by Krista Walsh
Meg recovered before Hunter and tore across the rotting floor. She barreled into Laura and wrapped her arms around the demon’s waist. Laura screeched. She clung to Charles’s shoulders, and as Meg tugged her away, she pulled Charles with her, rolling him onto his back. She threw an elbow into Meg’s cheek and scurried on top of Charles’s stomach. Blood dripped down his white shirt and he cried out as she drove her nails deep into his flesh. Meg pulled harder to get Laura off of him, but the demon’s bared teeth closed down over Charles’s mouth. He struggled to get away, his hands slapping against the floorboards.
Daphne neared the end of the fourth knot. She closed her eyes and retched onto the floor, her stomach bringing up nothing but bile that burned the back of her throat. Her magic was spotty, filled with gaps and stretched too thin, but she smoothed it out as best she could and tied off the end.
The chain was done.
So close now.
She drew in a deep breath to center herself. The spell was only half complete, and she needed whatever self-possession she could muster to finish the rest.
Come on, Daphne. Get this done.
She opened her eyes and a scream finally pushed through her cracked lips. Charles lay still on the floor, his dark eyes staring at her, empty and lifeless. Meg was lying on her back with Laura straddling her waist, ready to feed on her second meal.
Hunter stood to the side, covered in blood, with his weapon trained on Laura, but the demon clutched Meg’s shoulders and yanked her up, blocking his shot.
Daphne hooked one end of the chain to her core to anchor it and cast out her mind to locate the center of Laura’s energy. In the rush of the fight, she couldn’t find it right away, but then the spark of green magic responded to the call of her gold and grew into a glowing ball in the middle of Laura’s chest. Focusing on the light, Daphne launched her attack. A gunshot fired. The hook at the other end of the spell caught on something, but she was too stunned to see what it had latched on to. The world teetered around her as her head swam, and she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the red puddle pooling under Meg’s and Laura’s entwined forms.
Is it over? she wondered.
Then something tugged on the spell and jerked her forward. She wrapped her mind around the chain of knots to regain control. Somehow she’d missed the center of green energy and entered into an invisible tug of war. The power on the other end of the chain was so much stronger than hers.
Daphne lost her balance and set her hands on the floor. She wished her magic wasn’t so drained. At full strength she could have fought back without trouble.
The pressure of the chain pulled at her magic, shifting it in her blood, and she cried out at the burning agony cutting through her body. Every one of her muscles cramped and her arms gave out, sending her crashing against the rotting floorboards. Her joints strained, as though they were being bent backward.
Her magic infused every part of her, and now something at the other end of the chain was yanking it free.
She ran her mind over the first knot of the spell, the one that was supposed to protect her magic from the enemy’s, and saw the weaknesses. Her distraction had left holes, and Laura’s energy had worked through it, stealing hers.
She screamed as another wave of pain coursed through her.
Someone grunted and gasped for breath. A moan of pain. But Daphne didn’t have the strength to open her eyes to see what had happened.
Gritting her teeth, she dragged the chain out of Laura and cast her mind out a second time to find the green energy. She stayed focused on it and launched the spell again.
This time the hook landed in the center of Laura’s power. Daphne felt the strength of it stream across the spell. She used the third knot to drive the wedge between Laura’s human and demon energies, and then released the fourth spell to tear them apart.
She expected it to be as simple as it had been the night before, the spell doing most of the work, but this time the magic got stuck, and she slammed her palm against the floor.
A cry from Hunter strengthened her resolve, and she sent her mind down the spell into the middle of Laura’s power. Her own pain subsided as she lost herself in her magic, dipping deeper into it than she had in a year. The golden energy filled her, dulling the world around her, and she allowed it to carry her along the chain until she was a part of Laura’s green magic.
Against the ghost demons, she’d had Harold’s help weakening their energy. She’d launched the chain in the middle of an unformed cloud while the spirits were distracted trying to reform themselves to fight her.
Laura wasn’t weak and the challenge was so much greater.
Daphne waded through the energy, following the wedge the spell had created, and set to work. Her body had gone numb, but her mind had never been sharper. She felt like a surgeon removing a tumor from a network of nerves and muscles, working to get rid of the harmful cells without damaging the healthy ones.
Laura’s energy pulsed, making it difficult to tell the difference between human and demon, between what was hers and what had belonged to her victims.
Daphne picked the energy apart piece by piece and released it into the air to harmlessly disperse in the atmosphere, clearing away the darkness and the murkiness. A bitter taste coated her tongue, and she ignored it, focused only on eliminating the demon.
Laura released a wail, and there was a scrabbling of sharp claws against the hardwood as she made her way toward Daphne. Then Daphne heard her shriek of rage and opened her eyes in time to see Laura brace her bare feet against the floor and launch herself forward.
She struck Daphne in the chest, and they both fell over with a grunt, but the magic had done its work. The demon was gone, and Laura’s face had returned — her sharp brown eyes wild, her graying ash-blond hair tangled and blood-streaked, her slash of a mouth open wide with giddy laughter.
The demon was gone, and the madness was all that remained.
Daphne set her hands against the woman’s shoulders, but Laura still retained some strength. She slid her fingers around Daphne’s throat and squeezed. Daphne’s vision, already blurry, turned hazy, dark spots creeping in on the edges. She sputtered for breath, searching everywhere for one last bout of energy to defend herself and finding nothing.
She slammed her hands against the floor, against Laura’s arms, but only wild laughter followed her into darkness.
And then the weight was off her chest. Her lungs filled with cool air and light returned to the world.
Daphne rolled onto her side, wheezing, while Hunter straddled Laura’s back and pinned the woman’s arms behind her. Blood dripped under Laura from where she’d been shot, but she didn’t seem to feel the pain, continuing her high-pitched laugh.
Hunter pressed his weight down on her back and sent a concerned glance in Daphne’s direction. Relief filled his hazel eyes to find her conscious and staring back at him. Meg stood by the door, staring at the three of them in open-mouthed horror. Face pale and legs trembling, she sagged against the wall. Whatever adrenaline had kept her going throughout the fight had clearly drained out of her, and Daphne hoped she didn’t pass out.
Hunter snapped the cuffs closed around Laura’s wrists and crawled over to Daphne, dropping down beside her.
“I need a drink,” he said, and she nodded.
***
Daphne stayed burrowed under the emergency blanket Hunter had dug out from the trunk of his car while they waited for the paramedics to arrive to take Charles away and see to Laura.
“I don’t think this place has seen so many ambulances in sixty years,” she mumbled to herself, and rested her head against the wall.
At the sound of tiny claws scurrying behind her, she shivered and slid forward, preferring to slouch with her arms braced on her knees than to be anywhere close to the unseen rats. Ghosts she could handle, demons were a cinch, but rats could still send her screaming out of the building.
Hunter paced the room, talking to his boss on his cellphone. Meg sto
od in the middle of the hallway glaring at Daphne with her arms crossed. When Hunter ended the call, Meg turned on him.
“Now are you going to tell me what the hell I just witnessed?” she asked. “I put a lot of faith in you to follow this plan and now I’ve seen things I don’t think a sixty of scotch will ever wipe from my memory. What was that thing and what on earth was she doing?” She pointed at Daphne.
Hunter buried his face in his hands, then jerked his palms away when they touched against the scratch on his cheek.
“Meg,” he said, and then shook his head. “I can’t even begin to explain.”
“Not good enough,” she said. “That line won’t fill out our reports or satisfy the captain when she drags our asses into her office and asks us to explain what we just got involved in.”
“She won’t have to do that,” Hunter said, and his voice sounded calmer. “You know I would never put you in a position that would endanger your job, and you also know no one will believe what actually happened here.”
“So what do you intend to do?” she demanded. “Falsify the reports?”
“Do you see any other option?”
Meg’s arms dropped, and her angry expression sagged into shock. “Shit, Hunter. What did you drag me into?”
He approached her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “What I needed to. You’re my partner. I couldn’t go into this and keep you in the dark. There’s a whole other world out there that I’ve just found out about, and the way I see it, at least two people in the department need to know it. Sure, it’s going to rankle our ethics to fudge the details, but we just solved a murder we never would have solved otherwise. Think about that for a while and decide how you want to approach it. If you choose to go with the truth, I won’t hold it against you.”
Meg cast Daphne a dark look, and in her glower, Daphne read all of her blame for getting Hunter involved in something else that might get him in big trouble. Her cheeks flushed as she accepted the responsibility, but her guilt wasn’t as deep as it had been for her crimes of the past. This time she had given him the same choice he was giving Meg, and he’d followed her willingly.
“I need some air,” Meg said, then she turned on her heel and marched out.
Hunter blew out a breath and sank down beside Daphne. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders to trap more heat inside the blanket, but in spite of his extra warmth, her trembling increased.
“Two days in a row I’m asking how you are,” he said. “Not a streak I’m enjoying.”
“I’m less certain of the answer today, but I’ll live,” she replied. “What about you?”
Hunter frowned and glanced down at his chest. He’d replaced the torn shirt with one he had in his car to avoid some questions. “She didn’t get me too badly. The bleeding has already stopped, at least.”
His cheek hadn’t been as fortunate, and Daphne guessed he would boast a faint scar from the corner of his left eye to his jaw once the scratch healed. She wished she could help him with a shot of magic, but she felt empty. She wanted bed, tea, and one of her mother’s apple strudels — more than she’d ever wanted anything else in her life.
She laughed at the idea, and Hunter gave her a questioning look.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “I haven’t lost my mind. Surprisingly. I was just thinking that it’s been a long time since I found myself wanting something as mundane as a pastry. I’m amazed that my life has changed as much as it has. I hardly recognize myself sometimes.”
“I, for one, am glad of it,” he replied.
A low chuckle echoed across the room, and they both looked over to where Laura sat against the wall. Her arms were trapped behind her, and she rolled her head along the plaster, staring at the ceiling and humming to herself. Every once in a while, she would switch between a laugh and a low groan. Hunter had bandaged her shoulder, but the gauze had already bled through.
“She can’t hurt anyone now, right?” he asked. “You made her human again or whatever the hell you did?”
Daphne chewed on her cheek and crossed her fingers before saying, “I think so. I picked apart the power that gave her strength. The demon is still there, but it’s weak. As long as we keep an eye on her, she shouldn’t be able to turn crispy again.”
She hoped she was right. She’d have to speak with her mother and grandmother to see if there was a better way of ensuring no one else could be hurt in whatever place Laura ended up. The last thing anyone needed was a second Peony House.
Two pairs of paramedics arrived, Meg trailing behind them. The first transferred Charles onto a stretcher, while the others assessed Laura.
“She’ll be all right,” the female paramedic said. She stood up and stretched out her back. “It went through the shoulder. Nothing permanent. We’ll take her in and I’ll get the paperwork started to have her moved to the psychiatric ward.” She cast Laura a sideways glance. “I don’t think an evaluation would be the worst idea.”
She left Laura to her partner and approached Daphne, who allowed herself to be subjected to the usual evaluation and treatment for shock. The paramedic left her with her emergency blanket, recommended lots of rest and fluids, and gave her a number to call if she needed to speak with anyone about her trauma.
It took everything Daphne had left not to laugh at the idea of explaining to someone what she had been through over the last twenty-four hours.
“She seemed so lucid when we spoke with her,” Meg said, watching the paramedics wheel Laura off on the stretcher. She was singing lullabies to herself and picking lint off the blanket beneath her fingers. Even if the doctors could bring her back to this world, Daphne almost hoped they didn’t. Laura seemed so much happier wherever she was now. “I don’t understand how she…changed.”
“It was the hospital,” Hunter said as the stretcher moved by him. “Her brother wanted to tear down the place and it pushed her over the edge.” As soon as the paramedics were out of earshot, he frowned. “At some point, I’d like a better explanation myself.”
Meg frowned, but made no argument. “I don’t like the precedent you’re setting here, Hunter, and I worry that your reasons aren’t as clear-headed as you claim them to be.” She cast a scathing glance in Daphne’s direction, but then her gaze moved to Hunter and the vehemence faded. “But I do understand that someone needs to know. So I’ll work with you on this — within reason. But you,” she turned to Daphne, who tilted her head back to meet her gaze, “you watch yourself. If I get any idea that you’re pushing him out of bounds, I’ll step in to make sure you never go near him again. Got it?”
Daphne nodded, and Meg jerked her head. “Good. Then I’ll go out there and try to explain what happened. It’ll give me a chance to practice the lies we intend to tell our captain.”
She cast a final glance at her partner and followed the paramedics out of the hospital.
Hunter passed his hands over his face. “She’ll get used to the idea.”
Daphne grimaced. “I have no doubt. It’s all right, she has every right not to trust me. I’d like for that to change, but I know it’ll take time.”
“It will. For all of us, I think. But thank you for your help. I definitely never would have figured out the whole…twist without you.”
She forced a smile. “It was my pleasure. Always glad to be of assistance when the strange and unusual is involved.”
“It’s not that frequent, is it?” he asked with a frown.
She laughed. “More than you’d think.”
“Great.” He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, then released a breath and twisted his neck to stare down the hallway.
The sunlight coming through the front door caught his hair in a wash of gold, and Daphne saw sparkles in each strand. She blinked to clear her vision, not wanting to lose control of herself in her shock.
“This place feels emptier now than it did the first night we were here,” he said.
“That’s because it is. You might not have seen them or heard them, but
every room was full of the people who never made it out of here alive because of the Ancowitz demons. They can finally get some real peace. This place is actually abandoned now.”
“And probably won’t exist much longer now that Charles’s wishes can be carried out,” Hunter added. “But the board won’t act before I take you up on your suggestion to dig up the yard. I don’t look forward to what we’ll find, but I’d rather the dead had somewhere nicer to go.”
Daphne stared out the window toward the backyard. Through the clouded glass, she saw the gardens the way they would have been — full of color, vibrancy, sweet smells, and life.
“I don’t know,” she said. “There are worse places to rest than under the peonies.”
22
Daphne slept for most of the next three days, getting up only to use the washroom and eat the meals her mother brought upstairs. After twenty-four hours, her shivering stopped, and she was able to sleep without fifteen blankets piled on top of her. After forty-eight hours, she made it out to the couch to fall asleep to her favorite movies.
It wasn’t until dinner time on the third day that she managed to get dressed in her scruffiest pair of black sweatpants and a hole-ridden navy blue hoodie, throw her hair into a messy ponytail, and shuffle downstairs to have dinner with her family.
Cheryl and Evelyn both fussed, but she didn’t bother to shoo them away. On another day she would find it aggravating, so she figured she might as well enjoy it while she could. They’d prepared her favorite: butternut squash soup with fresh baked bread, followed by a heaping bowl of pasta and roasted vegetables. After three days of light fare that she barely remembered eating, she scarfed the meal down, not uttering a single syllable until the bowl was empty.
She hadn’t yet brought herself to ask them about Laura’s chances of a relapse into demonism. For now, the memory of their encounter was still too recent, and she wanted to set it aside. But time was pressing, and she knew the delay couldn’t last long.