Sixteen Blythe
SIXTEEN
B LYTHE
Aris had the hearth lit and a warm plate of cookies waiting for everyone on the table when they returned. Cups of mulled cider rested on a silver tray, still steaming. Blythe tossed her coat aside, grateful for the warmth that brought feeling back to her cheeks and nose.
She hurried toward the cider, only to notice from the corner of her eye that the parlor was empty.
“Signa?” Blythe called, crossing to the stairs. Was that… a piano? It sounded like incessant barking, too, distant but very much there. She took the first step, but Aris grabbed her hand.
His golden eyes flickered upward, nervous. “I think we should leave.”
Blythe tore her hand free. “And I think it’s time to investigate exactly what the lot of you are up to.
” She took hold of her skirts, hurrying up the steps, but again she was frozen in place, this time by Aris’s threads.
She twisted her head to find that his eyes were a deep, molten gold, and Blythe glared every ounce of her anger into them.
“Aris, you will take these off of me this instant.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, love.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek, then stepped around her and up the stairs. “Give me five minutes and I promise—”
Blythe’s skin erupted with thorns. They tore through Aris’s threads, freeing her from his hold. His jaw tensed as she shoved past him.
“Blast, you make it look so easy.”
Blythe gave him no time to try again. Vines grew from her scalp as she summoned her magic, focusing on the roots growing far beneath them, under layers of snow and soil, and resting before the spring.
She awakened those roots, bringing them up and through the floorboards and around Aris’s feet.
He grunted, stumbling on the stairs, and Blythe took advantage by hurtling herself forward.
Threads grasped at her ankles, then twisted through the very strands of her hair, where her thorns couldn’t quite reach.
Blythe, too, stumbled, catching herself on the banister as Aris tried to claw his way free.
She wouldn’t let him. She summoned the earth—summoned all living plant matter nearest them to twist around his body. They wound over his torso, his arms, his neck, effectively stilling him.
“You’re out of practice, husband,” she gloated, letting her hair turn to clay that slipped through his threads, freeing her. And then she had white-blond tresses back once more, just in time to flip them over her shoulder. “Though you do put up a good fight.”
She allowed Aris no time for a quip, stuffing his mouth with moss before she hurried up the stairs.
The noises grew louder and every inch of her skin crawled as she climbed, more tiny thorns prickling through her arms without her permission, as if creating an armor of sorts.
Blythe moved faster, following Gundry’s barking to her library. She reached for the door only to jerk away the second her fingers grazed the handle. It was so cold that it burned.
Behind her, Aris was still stumbling his way up the stairs, spitting out moss and shaking roots from his ankles. He caught his wife’s gaze. “Blythe, don’t go in there—”
She snorted, those words the very fuel she needed to clench her teeth and force the door open.
Blythe didn’t have any idea how to make sense of what was awaiting her inside.
She saw Gundry first, but not in any form that Blythe recognized. He was a monstrous hound several times his normal size, with darkness that dripped from his open maw and paws the size of her head. He was blocking Signa with his body, hackles raised and fangs bared.
His master stood before him, back to the beast, and Blythe knew at once that this was not Sylas.
This was Death , the reaper incarnate, and all the world seemed to cower in his presence.
The cold pressed against her, tendrils of ice snaking across her library floor.
Shadows swathed his figure, sharpening into a scythe he held at the ready.
“What the bloody hell is going on in here?” Blythe’s words came out quieter than she’d meant them to. More frightened. Death’s head swiveled to look at her, though Signa remained in place, arms wound around herself as she trembled.
Blythe’s heart sank. She started toward her cousin, only for a single one of Aris’s threads to slip around her wrist. He stood in the doorway behind her, doubled over and out of breath, with dirt marring his cheek. There was still moss on his tongue.
“Please,” he panted. “It’s not safe.”
The hairs along her neck stood, and Blythe recognized the feeling as the same one she’d had in her bedroom the night prior. Like there was someone else nearby, watching.
Spirits. There were spirits in Wisteria Gardens.
How strangely Aris had acted last night, though he shouldn’t have been able to see them, either. Which could only mean…
“Oh, you devil!” Blythe snarled the words, which now came out much louder than she anticipated, her anger making the thorns rise sharper across her skin. She whirled on Aris. “You absolute buffoon!”
“As fond as I’ve always been of our verbal sparring, now is not the best time—”
“I can’t believe you lied to me!” More vines were taking over Blythe’s hair, growing thick from her scalp. “All this time and that’s what you two have been hiding? That somehow our home has been infested with spirits ?” The odd behavior. The secretive glances. It all made sense now.
“They’re drawn to emotions!” Signa called out. God, why on earth was her cousin floating ? “Be careful!”
Around her wrists, the gilded threads pulsed warm. “Leave, Blythe,” Aris begged. “I can’t risk you being hurt again.”
“ Me ? You don’t want to risk me getting hurt?
” Each of Blythe’s steps shook the ground as she tore her wrist free and stalked farther into the room.
As Blythe drew closer, the spirits drew back, watching as vines tore free from the earth and cracked the floorboards.
They wound around Signa to offer some measure of warmth.
Her cousin’s teeth were chattering, her skin a deathly shade of blue. Blythe shot Sylas a glare.
“Did you know about this?”
The reaper sank in on himself, which only made Blythe’s anger more profound. She scooted Signa closer toward the hearth, though the temperature had already warmed drastically just with Blythe near.
“Buffoons,” she repeated under her breath. “I am surrounded by nothing but buffoons. Aris, stop cowering and get over here.”
“I am not cowering,” he started, though his mouth snapped shut when she shot him a glare that had him crossing the floor toward her in the next second.
“Spirits don’t like being near me,” Blythe said before he could ask, each word sharp.
“Apparently, I glow . Which you might have known, had you chosen to tell me about this predicament.” As biting as her words were, it was only to conceal the sorrow making her chest ache.
All this time, all these years spent waiting, and still, did he not trust her? “I could have helped you.”
His shoulders fell. “I know you could have. Of course you could have.”
“Then why didn’t you let me?” She sniffled, trying to keep back the tears that were threatening as she rubbed Signa’s arms, more vigorous by the second.
She wanted her cousin to be well, of course, but Blythe wouldn’t mind if, come morning, Signa’s arm was a little sorer for it. “Did you not trust that I could do it?”
“That’s not it at all—”
“Then what ? Clearly you—” Her voice cut off as Aris threaded her lips shut.
Her yells were muffled, but God, if she didn’t try.
She whirled on him, but he caught her hand in his, fingers wrapping around her fist. When he stepped closer, she could feel the heat of his body against her skin.
Not once did he look away, and she fought to hold his stare, too, no matter how smoldering.
“I wanted to give you the perfect Christmas.” He held tighter when she tried to pull away, clenching his jaw.
“I have never had a proper celebration, Blythe. Not like the kind you deserve. All I wanted was to make it great for you, and for you to not have to worry about something as ridiculous as spirits disturbing our peace. I wanted the holly to matter. For your effort and your hopes to matter .”
She glared at him, going silent until the threads sealing her lips unraveled.
“Even all these years later and you’re still a fool,” she told him.
“All I wanted was you , Aris. A Christmas with you and my family is what makes it perfect. Something like this? Something as ridiculous as spirits? We deal with that together , do you understand me? We deal with it before my cousin turns into a freezing and trembling mess.”
“I… am not… a mess,” Signa muttered weakly, to which Blythe could only sigh. She looked down at her, trying to rein in at least some of her fury.
“How many are there?”
“A few… a f-few dozen,” Signa said between her chattering teeth. It was, of course, not the answer Blythe preferred. But at least now she knew the truth.
She relaxed, steadying herself enough to withdraw the vines and thorns. “Well, I for one am not about to exist in a house filled with several dozen spirits at Christmastime .” She scoffed, taking her seat beside Signa. “Tell me everything you know about them.”
“It’s not much,” Signa admitted, dropping her voice to a whisper.
She glanced behind her, likely to ensure that the spirits were keeping their distance, before speaking.
“They died in a fire over sixty years ago, during their dress rehearsal. It was an accident—one of their actors got so nervous that he made himself sick. He did a poor job of putting out the ashes of his pipe before he hurried off to rest. But by the time he got back, the entire theater had burned to the ground.”
“Oh. Well, that’s…” Blythe sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, trying to choose her next words carefully.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t come up with a single decent thing.
“Actually, Signa, that’s ludicrous. I swear, do you even hear the things that come out of your mouth? You’re telling me there are a dozen—”
“Several dozen.”
“—several dozen spirits who were killed because one man was nervous?”
Signa pressed her lips together. “Unfortunately, that’s p-precisely what I’m saying. His n-name is J-Jules.”
“ Is ? You know him?”
“I ran into him at the cemetery, actually.”
Blythe nodded sagely. “Right, because that is perfectly normal.” She stared up at the holly she’d strung across the bookshelves. If it was true the plant could ward away evil spirits, it was doing a piss-poor job.
“I think that if the spirits are to pass on, they need to finish their performance,” Signa said, speaking easier with each word.
Her shivering had died down substantially, and she was able to sit up now.
“That’s what Aris and I have been trying to help with.
First we had to find their music to help them put on a show, and now…
I don’t even know how to describe it. They started their dance, but it was as if they were becoming angrier with each step.
Like they were all expecting something.”
“Likely because they were.” It was Elijah who spoke, still bundled in his coat as he stared at them from the threshold.
Gundry looped circles at his heels, the shadows slinking from him and his bones shortening until he looked like a normal hound once more.
He settled at Elijah’s feet when the man sat down and rested his chin on her father’s boots.
“You said they were performers. If it’s true that they’ve been waiting decades to put on this performance, I imagine they’ll want an audience larger than just us.”
Blythe grimaced as her cousin squeezed her arm, nearly bursting from her seat.
“I think you’re exactly right, all they need is an audience—”
“Perhaps I’m missing something, but have we forgotten that these people are dead?
” Aris asked. A chill passed through the room with his words.
Something whizzed by his hair, whipping several strands back, and Aris hissed a breath.
Suddenly he was wrangling out of his tunic, letting his threads carry it through the room until it caught onto a form, the shape of a body apparent beneath the fabric. He watched as the spirit flitted away.
“Blasted spirits,” Aris seethed, this time at half the volume. “How do you expect to give them an audience when we cannot even see them?”
Blythe looked from her husband’s bare chest, then to the tunic-clad spirit flapping around in the air, and she smiled.
“Witness me, family,” she said, “for I have the most brilliant plan.”