by Chloe Adler
The corner of his mouth curved up. “Well, you with Burgundy is hot, I won’t deny that. Nor do I wish to come between you two.” His breath caught. “Well . . . literally, yes, but not figuratively.”
“Are you proposing a triad?”
“I’m not proposing anything. This is a conversation that we need to keep having, to work out the particulars and then probably rework them. Set some ground rules if you want to stay with me. But I see the discussion as being fluid. And right now, you need all your powers in order to rescue our families. Yes?”
I rolled on top of him, grunting my assent. Covering his face with kisses and running my hands through his hair, I sat up. “Let’s revisit this later.”
There was a shuffling in the doorway and then something hard dropped onto the floor. We looked up to see Chrys standing there with her mouth unhinged, her nose crinkled up and her hands on her hips. She had dropped a coffee mug, which luckily had bounced but not shattered.
“Sadie. On the kitchen floor? Really? How inappropriate are you?”
Ryder gently pushed me aside and stood up, fully naked. Chrys covered her eyes with her hands and turned around quickly.
“Oh my god,” she screeched. “Have you two no shame?”
Old, familiar humiliation washed over me. I had always been uncomfortable with who I was. But now it was no longer a who, it was a what. This was my true nature. My chest puffed out in unfamiliar pride.
Burgundy and Jared were behind her almost instantly.
“Chrys, you’re blocking the doorway,” said Burgundy.
“Move into the kitchen.” Jared gave her a little push, her back still to us.
Ryder finished putting his clothes back on and then helped me up. Burgundy tossed me a sundress. My man caught it with one hand, shook it out and pulled it over my head.
“A lot has happened since you went to lie down,” I said.
“Obviously.” She was in the kitchen now but with her arms crossed over her chest, her back still to us. “A lot of sex. You know, Sadie, I get that being a slutty nympho is truly who you are, but at a time like this?”
“It had to be done.” Burgundy put her hand on Chrys’s arm and Chrys allowed herself to be escorted to the table. “Everyone else sit, now,” she ordered, sitting down next to Chrys.
From somewhere outside, a crow cawed. Our heads turned toward the window as a gust of dried leaves blew up in full force, scratching the pane.
“Bad omen,” Jared stated. We were all thinking the same thing.
My ball still rested on the table.
“Chrys, what’s the Latin spell for scrying?”
“Ostendat unum malum,” she replied.
I repeated it after her.
Nothing happened and Chrys made a sound. We all looked at her.
“Well, it’s not like you have any real powers,” she scoffed, smoothing back her hair to tighten her ponytail.
I waved my hand in the air and the crystal ball, their cups of tea and even the discarded paper from their tea bags rose up above the table and hovered there.
Chrys looked up, her mouth agape.
“That’s right,” I said a little too smugly. “And it’s one of the things we wanted to tell you. My powers have, shall we say . . . blossomed.”
Burgundy’s smile was all sparkles and teeth, her eyes hidden behind her thick, dark hair.
I waved my hand again, gently, and everything returned to its proper place on the table.
Chrys made an unattractive sound with her lips as Burgundy clapped gleefully.
Ignoring them, I looked down at the crystal ball, concentrating. Nothing happened. It remained as clear as glass.
I tapped on it, waved my hand over it, silently begged it and still nothing. I felt humiliated but the others weren’t saying a word.
“I don’t know why it’s not working,” I stated loudly to draw attention to the problem. I looked around the table, meeting everyone’s gaze. We were all in this together.
“I have an idea,” said Chrys.
All heads turned to look at her, including mine.
“I’ve seen Mom do it.” She got up and walked toward the cupboards. “We need a large container. Wooden, metal or ceramic. Something made of a natural element.”
Burgundy got up and rummaged through the cabinets for a minute, then pulled out her favorite large blue and white ceramic bowl.
Holding it toward Chrys, she asked, “Will this work?”
Chrys took it, turning it over in her hands. “Yes, this is fine. Now we need either colored water or fruit juice to fill it.”
“Colored water?” I asked.
“Food coloring,” said Chrys matter-of-factly.
Burgundy was already looking in the fridge. “We have cranberry juice, will that work?”
“Yup.” Chris returned to the table with the bowl and placed it in the center. She instructed Burgundy to fill it to the rim with the cranberry juice.
“Now what?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.” Chrys looked sheepish. “Mom says some words in Latin and sometimes she lights a few candles.”
“Why would she use this instead of her ball?” I asked.
“She said this works when the ball doesn’t, that’s all I know.”
“Fine.” I wondered briefly if Chrys was making all of this up to make me look even more ridiculous, but then the juice moved a little bit. We all stared into the bowl, but nothing else happened.
Waving my hand over it, I said again, “Ostendat unum malum.” There was another movement, light waves on an otherwise placid surface, and then nothing.
I threw my hands up into the air, fisting them. My immediate intention was to bring them down hard on the tabletop, which would have spilled the liquid, but I was too angry to care. Ryder reached out and grabbed one of my hands before I could react and suddenly the liquid swirled. We all saw it.
“It’s moving,” said Jared.
Ryder dropped my hand as I returned to my seat, leaning forward to see. But as soon as he let go of me, the swirling stopped.
I looked back at Ryder. His eyebrows arched. He reached for my hand again and as soon as we connected, the water swirled slightly. I reached out my left hand to grasp Chrys’s. To my surprise, she complied without a word. Soon, the five of us were standing, hands linked around the table. The liquid in the bowl churned.
“Show me the Scrim.” I said with as much authority as I could muster.
The churning cleared, and in the bowl was a vision of a miniature mansion.
I looked up and met everyone’s eyes around the table.
“I know exactly where that is,” said Burgundy, surprising us all.
Chapter Fifteen
It was a sprawling thing at the base of the largest mountain right outside of town. Technically, it was still part of Distant Edge but it was more like distant Distant. After the fifteen-minute drive across town and almost out of it again, we saw the mansion looming. Why do mansions loom? The sheer size of it was disconcerting, even at a distance.
Burgundy pulled up to a wrought iron gate at the bottom of the driveway. It was massive and covered with intricate designs and half overgrown with ivy. It stood ajar just enough to ease a car through, and she proceeded slowly.
“I’ve always wondered who lived here,” Jared said.
“It’s been abandoned,” Burgundy responded from the front seat of the car.
“How do you know?” I asked.
She hunched forward, looking out her front window to ease the car up the winding driveway. “Someone rented it out for a bachelor party.” She shrugged her shoulders and added, “They needed strippers.”
“Needed,” Chrys scoffed and rolled her eyes.
“You’re outnumbered here, Miss Prudey Vanilla Pants,” I replied from the backseat. Chrys’s pinched face became even more pinched.
She said nothing.
“We all need to get along for this to work,” said Burgundy, casting a glance toward the backseat, where Ryder, Jared
and I were all scrunched together.
Would I ever be able to get past the painful way Chrys had treated me since our father left? Maybe not. Most of the good memories were vague and fading. Still, I did remember sharing a little wooden playhouse that our dad had built for us. Chrys letting me pretend to cook with her and making mud pies. Dancing around in a circle, holding hands, trying to cast a spell to make the pies real. In my memory, our spell worked and one pie turned into a chocolate cake. We’d gobbled it up between fits and bursts of laughter. But later, Aurelia had scolded us for eating dirt so maybe I’d imagined that part. Why had everything gotten so wonky between us? It was as if she had become this person I no longer knew or even liked much. For Iphi’s sake, for my father and Ryder’s family, I had to play nice.
“I’m really glad you decided to come with us, Chrys,” I managed to choke out. “We need you.” It was the truth. We needed everyone we could get. Who knew what we were walking into? She grunted something vaguely affirmative.
I stared out of the window instead of looking at her. The trees near the mansion were gnarled and old. They looked alive, like something out of The Wizard of Oz. I shrank into Ryder, who put his arm around me protectively.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” Jared asked. “We were in a cave. This does not look like it leads to a cave.”
“It must,” Chrys said. “Scrying, in my experience, is never misleading.”
“I’m not buying it,” Jared huffed.
“Wait and see first, honey,” Burgundy called back to him.
He shook his light brown hair, which had grown so long it rustled lightly on his shoulders.
At the top of the long driveway, Burgundy pulled up to the front of the mansion. The once white stone facade was now stained, even black in some places. The roof sported dormers clad in metal, green with age.
It looked out of place in the Edge, like it belonged in sixteenth-century France. A gothic chateau.
“There are no cars anywhere,” said Ryder. “Are you sure we have the right place?”
“Maybe they flew in on pterodactyls,” Burgundy chimed in with a wry laugh.
“Maybe no one is home,” I said as we collectively shifted in our seats.
“It’s a good thing we didn’t think this through first,” offered Jared, eliciting an uneasy laugh from the others.
Once parked, we made our way to the trunk, where Burgundy grabbed a small duffel bag filled with a roll of duct tape, six flares, two fifty-foot skeins of rope, a flashlight and four pocketknives.
Walking up to the mansion as the sun began to set was an eerie experience. Ominous clouds hung over tall spires that reached into the sky like boney, arthritic fingers. I looked around but everywhere else, the sky was clear.
An owl hooted in one of the decaying trees at the same time a murder of crows chose to caw.
“Shh,” I said to the treetops. I didn’t want our trespass announced.
The birds grew cacophonous.
“They obviously don’t work for you,” Burgundy tossed over her shoulder.
She led us up the path with squared shoulders and a proud chest. I mean, her chest was always proud, but at that moment, it was even more inflated. The woman exuded confidence and we all followed behind her dutifully like we were the chicks to her momma duck.
On the front stoop was an old, withered rocking chair. It was moving but there was no wind. We exchanged glances.
The door itself was a dark wood that at first looked like cherry, but closer inspection revealed it was old and stained. Was that blood? Although it appeared cracked and even splintered in some places, it was solid. I put my hands on it and pushed. It didn’t budge.
Burgundy shrugged, then reached for the door handle. It was unlocked.
The door creaked loudly as Burgundy pushed it open, like we were in a Scooby-Doo episode. We all stood on the threshold for a few seconds, peering in. Blinking as our eyes adjusted.
A whiff of mustiness almost knocked me down. It reminded me of the dust you got when you blew along the top of a really old book.
“That’s weird,” said Burgundy, pushing in front of us. “It smells like no one has aired this place out in years.”
We all nodded in agreement.
“But the private party was only six months ago,” she added.
It didn’t look like anything had taken place there in years. There was nothing inside the grand room, not even furniture. A thin layer of dust coated the mahogany floors and elaborate chandeliers, which, upon closer inspection, were swaying.
Pointing above me to one of the larger monstrosities, I alerted the others.
Ryder put his fingers to his lips. We silently filed in. After Chrys, who was the last person to enter, the door slammed shut.
The abrupt noise caused all of us to jump.
“Whoever is in charge knows we’re here now,” Burgundy stated matter-of-factly.
“Should we split up and search the mansion?” asked Ryder.
“That sounds like the beginning of every bad horror movie,” I said with a laugh.
“Still, he’s got a point,” said Burgundy. “We don’t have a lot of time to waste.”
“How about you, Jared and Chrys. Me and Ryder?”
“I’m going to shift into my fox and try to find an entrance to the cave,” said Jared.
“Sounds good,” said Burg. “You guys want to check the upstairs?” She wasn’t really asking, despite the lilt in her voice at the end. We all split up, with Burgundy taking the duffel bag.
Ryder mounted the first stair ahead of me. It creaked loudly. I shrugged and he continued spiraling upward with me following. The banister and stairs were also made from mahogany and it was the most elaborate staircase I’d ever seen. The banisters were intricately carved, winding around on themselves in an ornate style.
“What do you know about this house?” Ryder asked as we climbed.
Shrugging, I said, “Virtually nothing, you?”
“When we first moved here, my stepmother told me to stay away from it. She didn’t say why and we didn’t question her but I always wondered.”
“I guess I’ve always known of its existence,” I offered, “but I pretty much forgot about it.”
He nodded. “Me too.”
“When we were growing up, our dad told us that it was owned by an eccentric billionaire with no heirs. I remember hearing that he made his money from oil, moved here from overseas, maybe Saudi Arabia or somewhere else exotic—“
“And when he died, he left the house to the town,” Ryder finished.
“Okay, so we both heard the same story.”
“And everyone in town assumed it would sit in a state of disrepair until it was turned into a museum or something?” Ryder offered.
“I guess so, I never really thought about it,” I mused and realized how strange that was. A few years ago, the mansion had fallen off my radar, like a black hole.
“That’s the crazy part, isn’t it?” Ryder seemed to pick up on my thoughts. “No one in town really thought about it after a while.”
Reaching the top, we stopped to survey the landing.
“I’ve always loved spiral staircases but this one feels sinister. Can a staircase feel sinister?” I asked.
“This entire house feels sinister,” Ryder agreed. “If it’s the Scrim’s lair, we know why.”
We crept down the long hallway that spread before us. Visions of running into a pale-faced ghost with hollow black eyes and long stringy hair made me tremble slightly. I reached for Ryder’s hand.
“This place is really creepy,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Rooms lined the hallway, and we entered the first one, closest to the stairwell. The tiny chamber had no furniture. It was bare, stripped down, compared to the rest of the house. The walls had been painted a dingy white instead of sporting ornate wallpaper like in the downstairs entryway. There were no elaborate fixtures, just one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The door
knobs were a dirty gray metal, not fancy brass ones. A maid’s or butler’s room?
It felt stifling. Only one long window on the outside wall let in filtered gray light.
Walking into the bathroom, I sneezed. Dust covered every available surface and the smell was the same as downstairs with a very slight top note of something citrusy.
“This is starting to feel like a dead end,” I turned to say to Ryder at the same moment he reached for me and pushed me against the dusty wall.
I pushed him back. “What are you doing? This place is disgusting.”
“Let’s see if we can invoke some of your powers.”
“I’d rather try the old-fashioned way first. What are you looking for?”
“The cave entrance. Removal of whatever glamour is being cast. Answers.”
“Right.” I closed my eyes and focused on the questions he brought up. When nothing happened I threw my hands skyward.
“Plan B.” Ryder’s mouth darted over mine and he pulled me tight.
Moving my hands down to his rock-hard ass, his hips ground into the soft spot right below my ribs. I was lost in the moment, sighing into his mouth. My hands wandered from his ass, pressing up and into that delicious six-pack. Yum.
Shifting, we changed positions. Ryder pushed me into the musty corner between the dirty toilet and the even dirtier claw-foot bathtub.
Dirt disgusts me, bathrooms disgust me, and dirty bathrooms may actually be at the top of my over-the-top disgusting list, but at that moment I couldn’t spare the time to care.
I touched Ryder’s face gently with my hand, my intention was to pull his lips back to mine. Even though there were no windows and only gray light in the bathroom, my grandmother’s ring glinted brightly on my finger as I reached toward his face, my hand lightly brushing his lips.
Ryder’s eyes trained on the ring and he pushed me away gently. His expression betrayed his physically calm demeanor. It reminded me of a fish that had just swallowed a hook instead of an actual fly.
“Where did you get that ring?”
“It was my grandmother’s. I always wear it. Why?”
He reached out to grab my hand, pulling it and the ring closer to his face for inspection.