The Charlatan's Conquest

by Vivien Dean

  “How’re you doing?” Cruz asked.

  Etienne waved off the question. “I’m fine. But why is it I sent you perfectly good instructions for my very best protections, and you still brought him back here broken?”

  Oh, hell no, he wasn’t laying this at Cruz’s feet. “I’m not broken,” Brody snapped.

  Etienne glanced at Brody’s feet, then swept a more discerning gaze over the pair of them. A wicked smile curved his mouth. “Well, I hope you loaded up on carbs after, because I need you at full strength to get this off the ground.”

  Cruz helped Brody get up the stairs, though Brody had to nudge him so he’d skirt an unmoving Simone. He had no desire to find out whether or not he’d go straight through her. Based on how solid she seemed, he’d probably seen ghosts his whole life and never realized it. The thought left him nauseated.

  They settled in a massive family room with sliding doors that led out to an even larger cedar deck. Etienne was perched on a bar stool at an island that separated the seating area from a gourmet kitchen, his crutch propped against the counter beside him, while Simone kept flitting back and forth like she wasn’t sure what to do with herself.

  “So here’s the plan,” Etienne said. “I’ve got everything started for Junior to open a window, he’ll let the pesky devils in, I’ll help him cut them free, then voila! No more psychic vermin.”

  That wasn’t a plan. That was barely an outline. “Who’s Junior?” Brody asked.

  “That’s you.”

  “You really have to start calling him by name,” Cruz said.

  Brody didn’t care what he called him as long as the plan was sound. “You need to be way more specific than that if you expect my help.”

  “Oh, no, it’s the other way around. I’ll be the one helping you. They want to steer clear of me.” He winked. “They know I’m the real deal.”

  “Even more reason for specifics.”

  “Is this dangerous?” Cruz asked.

  “Yes,” Simone said, at the same time Etienne replied, “Not really.”

  Brody looked back and forth between them. “So which one is it?”

  “Simone’s just touchy because they got the best of her.”

  “Or it could have something to do with the fact that you’re still recovering from the last time you tried tangling with a spirit you didn’t fully understand,” she snapped back.

  Etienne scowled. “I understand these bugs just fine.”

  “When was the last time you took one on? Oh, that’s right. That would be never.”

  “You know Junior can hear you, don’t you? I’m trying to instill confidence here.”

  As their argument went back and forth, Cruz leaned closer. “Don’t let this get to you. Simone’s always a downer.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Brody saw her pick up a mug and throw it with deadly accuracy at the back of Cruz’s head.

  “Hey!” He knocked it out of the way, sending it veering toward the nearby recliner. His hand vibrated from the impact, and he shook it out as he glared at Simone. “Was that really necessary?”

  “Enough.” The sharpness of Etienne’s voice startled all of them. Three heads swiveled at the same time to find him back on his feet. “We’ll have enough on our hands tonight without turning on each other. Simone, let me do this. Cruz, be nice. Simone’s our best chance at a Hail Mary if anything goes south. Brody….” His voice trailed off, and the good ol’ boy from their arrival peeked through. “Thanks for keeping an eye out for Cruz. It’s about time he had someone watching his back.”

  This Etienne he could get behind.

  “Now let’s get to work.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  BRODY wasn’t going to lie. He was scared as hell. Etienne’s plan was thorough, but frankly, it relied on a lot of dominos falling into place to work. If one fell wrong, the rest would fail or, worse, implode and wreak havoc for the others while he sat back and watched helplessly.

  Because that was the only part he wasn’t too worried about. No matter what happened, his ghosts weren’t going to let him die. They needed him. To sacrifice him if they got pissed was suicidal, and that was one trait he was positive they didn’t possess.

  Everybody else, however, was expendable.

  Etienne was blasé about the threat, though honestly, Brody wasn’t really worried about him. Simone would fight to the death—again—to protect him, and Etienne seemed fairly certain his skills evicting other ghosts would protect him this time too.

  No, Brody’s true terror revolved around Cruz. Simone wouldn’t be as swift to defend him as she would her brother, and with Brody stuck in the middle of the ritual, Cruz would be on his own. Anything could happen. They had to know he was the one who got Brody out of Philadelphia. They’d tried hurting him there. Here, in the middle of nowhere, where anything could be used as a weapon and they had no flesh to fight back against, what chance did Cruz have if things went wrong?

  He took a deep breath. Relax. He was working himself up and making it worse.

  At least Etienne had agreed with him that Cruz needed to be kept out of harm’s way. With the pair of them standing firm—they had that in common—everything Cruz tried fell flat. The best compromise he could get was a protective circle in the same room, out of Brody’s sight so he wasn’t distracted, fully fortified so nobody and nothing would get in or out until Etienne broke the seal. Or got killed, as Cruz was quick to remind them. Lucky for him Simone wasn’t around when he added that part. He would’ve been out cold otherwise.

  The ritual was taking place in Etienne’s private gym, the least dangerous room in the house simply because it held the fewest items that might be used against them. The treadmill was too heavy to move out, but with Simone’s help, Etienne had managed to haul away the free weights and bench, as well as the minitrampoline, exercise ball, and resistance bands. The mirrored wall was a problem. The mirrors were bolted in place, but they’d be easy enough to break and could slash through human flesh with little effort. To mitigate those, Simone covered them with sheets. The ghosts could still get to the glass if they got rid of the fabric, but it would buy them time if the need arose.

  Brody stood at the center of the room. In a corner to Brody’s right, Etienne perched on a bar stool with Simone as his bodyguard only inches away. Cruz was behind Brody in the diagonal corner to the Newman siblings, trapped inside another of Etienne’s protective circles. He couldn’t even distract Brody verbally. It was like Cruz sat in a soundproof glass booth.

  Brody had stripped down to loose shorts and a T-shirt so Etienne could paint his bare skin with the concoction he’d created. It smelled vaguely like the candles Cruz had used for the sweep in Binghamton, with an added piquancy that reminded him of his father’s favorite Scotch. He had no idea what the ingredients were. He was afraid to ask after Etienne warned him about the candles that marked off the points of the triangle he stood inside.

  “There’s silver fulminate in the coating,” he said. “Don’t touch.”

  Brody rolled the words around in his head but came up with nothing. “Why do I know that?”

  “Ever had a snap firecracker?”

  He stared at the candles in trepidation. “So you’re putting me in the middle of highly sensitive explosives?” Silver fulminate was the component that made the crackers go off.

  “They only boom if you touch them.” Etienne gave him a hard stare. “So don’t.”

  “What’re they for?”

  “The heat the candles put off will form the walls that’ll protect the rest of us.”

  “And it’s a triangle because it’ll best withstand compressive forces?”

  Etienne shrugged. “That sounds too much like school for me. Triangles are hard to break.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Not in English, you didn’t.”

  Brody pressed his lips together to stop the natural retort. Where was Cruz when he needed him? He’d understand.

  The candles were co
vered with a delicate glass dome that had a small opening in the top to allow a stream of pale blue smoke to float upward. The thickness of the smoke had something to do with whether or not they were ready, something only Etienne could determine—hence his vantage point in the corner of the room. Brody could just stand there, sweat starting to trickle down the inside of his thighs as the space within the triangle warmed. He had to wait for the signal. Eyes on Etienne. Thoughts on the job at hand. Hopes somewhere near the ground since he was pretty sure this was never going to work, in spite of Etienne’s assertions to the contrary.

  Simone never looked away from him, but even when Brody stared at the wall, he couldn’t block her out. If she dared to say anything, the tight strings that kept him composed would snap.

  Was it worth it? He didn’t want to put everybody at risk. Who were these ghosts really hurting? He’d lived this long with them. What was another thirty or forty or fifty years?

  Lonely, that’s what they’d be. Because he’d never be able to have a real relationship. Any possibility of a future with Cruz would be out of the question too. Brody would never run the risk of something more happening to Mariana. She’d already been through enough. He couldn’t guarantee the ghosts wouldn’t use her as a pawn if they thought they could get away with it.

  There was his answer. It was worth it. A life with Cruz was priceless. They understood each other. They had fun together. Plus, there was the wicked attraction that still made his blood hum when he dwelled on it. He would fight to keep it, to find a way to make it permanent, because they both deserved to finally have some happiness.

  “Houston, we have lift-off,” Etienne said from the corner.

  The order wasn’t quite what he expected to hear, but the lock of Etienne’s gaze on Brody was unmistakable.

  Brody reached into the first of his three bags and pinched some of the herb mixture between his fingers. When Etienne first went over the plan, he couldn’t wrap his brain around it. It was a combination New Age/cooking recipe with some Eastern philosophy thrown in for good measure. He knew the herbs had medicinal properties, and frankly, there was a lot about Chinese medicine that worked in ways people couldn’t explain, so he shoved aside his apprehension and tried channeling blind faith.

  It was easier said than done. Especially when he sprinkled the herbs into each of the three candle flames and absolutely nothing happened.

  He looked at Etienne in question. He wasn’t allowed to speak except for the banishment words when the time came. Something about upsetting the supernatural rhythms of the world.

  “Now you wait,” Etienne said. “Give ’em time to come knocking.”

  Doing nothing was not his forte.

  He counted his breaths to give him something internal to focus on. Sometimes it worked during meditation, but in this situation, he had to fight not to speed them up and start hyperventilating. When he reached seventeen, Simone flickered.

  He frowned. Etienne hadn’t said anything about that happening.

  She flickered again.

  What number was he on? He’d lost count. All right, he’d start over.

  But before he could, Simone disappeared. No flicker this time. One second she was there, the next… nothing.

  Etienne sat up straight. “Simone?” Though his voice was calm, his gaze was not, darting from here to there as he tried searching for her without moving. “Not funny, Simone. Get your ass back here.”

  The sweat that had been dripping down Brody’s legs went cold, and his arms rippled in gooseflesh as the temperature suddenly dropped. His next breath out came in a plume, fanning around his face before dissipating into nothingness.

  The smoke over the candles turned a dark gold.

  “Step two,” Etienne said. “Do it.”

  Brody had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, and his hand shook as he palmed the three seeds from the next bag. Etienne said they came from a flower in the bayou, where locals used them to attract predators intent on clearing out the smaller animal population. The seeds were toxic, the oils that coated them capable of paralysis. That was part of the explanation for the coating over Brody’s skin. It acted as a sealant against any of the poisons that might otherwise kill him before the ritual was over.

  Maybe he should’ve taken the list of all the things within the eviction itself that could hurt him as a sign he shouldn’t try it in the first place.

  He cleared his throat. The words that fell from his lips were foreign, awkward in their construction, rasping along his flesh like sandpaper. He’d practiced them for half an hour before Etienne declared his pronunciations good enough, but he still wasn’t clear what he was saying. Something about welcome or come in, and then “dark of the dark,” whatever that meant. Considering he felt like he’d been dropped in liquid nitrogen, he couldn’t even be sure he was saying them properly.

  The edges of his vision darkened. Great, he was going to pass out from the cold. Better to burn the seeds while he still had some motor control.

  When the third was resting in the melted wax, the iciness eased. He straightened and shifted his weight back onto his good ankle. The ibuprofen he’d taken for the bad one was starting to wear off.

  “Traitor….”

  The lone word was a breath against his cheek, in a rumbling voice he didn’t recognize. He stumbled backward, but rather than fall on his ass, he hit an invisible force that pushed him back upright. The wall. It was there. Did that mean…?

  “I’m not a traitor.” Where the words to the ritual had felt like glass, these that should’ve been right and familiar choked him. He tried coughing, but that did nothing to make it better. “This is my life, not yours.”

  “Ours….”

  Where was it coming from? Brody looked around him, but Etienne was still perched in his seat in the corner, quiet for probably the first time in his life. Though he was watching Brody, he gave no sign that he saw anything amiss.

  “Can you see them?” he asked, directing the query to Etienne.

  Etienne didn’t react. He didn’t even blink.

  That couldn’t be good.

  “You think you can hide from us?”

  He was on his own here. What was he supposed to do next? The third stage was meant to launch when the shadows made their presence known, but he couldn’t see them. He heard them, though, which had to count for something.

  “Screw it,” he muttered.

  More herbs, though these were tied in the same type of sprig bundles as the ones Cruz had used during the sweep. Three different kinds, each more stinky than the last. One had thorns. On that, Brody pricked his thumb and swabbed the bead of blood that came to the surface across the leaves of the remaining sprigs.

  A sharp blast of wind tore the bundles from his hand.

  Brody scrambled to catch them, but with the walls firmly in place, the wind had nowhere to go. He was trapped in a gale, buffeted from all sides with no way to get out of it, while the herbs kept whipping around, too fast to grab on to. He screamed in frustration, especially when he was knocked off balance and landed on his bad ankle.

  “This is not about you!” He had to squint to keep his eyes from watering, which only made it harder to spot the flying herbs. “I want my life back!”

  By sheer luck, he snagged one of the sprigs, so before he lost it again, he dropped to his knees and shoved it through the glass opening over the candle until the stalks were in the flame. He had no idea if it was the right one. Etienne said the order mattered, but when the world was flying to pieces around him, Brody said to hell with the order.

  He almost laughed. Cruz would, if he knew Brody was forsaking order just to get a job done. It was practically ridiculous.

  As the sprig caught on fire, he spotted the shadows for the first time. They were pressed flat to the invisible walls, the smoke licking along their edges. They were still amorphous, but there, in the malleable surface that rippled at the same beat of the wind, he could almost make out features. Human fe
atures, or once human, anyway. Too indeterminate to know gender, but of what use was that information?

  “Why fight it?” they said.

  He gritted his teeth. “Because I’ve finally found someone worth fighting for, you bastards.”

  They remained along the wall. If he reached out, he could touch them, but he was terrified of what would happen if he made physical contact. But even as he realized that, another question popped up. Why were they keeping their distance? They’d never bothered with that before.

  Fighting against the wind, he edged closer to them. Immediately, they slithered upward.

  His momentary hope they were afraid of him was quashed when he remembered Etienne’s paint job. That had to be what was repelling them. When he was done here, he was going to get on his knees and thank Etienne over and over for it.

  Another herb bundle scratched across his face. Brody grabbed it out of the air and shoved it into the second flame.

  The shadows screamed.

  It was working. Somehow, some way, all of Etienne’s mumbo-jumbo crap was doing the job. All he needed was to catch the third sprig and burn it.

  The glass around the remaining candle began to shake.

  “No,” he hissed. His heart was pounding, his blood roaring in his ears. Time was running out. The shadows were willing to set off an explosion to keep him from finishing. All his suppositions about them refusing to sacrifice him had been wrong, just like his spreadsheet had been wrong.

  Not wrong. Just looked at the wrong way.

  That was it. That was the answer.

  The only way to beat them was to throw his life on the line before they tried to minimize their loss with something like paralysis.

  He crawled the two feet to the final candle. The shaking worsened until he wrapped both hands around the glass and held it firm. It vibrated against his palm in its battle to get free, but he refused to let go, biting down so hard to keep control that he tasted blood.