their fine joins the only marks, other than a couple of small alcoves with old candles in them.
They joined Reuben, who had walked over to the devil’s trap positioned in the far corner of the room. Crude runes were cut in the floor in front of it. Despite the bright orange light from the lanterns, Avery felt as if the room was growing darker.
“I think the runes are a summoning spell,” Reuben said, dropping to his knees.
“Great, let’s not say it, then,” Avery said, wishing she was outside in the fresh air.
“Makes you wonder if they summoned a demon regularly though, doesn’t it?” he asked, running his hand across the runes. “Maybe it was their own personal demon?”
“For small personal requests?” Alex said, sarcasm dripping from his voice.
“Why else have a devil’s trap in the floor?”
Avery turned away towards the altar again, wondering what her ancestors got up to in here. She ran her hand across the engravings on the wall, trying to find comfort in the images of the Goddess and the Hunter and failing. Her gaze dropped to the floor and she saw the channels stained with old blood narrowing to join at the base of the wall, a shallow stone pool just visible before it disappeared under the wall. She felt her breath catch, and the others turned to her.
“What?” Alex asked, at her side immediately.
“Look,” she pointed, curious now despite her misgivings. “There’s the edge of a shallow bowl—it disappears under the wall. Maybe the wall moves back?”
“Maybe we need blood to move it back,” Reuben suggested.
Both Alex and Avery looked at him in alarm, but before they could stop them, he had pulled a small knife out of his pocket and slashed across his palm, just as Alex had done for his spell.
“No, wait!” Alex said, leaping to stop Reuben. “We don’t know what it will do.”
But it was too late. Reuben crouched down, squeezing his palm, and a bright stream of blood dropped onto the channels and into the shallow bowl.
Avery stepped back, alarmed.
For a few seconds, nothing happened.
“Maybe it needs more blood,” Reuben muttered as he repeatedly squeezed his palm to increase the blood flow.
Alex moved closer to Avery, pulling her back into the centre of the room. “Reuben, enough.”
There was a loud click as the entire wall cracked in half right down the middle, a previously invisible vertical line appearing in the wall between the Goddess and the Hunter. The walls swung back, hinged like doors, and the almost silent shush of the mechanism sent chills up Avery’s spine.
Beyond the door was a small room, an altar up against the far wall, cast in shadows. They could now see the whole of the stone bowl in the floor. Leading from it, another thicker stone channel led to the second altar.
Avery sent the witch light into the space and gasped when she saw a dimensional doorway carved onto the stone wall at the back, above the second altar. “Not another one!”
“Please tell me your blood isn’t running that far,” Alex said, his tone abrupt as he addressed Reuben.
“No,” Reuben said, throwing an annoyed glance back over his shoulder to Alex. “My palm does not produce rivers of blood!”
“Good. Watch where you drip. We don’t want to accidentally open that thing.”
But Reuben was already wrapping a portion of his t-shirt around his injured hand. He stepped around the original altar that stood before the wall and went into the smaller room, letting out a short cry of joy. “The grimoire.”
Alex and Avery tentatively followed Reuben and saw a small wooden box on the altar, and resting in it was a thick, leather-bound book. Reuben reached forward for it, but Alex shouted, “Stop! Let me.”
Reuben stopped mid-reach and frowned at Alex.
“Let’s not get your blood on anything else,” Alex said, stepping past him and checking the book from all angles before he reached in and lifted it up.
“Sorry, you’re right,” Reuben muttered. “Is it my grimoire?”
“Sure looks like it,” Alex said, turning the first few pages carefully.
Avery saw some objects on t
he altar and frowned as she tried to identify them. There was what looked like small bone, and maybe a ring, placed together, and next to it a bundle of hair. “Oh, crap!” she said, realising what she was looking at. “That’s a finger bone!”
The others turned quickly. “Where?” Alex asked.
“On the altar.” She picked the ring up and held it under the light. It was made of gold and it had a large, red stone set into it; the ring was large, undoubtedly made for a man. She dropped it back onto the altar, grimacing.
“Let’s get out of here,” Reuben said, his bravado from earlier long gone. “We’ve got what we came for.”
As they stepped out of the hidden room, the doors closed softly behind them with a whisper that seemed to come from beyond the grave. Avery desperately hoped they wouldn’t need to return here, but had a horrible feeling they would.
11
Alex and Avery followed Reuben down the driveway of Greenlane Manor, the gravel crunching beneath the wheels of Alex’s Alfa Romeo. At this hour the grounds were deserted, and the only light came from the window by the huge front door.
“What did you think of the hidden room?” Alex asked her. His face cast mostly in shadow looked grim.
“I hated it. It was oppressive and threatening.” She hesitated for a second, wondering if she really wanted to voice what she thought, but this was Alex, and she knew he’d probably feel the same. “It’s clear that blood magic, dark magic, was done there, and it worries me that Reuben doesn’t seem to care too much.”
“It worries me, too. I think his need to avenge Gil may be blinding him to some things.”
“And he’s inexperienced with magic,” Avery added. “I mean, he has power, certainly, but I think he’s a bit naive about some magic and its implications. It sounds ridiculous, I know, considering we’re what we’re all being exposed to, and we’re all using stronger magic than we have before, but at least we’ve been using it a lot longer.”
Alex glanced across at her. “Well, he’s lost Gil, and isn’t really speaking to El, so we’re going to have to keep an eye on him.”
“And he’s here with Alicia,” Avery said, feeling her anxiety rise. “We still don’t really know what she’s up to.”
“Reuben’s not stupid, though. We need to trust him.”
They rolled to a halt in the turning circle in front of the steps to the manor and followed Reuben as he crossed the huge, echoing entrance hall, leading them up the sweeping stairs to his suite of rooms on the top floor. He left the main lights off, and only a couple of lamps casting low light illuminated their way. Avery peeked through open doorways, noting that the furniture looked expensive and antique; it was a very glamorous house. She hadn’t been in here for years, and had forgotten how grand it was. It had definitely been refurbished since her childhood.
Reuben’s suite of rooms was on the second floor, overlooking the sea. They stepped into a small entrance hall and passed through it into a large sitting room. A small kitchen was located on the back wall, and a door led off to a bedroom, and another to a bathroom. It was nothing like Avery had imagined. She presumed Reuben would live in some sort of disaster of surfboards and shorts, with stuff everywhere, but instead it was all cream linen, dark grey walls, a slick sound system, and an enormous TV.
“You all right?” Reuben asked her, starting to laugh at her expression.
“It’s not what I expected!”
He winked, “Not quite the surf dive you imagined?”
“No,” she said, feeling embarrassed.
“That’s because we have cleaners.”
“Lucky you,” Alex said, walking over to the window to look at the view. A pale sliver of moon illuminated the sea beyond the bottom of the garden, and Avery could hear the waves crashing against the shore. The glasshouse glinted on the lawn below, and a vision of the hidden passageway and Gil’s death filled Avery’s thoughts.
Reuben turned on some lamps, and with a flick of a switch, the curtains started to close, dispelling the darkness. He locked the door behind them, and then headed to the rear wall and a section of dark oak panelling. “What I’m about to show you must remain a secret,” he said, very serious.
“Of course,” Avery said, raising her eyebrow speculatively at Alex.
“Our family is very big on hidden doorways, passageways, and rooms within rooms,” Reuben explained, releasing a mechanism which allowed a hidden door within the panel to pop out.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Avery exclaimed.
“We’re at the far end of the house, and this passageway leads up to a section of the attic that is separate from the rest. I shared it with Gil, but he accessed it through another door.”
They followed him down a long, narrow passage and then up a steep flight of stairs, all hidden in the narrow space between two walls, and then they went through another door and a section of crowded attic space stretched ahead of them.
The centre was dominated by a large table, covered in books. A selection of unmatched chairs were scattered around the place, all upholstered with old fading material. The floor was made of wide wooden planks, and shelves lined the end wall, along either side of a fireplace. There were no windows here at all, and on the far side of the room was another door. Gil’s entrance, she presumed.
“How on Earth did you get the furniture in here?” Avery asked, looking around in amazement.
“One of our ancestors brought them in years ago, through that wall.” He pointed to the main dividing wall that separated them from the rest of the attic. “And then they bricked it up again. From the other side it’s impossible to see that there’s anything here, and the attic space is so huge and full of crap, you don’t even realise it’s shorter than it should be.”
“So this spans the width of the house?” Alex asked, walking around.
“Yes, and therefore big enough for our needs. My needs,” he said, correcting himself. He placed the newly found grimoire on the table. “It’s nice to finally put this where it should be.”
He switched on a desk lamp and angled it over the book, and despite her increasing tiredness, Avery looked at the book with excitement.
The cover, like the others, was made of thick old leather, but unlike the others was a dark blue. The arcane symbol for water was embossed on the front, an upside-down triangle, and on the first page was the usual list of all the witches who had used the grimoire before. Reuben ran his hand across it and closed his eyes briefly. He looked incredibly sad. “Gil should be here for this.”
“Yes, he should. I’m so sorry he’s not,” Avery agreed, moving closer to Reuben and resting her hand on his arm. “How are you, Reuben?”
“I’m fine. I just want to find Faversham and kill him, that’s all.”
“There’ll be ways to deal with him.” She glanced at Alex concerned. “Is Alicia back here?”
Reuben concentrated on the grimoire as he spoke. “No, but she’s coming back soon. She texted me to say she’d like to stay here until she’s found somewhere else to live.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Of course I am,” he said impatiently. “It was her home. I’ve told her she can take as long as she wants.”
Avery glanced up at Alex, and he shook his head. Now was not the time to ambush Reuben by questioning Alicia’s loyalties.
Alex changed the subject. “What sorts of spells are in there?”
Reuben sighed as he turned the pages, “I’m not sure—the writing is so hard to read!” He sounded exasperated, and a bit emotional.
“It’s been a long night, Reuben,” Alex said. “You should rest and read this tomorrow. We’ll go and leave you to it, but would you mind if we checked the back first? To see if the hidden spell is in yours, too?”
Reuben shook himself. “Yeah, of course.”
They doused the electric lights and produced a witch light that cast a pale, silvery glow over the attic. Reuben turned to the end of the grimoire, and there on the back pages
was a spell, the lines of incantation headed: Part Four, To Suspend in Water. Avery felt dizzy, and wasn’t sure if she was pleased or horrified. Like the others, it was clearly incomplete.
“Just need your grimoire then, Avery,” Alex said, “and the spell will be complete.”
12
Tuesday passed in a blur of work. Avery found it hard to concentrate, her head swimming with all the new information about the hidden room beneath the Jackson’s mausoleum and discovering another part of the spell. She found her mind often drifting back to the map hidden in the old book upstairs, and a couple of times customers had had to repeat questions.
Sally had noticed her distraction, and over mid-afternoon coffee and cake taken in a break between customers, she asked, “Are you okay, Avery?”
Avery took a bite of her slice of coffee and walnut cake, thinking she could eat the entire cake in one sitting. “This cake is fantastic, Sally.”
“Cheers, I made it last night, but stop avoiding the question! You’re so distracted today.”
Avery looked at her guiltily. “I know, sorry, I have a lot on my mind. My life has become very confusing lately.”
“Do you want to share?”
Avery took another bite of cake, and wondered if she should. Sally was a good friend, and she valued her opinion, but she also had no idea about the extent of magic in White Haven. It was too dangerous to say much about it. “I’d love to, but it’s too complicated. Things are very weird at the moment, and I think it’s best if I say nothing for now.”
Sally watched her for a second, and then nodded. “Fair enough, if you’re sure. But keep safe. I feel whatever you’re up to is dangerous.”
“Have you still got your hex bag for protection?” Avery asked, with a flash of worry.
Sally reached into her blouse and pulled out the small bag, which she’d placed on a silver chain. “Right here.”
“Good. I’ll make sure Dan’s got his, too.”
“Will our other friends be okay, Avery, and my family?” Sometimes Avery was surprised by how perceptive Sally was.
