“My darling mother hen.” Gideon stuffed the handkerchief up the sleeve of his jacket. “I am here merely to assist in any possible way I can. I am most anxious for this ritual to go well. The afflicted child is the daughter of a very influential man. If we were able to help this poor young girl, then who knows how it could benefit us?”
“You don’t say.” Orella curled her hands to fists and placed them on her hips. “We all know she’s the Mayor’s daughter. Just what are you up to, old goat?”
Gideon cleared his throat, his hairy fingers fluttering over his perfectly tied cravat. “Yes. Well. One would have thought the Mayor would be here. One would have hoped for an audience. Though it would seem the Mayor has no knowledge of his daughter’s affliction.”
“How can they have kept this a secret?” Crowhurst asked. “It’s his daughter.”
Gideon wagged his shaggy head. “I had hoped for an audience, but it seems the Mayor has been told his daughter has an infectious disease. Therefore, he stays at the palace in Avalon Square.”
At the mention of an audience, Davis had started choking, like he had a prickle caught in his throat. “The Mayor would not understand this,” he blurted out. “He is a devout follower of The Higher Path. It is imperative this is kept from him, not to mention the public. The damage to his reputation would be devastating.”
“Rest assured,” Orella shot a venomous look at Gideon. “Neither the Mayor, nor the public will discover what happens here this night.”
“And nothing will go wrong.” I clenched my fist around the top of my cane, feeling the carved wood bite my palms.
“What do you mean…go wrong?” Davis asked, doing some more swallowing. “I was assured of a resolution.”
“Well—,” Crowhurst began, a smarmy look on his face. I thrust the end of my cane into his stomach. “Oof.” He clutched his stomach, stumbling back from the blow. “That hurt.”
Orella turned to Gideon. “I won’t have this. There are too many people around, there are distractions everywhere. Everyone goes to the kitchen. Lora alone will assist me.”
“Shouldn’t I be present as well?” Crowhurst straightened, rubbing his stomach, his brows pulled down. “Part of my education and all?”
“I did ask our newest employee to attend so he could learn,” Gideon protested.
“I don’t care.” Orella pointed back down the hallway. “All of you go. Lora needs to concentrate.”
“You heard her,” I ordered Crowhurst. “Off to the kitchen with you, where you belong.”
Gideon grumbled something under his breath, but walked past Davis and started down the corridor.
“You are not staying?” Davis squeaked, running after Gideon. “These women will know what to do? Really?”
“Of course. You heard. It is our place, in the kitchen.” Gideon motioned for Crowhurst to follow. “Perhaps we should clean and cook as well.” He draped an easy arm over Davis’s slumped shoulders and I caught him asking where the liquor was kept.
“You know where we are when you need us.” Crowhurst threw a sunny wave at me before strolling off, whistling an off-tune song.
Davis hesitated and turned back to us. “The Lady Corelli—”
I held up a hand to halt his protests. “We’ll send them down.”
He opened his mouth to argue, then shut it with a resigned look. Turning away, Gideon guided him down the hall. I watched them go for a minute, then Orella turned to me. “Lora. Make your presence known. It’s time to set the tone.”
Setting my jaw, I stepped forward. The atmosphere felt muddy, the air thick with the stink of urine. At the far side of the room, heavy purple drapes were drawn against the night. Lamps on the walls were turned down low, but with enough light to see the bed that the middle of the room. A young girl was spread out, wrists and ankles secured by rope to the bedposts. She wore a nightgown that was soaked and torn, her face distorted and twisted.
A woman with a ravaged but beautiful face sat slumped in a soft looking chair beside the bed. She wore an expensive gown and corset, her hair braided into a complicated bun at her nape. Hovering beside her was a Higher Path priest, his little white hat stained brown with sweat. It was clear from his revolted expression that his interest was more with gaining the favour of the mother, rather than helping the girl.
The second my boot hit the floor inside the room, the chattering from the bed’s occupant stopped. I approached slowly, eyeing the bed’s solid oak frame. The girl’s face went through contortions at my presence: bleeding lips peeling back, eyes bulging. I gave her a cheery wink then turned to the exhausted mother. “You need to leave.”
The priest stiffened. “We most certainly will not.”
“You must,” Orella said from behind me. “We cannot have fear in this room. It will interfere with the exorcism.”
The Lady Corelli watched this exchange with weary eyes. I had seen the look before, when the parameters of someone’s reality had shifted too far for sanity to keep pace.
“What are you going to do here?” The priest turned to Orella. The young girl eyeballed me as if transfixed.
“What needs to be done. This poor child has suffered long enough.” Orella’s words were clipped, but her face was smooth, as if she was reserving judgement.
The priest’s expression turned haughty and he stared down his nose at me. “The Lady Corelli is not one to expose herself to heresy on a whim.”
“This isn’t darkcraft.” I placed my bag on a nearby dresser, resting my cane against it.
“Witch Hunter….” the demon sang. “Have you come to kill me, Witch Hunter?”
“I won’t leave my daughter.” Lady Corelli rose weakly to her feet, fingers plucking at her skirts. To my surprise, Orella approached the woman with a sympathetic face, murmuring soft words of comfort and reassurance. Within seconds, she had whisked the mother and the priest out, closing the door firmly behind them. I took off my work-belt, unbuttoned my coat and folded it over the back of an armchair by the wall, placing my hat on top. Orella gave me a crabby look as I strapped my work-belt back on. “Know when to temper your skills with diplomacy, child.”
“Me?” My voice rose. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“Don’t talk back.” Orella stood a few paces from me. “We must take care, for I sense the work of a very powerful craftuser. Perhaps one that sold the girl’s soul to the highest bidder.”
“Can we retrieve it?” I asked.
“We can try.”
“I heard they call you Chopper now.” The demon grinned at me.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Yes, yes.” The demon twisted the girl’s expression into a sly look. “Does the child’s mother know what you did to the last person you tried to help? Such a story.”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
The girl sniffed the air. “And yet, you smell strange to me. Not like a Witch Hunter at all.” She looked at Orella. “Where have you hidden this little sweet meat all these years, Warbreeder?”
“What do you talk of?” Orella’s voice cracked the air. I glanced up, surprised to see the elf-witch’s face stormy with sudden anger.
The demon cringed. “I mean nothing by it, mother hen, nothing by it.”
I hesitated, then asked, “Orella?”
She tore her eyes from the demon to me. It was then I experienced a strange moment. Everything looked very far away, the sound of the world fading to a distant buzz. Something was wrong. I didn’t see Orella’s lips move, but it looked like she was shouting and I could hear the words whisper inside my head. The words were indecipherable, raw and old. Orella’s eyes were the colour of autumn, sometimes changing from russet reds to golden hues. Now they were white, as if drained of life, as if all her essence was channelled somewhere else. My breath stuck in my throat and my chest contracted with fright. I blinked a few times and everything went back to its normal pace.
Orella wasn’t paying me any attention at all, her attention fixed on t
he girl.
“I break no rules by being in this body,” the demon was saying, the girl’s jaw chattering. “By what right do you send me back? I claimed the girl, claimed her fair.”
“Enough of this.” Orella motioned to me impatiently. “Lora, begin.”
My hands hovered over my belt. I opened my special pouch, the one that contained my own home brand version of a spell-breaker mixture. Made up of powdered consecrated silver, salt and a dash of gunpowder, it was guaranteed to punch out the most powerful of spells. I called it my Sucker Punch Special.
The girl leered at me. “Do your worst, Chopper, and I’ll take the child with me.”
Pulling the throwing knife from the back of my belt, I sliced the girl’s nightgown open to expose her shivering body. I sprinkled the mixture on the girl’s torso, then recited the stock standard banishment spell, exactly as I had done last time. The bastardised Sumerian phrases that were the spine of the craft, the focus of the spell, tripped off my tongue with ease and the girl’s body began to writhe. She screamed as if in pain, thin hips bucking on the bed. I hesitated and stepped back without thinking, my nerves winding tight.
“Lora.” Orella’s voice was sharp. “Pay attention. You’re feeding it your fear.”
Moving forward, I seized the girl’s body, mixture rolling under my hands. I began the spell again, tripping over the words occasionally with the sudden show of nerves. The girl threw her head back with a terrible scream, then fell limp. I waited, watching her grey pallor tinge pink. The blue patches under eyes remained, but the veins that had been so prominent, now faded as her natural skin tone returned. I felt light-headed with relief. Now that was how you performed an exorcism. Simple, neat, quick. I grinned at Orella. “Easy.”
Orella grunted in reply and I reached out to close the girl’s clothes over her.
“Lora!”
Something changed in the room, pressing down heavy and Orella’s warning came too late. The lamps went out and the room was plunged into darkness. There was a terrible, grunting crack of broken wood, like a tree being felled in a forest. Something heavy and hot encompassed my left wrist, taking it in a crushing hold. It pulled me towards the bed, towards something breathing deep, smelling like a putrid night fog over a swamp.
A bubble of blue light burst into existence over Orella’s head and my ears popped from the pressure of sudden magic. The sphere’s light cast the room into pale relief and I saw the girl was now sitting, eyes straining in their sockets. The two bedposts by her head were bent and broken, fallen to the floor, and her small hands had ripped through the ropes, her slender wrists bleeding bright. One of her hands was clamped around my wrist, squeezing painfully. Terror froze my mind and limbs. I found I could hardly breathe for the fear that choked me. The girl had been open, an empty vessel waiting for her soul to reclaim it. Souls rarely went far at first, before being called to their final resting place. But something else had entered the girl, something that had been waiting. It felt ancient and powerful, pressing in on the room.
My vision began to fade in and out of blackness, and I saw Orella throw salt on the girl, shouting a spell I didn’t recognise. The ball of light bounced above her head like a small moon, stretching Orella’s shadow long over the girl. A wind from nowhere stirred and roared around the room. My hair came loose from its braid, tugged in all directions by the howling gale. I screamed, trying to pull myself loose from the girl’s grip. Her head turned slowly on her slender neck to stare down at me. Her bow-shaped lips parted and the sounds of the world faded away, leaving only the terrible chorus of her voice.
“Who leaves this doorway open?”
The Sanskrit words paused on Orella’s lips and her eyes blazed bright. “You cannot enter The Weald,” she cried. “It is forbidden.”
The girl’s eyes slithered to regard the elf-witch. “You called us.”
“No one called you here,” Orella shouted, voice barely noticeable over the wind. Her hair was raised, braids of white and black writhing in the whipping wind.
The girl’s fingers tightened around my wrist, twisting, and I screamed again, my stomach giving a sickening lurch and my legs buckling. The magic in the room felt like a wave of warm surf; it washed over me, tingling and pulsating on my skin. It felt it suffocating me, filling my mind. The girl looked down at me and spoke again, her voice like a gentle caress. “This one. This one tipped the balance and let us in.”
“Let me go!” I yelled.
The girl’s pupils bled to silver, focusing on me. Her lips spread in a smile, gazing at me with an almost fond expression. Then the wind stopped as abruptly as it had started. The girl spoke, her voice low, as if for my ears only.
“Daughter. Dreadwitch. How you’ve bloomed.”
Gasping, I tried to pull away, and heard a crack in my wrist bones. The girl’s body jerked, releasing my wrist. She recoiled against the bed head, as if hit by a terrible force and then was still. Scrambling back, I clutched at my wrist, breath tearing from my lungs.
The girl lay silent, her eyes still open. Then she blinked and began a high-pitched wail, thin and frail. Orella’s rough hands pulled at my shoulder, then cupped my cheeks, her wrinkled face filling my blurred vision.
“Are you hurt?”
“She twisted my wrist.” I looked to the sobbing girl and struggled to my feet, Orella helping me. “The girl alright?”
“Sounds fine to me,” Orella said wryly. “I’d be worried if she wasn’t crying.”
Holding my aching wrist to my chest, I asked, “What happened?”
Orella passed a hand over her eyes in a weary gesture. “Perhaps it was a result of the corruption in the lines from the blood moon. Something took her over, something that I’ve never seen before. It was more powerful and ancient than a demon.” She looked at me, eyes pinched. “It said something to you. What was it?”
I hesitated, uncertain that I wanted to share what the girl had said. I got the distinct feeling I was going to be in enough trouble as it was. “I didn’t hear.”
Orella went to say something more, when we both became aware of frantic knocking on the door. She threw me a warning look. “Everything went according to plan. Say nothing besides that.”
Chapter 15
Fingering the bandage on my wrist, I waited for Gideon to finish his rant. We’d retreated to Blackgoat after a rather hysterical Davis had kicked us out. Whatever heresy he had expected, we had clearly surpassed his expectations. While the Lady Corelli was relieved her daughter was no longer the vessel of a demonic force, the sobbing hysterics of her daughter had prompted her to rage at us in a cold fury. Crowhurst had long since departed, and now it was Orella and I who had to suffer through Gideon’s idea of a debrief. This mostly involved accusations about whose fault was what.
Lifting my wrist to my nose, I tentatively sniffed at the bandage. Orella had slathered it with a poultice that smelt like sweat and ammonia, then braced it in a tight bandage. Unfortunately, the pain in my wrist wasn’t enough to distract me from the boredom I felt as Gideon raved about treating special clients with kid’s gloves. Orella sat beside me, smoking her pipe and staring at the floor vacantly. I half suspected she’d mastered the art of falling asleep with her eyes open. The receded storm had returned with a vengeance and it was pouring now, raindrops drumming on the tiled roof like a thousand fingers.
“I don’t see what the problem is,” Orella spoke suddenly, making me jump. “We finished the exorcism and the girl was saved. What else did you want to happen?”
“The problem? You ask what my problem is? Is it not obvious?” Gideon’s hooves scraped on the wooden floor as he paced in short strides. “We have a distinctly unhappy customer on our hands. This is now the second time Lora has been associated with an exorcism and a disgruntled client.”
“I don’t see why,” I complained. “We did what we were hired to do.”
“As I keep telling my customers, and as I explained to you, old goat, magic is unstable at the moment,”
Orella said in a tired voice. “I warned you, but you refused to listen. You need to reject any more jobs with magical aspects, until things right themselves.”
Gideon waved his hands frantically about as if besieged by bees. “Why not? After all, money grows on trees, doesn’t it?”
“Keep your hairy britches on,” Orella sighed. “It can’t last too much longer.”
Gideon just grumbled some more. I made a movement, as if to get out of my chair, thinking the lecture finished. Gideon poked a crooked finger at me, returning to his original complaint. “The child was traumatised. The room was torn apart. That snivelling secretary threatened to send us a bill.” He deflated a little, leaning against his desk. “The Lady Corelli may not pay us.”
Orella grunted. “The fear will pass. She needs time to realise her daughter is no longer in danger.”
“Still…” Gideon trailed off.
“What is it you’re really upset about?” I asked impatiently. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go home and have a drink. No, home, bath and then a drink. Most importantly, I needed to think on the night. The entity that had temporarily taken hold of the girl had a voice that was familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it. My thoughts also turned to the symbol I’d nicked off Seth. I was dying to ask Orella, but wasn’t sure how. At the very least, I’d send word to Caleb, ask him to come around and pass it on to him. Then it could be his problem. I was starting to feel like the whole mess was beyond my capabilities.
“Yes,” Orella said. “Lora’s right. What is this really about?”
Gideon got a second wind and snatched up a letter from his desk, waving it about. “Never will I understand the insistence of the citizens of Harken City to deny the rights of full-bloods and otherkins.”
Orella and I groaned in unison. “Nuts,” I said. “Not this again.”
He waved the letter at us. “You may think me an old stupid goat, blowing hot air. Mark my words; there are those who hate us. One day, the tide will turn and we will be the ones to suffer. It has happened before and it will happen again.”
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