The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2)

by A. K. Caggiano

  “This place just keeps getting bigger.” Lorelei didn’t tack on the and creepier she was thinking but figured it was implied.

  Conrad pulled out his phone for light, and she did the same, the moonlight from the windows not enough to pick out details. Together they panned over the length of the room. With unfinished walls and beams crossing overhead, it could have made for a delightful, rustic set of rooms with some divisions, but apparently the manor hadn’t thought of that, and instead devoted the whole space to a single that had fallen disused and forgotten.

  And yet there was a feeling there, a sort of presence that was different than knowing the faeries were living in the walls or that you were under the same roof every night with at least a handful of strangers. It reminded Lorelei vaguely of how she felt in the Rognvaldson house’s front room, that warm coziness, but there was a cast to this too, something else looming heavier in the shadows. A shiver crawled up her spine, but she told herself she was being ridiculous, shaking it off.

  Unlike the cramped space at the attic’s front, this hidden room didn’t have unmarked boxes of old things, but instead everything was laid out as if for use. That may have been what made it feel so strange, as if a ghost were living there. Lorelei knew ghosts weren’t real, but things that were like ghosts may have been a different story.

  In the carved-out dormer window to the left were two chairs angled to look outside. She imagined standing in the front yard and peering up to see a pale face staring out over the manor grounds, giving her another unfortunate shiver. The chairs didn’t look especially comfortable, over-stuffed and with rigid backs, and their patterns were faded from many years of sunlight, but if you didn’t really have a butt anymore—and ghost-like things probably didn’t—that might not matter.

  Lorelei huffed, wanting to push past the spookiness, and decided to just treat the abandoned attic bedroom like it weren’t haunted at all—which it wasn’t. She squared her shoulders and went toward the chairs with a purpose, cool, confident, collected. And then she tripped right over the curled edge of a rug laid out beneath them. She yelped and caught herself on the back of one of the chairs, almost propelled right over it.

  Then there was a hand on her hip, pulling her back, and she knew Conrad was right behind her, attempting to save her utterly useless ass from what he probably thought was another gigantic spider woman but was actually just her own klutziness. She scrambled to straighten up, the back of her head grazing his chin. His hand was still wrapped around her, and for a second she considered pretending to be too frightened to move, but then turned and wiggled herself free. “I’m okay, just clumsy.”

  He took a step back and nodded, looking down at the ground, suddenly very interested in the nothing that was there.

  She went back to investigating the seating as he searched off in the opposite direction. In each seat was a little pillow, one with golden tassels at the corners and another tufted and round. Between them sat a small table complete with a lace doily and a Tiffany lamp which she was particularly thankful to have not knocked over.

  “This is all set up for someone to stay.” She ran a hand over the back of the chair expecting dust, but her fingers came away clean. “But as far as I know, the manor’s never assigned anyone to this room. I didn’t even see a number, did you?”

  “No. I never even knew this was here.” Conrad was inspecting the bed set into the next window alcove, an iron frame with intricate floral details at its four corners and neatly made bedding.

  Lorelei was both surprised and not to hear that—he’d lived there all his life, but the manor was always growing and changing. She crossed the attic to the other angled-in wall. Framed photos had been attached there, some slightly overlapping others as they hung in rows. She reached out and touched the frames, making them sway. The center photo was of a small group of people from a time long ago, young, happy, all grouped together in the front room of the manor by the fireplace, but she didn’t recognize any of them.

  On the dresser below was an album. She lifted the cover to see loose photographs set inside, all landscapes of beautiful places, old castles, desert sunsets, rolling fields. The pages, however, held much older photos, squared off and sepia and Polaroids. As she flicked through the pages, moving forward in time, the photos became less brittle and went from black and white to color. The manor was a background feature in almost every one: a group around the fire in the sitting room, a lady pruning roses in the conservatory, a teenager decorating a cake in the kitchen, all utilizing a bit of magic to complete the tasks.

  Then she finally recognized someone. “Conrad,” she said with a gasp, “isn’t this Arista?”

  CHAPTER 25

  CHARMED BLOOD

  Conrad popped his head up from where he was peering under the bed. For a moment he looked distressed at the suggestion Arista might be in the hidden attic room with them, but then he saw the photo album Lorelei held up.

  The picture she had come upon depicted a smiling woman in a red dress with bell sleeves standing at the front desk. She looked happy, odd on a face that Lorelei was used to seeing sneer. Beside her stood a young, handsome man in high-waisted, checkered pants and an open vest over his patterned shirt.

  Laughter bubbled up out of Conrad. “That’s my father. Before the mustache, apparently. They look ridiculous.” Their clothes were particularly loud, even in the drowned-out colors of the aged photo.

  “Oh, no, I think they’re cute.” Lorelei smoothed the edge of the page down to see better.

  “No, not in those pants.”

  She looked him up and down. He had on his usual uniform, tight, black jeans, a dark t-shirt, and a grey plaid flannel. “I hope your kids look back at you a little more graciously,” she needled.

  “Hopefully I’m a better parent.” He scoffed. “But that’s not likely, is it?”

  “What, you being nice? I feel like you’ve done it once or twice.” She pursed her lips. “But if you mean having kids, I think you probably have to. I bet your charmed blood demands it or something. Look.” Lorelei flipped back through the photos again to show him generations of people he was likely related to, tall with his same white-blonde hair and light eyes. “Though you could probably use some more diverse genes in there.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He chuckled, his voice low. “You mean like a brunette?”

  Lorelei’s face went red, and she was glad it was tipped down looking into the album, her own dark hair falling around her shoulders. She snapped the album shut and pushed it into his hands. “I meant like a satyr. Or maybe an elf? I bet Ren knows a few, and they’re probably all gorgeous.”

  “Maybe.” He tossed the album onto the foot of the bed. “Probably no fun though.”

  “Oh, and Bridgette was fun?” She turned back to her side of the room to peek through the thin drawer of a vanity, desperate to change the subject. There were pieces of vintage cosmetics inside but no papers.

  “No, not really.”

  Lorelei picked out a compact, delicately opening the clasp on it, and the mirror inside shone with its own luminescent glow, but her reflection in it was so intensely magnified she had to snap it back shut. “She was pretty though,” she muttered, closing the drawer. “And she must have had some kind of redeeming qualities to stay with her between—” She stopped herself, feeling a snap of guilt. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

  “She was powerful.” Conrad held a book upside down, thumbing through the pages and waiting for something to drop from between them, but nothing did. “Top of her class the year before mine, and specialized in all the schools I lacked. I thought about it a lot, and if I’m being honest with myself, I kept her around for the wrong reasons too.”

  Lorelei considered asking him if being with someone powerful was crucial, but she didn’t really want the answer. Instead, she moved into the darkest part of the attic, her phone’s light casting over the mostly empty space.

  There was only another wardrobe there, and she glanced qui
ckly up its length before tugging one of the doors open by its brass knob. Inside it only held jackets, a few hats, and no false back. “I’m a little disappointed,” she said, slipping a newsboy cap off the hook on the inside of the door. “I thought maybe this one would take us into the forest or something.”

  “Just back half a century.” Conrad stood beside her and started to go through the shallow pockets of the old jackets, coming up with nothing.

  Lorelei took a step back to look at the details carved along the edge of the armoire. They were simple, perfectly straight edges running its length, scrolling work at the corners, then she noticed a shadow different from the others on its top. Getting up onto her toes, she struggled to reach for whatever was there, but her fingers only grazed the corner of the wardrobe.

  Conrad reached over her head and grabbed it with little effort, brushing up against her back which gave her another chill. She turned, and he was right in front of her, so close she had to press her back against the wardrobe to put space between them, but he didn’t seem to notice he was blocking her in. Instead, his eyes were locked onto what he retrieved.

  It was almost definitely an urn. “Oh, geez, do you think that might be the owner of all this stuff?”

  Conrad shook his head slowly. Then he looked like he might be sick.

  Lorelei shone her light down on the urn. Matte black with silver markings all over it, the symbols were placed in a pattern she’d seen before. As he shifted it in his hands, the markings appeared to move over the surface, growing and receding back on themselves.

  She touched one of them, needing to feel it to be sure, but the moment her hand came in contact with the urn, she froze. There was a voice, just a whisper, projected directly into her mind, but she knew it was coming from the jar. The words meant nothing to her, a jumble of sibilant noises, but they felt dark, sad even, and her heart got heavy.

  She kept listening, hoping to make something out from the discordant languages, but the voice split into many layered on top of one another. They echoed off the inside of her head and bounced back at her from every corner of the room, picking up speed and an anger that eased its way into her. The voices mounted as she slid her fingers across the urn, but they seemed to make even less sense the harder she tried to listen. Frustration grew in her chest, and she went for the container’s lid.

  But it was gone. Conrad stepped back from her and thrust the urn onto the open shelf inside the armoire. He was breathing heavy, his eyes locked onto it, and he gripped the edge of the open door, knuckles white. His other hand came down on her wrist, holding her still, and she only realized then she had been going for the urn again. Conrad was shaking his head at her, eyes wide. “Don’t touch it.”

  Her mouth was dry, but she managed to speak, “It wants to be opened, doesn’t it? What is it?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s been in there for a while. And it’s mad.”

  “The voices—all those voices coming from one person, one thing—it’s the same as Zyr. And Atax too. And those symbols.” Lorelei could see the amber bottle in her mind as clearly as the urn in front of her. “Those are just like the ones Bridgette used to bind Zyr.” The marks were moving still, more frantically, but then they slowed. It had been frightening, but she wanted to touch it again, and she shivered at that thought so intensely she knew she was shaking. “All those binds, those are the ones you created,” she said.

  Conrad snapped the armoire door shut, breaking her line of sight on the urn. She was glad for the separation from the thing, but Conrad’s intention was concerning.

  “Did you do that?” she asked quietly. “Did you trap that thing in there?”

  “No.”

  “Then how are they the same? Bridgette said you designed the spell, and Estrid said she’d never seen anything like it. Now the symbols are here too. How?”

  Conrad still had a hand on the armoire, hunched over, but he took a deep breath and straightened. He gestured with his head as he started across the room to one of the window alcoves where there was more light. Lorelei followed, apprehensive, glancing back at the armoire only once to make sure the doors stayed shut.

  He shrugged off his flannel and dropped it on a table. Then he reached over his head and grabbed the collar of his shirt to tug it off.

  Lorelei almost told him to stop, not that she wanted him to necessarily, she just had no idea what the hell he was doing until she saw the moonlight fall on his back. The marks there, the tattoo she’d only seen briefly months before that he always wore multiple layers to cover up, were laid bare. Once she had uncovered too much of his upper arm, and he’d gotten huffy about that even though she was technically saving his life at the time, but now he was standing there completely shirtless, and—heat flashed across the back of her neck—oh, god, it was not a good time to realize how good he looked half naked.

  “I’ve had this thing since I was five, but it’s grown since then.” He turned so she could see the entirety of his back. “I’ve been copying the symbols and experimenting with them for years until I finally figured out some of the patterns and made them good for something, but I have no idea what a lot of them are. This sequence here,”—he lifted an arm and pointed to a line that went down his side and the geometric shapes that sprawled off of it over his lower ribs—“is the part I taught Bridgette that she used on that bottle with Zyr. You’re right, it’s almost exactly the same as what’s on that urn.”

  Lorelei took an unsteady step toward him to close the space. It was clearer now that it wasn’t a tattoo like she had always thought. The marks were instead burned into his skin, the detail very fine like a thin lightning scar with black lines running over raised welts.

  She moved slightly to better see his back and how far they went, webbing out from a central point just below his left shoulder blade and crawling up and over to stop at his collarbone and down his left bicep. The tendrils continued downward too from their origin spot, reaching his side and down to his hip, extending only to the hollow of his spine and leaving his right side completely unblemished. Along each jagged line were geometric shapes, some overlapping, some only half finished, written out like a language made up of triangles and half-circles and hexagons.

  He didn’t move, letting her look. The lines were dark, but in the moonlight there was a silvery strand running through them that shifted like liquid across his skin. She reached out to the point where it all seemed to originate from, a series of interlocking circles, in their center something like an eye that sat just under his shoulder blade, then hesitated. “Does it hurt?”

  He shook his head.

  Lorelei brushed the central symbol with one finger. He didn’t flinch under her touch like she expected, so she traced over the lines, the skin raised but smooth.

  “When I saw the edges of this before, I thought it was a tattoo,” she said quietly. “But it’s not.”

  “It’s the remnants of a spell, but I’m not sure what kind. Nothing he should have been able to do.” He was glancing back at her over his shoulder.

  “Who?” She flicked her eyes up to his face.

  “Byron.”

  Lorelei let the rest of her fingertips touch his skin then spread her hand until her palm pressed fully against his back. “How could he?”

  “He was twelve, and he’d never shown any signs of being able to cast before.” Conrad moved then, just a step away, and pulled back on his shirt. “I have no idea how he mustered up something so permanent and so…alive, but it knocked me out for months. Our father stopped it midway, so I don’t know what it was supposed to do, but it blocked my ability to cast for about three years.”

  Lorelei meant, of course, not technically how did he do it, but how could Byron bring himself to do something like that to his own brother, but then she remembered what Conrad said in the park in Bexley. “I thought Byron was like Seamus? Doesn’t this prove he had a spark all along?”

  “It was the only thing he ever did.” Conrad shook out his flannel, shrugg
ing. “Until, ya know, the thing.”

  Right, the thing where he killed both of his parents. Lorelei had assumed that had been done with magic too, though she hadn’t wanted to imagine the details. “So,” she said, pursing her lips, “the bind used on the bottle to trap Zyr came from your magic tattoo-thingy which came from a spell that Byron cast, even though he supposedly can’t cast spells. Maybe Byron learned to cast that spell from the exact same bottle that had the bind on it.”

  Conrad rubbed a hand over his face. “Are you saying I might have done this to myself?”

  “In a sort of roundabout way? But, no, I actually think it’s all Zyr. We thought Byron collected the bottle recently, but it makes so much more sense if he got it way back then. We trapped Zyr hundreds of years ago, but he wasn’t thrown out of the time stream at the exact same time as us, he probably got tossed out, uh,”—she counted on her fingers—“about eighteen years before Bridgette and I did.”

  Conrad looked back at the shadows where the wardrobe holding the urn was. “You think he found it when he was twelve?”

  “A sad kid who just wants to fit in with his family finds a magical, whispering bottle. It tells him it can help him, he believes it.”

  “It tells him to kill his brother, so he tries.” The emotions had fallen off of his face as he recounted the likeliest scenario. “Then it tells him to kill his parents for stopping him, so he does.”

  Lorelei folded her hands before her. “It’s a theory.” She remembered looking into Byron’s eyes and seeing something else there, something more than just him, something dark. And that darkness had been eerily similar to the same thing inside Zyr. “And not to start a ticking clock or anything, but it’s been a while since you sent him away. Do you think he’s still in the nether? In the trow labyrinth?”

  Conrad stared into the darkness for another moment. “I don’t know, but there’s a way to check. Arista will have to do it, but she can scry on him, and we can know for sure. I feel like we have more questions than answers right now.”