The Broom #4
“She probably needs a minute. I’ll leave the radio here and we can go look at it,” Eilonwy agreed.
Taran followed her into the office, turning his blue witch light back on. Eilonwy took a pair of white cotton gloves out of one coat pocket. Then she took out a pair of glasses with pink-tinted round lenses.
“What do those do?”
“They help me see leftover magick while protecting my eyes,” she said while putting them on. “I don’t want you to look at the mirror while I do this.”
“Should I wait outside the room?”
“No, my witch light is too dark, and if something goes wrong, you’ll have to pull me away.”
“What could go wrong?”
“My pentacle should protect me from most things. Are you wearing yours?”
“Always.”
“Do you have salt packets?”
“Yes,” he said and pulled them out of his pocket.
“Excellent, now close your eyes.”
Taran closed his eyes and listened while Eilonwy examined the mirror. She didn’t look directly into it, but looked at the frame, then the glass, without meeting her own eyes. It had a basic, dark shimmer of a scrying mirror.
She pulled a small box of eight spell crayons out of her pocket and selected the dark blue one, putting the rest back in her coat. Then she touched the crayon to the glass in a star pattern while saying, “Scry to me the other side.”
As soon as she finished the words, the mirror showed a room with a bed and a book laid on top. It was a cozy-looking space, with floral wallpaper and a reading lamp.
Eilonwy took off her glasses to see better. “Taran,” she whispered, then beckoned him to look. She put a finger to her lips, then pointed at his witch light.
He turned off his light and joined her at the mirror.
Dante Valentine strode into the room, stark naked, holding a glass of wine.
He was lithe and sinewy, with broad shoulders.
His hair was pulled back, and he had a prominent nose, cheekbones, and chin.
He put the glass on a side table and got into bed to read.
They watched for a minute. He sipped his wine, turned a page, and then sipped again.
His eyes seemed to dart toward them for a second, but he just kept reading.
Eilonwy took the crayon and made a cross across the star. The mirror went back to being a strangely dark mirror.
“Why did you close it?”
She brought Taran back out of the tiny office and closed the door behind them. “Because he can use whatever mirror is on the other side to see us as well. Haley may have used it as a focus to talk to Carey, but Dante could also use it as a viewing scry to eavesdrop.”
“Do you think there’s one in her little room?”
“It’s possible.”
“We need to see in there.”
“Let’s be careful. We should treat it as though it’s her bedroom. She’s upset, and we don’t want her to stop talking to us.”
They went to the closet, and Taran knocked on the door. “Haley, can we come in?”
The static on the radio answered, “Do you have to?”
“Yes, please, we think there may be things inside that will help us figure out what Dante did to you.”
“Do you promise not to dispel me or smudge me out or do whatever it is witches do to get rid of a ghost?”
“As long as you don’t attack us,” he confirmed.
“Okay, you can come in, but I don’t know how to open the door.”
“I think I do,” Taran said, and stepped up to the door. He tapped the top left corner, then the right, then moved to the bottom right, then the left, and back up to the top left, all while saying, “Wither ward, dissolve your hold, gently I command.”
With quiet pops, the wood split down the middle and parted into a swinging door. Taran pushed one side gently, and it moved inward. He pushed it all the way back as Eilonwy held the lamp.
Three feet ahead was a bookcase. It held books from top to bottom, along with a snow globe, a jewelry box, and a few plushies.
“The air isn’t terrible. All I can smell are dried herbs and candle wax,” Eilonwy said.
“Can just Eilonwy come in?” Haley’s voice said faintly through the radio, as though she were far away.
Taran gave her the lamp and stepped back. Eilonwy picked up the radio with her other hand. She didn’t like having her hands full, so she placed the radio on the floor in front of the bookcase.
“I’ll make sure you don’t get trapped inside,” he whispered.
“Thank you,” Eilonwy replied, and walked through the door.
The corridor formed by the bookshelf was dark and tight.
Just past the shelf’s corner was a twin bed with a body on top.
She was laid out upon a colorful quilt and under a red satin sheet, her hands folded across her chest, holding a large black feather.
Her nails were painted red, a lacy white pillow held her head, and her eyes were covered by a purple sleep mask.
Long, honey-blond hair was carefully curled around her face and across her neck.
The weirdest thing was her lips; they were still plump.
Then Eilonwy realized she had been preserved with some kind of beeswax.
It was strangely colorless, or possibly tinted to her flesh tone.
“Welcome to my tomb,” Haley said through the radio.
“You are well-preserved,” Eilonwy said loudly enough for Taran to hear.
“Thanks. He took a lot of time.”
“Is there a light in here?”
Just as Eilonwy said it, a soft light came on over the bed, and another at the end of the room, above a rack of scarves. A curtain was also pulled over a doorway.
“What’s in there?” Eilonwy asked.
“A bathroom. It has a window where you can look outside and watch the world go by without you.”
Eilonwy took the lamp to the curtain and was about to pull it aside.
“Please don’t look in there.”
“Why?”
“It’s where the blood and guts are. I watched everything he did, and I don’t like to think about it.”
“It might help me figure out what he is.”
“Fine, but I warned you.”
A light came on over the medicine cabinet.
It was the smallest bathroom she had ever been in.
There was the window that overlooked the sink.
The lower half had privacy glass, and the top could indeed be seen through.
There was a toilet, a pedestal sink, and a tiny tub with a shower stall, only big enough to stand in or take a bath if you bent your knees close.
Stacked inside was jar after jar, made of clay and sealed from sunlight.
It smelled a little like death, and she guessed Dante had opened the window to air out the odor.
The medicine cabinet was odd. Inside were the usual cosmetics and creams, but behind those, scribbled on the wall in black permanent marker: You love me.
You are the art. We are together forever.
This is love. All is well. Various geometric symbols that seemed familiar, but not quite right, were scribbled on the interior side of the door, and then she realized those were scribbled in blood.
Eilonwy closed the medicine cabinet and went back out to the bed. “I can see why that would upset you.”
“It’s much more pleasant out here.”
Eilonwy looked around the room. There was barely space for anything but the bed, and yet the walls were lined with narrow bookshelves. These were covered in books, knickknacks, and photos. The ceiling, nine feet up, had bunches of dried flowers and herbs hanging from sticks.
“Did you live here when you were alive?”
“Yes. He kept me prisoner after I broke up with him. This was his bedroom when he leased the place. I was locked in here for weeks with nothing to eat but a strange gruel made of marigolds, sunflower seeds, and oats. He gave me cups of green tea that tasted like honey and lavender.”
“Did he ever talk to you about reliquary?”
“Yes, he was always going on about the dead and preserving heads, arms, and organs for some kind of honorific worship.”
“Do you think that’s what he was doing to you?”
“He said I would be his greatest work, but it doesn’t make sense. Art is only art when everyone can see it.”
It didn’t make sense to Eilonwy either, but she knew that people rarely made sense when trying to figure out why they did the selfish things they did. “How so?” she asked so Haley would continue.
“He said he loved me, but he locked me in here, and for some reason I was glad to do what he asked me. I didn’t feel like I could escape, and I didn’t want to. Why?”
“You were probably mesmerized somehow,” Eilonwy offered, not because she was guessing, but because she knew there was no way anyone would submit to this without being mesmerized in some way.
“I’ve felt shame and embarrassment every day since I died. I feel like I should have seen the signs. He had books about preservation and blood rituals. He wanted me to drink his blood, and I laughed. I thought he was a funny goth guy.”
Eilonwy understood. Her family owned countless books of dark arcana. One of the reasons Ric was so grief-stricken was that he knew his brother also had this knowledge. It never occurred to him that Ewan would use it to kill those close to him.
“My mother felt guilty for not seeing the evil around her until it was too late, and she was brilliant. Don’t take it hard that you didn’t see what was right in front of you, especially when someone is manipulating you with magick,” Eilonwy surprised herself by saying out loud.
“I loved him. I loved him, and he did this to me.”
“I’m sorry. Sometimes we love people who are terrible,” Eilonwy said, her throat hurting from holding back a sob.
Haley was quiet for a long few seconds, and then she started to cry. It was a soft gasp at first, but then she wept. Eilonwy wasn’t sure what to do.
Taran poked his head around the door. “Is she okay?”
It was a silly thing to ask. Haley was dead and had been for twenty years. Her brother was as kind as her father had been deceitful.
Eilonwy shook her head.
Then they heard the laughing. It was deep and far away but nearby, from the bathroom.
Eilonwy turned to see Dante’s reflection in the medicine cabinet. He looked like an evil bird with large eyes, his head dipped slightly.
Haley stopped crying.