“I’d say you’re in the clear.”
She sighed with relief. “We’re still taking statements from all the people in that mob. As of now, we’ll be charging five people with various crimes. I imagine there will be many more. Arson, property damage, assault, manslaughter, inciting violence… you sure know how to make friends.”
I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a likable guy.”
DS Judge’s eyes darted to the door, then fixed on mine. She drew her phone out of her pocket and placed it on the table in front of me. “Check it if you like. It’ll show you I’m not recording this conversation, Blake. There are no cameras in this room. No one is listening in. It’s just you and me.”
“I believe you.” Mostly because I had no idea what to do with her phone.
“So maybe you can tell me why the only record I can find about you is a death certificate from when you were only a few months old?”
“Why don’t you tell me why you think I have a death certificate.” I knew about death certificates from episodes of Elementary on the telly. It was actually kind of cool, being at the station and seeing the human justice machine clanking along in real life.
Judge tapped the edge of her phone against the table. “There were reports that one Aline Moore – that’s Maeve Moore’s mother, another person connected to Briarwood with a death certificate to her name – was sighted at the castle a day before this mob attacked. That’s not a coincidence. I think you’ve been meddling with some kind of magic you don’t understand.”
I flashed her my winning Blake Beckett smirk. “You’ve got everything exactly right, and also completely backward. I’m on an urgent errand, so I can’t sit here forever and chat over these delightful cups of watery grit. I do have a question, though. Does Corbin have a death certificate?”
“Not yet. You’ll need to register his death. The front desk can give you a pamphlet to tell you what to—”
I leaned back in the chair. “We might hold off on that for a wee while.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why? You think he might be coming back?”
“I couldn’t say,” I shrugged again. “Incidentally, what would you do if someone you thought was dead appeared to return to the world of the living?”
“I’d have to conduct a serious investigation. If it was found that some shenanigans had taken place to waste police time, there could be serious consequences for the people involved.” Tap, tap, tap, went her phone. “Jail time, even.”
“That’s fine. We can wash our hands of this and leave the next army of the dead for the law to deal with.”
Judge smiled. “I like you, Beckett. I’ll get the paperwork for you to fill out and you can have his body back immediately.”
“Did the autopsy reveal anything?” Corbin would be proud I’d remembered the word for human scientists dissecting bodies to figure out how they died. In the Unseelie Court, dissections were usually performed while a subject was still alive, and they served no legal purpose – the Princes just found disembowelment fun.
“I’m not really supposed to share details from an active investigation. Will it help you in your, er, magic?”
I nodded.
“Corbin Harris was killed when a knife entered his abdomen, and he bled internally. His body was then thrown on a fire and impaled on a stake. We have some DNA material, but it’s a mess. There’s human, and fox, and some other DNA we can’t identify that the pathologist believes is a corrupted sample. The fire destroyed much of our physical evidence. All we know is he had several pens and a candy wrapper in his pocket. Oh yes, and there was a metal object around his neck. It’s filled with some kind of weird organic sludge the pathologist couldn’t identify.” She pulled out a plastic bag from her pocket and tossed it on the table.
I picked up the bag, hating the way the plastic crinkled beneath my fingers. The object rolled across my palm. It was a tiny metal vial, encrusted with rust and stoppered with a tight wooden cork. A symbol was carved into the side – the same cross I’d seen on the pages of Clara’s book.
The cross of Saint Lazarus.
Even with my paperwork, I had to sweet-talk the women at the coroner’s office to get the body released. She said it wasn’t normal for the family to pick up the remains. Over and over again she asked me for the name of my funeral director. “A guy named Lazarus,” I finally said. “I can’t remember his number. But he’s going to do the ah… funeraling at our home, so he suggested we swing by and pick up the body. It just saves time.”
The flustered secretary finally gave in, and a few minutes later I returned to Arthur’s car with a large box under my arm. “That’s it?” he asked, peering at the box that held the last earthly remains of a larger-than-life human. We could both tell from the shape that Corbin wasn’t even whole anymore.
“That’s it.” I placed the box on the floor in the backseat, slammed the door, and slid into the passenger side, glad that ordeal was over. “Don’t break hard. The lid isn’t exactly sealed, and I don’t want bits of Corbin through my hair.”
We raced back to Briarwood. On a normal day, the driveway would be choked with tourist vehicle as people showed up to get their fix of turrets and wonky stairs. But Corbin put the tours on hold a couple of weeks ago to focus on the fae. It was just as well, because two guys carrying a body in a box through the grounds wasn’t going to get the castle top-rated on TripAdvisor.
Everyone was already gathered around the sidhe when we arrived with Corbin’s body. Arthur placed the box under a tree on the far side of the meadow, next to Maeve’s body. He kissed the tips of his fingers and placed them to her lips. I looked away, not wanting to intrude on his private moment.
Flynn, of course, had no such compunctions. He walked up behind Arthur and clamped two hands on his shoulders. “Boo!” he cried in Arthur’s ear.
Arthur leapt two feet in the air, spun around, and clobbered Flynn around the head. I sniggered. Aline and Smithers may have been the ones heading to the underworld, but Flynn was the one with the death wish.
“Boys,” Clara called from the sidhe. “We’re ready.”
I approached the mounds that formed the gateway to the fae realm, the place I’d spent my entire life plotting to escape. All this time, I had no idea that Daigh knew how to resurrect the dead. I knew then that he’d kept it secret so he could also keep his other evil deeds – such as the death of my parents – buried forever. Who knows how long he’d been planning this transition from fae to demon, this play toward dominion over life and death?
At the entrance to the mound, Clara had placed a pile of twigs and bracken. Beside it, she laid out the paintings, ready to be thrown on when the time was right. One wave of Arthur’s hand and the fire caught. It wasn’t a raging blaze, but it would do for our purposes.
“Are our sacrifices ready?”
Aline and Smithers stepped forward, joining hands as they faced Clara over the fire. Aline wore Maeve’s pendant, and Smithers had the ampulla I’d recovered from Judge around his neck. Aline’s jaw was set in a firm line, the same expression Maeve wore when she’d decided something and there was no changing her mind.
Sacrifice. It was the bond of a parent to a child – the love that defied dimensions and would bring down kings. Daigh may have raised me, but he’d cast me aside as soon as he no longer needed me. In all his plans and schemes, he’d never accounted for the fact that love could be his undoing.
And yet, my gaze fell on every face in the circle. On Rowan, who’d trusted me when no one else did. On Flynn, who’d been the first of the guys to show me what it meant to have a friend. On Arthur, who had been willing to admit he’d been wrong. My gaze flicked to the box and the body lying under the tree. I would leap into the flames for any one of them, and for the first time I didn’t doubt they would do the same for me.
This is what it is to have a family.
After casting the circle with salt and fire, Clara lifted her hands skyward, indicating that we should do the same. I
stood between Arthur and Kelly, who’d insisted on being involved even though she wasn’t a witch. “I’ll do the belief magic,” she’d said. No attempt to explain that belief magic didn’t work like that would dissuade her. Jane was the only one sitting out the ritual. She remained under the tree with Connor, keeping a watch over the bodies.
“The clay steals the clay,” Clara intoned. “Death’s wings have swept away two souls who are before their time. We humbly submit for their return, and offer in exchange these worthy replacements. Let the clay steal the clay.”
“The clay steals the clay,” we chanted. “The clay steals the clay.”
At least our chant was in English. Apparently, Corbin usually made the coven chant in Latin or Orcish or whatever extinct language he was obsessed with that week. As I spoke the words, I focused on drawing up my spirit magic. There was precious little left after our efforts with the Slaugh, but a trickle still snaked through my veins. I hoped it would be enough. Thinking of Maeve and her bright smile, and Corbin and his sacrifice drew up a fresh burst from a source deep inside me. I forced the magic through my palms. It crackled in the air as it merged with the other witches’ power, creating a great cone that extended down over our circle.
The ground shook. I dug the heels of my boots into the earth to hold myself upright, and kept pushing. I remembered Maeve’s quick mind and how she stood defiant even when she was scared, how she got that authoritative tone in her voice when she lectured one of us about science, how I kissed her for the first time and it was like no kiss before that had ever existed.
Spirit magic churned inside me, pulsing against my palms as I fed it into the spell. The ground bucked and swayed, sending chunks of dirt cascading from the sides of the sidhe.
A dark crack opened in the earth in front of me, running from the top of the sidhe steps out toward Clara – a dark path none should ever follow. Black fog poured from the crack, which widened, the earth groaning as it was torn asunder.
Aline gripped Smithers’ hand. “Are you ready, my love?”
Smithers’ nodded.
Aline flashed him a bright smile with no hint of sadness. They broke from the circle, and together they leapt into the darkness, into their doom.
The void shuddered as the darkness embraced them. My stomach clenched as a flash of green caught the corner of my eye. A figure darted from the forest behind the sidhe, running toward us at full speed. It broke through the circle and paused on the edge of the void, white braids whipping around her face, arms outstretched, ready to jump.
“Liah!” I cried.
Her face spun toward me, her expression ice. She nodded, and dived for the void.
I surged forward and dived after her. As I toppled into the void, another body brushed against mine. Isadora’s eyes met mine, her mouth curled into an O of surprise. I tried to shout at her to get back before she fell in herself, but the darkness filled my mouth with gloom. My body exploded with pain as it collided with terror itself, and the underworld swallowed me completely.
35
CORBIN
Maeve crackled with power. A cold glow rose off her skin, a blue flame burning bright with power. Daigh stiffened in her arms as she pressed her hand to his temples and blasted his mind with her pain. She screamed, he screamed, and the whole of the underworld groaned under their collective agony.
My breath caught in my throat. My legs froze in place. I didn’t know what to do, what I wanted Maeve to do. I wanted to see Daigh suffer as much as she did, but was this the way? Was this the right way?
Maeve’s eyes fluttered open and her body went slack. She tore her hand from Daigh’s temple. The air whispered as her magic snapped from his mind. She stepped back. Daigh wobbled on his feet, steadying himself against the steps.
“Sorry, father,” Maeve said, staring down at the blue light glowing around her hands. “I never was very good at listening to my parents. I don’t want to kill you. I think we should talk.”
Relief flooded me, followed by a nervous clamor. Even after everything Daigh had done, Maeve didn’t want to kill him. She’d chosen the path of righteousness, as Matthew Crawford might’ve said. But it was not the easy path. We still had to deal with Daigh.
What good will come of talking to Daigh? Everything he says is a lie.
Maeve flicked her gaze to me for a moment, and the flicker of a voice echoed in my head. A voice that wasn’t my own.
Corbin, get the crown.
I gaped at her. How had she sent her voice into my head? She shouldn’t be able to do that with a non-spirit witch. That was interesting. Were her powers somehow growing—
The crown. It’s what he meant when he said there’s no king to kill. That demon wasn’t the king, it was a guard or something. The crown is the source of all their power. I’ll distract him, and you’ve got to get it off him.
My eyes locked on Daigh’s crown, and I immediately grasped Maeve’s thinking. The bone crown on Daigh’s head glowed with a similar blue light to the one that surrounded Maeve. Some of her power had been drawn into it, like a corruption of Flynn’s witch statue collecting the magic of belief.
In this world of darkness, the blue aura was a way for the demons to discern the shades of witches. It would also help them to keep any visiting fae in check. The demon blood on my face was making me see it as a demon would. But the thing Maeve had to have noticed was that only the crown glowed – no other part of Daigh’s body shared the aura.
Daigh wasn’t fully demon, not yet. He still had little power of his own. He streamed it from the crown. If we could get that crown off his head, then he’d be powerless.
“I want to talk about you and me,” Maeve started, folding her arms. “I got the DNA test results back, and you were right – I am your daughter. It’s all very strange, because the binding has made my DNA completely different from any other human.”
I crept across the bridge to where Maeve stood, moving slowly and smoothly, as if my whole purpose was to stand near Maeve. Our fingers touched, and Maeve’s magic sparked a memory across my mind.
It was Maeve and Rowan and I in the seedy hotel room in London, our bodies wrapped together in the heat of our love.
Daigh’s eyes glittered at Maeve. “There you are, you see? Your earth science has proven what I already knew – you are mine, daughter, and you are special. The fae have been wrong to forbid bindings. You are the strongest witch of your age. What you did to me just now would have killed a mortal. It’s fortunate I’m no longer a mortal.”
“Indeed,” Maeve tapped her chin. “It seems I’ve been completely wrong about magic. It’s written into our DNA. It’s scientifically observable and—”
I slid off to the side and crept around the dais. Daigh’s eyes didn’t leave Maeve’s face as she waxed on about the awesome power of DNA. It was quite a speech, delivered in her best “schoolteacher” voice, the one that Flynn thought was the sexiest sound alive.
At the back of the throne, the steps were so narrow there was only enough room for the toes of my boots. I stepped up on to the stairs and peered around the side. Daigh didn’t seem to have noticed me, but he’d moved back up to settle on top of the throne. That meant I’d have to climb all the way to the top.
I swung my leg up and balanced precariously on the next shelf. Even though I was a shade or something, my muscles screamed with the effort. Heat rose from the fire, burning a good twenty feet beneath me. I stretched with my hand and gripped the edge of the next step.
Almost there. Just keep him distracted a moment longer, Maeve. I’ve almost got him!
36
BLAKE
I landed hard on my side, but the pain that shot through me was oddly dulled, like I’d hit my toe instead of fallen into the underworld. I rubbed my eyes, trying to adjust to the dim light of the hallway. The palms of my hands were covered with fine dust.
A lump groaned beside me. Isadora. I reached out and touched her arm. She shrunk away from me like I was made of fire.
&n
bsp; After a few moments, my eyes adjusted and I dragged myself to my knees. I was sitting in the middle of a wide hall made of black veined stone, lined with wooden doors on either side of us. Every surface was covered with a thick layer of dust.
It looks exactly like Maeve’s dream.
I pulled myself to my feet and went to find the others. Aline leaned against the wall, cradling Smithers in her lap. I held out a hand and helped them both up, then turned to Isadora. She waved me off as she staggered to her feet and smoothed the wrinkles out of her dress.
“I never thought I’d see this dump again,” she muttered. She bent down and slipped off one of her stilettos, eyeing the broken heel with disgust. “What a waste of a new pair of Louboutins.” She tossed the shoes away.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“I’m here because you can’t count,” Isadora huffed. “For each soul that leaves the underworld, one must remain. And since you jumped in like a bloody fool, I had to go in after you to even up the numbers.”
“No, you can’t count. I was following Liah.” I cast my eyes around in search of her, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. My stomach churned. Did I imagine her? “She broke through the circle and—”
“If she is even here, she is fae. That sigil on her arm has been infused with demon and witch blood. It already carries the magic to pass between the worlds.” Isadora yanked her skirt up and showed me a cross of Saint Lazarus carved into her thigh. Arthur had said the tattoo looked all diseased and bloody. But now it was dull and perfectly clean. “This was tattooed with demon, fae, and witch blood, the same as your fae friend’s arm. Only mine has been weakened so much, it will not work again.”
“Oh.” Shite. “Well, thanks. You’re giving up your immortality for me. That’s big.”
The Castle of Spirit and Sorrow Page 21