by S. L. Prater
An open tome on the floor caught her eye. Its massive pages were dogeared on a chapter titled Identifying Demon Magic in Dimension III. Marnie flipped it closed with her boot. It snapped shut, creating a gust that sent spiders rolling across the hardwood. A picture of a menacing-looking ceiba tree, thorns dotting its bark, was printed on the book’s cover under the lettering Death Magic.
Jack tossed Animal Possession toward a smaller stack on the floor by the empty fireplace. She could read some of the titles from where she stood: Recognizing Demonic Influences in Higher Society, Magical Zoology: The Impact of Curses on Loreley’s Fauna.
The flesh on her back and neck crawled. “What is all this?” She rolled her shoulders to ease the building tension there.
“Some light reading.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I am never ridiculous.”
When she looked up at Jack, he had pulled one of his ears from the side of his head with magic that smelled like cinnamon and stuck it to his chin. He showed his teeth in a lopsided grin.
Marnie made a noise in her throat, trying not to laugh. “No more games! Fix my mother now. Those people in the ballroom don’t take kindly to hexes, even the harmless kind. If the furniture starts floating, they’ll get scared and go looking for the nearest witch to torment—which would be one of us, by the way.”
“If you’re so worried, why don’t you break the hex yourself?” He leaned down, caught the coffee-colored knot hanging against her cheek, and examined it. “Could I have this?”
Marnie slapped his hand away. “If I tried undoing the hex, I could accidentally make it worse. My God, why do you need so many spiders?” She kicked a grouping of them off her laces. “You know I can’t fix my mother. I’m lousy with spirit magic.”
“You’re not lousy—don’t squish them, please—you’re just unaccustomed to having to work at something. Memorizing the different prayers and runes is quite tiresome at times, but your mind is more than up to the task.”
Jack jumped down from his pile of books and plucked his ear off his chin with a resounding pop. The scent of magic, cabbage, and sweetcorn filled her nose as he twisted it back into its proper place.
“You might not even need spirit magic to fix your mother. When we were younger,” Jack said, his blue eyes twinkling, “you did some wild things with natural magic—”
“You know I hate it when you bring that up.” Marnie scratched at an itch that wasn’t there, avoiding his prying gaze. Her throat dried up. “We were young and in danger . . . nerves and adrenaline and all that.”
“You aren’t lacking in skill, is what I mean. What you lack is confidence. Come and look at the bureau.” He gestured at the burner. “Your mother is fine. Whatever magic you stumbled upon can’t be malicious or demonic, or the glass on the burner would have turned black and burst. I have alarms like this one all over the manor just in case organic magic misbehaves. She is fine.” He pouted. “Your lack of faith in me is downright hurtful.”
“Why do you have all this?” There were so many spiders on the nearby bookcase, the skittering of their tiny legs was audible against the wood. Her skin pebbled. “It’s like you’re prepping for war. Surely, the poltergeists can’t have gotten as bad as all—Oh, damn! It would turn black, you said?”
The glass on the burner filled with a blackening liquid and burst into thousands of tiny crystal shards. The shards hovered in the air, caught by an unseen force. The remaining black liquid evaporated into an earthy fog which doubled in size, rushing to spread across the ceiling.
Jack grabbed Marnie’s arm and pulled her into the hall among the fleeing spiders and squeaking mice. The strange sour cloud followed them out through the archway, raining a dark dust on everything. Marnie coughed to clear her throat of the taste of turned eggs. She removed her kerchief, slapping the gritty brown grime out of her hair.
“What in hell was that about?” Marnie dusted brown powder off her dress hem. “My mother?!”
Jack coughed, eyes squinted. “We’re in trouble, Marnie,” he hacked, “not just your mother.”
“You’ve got to stop it!” Her heart thundered in her chest. A balmy heat grew in the corridor. It smelled so strongly of dead leaves it stung her eyes. They watered, blinding her. The scent changed. The smell of thick, hot rot replaced dead leaves and she gasped. “Do you feel that, Jack? It feels wrong.” She wiped at her vision with a fist, but it only made the sting worse. She blinked furiously.
Jack patted down his trousers, coughing as the cloud darkened. Then the music from the stairwell died away. Sound sucked from the hall with a loud crack and a shimmer of bright light. Marnie’s stomach squeezed. A filmy translucent barrier appeared, separating her from Jack. The brown cloud evaporated, replaced by a new essence that was thin and clear, fluid like water, casting rainbow fragments in the light. It looked as fragile as a bubble, but Marnie knew better.
It was demon magic. A curse.
The smell of it—ugh. She plugged her nose against the sudden reek of burnt meat. It strangled her.
Through her witch senses, she could feel how deadly and bloodthirsty this magic was. Her skin crawled, and the hair on her neck rose. Birthed by the curse, it formed into a bubbling creature. Strong magic had the furniture lifting off the floor, first the bureau and a bookshelf, then an armchair. Ash from the empty fireplace met with the hovering glass fragments, and they swirled into a funnel. Books floated from their stacks, melding with the ash and glass. Together, they melted into the growing, darkening, liquid light.
Marnie stood, feet anchored to the floor, wondering if she were about to melt into nothing like the books.
Chapter 2
Demon magic was a rare thing in civilized society, something Marnie had only ever read about. This research was done in secret because demons were such an unseemly subject. Their magic was a nightmare, nothing to be trifled with. Priests of the Church of the Cloth gave speculative street-side sermons against the creatures and their love of natural magic to scare citizens into avoiding both.
Jack muttered a quick prayer to God promising his spirits a sacrifice of toenail clippings, ram’s horns, warts, and a goat tumor in exchange for aid. No divine intervention came, and neither dared move.
“Jack, did you do this?” The death tome from earlier haunted her mind.
“Of course not!” Though they were only separated by inches, through the foul barrier his voice was a muffled echo, like he was calling to her from the end of a sewer tunnel.
“Who could conjure this? Who would want such a horrible thing . . . ?”
“No one good. Marnie, it’s growing!”
She leapt back, hiking up her dress. The barrier followed her, slow at first, then quickly Marnie had to run.
“Transport out!” Jack called. “Ride magic out of the manor right now!”
“You know I can’t!”
“You did!”
“We were kids!” she screamed, picking up her feet faster, the barrier pursuing, growing and flowing. The walls cracked and splintered where it passed. Her thighs burned, straining to keep up the speed. Too soon, she was winded, and she deeply regretted smoking so much.
She passed the servant’s quarters. The lamp-lit office wasn’t far now. Bran. She would have shouted a warning if there was any air left in her lungs.
She dove inside, colliding with him. He caught her unwittingly. His brows pinched together as she slammed the door shut and locked it. In her haste to the window, she kicked down his stack of encyclopedias and cracked the glass while flinging the panes open. The opening was narrow and let in little fresh air, but it was the best she could think up on her own.
“I didn’t realize you had such strong feelings against economics,” Bran teased, his expression a pinched mixture of puzzled and amused.
She could still smell the terrible magic. It put a lump in her throat she could not swallow away. “We have to get you out of here.”
“I’m in trouble now, aren’t
I?” he said, misunderstanding. “I truly did mean to go downstairs and admire an orchid, I promise, but you were right about my equation. I’ve graphed it finally.”
The door groaned. A clear film seeped through cracks in the frame, turning the wood a frightening gray that made Marnie’s hands go cold and numb.
Bran’s eyebrows rose up toward his hairline. He stepped closer, studying the oozing magic. “What will happen when it reaches us?”
“I don’t know!” She jerked on his arm until he moved with her behind the desk. “Nothing good, so don’t let it touch us.”
Marnie felt lost. She thought of Sidra, a great spirit of God who gave her gift of the constant star to guide the lost. An office was frequently full of things Sidra favored for spell work: maps, parchment, ink, chalk . . . She released Bran’s arm and grabbed at items, bringing them to her nose, searching for the scent of natural magic. She tossed anything that didn’t feel helpful, first a quill and then an old map of underground train routes.
A small pile of nonsense grew into a hill at her feet.
“Can I help? I want to help.” Bran paced around her. His eyes locked on the bubbling curse oozing closer.
“No. Shush. I need to think . . .” She took a breath, fighting to slow her racing thoughts.
Marnie hated spell work with spirits. For her, it was the worst kind of guessing game, something her analytical mind had no instinct for outside of the most common prayer. Math made sense. She had a harmony with alchemy which solely utilized ingredients favored by organic magic, but spellcasting—combining spirit with natural—always felt to her like blending nonsense ingredients with random words.
Flustered, Marnie tossed a jar of ink over her shoulder. It broke open on the floor, shooting off the faint scent of organic magic in the rupture. Her nostrils flared. It was hard to find beside the potent demon curse, but this smelled like lavender. She remembered her tobacco, pulled out her pouch and breathed deep. There was magic there too, but it did not feel helpful.
“No,” she groaned. “They don’t belong together. They won’t work . . .” But then it struck her, a panic-fueled bit of insight. “I don’t need them to work together; Sidra favors the lost.”
She rushed through a known prayer to Sidra, one that asked for confidence in travels and begged guidance from the stars. She added another verse about protection for missing loved ones, just for good measure. Anything, really, to draw the spirit’s attention. Sidra favored spells cast at night and in confusion, and Marnie had that in abundance.
The scent of lavender and ash mingled when she mixed the ink with the tobacco, repeating the prayers anxiously and crushing the substances between her fingers. The scent changed to wood smoke.
The shape of a star appeared in the ceiling, burned in the plaster, a spirit symbol that told her she had gotten something right. She squealed delightedly. Sidra was listening. Spirit magics were present. They smelled like coconut milk, almost enough to push the stink of rot away from her nostrils. The demon curse reacted, slowing and retreating.
“Sidra will want a sacrifice for her help with something this big.” She ripped open a drawer and rifled through papers, casting aside notepads and pamphlets. “I need something you’ve worked hard on. Something that would break your heart to lose.”
“Move over.” Bran squatted low and opened the last drawer. He pulled a carefully folded slip of parchment from a dusty collection of old journals and offered it to her.
When she opened it, she recognized the scrawled design of a one-man airship. An old dream crafted by a young man who fancied himself an engineer before he was pushed into the world of politics by duty and family and an emperor he cared for. The corners were scribbled over with equations, but not all of them were in his handwriting.
Some of them were in Marnie’s.
“This . . . I can’t believe you kept this.” She smiled at forgotten memories. “This will do.”
“It’s getting closer.” Bran hovered over her. His hands flexed into fists as if he wanted to make use of them.
“Then help me.”
He hoisted her onto the desk and followed after, squatting so his head did not hit the ceiling. The curse coated the floor, shimmering and flowing like a river in a storm. Marnie poured ink onto her fingers and smeared the parchment, covering the schematics and equations. Hands trembling, she recited another prayer for Sidra, the one which thanked her for the moon’s glow to guide those lost in the dark, not at all sure if she had picked the one Sidra wanted to hear.
Marnie pressed the ink-covered schematic into the center of the star. The parchment evaporated; the demon curse retreated. It rippled like waves caught in a torrential rain, and then patches of the ceiling melted away, revealing the third floor. Bits of plaster sprinkled onto the curse, disintegrating into nothing with a sizzle that turned Marnie’s stomach.
“Damn . . .” She grimaced at the hole above them. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“You’ve created an exit for us. It will have to do. Up you go,” Bran said in that inarguable way only a master can.
She clambered up through the ceiling, stepping on his shoulder, briefly onto his face—“Oops, sorry”—then into the hall of the third floor. Empty chambers of seasonal workers flanked her on either side. She tried to help Bran in return, tugging on his wrists.
“You’re so heavy!” Her teeth were clenched.
“Make room,” he ordered, then he pulled himself up with a grace that did not fit a man of his size. His legs should have tangled, they were so long.
At a loss, they watched the room below their feet fill slowly with the clear curse and the smell of death.
“I thought it might be after me,” Marnie said. “Demon magic is a consuming thing. It seeks the natural magics that favor witches and blood, but that can’t be right. Jack has way more organic magic than me to feed it. He’s been cooking mice tumors and spiders and whatever else all night. It should have pursued Jack. Bran, I think it’s after you.”
His lip curled. “It’s after me still. Run.” He seized her arm at the elbow, and they sprinted, panting down the halls, the curse bubbling up after them.
There were no more floors left in the great house, and Marnie had no plan and no more spell ingredients or precious items to sacrifice. Fear had created an icy pressure on her insides, and she gasped.
Like a giant serpent, the backend of the demon curse had overflowed the east staircase, their only exit. She worried after Jack and her mother. Did they get out? Behind them, the front end of the barrier grew, thickening and darkening.
Bran pushed her into the nearest chamber. They shut the door and locked it, a wasted effort but a comforting one. She expected to see the curse seeping through, but nothing emerged. Not yet.
Marnie paced the room, hugging herself, praying desperately to God and every spirit who came to mind. She got several of the verses to common prayers wrong. Nerves had her mind in a tangle.
Bran tip-toed closer to the door. “Why isn’t it coming through like before?”
“I was just wondering the same thing,” Marnie said. “Jack maybe? Hopefully, help has arrived. Someone must be slowing it down—no, don’t do that. Don’t touch the door.” She grabbed his hand and tugged him back. “I don’t trust it. It can’t be safe.”
She did not let go of his hand. He did not release hers.
They stared at the door in silence, listening to the eerie sounds of the curse bubbling and pooling behind the frame.
Marnie glanced at their joined hands and remembered the young Bran, her friend from school before her father had died. The adolescent heir who pressured his family to take in her and her widowed mother when they had nowhere to go.
She should have been thinking of an escape. A smaller part of her brain shouted at her to focus. Instead, she dwelled on the tall, dark-haired youth who had regularly chased bullies out of the manor gardens. The master who paid her tuition at the academy even though everyone advised him pot scrubbers
had no use for formal education.
“Bran, I need you to know something.” She squeezed his hand so tight her fingers went white. His brown eyes were troubled but kind. “I know I tease you often, but you deserve to hear this . . .” Losing her nerve, she stared at her feet. “You are decent. A good man. Probably the most decent of anyone on this island.”
Marnie gulped when his grip on her hand tightened. He moved in closer until they were flush with each other, chest to chest. Her soft form pressed to his solid frame made her gasp. His other hand found her hip. “You should have danced with me.”
“Bran—”
His expression stole the last of the air from her lungs; his eyes were so earnest. Marnie swallowed. The pads of his fingers felt heavy on her skin.
“Dance with me now.” His words were soft as a caress, sad as a dirge. “Why not?”
She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Because we . . .” The curse burbled in the hall. Color and warmth drained from her body. “Because I can’t get us out of here. I can’t save you. That curse is going to kill us.”
“Then I’d like to die with my boots on.”
She blinked at him for a time, undecided. “Fair enough.” Her hand trembled in his. She met his eyes and took a breath, pushing away her panic. “There’s no music.”
Bran hummed. Marnie snorted at him. He rocked them side to side, singing softly, a silly children’s song about birds and summertime. She sang with him, soothed by the sound of their melding voices, color and heat returning to her flesh.
The song ended. She turned to examine the door, her lip trapped in her teeth, and was shocked there was still no sign of the curse seeping through. A glimmer of hope that help had arrived grew, warming her belly.
Bran pulled her back into his arms and made her meet his eyes. He twirled her. They danced. She sang an old drinking song, and he spun her faster until they were both panting.
His face softened with laughter, and for the moment she felt safe. Curse or not, Marnie felt like she was exactly where she should be. Surely, trusty Jack would stop the curse, and all would be well again soon.