Gathering Black (Devilborn Book 2)

by Jen Rasmussen

  And that would never do. I could no longer afford such weakness.

  (can’t afford any liabilities)

  I was supposed to be getting stronger.

  A little bit dark.

  So instead I got directly to a point of my own. Starting with another step forward. Marjory Smith, I vowed, would never see me back down before her again.

  “Now you listen to me, you evil old witch,” I said. “You know what I come from. You knew my father’s power. How can you possibly imagine that you’re a match for me?” Another step. “I still don’t know what Cillian Wick promised you, in exchange for becoming his servant, but I imagine it was some version of what you’ve always wanted: Bristol. You want all the power of this town for yourself. Probably you always have, even when it belonged to Amias and your precious Miss Underwood.”

  I took yet another step toward her, and although Marjory held her ground, she didn’t look comfortable about it. When I jabbed a finger at her, she flinched.

  “But this is my town now,” I went on. “As much as it was ever his. You have no power here. And you’d best remember it, or it will be your grave I’m dancing on.”

  I turned my back on Marjory Smith, and walked down the path away from Greyhill. I made a point of not looking back, so I didn’t know how quickly she recovered from her shock at being stood up to, or whether she followed me. But I came back onto the hotel grounds alone.

  She’d certainly given me plenty to think about. I needed to figure out how much she really knew. Maybe, if I was lucky, some of that had been bluffing, an attempt to get me to betray my secrets.

  But even if Marjory did know how Letitia had cast her sanctuary spell—and how I had cast mine—it didn’t follow that she would know how to undo such magic.

  The sad fact was, I knew nothing about soul magic, having engaged in it only that one time, and mostly blindly. But I had the sense it was the strongest of witchcraft. My father’s sanctuary had only been broken by means of a condition Letitia herself had purposely worked into the spell. I knew of no way to break mine.

  In the meanwhile, I’d gone to Greyhill with the intention of practicing this new combination of storytelling and place-magic Granny had in mind for me. I still needed to find someplace to do that. With Marjory Smith having just openly vowed to take my life, it was more urgent than ever that I find a way to grow my own power.

  But the hotel wouldn’t do; it was too friendly to me, too predisposed to do my bidding. I didn’t necessarily want to start with a challenge as big as the barn had been, but I wouldn’t get very far by tossing myself only softballs, either.

  I stopped by Cordelia on my way back to the building, leaning against her trunk to soak in a bit of sunshine, and think.

  So where could I go, that was off the Mount Phearson property, but still within the sanctuary of Bristol? Preferably somewhere Marjory and the Garden Club were unlikely to watch me too closely, or interfere too much.

  I considered asking Wendy or Granny whether I could use their houses, but I was afraid the potential for destruction might be too high. That also eliminated the library, the only other place in Bristol I’d ever felt at ease.

  Except that wasn’t quite true. I’d forgotten the smuggler’s den.

  I had no idea what made me remember it then; I must have been in fourth or fifth grade the last time I’d been there. Maybe it was being with Cordelia, another childhood refuge, that brought on the association.

  The Mount Phearson was home to me now, and kind to me. A place of safety. But it hadn’t always been so. I’d been as scorned there as anywhere, when I was young. Worse than scorned. Madeline Underwood and her coven loved my father, but despised my mother, and resented me. The moment when they would slip and vent their spite always felt a mere breath away. One wrong move, one poorly chosen word, might be all it took.

  Cordelia was always there, easy to climb, ready to welcome me into those great branches, to read or just huddle up with my thoughts. It was good to get away from the hotel, the staff who thought me a freak, Miss Underwood’s unsettling dour gaze.

  But sometimes Cordelia wasn’t far enough. My mother knew about her, for one. There were few who were inclined to seek me out, as long as I wasn’t underfoot, but if they did care to look, they could find me in that tree.

  And sometimes, without any reason I could name, I was simply afraid to be found.

  So eventually, I found another place. The woods around the hotel were scattered with the remains of outbuildings. One of these was a stable—or more accurately, one wall, a floor, and assorted rubble that had once been part of a stable—that I’d christened the smuggler’s den for no reason but that it sounded like an adventurous sort of name.

  I wasn’t supposed to go back there, of course. Aside from the usual dangers inherent in a child roaming the woods on her own, some of those old buildings were haunted.

  But the smuggler’s den was not. Like me, it was alone. Set way back in an overgrown, thorny area with no clear trails near it, it was free of the kind of visitors who frequented Greyhill, looking to sneak a smoke or a drink, or simply for a pretty hike. The stable had long since been forgotten.

  I spent hours there, working the kind of magic that is the province not of witches but of children, lost in stories that didn’t, at least as far as I knew, double as spells. Sometimes I was indeed a smuggler, although I didn’t have a terribly clear idea of what that entailed. Sometimes I was a weary adventurer, seeking shelter in a castle or cottage, on the run from an evil enchantress. Sometimes the two old iron hitching posts, so overgrown with vines they were nearly invisible, marked the gateway to another world, or a time portal. I had to be careful with those, as I was allergic to iron (or so I thought at the time), but that dash of danger only made them more powerful and mysterious.

  As I reflected on those times, I decided the smuggler’s den would be an ideal middle ground to practice on. Though once part of the property, it had been reclaimed by the woods long ago. I’d never owned it. And although I had a connection to it, I was sure that mattered more to me than to it. I doubted I’d left such a mark there as to predispose the place to my bidding.

  So after writing several new spells in an attempt to help give my sanctuary a happy ending over Marjory Smith, I set out that afternoon to find the den again. But I overestimated the power of my own memory. It took hours, until I was sweaty and most unhappy, before I came upon it at last.

  Like so many things from one’s childhood, it was smaller than I remembered. But just as overgrown, more of a tangled thicket than proper woods. The stable floor was still there, and the single standing wall made of the same tan stone. Near what would have been the front, the hitching posts were even less visible than before, choked in vines and undergrowth.

  I closed my eyes and reached out with my mind. And there was… nothing. No vitality, no will. It was just a crumbling shell, scattered with chunks of stone and wood and other debris, but not with magic. I felt the normal tug of memory you’d expect, on seeing something you once loved but haven’t thought of in years. Apart from that, I had no sense of the place, and it had no sense of me.

  For my purposes, that could be a good thing. This could be the mostly-neutral ground I was looking for.

  But not until tomorrow. It had taken me so long to find the place, I had no time left to do anything but hike back to the hotel, using the pocketful of red ribbons I’d brought to mark a trail as I went, so I could find it again. (Though not so many of them as to encourage others to do the same.)

  I got up at dawn the next morning, so I would have some chance of getting across the grounds and into the woods unobserved. The construction crews finishing the spa and starting work on (ironically enough) a new stable for the Mount Phearson wouldn’t arrive for a couple of hours yet.

  As I’d hoped, I didn’t pass anybody. It had rained overnight, and my sneakers were soon soaked through, the bottoms of my jeans caked with mud as I followed my trail of sodden ribbons back to the
smuggler’s den.

  Once there I stood for some time, staring around like an idiot. Wondering where and how to start.

  The barn was a setting, Granny had said. The trees were characters.

  Theater.

  All right. Then if the smuggler’s den was to be my setting, who were the characters here? Not the hitching posts; I wouldn’t be able to work any magic on iron. Bushes I had around me in plenty, if not trees. One crumbling wall, the remains of a floor. Some bugs, surely—did insects count? Could I work my will on something sentient? I supposed I could find out, eventually. But it was probably best to just start small.

  So for a few minutes I simply walked around, trying to connect to the place the way I had as a child. Remembering all the stories I used to tell there, when they were only stories, and not magic. Trying to remake the old stable into the smuggler’s den I wanted it to be.

  I felt nothing; the place gave nothing back.

  I was doing it wrong.

  Your great power is collaboration. Granny had said that, too. You aren’t just the author anymore. You’re the director.

  Theater.

  I was trying to impose my own will on the place. That would not do. I was good at two things: storytelling and place-magic. Combining them would mean giving up some control over the former, in order to tap into the latter. I would have to let the settings, and the characters within, write their own stories, at least to some degree. I would have to collaborate.

  I tried to clear my mind of all that I already knew and felt about the smuggler’s den. I tried to stop thinking of it as the smuggler’s den at all.

  It had been a stable. Stalls would have crisscrossed that long floor. Horses would have been hitched to those posts. It would have smelled like straw and manure and leather tack. There would have been a well-traveled path back to the main house. It would have been bustling, busy.

  And then what? When and why had it fallen into disuse? The fact that it was partially standing suggested it hadn’t been intentionally demolished, at least not properly. Yet the rubble that remained wasn’t enough to account for an entire building, either. It must have been plundered at some point, for stone and other materials. And then simply abandoned to decay where it stood.

  Did the stable resent that? Or was the land it stood on glad to reclaim this piece of itself?

  This is ridiculous. Cooper is out there risking his life. I don’t even know if he’s okay right now. Our enemies are closing in. Marjory Smith is actively working to break the sanctuary. And I’m standing here, thinking about how a few yards of land might feel.

  I pushed the defeatist thoughts away, along with as many other selfish thoughts as I could. If Granny considered this line of magic worth pursuing, I would take her advice. And it wouldn’t work if all I could think about was myself and my own troubles.

  I closed my eyes, breathed in deeply, and tried again. What did I sense? What energy had built up here, through the years, to mark this place, to define it?

  Loneliness. Longing. Greed, even.

  It came in a sudden flash, and I wasn’t even quite sure how. But once I made the connection, I found I could do it again without effort. Like seeing the trick of an optical illusion, and never looking at it the same way again.

  This place was bursting with energy once, important, full of life and travel and purpose. And now all that vitality has been taken away. The old stable is forgotten. Forsaken.

  Hungry.

  Okay. Good. So how did I use that? What story could we write together?

  It would be yearning, then, to get some of that old vitality back. And I was a powerful witch, half phantasm; I had more than the average person’s share of vitality. Supposing I were to share a bit?

  If I gave some vitality to this place, what would it choose to do with it?

  There was only one way to find out. I closed my eyes again, gathered up my will, my energy, as if I was going to work some magic of my own. And then I simply offered it to the stable.

  There was a groaning, scraping noise. I opened my eyes to find that the single wall was moving. Or parts of it were. Almost imperceptibly, the crumbling, falling pieces of stone at the edges were righting themselves. Straightening the wall, fortifying it.

  I stared, breathing heavily. I definitely hadn’t imagined it. That wall had just moved. It wanted to mend itself. The whole stable wanted to mend itself.

  It wants to rebuild.

  Of course. It wants a happy ending. Every story does.

  I felt drained and oddly fatigued, much more so than if I’d done the magic myself. But it was a good start. I’d tapped into the inclination of the stable, the same way I had once used the inherent power of an inn to protect the guests at my hotel. But this time, the place itself had actually changed. Had done a tangible, physical thing. An event. Plot for the story.

  I knew that collaboration could only take me so far. I could hardly count on every dire situation occurring in a place that was angry or resentful, that I could encourage toward some useful destruction like I had with the barn. If this was to be any more useful than the rest of my rather eccentric skills, I would have to learn to keep some of the power for myself, to treat the places less like cowriters and more like stage sets, where I could tell my own stories.

  Theater. You aren’t just the author anymore. You’re the director.

  I knew that was my endgame. But for now, I was satisfied. Not to mention hungry. I walked up to the wall and gave it a pat, and imagined I felt a tiny vibration beneath my fingers. Energy, anticipation. The stable was ready for more.

  Soon, I promised. I need rest. But I’ll be back.

  I made all sorts of plans on the way back to the hotel, for returning the next day, and as often as I could after that, to commune with the old stable. To help it rebuild a bit, if that was truly what it wanted. To flex my magical muscles until I was moving stone and wood every day.

  But those plans were driven from my mind when I came into the lobby to find a very harassed-looking Rosalie, standing off to the side of the desk speaking to a woman who, although I could only see her from behind, I was pretty sure was Arabella Blackwood.

  I started toward them, and Rosalie, spotting me, hurried to meet me halfway.

  “Thank goodness you’re back. This person is obviously unwell, but she’s been demanding that I let her into your suite! I keep telling her that’s impos—”

  She stopped talking abruptly as I put a shocked hand to my mouth, looking over Rosalie’s shoulder.

  Arabella had turned around. Her long dark hair had been cut, or maybe burned, down to her scalp on the right side.

  On that same side, she was missing an ear, and an eye.

  I rushed over to her. “Arabella, where is Cooper?”

  Arabella shook her head. Her intact eye was shining with tears, but her voice was hard and steady. “They’ve got him. And my father. In my father’s house. They sent me back here.”

  My blood ran cold. I swallowed hard and nodded, to show that I understood why they’d sent her, that there was no need for her to say it out loud.

  But she said it anyway. “If we don’t bring them the West Seed, they’ll kill them both.”

  Balls. What am I going to do?

  The question was constantly presenting itself, over and over in my mind. It was never accompanied by an answer. Each of my options was intolerable.

  If I were to pull the West Seed out of the vault and take it outside of Bristol, it would be immediately vulnerable.

  Including to Arabella. Suppose this whole thing was a complicated ruse to get me to trust her, so that as soon as she got me out of the sanctuary with the seed, she could attack?

  That was surely an irrational fear, as well as an unkind one. She’d saved my life.

  (Or appeared to save it.)

  Not to mention she’d now lost an ear and an eye. Permanently, she said—apparently the vital talent for self-healing did not extend to regenerating body parts. Even if she was a tra
itor like her father, would Arabella really go that far to trick me?

  It seemed unlikely, but under the circumstances, I had to be practical. The only person I really trusted was in the hands of the Wicks.

  And he wouldn’t want me to surrender the seed. Not even to save his life. I knew that. He wouldn’t thank me for it, if I ransomed him this way.

  But selfishly, I wanted to do it anyway. Cooper might be willing to sacrifice himself to his cause, but that didn’t mean I was prepared to sacrifice him.

  I just wasn’t sure giving in was the best way to save him. The West Seed was my only leverage, the only guarantor of his safety. Bringing it out in the open and up for grabs was not a good answer.

  Balls. What am I going to do?

  I paced around my suite, resisting the urge to punch the walls, while Arabella watched me in silence from where she’d collapsed on the couch.

  “What about water?” I asked her. “Can I at least get you that?”

  She nodded, and I hurried to comply. At least it was some action I could take, that I knew I could complete successfully. She kept insisting I not fuss over her, but her injuries were even worse than they’d initially looked. One of her legs had been shattered badly enough for the healing of it to be a difficult and, I suspected, lengthy process. Her face was burned, her empty eye socket oozing. And her breath was still coming in wheezy hitches that made me wonder what they’d done to her on the inside.

  I’ve done her a disservice, and not for the first time. She’s no traitor. Nobody would put themselves through this on purpose.

  “How did they do it?” I asked, nodding at her face as I handed her a glass. I knew I would hate hearing the details, but I needed to understand the situation. And I instinctively felt it would be a good thing to get her talking.

  “First they set my hair on fire,” Arabella said in a dead voice. “Then they used a red-hot iron dagger. They did it in front of my father. Talon…” She trailed off and took a long drink of water before she said, in a voice so quiet I thought I must have misunderstood her, “He made Dalton eat my ear.”