Gods, I did NOT want to be the keeper. But even more so, I did not want to see my sister be overtaken by the haunt. I would do absolutely anything to keep that from happening, including take up the talisman.
“I know the keeper.” Not a lie. But such an untruth all the same.
“You’d have to be pretty ruthless to take the talisman from them. It’s incredibly painful.”
“My mother raised me to be ruthless and cold,” I told him, knowing he had no idea that my mother was the keeper. But I also knew, damn her, that she’d have told me to do it. She’d have done anything to save Branka. My mother would have taken the talisman from her mother even if the only way had been to kill her. Mother would have slain her parents in a second to save Branka.
“The easiest way to take the talisman from the current keeper is to gain possession of it, use it in the way it was intended, and be found acceptable by the talisman. It’s pretty iffy.”
None of my friends said a word for a moment and then Felix said, “Well I guess we know why the council has been looking so hard for the talisman.”
“Is the talisman of the thinning lost?” Hiro asked disbelievingly.
“Sort of in flux,” I answered. I mean…this was my brother and as much as I wished that I didn’t have a brother and that my daddy was mine, I wanted a relationship with these strange siblings of mine. With little Saki, with fierce Tane. With the mysterious Ruby. And I didn’t want to scare them away with the monster that I was.
“So I find the talisman, make it mine, be found acceptable to be the keeper, and then slay the haunt.”
“No,” Hiro said seriously. “That doesn’t even solve the worst of the problems. How are you going to get the haunt out of your sister? That’s the problem with haunts. They’re bound to the victim. It’s why you can’t save the cursed one. To slay the haunt, you slay the victim. You slay your sister. Otherwise, the haunt won’t leave your sister’s body until after she’s gone.”
“Rue will find a way,” Saki said loyally. There was no shadow of a doubt in her voice. Bran wouldn’t have been so sure. If I followed the instincts of my heart to Bran, I would feel terror and desperate hope. Mostly, however, terror. There wasn’t a path for me to follow to Saki. Not through my heart. Not yet. But, I didn’t need a path. She was there, in front me, faith shining from her eyes.
Loyal already. Already believing. Already willing to believe I was something other than a snake. The sweet, naive little princess. Gods. What a cruel joke life is. Someday, I would see Saki as she realized just who and what I was. And that faith would fade.
“You need to deal with the bite before you can help anyone.” Hiro did not have the same faith. And it was there in front of me as well—so clear. So precise.
“Right,” I agreed. “So you’re the heir apparent to the Boston Thinning. You’ve been trained in things like containing bites from a haunt?”
My voice was curious but there was, perhaps, a bit of a challenge in that question. I wasn’t used to having an older sibling. I wasn’t sure what to do with this one. Not that he was a real one. My only real sibling was Bran because she was the only one who could understand.
He just nodded.
“Wait,” Felix said as he started setting plates on the table. “Why are you here?”
“Saki,” Hiro said precisely. He glanced at his little sister, with her twin braids and black pleated skirt. She was such a beautiful, determined little thing.
“So you wouldn’t have come without Saki?” Felix didn’t sound aggressive, but there was no give in his voice.
“Not like this,” Hiro said. He shrugged a little apologetically but there was no guilt in his face. “Not this soon. Not without checking things out. I thought you were contacting us because of the money until I saw this place.”
My house, Martha, was amazing. She was shockingly beautiful, teeming with wealth. She was extravagant with the type of beauty only old money seemed to show so well. Old money put beauty in the details. In the perfect, wide-planked wood floors that shone. In the twisted, wrought iron fencing that made scenes in iron here and there. In the bricks of the house that formed patterns. The way the stone and brick of the house complimented each other as if each brick and stone were precisely chosen for their shade and shape—and I was sure that was exactly what happened. Martha was amazing.
“I don’t want your Dad’s money,” I said honestly.
“Our Dad,” Hiro corrected. He didn’t quite believe me, and I didn’t quite blame him. I had seen that brownstone mansion his family owned, and money would have been a compelling argument for a lot of people to bother his family.
But the thing was—just because Hiro’s parents were married to each other did not make me any less a member of that family. Right? I don’t know. I mean…I was blood-related to them. And that mattered to me. But my Daddy was Theodore Jones.
“I can help you with the binding of your bite,” Hiro said. “I do know how to do that. If you don’t have anyone else you can call, I will help you.”
I didn’t need to think about that. “I don’t have time to wait for someone else. If you help me, I’ll be glad to have it.”
“He’ll help you,” Saki said. “Where is your sister?”
“She’s currently…”
“Resting,” Felix finished for me.
Saki accepted what he said and Hiro raised a brow.
Hiro pulled out his phone brought up a spell that he carried in his docs and said, “This is what we’ll need.”
Jessie and I conferred and we sent Cyrus for the few things we didn’t have.
“There are, actually, two options. This is the one I would do,” Hiro said. “But fire has been the traditional method. We would have to bind your arm down, write spells on it to keep the fire contained, wrap you inflammable material and set you on fire.”
“Or…” Felix demanded, shuddering at the description
“Or we tattoo the containment and cleansing runes on her skin. It will keep the haunt’s infection in check. The bite is the avenue for the haunt to come after you once it’s done with your sister. And it makes you vulnerable to it in a fight.”
“So what does the tattoo do?” Jessie asked.
“It does what her makeshift runes do, but with magicked ink rather than sharpie. It will cleanse and remove the infection completely over time.”
“How much time,” Chrysie asked.
“I’m sorry,” Saki interrupted, “But are you a vampire?”
Chrysie nodded her head once and Saki squealed a little bit and said she couldn’t wait to tell Tane and her friends.
While Chrysie explained becoming a vampire, I led Hiro to my lab and we put together the spelled ink to tattoo onto my arm. Hiro did the work while I tried to pretend that tattooing around my already bruised and hurting flesh didn’t make me want to rip off his face.
“How did your sister get haunted?”
I thought for a moment and then decided to tell him the truth. I was going to have to be myself with these new siblings and let them choose me or reject me. Pretending to be something else would never work.
“I was having some trouble here, so my Mother came out to help me. While she was gone, Bran…”
“Brawn?”
“Branka,” I said, sounding it out to be Brawn-kah. “My full name is Veruca.”
He flinched for me and I grinned for a second before he went back to manually jabbing a needle dipped in spelled ink into my arm and I went back to pretending to be tougher than I am.
“Anyway, Bran snooped. And found out about all of this.” I gestured at him, but his expression asked me to explain. “We thought the man who raised us was our dad. We didn’t know we had half-siblings and different dads.”
Hiro flinched for me again and I nodded. “I found out about you guys and all of this right before Bran drove me to Boston and made me see you.”
“And on the way back, you discovered she was haunted.”
I couldn’t s
hrug without risking him messing up, so I had to explain again, “I knew something was up with her. I just had no idea it was so bad.”
“I’m sorry that you’re losing her,” Hiro said.
“What would you do if it was Saki?” I asked him, pulling away so he had to face me.
“Anything,” he said. “Everything.”
“Then don’t give up on Bran yet. She’s all I have.”
He took my wrist and pulled my poor, bitten forearm back to him. As he went back to filling in the runes on my arm with tattoos, he said, “Not anymore.”
Chapter 13
“Rue!” Felix’s voice was a roar. One I should not have heard, but Martha was a magic house after all.
I jerked my arm away from Hiro where he was cleaning it up and bandaging it and went pelting down the stairs, down the hall, through the kitchen, and down the back steps. When I got into the marble hall, what I saw terrified me.
Haunted Bran was holding Saki by the hair and screeching, “LET ME OUUUUUTTTTT.”
“Saki,” Hiro shouted and fell to a horrified stop. If he got too close, haunted Bran would hurt our little sister.
“Bran,” I said, stepping forward. “How did she get out of the chair? How did Saki get in there?”
I was not really looking for answers and no one answered. We were all too focused on the haunt wearing my sister’s body and clutching sweet, little Saki by the neck.
“Let. Me. Out.” This time it was more cut off growls than shrieks.
“Ok,” I said. “Let Saki go.”
“I know you for a liar,” the haunt said.
“Oh gods,” Hiro said. “Oh gods, how did this happen?”
“I will get her out,” I swore to Hiro and looked at Saki. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I will kill her,” the haunt swore using Bran’s mouth.
“Martha, truth serum.” My voice was clipped. But there was enough of Bran within the haunt that it knew that offer for what it was.
A cupboard door opened and Chrysie darted with her vampire speed to it. She was back a breath later and I held it out for Bran to smell—no one knew that scent like us. Bran crossed to just out of reach with the silent, terrified Saki thrust behind her and took a depth breath.
Those twisted eyes focused on me and the head of my sister nodded once.
I downed the serum in one swift gulp and said, “I thought I would do anything to save you, but I won’t exchange Saki for you. You chose well.”
“Let me out,” the haunt said with Bran’s lips.
“You have to let Saki go unharmed.”
“You won’t let me out then,” it snarled.
“You know better. There is no way that you didn’t figure this with Bran in your head.”
The haunt cackled and then said, “She knew that you would sacrifice any of the rest for her.”
“But not Saki,” I said. I tried to look comforting to Saki, but I suspected that I seemed cold and hard.
“Not Saki,” the haunt sang.
“I swear to you on the life of Daddy that I will break the pentacle if you let Saki go.”
Bran’s eyes looked at me, then darted around the room.
The haunt hesitated and I said, “Truth serumed. I cannot lie.”
Bran’s head nodded once before her mouth said, “Back against the wall.”
Felix, Chrysie, Jessie, and Cyrus backed towards the wall without delay. The lapping of water in the pool and the echo of their steps floated eerily through the big open room.
“You too,” Bran said, looking at Hiro.
“No,” Hiro said, but there was a break in his voice that said he knew he couldn’t save her alone. Not with the way the haunt held Saki by the throat.
“Go,” I shouted and Hiro backed reluctantly up.
“Don’t be wrong,” he pled as he moved away. But I had no time for him.
“Give me Saki,” I demanded.
“Let me out.”
“One,” I waited until the haunt nodded and then dragged Saki to the edge of the pentacle as close to me as she could get.
“Two,” I said. I took a deep breath and prayed to the gods before I said, “Three.”
I kicked aside the candle at the edge of the pentacle, focused my will, and let out Bran. The haunt threw Saki at me, knocking us both into the pool. I fought my way to the surface and yelled, “Martha.”
A shriek of fury filled the air.
“Can you swim,” I asked Saki.
She nodded, but she was crying so hard, gasping so much that I pulled her towards the side of the pull where Hiro dragged her out and wrapped his arms around her without regard for the water.
I was going to pull myself out, but Felix dragged me from the water and hugged me to him as well.
“So, the haunt can access Bran’s thoughts,” I said. “Or hear her. But it isn’t as smart as she is. She would never have fallen for that.”
“What happened?” Hiro asked
“And,” Jessie said, “The haunt’s memories are spotty. It should have remembered that Martha’s wards tripped before.”
“Martha?” Hiro stood and lifted Saki as he did. “What?”
“Martha is the house,” I said. “She’s pretty…aware.”
“And powerful,” Cyrus said.
“And, Martha’s wards tripped before. When the haunt was peeking out of Bran’s eyes,” Felix added.
“Which is why I ended up truth seruming Bran and finding out about you guys,” I said.
“You truth serumed your own sister?” Hiro sounded disgusted though he was still clutching Saki close. Being disgusted by my family was fair given that doing what we did to each other was against basic witch laws.
“It’s sort of a family tradition…” My voice trailed off at his look of horror. I added lamely, “You had to be there.”
When his disgust didn’t fade at all, I said, “Look, I know other witches who do it. I’m not saying I’m proud of it…but….anyway. Martha’s wards had tripped before because of Bran which was my first big clue that something serious was going on with her. Something more than this family crap and our mother being…our mother.”
“It’s ok,” Saki said. She shivered in Hiro’s arms and then said quietly but with leftover terror, “I’m sorry for getting caught. Thank you for saving me.”
“What happened?” Hiro’s voice was tortured.
“I wanted to know about Rue,” Saki answered. “I thought it would be ok, but…”
“The haunt distracted her and Saki entered the pentacle. The haunt grabbed her before I could do anything.”
That was saying something since it was Chrysie speaking. And she could move like The Flash with the right incentive.
“She’s ok. We’re ok,” I said and sat down on the floor. I…gods…I was lost. But Saki wiggled out of her brother’s arms and flew into mine.
“It’ll be ok,” Saki said—giving me the first hug from my new family. She petted my hair and whispered to me and made losing my Dad as my Daddy ok. He’d been that one good thing in my life. And he was still there, plus I had this sweet little thing too.
I wrapped her up in my arms and hugged her close and prayed that I would be able to save Bran as I’d saved Saki.
Chapter 14
“So,” I told my coven and siblings. “I’ve tried everyone. No one can provide hope.”
“Are you sure you want to get the talisman then?” It was Felix who asked, and he asked because he knew I didn’t want to be keeper.
I nodded. And then I looked to the older brother I never knew I had and said, “I have no training as a necromancer.”
He seemed startled but said nothing.
“I can get the talisman of the St. Angelus Thinning. But I might need some help hunting up a ghost.”
“You can’t just go after any ghost.”
“It just so happens,” I said, thinking of Finn, “That I know of one that needs to be sent on its way.”
Hiro nodded once. I wasn’t
sure he could do anything else when Saki was watching him so carefully.
“If you can get the talisman…” Hiro was doubtful, but I just grinned at him, momentarily amused. I might have protested I couldn’t get it when no one else could use it. I hadn’t known about the loophole. And now I was grateful.
“Let’s move Bran,” I said. “And tie her back up, since releasing her was clearly a mistake.”
“How?” Felix looked at the pentacle and then back at me.
“I am having some anger issues,” I said. “I think I’ll work them out.”
I went up to my lab and got a sleep potion, loading it into a syringe. I wasn’t an expert at syringes by any means, but this was the type you shoved into a butt or a thigh. I was totally going to leave a bruise, but considering my STUPID plan—if I had any other ideas, any at all, I’d have tried them first.
Martha had Bran pinned to the floor on the stairs. It looked painful as living in the hells. I enjoyed—far too much—jabbing her with the sleep serum and waiting for her to fall asleep. Felix, Hiro and I carried Bran to the pentacles where we tied her to a chair and then cuffed her with the magicked cuffs that Jessie had made. Jessie had been forced to make a new set after the haunt had somehow destroyed the old ones. We redid the pentacle but used some runes that Hiro advised. In the end, she was as safe as I could make her while also trying to keep everyone else safe.
“Martha,” I said as we left. I could feel my coven freeze and listen as they waited for me to ask her for the talisman. “Please lock the pool room so Branka cannot get out and no one else can get in.”
“Your house will do that?” Hiro asked. He was holding Saki’s hand and had watched as I’d moved through my place. I think if we’d been at his place—he’d have bene more likely to take over. There was something of a commander about it. Something righteous. I didn’t want to say it, but he reminded me very much of Finn. Except I didn’t despise Hiro in the depths of my spine like I did Finn.
“So…I don’t want to minimize what you’re going through, but I don’t see how you could possibly get the talisman. Let alone take it from the rightful keeper.”
Sisters and Graves: A Rue Hallow Mystery (The Rue Hallow Mysteries Book 4) Page 9