Chapter 7 Emory
brYONY’S UNNATURAL EYES HAUNTED EMORY even in sleep.
Here in the darkness of her mind, her ghosts were inescapable.
They hovered around her in a circle, trapping her.
They were in a cave she could never forget, standing on the platform where the Hourglass stood.
Except there was no Hourglass here—she stood in its place, for she was like a door herself.
The ghosts drew nearer, tightening the circle. They felt more prominent, more corporeal here in sleep, as if not ghosts at all but real, as if the sleepscape had torn down the barrier between the living and the dead, and here they all stood together in echo of the night that sealed their fates.
There was Travers, water trickling down the side of his mouth, weeds and barnacles clinging to his body, his face sallow and his body deteriorating before her eyes. “This is all your fault,” he said in a watery voice.
There was Lia, blackened, tongueless mouth opened on a silent scream. Your fault, her frightened eyes echoed.
“Why couldn’t you help us?” This from Jordyn, barely human, with the depthless eyes of an umbra and claw-tipped hands reaching for Emory.
“I tried to warn you it would come to this.” Lizaveta, arms crossed and expression as haughty as it had been in life, blood pooling from the hole at the base of her neck.
And Keiran. Worst of all, Keiran.
But Emory’s attention went to the two people beside him. The circle, it seemed, was not complete with only the dead; the living had joined in, just as eager to blame her for what she’d made them suffer.
The first was Penelope West, eyes red rimmed and haunted. “You let them manipulate me,” she said. “You let them take away my memories. I can’t believe I ever called you a friend. You weren’t worth the effort.”
The second was Baz, who looked at her the same way he had after realizing she’d betrayed him. “Everything you touch crumbles to dust.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “Please, I’m sorry…”
Keiran stepped into her space, and she was too stunned by how real he looked, too broken by all their accusations, to back away. His hand closed around her neck. She felt the biting cold of him against her skin, a touch of death that seeped into her soul.
Keiran’s ghost did not speak, but the hungry, hateful look in his eyes left no room for interpretation.
He blamed her for leaving him to the umbrae. Loathed her for letting him die. And as his icy grip squeezed tighter around her, she knew this was a promise as much as a threat.
She had killed him, and he would haunt her forever because of it.
He had a hold on her even in death.
Emory did not fight him off, even as every part of her screamed at her to move, to shove him back, to close her eyes and wake up.
Keiran’s chokehold tightened, and the voices of everyone else she had hurt rose in the depths of Dovermere, echoing off the walls, slithering along her skin, sinking their teeth into her tortured heart.
And they were right. It was her fault. If it weren’t for her, none of this would have happened.
Maybe the world would be better off without her.
Keiran lifted his other hand to brush her face, his eyes going tender now, like he agreed with the ugly, intrusive thought worming its way into her mind. Like he was offering her the death that would silence it forever.
Maybe it was what she deserved.
“You know they’re not real, right?”
A voice like midnight, cutting through the gloom.
Kai detached himself from the dark. Their gazes locked.
The hand around her neck relinquished its hold. Her ghosts, both dead and alive, disappeared, drifting away like dust on an imaginary breeze.
It was just her and Kai now, alone in the Belly of the Beast. They blinked at each other in the quiet.
“Are you real?” Emory asked.
Kai frowned. Before he could answer, the darkness shifted between them. Out of it emerged the stuff of actual nightmares, all sightless eyes and clawed hands and skeletal figures. The umbrae.
They shifted and swirled, immaterial and restless, as something else formed among them, something darker and stronger and older than the umbrae.
Fear settled in Emory’s bones, even as something kept her rooted in place, staring wide-eyed at the giant umbra that was taking shape, a terrifying sort of recognition singing inside her.
Kai swore, snapping her out of it. His eyes locked with hers again. “Wake up. NOW.”
And so she woke.
Emory lit the candle beside her bed, desperate to chase away the shadows. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there trying to get her heart to slow as she puzzled over the nightmare. Kai must have been real. But how could that be when they were worlds apart?
And that dark presence…
It was still night out, but she couldn’t sleep anymore.
Grabbing the candleholder, she ventured out into the hallway.
The house was quiet, the ascension celebrations over from what she could tell.
Her feet led her unbidden to the lilac-painted room on the second floor, where Bryony stood in a robe and nightgown before the marble altar.
Tendrils of smoke wafted from an incense burner hanging at the back of the room, making the air smell woodsy.
Emory watched quietly from the doorway as Bryony held a fisted hand over the altar. She opened it, letting pieces of bone fall atop the bowl-like clump of amethyst that sat on the altar.
“I can feel you there, you know,” Bryony said without turning.
Emory stepped into the room, which was as unnaturally cold as ever. She tightened her own robe around her. “Sorry. I didn’t want to interrupt. Were you scrying?” She had yet to see a witch scry.
“Trying to.” Bryony grimaced as she looked at the bones atop the amethyst. “I don’t think I’ve found my scrying method yet. Bones are decidedly not it.”
“How do you find what scrying method works?”
“Trial and error, mostly. My sister tried everything before she realized what works for her is getting lost in the rhythms of the elements. My mother, on the other hand, knew from the very first breath she took after ascending that her sixth sense unlocks with sculpting.” Bryony sighed.
“I wish I knew mine. But then… I’m also scared to find out. ”
“How come?”
“At my ascension, I was… Something happened that wasn’t normal.” Her eyes flitted to Emory. “But you saw it, didn’t you? You were hiding in the woods, looking in on my ascension.”
An excuse was already on Emory’s lips, but Bryony merely smiled, saying, “It’s all right, I won’t say anything.”
“We were just curious, really.”
“I understand. I’m like that too. My mother always says curiosity kills the cat, but she forgets that cats have nine lives.”
Emory laughed at that, an image of Dusk, Romie’s stray tabby, coming to mind. “Well, thank you for keeping it a secret.” She studied the younger girl. “Is that why you’re afraid to scry? You think what happened at the ascension will happen again?”
Bryony nodded. “Some of the witches believe what happened means I’m a—a hellwraith. That a demon took hold of my essence while I was buried, and now it’s fighting back against the Sculptress’s claim on me.”
A shiver ran up Emory’s spine. So this is what a hellwraith was. “Is that… possible?”
Bryony lost herself in the pile of bones atop the amethyst, a crease forming between her brows.
“I felt it when I was underground. This demon in my mind, desperate for a way out of the netherworld. The Sculptress won, but I’m afraid if I tap into my scrying ability, it’ll find me in the astral plane and seize my essence for good. ”
She gave Emory a furtive glance. “I’m not supposed to say any of this to you.”
“Why not?”
“My mother thinks you coming here, in this world you don’t belong, is what attracted this demon in the first place.” Her eyes fell to Emory’s wrist. “That spiral—it’s a sign of our Sculptress.”
“Where I’m from, this mark relates to our divinity,” Emory said. “The Tides. They’re at the origin of our lunar magic, much like your Sculptress is at the origin of yours.”
Bryony seemed to mull that over for a while.
“There’s a story that’s told to us when we’re young.
About twin sisters who ruled the coven together, long ago.
They rose to power during a great blight that started after demons broke through the seams of the underworld and corrupted the woods, the magic that flows through it.
Many a witch tried to cast them back without success.
Until, on a black moon, when the veil between this plane and the underworld is thinnest, the twins were able to cast the demons back to their realm.
The woods healed, and the witches lived on happily.
“The story never made it clear how the demons escaped the underworld in the first place. Some think it was a cunning demon king leading his army to conquer the world of witches. Others, that a witch fell prey to a trickster demon and parted the veil for him.” Bryony eyed Emory’s wrist again.
“My mother believes you might be trickster demons here to hurt us.”
“I promise you we’re not. We just want to go home.”
From Bryony’s expression, she wasn’t sure if she believed her.
Emory thought of her nightmare, of all those people she’d hurt in some way or other. She vowed to herself that neither Bryony or anyone else would become one of them.