“How’d you guess?” River said. “The borderlands were my first assignment. Ilsa, should I leave the candles outside the house?”
I’d turned away at the initiation of faerie talk. “Why ask my permission?” I said. “I don’t own the place.”
Hazel gave me a vaguely puzzled look, but I ignored it. It wasn’t worth feeling insulted that River was capable of having a conversation with my sister without implying she was the Sidhe’s property.
“Do you think another wraith will show up, then?” she asked him.
“Possibly,” said River. “You’re not to leave the house again today.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “It attacked us right here. Logically, we’re no safer staying in than we are going out.” Wraith or none, answers weren’t here—about the heir or otherwise. And I needed to speak to Grandma’s ghost again, if just to tell her that it’d be helpful if I could talk to River about my newfound magic.
One look at River’s face told me he wasn’t budging without a fight, and I’d had quite enough conflict for today already. Besides, I was certain Grandma had appeared next to the house. Maybe she was still here.
“Can you sense any more ghosts?” I asked River.
“No, I can’t. I’d tell you if I did.”
Hmm. Maybe she’d hidden herself from him. Considering he’d decided to start ordering us around again, I didn’t blame her.
“Is that your spirit sight?” asked Hazel, with a not-so-subtle glance at me. Maybe she figured I wanted to tell him. But he didn’t take the hint.
“My spirit sight allows me to sense if anyone living or dead is in the general vicinity, yes.”
“Then why didn’t you pick up on the wraith?” she asked. I’d been about to ask the same question, as unwise as I knew it was.
Sure enough, River’s eyes narrowed. “Because for some reason, I can’t detect those monstrosities until they’re right on top of us. It’s like it bypassed the veil altogether.”
“So the salt didn’t do much,” I observed.
“It stopped the wraith from getting into the house,” he said. “Which is likely why it decided to unleash a frontal assault on your defences. If you two had been inside the house, you’d have been fine.”
Hazel folded her arms. “Right, so I’m supposed to hide. Its magic shouldn’t have been able to touch me.”
“That wasn’t faerie magic, it was death energy,” he said. “Otherwise known as necromantic power or kinetic energy. Like a highly powered poltergeist.”
No kidding. Poltergeists broke stuff. The wraith had put a dent in a magical house with more defences than almost anywhere. And it was the third one we’d encountered in a day. One thing was abundantly clear: the person who’d summoned it wanted one or all of us dead. River thought he’d banished it. But he hadn’t. I’d done it. Somehow…
Hazel beckoned me into the living room when I returned to the house to deposit the empty salt canister.
“You did it,” she said in a low voice. “Didn’t you? It wasn’t him.”
“You’ve got it. Also, I can’t tell him.”
“Nor me.” Her gaze dropped to my pocket. “Seriously. I tried to ask you in front of River, and it’s like the words—stuck. Must be a spell on the book.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “I need to talk to Grandma. Maybe she knows why we have necromancy in the family.”
When it came to supernatural hierarchies, mage and faerie magic tended to come out on top, while witch and necromancer magic came second to any other magic in the family. So most hybrids lived in one world or the other, not both the way River seemed to. Then again, it was fitting that our family, which didn’t entirely belong in Faerie or the mortal realm, had links with necromancers. Still, we were tied to the Summer Court, and I’d thought our family’s magic rested in life, not death.
“Life and death are intertwined,” Arden interjected, when I said this out loud. “You cannot separate one from the other.”
“Of course you’d talk in riddles,” said Hazel. “That won’t help us now. Why did she give the magic to you?”
“That’s nice,” I said, a little stung.
Hazel winced. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that. But it’s weird.”
“Yeah, it is,” I muttered. Maybe the person who’d created the book had decided the Gatekeeper had enough power of their own, and it was only fair that someone else had a shot at developing magical abilities. Sure would have been nice if this had happened when I was a teenager, so I wouldn’t have had to go through puberty while watching the Sidhe’s magic transform my sister into a powerful magic user, while I remained an ordinary human. Admittedly, any type of magic came with a sting in the tail. Like murderous wraiths, for instance. “Perhaps the book’s set on a timer to awaken once per generation and target a non-Gatekeeper. It’s not like Morgan is a contender.”
Hazel grimaced like she always did when I mentioned our estranged brother. He’d reacted to not being Gatekeeper by running away and turning to a life of crime, and Mum pretended he didn’t exist most of the time. “No, I suppose not.” She sighed. “I’m going to shower.”
“Have you told Dad, by the way?” I asked as she left the room.
“No, of course not,” said Hazel, over her shoulder. “He doesn’t need to know every time Mum goes jaunting off to Faerie. And it’s not like he can do anything about the wraiths. We’ll be fine.”
Let’s hope so. Dad didn’t get in touch often, but telling him killers were after us would cause unnecessary panic considering he didn’t have any magic of his own. He wasn’t so much inattentive as eternally absent. Possibly, I took after him, because I’d only spoken to Mum a handful of times in the last few years. We’d argued before I left, and while I hadn’t disappeared off the face of the earth like Morgan had, I spent entirely too much time justifying my decision to leave. It’d taken me a while to conclude that maybe she envied that I had the choice, unlike her and Hazel.
I caught sight of my blurred reflection in the newly repaired window. An odd silver light gleamed over my forehead, and I frowned, walking closer. What in the world is that?
I ran to the hall mirror to properly look, and gasped. A thin cut snaked down my cheek where I’d been hit by debris in my collapsing house, but more significantly, a pattern of swirling silver lines appeared on my forehead like an elaborate tattoo. I walked right up to the mirror and rubbed it with my sleeve. Then I touched a hand to my face, followed the line with my fingertips. The skin felt slightly raised.
When did that happen?
I walked to the sink in the kitchen and ran a cloth under the tap. Then I pressed it to my face. My reflection on the inside of the now-fogged window still wore the mark. It hadn’t faded at all. Soap had no effect. It only irritated the skin, and left the mark intact.
My heart started beating fast. No. It can’t be permanent. For the last five years, I’d been relatively free of the questions that plagued me in Foxwood, because nobody at the university had ever met my sister. I didn’t have a lot of friends, but that was by choice. Not because I had “I’m cursed” written in blazing ink on my forehead. For the first time since the attack, tears stung my eyes, and a bitter taste coated my tongue. I imagined Hazel, twelve years old, waking up to the same sight—not difficult, because I’d witnessed it. She’d screamed in wild delight, running up and down the halls, not knowing or caring yet that the mark was one of the signs the Sidhe usually put on things that belonged to them.
The one thought that had carried me through the last eleven years was knowing I was my own person, not someone else’s. And now a similar mark gleamed across my forehead in a swirling pattern of lines.
Wait. I know that symbol. I pulled the book from my pocket. The swirling lines on the cover hadn’t moved, nor did they glow like before—but the symbol was definitely the same. I didn’t know it. Whatever faerie tongue it was, it carried no translation that I knew of.
One thing was clear—whatever the ma
rk was, it meant trouble.
8
“What’s wrong with your face?” asked Hazel, when she came downstairs to find me in the living room. I lowered the sci-fi paperback I’d been attempting to read—spaceships and explosions, no faeries and curses, thanks—and she gasped as my hood slipped down. “What is that? Holy shit.”
I put the book on the coffee table. “I guess it’s like a faerie mark. It won’t come off.” I pulled some of my hair forward into my eyes. I’d needed a haircut for weeks, but hadn’t had much in the way of spare cash. “I need one of Everett’s witch charms to cover it up.”
Agnes and her husband Everett were the only people who might have skill enough to hide a spell signature. I’d never seen anything close to it—except the Gatekeeper’s mark.
Arden fluttered down to land on the arm of the sofa. “You won’t remove that mark with a spell.”
“What?” I looked at him. “You don’t know what the mark means—do you?”
“The mark is the Gatekeeper’s.”
“I’m not the Gatekeeper. I don’t even know what this magic is. I can’t actually read the book it came from.” I pulled it out of my pocket. Apparently I could speak freely about it in front of Arden, but he was family.
Hazel sucked in a breath and pointed at the book’s leathery cover. “Look.”
“I know it’s the same symbol,” I said. “But it’s not the faerie language.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve been trying to figure out where I saw something like that before, and I have seen similar runes recently. On River’s sword.”
“Seriously?” I stared at her. “But he’s not—”
“It’s not death magic,” she said. “Not like, the corrupted outcast magic, anyway.”
“Definitely not,” I said with a shudder. The Grey Vale beasts that ended up stranded in this realm… if they had any magic at all, it was a darker version of Summer’s or Winter’s. While Summer drew on life magic to thrive, the darker version fed on life force. There were skin-eating faeries and beasts that sucked the blood from your veins while your heart still beat. Winter magic thrived as the seasons turned to decay, but its darker version fed on despair and hate, and creatures like hellhounds grew more powerful the more death there was in the area.
I didn’t gain strength from the magic. All I’d done was banish the spirit, in the same way a necromancer would. It wasn’t Summer or Winter magic, in any shape or form that I knew of. So why did I have a faerie mark?
“I can’t go out like this,” I said. “Does Mum have any disguise charms? She must have rearranged her desk, because I couldn’t find any.”
“Sure,” Hazel said. I got up and walked behind her into Mum’s workroom. Of all the rooms in the house, it was the messiest, filled with an array of weapons and tools and miscellaneous magical ingredients. While the faerie-made weapons were conspicuously absent, Mum had left no shortage of witch spells behind, since they didn’t work in Faerie.
“Here.” Hazel held up a teardrop-shaped necklace. “One of Everett’s illusion spells. It’s been here a few weeks, but it should work.”
I put the necklace on and walked to the hall mirror. Immediately, the mark faded into the background, leaving smooth skin behind. When I ran my finger over my forehead, I could still feel the slightly raised pattern, but it was no longer visible.
“Thanks,” I said to Hazel. “It’s a good job Mum had it. I just wish she’d told me about all this.”
“Yeah,” said Hazel, biting her lip. The unexpected nervous gesture made her look younger. “She’d better have a really good reason for ditching us. As for Grandma, she’d better have a good reason for not telling us—anything.”
“She didn’t have long to speak, I don’t think,” I said, touching my forehead. “But there aren’t any other ghosts to ask. I need an actual source, from the Court or… I don’t know. Do the Sidhe have anyone designated to deal with the Grey Vale?” I didn’t think so, somehow. They’d been as taken by surprise as we had when the outcasts had invaded this realm and waged war against the supernaturals here.
“Mum might know,” Hazel said. “The Sidhe generally avoid discussing the outcasts if they can help it.”
The door opened and River walked in. I lowered my hand and turned my back on the mirror, hoping he hadn’t seen.
“There’s a problem,” said River. “I’ve been in contact with the local necromancers, and apparently they picked up some unusual necromantic activity coming from this direction.”
“They detected the wraith?” That might lead to unwelcome questions. I’d never spoken to the local necromancers, but everyone knew about their ongoing feud with the village’s other supernaturals. We tended to stay out of one another’s way at the best of times.
“You spoke to them behind my back?” said Hazel. “If the local supernaturals are involved, they’re supposed to go through me.”
River must think the wraith’s threat was more important than our family’s secrecy. That or the way the wraith had vanished had raised his suspicions after all.
“I’m just passing on the message.” He put his phone in his pocket. An old model, covered in a heavy plastic case probably to stop the metal touching his bare skin. I hadn’t realised he had the necromancers’ contact details, let alone that they actually used them. There wasn’t much chance of a phone signal from the afterlife.
“Thanks,” Hazel said to him. “I really appreciate you telling all the local supernaturals that the Gatekeeper’s heir failed to stop a ghost putting a dent in her house.”
“I didn’t tell them that,” River said. “It’s inevitable that someone would have picked up on the aftereffects. I’m told there have been a few other incidents of undead attacks in the area lately.”
“I told you that,” Hazel said. “Who was the local necromancer head again? Graves, right?”
“Greaves,” River said. “I’m told he’s not fond of the nickname.”
“I’ll speak to him in person and set him straight, then,” I said. Maybe I’d even find someone at the necromancer guild who knew about the book. As much as I’d wanted to avoid attention, it seemed sensible to ask an expert about whether it was possible for a non-necromancer to have necromantic magic.
The necromancers’ guild was so far on the outskirts of town, it was almost part of the fields, down the road from the Lynn family mausoleum. Around the guild, the fields were abandoned as their owners had fled during the faerie invasion, untouched by the life magic covering the Summer estate. A medium-sized building with blacked-out windows housed the necromancers of this region. Rather than making for the building, however, River pushed open the gate into the graveyard alongside it. The earth was fresh, like it had been recently disturbed.
River walked down the row of gravestones. “This is what the call was about,” he said, indicating the surface of the nearest grave. A symbol appeared above the grave, a swirling silver pattern. Then it vanished.
I couldn’t breathe.
The same symbol marked my face.
Hazel stepped forwards. “Looks like a spell. Are the necromancers even here?”
Never mind that. What in hell was the symbol that had appeared on my face doing in the necromancers’ graveyard?
“This is a spell signature,” said River. “According to the necromancers, they traced its source to the Ley Line. And this mark looks just like yours, Hazel.”
“No, it doesn’t.” She lifted her hair to show him. “What exactly are they accusing us of?”
A stooped figure appeared from behind the grave. For an instant, I thought he was a ghost—but he didn’t have that odd shimmer about him that the dead did.
“Mr Greaves,” said River.
‘Graves’ seemed a more appropriate name. He looked so old and frail it was a wonder he could stand, or hunch, anyway, looking at the trampled earth around the headstone beside him.
“What did you do?” he demanded. “If this mark is yours, one of you cast a necromantic
spell and raised my predecessor from the dead.”
Oh shit. That’s what he thought we’d done?
“We aren’t necromancers,” said Hazel. “And that mark isn’t mine. I’m the Summer Gatekeeper’s heir.”
“And your sister—”
“Can’t use magic,” I said.
“Maybe don’t accuse us of crimes we never committed. You don’t want to make an enemy of the Gatekeepers, Graves,” Hazel said.
Graves narrowed his eyes at her. “It’s Greaves, not Graves. And don’t think I won’t teach you your place if you continue to insult us.” His voice was deep and gravelly with a spine-chilling quality that made me want to slowly back away.
“Perhaps we might talk to the spirit, if he’s still here?” River cut in.
“Exactly,” I said, determined not to let the old man intimidate me. “Pretty sure the spirit can set the record straight.”
Abruptly, the world went grey, and the graveyard disappeared, blanketed under thick fog. Three figures stood out—River, Greaves… and a blank white space.
I backed away by instinct, feet bumping against a headstone. Fear prickled every inch of my skin. The white light grew above the grave until it was human-height. Features became distinct, like a camera coming into focus, and I realised it was a person. An old man, who might have been Greaves’s twin. His father?
The ghost watched me. “So this is the Gatekeeper,” he said.
9
“We need to ask you a question,” I said, before Hazel could anger Greaves any more. Or the spirit, come to that. But the old man didn’t have the same scary vibe as his living son did. His semi-transparent shade hardly came up to my shoulder.
“I didn’t come back from the dead for young upstarts like you to make fun of me,” muttered the ghost, and about-turned, like he intended to walk through a door. Except there wasn’t one. Just his grave. An unexpected flash of pity went through me. I knew how spirits had trouble adjusting to reality. Even necromancers, apparently. “I came to speak to the Gatekeeper.”
The Gatekeeper's Curse- The Complete Trilogy Page 8