“The basement door is still unlocked. I snuck around the first floor a little, and it really does sound like they’re having dinner. The mother sounds drunk or drugged or something, by the way. Anyway, the kid might be on the up-and-up.”
Too easy.
“But I bet these puzzles won’t be,” I muttered.
“Won’t be what?”
“Easy.” I stood up. “This whole thing has felt too easy.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. But I bet you’re right. I bet the hard part is ahead.”
“Let’s find out.”
All four side doors were locked, but the one at the end of the hall was not. There was only one way to move forward.
“Not much of a puzzle so far,” Cooper said with a smile, and stepped through the doorway.
There was a rush of cold air, and in the gloomy light I was just able to make out his neck and head disappearing downward, before he was gone.
“Cooper!”
The room he’d gone into was pitch dark, beyond a foot or so of stone floor. Why he’d walked forward when he couldn’t see a thing was beyond me.
“Cooper?” I stepped forward, careful to stand only on the part I could see.
But of course, as soon as I got beyond the threshold, the door slammed behind me.
Lights flared to life, at first so bright that I was just as blind as I’d been in the dark. When my eyes finally adjusted, all I could do was stare in blank confusion and shock.
I was in a round room, like a tower, with stone walls, and a stone floor covered in straw. There were no doors other than the one I’d just come through. A large chandelier hung from the high ceiling, providing way more light than its dainty bulbs should have been capable of.
I peered at the floor. The layer of straw was thin enough for me to see a bit beneath it, and as far as I could tell, it was solid.
So what did Cooper fall into?
Reasoning that the so-called puzzle must involve trap doors and trick tiles in the floor, I got down on my hands and knees and pushed the straw aside. I pressed down—as hard as I could—on the stone in front of me before moving forward. It didn’t budge, and neither did the next.
I made it to the center of the room this way. When I looked back, I saw that the line I’d tracked through the straw was pretty much a straight shot from the door. Yet Cooper had walked only a step or two before he fell.
Balls, what happened to him?
“Cooper?” I tried again, but the word fell unanswered into the thick silence around me.
Okay, don’t panic. Think. It’s a puzzle, remember?
I tried to guess what might have happened, without picturing Cooper lying at the bottom of some pit with a broken neck, which was a tricky balance to achieve. I’d definitely seen him fall. He definitely wasn’t answering me now. He was definitely gone. Which meant I had to be right; there had to be some kind of trap or trick around the door. I must have missed it, that was all.
I crawled back to the door, then all around it, then finally around the entire perimeter of the room, pressing on stones as I went. Nothing moved.
Finally I stood and felt my way around the walls, circling the room once again, trying to find something, anything, that might trigger a trap. All the while calling for Cooper as loudly as I dared.
I found nothing. I heard nothing. Even my own voice seemed to hit the dead air and immediately wither.
I tried to use magic to connect to the place, or to get a sense of Cooper. But I still had that horrible sense of emptiness, like staring into a corpse’s eyes.
Focus. Tell a story.
You don’t need the room to help you.
Tell a story of your own.
It was what I was good at, after all. True, I hadn’t had much success at telling stories without writing them down, but sometimes desperate circumstances made my will more effective. I closed my eyes.
Verity found Cooper a moment later, unharmed.
Together they solved the puzzle and found Serena.
They rescued the witch from that strange house, and Verity’s curse was broken.
I breathed in and out, slowly, commanding myself to concentrate, not to panic.
Verity found Cooper…
But it was no good. It was almost like the room was swallowing my will. Like I was in an anti-magic zone. I couldn’t sense anything around me at all. Not even in the normal way; I couldn’t even smell the straw.
Okay, so what do I do?
I slid back down to the floor and picked up a piece of straw, shredding it between numb fingers. I could just go back the way I came, sneak out of the house, and go find Phineas to help me. But sneaking back in might not be so easy a second time. It was getting late. They would lock the doors. The security guards might even come out of their trance and raise an alarm, before too much longer. How long had Phineas said they would be out? I couldn’t remember.
The floor was moving.
I closed my eyes, counted to three, and opened them again, wondering if panic was getting the better of me.
But no. The floor was definitely moving. Or rather, something was moving across it, under the straw. I couldn’t see what it was.
The curse.
Well, if anything in history had ever been timed worse, I’d never heard of it. I certainly couldn’t afford to have an attack now.
Get it together. You have to be stronger than it.
More movement, in my peripheral vision this time. Whatever it was, there was more than one of it.
No.
No no no I can’t do this this can’t happen.
Breathe. Focus. Calm—
I abruptly stopped scolding myself. I was calm, I realized.
Or at least, as calm as a person can reasonably be expected to be, when her boyfriend’s just disappeared without a trace, and she’s in a creepy room with a crawling floor. My heart was pounding, yes, but its beats were regular. I wasn’t sweating. I didn’t feel dizzy.
I took a few deep breaths, in and out, slowly. They came easily. I stood up again, testing my legs. They were steady.
I checked my bruise. Still ugly, but smooth and still, as skin should be.
Which meant…
This isn’t a curse attack. It’s not a hallucination.
There really is something slithering across that floor.
As if it had only been waiting for me to realize the truth, a snake emerged from the straw just inches in front of me.
And then another, to my right.
Another straight ahead.
Three more, to my left.
They had the distinctive brown-and-tan pattern of copperheads. But that couldn’t be right. Did copperheads live this far north? Even if they did, they wouldn’t be active in the winter, surely, not a winter like this.
Maybe Cillian had them brought in special. Maybe he’s set up an environment that’s good for them. A habitat, like in his zoo.
Is the room warm? I can’t even tell. Why can’t I sense the temperature?
The stone was cold before, wasn’t it?
Balls, I am falling apart. I have lost my mind.
I tried to rein in my scattered, useless, panicked thoughts, as the snakes curled and rose up like cobras in front of a snake charmer in a cartoon. They regarded me with their pitiless eyes.
And then, as one, they fell flat again and slowly, leisurely, began slithering around my feet.
Well, at least they’re not in a hurry.
A bubble of hysterical laughter rose to the top of my throat. They’d be biting me soon enough, poisoning me. As if I wasn’t poisoned enough already. I looked sideways, trying to work out whether I could possibly jump away and get to the door, somehow.
There might be more, of course, lurking under the straw. I might scare up nest after nest of them, if I ran.
But it beat standing there just waiting to get bit, didn’t it? I was wearing jeans and heavy shoes. Surely I could manage to shake a snake off—or better yet, stomp on it—before i
t could get to any exposed flesh? Just how fast could one of them get up a pant leg?
I lifted one foot, slowly, to see what they would do.
There was a great chorus of hisses, and three more snakes reared up from the straw, mouths open, yellow fangs exposed.
Worse, there was a new noise, a scuttling and sliding sort of noise, and this time it came from behind me. I had no idea what that was, but I was afraid to take my eyes off the snakes long enough to look. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, anyway.
Something plopped into my hair.
I jumped and screamed, slapping at my own head. My hands came away covered in spiders, brown and heavy, with strange eyes attached to the ends of what looked like hairy stalks.
I flung them off while the snakes coiled around my ankles.
Without consciously deciding to, I started to run.
But the floor was suddenly slippery, slick with some foaming algae. I fell before I’d taken three steps, hard enough to rattle my teeth. My knee, still tender from a gunshot wound I’d taken at Halloween, blazed with pain.
The more pressing issue was that, for the second time that day, I was looking straight into the eyes of an angry snake, its head only inches from my face.
Time seemed to stop as I stared at it, and it stared back at me. Time, but not sound: I was suddenly aware that the brief laugh that had escaped me earlier had never stopped.
No, that wasn’t right. That wasn’t me.
A hearty rumble of laughter, deep yet also unmistakably feminine, filled the room. It sounded distorted, slightly muffled, like it was being piped in from behind the walls.
Is someone watching me?
I thought of the ornate chandelier, the dark ceiling above it. There could be concealed cameras, I supposed.
But somehow, I didn’t think that was it.
Something was gliding up my leg. Something else—a swarm of somethings, by the feel of it—skittered over my back.
And still the snake stared.
I felt another of the strange-eyed spiders crawling slowly across my temple.
My panic was subsiding, however, even as the creatures seemed on the verge of engulfing me. I was still thinking about that laugh. And Cooper’s sudden disappearance. I was thinking about the snake in the hedge maze, and how it too had disappeared—entirely too quickly, even for a snake.
Puzzles.
Hallucinations.
And while I was thinking about those things, I was also thinking about a vineyard, not so terribly distant from where I now lay covered in crawling things that were, to so many, the stuff of nightmares.
A vineyard that had been full of life on one visit, and utterly dead the next.
Two Rottweilers who had barked and run and licked my fingers, yet who were in reality no more than a pile of old bones.
Illusions.
It was so obvious, I was no doubt an idiot for not realizing it sooner. But then, surely that was the whole point of the aforementioned crawling nightmares—things that would be bound to shock and distract the rational mind.
I reached out toward the snake in front of me. It hissed and bared its fangs. I extended my hand still farther.
For an instant I really felt it, that hard bite Harry had warned us about.
I rejected it.
And just like that, the pain was gone. The snake was still attached to me, but it no longer felt real. It was like one of those rubber snakes kids play with.
This is the puzzle. This is the whole thing. No more, no less.
Of course. Cillian Wick would design his personal fortress, first and foremost, to protect him from vitals. Enemies whose physical strength was much greater than his, who could heal on demand. Force and violence weren’t the most efficient ways of keeping them out.
Magic was.
Vitals didn’t work magic. They had no way to counter it. And as for the witches and seers who crossed Wick’s path, well, he’d done what he could to convince them that their magic was no good here.
And yet, this place was enchanted. It wasn’t an anti-magic zone at all. Quite the opposite.
I stood, flinging the illusory snake away, no longer afraid of the creeping things that surrounded me. I couldn’t feel them anymore.
Because they’re not here.
I focused my will one more time. And like all magic tricks, how much easier it was, now that I could see the illusion, to break it. I simply waved my hand.
You’re not here.
The snakes disappeared, and the spiders with them. The straw disappeared, too. In fact, the entire round room disappeared, or rather, realigned itself.
The walls and floor were still the same odd, vaguely medieval-looking stone, but they shifted until they formed a square instead of a circle. The chandelier remained, but other furniture came into view to join it.
And all the while, the laughter I’d been hearing got louder and louder, until it was right behind me. Bursting with mirth and madness.
A witch’s laugh.
I turned. A disheveled woman dressed in a filthy, ragged suit, with no eyes and only one hand, sat in an old-fashioned wooden rocking chair, quite literally rocking with laughter.
“Hello, Serena,” I said.
Serena stopped laughing at the sound of her name, and for a moment the room was silent, while I studied this woman who had cursed me. Who had nearly killed me, in fact.
Despite the hostility I’d been harboring toward her for some weeks, now that I saw her, I found that I couldn’t blame her.
The missing eyes and hand were bad, of course, but they weren’t what stirred the most pity in me. There were several parts of her body—including her face—from which random chunks of flesh had simply been cut away. That was somehow worse than the purposeful act of blinding her. The whimsical nature of it, the pointlessness, was so disturbing that it made me feel ill.
You poor woman.
I will get you out of here. I would get you out of here even if my life didn’t depend on it.
As if reading my thoughts, Serena smiled, exposing neat rows of straight but brown teeth, their decay suggesting she’d been a captive for at least the year and a half we’d estimated. Even Arabella didn’t know for sure when the Wicks took her stepmother; Dalton kept it a secret for so long.
“Hello, Serena,” I repeated. “I’m Ver—”
“I know who you are.” Serena’s voice was low, smooth, and pleasant. She might have been at a dinner party.
“Right. You knew I was coming.”
“Who do you think cleared your path? I sent all the important ones running off to Minnesota for you.”
“Harry told us. Thank you.”
“I knew Cillian would want to go himself. He’s in a killing rage over you and your gentleman friend, you know. He loved those awful children of his.”
Awful children, indeed. And we’d killed all three. It came as no surprise that Wick was looking for revenge.
“Speaking of my gentleman friend, can you help me find him? He got lost in the… puzzle… I think.”
Serena inclined her head. “You’ve beat the puzzle, but you haven’t broken it yet. You must break it, to free him.”
“How?”
Instantly, her entire demeanor changed. Her brows came down over her empty eye sockets like windows slamming shut, while her single hand tightened into a fist in her lap. “How? The same way you do anything, you stupid girl. I sometimes wonder whether you’re even a proper witch. With your will.”
I blinked at her, then closed my eyes and flexed my will.
The illusion broke, and Cooper was free.
The puzzle broke, and Cooper was free.
Nothing happened. I couldn’t sense Cooper at all. And I’d been so sure I’d conquered this place. I tried several more times, varying the wording, changing the story. None of it worked. I started to panic, which did nothing to help my concentration.
Okay. Calm down. The snake bite didn’t hurt me, so surely nothing Cooper is dealing with
right now will hurt him. And even if it did, he can heal himself. He’s fine. I just need to relax and get him—
Serena’s harsh voice interrupted my internal pep talk. “You have got a will, haven’t you?”
I swallowed and said, as kindly as I could manage, “I’m doing the best I can, but I’ve been finding it kind of hard to work magic here. I don’t suppose you could help me?”
Serena clucked impatiently. “I could, but they’ll catch me if I do. They have ways of finding out, and they’re watching me for unauthorized magic.”
“But we’re going to get you out of here,” I pointed out. “You’ll be safe from them.”
“Oh yes, I have complete faith in your ability to protect me and see me home,” she snapped. “After all, you’ve shown an abundance of competence so far, haven’t you?”
I’ll admit, I’d thought Arabella’s grumblings about her stepmother to be exaggerated. I was sorry to instead find that they had been, if anything, understated.
I took a deep breath, and once again reminded myself that Serena had been grievously tortured and probably driven most of the way to mad. She deserved pity and compassion after all she’d been through, no matter what she’d done to me in her desperation to be rescued. Or how unpleasant she was.
This reminder was only partially successful, and my tone was no longer quite so kind when I spoke again. “Serena, this mission is not going forward without Cooper. So you can either help me, or give up and stay here.”
With another impatient noise, she gestured for me to come closer. “Put your hands on either side of my face.”
For a moment I was glad she was blind; that way she wouldn’t see the revulsion that came unbidden at the thought of touching her. But I stepped forward and did as she asked. Looking at her up close, I thought Serena must have been beautiful, maybe even stunning once. But among worse things, her captivity had aged her. She was sallow now, and far too thin, her hair wiry.
Her cheeks were dry and warm, like old paper. I tried not to feel the cavity beneath my right palm, where part of her cheek was missing.
“Now try again,” she said.
It was like touching a battery. This time when I closed my eyes to concentrate, I felt a surge of power, coursing through me almost physically from my hands. I repeated my one-line story over and over again, channeling that newfound power into my words, feeling stronger with each repetition. I hadn’t felt so whole, so healthy, so alive, since I’d been cursed.
Witch Bound (Devilborn Book 3) Page 6