Chapter 8
8
P iling four adults and a single small fairy into a sporty little car was not exactly comfortable. And the smell all of us gave off after swimming in the river was nothing short of an epic stench.
Crash would have understood why I was grinning like a fool. Not only was Suzy back—and I couldn’t wait to hear the whole story, because no doubt there was definitely more to it than what Corb had said—but all of that aside, we were totally ruining Corb’s leather interior.
I opened up my hip bag and looked into the depths. “Gran. Any idea how we kill the galloo?”
“Black magic pins all of its pieces together,” she said, her voice echoing up from the bag. “You either kill the witch who made it, something I don’t think you can do, or you find a way to break the spell.”
“Can we just throw salt at it?”
Her voice echoed up out of the depths. “No. If it were that easy, it would never have become a legendary monster. No…there is a stash of very old parchments that I hid years ago. They are out on Ossabaw Island. Written in demonic language, no less.”
My eyebrows shot up and I twisted around to look at Damian in the back seat. “Isn’t that where Toltza is?”
Damian frowned. “Yes. And before you ask, I don’t read demonic. Or at least not well.”
“You don’t?” Corb sounded pretty shocked. “Why not?”
He hesitated before answering. “Dyslexic. But extreme as in everything is all over the place, there is no making sense of the words for me. So I won’t be able to help you.”
But Toltza might be able to. And he also might know of a way to break into hell.
Pathway, open before me.
“Corb, we need to go to Ossabaw Island. Right now. Fast as you can.”
He hit the gas without question, and we were streaking through the streets, out onto the main highway that would take us south.
Suzy spoke softly to Kinkly and Damian, talking to them about cross-species dating.
Eric was going to come unglued when he saw Suzy. My heart clenched as I thought about my friends waiting for me to save them. Waiting and hoping that I was going to be able to piece it all together.
Corb cranked the wheel. We drifted through a corner, and then we were jetting down another straight stretch as the sky opened up around us, hammering down on the roof of the car, making talk nearly impossible.
Which left me to think for the hour-long drive.
Think and think.
Not a good place to be when you can see where you need to go but aren’t sure how to get there.
A boom of thunder shook the body of the car and I grimaced. “Where are we going, Gran?”
“There is a large hut, it will look abandoned, but it is the storage facility for the texts that were deemed too dangerous to have any one witch handle.” Gran sighed. “I never thought we’d need them.”
“Would Bramble know about this place?” Because if she did, we were ducked right up the behind.
“No. They were entrusted to me, and I hid them. The spells covering the place are…” She drifted off, and when I glanced over, there was a frown etched into her face.
“Gran? What is it?”
“Funny,” she mumbled. “That’s what they were looking for.”
I wasn’t following. “Who was looking for what, Gran?” Had she finally lost it completely?
“The ones who killed me. I didn’t remember until just now, but that was one of the questions they asked me. They wanted me to lead them into the parchment hut. They wanted a way in.”
I translated for everyone else, even as her words sent chills ripping through me. “They wanted the spells that were so dangerous you had to hide them from every other witch…”
“Yes.” The horror on her face likely mirrored my own.
And we were leading them right to it. Again.
“We can’t go there,” I shook my head. “We go straight to Toltza.”
Damian groaned. “Sweet baby Lucifer, Bree. That’s a terrible idea. A truly, truly terrible idea.”
Kinkly swept herself around the middle of the car and landed on the back of Corb’s seat. “Why keep the spells, Celia? Why not just destroy them?”
Gran shook her head. “Because knowledge is power.”
I looked at my Gran. “Maybe, in this case, knowledge should be destroyed.”
Gran clutched at her chest. “What if we need something else from the cache? What if another monster comes out of the woodwork and we have no other way to defeat it? Some of the knowledge is evil, but help can still be drawn from those parchments.”
I told everyone else what she’d said. While she was not wrong, there was something to be said for wiping out whatever the Dark Council wanted. Maybe it was just a piece of the spell. Maybe it was the idea that something could be hidden and useful.
“Damian.” I turned to look at him. “What do you think? This is demon knowledge. If we wipe it all away to protect the world from it, what are the chances of getting help from actual demons?”
His face was serious. “I can’t speak for demons as a group, Bree. We don’t work that way.”
I waited, seeing that he had more to say but was working himself up to it.
He glanced at Kinkly and smiled. “But I am here. And I will do all I can to help you.”
From the depths of my bag came Robert’s voice. “Friends. Trust them.”
I smiled. “Then we wipe the cache out. We grab the parchment, and then we…what’s the best way of destroying the rest, Gran? Fire?”
She slumped where she sat and finally gave a nod. “Yes. Fire will do it. The rain that is coming down will not hurt the cause either if the roof is destroyed.”
After that, Gran gave directions, which I passed onto Corb. I knew Gran wasn’t happy, but it was the best compromise I could come up with. Because Damian seemed truly unhappy, maybe even terrified, by the thought of going to Toltza. And I didn’t want to give the Dark Council another damn thing handed up on a silver platter.
Which meant we had to be careful.
Corb turned off the main road and pulled over. “This is no Range Rover. The mud track is slick, and my car won’t help us get there.”
“Is it far?” Kinkly asked. “The rain is hard on my wings.”
Before I offered for her to take shelter in my bag, Damian beckoned to her. She shot over to him, sliding under the collar of his shirt.
“Not far,” Gran said, her voice still edgy with unhappiness. “About a ten-minute walk.”
I opened the door of the car and stepped out into the pelting rain—and I mean pelting. Fat droplets fell from the sky as if someone was throwing them at us. At this rate, I wouldn’t put it past some god or goddess to show up and start causing a ruckus.
My luck just seemed to run to extremes. Super lucky, or super unlucky—there were no in betweens for me.
Gran led the way through the rain, her figure floating in and out of view between the fat droplets.
Suzy fell into step beside me, and Corb fell back, bringing up the rear.
“What really happened?” I asked Suzy. “I just can’t imagine him volunteering to help you.”
“He didn’t.” Suzy gave a tight, almost predatory smile that reminded me of the Melusine side of her. “But…now is not the time. He thought he could outfox me, but he forgot he wasn’t the only one with aces up her fins.”
I reached across and squeezed her hand, her mixed metaphors making me smile. “I couldn’t be happier that you’re back. I mean, I could, but only because it would have been nice if we hadn’t immediately been thrown into trouble.”
She laughed. “If not for that, I wouldn’t be sure that I wasn’t dreaming.” She paused. “How has Eric been, I know you said he was taken but before that?”
“Missing you desperately,” I said. “He loves you, that will never change. He has never given up hope, none of us did.”
Her smile was brilliant. “I love him too. I’m going to ask him to marry me. You think he’ll say yes?”
Her words did a funny thing to my heart, my throat, and even my stupid eyes that blurred with happy tears. “Yes, I think he will.”
No matter that my own marriage had been a shit show of epic proportions, no matter that I’d thought I’d be a bitter old woman who never found love again. It turned out that I was more than a bit of a romantic. And seeing two of my dearest friends fall in love and fight to be together against the odds made it hard to be bitter.
“Here.” Gran’s voice snapped me out of my musings as she pointed at a space between two large trees. “It’s there, hidden behind spells. Just you, Bree. Find the parchment and come out. I don’t want anyone else knowing.”
I looked at Damian, who looked like a drowned demon at the rate the rain was coming down. “You know that he can hear you, right?”
“He’s a demon. I think most of them know where the parchment stash is.” Gran sighed.
Damian approached me and bent his head to whisper. “If she doesn’t want anyone else knowing, you should send us all back to the car. Find what you need. Destroy the rest.”
It was a good idea. Dangerous but good. I trusted Suzy, but only an idiot would put faith in Corb. “Okay, everyone back to the car. Gran wants me to handle the rest of this on my own.”
Corb locked eyes with me, rain sluicing down his face. Even knowing him as I did, I could still admit he was a handsome ducker. “You don’t trust me.”
“Gran doesn’t trust anyone,” I said. “But yeah, you are probably the top of that list, being the biggest of all the liars.”
Suzy snapped her fingers at Corb and he jumped. “She said she’s good to handle this on her own. Stop pestering her.” She turned to me. “We’ll wait for you at the car, okay? If you aren’t back in ten minutes, Damian will lead us back here to you.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Then watched as my friends left me standing in the muck and the growing swamp water puddle.
“Hurry, you don’t have a lot of time and I don’t know where the parchment is.” Gran swept off toward the two trees. She drew level with them and just disappeared.
I hurried toward the space, and as I got close, I took a big breath and stepped over the invisible line and right onto a rickety wooden porch. It reminded me a bit of Penny’s house. You weren’t able to see it fully until you were right on top of it.
“You sure Penny doesn’t know about this?” I asked quietly.
“She does not. Her home has a similar spell on it, or it did, I know. But it is not an uncommon trick amongst witches.”
I hurried up the old steps, grimacing with each creak and groan under my boots. When I reached the shallow overhang, I didn’t wait to ask Gran if it was a good idea to test her spells. I just grabbed the doorknob and twisted it, making an assumption I should not have.
That Gran hadn’t put any other safeguards on the place.
A shock of electricity bolted through me, not enough to knock me flat, but enough to make me yelp and jump back a step.
“Gran!”
“Sorry, I should have warned you. That being said, because I am here, it won’t affect you like it would if you were an intruder, twist the knob and push hard.” She waved her hand at the door.
Steeling myself, I flexed my hand, grabbed the knob, and pushed hard as the electrical current shot through me.
“Son of a son of a son of a…” I stuttered.
Then I was through, and the door slammed shut behind me as I cursed and hopped around, shaking my hand, fully expecting smoke to roll out from under my fingertips. “What happens to someone who isn’t with you?”
“Death by lightning bolt,” she said as calm as you please. “Start looking. The parchment has a burgundy ribbon binding it, I believe it is the only one.”
I got a good look at the room I stood in, and I sucked in a horrified breath. “Gran. This is insanity—”
“That’s why you need to start looking.” She floated through, peering around but unable to move anything.
Every wall in the room was covered in floor-to-ceiling cubby holes, and each cubby hole was stuffed to overflowing with rolled and intricately folded paper in all states. And by all states I mean that some of the paper was disintegrating as I looked at it, bits of material floating to the floor. Strike that, not the floor, onto the boxes and boxes of papers that covered the floor like a thick mat.
There wasn’t even a floor visible other than the one spot I stood in. I crouched and started to look for the burgundy ribbon, pulling out paper and checking the ribbons binding it.
My fingers tingled when I touched some of the papers, which made me nervous. “Gran, I had no idea there were so many terrible spells!”
“These aren’t all spells, honey child,” she sighed. “There are many things in here. Locations of dangerous, wicked items that contain magic. Legendary creatures and their last known whereabouts. And, of course, spells of all sorts.”
I didn’t pause in my search as I spoke to her. “But so much! So much….”
“Does that really surprise you?” Gran stood in front of me, her skirts swirling. “Does it surprise you that there is so much darkness in the world? So much evil? The hearts of men and women are easily influenced, Bree. Especially those who carry pride with them, believing that they are above being taken by a demon.”
I hunched my back as if that would stop me from hearing what she was saying. Because no matter how much I’d survived, no matter how much bitterness I’d felt, I wanted desperately to believe that things weren’t as dark as I was seeing the proof of in front of me. “I know that there are many, many bad people, Gran. I know that the world is dark and hard, and so very scary for so many people. I just…seeing it like this is a bit overwhelming.”
I dumped out a box of papers, many of them disappearing into ash. Those left inside were tied with black ribbons. “But maybe that’s why…looking out for Savannah and my friends is so important. Because I can’t just turn my face away. I have to keep trying to fight the darkness, no matter how deep the shit goes.”
Gran sighed, but it was a happy sound. “I know, Bree, I know. It’s what makes you the person you are. You don’t give up on people. You don’t give up on this world, even when you have every reason to do so.”
I shuffled along on my knees, making a path for myself as I searched through the parchments.
There was a boom of thunder, and I could feel the time ticking. “Gran, can Robert help?”
“I would think so? The protection spells are only set to repel a living creature, of which he is certainly not.” Gran put a hand on her hip. “Try, it won’t hurt.”
I pulled Robert’s finger bone out of my bag and set it on a stack of papers next to me. “Robert. We need to find a parchment wrapped in a burgundy ribbon, quick as we can.”
He evolved like a sprouting tree, a finger bone in one second, and a fully—well sort of fully—fleshed Robert in the next. Swaying left and right, he stumbled on the stack of papers, slid sideways and caught himself on the shelving unit on the right.
“Friend. Bad things.”
I grimaced and kept looking through the papers as I spoke to him. “Yes, I know. Robert, we need that parchment wrapped up in the burgundy ribbon and we need it quick. We think the Dark Council might try following us here, so we have to find that one parchment and light fire to the rest.”
I wasn’t looking gently anymore, I pawed through the papers across the floor, feeling the minutes tick by. It wasn’t like it mattered if they held together, we were destroying them the second we were out of here.
The shack shook violently as a boom of thunder seemed to erupt directly on top of us. Neither Gran nor Robert so much as flinched. Me? I looked up at the ceiling of the shack, wondering if it would hold up much longer.
A burgundy ribbon hung from the narrow rafter above my head, just dangling. Why would it have been put up there? “Gran! Up, on the rafter! Is that it?”
Gran hurried to my side and looked straight up. “I never put anything up there.”
I swallowed hard. “So someone has been here? And they put the one parchment we need in a place that would be sort of easier to find?” Separated from all the thousands across the ground and in the cubby holes.
“Assuming you were going to look up in the rafters, which is rather presumptive,” Gran said.
Unless of course that someone knew me well, knew that I often looked up when I was frustrated.
Had Bramble been here?
Gran did not seem to be having the same worries as me. “Can you reach it?”
Did I want to reach it? What if it had been put there as bait? What if by grabbing it, I triggered something? Because yeah, I wasn’t about to be snapped up in a trap again, thank you very much.
I stepped to the side and jumped, trying to see what was on top of the rafter. “I don’t want to just grab it. Gran, who would know about this place?”
Please don’t let Bramble have been here.
Height, I needed height. I went to the side of the shack and approached the shelving unit that held hundreds and hundreds of parchment papers. Getting my fingers dug in behind it, I tugged hard. “Robert, help me!”
“Friend. Smart,” he grumbled as he stepped up beside me and dug his fingers in behind the unit and pulled with me. The shelves were not bolted to the wall, and with a bit of muscle, it began to lean away. Groaning and creaking, it fell with a crash to the floor.
I stepped up onto the back of the shelving unit and jumped to get a good look at the parchment. I could for sure reach it now. The question was, did I want to risk it?
“Gran, we need it. So, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to grab it. If anything at all happens—anything—you make a beeline for Damian back at the car, okay? You’ll be able to tell him what’s going on.”
I looked at her in time to see her nod. “I will.”
That was the best I was going to get right now. With a sigh, I jumped and reached for the dangling ribbon. Silken, smooth, it almost slid right through my fingers. With a yelp, I fell forward, closing my fingers around the ribbon and pulling the parchment free from where it had been placed.
I landed on my knees in a pile of ashen paper that fluffed up around my face. I held my breath and stood, holding the ribbon and what it was attached to at arm’s length.
“Do I read it now?” I turned to see Gran had a horrified look on her face. “What?”
Here’s the thing, seeing a person go pale was bad. Seeing a ghost lose color?
Bad doesn’t even begin to quantify it. “Gran?”
“I just realized who must have left that there for you to find. But it doesn’t make sense. Why would she do it?” Gran put her hand to her throat, clutching.
“Who?” I asked, but I’d known the answer even as I asked, because it was what I’d been thinking the minute I saw the burgundy ribbon. “Please don’t say Bramble.”
Gran pressed her hand to her chest. “Yes, it has to be.”