by Zoë Archer
The woman was also completely translucent. Zora could see right through her to the wall.
A bavol-engro. A ghost.
Zora recited old Romani incantations against evil, incantations she never believed in nor tried to memorize. Now she wished she had paid more attention when her grandmother had attempted to instruct her in Romani lore—back when Zora did not give credence to things such as magic and evil. She knew differently now, yet too late. All she could recall were jumbled phrases, shreds of belief she tried to use as shelter. To no avail. The ghost did not disappear, did not even flicker. She continued to hover just above the ground as she stared at Zora.
“Go from here, spirit.” Zora attempted a command, but her voice shook as much as her knees.
To her shock, the ghost answered.
“She can see me?” Her voice held a strange accent, a little like the Italian commedia actors the Rom sometimes met in their travels. The ghost at first sounded as though she were a great distance away, but, as she spoke, her words grew stronger.
Zora could only nod.
“And ... she hears my voice?”
“Y-yes.”
The ghost held up her own arm and stared at its gleaming translucency. “She sees. And I have form.” Lowering her arm, she drifted toward Zora. Her eyes beseeched as much as her outstretched hand. “Touch. So long. It has been so long since I felt another’s warmth.”
Zora skittered away as the ghost floated toward her. When the spirit passed through the solid form of a chair, she stopped in her progress and stared down in shock.
“Form, but no substance.” She whirled away from the chair, pressing her knuckles into her eyes. “The punishment, it does not cease. Punished for my transgressions.”
Zora did not know what to believe or what to trust. Wafodu guero was a liar, a trickster. This mad spectral woman could be one more of his ruses to lead her down dark paths. Whit had been taken in, but Zora needed to remain wary, for his sake as well as her own.
“Transgressions?” she asked guardedly.
“Pride. And greed,” answered the spirit, distracted. She suddenly grew agitated once more, spinning back toward Zora. “Am I too late?”
“I don’t know.” Zora could hardly believe she conversed with a ghost, if that’s truly what this creature was. “Too late for what?”
“Too late for what, she asks. Does she not know? I do not believe she knows. She must.” The spirit’s lovely face grew stern. “To defeat the beast that has been set loose upon an unsuspecting world.”
Wafodu guero, Zora thought. “He is your master.”
The ghost gave a riotous laugh before choking it back. “Not my master. No. I sought to be mistress over him.”
“Who are you?” Zora demanded.
“Names? What are names? Alone, who has a name? Once, others called me Valeria Livia Corva.” Her voice grew wry. “Other names, too. When they thought I did not hear, but I heard. Yes, and marked them well. Wicked woman. Priestess of Hecate. Worshipper of the dark forces and chaos.”
Zora’s head spun as she tried to puzzle out what she saw, what she heard. Truly this spirit—if that’s what she was—had lost her mind. “This makes no sense to me.”
“We are of a kind, her and I. Am I here? Do we converse? Is she real? My memory, my ... sanity, it is a liquid thing.” The ghost pressed transparent hands to her temples. “I remember. . . the prison being opened, and I was free. But so was he. And there were men. The ones who had freed us. The girl was there. And then ... she summoned me. Yet”—she glanced around, her eyes attempting to focus—“I know not this place.”
“This is the home of one of those men. We’re far from where this all began. How did you come to be trapped with the Devil?” Zora would ferret out the truth, if it existed.
“The Devil,” the spirit repeated, her mouth twisting. “So that is what he is called now. I have my name. Valeria Livia Corva. He has his names, his faces, all different. They were different then, when I knew him.”
“A long time ago,” Zora guessed.
The spirit gazed about her, uncertain. “I do not know when we are. Once, I lived. A woman of flesh and appetite. Many appetites. Food. Men.” She smiled at some wicked memory. “All of them mine. Anything for a daughter of Rome here in Anglia, this cold, cold outpost of the Empire. Worshipping my own gods. The dark gods of the natives.”
Images appeared in the air between Zora and the ghost: a statue of a triple-faced goddess holding torches, a goat-horned, bearded man, and twisting, seething shapes of implike creatures. All of them radiating sinister energy. Instinctively, Zora clutched the shard of pottery, seeking its protection.
“They told me. Mother. Father. Said I wanted too much. What did I care what they thought? More. Always more. That’s what I wanted.” Disgust laced the ghost’s voice. “Greedy girl, vain woman—lured by darkness. Now, what have I? Half life. Nothing. Half of nothing. Is half of nothing still nothing?”
Zora thought of Whit and his friends, how they had been tempted by Wafodu guero. If there were answers in this mad spirit, she must find them. “You summoned him,” she deduced. “To gain power.”
“Oh, power is a delicious thing.” The ghost gave a low, voluptuous chuckle. “Sweet and edged, like a knife of sugar.”
“How did you do it?” Zora pressed, trying to guide Valeria Livia Corva toward a measure of clarity.
“The door between the worlds was sealed tight. Locked. He would not come. I had to open the door.” She admitted with a measure of bitterness, “It took more power than I had. What wasn’t mine, I stole.”
The images shifted and transformed into two women. One was fair, dressed in a different style of tunic, with elaborate metal bands around her arms. The other had dusky skin and dark eyes, wearing bright silk and golden jewelry. Something about the dark-skinned woman felt familiar to Zora, though she was certain she’d never seen her before.
“A captured Druid priestess and a slave from India,” said the ghost. “Possessors of powerful magic. Proud women. Strong women. They fought against me. Their courage and pride, they meant nothing to me then. I took their magic.” She mimed reaching out and grabbing something, and her voice was cold with anger—toward herself.
Zora knew deception. It was her trade. The ghost’s fury with herself did not seem feigned, nor fully a delusion created by her madness. But Wafodu guero was a master at manipulation and deceit.
“Their power was mine,” the specter said, “and I used it. Pushed the portal open. The portal between the worlds.” The vision of the captured women dissolved into ghostly flame. “The Dark One crossed through. From his world of darkness into our world of light. Evil in his eyes, no promised power. The future writ large in letters of fire.” She waved her hand, and a cascade of sparks fell to the floor.
Zora started forward, seeking to extinguish the sparks before something caught fire, but they were only phantasms that vanished the moment they touched the ground.
The ghost, lost in her memories, paid no heed. Her eyes were wide with horror as she relived releasing the Devil.
“He comes!” she cried. “He will enslave us all. Make this earthly plane into another Hell. Fool, fool!” She knocked her fists into her forehead with such force, Zora believed the ghost might injure herself—if she weren’t already dead. “My fatal mistake. I did not realize. Not until this moment as he steps from the underworld.”
“Too late,” Zora could not help but say.
The ghost seemed to recall herself, and smiled bitterly. “The Druid and the Indian slave, they were better women than I. They found reserves of courage, and magic. And allies.”
As she said this, the images of three armored men flickered in the air, their swords upraised as they fought against an unseen enemy. Zora had never seen soldiers in action, not with this kind of intent and purpose, and it awed her to see them in true combat. The two women joined the fight, with bolts of magical energy streaming from their hands. Even though the five peopl
e battled with every ounce of their strength, they all sustained terrible wounds, and blood poured like autumn rain.
“Did they win?” Zora asked, unable to keep herself from being drawn into the story.
“Win, lose, win, lose,” said the ghost airily. “They are the same. The words mean nothing. Small words.”
“What happened to the Devil?” pressed Zora, gritting her teeth.
“Forced back through the portal.” The spirit shook her head. “It cannot close to keep him in. Someone must shut and lock the door from the inside.”
“Sacrifice themselves.” When the ghost did not answer, Zora stared at her, and the tight, drawn expression on the specter’s face provided the answer. “You.”
“Never have I done anything for anyone but myself. My last act as a living woman—my first selfless deed.”
The shapes in the air changed once more. Zora watched as the figure of the priestess hurled herself into a gaping, fiery gateway, pulling burning gates behind her.
“Terrifying,” said Zora.
“No words can describe the feeling, the fear.” The ghost’s voice shook with it even now. “Precious life. I did not want to end it.”
“Yet you did.” Zora considered the ghost. Perhaps this was more trickery, but if it was, the deception was artful and tugged hard on her heart. Was the crazed ghost’s story of self-sacrifice true? Zora wondered if she, herself, would have the courage to face death—and possible eternal torment—to do what must be done. She could not stop herself from asking, “What’s it like? Death?”
The ghost turned to look out the windows, but light from the candles turned the glass reflective, opaque. There was only darkness and flame.
“This is not the peace of death,” she said, her voice hollow. “Not dead. Not alive.”
It sounded awful to Zora. “You were trapped, just as the Devil was. Just as I am.” She added quietly, “If you speak truly.”
“The girl of warm flesh and cold heart calls me a liar,” the ghost muttered to herself.
“I think that where Wafodu guero is concerned I must remain on my guard.”
The priestess’s mouth curved into a cynical smile. “She has wisdom, this girl. More than I ever did.”
“It was hard won.”
“As was mine,” said the ghost. She gazed at the reflection of the burning candles. “I thought to imprison the Dark One. So I did. One final spell, just as I crossed the threshold. Binding the Dark One to a hidden prison. Our prison. Mine wasn’t the only life surrendered that night. A centurion guarded the prison, allowing himself to be buried alive in order to keep it safe.”
An image of a box appeared. Zora recognized it from the underground chamber where she had found Whit, his friends, and Wafodu guero.
“The soldier simply died after a time. Not me. Not the Dark One. Him and me. Me and him. Forever and ever and ever.” The spirit’s voice went far off, her eyes empty. “No one to speak to. No one to touch. The world changing around me. Figures on a distant shore. Such transformations I could never have believed. This is my eternity, watching the passage and shift of time.” Pain laced her words. “Endurance. All I knew. Trapped in a dream from which I could not wake.”
No wonder the spirit had gone mad. Zora both condemned and pitied her, if it was possible to feel both emotions at once.
“One consolation. One small gem I clutched to myself. Believing the Dark One was as trapped as I. There was little comfort in it. Trapped in between,” she said hollowly. “Forever.”
“But not forever,” Zora noted. “You’ve been freed.”
The ghost blinked, as if coming back into the room, into herself. “Am I free? And who freed me?” She seemed at a loss. “These men?”
Once more, the images in the air changed, transforming now into the strong, bold figure of a man Zora knew very well. His square jaw, the sensuous curve of his lips, his clever blue eyes that gleamed with a ravenous need for more.
“Whit,” Zora whispered.
This image of Whit was flanked by his four friends, each of them shadowed by hunger.
“Why did you open that cursed box?” the specter demanded of the images.
Again, the ghost’s pain and confusion seemed real, even as she mistook her own illusions for reality. Zora could only venture a guess to answer her demand. “Because they have everything, yet it isn’t enough.”
“We share that complaint.” The specter reached toward the images of the men, but they dissolved into nothingness. She stared down at her empty hands. “And we share recklessness. They do not know. Could they? No—how would it be possible for them to understand? What they let loose upon the world. Their lives and many more imperiled.”
Zora’s chilled blood cooled even further. If this was deception, if the ghost was a minion of Wafodu guero, it was a cunning deceit, disguised by lunacy. “What will happen?”
The ghost looked bleak. “These gaps in my mind—the storm comes through. Rain upon the floor, only cold water and wind. No knowledge. Yet the Dark One is clever. Subtle. He chooses his pawns well. Hands tied, others will do his work for him. Men of strength and power.”
“Whit’s friends are indeed men of strength and power—just as he is strong and powerful.” She had felt his power even without the dark influence of Wafodu guero.
“Precisely what the Dark One needs.”
“Needs to do what?” She feared what lay in store for Whit. What sins he might commit.
The specter turned and held Zora’s gaze. It felt like the icy hand of eternity clutching at her.
“To unleash Hell on earth,” said the ghost. Eyes burning with sudden clarity, she floated closer to Zora. “But the girl and I are going to stop him.”
Whit staggered from the table. Direction and comprehension both failed him as he wove through the club. Noise, noise on all sides. Voices, glasses, rolling dice. Someone spoke to him but he heard nothing, only formless sound. The many candles threw everything into glaring relief. His limbs felt heavy and numb, barely under his control. Somehow he managed to gain enough balance to find a spare room off the club’s main hallway.
As Whit opened the room’s door and then closed it behind him, the flame of a lamp within guttered. Misshapen shadows writhed upon the walls.
Unwanted detritus from the club formed a small chaos. Tables and chairs jumbled together, other pieces of random furniture, paintings, candlesticks. The window, bare of curtains, looked out onto a narrow alley. He stood there for a moment, his breath coming harsh as his head spun.
He needed Zora’s steadiness, but she was not here.
“Veni, geminus,” Whit rasped.
The scent of burnt paper filled the room. And then a man stood in the room with Whit. The man’s face was a blank; or, rather, Whit could not truly see his face, for his gaze kept sliding away every time he tried to focus on the man’s facial features. By his fine clothing, Whit recognized him as one of the courtiers who had attended Mr. Holliday in the underground chamber, the same courtier who had procured a token from Whit. A button. Whit had given the courtier a button from his coat, and in exchange, he had received the gift to control chance, with the markings upon his skin as signifier.
At the time, Whit had believed his gift was infallible. And it had been, up to a few minutes ago.
“A pleasure, my lord,” said the courtier. He bowed elaborately.
The gallant gesture meant nothing. “I would not have wagered your master’s gifts to be so faulty.”
“Oh, never faulty, my lord.” The courtier’s voice was polished glass. “Always perfect.”
“There was nothing perfect about what happened just now at the hazard table. Except I felt like a perfect fool.” He took a step toward the courtier. “If probability is mine to control, then how is it that I lost when I had no intention of losing?”
The courtier sighed, as if about to explain once more a lesson that had already been taught. “Power over the odds is yours, indeed, but only ...”
&nbs
p; “Only ... ?”
“If you are going to win something that truly matters.”
Whit foundered. “The stake at the hazard table was five hundred pounds. That is no small amount.”
The courtier made a sound of dismissal. “A trifling amount for you, my lord.”
“And everything that had come before? This?” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the ruby stickpin. “This does not matter, yet I won it.”
“You needed that win, just as you needed the racehorse and the seaside cottage.”
“Again, both valueless to me. I can buy as many damned horses or cottages as I please.”
The geminus looked at him with almost pitying eyes. “The things themselves did not matter. You needed the win to soothe the turmoil in your heart. The win of five hundred pounds would do nothing for you, not here.” The courtier tapped the center of Whit’s chest, and he reared back, away from its touch.
True—he had placed the bet for the five hundred pounds when he cared little for the outcome. Yet the fact that he lost at all was still profoundly wrong. He was not supposed to lose. Ever.
“ ’Tis only money,” continued the courtier, then added with a smile in his voice, “And it is not gambling if you win every time. Where’s the thrill in that?”
Whit felt the air leave his body, as if he was clutched in a giant fist and squeezed until his bones turned to pulp. “Mr. Holliday said none of this,” he managed to choke out.
“A very busy man, is Mr. Holliday. Certain small details escape him from time to time.”
“This is more than a small detail.” Whit wondered what other small details he and his friends had not been informed about, what hidden traps into which he had blundered. Zora’s warnings sifted through his mind, her continual pleas for him to repudiate Mr. Holliday and his gifts.
The courtier effected a shrug. “You are a gambler, my lord, as is my master. As I am. The pleasure comes from never quite knowing what may happen. Shall we lose everything? Shall we gain a valuable prize?”