Ghostly games, p.5
Ghostly Games, page 5
I sneered at it, dearly hoping never to see Winchester again.
And I left.
For now.
If I’d had my witchly senses about me, I would’ve appreciated something felt like it would call me back all too soon.
And that something had the unfortunately strong grip of destiny.
Chapter Six
Winchester Stone
I walked into Grace’s mother’s abode. Grace technically lived here too, but from reports, she mostly stayed with an aunt.
Reports. Yes. I still kept tabs on her. I listened in to any relevant conversations around the Magical Academy. Even though I did not want to. Even though I knew it was pathetic. I couldn’t stop myself.
If she had chosen any man other than my brutal brother, I would’ve turned my heart from her long ago. Now, as we strode into the quiet house, the only thing I could think of was asking her that one question I knew she’d never answer. She turned nervously. “It happened in here. Please come.”
I followed her. “Where’s your mother?”
“Staying with her sister. I won’t leave her alone here. Not now that it’s missing.” Her voice bottomed down low.
I’d already asked her this three times on the way over, and though I knew there was no point, I did it again. “Grace, what’s missing?” I tried.
She rushed ahead, pretending she hadn’t heard me.
With a grunt, I followed. We walked into a ritual room. It very much belonged to a witch. The earthly sense was maddening. I looked around and instantly realized it hadn’t been clinically cleaned in a long time. A problem. When you were dealing with strong magic, you needed to ensure the area you practiced in was as clean as possible. Spells could interact with one another. All it would require was a fraction of a potion to stick around or a curse or what have you, and the interactions could start to combine.
My own secret ritual room in the Academy was cleaned every single day. I would find time – sometimes even an hour – to go over every single scrap of it.
This place reeked.
It reeked of two things. Complex old messy magic. And… murder.
Murder leaves a very specific scent, especially to a man like me. For the involuntary act of death disrupts the eddies of life-giving force that run through this planet. Some call them Ley lines. They were essentially Nature’s breath. And the breath of this room was all stuck near the door.
“When my mother found her, she was here,” Grace pointed to the door but got the location wrong. I did not correct her. “But then, just before the constabulary arrived, she was against the desk. And then… someone moved her yet again before the constabulary got to the room.”
I arched an eyebrow.
I didn’t just have the skills to see if somebody had been murdered in the room. With careful observation, I could see if someone had been messing with the dead.
Usually, it was quite a chaotic sight. Those Ley lines I’d spoken of previously would become messy and intersect at strange angles.
A deep frown etched itself onto my lips.
“I just know that somebody was trying to entrap my mother. But… in the end, it didn’t count. I….”
I ignored her, a fact she well knew, because she voluntarily became quiet. She knew me more than well enough to appreciate when I was being absorbed by some mystery. Though I liked to think I was often in control of my attention and not the other way around, when I was hyper-focused like this, nothing could distract me.
I strode over to the desk, placed two fingers against the shined wood, and let them slide down. Then with an incomprehensible mutter, I moved over to where she had pointed to, even though my senses were locked a little to the left where the old maid had really died.
Grace stood in the middle of the room, wringing her hands. “This is where she was killed. But….”
I soon had the information I needed. Someone most definitely had moved the body.
They’d also done more.
I followed the Ley lines in the room until I glanced over at a shelf. Of all of the things in this room, the potions lined up against it were the neatest. It was easy enough to discern that one potion was missing.
I moved over to the shelf, read the potions, which were kept in order, and soon concluded it was an anti-magic potion.
“Curious,” I muttered, breaking the silence after such a long time.
Grace scrunched her lips together and bit them hard. “You know who’s done this? I….” She stopped herself from saying what she wanted to say next.
I saw one letter on her lips, however. It was the a of the Academy.
Witches and wizards had never liked one another. And in this town, the wizards had a preferential relationship with the Royal family.
Sorry, that sounded like an excuse. This town, regardless of its myriad problems, had long ago recognized the superiority of wizard magic. Certain witches, however, thought that bias ran deeper. They believed there were those amongst the Magical Academy that tried to actively undermine witches. We simply didn’t have the time nor the inclination in reality.
I walked over to the desk again. I investigated it once more. It did not take me long to discover one rather disturbing fact. All I had to do was reference the movement of the Ley lines in the room to appreciate that someone with strong wizard magic originally moved the body. Someone who was trained in a specific way, too.
When the body had originally been moved onto the desk, the person hadn’t done it by touching the corpse. They’d used magic. While the magic itself had long since dissipated, its effect on the Ley lines remained, and I could easily read the ordered interference.
“Do you have any idea who did this?” Grace asked.
I placed my hands on my hips and turned to her. “What’s missing, Grace?”
She winced. “I… do you have any idea who did this?”
She kept insisting. Perhaps I could tell why. Was this a test? If I admitted that it felt as if a trained wizard from the Academy had done it, would she trust me enough to tell me what was really going on?
The petulant side of my personality, which by now you would know was far too large, wanted to leave it at that. I had been asked to come here. I should not have to earn her trust. In fact, I should simply turn away, walk on, and never return. But one look into her large blue, shimmering eyes, and I closed my own. “It seems a wizard – a trained wizard, perhaps from the Academy – was involved.”
Grace knew nothing about magic. Perhaps somebody else would question how I could come up with such a conclusion. But then again, I was one of the most competent wizards in the town. And I knew my way around detection spells.
No one would have to know how I’d really discerned this.
Her shoulders caved. She squeezed her eyes closed and breathed hard. Only after a significantly long time did she open them. She gestured me on with a flick of her hands. “I… my family has had a secret for some time. Can I trust you, Winchester?” she asked that so breathlessly.
I’d been in control of myself. Until now. I’d thrust away feelings for reason. Until now.
Now as my gaze darted along her smooth skin, as I stared at the woman who’d stolen my heart and still kept it in her own chest, I nodded. It was an instinctual move, and never a truer one had been made.
Could she trust me? Yes. But I couldn’t trust myself around her.
“Then come this way, Winchester. My family once possessed a book.”
“I see. And what was this book?”
She turned over her shoulder as she led me down the corridor, every footstep for some reason aching as if the very building was on tenterhooks to find out what she would say.
She led me up the stairs without another word. She led me, in fact, all the way to the attic. It was dusty and did not suit her. That was irrelevant. She climbed a rickety set of steps after grasping up a candle and lighting it.
Then she showed me to a velvet plinth. From the feeling in the air, I knew something tremendously important – and dark – had once laid atop it.
“My family once possessed a forbidden grimoire. A grimoire that, in the right hands with the right ghostly practitioner, promises to raise the dead. Somebody stole it. And heaven knows what they plan to do with it.”
I stared in horror at the velvet plinth, at the feeling in the room, at the fact of what she said. I stared in horror, and that was only the start. For the true horror had not befallen me yet.
Chapter Seven
Lisbeth McQuarrie
I lugged my sack back to the cemetery. I planned to hand it to Wintersmith, then, maybe if I was in a particularly plucky mood, tell him I was done for the night.
I yawned as I moved. I shook, too. I needed sleep, food, and more sleep.
I took a step along the old dirt path and froze, my senses activating with the equivalent of a neurological slap.
I could feel the dead calling out to me. They always did that, and I was usually very good at ignoring them until they got close. This was different. For the energies were far darker.
I heard a scream, ghostly, ethereal, and so broken.
I ran. Not away from the cemetery, but toward the scream. For, apparently, even though all night I’d played with the possibility of becoming a coldhearted wizard who only looked after myself, when push came to shove, I pushed back.
In the direction of anyone hunting the dead, that was.
The closer I got to the origin of the scream, the more hell energies gathered around me. Someone was calling the darker powers of the wrong side of death. Most ghosts I knew were gentle creatures who simply insistently wanted me to do things for them. They had not been particularly bad in life, though everyone is a complex moral being at the end of the day. This scream was different. Somebody had gathered a dark force. And they appeared to be using it to trap the soul of a ghost.
I don’t believe my heart had ever beaten quite as wildly as it did now. My body prepared itself for the fight of its life. And it only then reminded me of the thousand soul crystals jostling over my shoulder.
I had no idea what I would face, and it would be smarter to have firepower, but I also couldn’t jeopardize the crystals. I didn’t like Wintersmith. He was clearly using me. But I wouldn’t let every single ghost in this cemetery fall to dark forces.
I soon found a convenient half-crumbled gravestone. I placed my sack down behind it.
I hid it as best I could in a mound of leaves. If anyone else came across it, from the outside, it would simply look like an old trampled leather purse. Critically, an empty one.
I simply hoped they would not look inside.
As soon as I stood, I saw the clouds gathering over the cemetery. Deep, purple, dark like bruises, they suggested just as much damage. But not to the physical realm. To the ethereal one.
I saw long lines of energy move past me. I caught them occasionally, but I couldn’t read them.
They all headed toward that scream.
It sounded like a ghost was on the very edge of death. Wait, not just any ghost. It was the lass who’d woken me up. If she’d let me sleep, I wouldn’t have had to do these wild things tonight. She hadn’t. And she was now in the trouble of her life – or should I say death?
I didn’t scream at her to hold on. I rushed forward, tugging my cloak harder over my face.
Before Wintersmith had set me off on this mission, he’d told me mist cloaks were additive. Should I find myself three or four more, they would act as a true invisibility cloak. Before then, they would simply obscure me. There was, however, a way to use them to hide my identity – but only part of it. Fold them in half, and you could choose to hide your face or your hands, your neck or your stomach.
I hesitated now.
I had no choice.
I chose my face. There would still be identifying features on the rest of my body, but I would remove my dress and burn it after tonight.
Just one of the myriad things I was ready to do for the dead, it seemed.
More of those bruise-like clouds continued to gather over the cemetery, their force chaotic indeed. Strikes of devastating lightning powered through the sky. Then one lanced down into the middle of the cemetery. It let out such a violent blast of illumination, it felt as if it was some holy flower from heaven.
Dabble with the dead for long enough, and you would appreciate one thing. The realms ought to be kept apart. You cannot bring that which is underneath onto the earth, and you mustn’t bring that which is above down, either.
As another blast of lightning sliced into the cemetery, it brought more than illumination this time. A tremendous thunderclap made that vicious scream from earlier twice as loud. Whatever that hell creature was, it suddenly became apparent it was feeding off the storm. I heard the young ghost scream. It was the shriek of somebody who knew they simply did not have any more time. It had run out.
But I would not let that happen.
I powered forward, keeping low. I ignored my dress. Usually when I knew I was going on missions, I changed into something more comfortable. Trousers – and you heard that coming from a lady – are always easier to jump and flip and run in.
I at least loosened my bodice with a well-placed flick of magic as I came down a rise. There was natural topography in this cemetery. Though perhaps the word natural there had to be caveated. This cemetery had originally been designed and built by witches and only then over the years taken over by wizards. They might’ve changed the placement of certain buildings, but they had not addressed the actual lay of the land, and that’s what gave this cemetery some of the greatest power in all of the city. Every undulation of every hill and every valley concentrated energies down or up. And critically, inward.
I reached the central dip in the cemetery, and there, I saw a circle of headstones. They floated. Someone had snapped them off from where they usually sat. Ethereal power, green, yellow, and ghastly gray, climbed around them like groping fingers.
There was my ghostly friend. She was down on her knees, power trying to tear her apart to get to her soul. It appeared as nothing more than a single fleck of bright light inside her sternum. Her hands were clasped over her chest, and her whole insubstantial body quaked as she tried desperately to hold onto it. If she lost her soul, she would never be reborn again.
She might’ve bothered me by dragging me into this mess, but I would not see that happen to such a fine heart.
A man stood just back from the circle of floating gravestones, his hands lifted high.
He was far away, but I still saw a glimpse of a strange circular red tattoo adorning the back of his left hand.
He channeled power from the storm. As he let out a guttural cry and sliced his fingers to the left in a coordinated motion, another strike of lightning lanced from the clouds and struck something to the left of the gravestones. I could see the direction of the ghost’s terrified gaze. It locked on something in the darkness. Something growing as it received every new strike of power from the clouds above.
My stomach was gripped with true fear as I spied it.
A gargoyle. A creature made of stone, brought to life by the breath of darkness, I’d only ever read about them. And only then in secret. A consequence of living the life I did was that I had crept into many a basement and old building in this city. I had come across powerful tomes in my time. And when not dealing with ghosts’ requests, occasionally I had lingered to read them. This was my way of telling you that that secret knowledge assisted me now.
Gargoyles were not natural creatures. They were born of a combination of hardened rock, dark magic, and harder desire. You had to have the coldest heart to be able to breathe life into them. For you breathed a little of your own life. You must first possess enough to sacrifice. And you second must have the sufficient cold, angry desire to manifest stone into life.
The gargoyle suddenly grew one stone wing.
Gargoyles could rip the souls from most things unless they were particularly powerful.
The young ghost was now down on her side, crying misty tears that extinguished themselves in the fiery air around her. She clutched onto that little spark of her soul as it shuddered in her chest. Her soul was part of her life, and though technically did not possess intelligence in the same way ordinary folks did, would know what would happen. It would understand it was about to be extinguished for good.
I had two options. I could take on the man himself, or I could take on the gargoyle. You would think I would have much better odds taking on the man, especially considering I still had five soul crystals in my pocket. Though technically it was 4.5.
But that was not the better plan. The gargoyle was still half formed. Should it form entirely, there would be two enemies to fight. And the gargoyle would find it so very easy to turn its claws on me and rip my own soul from my chest.
There was only one way to win.
I did not think. You could quite rightly accuse me of never thinking that much in pressured situations like these. I rushed to the side of the chaotic scene. I felt the energies pulling at the rest of the graveyard. I wondered where Wintersmith was right now? Was he huddling in his crypt with the rest of his ghosts?
Good. He could keep them safe, and I would save the young lass here. And that was a promise.
Another slice of lightning lanced down from above. I got there first. Squeezing my hand around the already cracked soul crystal, I called on it to give me the requisite power. It blasted up over my face, but it did not lift my folded mist cloak. That remained steadfastly in place, and if Wintersmith were to be believed, it would never move, even if I was struck repeatedly in the head. Something I would attempt to prevent from happening, even as the gargoyle finally locked its senses on me.
This was one of the most precarious situations of my life. If I lost my momentum, lost even a second, it would give the gargoyle time to attack. And long before it did that, its singular senses would recognize what I was.
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