Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Front Matter
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Signup for my Newsletter
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Back Matter
Haunted Cover
Pack Ebon Red Cover
Dark Glitter Cover
The Nine Cover
Allison's Adventures in Underland Cover
Chapter One
Keep Up With The Fun
More Books By C.M. Stunich
About the Author
Brynn of Haversey is a spirit whisperer—a person blessed with the ability to see and speak to the dead. In the country of Amerin, she's one of a select few with magical gifts known as whisperers.
Every year, the Royal College accepts a small number of new students, all magically inclined, all whisperers. Competition is brutal and the classes, nearly impossible to pass for a half-breed angel with two left feet and a massive pair of black feathered wings.
Oh, and especially if she brings her six ghostly boyfriends with her to the academy (including the recently deceased crown prince, a master thief hanged for his crimes, and a former student of the Royal College). What kind of spirit whisperer is Brynn of Haversey if she can't exorcise her own soul mates? But Brynn isn't attending the most prestigious academy in the world to become a better exorcist—she's searching for a way to bring her lovers back to life …
Spirited
Spirited © C.M. Stunich 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
The For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 89365 Old Mohawk Rd, Springfield, OR 97478.
www.sarianroyal.com
Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal
The The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
this book is dedicated Amanda Rose
Thanks for the awesome map.
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The instrument of my own destruction loomed above me, casting a long shadow in the bloodred rays of a dying sun. Its crumbling facade was decorated with a morbid metaphor of a face—soulless eyes, a gaping mouth, tangled green locks. Okay, so I was exaggerating the broken windows, the front entrance with its missing doors, and the cluster of wild blackberries that had morphed into a monster of their own making, but come on: the former Grandberg Manor was bust.
“This is the place?” I asked, hoisting my equipment up on one shoulder and eyeing the crumbling old house with a raised brow. “It looks half-ready to collapse. You know me—if there's even the slightest opportunity that I might trip, I will. Just be honest: am I going to fall straight through the floor?”
“Probably,” Jasinda said, moving around me and over the twisted, rusted remains of the front gate. Once upon a time, this place was crawling with nobility from around the world, and its gardens … even the drawings were enough to make my mother's green thumb well, green with envy. “Air and I have a bet going on whether or not you'll make it out of here alive.”
She thew a smirk over her shoulder at me and I pursed my lips.
Jasinda and Air were always making bets about me despite the fact that Air was the flubbing prince and shouldn't be making bets with anyone, let alone my handler. I had to admit though: if there were anyone around that was worth betting on, it was me.
First off, I was a half-angel which meant I could see spirits. And second, I was a half-human which meant those spirits actually deigned to communicate with me. A full-blooded angel was too haughty and highbrow to give any ghost the time of day, and a full-blooded human couldn't see one if they tried.
This special ability of mine did end up getting me into heaps of trouble. For example, there was that one time I followed a ghost straight into the queen's chambers and found her, um, indisposed with the head of the royal guard who, you know, also just happened to be my mother.
Then of course, there was the fact that I had the small, slight frame of my mother's desert dwelling ancestors but the wide, heavy span of wings from my father's side. Let's just be frank and say I toppled over a lot. Oh, and I ended up having long, in-depth conversations with people who weren't really people but were, in fact, very tricky ghosts. Even my first kiss had been with a spirit.
I took a deep breath of the cool, lavender scented air and followed after Jas, tripping and cursing in my own made-up language.
“Go flub yourself,” I growled at a thick tangle of blackberry that had gotten wrapped around my ankle. “You bleeding blatherer.”
“Are you making words up again?” Jas said, parking her hands on her hips and sighing at me. “Can't you just say you bleeding bastard like everyone else? And don't even get me started on you using the work flub instead of fuc—”
“Hey!” I snapped, putting my palm over her lips with one hand and pointing at myself with the other. “Half-angel over here. Just hearing somebody use a word with an extreme negative connotation makes me lose a feather.”
“Oh, please,” Jas said, pushing my hand away from her full red lips and smirking at me as I tried to rub her makeup off on my breeches. “That's a myth and you know it. Air told me that when you were kids, he used to chase you around the castle saying damn and bastard and the like, just to see if you'd lose any feathers—you didn't.”
I narrowed my eyes on her as she turned and headed up what was once an impressive flight of marble steps, now cracked and chipped like an old beggar's teeth. I shivered and followed after her, examining the red stain on my palm that stunk like copperberries. A lot of women painted their mouths with the stuff, but to me that fragrant floral scent was tinged with a metallic sting, like copper. Like blood. Thus, the name—copperberries.
As I hurried up the steps, I kept my eyes on the decaying black facade of the manor, all its intricate moldings and details stripped away by time and rain, the harsh winds that curled across this part of the kingdom in summer.
“Let's do a quick walkthrough and see if you can't sense any residual energies,” Jas suggested as I set my black leather satchel on the floor and knelt beside it. The ground around me was littered with debris—leaves, twigs, bits of crumbling plaster, a dead mouse.
“Oh, that's flubbing sick,” I whispered as I caught sight of the creature's spirit hovering nearby, its furred sides almost completely translucent as it took long, heaving breaths. Of course, the mouse didn't need to breathe anymore, but it didn't know that.
I pulled a dagger from the sheath on my belt—please Goddess, don't actually ask me to use this thing in combat—and prodded at the mouse's body with the jeweled hilt.
Fresh blood stained the white leather pommel and made me shiver.
“Jas,” I started, because a long dead carcass was one thing, but a fresh one? Hell's bells—since Hell was an actual place it didn't count as a curse word so no lost feathers for me—but I hoped it was just a cat that had taken the
rodent's life and not … something else.
“Brynn, you need to see this!” Jas shouted and I sighed, wiping the mouse's blood on the already dirty leg of my breeches and tucking the knife away. Before I stood up, I clasped the silver star hanging around my neck with one hand and reached out to touch the mouse's spirit with the other. The poor thing was too scared to even shy away, its soul becoming briefly corporeal as my fingers made contact with its fur.
“Goddess-speed and happy endings,” I whispered as the image of the mouse morphed and shivered, turning as silver as a beam of moonlight and fading away until there was nothing there but the warped and rotted boards of the old floor.
I stood up, leaving my satchel where it was on the ground and rubbing my shoulder as I followed the sound of Jasinda's voice. The road up to the manor was riddled with broken cobblestones, weeds, and the skeletons of long abandoned carriages. It was too rough for any sort of pack animal to make the trek, so we'd had to carry ourselves on foot, lugging all the equipment that a spirit whisperer—that's me—might need to exorcise a ghost or two or ten.
“Jassy?” I asked as I moved past the formal foyer with its double staircases, and down a long receiving hall that would've been used by servants in times past. The wallpaper was peeling like old skin, leaving behind water stained walls and flaky plaster. At some point, thieves had come in and stripped the old place of its wood moldings, sconces and chandeliers; they'd left nothing but a skeleton behind.
“In here!” she called out, drawing me through an empty archway where a swinging door might've once stood and into the kitchen. As I moved, I was conscious of keeping my wings tucked tightly against my back. My clumsiness was not limited to my feet. I was notorious among the castle staff for breaking things with the feathered black wings that graced my back. As a kid, they used to call me Pigeon Girl because I caused ten times as much damage to the royal halls as the flying rats that plagued the old stone building.
“What is it?” I asked as I leaned against the wall outside a small servant's room—a tiny square that would've belonged to the head cook. “Jas, there was a mouse—”
“Flub mice,” she said, only she didn't actually say flub but I wouldn't lose a feather even thinking about the F-word that famously rhymes with duck. As a half-angel, my powers were bound to the Light Goddess and she was a serious stickler for avoiding words with negative connotations. I supposed I couldn't blame her; the very words I spoke held power. The more positivity and light I imbued those words with, the more powerful I was. “Look at this, Brynn. There's a distinct spiritual signature written all over this room.”
The room itself was so small that with the collapsed remains of a small bed and a sagging dresser, there wasn't space for us both. I waited for Jas to step out, pushing her long dark hair over her shoulder, sapphire blue eyes sparkling with a scholar's excitement.
“Brynn, this could be it,” she said as I took a deep breath and stepped into the room. “Our big break.”
Jas was always looking for that one case, that one unique spirit that we could exorcise that would prove our worth to the scholars at the Royal College. In just two weeks, I'd be turning twenty-one and that'd be it; that was the cutoff date for acceptance into the prestigious training facility. It wasn't that Jas cared about the status of being a student there, or the potential for a high-ranking position after graduation, it was the library. Only students and staff of the Royal College were permitted to use the vast, twisting hallways of the catacombs. There were books there that couldn't be found anywhere else—not to mention ancient artifacts, exemplary professors, and vast resources that could be used for research.
It was Jasinda's dream, even if it wasn't mine. I hoped she was right; I hoped this was it.
I stepped over a small hole in the floor and into the tiny windowless room.
As soon as I did, it hit me, the pressure of an angry spirit, bearing down on me with the cold burn of something long dead and waiting. Waves of icy winter chill tore across my skin like knives, despite the warm evening air that permeated the rest of the building. Whatever this was, it was powerful.
I grasped the silver star at my throat and closed my eyes.
“Haversey,” I whispered, invoking the name of the light goddess.
If I were Jas, I knew what I'd be seeing: a girl shrouded in silver moonlight, her tanned skin pearlescent and shimmering, her hair as white as snow lifted in an unnatural breeze.
I opened my eyes slowly and bit back a gasp.
Every inch of the walls was covered in the word Hellim, the name of the Dark God. What I had originally thought were decorative splotches on the wallpaper were actually his name, written in blood a thousand times over. It had been impossible to see in the dim half-light, but now that I had my second sight open, the letters glowed with a strong, angry spiritual signature.
I started to take a step back when my foot went through the hole in the floor, and the rotting boards around me creaked and toppled into a black pit below.
“Brynn!”
Jas screamed my name as I fell through cold shadow and frost, hitting the soggy wet earth with a grunt and a crack of pain in my shoulder that almost immediately went numb. That was bad, really bad. Pain was one thing, but numbness meant that what'd just happened to me could be really serious.
I tried to stand up, but my arm gave out and I found myself lying in a mound of decaying wet leaves and dirt, the scent of rot thick and cloying in the air.
As I blinked to try and orient myself to the darkness, I felt a cold hand on my shoulder and a gust of icy breath at my ear.
When I turned, I found myself looking into the face of a handsome—and very angry—spirit.
His lips curved up in a smile meant to disarm me.
“Boo,” he whispered as he reached out and pushed my dislocated shoulder back into place.
White-hot pain crashed over my vision and I passed out.
Waking to a rat tail slithering over one's face was about as unpleasant as it sounded, jarring me back to reality and my throbbing shoulder. The feel and smell of slimy, molding leaves assaulted me, making my stomach churn as I struggled to sit up, stretching my wings to the sides to feel out the edges of the room.
I expected the feathery tips to brush up against brick or cold stone, but there was nothing but empty blackness. Not really all that surprising considering the overall size of the manor. I might've been sitting in what used to be a wine cellar or … well, considering the level of spirit activity in this place, a dungeon.
It took three tries to clear my throat before I could speak.
“Jas!” I called out, looking up toward the impenetrable shadows above me. There'd been no light in the cook's room so I didn't really expect any to filter down here—wherever here was. But I did expect to hear my handler's sharp, clear voice calling out to me. In a place this riddled with ghosts, I really needed her by my side. Without a handler, a spirit whisperer was just as likely to get their soul pulled from their body as they were to push a stubborn ghost into the afterlife.
I took a few deep breaths, rubbed at my sore shoulder, and tried again.
“JAS!”
My own voice echoed around me, encouraging the small headache I was nursing to go full-on migraine. Still, no answer from Jasinda. An icy prickle of fear teased its way down my spine as I took a deep breath and forced myself to stand. Good or bad, it seemed that my shoulder—and the pile of dead leaves that had drifted through the hole in the floor over the years—had taken the brunt of the impact. Testing out all of my limbs—wings included—I found all but my right arm to be in good shape. Hell's bells, I'd had worse falls tripping on my way out of the bath.
“Not the worst mistake you've ever made,” I mumbled to myself as I brushed off as best I could in the darkness and then felt around on my belt for a torch. I could summon my own light to guide the way, but then that would alert every dead thing within a hundred feet. My power came from Haversey, the Goddess of Light, and her magic called t
o spirits like flame called moths.
Freeing the torch from my belt, I blew on it gently until it burst into brilliant orange, red and yellow flame, sending rats scattering into the darkness and shadows dancing on the walls. This particular item was enchanted by a fire whisperer, giving it the ability to catch and hold flame with the warmth of a single breath—even in wet or humid conditions.
“That's better,” I said, continuing the trend of talking to myself. It was a nasty habit of mine, one that I was definitely not going to attempt to break since it made the staff at the palace think I was crazy. That way, they were less apt to go off on me when I inevitably broke precious historical artifacts or knocked over tables laden with food at banquets when I was 'dancing'. Here's a fun little fact about Brynn of Haversey: she has two left feet with a pair of wings attached. Clumsy plus twenty foot wingspan equals trouble most days.
I picked my way across the rubble strewn floor, working my way forward so that I could find a wall and then use it to guide myself to a (hopefully) unblocked staircase. Just a few steps forward and my black leather boot landed on something soft—something that squished beneath my weight.
Drawing my foot back, I looked down to find another dead mouse.
A quick glance around and there its spirit was, cowering in the corner. Its spiritual signature was so slight that it had gotten lost in the metaphysical storm swirling around me. With every inch of my skin, I could feel eyes on me, ghostly hands, grinning maws ready to bite. The Grandberg Manor was a spirit whisperer's worst nightmare—or dream, depending on how egotistical or prepared one might be.
At this point, I was neither.
I knelt down next to the mouse and clutched my necklace with my free hand.
“Hey, little guy,” I whispered, nesting my torch in a small pile of rocks so I could reach out and touch the translucent little critter with my fingertips. With something this small and simple, I was okay exorcising the spirit without Jasinda around but anything bigger—even one step up like a cat—and it was a no-go.
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