Gods & Monsters

by Shelby Mahurin

  When she pulled the book toward her, the entire wall groaned. Gears clanked. And the bookcase—it swung open. Beyond it, a steep, narrow staircase disappeared into the dark. She bowed slightly, still grinning, and snapped her fingers. The scent of magic burst around us—fresher than before—and a torch on the wall in the stairwell sprang to life. “After you.”

  Beau removed the torch warily. A shadow bearing light. The unnatural sight of it lifted the hair on my arms. My neck. “You didn’t tell us the treasury was in her personal chambers.”

  “I didn’t want to scare you.”

  “Oh, yes.” Tentative, Beau stepped onto the first plank. It creaked under his weight. “The shadows, wraiths, and murderous witches would’ve paled in comparison to Morgane’s bed.” He hesitated and glanced back. “Unless—do you think she’ll be returning soon?”

  Coco followed before the coward could reconsider. “I think she’s busy plotting the end of the world.”

  “This place . . .” Célie stared longingly over her shoulder as she too ascended. Her eyes lingered on the peacock quill before settling on the harp. Its golden strings. Her body swayed slightly to the haunting melody. “It’s so beautiful.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You almost died outside, Célie.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” she snapped, suddenly defensive. I bristled at her tone. “Believe me, I remember what magic is. It’s just—” Tearing her gaze from the room, she turned instead to Jean Luc, to me. Her hand rose to catch a snowflake between us, and we all watched it melt on her fingertip, transfixed. No. Not transfixed—revolted. “You never told me it could be beautiful too,” she finished, softer now.

  “It’s dangerous, Célie,” Jean Luc said.

  She lifted her chin. “Why can’t it be both?”

  We both heard what she really meant. Why can’t I be both?

  Jean Luc stared at her for several seconds, tilting his head in contemplation. When at last he nodded, affirming her unspoken question, she kissed his cheek and ascended the stairs with the others. He followed behind like a devoted, lovesick puppy, and my stomach plunged as if I’d missed a step. His response shouldn’t have surprised me. Nor hers. Célie had clearly suffered from the witches’ influence, and Jean Luc would never utter a word against her.

  Still, I felt . . . off, somehow—disjointed—as I jerked my chin toward Lou. She alone remained. The others had left in more than the literal sense. “Go.”

  Her gap-toothed smile slipped. “Forgive me, but I’d rather not end the night with a knife in my back. You understand, I’m sure.” She wiggled her fingers in silent threat, motioning me forward.

  Scowling, I followed Jean Luc. Though she’d been right in her suspicions—I did want to end her depraved existence—I had no choice but to obey. I’d lost my Balisarda. “I thought the door was guarded by a powerful enchantment.”

  Her footsteps fell heavy and clumsy behind me, her breath growing louder with each tread. Labored. I didn’t offer assistance. If she insisted on this foul magic, she would reap the reward. “That was a door,” she panted. “It wasn’t the door. Did you really think my mother would protect her most treasured possessions with only a bookshelf?”

  Her most treasured possessions. The words sent a thrill of anticipation through me. Surely, something beyond this door would be useful in eliminating her—in eliminating all of them. Perhaps if I liberated it, delivered it to the new Archbishop, I could renew my vows and rejoin my brotherhood. It was where I belonged.

  As quickly as the thought materialized, however, I cast it aside. If this new Archbishop accepted me so readily—me, a man guilty of murder and conspiracy—he would be no leader at all. I could not follow him. No, from this point onward, I could seek only atonement. I would kill these witches, yes, but I expected no reward. If the wanted posters had been true, I deserved none.

  I would kill them nonetheless.

  At the top of the staircase, the others halted before a simple, nondescript door. Lou pushed past me, still wheezing. She clutched her chest with one hand and the door handle with another. “My god. I think my knees might’ve actually cracked.”

  “My māmā rū’au can predict the weather with hers,” Beau offered.

  “She sounds like a fascinating woman, and I mean that genuinely.” Straightening as much as possible, Lou twisted the golden handle experimentally. It didn’t move. At my derisive snort, she muttered, “No harm in checking.”

  A beat of silence passed as she stared at the door, and we stared at her.

  Impatience sharpened my tone. “Well?”

  Flattening her palm on the handle, she cast me a cutting glance. “I was right. A nasty enchantment has been cast on this door, and it’ll take time to break—if I can break it at all.” She closed her eyes. “I can . . . feel it there. Like a sixth sense. The magic—it pulls at my chest even now.” She shook her head, opening her eyes once more. “But I don’t know if I can trust it.”

  Coco’s voice turned grim. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  “It wants to protect this place, even from me.”

  “You control the magic, Lou. It doesn’t control you.”

  “But what if—”

  “Shift your perspective.” The response startled even me, and it’d come from my own mouth. Beneath their startled gazes, I immediately regretted I’d spoken. Heat crept into my cheeks. Why had I spoken? I needed to get into this room, of course, but—no. That was the only explanation. I needed to get into this room. Looking each one of them directly in the eye, I continued, “This new magic, it wants to protect the Chateau. Why?”

  Lou frowned. “Because it’s my home. My sisters’ home. It’s been ours for all of living memory.”

  “That isn’t quite true,” Coco whispered.

  Lou blinked at her. “What?”

  “My aunt remembers differently.” Coco shifted in obvious discomfort. “She speaks of a time when Dames Rouges walked these halls instead of Dames Blanches.” At Lou’s bewildered expression, she hastened to add, “It doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything.”

  “But—”

  “She’s right,” I interrupted, my voice hard. “What matters now is whether you—La Dame des Sorcières—still consider this place your home.” When she didn’t speak, only stared at me intently, I shrugged. Shoulders rigid. “If not, it stands to reason your magic won’t protect it anymore. It’ll shift to your new home. Wherever that is.”

  She continued to stare at me. “Right.”

  I crossed my arms and looked away, distinctly uncomfortable. “So? Is it?”

  “No.” After another long, uncomfortable moment, she finally did the same, murmuring, “No, it isn’t.”

  Then she closed her eyes and exhaled. Her entire body relaxed into the movement, shedding its withered skin until she no longer resembled the Crone but a young woman once more. A vibrant young woman. A witch, my mind chastised. A vibrant young witch. Still, with her eyes closed, I couldn’t help but study her. Long brown hair and elfin features. Sharp-cut eyes. Sun-kissed freckles. At her throat, a ring of thorns circled her golden skin. Roses too.

  Why can’t I be both?

  The inexplicable urge to touch her nearly overpowered me. To trace the delicate curve of her nose. The bold arch of brow. I resisted the mad impulse. Only fools coveted beautiful and deadly things. I wasn’t a fool. I didn’t covet. And I certainly didn’t want to touch a witch, regardless of how she looked at me.

  She looked at me like I belonged to her and she belonged to me.

  “It’s a lock,” she breathed eventually, her face contorting with strain. Sweat glistened on her brow. “The magic. I’m the key. La Dame des Sorcières cast the enchantment, and only she can break it. But I”—her eyes screwed tighter—“the webs, they’re all fixed—I can’t move them. They’re like iron.”

  “You believe it a lock?” Célie approached the door hesitantly. “Pin and tumbler or warded?”

  Eyes still closed, Lou pursed her lips.
I tore my gaze away. “I’m not sure. It’s like—it’s like I’m inside it, if that makes sense—”

  “Description, please!”

  “I can’t describe the inside of a lock, Célie! I’ve never seen one!”

  “Well, I have, and—”

  “You have?” Jean Luc asked incredulously. “When?”

  “Everyone needs a hobby.” Resolute now, she shouldered past him to face Lou, grasping her hands. “I picked the lock on my father’s vault, and I can help you pick this one too. Now, tell me, do the patterns have notches and slots, or do they more resemble a counting frame? Are there three or more parallel rows?”

  Lou grimaced. So did Jean Luc. “No rows,” she said, her knuckles white around Célie’s. “They might be notches. I—I can’t tell.” She inhaled sharply as if in pain. “I don’t know if I have the control for this. The magic—it’s stronger than me. I . . .” Her voice trailed off, growing faint, and she swayed on her feet.

  “Nonsense.” Célie steadied her with a firm hand. “In my sister’s coffin—when I felt like I might float away—I counted the knots in the wood to ground myself. There were thirty-seven that I could see. I would count them, over and over, and I would take a breath with each one.” She squeezed Lou’s hands. “Listen to my voice and breathe.” Then— “You need a skeleton key.”

  I couldn’t help it. I stepped forward, eyes rapt on Lou’s face.

  “A skeleton key?” she asked.

  “It’s a warded lock. Those notches you see are meant for false protrusions, which prevent the mechanism from opening. A skeleton key has none. Form the key in your mind—long and narrow, with none but two true protrusions on the end. Shape them to fit the last notches, and push.”

  Coco shifted from foot to foot, her expression bewildered. “I don’t understand. Why would Morgane have created simple keys and locks when she has magic?”

  “Who the hell cares?” Beau hovered anxiously by the stairs, keeping watch. “It’s an enchanted lock for an enchanted door in an enchanted fucking castle. None of this makes sense. Just hurry up, will you? I think I heard something.”

  Lou gritted her teeth, pale and trembling now. “If one of you had tried to open this door, you wouldn’t have seen a lock. It’s meant for La Dame des Sorcières alone, but it’s also—it’s the previous matriarchs’ magic testing mine. I can feel their challenge. Their treasures lie within, and I must—earn—entry.” Her head twitched abruptly with each word, and her eyes flew open, snapping to the doorknob. It responded with a simple click. Heavy silence descended as we stared at it.

  Lifting a single finger to the wood, Lou pushed tentatively.

  The door swung inward.

  We stepped into a room of gold—or at least, it appeared so at first glance. In reality, the vaulted ceiling and octagonal walls had been erected from plates of mercury glass. They reflected the golden couronnes. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. The coins spilled forth from every corner, stacked precariously into piles, forming towers of their own. Narrow footpaths wove between them as roads and alleys in a colossal, glittering city.

  “This . . .” Beau craned his neck to study the highest crest in the ceiling. Built at the top of a tower, the room stretched taller than wide—cylindrical—like we’d walked into a music box. A basin of fire sat atop a pedestal in the center of the chamber. No logs fed the flames. They emitted no smoke. I inhaled deeply. Though magic coated everything, it tasted almost stale here. Like a thick blanket of dust. “Is not what I expected,” he finished at last.

  Lou examined a set of rusted chains near the door, the links thicker than her fists. A dried substance flaked from the metal. Brown, almost black. Blood. “What did you expect?”

  He picked up what looked like an ancient human skull. “A dusty cupboard full of creepy dolls and old furniture?”

  “It’s a treasury, Beau, not an attic.” She pointed to a heap of gold across the path. A wooden figurine sat atop a stained settee. Beside it lay a golden comb and a rose-handled mirror. “Though there is a doll there. Morgane once said it was cursed.”

  Beau blanched. “Cursed how?”

  “Just don’t look it in the eye.” Replacing the chains, she seemed to choose another path at random and strode forward. “Right. We should split up. Give a shout if you find something that resembles a golden ring, but don’t touch anything else.” She arched a brow over her shoulder at us. “Here there are many deadly and beautiful things.”

  I slipped behind her as the others scattered to search. At the sound of my footsteps, she turned with a small smile. Here, in this dark room with its cursed gold and magic fire, she looked more a witch than I’d seen her. Strange and mysterious. Almost surreal. “Just couldn’t stay away, could you?”

  I didn’t know why I’d followed her. I didn’t respond.

  When she slipped behind a wardrobe—its black cabinets painted with tiny flowers—I drew a knife from my bandolier. Her ghostly chuckle echoed through the thickly scented air. It seemed to shimmer where she’d disappeared, firelight illuminating the dust motes gold. A fingertip brushed my nape. Whirling, I found her standing directly behind me. Her eyes gleamed unnaturally bright. Blue. No, green. “I won’t let you kill me, you know,” she said. “You wouldn’t be able to live with yourself later.”

  My fingers ached on the hilt of my knife. My throat tightened. I couldn’t breathe. “I just want my memories back, witch.”

  Those haunting eyes fell to my blade, and she stepped forward. Once. Twice. Three times. She walked until her chest met its tip, and then she leaned farther still, drawing a bead of blood. Only then did her eyes return to mine. Only then did she whisper against my lips, “I want that too.”

  I stared at my knife. At her blood. A quick thrust would do it. One simple movement, and La Dame des Sorcières would be dead. Incapacitated, at the very least. She’d be helpless to stop me from pitching her body in the fire—the magic fire. It’d be almost poetic to watch her burn upon it. She’d be ash before the others could save her.

  A quick thrust. One simple movement.

  She would drive me mad unless I did it.

  We stayed that way for another second, another hundred seconds—tense, poised—but a shout sounded from across the treasury, breaking our standoff. “It’s here!” Célie’s laughter swelled between us. “I found it!” With a smirk, Lou stepped backward. Away from me. In her absence, I could breathe again. I could hate.

  The woman would drive me mad until I did it.

  “You’re lucky,” I said darkly, sheathing my knife.

  “Funny. I don’t feel lucky at all.”

  Her smirk seemed brittle as she turned to follow Célie’s voice, gifting me her back. Every fiber in my being longed to lunge. To attack. I even bent my knees, stopping only when a sapphire glinted in my periphery. I froze. From within a drawer of the wardrobe peeked the silver hilt of a Balisarda. It looked as if it’d been stuffed there haphazardly. Stowed away and forgotten. A jolt seared through my body. A lightning strike.

  Carefully, quietly, I slipped the Balisarda into my bandolier.

  We found Célie, Jean Luc, and Beau congregated beside the fire. Coco converged on them the same moment we did. Immediately, Célie thrust the unexceptional ring into her palm. “I found it,” she repeated, breathless with excitement. With something else. When her eyes flicked to Coco’s collar near imperceptibly, I followed the movement. A locket glittered there. “Here. Take it.”

  Coco examined the ring for a long moment before she smiled. “You would be the one to find it.” With an appreciative nod to Célie, she handed it to Lou, who slipped it on her finger like it belonged there. I frowned. “Thank you, Célie.”

  “We should go,” Beau urged. “Before Morgane comes back.”

  In agreement, we retreated down the stairs, but it wasn’t Morgane who met us at the door.

  It was Manon.

  Ask Me No Questions

  Reid

  Feet planted wide—arms gripping
each side of the threshold—she met us with a frighteningly blank expression. Trapping us here. All traces of her tears had been scrubbed away since the corridor below. “Chamomile tea, Louise?”

  Lou edged to the front of our group, her hand brushing mine as she passed. The touch tingled. I jerked away. “You looked like you needed it,” she said, gesturing to Manon’s general dishevelment. Her airy tone felt forced, as did her smile. “I’m assuming you didn’t heed my advice and drink it. When have you last slept?” Manon didn’t answer. Shouts below wiped the smile from Lou’s face all the same. Her eyes flew wide. “You—did you tell my mother—?”

  “Not yet. I had to be sure of the intruder. But I told others. They will inform Our Lady soon.”

  “Shit, shit, shit. Shit.” Exhaling a harsh, incredulous breath, Lou clenched her fists before seizing Manon’s collar and yanking her into the stairwell. Beau slammed the door behind them. “This is fine. They don’t know I’m here specifically. We can still—”

  “You will not escape again, Louise,” Manon said, her eyes still flat and unexpressive.

  “Just—just—” Lou wrung a fist in the witch’s face, and Manon stiffened like a board, unable to move. “Just shut up for a second, Manon. I need to think.” To Coco, Jean Luc, and me, she said hastily, “We can’t go out the way we came in. Any brilliant ideas?”

  “We fight our way out,” I said instantly.

  Jean Luc’s brow furrowed as he considered strategy. “There are six of us. Enemy numbers unknown. We’ve claimed the higher ground, but we’d need to form a choke point—”

  I pounded my fist against the door. “We have one. They can’t break the enchantment—”

  “You’re both idiots.” Lou turned imploring eyes on Coco. “Was there anything in the treasury we could use?”

  “Can’t you just show them the Goddess has revoked Morgane’s blessing?” Beau waved his hands wildly. “You are their queen now, correct?”

  “Again, why didn’t I think of that? I’ll tell you what, Your Highness, why don’t you command your people to stop burning witches, so all of our problems go away?” She turned back to Coco before he could answer. “There was magic fire.”