Her gold eyes narrowed. “You have vexed me. You’ve ruined plans long in the making.”
I would have spread my arms, but they were already pulled wide. “You would rule through Nitidean, controlling lands that were once yours?”
“And will be mine again.” She smiled, flashing fang. “I have traveled more swiftly than my kin.”
“The Sepheri never arrive strong enough to reestablish control.”
“Some of us anticipated the Scattering. We planned. Our plans bear fruit.” She slithered forward and grabbed my jaw in a long, taloned hand. “You will help me.”
Her claw raked through my neck. Energy spurted as if it were blood. I cast a spell to staunch the flow, and she opposed it, keeping the wound open. I moved to pinch off a vein. Though I had no veins there, if I visualized the rent in one, I could close it. She forced it back open.
A bulbous jar appeared in her other hand. She pressed it against my breastbone, slowly filling it with the energy leaking from me. Collecting it distracted her, so I plugged a hole. This gave me hope, but she crushed it, strangled it.
Then it grew anew as I fought back. I won, pushing hard, closing my throat. I smiled and almost laughed. In her realm I was winning, which should have been impossible.
And with another caress of a talon over my throat, I realized it was impossible. She toyed with me, torturing me, slowly draining my essence for future use. Hope could be incredibly powerful—able to work miracles among the magick-ignorant.
I stopped fighting.
She slapped me. “Do not give up now, little man.” She came closer and pressed her lips to mine. “I want it all.”
Repulsed, I wanted to fight, but she would win.
Her tongue flickered against my lips. She pulled me closer. A thumb on my chin pried my jaw open. Her feathery tongue slithered into my mouth.
Then she jolted, and her Lair imploded.
It felt as if her Lair had shattered into a million crystal shards. Every one of them blew through me. I gasped and coughed. I pushed up, but my hands slipped in blood. I rolled to the side and banged my head on a wall. Stars shimmered, then vision returned.
Kellach held Veneceana’s severed head by the hair. Two servants lay dead, and four more cowered in a corner with a pair of the Duke’s Wurmhounds holding them at bay. I pulled farther back, realizing my tingling feet still lay on her body, then pulled myself from the pallet.
I staggered and went to my knees.
Kellach buried a bloody short sword in a table, then hauled me to my feet. He stared at me.
I held up gory hands. “I need a moment. I should not be here.”
“You are still welcome.” He recovered the blade and wiped it on her gown before sliding it into the scabbard. “We should not linger.”
“No.” I shook my head to clear it, then used a spell to check myself. None of the blood was mine. My throat wound was closed, though I’d carry a pair of scars for the rest of my life. Despite my legs’ trembling and the overwhelming desire to lie down and sleep, I figured I would survive.
What I couldn’t figure out was how I’d ended up there. Veneceana must have somehow dragged me physically through the Veils when she returned to her body. Such a thing was impossible, at least to my knowledge, but it had happened. She had suggested she had anticipated the Scattering. Was that ability part of it?
I leaned on a table and overturned a wine pitcher. I washed my bloody hands, then followed Kellach. I might not have made it, save one of the Wurmhounds let me hold on to its tail.
“The dogs found this place by the scent of your piss?”
The Cengar laughed, then emerged into a wider lane and crossed to a closed, horse-drawn carriage. Two hands slid through a curtained window and smeared Sepheri blood over themselves. The Bloodlock ring slipped off easily and shattered against the ground.
The carriage door opened and Duke Darikean stepped forth, still looking like a victim of the black flux. His pet sorcerer followed him and gestured, removing the glamour that had so effectively made him appear dead.
The Wurmhounds went to him but did not lick at his hands.
My eyes narrowed. “Kellach reported back to you that we’d met Veneceana and you recognized the name.”
“Not the name, but the description. When I was a youth, she seduced me. Though I kept her as a mistress for several years, I sent her away when I first married. I thought she had left the city.”
“Then you went off to Aviantis. She poisoned your wife and child, then later replaced the child. You raised the viper in your own home.” I shook my head. “You faked your death to precipitate her plans?”
He nodded.
“But that got your son killed. Your wife and daughter as well.”
He cocked his head. “Though I knew she was involved, I did not know who had become her agent in my household.”
“If you’d told me she was your enemy, I could have learned Nitidean’s secret.” I ran a hand over my jaw. “That would have required trust. You didn’t trust me. You didn’t trust your own family.”
“I can always replace a family.”
I closed my eyes, wishing no longer to peer into the soulless pits in his face. The carriage’s springs squeaked as he got back in. The horse stamped. Something heavy bounced from my chest and clanked on the ground.
I looked. A bulging purse.
I almost did it. I almost reached back and gathered enough power to convert his carriage into the pyre he’d avoided.
The driver snapped the reins, and the carriage clattered from sight, the dogs trailing obediently.
Kellach knelt and hefted the purse. “A generous offering.”
“I suppose.” I rubbed my chest. “He’s alive. That’s all the Iron Duke cares about. It’s all he can care about.”
Kellach stood but said nothing.
“That man let my city die, and I just saved his life.”
“He is mortal.” The Cengar tossed the pouch up and caught it again. “He could die sooner than he expects.”
I smiled at my friend’s veiled offer of murder, then shook my head. “His home is a hall of the dead. He thinks he can replace a family. Maybe. But while he lay there pretending to be dead, he heard his family mourning his death. They loved him as he never could have loved them.”
“Some men do not need that.”
“Don’t kid yourself, my friend, every man needs that, and those who think they don’t need it even more.” I plucked the money from his hand.
“In the cold hours before dawn, the Iron Duke will hear their wails repeated. He will never sleep well again.”
The House of Seven Spirits
Sharon Shinn
I had thought it would bother me to live in a haunted house, but in fact I grew fond of the ghosts in an amazingly short time.
The agent from whom I rented the property for the summer had been very clear about the amenities—three bedrooms, two bathrooms, renovated kitchen, wi-fi DSL, cable TV, a small backyard, weekly yard service, and seven unevictable tenants.
“Some people never see them,” he told me, his dark eyes earnest and his pale face severe. He’d tried to talk me out of renting the place, but I couldn’t pass up its dirt-cheap price. Writers just don’t make that much money, and I had almost despaired of finding someplace I could afford for a few months while I put my life back together. “But everyone always reports a sense of being watched. Accompanied. I don’t believe they’ll harm you. But you might be—uncomfortable.”
Uncomfortable was staying in the tiny New York apartment with Steve while we hammered out the terms of a divorce. Could seven sad wraiths fill me with as much anger and despair? Hard to believe.
“How did they die?” I asked.
He reeled them off as if he’d given this particular speech too often to count. “Martin shot his wife, Suzanne, and her lover, Bradley, when he came home and found them together. Then he killed himself. That was fifteen years ago. A couple of years after that, two elderly
women, Victoria and Charlotte, died of carbon monoxide poisoning—that’s been taken care of, by the way. A middle-aged man named Edison fell down the stairs and broke his neck. Lizzie died of spinal meningitis when she was nine years old. Her mother thought she just had a bad case of the flu. That was three years ago. No one’s died in the house since because no one’s lived there very long.”
“Who owns the place?”
“Family members. I deal most often with a niece who owns and rents out a number of properties in the area.” He gave me another serious look. “You should think hard before you decide you want to live in this house.”
“I’ll chance it. I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.”
He didn’t laugh. Maybe he didn’t get the reference. I wrote out a check for my first month’s rent, got a map, got a key, and set out for my new home.
I was met just inside the front door by an older woman with curly gray hair and a wide, hopeful smile. I’d always thought ghosts would be a misty white, floating from room to room like errant wisps of smoke. But this one was colorful in a pink-and-purple-patterned blouse and navy blue trousers. Insubstantial, though—she looked like a watercolor painted on a sheet of gauze. I could see straight through her to the polished taupe of the walls.
Despite the rental agent’s warning, I was startled to see her, and I dropped my key. “Hello!” I said, feeling my heart beat suddenly harder. “Um—I’m the new tenant. Erica. I’m here for the summer. Hope that’s all right.”
She clapped her hands together, though they made no sound, and looked delighted. “You can see me!” she exclaimed. “Oh, I’m so glad. The couple who were here last—well—they clearly knew when one of us was in the room, but no matter how loud we were or how much we waved our arms, they just never seemed to be able to focus. They didn’t stay long,” she added sadly. “We didn’t mean to frighten them. I hope you won’t be afraid.”
Indeed, my heart had already settled down to a normal pace. She looked like somebody’s grandmother, just in from the kitchen after having made a batch of cookies. “Not afraid yet,” I said. “Which one are you?”
She smiled again. “Victoria. So pleased to meet you.”
I glanced around. “Maybe you can give me a tour of the house.”
It was a lovely place, probably eighty years old, two stories of hardwood floors and hard plaster walls and shabby-chic furniture that someone had picked out with care. But my first walk-through was a little—unusual.
“Here’s the kitchen, where Martin died,” Victoria said, showing me the small but spotless black-and-white-tiled room. The dining room hadn’t seen much action, but the living room was the place where “Charlotte and I were watching TV when we were overcome by carbon monoxide poisoning.” She sighed. “We only got to see the first couple seasons of The X-Files. I always wanted to know what happened.”
“There were a couple of movies, too,” I said.
“I know! Never got to see them, either.”
So they must have died before 1998. “Were you and Charlotte sisters?”
“Lifelong friends. Widows. We moved in together after her husband died.” She headed toward the stairs, gesturing at a pretty rug placed beneath the very bottom step. “That’s where Edison lay dying after he fell and broke his neck. He was alive for quite some time, but none of us could figure out how to use the phone and call for help. Very tragic.”
I stepped gingerly on the floral pattern of the rug. “He just fell?”
She glanced over her shoulder at me, an impish look in her eye. “Well. He says that Martin pushed him. Impossible, of course. Martin may have appeared suddenly and frightened him, causing him to take a misstep, but he doesn’t have any more strength than the rest of us.”
I swallowed. Martin was the only one of the ghosts who had violence associated with his past, at least as far as I knew. “Would he—is Martin the kind of person who would want to shove someone down the stairs? Did he frighten Edison on purpose?”
“Martin is very angry,” Victoria admitted. “It’s my theory that no one who dies in this house will ever be permitted to leave as long as Martin’s spirit is still tethered here. But did he try to kill Edison? I doubt it. He dislikes Edison even more than the rest of us do. I wouldn’t think Martin would have wanted to be stuck with him for—well, forever.”
I thought that over as Victoria showed me through the upstairs rooms. “Here’s the bedroom where Bradley and Suzanne were killed. Some people say you can still see the blood on the floor, but I’ve never been able to make it out… This is the bedroom where Lizzie died. Poor thing. She was so hot. Charlotte and I stayed with her all night because, you know, a ghost can bring a chill to the air, and we hoped it would bring her fever down. But no such luck… Her body went still, then her spirit just sat up. She looked at us, and said, ‘I guess I’m here with you two now.’ “
Lizzie’s room was smaller, for Bradley and Suzanne had been killed in the master bedroom, but I liked it better. More light streamed in through the two tall windows, and the view showed the small green backyard. And, OK, I was less unnerved by the idea of sleeping alongside the ghost of a girl who had died of illness than the thought of sharing a bed with the spirits of two murder victims.
“I think I’ll make this my bedroom,” I said.
Victoria gestured down the hall. “The third bedroom is quite nice, and no one died there,” she said. Clearly I hadn’t fooled her at all.
So I followed her into a room about the size of Lizzie’s and prettily furnished, but it was instantly clear to me that it would be my last choice. For one thing, the sun had a hard time making its way through the single side window. For another, the room was significantly colder than any other room in the house.
For another, it really was haunted.
A thin, bony-faced woman sat on the bed, apparently reciting a story to a small blond girl who leaned against her, smiling sleepily. They had to be Charlotte and Lizzie. A dark-haired young woman stood at the window, looking out; I could only see her profile, but the twist of her mouth was bitter and dissatisfied. A few feet away from her stood a short, pudgy man who looked like he had once been ruddy and choleric. He was talking so loudly that I couldn’t hear the tale Charlotte was spinning for Lizzie.
“If you’d only ask him to be more thoughtful. He’ll listen to you. But, no, you’re too selfish to think about anyone but yourself or anything but your own misery.”
The woman at the window ignored him, but Charlotte gave him an icy stare. “For God’s sake, Edison, no one has ever had any success at getting Martin to behave in any but the most abominable fashion, and your incessant complaining is about to drive every single one of us stark raving mad. Will you just shut up?”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Instantly, they were all staring at me. I had the strange sensation that they hadn’t seen me when I walked through the door—as if whatever plane ghosts existed on really didn’t intersect with the ordinary world, at least all the time. I tried to smooth away my smile. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m Erica. Victoria’s showing me around.”
Charlotte looked at Victoria with her eyebrows raised. “She sees all of us?”
“I see you and the little girl—Lizzie?—and Edison,” I volunteered. “And someone at the window. Suzanne, I guess. I haven’t seen Martin or—” For a moment I blanked on his name. “Or Bradley yet.” I glanced at Victoria. “Did I miss them?”
She shook her head. “They must be in the yard. They can’t go past the property boundaries, but both of them like to be outside of the house.”
Charlotte stood up, urging Lizzie forward. I had the feeling that the older woman would have offered me her hand, except long experience had taught her it was useless for a ghost. “How very nice to meet you,” she said, her voice more reserved than Victoria’s but her pleasure just as genuine. “We hope you’ll enjoy your stay.”
Lizzie jumped up and down. “Will you play with me? Will you read me stories? Charlotte tells me stories al
l the time, but she doesn’t know any new ones. Will you go to the library and check out new books for me? And read them to me? Every night?”
I was charmed. “I will. What kinds of books do you like?”
Edison made a huffing sound. “Oh, sure, the cute little girl gets all the attention! It doesn’t matter what anyone else wants. You could read me Tom Clancy books, but will you? I don’t think so!”
“Shut up, Edison,” Suzanne said. She had moved away from the window and was heading for the door. It seemed to me that she had less color than the others—she was a closer approximation of my idea of a ghost—that her very manner and expression were drenched in sadness. She gave me one unfathomable look and slipped out the door.
“Well, nobody cares about me,” Edison muttered. “I’m the one everyone always forgets.”
“I don’t think I’ll forget you, Edison,” I said cheerfully. “I think we’ll all be friends.”
And oddly, we were. I mean, almost right away. As soon as I hauled all my stuff in from the car, I headed out to run errands. I picked up food at the grocery store, books at the library, and DVDs at Blockbuster. That very night, I set up entertainment zones in four separate rooms of the house. I’d rented a few seasons of The X-Files for Charlotte and Victoria, and I set up the first discs to play in the living room. Victoria told me that Bradley liked PBS shows, so I had the little TV in the kitchen tuned to the local public television station, even though Bradley still hadn’t made an appearance. For Edison, I’d rented a selection of Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Tom Clancy books on CD, and I had one of them running on my laptop up in the third bedroom, where the ghosts seemed to like to congregate.
Lizzie and I settled into her room/my room, and I read her half of a Baby-Sitter’s Club book. She leaned against me just as she had against Charlotte, listening happily. There was no weight to her body, but I felt a coolness against my skin, as if a curl of winter had blown through the window and come to rest companionably at my side.
Unusual Suspects: Stories of Mystery & Fantasy Page 8