Corpse Curses

by Jen Ponce

  Ha. My grandmother would die a thousand deaths if she knew the daughter of her daughter attracted demons like ticks to a hound.

  “So, do you have family here? Can I meet them?”

  “Most of them are gone, either killed or trapped. The Lodge is chewing through our ranks now that they’ve worked out the spells needed to find our true names. It will only be a matter of time before I’m called again.”

  I pursed my lips. Hell. No way was I going to let them take Lux or keep Malphas from me for long. If I had to kill every one of them to free them, then so be it.

  “You’re very beautiful when you think bloody thoughts,” he said.

  “Then I must be the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever laid eyes on because I want to kill them all.”

  “Why?”

  They kept asking me that as if it were such a crazy thing for someone to hate the idea of them being enslaved. “Because that fucking Lodge mows over anything and anyone in its quest for more power. I’m tired of them winning. I’m tired of them prancing about on TV, positioning themselves as better than the rest of us because chance landed them in the womb of a rich lady instead of a poor one. It’s ridiculous what they do and it’s downright criminal how the witches are forced to live. Hell, they’ll be separating themselves from the mundanes next, saying they have to keep their bloodlines pure.” I thought of golden boy Adam, born with a silver, magical spoon in his mouth. Given everything he needed to succeed … including the power of a trapped prince of Hell. No wonder he was Grand High Exorcist. The position had been bought and paid for by his daddy. “You wanna fuck me? Because I’m feeling a little aggressive and I need to work that right on out before I go to sleep.”

  Almost immediately he was growling, showing killing teeth, and when he bit me, he chased the anger right out of my head.

  15

  STOLAS

  Suspicion might be the cancer of friendship or it might end up saving lives. I’d rather lose a friend than have them lose their life.

  I still smelled her long after she’d gone. Lux hadn’t been joking when he told me about her, about her unusual hair, and unusual eyes with their bloodthirsty gleam. I paced the store, still not quite able to believe that Malphas allowed himself to be trapped by her. He’d spent forever as a slave and he just turned around and jumped into the cage for her?

  Why her? What was it about her that had Lux singing her praises?

  Why had her crystal burned that particular shade? Perhaps that had been a trick of the light. A coincidence, surely. A mistake.

  I pushed thoughts of the crystal aside to focus on Lux’s obsession. Hell, Malphas’s obsession. She had said she was willing to hunt down the last piece of me still in that bitch’s clutches, but it could have been lip service. She might offer favors the way others offer tea.

  I opened the cabinet where I stored all manner of magical accoutrement and pulled out a globe of black glass in which danced some of Lilith’s fire. She’d gifted it to me after the Battle of the Joris Plains and I’d kept it hidden away knowing my fellow demons would want to see it, to touch it after she’d disappeared. This bit of her was mine and I was greedy enough to want to keep it to myself.

  I set it on the counter and spun it. The fire spun too, twirling and dancing and eventually opening a Way. It allowed me to see the past of anyone I wished, and I focused on the intriguing woman who’d walked into my shop wrapped in an aura of lust and danger.

  Heady combination, that.

  “Show me Korri Marchand,” I said, holding her likeness in my mind’s eye. The Way shifted, sizzled, and then I saw her as a teenage girl confronting bullies in front of a brick wall. I saw her as a young woman, as a child. Every time the Way shifted through her life, there was always a huge part missing between the time when she was small and the time when she was a teen. Something had redacted that part of her past, redacted it so thoroughly I could see nothing of the time between her toddler and teen years.

  Interesting.

  I spun the glass the opposite direction and whispered a thank you to my queen, even though she was no longer around. I missed her; we all did, our lord most of all. Her death had been the end of us, though we hadn’t known it at the time. The death of the goddess Hecate had started it all, but Lilith had finished it.

  Spinning in the opposite direction, I could gaze some at the future, and I saw Korri in mine, saw Malphas and Lux too. The future was less certain, and the ball could not possibly capture all the infinite possibilities and timelines we could spin off into. It could sometimes grasp brief glimpses and sometimes those glimpses turned out to be true, but it was a hit and miss.

  Most of the time, when I spun it to the future, I saw our destruction.

  This time …

  Was it because of the woman that I didn’t see only despair this time?

  I spun it back the other way again, searching along her timeline. Sometimes, a spin forward would help uncover mysteries of the past, but this time I got the same blank space in her life. Whatever happened had been powerful to knock all mention of it from history.

  Venturing into the Magi’s world was always fraught with danger, more so now that I was hiding from their summons. Still, I needed to learn more about the little mortal who had enchanted Lux and Malphas, not only because she smelled good, but because she might pose a threat to all of us. It wouldn’t be the first time a magus managed to fool us. It didn’t happen often, or it hadn’t used to, but it was always a possibility.

  Nothing had been right in our world since the bastards had figured out how to crack the code on our names. That had happened soon after Hecate died. Many of us had wondered if her death had fueled some sort of spell they used to learn our names, but no one had ever found out anything concrete—and not for lack of trying. The magi were shielded well, they’d learned to hide from our wrath, and they only summoned us to entrap. Once we were caught, they could use us at their whim.

  I knew from experience, having been a slave for over a hundred years. I’d won myself free from a magus who had inherited me but hadn’t had the experience not to fall for my tricks—as the magi were wont to call our every attempt at freeing ourselves. I killed that little bastard and escape home. I’d surrounded myself with trickery and magic in the hopes that it would foil whatever device or spell helped them find us.

  So far, I’d been successful. If I went to their world?

  Still, I had to go, had to learn more about Korri Marchand, about who she was and what, exactly, she was up to.

  I decided not to tell Lux. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him and it would keep him from attempting to cast her in a good light.

  Let her actions speak for her.

  And if she looked like a threat, I would kill her.

  With that settled, I locked up shop, added a couple dozen hex charms to the exterior, and made my way to the magi world, everything I might need packed away in the pocket I carried with me everywhere I went. It was an extraordinary thing, this pocket, in that it existed out of space and time. A friend of mine from long ago had shown me how to open my own and now I carried it, and her memory, with me always.

  In the world of the magi, witches were second-class citizens at best. I remembered a time, long ago, when we worked together, celebrated together, fucked, danced, lived and worked magic together. They’d had power and confidence. These descendants that scurried around today, looking as though they were ready to be beaten at any moment, were pitiful.

  I knew we didn’t have room to talk, we demons. Not trapped or in hiding as we were.

  I shifted into an owl and soared above the ramshackle part of the city called the Witch District and over the hideous wall that was the magi’s monument to their bigotry. Lilith’s fire guided me to the home of Korri’s grandmother. I would have to be careful as there were magi living all around. I hoped I’d done enough to protect myself. I would not survive another round of slavery with my sanity intact.

  I sat in a stately old burr oak and
watched the house for some time. Witches were working the grounds in servant’s garb tending the house, and there was a steady stream of delivery people. I observed the workers and their uniforms, then glided down to the hedge maze in the back. I shifted into my regular shape, then changed myself in increments until I resembled a witch with dark brown hair and green eyes, my magic dancing on my skin as witch magic was wont to do.

  I made my way inside, touching the minds of everyone I met, making them believe I’d always been employed here, they’d always known me, I was boring, boring, look away. It wouldn’t work on a magus with a demon in a cage, but I didn’t intend to stick around long enough for one of those to spot me. I just wanted a look around.

  I wanted a feel around.

  The house was sedate, elegant and utterly devoid of laughter. It wasn’t a happy home. Not broken either, just … blank.

  All houses had history, had character. Some more than others, some scarier than others but this … this was an emptiness that even brand-new houses didn’t have. Someone had wiped it clean, was continuously wiping it clean. Why?

  What was going on under the surface that someone had to keep hiding the evidence? Kind of like a leaky well, the oil would keep seeping to the surface if it wasn’t capped properly. Something big had happened here, something momentous, and someone was trying very hard to make sure no one ever felt it.

  Had that something been the same thing that had ripped a hole in Korri’s history?

  “Excuse me,” I murmured to a nearby servant.

  The witch looked up, harassed, and sighed gustily. “What?”

  “Is the mistress of the house home?”

  She snorted. “Bitch is out. Which you would have known if you’d shown up to the meeting this morning like you were supposed to.” She went on her way, muttering and I eased open the time pocket.

  Even this bit of magic would alert a magus, especially one hanging onto a demon, but without the magus home, I could risk it. The witches would feel it, but they’d been taught so long to ignore or downplay magic, they would probably dismiss the shiver that ran across their skin as a premonition or a bit of unease and nothing more. I kept an eye on Lilith’s fire as I walked through the house. It flickered as it always did until I neared the south side. A large room sat behind a large wall of wood and glass. The flame exploded against the glass of the ball as I opened the door and entered, shutting it behind me with a quiet snick of sound.

  The flame continued to burn frantically as I walked to the center of the room and then the entire ball itself flew out of the pocket, launching itself to the floor before I could catch it. Magic exploded outward and knocked me back against the wall when I tried to retrieve the damned thing before it outed me.

  It stopped dead in the middle of a beautifully tiled floor and stilled, ball, flame, glass, all of it going black.

  The magic fell like water and splashed against the ground before dissipating. I heard the cries and knew I should get the hell out of there, but I needed to see what would happen next.

  I whispered a keep-out spell and waited.

  The ball didn’t move, the magic didn’t rise. I whispered another spell. “Show me.”

  The room grew darker. The windows changed, their shapes smaller. The tile disappeared, plants on long shelves appeared against each wall, and day turned to night. On the floor was inscribed a large summoning circle, as big as those I’d seen in the Lodges. At one end, a woman in a silver gown stood with arms outstretched. A man knelt in front of her, both of them facing the innermost circle where the ball now rested.

  The vision wavered. I heard a child’s scream, a man’s scream, a woman’s scream. I heard the raging roar of our queen.

  The door rattled behind me. “What’s going on in there? Are you okay?”

  I turned to see the witch from earlier, her eyes a bit wild, her hair in wild disarray at the magic that had pulsed from the ball with Lilith’s flame. “I’m fine. What happened?”

  It gave her pause, that question, and I added more confusion to her already panicked thoughts. “I don’t know. I thought—”

  “I heard something come from out back. Did something explode?”

  She glanced to the backyard and I hid, taking the memory of me out of her head with magic. She turned back to the room, her eyes a bit glazed. She blinked once, twice, then darted toward the back door, her encounter with me forgotten.

  I went to the ball and picked it up, studying it. It had gone completely black, no flame to be seen. “Are you still there?” I asked it, but it did not answer with either flicker or magic. I slipped it back into my time pocket and took myself back to Hell, shaken.

  What had happened that night? Why had the ball sought out that spot? Did it have something to do with Lilith’s death? Had Korri’s grandmother summoned her that night? Or the grandfather?

  What the Hell had happened?

  I knew I needed to find out more. If Korri’s family had anything to do with killing our queen, they had to die. And if Korri helped? If she’d benefited in any way?

  I would kill her too.

  16

  KORRI

  “You went where and did what now?” Poppy asked.

  We were out in Hell’s Mudroom, sitting at a shitty little table crammed in with other shitty little tables to get our coffee fix from the best coffee shop in our slice of Bolger, Kitty’s Kaffee. Everyone forgave her for her horrendous spelling because she really did make the best coffee in the known universe.

  “I went to Hell, twice, and fucked for at least a week, without missing anything here.” I sipped the wicked brew I had, enjoying the notes of chocolate, cinnamon, and the swirl of vanilla. It was like a dream in my mouth and I wished my heart could have withstood another five cups of it.

  “Hell. Hell, Hell? The Hell?”

  “All of the above, yes ma’am.” I was stiff in a good way from all the banging. Lux and I had done it every which way and then some. He was one mighty fine hellhound and he knew how to treat a girl right.

  “And now, you have … Earl Grey,” we’d decided on no names, “in a … tea bag—a giant ass tea bag—” she said, eying the large crystal hanging between my boobs, “and we have to figure out how to perma-save him from the clutches of the evil … tea conglomerates.” Translation: I had Malphas in a crystal around my neck and I had to figure out how to get the other piece of him away from a very powerful magus while keeping him safe from Harriet.

  If someone was listening to us, they’d probably recommend incarceration in the nearest mental health facility. “Yep.”

  “Shit.” She looked as though I’d just laid a giant turd right in front of her on the table and Hell, maybe I had. It wasn’t any kind of simple task we had laid out before us. It was a mountain to our ant and no amount of positive thinking shrank that fucking thing one little bit.

  “We have to take her out for tea. She’s gotten lucky twice and she doesn’t deserve to be lucky, you know what I’m saying?”

  She knew. Harriet had helped get Kyle Klein out of trouble and helped keep him out of prison. She’d falsified witness statements, harassed Poppy to the point that my friend had almost given up, had almost committed suicide just to get some relief from the pain of it all, and had generally been a cunt of the highest order.

  Harriet deserved to die, even if she hadn’t been the one to stalk my friend. She’d help cover up the murder of Poppy’s entire family. She’d helped hide Kyle’s assholery and by hiding it, condoned it. She needed stabbed at least a million times and then she needed stabbed again.

  “Hey,” Poppy said. “You’re scaring the locals.”

  I blinked, realizing I’d gone away a bit in my head. “Sorry.” I wiggled fingers at an old lady staring and she flashed a gap-toothed grin back. “She’s not scared.”

  Poppy glanced over her shoulder, then stiffened. “Yeah, well, she looks like she mainlines sulfur so …”

  I rolled my eyes. “So. Ideas. How do we take this bitch out for
tea?”

  Our conversation was paused by the sound of shouts down the street. I leaned out far enough to see the signs shaking over the heads of a small group of witches. “WE DESERVE EQUAL RIGHTS!” shouted one poster. “MAGI SUCK!” yelled another. Brave, considering not fifty years ago the magi had brutally put down a district-wide uprising that took the lives of over two hundred witches. Protesting wasn’t illegal, but it wasn’t exactly looked upon favorably either. They might get away with it here, in the heart of the Witch’s District, but if the Keepers caught wind of it …

  “Things are getting bad again, aren’t they?” Poppy said, the question not really a question. She knew; I could tell from the solemn cast to her pretty brown eyes.

  “It’s boiling to a head again.” And I didn’t think the witches were in any better shape to win than they had been the last time.

  Her lips tightened. “It’s good we’re doing what we’re doing then.”

  “Yeah. I only wish we could do more.”

  Poppy scooted closer so I could see her phone screen. “I’ve been thinking about that. Look.” She scrolled through an archive of news articles gathered by the resistance who maintained Witch Net and stopped on a picture of the guy, painfully young, his smile hopeful. “Jimmy Folks. He was executed.” She slid her thumb up, revealing another picture. “Darnell Reed. Executed. Benny, imprisoned for ten years.”

  “Possession of summoning accoutrement?” I guessed. I still needed to read the book I’d taken from the basement of Daddy’s apartment building.

  “You got it. The buzz is that Harriet hates being told no. Sound familiar?”

  Kyle.

  “When Jimmy, Darnell, and Benny told her no, she framed each one of them for consorting with demons. Guess who took the case every time?”

  Adam fucking Windhaven. “The Grand High Exorcist of Lodge 2?”

  “You got it.”

  “So, you’re thinking that we dig deeper, find concrete proof, and expose her?”

  “I’m thinking we dig deeper, find concrete proof, and let her think we’re going to expose her.”