by Nancy Holder
“Bien,” he said. “Let’s lure him there, and see what we can do.”
She turned and crossed the street.
Scarborough: Amanda
Her spell had worked.
Amanda sat huddled in the kitchen at four in the morning watching images of herself shimmering in the air. She watched herself as she dreamed, tossing and turning through nightmares. Finally she saw herself get up off the bed and walk through the house until she reached the study of the former occupant. She pulled some books off the shelf and then put them on completely different shelves scattered around the room.
It made no sense to her, but she continued to watch, fascinated, as her sleeping self left the study, climbed down the back stairs, and came to a stop before the same blank stretch of wall that she had woken up in front of before. She watched closely and was stunned to see herself reach out, push hard against a section of the wall almost above her head, and then step through an opening that magically appeared. Once through, the hole sealed itself and the vision ended.
Amanda stood, sweating and trembling as she thought about what she had just seen. There was a secret passage in House Moore and her dreaming self had discovered it. When she woke up to see that same wall, was it before or after she had gone inside? She knew that she should tell the others. They had a right to know what dangers lurked in their current home.
She glanced at the clock on the microwave. It would be at least a couple of hours before anyone else was up. She grabbed a flashlight and headed for the wall. Once there, she slid her hand up and pressed, hoping that she was hitting the right spot. She wondered if there was any spell she was supposed to say and wished that she had thought to include audio on her little video spell.
She felt around for a moment, but the wall appeared to be completely smooth. After a moment, though, she must have hit the right spot because the hole opened before her.
I shouldn’t go in there, she thought, even as she was stepping across the threshold. I really should get the others. The portal closed behind her and her flashlight was the only thing to illuminate the darkness.
“Come on, feet. You’ve been here before; lead the way,” she said through gritted teeth.
She stepped forward hesitantly and then, as the footing seemed to be sound, more boldly. The floor began to slope and then to turn and twist like a snake. After a minute she couldn’t tell where she was in relation to the rest of the house or even if she was still within its walls. At last the tunnel emptied out into a large chamber, surrounded on three sides by doors. One door was charred and hanging off its hinges. The room beyond looked like some sort of giant cage.
Is this where the dragon came from?
She stepped away.
In the center of the room was a table containing a candelabra and several ancient-looking manuscripts. A chair was pushed out from the table as though its last occupant—probably her, she realized—had left in a hurry. One manuscript lay open on top of the rest. It was giant, at least a foot tall and about five inches thick. By the feel, it was made of some sort of animal skin. She marked the place with a finger and flipped back to the beginning.
“Ye Prophecies of ye Magus Merlin.”
She shuddered. The island that Nicole had been trapped on was supposed to have been Avalon, and the spirit of the dark wizard Merlin was said to still haunt it.
She turned back to the page she had marked, and tried to read. It was in an ancient language that she couldn’t decipher. She put the book down, closed her eyes, and then touched each of them with her fingertips. “Goddess bless what I see, bless my eyes and let them read,” she said.
She opened her eyes and looked at the manuscript, and was a little surprised to see that it had actually worked. It looked like it was in English now. She wrinkled her nose. Old English. At least that was better than whatever it really was.
“And ye Ciety naymed Seattle shal be layid to Ruinne when ye Monsterums of Ye Eryth & Sea are freeyd by Ye Dark Wyzarde.”
Amanda blinked and reread it three times. “But that’s happened; that was us, or Michael. It’s true!”
She continued to read. “Ye Moste Powerfyl Witch of Hr Tyme shal be tormenteyd by Daemons from Evry Realym & a Wyzard Priest shal free Her.”
“Holly and Armand!” she gasped.
She flipped back a page and could clearly identify other prophecies that had come true before their eyes. She found prophecies dating back centuries, dealing with wars and scientific breakthroughs and everything of importance that she could think of: the discovery of penicillin, the general theory of relativity, even the stock market crash of 1929.
She was about to check to see if there was anything about Isabeau and Jean, the Cahors and Deveraux ancestors who had started the whole curse, but she wanted to know more about the future than the past.
About Owen.
She skipped forward again, but before her eyes the letters changed, rearranged. Her seeing spell must have worn off. She frowned, about to recast it, but the shadows around her seemed to have crept closer, pushing in against the circle of light cast by her flashlight. With a shiver she decided that maybe the better course would be to leave and take the book with her.
She tucked the book under her arm and started back the way she had come. She shook the flashlight as the light started to become weaker. She had put fresh batteries in not that long ago, but that didn’t seem to matter.
She made it back to the entrance and then stood for a moment, beginning to panic as she realized she had no idea how to exit the tunnel. She slid her hand up the wall, trying to approximate where it would be on the opposite side to trigger the portal to open.
Nothing happened. The flashlight winked off and then on.
Oh, no, I am not getting trapped in here.
Somewhere behind her she heard a low rumble. A growl? A cave-in? She was more certain than ever that she didn’t want to know what other creatures Sir William had chained up down there. She moved her hands all around the rock wall, searching for some trigger to make it open.
The growl—it was definitely a growl—grew louder. Amanda glanced down the corridor but could see nothing in the failing light. Her flashlight flickered once, twice, and then went out.
Tommy! Her rational brain knew that he was too far away to hear her through the stone walls, even if he had been awake.
Call to him.
She wasn’t sure if the voice was inside her head or outside. It seemed to echo for a moment before fading away in a high-pitched trill. He won’t hear me, she thought.
Call your thrallmate.
Okay, that definitely wasn’t her subconscious whispering to her. “Thrallmate” was a word she had never heard, let alone used.
Now!
Tommy! she thought in a panic. Come to me, Tommy, find me.
And then she pushed with her mind, really pushed. It was as though she were free outside the tunnel, ascending to the upper floor and touching Tommy on the cheek where he slept in his bed. He rose, still asleep, and followed her as she took him by the hand and led him down, down. Then they were standing on the other side of the wall. She lifted his hand to the place that would open the portal, and…
The wall slid open, and she nearly fell over Tommy as she staggered out. Clutching the book to her chest, she stared at him as the wall slid closed behind her. His eyes were closed, his face slack. She took his hand and he followed readily back to his room. She watched as he climbed into the bed, grabbed a blanket, and flipped onto his side.
She stood for a long time watching him. How had she done what she had done? The bond she had with him was strong, special, but how had she used it to manifest herself and manipulate his sleeping mind and body?
Somehow it scared her more than the creature that had been growling in the dark. She slipped quietly out of the room. She had to hide the book before he woke.
Why? she thought. Why do I have to hide it?
You do. You do, you do, you do, said a whispery voice, eager and insi
stent.
I…I do, she thought, as veils of secrecy came down over her mind. And I will.
six
SAGE
Our hearts are black from all our deeds
Upon our souls the maggot feeds
The dead will walk and the dead will rise
Make us answer now for our lies
Old ones, young ones, hear our cry
Dust we are and all must die
That doesn’t mean we shall not fight
For right is wrong but blood makes might
Seattle: Kari, Hecate, and Osiris
Nigel was asleep. Kari had made sure of that.
She didn’t know if the vast assortment of sleeping aids he kept in the medicine cabinet of his downstairs laboratory were meant for her, or for himself. Maybe trying to make the dead live again gave him insomnia. Despite what he thought, her former graduate advisor had not made the dead live again. He had only made the dead walk again.
As for her, she did all she could to stay awake. Her nightmares were unbearable.
She revolted herself. She had unwound the bandages and screamed when she’d seen the hideous snakes of stitches and stapled incisions winding around her chest and over her breasts. The puckered mass of dead white and purple served as proof that she had sustained killing wounds. She shouldn’t be there. She should be lying in her grave.
I’ll never make love again. I’ll never be able to undress in the light.
And her thoughts went to Jer, who was also horribly scarred. The Black Fire had melted his craggy, handsome face into hideous pulp, incised with rivulets, as if acid had run down his forehead and cheeks. Or lava.
Maybe now we can be together, she thought. But she knew he didn’t love her anymore.
Standing in Nigel’s living room, waiting for the cab, she tried to stop scratching her itchy flesh beneath the black turtleneck Nigel had bought for her. Her black wool pants sagged on her. None of her own belongings had survived the terrible floods and fires that had overrun Seattle. Everything was gone, except for her laptop. It was an old model she had used as a backup, and with it she had withdrawn all her money from her online bank accounts to buy a ticket to England.
The sky was a silvery white downpour of sleet, the storm ripping the midnight blue with cat-scratch lightning. A night not fit for man nor beast.
And yet.
Hecate sat in the bay window and growled low in her throat. Black with a silver blaze down his forehead, Osiris was pacing behind Kari, back and forth, his claws ticking on the hardwood floors. He knew he was being left behind.
Both cats knew things, told her things, and Hecate promised that she could lead Kari to Nicole Anderson-Moore, who was Hecate’s mistress. Maybe the witch could help them both—make them truly live again. She wasn’t certain what Hecate would do to Holly. Holly had sacrificed Hecate to gain magical power—had heartlessly drowned the poor cat in a bathtub. How could Jer love someone like that?
Hecate yowled; she wanted Osiris to come too. Maybe Nigel could drag something else back from the afterlife to keep the poor thing company.
All this Kari thought in a sensible, cohesive manner. But when she tried to speak, it was a struggle to string more than three or four words together. She could barely write.
She remembered the name of a condition caused by brain damage—aphasia. When she had been doing her folklore research, she had come across dozens of fairy tales in which the heroine was unable to speak—the Little Mermaid, the girl threatened with death if she didn’t defend herself in “The Six Swans.” She had written a paper suggesting that it was a means by which simpler folk explained the presence of aphasia, saying the silence was brought about by magic, or a curse. Maybe magic could lift the curse.
Maybe death had struck her dumb.
“Okay, Hecate, crate,” Kari murmured as she glanced at the time readout on Nigel’s cable box. It was almost one a.m. The cab should have been there at twelve forty-five. The crate sat beside Nigel’s wide-screen TV; it was a plastic box with a see-through metal door. Labels reading LIVE ANIMAL were plastered all over it. She had found several such crates in Nigel’s basement—for lab animals, she guessed. How many failures had he had, before successfully revivifying Osiris? And her?
Hecate stared straight ahead, growling. Kari reached for the cat; Hecate leaped off the bay window and trotted over to Osiris. The two animals turned as one and stared at Kari, and then meowed in unison. They sounded insistent, grief-stricken.
She shook her head. “One cat.” It was strict airline policy. She had checked and double-checked.
An image poured into her mind: Osiris in a shipping crate, in the belly of the plane with the cargo. Just pack him in, stow him away. But they would x-ray the box to see what was inside it. She would be caught, maybe even thrown off the plane for cruelty to animals.
He cannot die, came the thought. And then, a clear image of all Nigel’s many sleeping pills filled her mind. As understanding dawned, she recoiled in horror. The cats wanted her to give Osiris an overdose.
He cannot die, the thought repeated.
She took a deep breath. “The cab…”
When you are done, the cab will come. Hecate stared hard at her with her yellow eyes, which seemed to glow in the lightning flashes. Kari knew the thoughts were Hecate’s thoughts. She knew she was communicating with a dead cat—that, apparently, had magical powers.
“All right,” she said.
Cold dread filled her as she went down into the basement and collected the bottles of pills from Nigel’s medicine cabinet. As she placed them into an empty yellow plastic bin she’d located beside her hospital bed, she couldn’t help but wonder if he had planned to sleep with her once he’d brought her back. She’d known he was in love with her. But she’d only had eyes for Jer Deveraux. Nigel had been too much of a gentleman to push.
She stared at the vast array in the bin. It would be tempting to take them all, just go unconscious, but she knew it wouldn’t end there. She wondered if she would have to go back to hell. Maybe what Nigel had done was actually rescue her from another hellish version of the Dreamtime, as Richard had rescued Jer?
She carried the bin back up to the living room. The two cats were waiting for her. Hecate was licking Osiris’s head. To comfort him, maybe.
Another image filled her mind: Osiris, limp, his heart stopped. And then his eyes opening. His heart starting again.
He could not be killed.
Because he isn’t alive, she thought as she opened a small amber plastic bottle. It was Ambien. She knew that was a prescription sleeping aid, very strong. She saw herself emptying all the capsules and mixing them with the cat food. If we’re dead, why do we eat?
Then she saw herself taking a couch cushion and smothering him. With a cry she dropped the bottle back into the bin.
She couldn’t, wouldn’t, do such a thing. But how was it different from an overdose? The degree of violence? That it was so direct?
Get it done, Hecate urged her.
And in that moment she felt a twinge of sympathy for Holly, who had killed Hecate in the first place. Just a twinge.
When she finished getting the poison ready—that was exactly what it was—she found Osiris inside a heavy cardboard box filled with clothes. He was snuggled inside a large, old-fashioned lead-lined pouch, used back in the day for storing camera film when suitcases passed through X-rays. She had no idea where the cats had found it, nor why Nigel had it, but it twisted her stomach to see him placidly curled up inside it. It reminded her of a body bag.
Her hands shook badly as she held out the food. He gazed up at her and licked the tip of her finger, then gobbled down the food.
Twenty minutes later the taxi arrived.
Scarborough: Amanda, Nicole, Tommy, Richard, Owen
The childe of magicks is made in a minute, borned of womane in a moment. His fatheyr be unknowne, even unto ye Motheyr. And ife theys childe be growne until a manne, The Wordl be forfeiyt, yea, the very Erth
and Skye Runneth as Dragonne’s Bloode…
“No,” Amanda said aloud as she shut Merlin’s book and leaped away from it. She shuddered as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water over her head—or desecrated her grave. She rubbed her arms and shook her head. She must have read it wrong.
She had been reading in bed, and it was three in the morning. In magical terms, it was the dark night of the soul, when Black Magic was strongest. Maybe an evil spell lingering in the house had jumbled the words. Or maybe she’d fallen asleep and dreamed it.
Gingerly she murmured a spell of protection and opened the book again. The words were still there. A child whose father is a mystery, “made in a minute.” If such a child grew up, the world would end.
Her stomach clutched. It can’t mean Owen. Not our little baby.
She read on:
Three signes there be: ye childe will possesse a Marke, behind his Ear Sinister; Ye childe will sing, and Ye Monsters will comme; Ye childe will kill a creatuyr most innocente. An ye babe shews these sigyns, better thou grab it bye its ankles and dash its head upon the chimneye, than you suffar him to live. If he liveth, all else dies.
She actually laughed out loud. “Sinister” meant “left.” Owen didn’t have any kind of mark behind his left ear—or his right, for that matter. And as for the other two—
Not gonna happen.
She closed the book and set it on her nightstand, then wiped her palms on her pajamas. That wasn’t enough; she wanted to wash her hands. She grabbed her flashlight and went into the hall. As always, she paused before Tommy’s door. They were engaged now. It would be okay for her to climb into bed with him, find some comfort there.
Not with Daddy in the house, she told herself.
She walked down the hall toward the bathroom, passing the door that led to Nicole’s, Owen’s, and Richard’s rooms. She heard soft snoring, and smiled to herself.
And then she heard…singing—sweet, high-pitched, and breathy.
She stopped dead, listening. Five notes, over and over again. La, la, la, la-la. Maybe it was a toy. You could record your voice, to be played back when a child squeezed his toy around the middle or tugged on its nose.