Death at Peony House (The Invisible Entente Book 2)

by Krista Walsh

  Seam by seam until the whole house crumbles, she thought, and shook her head to clear her mind. She couldn’t afford to get distracted by thinking about everything that might go wrong.

  She wiped her hands on her pant legs and hugged her arms around her waist, hoping her guts would stop twisting so painfully once they got the show started.

  Her magic slipped into her veins and filled her all the way to her toes. It burrowed deep into her muscles and grew thick under her skin.

  Harold cast her a sideways glance. “They’ll know you’re coming a mile away. You’re lit up like a beacon.”

  Daphne considered releasing the power to remain hidden, but then frowned. “Let them know. I’d rather show them they can’t mess with us before they feel the need to try.”

  The guardian snorted, but he grabbed hold of his own magic, and the tingle of it warmed the outside of Daphne’s skin just as her own power warmed the inside. His magic left a sweetness at the back of her throat, like she’d eaten too many chocolate caramels, and through her heightened senses she caught a hint of silver running over the back of his hands, a faint sheen that contrasted with the gold of her own. He was strong. Strong enough that her instincts urged her to step away from him and guard against the threat he represented. She reminded herself that he was on her side.

  The ghosts in the hospital were quiet. Their whispers were distant and full of a fear that filled the air with the same acrid flavor she’d tasted earlier. They seemed too wary of her and Harold to approach, but that was for the best. Soon enough, the ghost demons who had killed them would be standing to face justice, and she would concentrate better if the spirits kept their distance.

  It’ll be enough of a challenge protecting my own mind, Daphne thought, and her insides twisted again.

  Her eyes prickled as her fear tried to find another escape, but she released a breath and swallowed the tightness in her chest. She had prepared for what was to come and she had a guardian at her side — one of the most awe-inspiring creatures of their world.

  “Here should be good,” she said, her words trembling.

  She stopped in the middle of the hallway, preferring to stay out in the open. She didn’t want to feel trapped in a room if too many ghost demons responded to her call.

  Harold helped her draw the chalk circle of the protection spell across the floor, and they sat together inside it.

  Daphne crossed her legs and rested her hands on her knees with her palms up. Harold mirrored her pose beside her. Closing her eyes, she counted backward from ten, allowing her consciousness to sink into a state of deep relaxation. The mental silence made it easier to grab the disentanglement spell hovering in the front of her mind. She raised her magic to the forefront and allowed it to take over.

  Her mother’s words came to her, warning her to stay in control, and she wrapped her magic tightly in the leash of her restraint. She would not let it consume her.

  In spite of the heaviness of her limbs, Daphne’s blood rushed in her ears and her skin prickled. She suppressed her fears and doubts and imagined herself completing the task with ease.

  A warm hand covered hers, and Harold’s wrinkled fingers lent her strength. The coolness of his silver magic seeped into her blood to mingle with her own. It raised the hair on her arms, and the desire to try to absorb more of it nearly overwhelmed her. Harold must have sensed her struggle, because his magic tugged sharply under her squeezing grasp. The silent reprimand brought her back to herself. She opened her eyes, squeezing his fingers to let him know she was strong enough, and then let her mind wander.

  “If there are any members of the Ancowitz family here tonight, I’d love it if you came to say hello,” she called.

  The hallway remained silent after her summons, but her magic picked out the spirits coming toward them down the hall. At first only two women appeared, but then four more translucent, shimmering shapes came, followed by a dozen more. Male and female, all somewhere between early teens and middle aged. Apparently the lifespan of a Morgrin demon was tragically short. Arthur appeared in the middle of the front line, his lip pulled back over his teeth in a snarl.

  They marched like an army, their empty gazes focused on the two blobs of magic before them. Daphne cast out her mind to read them and registered their hunger — even after death they weren’t satisfied.

  At first, her heart twinged with sympathy as she realized they were just as miserable as their victims, just as trapped. But beneath their frustration, the power of their rage swept through the hallway, their hatred deep from carrying the worst and strongest of their victims’ emotions for so long. Her hair rose on the back of her neck, and she shuddered.

  “So many of them,” Harold murmured, and his magic stretched out before him, dipping into the energy sent out by the ghost demons. His silvery power mixed with the approaching murkiness and was lost in it. His face flushed and strained with the effort to pull away, and another coil of fear unfurled in Daphne’s stomach.

  The two female spirits in the lead — one in an ankle-length dress and a tight belt around her corseted waist, the other with her hair done in curls and a thick necklace around her throat — drew to a halt, and the others slowed behind them. Each of them shifted on their feet, an impatient mob, and Daphne stood up with Harold at her side, still holding his hand.

  “Do you know why I summoned you here?” Daphne asked, keeping her voice calm and steady. In the corner of her eye, she saw Mary Ruth in the doorway of the room to her left. She stood shaking, no doubt terrified by the knowledge that her murderer was among the group in the hallway.

  None of the spirits answered Daphne’s query. They growled and slathered, as though they were the hunters and she the prey. All that remained was emotion and instinct, and in that moment she accepted that there would be no answers to satisfy her curiosity. This group had caused the deaths of countless innocent people, and yet none of them would be or could be held accountable. They were no more aware of their actions than a tiger was of its kills.

  And their threat was still real. Maybe not by the same methods they’d used in life, but her grandmother had warned her: if they touched her soul, she wouldn’t leave the hospital the same person who went in.

  She looked over her shoulder, again hoping to hear footsteps coming up the stairs. This moment was what Hunter needed to see if she wanted any chance of him believing her about Charles.

  But the window was closing. She had to start now if she wanted to finish the chain before the demons worked their way into her head.

  She drew in a deep breath and began to weave her magic into the pattern of her grandmother’s spell. It shifted in her mind and seeped into the air in front of her, hovering at eye level. She kept her gaze on the swaying demons, hoping that if she kept her movements slow, they wouldn’t notice the change in her energy. She needed time to make her strategy work.

  One of the girls in front curled her lip back in a sneer. Her translucent teeth had shaped into small fangs that cut into her lips, dripping shimmering blood down her chin.

  Daphne forced herself to focus on the first knot and not to be distracted by how the spirit could have injured herself. The dead were dead and could no longer be physically damaged.

  Harold released her hand and held both of his out in front of him. “We’re not here to harm you if we can avoid it,” he said to them. “We’re here to set you free. All of you. None of you want to be here. This is no longer your place.”

  “This is our place,” one of the spirits hissed. The voice echoed down the hallway, bouncing off every wall until it sounded as though each spirit repeated the words, louder, closer.

  Daphne pushed the sounds away and continued her spell.

  “This is our house,” another demon said.

  “This has always been our house,” growled a third.

  As one, they took a step closer, and Daphne ground her feet into the floor, holding herself from stepping back. Fear squeezed her lungs, but she had to see this through. Sh
e couldn’t show weakness.

  But she was also running out of time to show her strength. The crowd of unearthly energies took another step closer, and another, then broke into a run.

  Harold held out his hands and fed more magic into the protective circle. The air sparked around them, and goosebumps broke out on Daphne’s arms. She forced her thoughts away from Harold’s magic to concentrate on her woven spell before it could unravel at the interruption.

  His magic shot out from his palms in two streams of swirling silver and caught the two nearest spirits in the chest with eerie silence. They dissipated, their energy drifting toward the ceiling and merging together into a pearl-white cloud. Daphne closed her eyes to avoid the distraction of the writhing mass, but icy fear that the demons would reform themselves and come at her forced her eyes back open.

  She drowned out their screams of fury as Harold wrapped his fists in magic and swung toward the remaining spirits who came within reach. More and more energy slipped toward the ceiling, and Daphne worked faster to create her chain. She tied off the first knot — three to go.

  In the room beside her, Mary Ruth and some of the other ghosts had come to watch the fight. Their whimpers of fear outgrew the hisses of the demons. She wanted to shout at them to back away, to stay clear until the fight was over, but when her thoughts drifted away from the knot for a moment, it came undone, and she had to start it again.

  Sweat dripped down her brow and tickled her eyes, and she brushed her face against her shoulder to wipe it off. Her hands clenched in fists at her sides as she struggled to wrangle the magic into place, and her legs trembled.

  She finished the second knot.

  Arthur’s spirit broke through Harold’s defenses and barreled into her. His energy passed through her skin, and ice water flooded her veins. She cried out — pain and terror competing for dominance. He stretched inside her, compressing her lungs and pressing on her heart, and she dropped to her knees with a scream that came out as a gurgle. The disentanglement spell nearly slipped from her grasp, but she squeezed her mind around it, sacrificing her own defense for the more important goal of creating the next knot. If she dropped it now the other two would unravel and her mind would be open to the demon’s attack.

  So close now. Two and a half done. Only another one and a half, and she would be able to launch it at the center of these creatures. She just had to stay —

  A wave of pain sent her rolling on the floor, her limbs spasming, and the third knot slipped. She arched her back, but couldn’t escape the feeling of being torn apart from the inside. Arthur’s desire and hunger filled her, a maddening cry that made her cover her ears, though that did nothing to block the sounds rolling around inside her head. Her heart beat so fast that black spots lurked on the corners of her vision, and the pressure on her lungs made it impossible to breathe. She gulped for trickles of air.

  She flipped onto her stomach and searched for Harold. The guardian had fallen to his knees, and while his fists continued to swing, wrapped in their silvery gloves, his movements were slower, the visible magic fragmented and weaker.

  His continued efforts filled her with renewed determination. Daphne pressed through the agony to form another half-knot, but a cramp cut through her abdomen with such force that she curled in on herself and slammed her palm against the floor. Her vision blurred and tears ran down her cheeks. She held on to the two and a half completed knots, but divided her mind to attack Arthur within her, knowing she would lose consciousness if she didn’t act soon.

  Reaching deep into her core to grab any magic not directed at her disentanglement spell, she ejected it through her system, an antibody searching for a virus.

  It found the source of the demon and wrapped itself around the ravenous energy, squeezing, preventing Arthur’s power from reaching her physical body. He fought back, tore at the shield her magic created, but the barrier held. She prayed it would hold as long as she needed it to.

  She gritted her teeth and struggled to close the half-knot. The process was so much more laborious now that she was unable to dedicate all of her attention to the task. Without her mother’s magic supporting hers, she felt the drain on her power. Each pull of her magic exhausted her, and the thought of extending the chain over the last knot filled her with a despair so black and deep her stomach dropped, as though she were falling down a bottomless chasm.

  She finished the third knot.

  The remaining spirits turned their attention to her.

  Harold had collapsed. His chest continued to rise and fall, but she had become the greater threat.

  The guardian had done his part while he could. Only three spirits stood in the hallway with them. What remained of the others, the energy that had been torn apart by the force of Harold’s magic, hovered in a cloud large enough now to cover most of the ceiling.

  Already, arms and faces were pressing outward against the edges of the cloud, working to break back into the room. The demons would reform quickly, but it hardly mattered. She doubted she had the energy to handle the three rushing toward her with the fourth still trapped inside her.

  She was glad now that Hunter hadn’t come. He wouldn’t have been safe. He would have seen her fall.

  “Hey!” a voice shouted behind her, and Daphne dropped her forehead to the floor, squeezing her hand into a fist.

  No. The word caught in her chest, unable to make it past the ball in her throat.

  “Over here! Pay attention to me!”

  Emmett’s taunting had the desired effect, and the three spirits changed direction. He swung his fists at their heads and their torsos, but without any magic, his blows passed straight through without slowing them down.

  Daphne fought against the weight pulling her to the floor and rose to her knees. She turned to face him.

  How could he have come back? How could he have been so stupid?

  Her hands shaking and sweat dripping down her brow, she wove the fourth knot. Before she could finish, Emmett released a soul-shattering scream and dropped to the floor, flailing like a man possessed.

  On the floor beside her, Harold groaned and rolled his head toward the noise. He opened his eyes, and a new wave of magic drifted over his arms to cover his skin. Daphne wanted to tell him not to push, that she was almost done, but her teeth were clenched together in her efforts to finish the spell, and Emmett’s screams tore through her mind, pulling her out of herself. The cage around the demon inside her weakened, and his strength pressed her barrier outward. The sharpness of his ethereal claws tore at her stomach. She groaned and wrapped one arm around her middle, holding her other hand out in front of her as she tightened the final knot.

  The spell was done. She was ready. She prayed to all the gods she could think of that it would work.

  Emmett’s screams fell silent, and his body went still.

  18

  Daphne grabbed the demons’ attention away from Emmett with a cry from the depths of her soul. She whirled around and launched the chain of knots at the center of the cloud hovering over her head.

  Her magic hooked into the writhing mass, and she felt a jerk in her chest as her power ran through the connection. At the same time, all the hatred and negative energy the creatures had absorbed over the centuries passed back down the chain, trying to penetrate her shield. Their green magic slammed against the protection of the first knot resting against her core as the demon inside of her pushed to get free.

  Her stomach spasmed, and she retched onto the floor at the double force of the attack. She bent over, her arms trembling with her weight. The effort she needed to block the destructive energy required more than she could manage with her magic divided, so she allowed the cage around the demon inside her to fall away and gritted her teeth against the renewed agony cutting through her.

  In an effort to hang on and stay strong against the barrage of dark power, Daphne grabbed hold of the magic within her reach. She dug deeper into her own golden reserves, and when that came up thin, she grabbed on t
o the next best thing. The demons’ green magic danced around her, and she absorbed it into herself, allowing it to charge her.

  The warmth of power filled her limbs as though stretching muscles she hadn’t used in a year. The new magic spread through her veins, merging with her own energy to lend her more strength. Her arms flexed as it poured into her hands and through each of her fingers. Her lips spread into an involuntary smile.

  Why did I let this feeling go? I need more.

  Blood dripped from Daphne’s nose down to her chin, but with her new strength, she held firm. She cast her mind down the chain to the center of the demons’ essence. Using the spells of the last two knots, she drove wedges between the demon and human energies and cast the final spell to tear them all apart.

  The demons who had gone after Emmett slammed into her. Their fingers dipped through her chest and her head. Two energies gripped her heart, stilled it, left the heartbeat stuttering. Another slipped into her mind and touched on the spell. She reached out with her magic and drew the energies into her. They pulled back, afraid of being absorbed, but she refused to let go. With each new streak of green magic she took into herself, the disentanglement spell grew stronger.

  I can do this. Tears of exertion spilled over her eyelids and streamed down her cheeks, mixing with blood as it dripped onto the floor.

  She basked in her growing power and curled her fingers into the floorboards to stay focused. Her magic traveled along the chain, wading through the putrid murkiness of the demon energies, pulling them apart. She could feel each unraveled thread between the demons and the ghosts weakening the monsters crowding around her.

  They fought against her. Their energy wrapped around her magic and squeezed, trying to snuff it out, but each time they came too close she grabbed them and claimed their power as her own. Her blood boiled and her stomach churned, but the rush of new power made her feel invincible.

  It’s too much, she told herself, but that voice came as no more than a whisper compared to the other voice that urged her to keep going, to absorb more. So much pain. It’s burning through me.