Grim Haven (Devilborn Book 1)

by Jen Rasmussen

  “Not quite. There’s, um, one other thing. That I need your help with.”

  “What’s that?”

  I cleared my throat, then cursed myself for it. Why not just carve the words I am nervous into my arm with the dagger, while I was at it? “Well, you’ll only need one hand to do your part. And I’ll only need one hand once I’m done with the salt. So… since we’ll both have a hand free… it would really help me if you would hold mine.”

  “Why?” Cooper asked, but both his tone and his eyes had softened considerably. “Just for reassurance, or is it part of the ritual?”

  “A little of both. It’s…” I swallowed. This was easily the scariest thing I would face this day. How could I tell him this? When the first time he’d kissed me he’d apologized, and the second, dropped it immediately to get back to business? What I was about to say brought I’m more into this than you are to a whole new level.

  I decided to just get it over with, speaking as quickly as I could manage. “To do the spell, you need an anchor, see, like something you keep in your mind, to help your soul fight the instinct to move on. Something you really want to come back for, to bind you to your life on earth. And I just thought, if you were right there, holding my hand— oh.”

  He pulled me close and kissed me again. I was fairly certain he wasn’t going to apologize this time. Or start talking about his father. At least, he certainly did it like he meant it.

  Oh my, he smelled good. I tilted my head for better access and deepened the kiss, running my hands over his chest, never wanting the moment to end. But it would have to. We had no time for this.

  Okay, but just a second longer…

  Finally I pulled my head back, and he made a regretful little sound that made me want to start all over.

  “We have to do this,” I said.

  “Just come back to me,” Cooper whispered, still holding me tightly, one hand in my hair, his thumb brushing my cheek. “Promise me.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  The faintly sweet smell of skullcap was filling the air now. I backed away from Cooper, still holding one of his hands. He gave mine a squeeze and nodded.

  My phone, on vibrate, buzzed against the table. Someone was texting me. I ignored it. If it was Agatha or Lance trying to tell me our enemies had gotten inside, there was nothing I could do but what I was doing.

  I picked up the dagger, cut myself behind one ear, and started to speak.

  The ritual itself was easy. As soon as I spoke the last words of the incantation, I felt the strangest sensation I’d ever experienced. It was like when you fall in one of your dreams, except upwards instead of down.

  My soul, separating from my body.

  And then I was free.

  I could still see—including my own body, standing by the table, hand clenched in Cooper’s. He was using his other hand to burn the spell.

  The spell… that does something important. Something I’m supposed to pay attention to. I’m supposed to give something to bind it… something…

  The thoughts slipped away, along with all my other worldly concerns. I’d gotten a glimpse of the window, and the sky beyond.

  Time to go.

  No, I’m supposed to do something. It’s important.

  But I wanted to go. Not even wanted to, exactly—it wasn’t a desire. Desire implies a question, a hoped-for answer. But the outcome of this was certain. It was just a fact.

  I was going to go. It was simply what I was meant to do.

  I floated away from the table, from my body and Cooper’s, toward the window. Gaining speed as I went. Ready to break away.

  And then I felt something. Warmth. A squeeze. And something more, something heavy but not burdensome, that I couldn’t identify.

  Where was it coming from?

  I hesitated, gripped suddenly by a confusion so acute it was almost painful. Trapped between two opposing forces. Two contradictory truths.

  That feeling. That pressure. Was it in my chest?

  No, it was in my hand.

  Cooper.

  I could feel him, my hand in his grip, despite not being attached to my hand anymore. The heat of him. I could feel the fear in his voice, too, even though I wasn’t sure what he was saying. I understood that he was afraid for me.

  I felt a surge of matching terror, for him.

  If you leave him here alone, they’ll kill him.

  That brought back my focus, and with it came a rush of cold, like falling through ice into a frozen pond.

  Why was I so cold?

  The heat was gone; Cooper was gone.

  He’d let go of me and turned toward the door. Had he heard something?

  The door crashed open.

  Falcon Wick and Marjory Smith stood at my threshold.

  I had no time to lose. For a number of reasons.

  Cooper managed to toss the flaming parchment into the bowl and rush at our enemies, bone dagger in hand, just as Marjory Smith flung something at him. Not jet, I hoped.

  But if he’d had time to burn the parchment, I’d already been out of my body too long. If I didn’t get back now, my soul would be lost forever. I would die for real.

  Whatever Marjory hit Cooper with—a vial of something—burned one side of his face, but I knew that wouldn’t slow him down. They had plenty of magic at their disposal, no doubt, but his physical advantage was significant, even over Falcon. I had to hope that would be enough.

  Keep them busy, Cooper.

  He’d had the presence of mind to lead them away from the table, meeting them closer to the door. That was good. To complete the spell, I needed the candle and the cedar bowl to stay undisturbed. I flew back toward my body, where it still stood like a mannequin by the table.

  Cooper pounced on Falcon, cutting upward with the dagger. Falcon screamed as it went into his flesh.

  But Marjory’s mouth was moving, speaking an incantation. And she had something in her hand. A poppet, maybe.

  Those damn dolls.

  They were good for more than just protection.

  Cooper yelled and stumbled backward. He seemed to be blinded. But even that didn’t stop him. He pivoted toward the sound of Marjory’s voice, swinging the dagger.

  I glanced at the pewter bowl, where the ashes of the spell paper mingled with the wood. The ritual was nearly finished. There was just one more piece it needed.

  A piece of me.

  I couldn’t see my disembodied soul, but I could feel it. I’d felt it when Cooper was holding my hand, like a physical thing. And if I could perceive it that way, if that was how I was able to conceive of it, surely I could rip it that way, too.

  I reached up and scratched at my neck—or the place where I thought my neck should be—in the same spot I’d cut it while speaking the incantation. Despite the chaos around me, I focused as hard as I could, visualizing a tear, like I was peeling off a strip of skin.

  And I could feel that strip of soul. I could feel it as surely as if I was actually holding it in my physical hand.

  It’s working!

  A short-lived surge of triumph, before the pain hit me.

  I’ve called myself a storyteller, but there is no describing this. There can be no torment in Hell worse than having a piece of your soul ripped off. It was every kind of pain, in every part of me, all at once. Burning, tearing, stabbing, sharp, dull, cramping, gnawing. You name it, it was there.

  I shrieked in agony.

  Everyone in the room stopped.

  My body didn’t move. My mouth stayed silent. But my soul screamed and screamed, and apparently the sound—felt rather than heard—was as unbearable for the living as the pain was for me. They crouched, arms over their heads, faces contorted in pain. Marjory actually fell down, screaming herself.

  The fighting had stopped. The ritual had stopped. Everything had stopped, except my pain, and the pain I was bringing to them.

  But it won’t stay stopped forever. You have a moment, Verity. One moment. One chance.

&nb
sp; And maybe, if I could take that moment and make it pass, the pain would pass with it.

  The alternative—that my torn soul would feel like this forever—was unthinkable. Instead I thought of the heat of Cooper’s hand, and what I was fighting for.

  These enemies are trespassing on your property.

  Make them unwelcome.

  I flung the piece of my soul into the pewter bowl. I couldn’t tell you how I did it, having no functioning hands and all. With my will, I suppose. That’s what magic is made of, after all.

  And then, praying I wasn’t too late, I slammed back into my body.

  The pain immediately loosened its grip. It wasn’t gone, but it was less. I took a long, deep breath, my lungs hungry, like I’d just come out of the water.

  Dizzy, ears ringing, I stumbled blindly for I don’t know how long, unable to properly use my limbs.

  When I began to regain control, the first thing I noticed was the silence. The room had been full of the sounds of fighting before, although those sounds had been muffled while I was out of my body, like I was hearing them through a wall. Shouts, screams of pain (whose?), swearing.

  Now all was quiet.

  I blinked away the haze and focused on what was closest to me first. The table had been overturned, possibly by me, and the candle had fallen. Often a ritual candle will produce a hardier flame than most; this one was no exception. It still burned against the carpet.

  But the carpet didn’t catch fire.

  The hotel was a fortress against harmful magic, and could not be burned or destroyed.

  “Cooper…”

  Was that my voice? It sounded unnatural, too low and too weak. Inhuman, even. Like I’d always imagined a ghost would sound, though I’d never actually heard one summon a voice.

  “Cooper?”

  And then I heard the last sound I expected: a deep, rumbling laugh. A purely joyful noise, if ever there was one.

  Cooper was sitting on my floor, with an assortment of wounds at various stages of healing themselves. Laughing.

  Beside him, Falcon Wick was sprawled, dead. Presumably thanks to the bone dagger stuck up under his ribcage.

  And in front of him, Marjory Smith stood with the stupidest expression I’ve ever seen on a person, before or since.

  I started to laugh, too.

  Hearing the sound, Marjory turned on me with the glare of an angry schoolmistress. “You…” She reached for the inside pocket of her suit, and pulled out a small vial.

  I watched her calmly, and made no move to stop her from uncorking it and flinging it at me. Cooper stayed where he was, too.

  The liquid in the vial splashed over my face. I’m sure it was supposed to burn, or do something equally nasty. At least render me unable to do magic. But it might as well have been water.

  Verity and Cooper were given sanctuary too, and could not be harmed in Bristol.

  I smiled at her. “You’d best go, Marjory.”

  “What did you do?” she asked in a dead voice.

  “You can’t harm us. You can’t harm the hotel. Your new friends…” I glanced at Falcon’s body. “The ones who’ve survived, anyway, can’t even come into Bristol now. This town doesn’t belong to you anymore.”

  Marjory straightened her shoulders and said, with a dignity that almost (but not quite) made me feel bad for her, “You can’t make me leave Bristol. This is my home.”

  “No, I can’t do that,” I agreed. “But I can sure as hell kick you out of my hotel.”

  Without a look back, at either us or her dead companion, Marjory Smith left my suite, and quietly closed the door behind her.

  I wasted no time flinging myself into Cooper’s arms. “We did it,” I said as he held me to him. “Bristol is safe, the hotel is safe, the seeds will be safe—”

  “I don’t care,” Cooper said, and he didn’t sound like he felt much like laughing anymore. He sounded downright choked up. “All I care about right now is that you’re safe.”

  We should have followed Marjory. We should have made sure she and all her cohorts left the property. Calmed Agatha and Lance and the nervous guests. Found out where Cillian Wick was.

  And we did do all that. After a while.

  But for the moment, all we did was get up, go into my bedroom, and close the door.

  We might not even have done that much, might have been content right there on the living room floor, if not for the dead body. A girl needs some standards.

  By the time Cooper and I came outside, the sun had resumed shining as it ought.

  The darkness has lifted. Again.

  My wards had held up better than I’d hoped, against a coven as powerful as the Bristol Garden Club. It seemed that only Marjory and Falcon had managed to breach them, and get inside.

  Although a few of her coven still lingered in the parking lot (much to the dismay of Lance and Agatha), Marjory was gone.

  As was Cillian Wick—if he’d ever been there at all. Nobody seemed to remember whether they’d seen a man meeting his description or not.

  The town was a safe haven, a place feeders could not enter.

  Asher Glass was still there, and he was not a happy man. In fact, he threw what could only be called a tantrum, and threatened me with all sorts of trouble, legal and otherwise. But eventually he took his leave, along with the rest of them.

  We’d fended off another attack. And done a better job of it this time, I trusted. I looked over the faces of the guests, the staff. Some of their expressions were still confused or disturbed. But nobody looked even vaguely nauseous.

  The sanctuary will hold.

  Cooper and I took Falcon Wick’s body to the woods that night, and dumped it as unceremoniously as we had his sister’s, in the overgrown foundation of a crumbling old ruin. I personally took care of the blood stains in my carpet—I hadn’t spent my teenage years as a hotel maid for nothing—so none of the rest of the staff would find out.

  That was cosmetic, of course. I knew there would be forensic evidence in my room, if anyone chose to look for it. But Cooper assured me that Falcon would never be reported missing, that Asher would never have an excuse to investigate his disappearance. I tried not to be afraid.

  The next day, Cooper got in touch with his father, who was delighted to find that his son was alive, but less so about the plans Cooper had made without permission. The elder Blackwood decided to call a clan-wide meeting, to discuss Cooper’s proposal that the seeds be kept in sanctuary.

  But not in person, of course. The Blackwoods were far too cautious for that. Instead they would spend days sending coded messages back and forth over dating sites, billiards forums, video gamer blogs, and other random corners of the internet.

  While we waited on their decision, we took the West Seed to the iron vault. And there it stayed, protected.

  Cooper cooked dinner for Lance and Agatha that same night. By the second course, they were begging him to become the head chef at Haven—they’d nearly settled on the name he’d suggested—when the time came.

  He accepted. Tentatively, at least. We had no way of knowing what the clan’s verdict would be. But I was determined to stay optimistic. Each passing day showed that the sanctuary spell was a success, and that the sapwood seed was safe.

  Asher Glass, bless his heart, did his best to make good on his threats. In the days after the attack, we had several unscheduled visits from building and health inspectors. Our construction permits were double and triple checked, in hopes we were in violation of something.

  But there was no mention of a murder having been committed on the premises. And there was nothing Asher could really do to harm either me or the hotel.

  The sanctuary is holding.

  Five days after we did the ritual, Cooper and I gathered in the private room at the Cask & Barrel with the Boyles, the Murdochs, and the Thaggards, to celebrate my twenty-fifth birthday. Only a couple of months before, I wouldn’t have imagined having any friends at all to mark such an occasion with, let alone enough t
o make a dinner. Now I had not only a boyfriend, but family there.

  I was still getting used to the idea of having a cousin. Phineas said I’d better let it sink in, before I tried to handle the rest of the extended family.

  “My mother will be off-puttingly enthusiastic,” he warned me.

  “His mother is the sweetest person you’ll ever meet,” Lydia said, swatting her husband’s shoulder. “And damn, Lance, I didn’t think you could beat those chips, but this shrimp is amazing.”

  “Just you wait,” Lance said. “Next year, we’ll be doing this at Haven instead, and that food will be beyond spectacular.”

  “I’m assuming you’ll give me the night off for that,” said Cooper.

  “Send me an email and I’ll try to get it on the calendar,” Lance said, and I couldn’t quite tell if he was joking or not.

  “Love the name Haven, by the way,” said Caleb, prompting a cocky smile from Cooper.

  “Me too,” said Lydia. “Bristol was born to be a haven. I’m glad to see it serving a worthier cause, now.”

  “Oh, I can think of a few people who would dispute that,” Wendy said with a laugh. “Asher Glass looks awfully pissed off when he comes in for his morning coffee these days.”

  “I guess that means we’re in the clear.” I didn’t even like saying that out loud, for fear of jinxing it, but Cooper nodded.

  “I told you he wouldn’t be able to do anything about Falcon,” he said. “Officially, the Wicks don’t exist. Nor the Blackwoods, for that matter. You might as well file a missing person’s report on a ghost.”

  I smiled as I took a sip of wine. “Let’s hope not. I don’t need him haunting my nice new hiking trails.”

  “Well, you two are awfully casual about having taken a life,” Agatha said, with a sniff of disapproval that would have put Marjory Smith to shame.

  “Agatha, he came to kill us,” I said.

  Her face fell. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m just still… a little shaken up by everything, is all.”

  Lance put his arm around his wife and made a sound that wasn’t quite a chuckle. “That makes two of us. Half my hair’s gone gray since the Garden Club’s little performance.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked. “You shave your head.”