“What is this place?” I asked aloud, recalling the granite behind the windows and the locked doors. “Find a way to tell me what this place is.”
My soft-spoken words seemed to hang in the air.
There was no reply, it was too much to hope for a straight answer, it would appear. That didn't fix my dilemma, the problem of what was haunting this house. Cool fingers touched the back of my neck, making me shudder and twist to see what was behind me.
A formless shape loomed over the couch where Anna was resting. Anna blinked innocently at the thing which did not breathe and was coming closer and closer, reaching a hand towards her with its fingers of smoke. A terrible fright washed through me and for a petrifying instant, I was too scared to move.
A bit of smoke touched her chest. The pin flashed as quick as a camera, filling up the room, reflecting off the glass covering the pictures. When the tears blinked out of my eyes, the thing was gone, and I had an answer. Anna was none the wiser for her close call, which did little to ease my own nerves.
A dread anticipation filled my gut. There was one place I hadn't checked.
I flipped one of the picture frames over and my heart sank.
There on the back were symbols I'd seen before. Symbols painted on walls. Symbols carved on trees. Symbols unrecorded throughout time and history for fear of what people would do with the knowledge.
Unwrittens.
And this one wasn't new. It was one I had encountered and stopped before. I flipped the other portraits over, stepped back and examined them, their colonial-era demonic structure.
Someone was making a new shadow dragon, but they hadn't gotten very far yet. It was a young spell, perhaps a couple of weeks old, at the most. About the same time that Gregor Cole had made his return from the dead.
I went searching for bones, not sure if he'd had time yet to create them, but fearing their power if he had managed it.
Fingers tickled across my skin as I tore cushions off their places in the house, checked under chairs and pried open the cupboard beneath the sink. Already bone-tired, I refused to stop despite the urge to sit down and rest.
It was a little cool in the cottage, despite the lantern flame flickering from oil lamps suspended in the center of every room. The windows seemed to be lit from behind, but I didn't know where the sunshine could be coming from considering there were bricks in the way.
I walked down the short hall to where there were two bedrooms opposite one another. Each one had a perfectly made single-sized bed with a fluffy down comforter and matching floral bedspread in cream and autumn-leaf orange. A set of oak drawers was also in place, no closet, no desk. All of it too clean, as if it were a dormitory prior to students moving in.
I shivered. Something bothered me, a nagging thought or memory; something at the edge of my mind. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on it. It slipped out of my grasp, leaving just a feeling of dread in its wake.
A child tugged on the hem of my shirt and I quickly opened my eyes. No one was with me in the hallway, and there had been nothing to catch my clothes on. I glanced into the bedrooms and back into the main sitting area uneasily. The sunlight that shouldn't be had gone, only the faint wobbles of harsh lantern light prevented the house from tipping into precarious darkness. I swallowed and faced the living area.
Before I could take a step the voices reached me. At first I did not know if I was hearing them, or if they were in my head, a faint, distant sound that resonated through memory rather than belonging to the outside world. Anna wasn't asleep, but she wasn't making noise now, either. I calmed my thoughts and let the muscles in my back relax.
Shapes and shadows moved where the lantern light did not touch them, yet I couldn't see them well enough to tell what they were. It was just movement that caught my eye, movement which was almost but not quite in synchronization with the wobble of flame dancing on its wet wick. For a haunting it was a stunning display, a ballet of dodges and dashes, a low hum which came from the very air itself.
The voices became louder, closer. Maybe just in my head, but I didn't think so. Not any longer.
I swayed on my feet; my skin tickled. A small, cool hand grasped my finger and urged me forward.
I stepped to the fringes of the room and watched as the lanterns snuffed out and faint, misty lights took their place. Blues and greens were most of them, but two red eyes blinked and stared from the edge, taking tenuous swings towards and away from me.
The voices were loud enough to hear now, a faint whisper.
The blurring of the sounds was enough to confuse the words, but distinctly came the words, “Dance, then.”
Goosebumps rose on my skin as the blue lights gleamed and the red lights festered.
I distinctly heard them now, like a TV playing on low volume. The sounds came from within me and from the chairs, from the walls and the spaces in between. I didn't know the song, but I tried to sing along with them, ending up humming instead.
Something about whipping and stripping and dying.
The sweet voices were at an utter contrast to the gristly lyrics, chilling my skin and making my stomach churn over as I tried to not envision the events the song was portraying, nor the reason the ghosts had for singing it now. Wet tears welled under my eyelids and I struggled to follow after the song. On a sudden burst of inspiration, I unzipped the couch cushions and began to gut them.
Back to the, 'dance, then,' chorus.
It had to be a church hymn, but how old of one? How old was this haunting? It couldn't be that old, surely. I faltered when I found an arm bone, the thinner one, whatever it was called, but the voices continued, the green lights growing as the tone changed to a deep, raspy chant. I handled the ceremonial bone carved with Unwritten runes and seeping a tacky liquid. The red lights dashed towards me.
The red lights were now pinned in the center of the room, fenced in by faster blues which streaked and cut off any chance of escape. How to best destroy the bones? I had no real memory of how I'd done it in the past, but I knew I had done it.
Ah, there was a reference to the Devil. I'd wondered when he was going to put in an appearance.
My thoughts went straight to Gregor Cole, and to the Immortal. I couldn't let them keep these people trapped. Someone clasped my hand in his calloused one, squeezing tightly, draining the warmth first from my hand and then the chill swept upwards, through my arm and towards my heart. With a deep breath, I raised my arm and brought the bone crashing down on the edge of the coffee table, snapping it in half the way I had done to the pool cue.
The chorus blared into an ear-splitting scream.
My hand burned where it had contacted the liquid. The blue and green lights flared and a terrible, ear-splitting scream broke out. I jumped, instinctively turning into the man who'd held my hand. He patted my back, a soothing gesture even if it was cold, and then he was gone.
I felt the power in the spell ebb away like waves washing ashore, taking with them all trace of what had been there prior. The faint tickling on my arms died to nothing. Ghostly voices were no more. Even the faint scent of cheap candles and old lady perfume blew away.
All around me, the wind stirred.
Because I was no longer in a locked-up barricaded house.
I was in the burnt, crumbled remains of a lot which had a chain link fence around it overgrown with ivy, and attached to the gate was a piece of paper which at one time had condemned the building as unsafe.
Chapter Thirty-Five
My first action was to gain some distance from the building, while also being close enough to keep eyes on it if someone—like Cole or perhaps a friend—had followed me through to the place. I took stock of my new circumstances and considered my situation. While free, I now had no way of contacting the others. I'd never been able to do it. Except those nights in my bedroom as a child, burning letters to Railey—but that had been the exception. Despite experimentation, I hadn't been able to re-create the memory and now I wasn't so sure that I'd ever ac
complished the feat.
My parents had used phones and kept a cell or two. Bogey busting prior to this had killed enough of my phones that I knew their number in my sleep. But I didn't want to call my parents unless I really, really needed to. Preferable would be to contact the Selestiani. Trouble was, I hadn't seen a trace of technology there. Nor did any of my coven have phones.
Nor did I, actually. Maybe there was a payphone around and maybe I had some lamb money to pay it with?
Well, this was incredibly poor planning on my behalf. I'd gotten spoiled by having companions other than a ghost. I checked my pockets. No coins. Not even of the magical sort. So. No money, no ID, no phone, no convenient portalling trinket. And no one pursuing the horror house.
Brilliant planning, Fera, you've failed to adult. Thank goodness it's only your own sorry skin that's going to suffer—oh wait, that's right, you've got a newborn that isn't even your own to care for, too.
I said a word that I hadn't even realized I'd learned, then headed towards a road where I heard vehicles, mulling over a plan. One consisted of finding the nearest Magic Constable and employing Barnes' name to get back in contact with my coven. Which would lead to a lot of questions I didn't want to answer and they would ask and ask and ask. Another option was to find a 'normal' person and beg to make a call on their phone, which they'd probably allow so long as I didn't walk away with their phone. The call would have to go to my parents, and once again they'd want answers I didn't want to give, and there would be confusion.
Eventually it would all get settled out, but it might be a hairline faster to go the constable route. The odds of finding a sorcerer who would burn a letter for me were slight, but not as slight as finding a portal station.
Of course, that was an idea. Portalling.
My body ached in protest at the very thought. Hadn't I been running around expending energy far too long as it was? Yet I still patted down my pockets again and toyed with my necklace of trinkets. No chalk to draw with. No replacement Earhart compass, either. Another oversight.
It was possible to find a stick and draw the portal out on the ground, but it would be best if it was ground which allowed for crisp lines, perhaps like a layer of dust or sand on top of a hard subsurface. While I mulled my three ideas over, I started to look for suitable ground to do the portal. Going to Selestiani would be the best. At least I could drop off Anna there.
My chest constricted at the thought.
I closed my eyes. Once, I'd felt that I never could have a stronger bond than the one that tied me to Mordon. I'd believed it as surely as I'd ever believed anything in my life. But now there was this little thing, a thing that wasn't even mine, and now I wondered. Could our bond be second to my attachment to the child? Surely she didn't feel the same affection towards me that I did to her.
An uncomfortable thought wedged in my mind. This is what my parents probably feel towards me. And it made me shamed that my relationship towards them was markedly different. Maybe not less, per se, but different. That assuaged a tiny bit of guilt and made up my mind: I'd find a phone and call my parents. If I had access to internet, I should be able to get my latitude and longitude, and then they'd be able to work out the best way to find me. To find the phone, I should go to the road and try to wave someone down. If I looked distressed and not like I was thumbing a ride, I should be in luck.
I was so tired, I wasn't even aware of the man before he was ten feet away and had a shotgun leveled at the back of my head.
“Doughn move.”
Suffice to say, I didn't do anything except flinch in surprise. I moved my magic around, rustling the hem of his coat before inspecting the surrounding area. It was just the two of us. That could be either in my favor, or against it. I didn't know which yet. Anna started to make noise.
“What's 'at you got there?”
“She's my ward,” I said, before realizing that if the man was not a sorcerer, he would either not understand the term or think that it was very old-fashioned.
“Turn around.”
So I did. His thighs were bare, hairy, and I didn't want to know if he was wearing whitie tighties beneath that long coat of his. He did wear socks held up by...were those garters? I'd be laughing my head off if I wasn't worried about the 10-gauge double barrel peering at me. I wouldn't even be worried if he was doing a half-ass job of holding it, but from his stance and the way the sites didn't bob in the slightest, he knew what he was doing. Wait, was he wearing a Constable jacket?
“You come out of the house?” he asked.
“We did.”
“What'd you do to it?”
The first line that came to mind was, “I didn't like it”, but it didn't seem like a good idea to go all smart Alec on a guy holding a gun at me when he might—possibly—be a friend. So I said, “It was accident I ended up there. Are you a Constable?”
He sank a little lower into his shooter's stance. “Might be.”
It was hard to tell in the dark, but when I tickled the breeze over his uniform coat, it felt the same way that Barnes' did. I decided to risk it. “There was an Unwritten taking shape there. I got rid of it.”
“Ain't no one been able to stop it. Why can you?”
“Because I have done so before. My name is Feraline Swift, and I need to talk with Constable Barnes of Merlyn's Market. Now put that piece of tin down and let's go someplace where I can take a seat and you can put your trousers on.”
The man seemed to like that idea, even if he disliked his fine blue steel barrel being called a piece of tin.
Not long after this, I was ensconced in a cubbyhole of a room which still boasted train ticket booth with fancy bars to divide the customer from the ticket master. Now the waiting area was little better than a fancy low-security jail cell, and the rest of the train station had been converted into a Constabulary Outpost. I wasn't one to complain, though. The fireplace was charming, I'd been given blankets and food for myself and Anna, and I'd been able to write a letter to Barnes which had been burned for me.
Not three minutes later, another letter had burned back to me.
The reply had been short:
Stay put and keep your nose clean.
It wasn't even signed.
The constable in residence held his own correspondence with Barnes. I drifted off to sleep despite my best efforts to remain vigilant. Too much spellcasting, too little energy in reserve.
A sense of movement and voices woke me up. I became aware of varnished walls, wood-smoke, and the uncomfortable pressure of a hard bench beneath my tailbone. Nothing made much sense until I recalled the events which had ended up with my presence here.
“I found her wandering in the industrial park,” a stranger's voice was saying. “Watching the house, as if expecting to see something come out of it. Now I find the two of you doing just that. Creepiest shit I've seen in years.”
“Is the Lady well?” Valerin asked. “She isn't hurt?”
“Fine way you know her, iffin you think she'll be banged up in the least,” the constable who found me said.
“I need to see her.”
“Ain't nobody going to see her but for the fellow from Kragdomen, and even then, only because he's her guardian. Otherwise I'd boot your scaly kidnapping asses out into the street.”
I strained my ears but couldn't hear Mordon's reply. What I heard loud and clear was Valerin.
“Won't you tell me if the Lady is in any way injured, or if she had a child with her?”
“Wolds, be silent,” Mordon said. “I will tell you when I return.”
Then the solid panel door opened and the constable let Mordon into the room, shutting the door after him quickly as if to keep Valerin from barging in.
Mordon had a puffy cheek which was blooming into a bruise, his hair had been quickly combed into a state resembling order, and his eyes lacked luster. He slumped visibly when he saw me.
“Come sit down,” I said.
He did, groaning as he hoisted first one boot the
n the next onto the bench directly opposite us. Before Mordon's entrance I hadn't realized how small the room was. A third adult would positively crowd the space. I already had to snuggle up uncomfortably close to the fire to make room for Mordon.
“You survived,” Mordon said, his voice unusually devoid of emotion. He pulled the hair off my neck, let it trail down my shoulders. Then he stroked Anna's cheek. “Just a couple dark spots under your eyes to show for the wear and tear.”
What was I to make of his mood? I swallowed hard. “I did my best.”
He slowly nodded, closed his eyes, and let his head drop back against the wall. “I know.”
Lost Magic (The Swift Codex Book 3) Page 27