Chapter I
I
Eastern Piedmont
The girl was surprisingly beautiful in the moonlight.
“Surprisingly” for two reasons. First: she had a reputation for beauty.
In my experience, this would usually mean only that she’d managed to keep all her teeth in the long weeks between puberty and pregnancy.
And second: she was two days dead, and I have violated enough graves to know that corpses are not, to common tastes, beautiful.
I believe her name was Cristina. Her ghost sat opposite me on a crude tombstone, watching me work.
Now, the ghost was beautiful, but they often are.
This spirit girl’s hair was typical of Piedmontese folk, thick and dark and curly, falling just below her shoulders.
Her eyes were large and bewitchingly deep with the gravity of the hereafter.
Her shade glowed softly, wearing the same white smock I had just cut away from her corpse.
“That was expensive,” muttered the girl, looking at the ruins of the dress.
“I can tell,” I replied. “Aren’t you pleased that it’s not going to rot in the ground?”
Sarmodel, my indwelling demon, had Projected himself in human form to sit beside her, with the very worst intentions. He appeared as a black-haired boy of about ten years, with a long face and an exquisitely aquiline nose, which I assume was how I looked when we were first joined.1
“Aren’t you pleased, Sebastian, that you can add to your stock of used cerements?” Sarmodel asked me, smiling. “And wasn’t this worth leaving home for?”
Among many other things, I have need of good cloth in my line of work, and the dress would not be wasted. But Sarmodel’s point was plain; Cristina was a charity case.
“We weren’t doing anything else,” I replied.
In truth, I had hoped Cristina’s late-night visitation might result in more than another evening combing through entrails at the cemetery.
I had been, if not quite preoccupied, a little out of sorts over the previous few days.
I had experienced a growing sense of waiting for something, which I have learned never to ignore.
The pretty ghost with her tale of a deadly curse had seemed a promising start.
“I guess it doesn’t matter—it’s just a dress,” Cristina sighed. “Have you finished?”
I had dissected the girl’s body (rather neatly) at her behest and examined it for the cause of her demise.
“Yes, I have, Cristina. But you haven’t been completely honest with me.”
“What do you mean? I was killed, wasn’t I?”
“Well yes, and no,” I offered. “You certainly didn’t die naturally—”
“Bastarda! I knew—!”
“—but I don’t think White Marta was responsible. Not unless she snuck into your home and strangled you with your own hands.”
“My own hands?” She looked at me with her wide, wide eyes.
“I’m afraid so. The bruising and scratches on your neck are a perfect match—see?” I held her corpse’s hands up to its throat to demonstrate. “Note also the scraps of skin under your fingernails.”
“But that’s impossible! I didn’t kill myself—I swear it!” She crossed herself, scandalized. “The pastor says there’s only damnation for suicides.” She whispered the last word as though the Almighty might be eavesdropping from the hedgerow.
“I believe you, Cristina, if only because it would, in fact, be impossible to kill yourself this way.” I let the dead hands fall once again. “At least not on your own.”
“Who was it then?” she persisted. “It had to be White Marta! She’s the only one it could be.”
“And why is that?”
“I went to her not a week ago, and she turned the evil eye on me, she must have!”
“Went to her for what?” I knew Marta quite well. She was a competent hedge-witch, but the “evil eye” was not really her style (or anyone’s, given it is utter nonsense).
Cristina resisted, but she’d made a Contract of Truth,2 and she was bound to answer. “I asked her for a blessing. I am . . . I was newly married.”
I raised my eyebrows. “A ‘blessing’? A fertility charm, you mean. Witchcraft.”
“No! Well, yes.”
“And?”
“I went all the way out to the scree to find her, with a fat hen as payment, and all she gave me was a strange little pouch. She said I was to put a tooth inside and leave it under my pillow and I would dream of my future child.” Spectral tears brimmed in her lovely eyes.
“Instead, I dreamed of a woman with no face, choking me in my bed, night after night.”
“Wait—a tooth? Whose tooth?”
“Mine.”
“Are you lying to me, Cristina?” She lowered her eyes and I knew I had the right of it. The mark of my Contract burned brightly on her right palm, and she covered it with her other hand.
“Well . . . Marta said to use one of mine, but I went to the field below the granary instead. They’re always digging up bones there.” She lowered her gaze. “I knew it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t cut out my own tooth, I just couldn’t.”
I grimaced. “Cristina, that field is full of bones because it’s sitting on a mass grave.”
“From the plague?” She looked aghast.
I shook my head. “From the witch hunts. I think you may have unintentionally brought home more than a tooth. Old bones are dangerous, and those ones in particular.”
“What do you mean?” She seemed on the verge of tears again.
“I believe you may have collected a witch’s bone, containing either her angry spirit or one of her familiars. It doesn’t really matter which.” I sighed. “It’s dreadfully unlucky—very few of the women in that field were actually witches at all. Can you guess how they were executed?”
“They were strangled,” she murmured.
“I’m afraid so. And now one has had her revenge, misdirected as it was.”
She looked around helplessly. “But . . . but I didn’t know! I didn’t mean to! With my own hands?”
“That’s your Truth, Cristina. I am sorry,” I said, and I meant it. Death had come unfairly for this one. The burning mark on her hand faded away, signaling the fulfillment of my Contract. The identical mark on my left hand soon followed.
“It doesn’t matter anymore, my lovely one,” I continued. If I could have dried her tears, I would have.
“Please—please don’t tell the pastor,” she implored. “I don’t want to go to Hell.”
“There’s no fear of that,” I said. “It was an accident. God never punishes an accident.”3
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“So, I can . . . go?”
Sarmodel sat up now, suddenly interested. “Yes! Yes—there’s nothing to fear,” he said. “You can rest now, take my hand.”
“Sarmodel,” I said. “No.” I dragged the girl’s body back toward the edge of her grave.
He gave me an unfriendly look. “Just get that meat back in the ground,” he said. “This is not your concern, Sebastian. How else do you think she’s going to pay?”
“She’s a client.” I leveled the knife at him. “We agreed on this.”
Generally speaking, a Contract must be paid for immediately on completion, either in coin4 or in anima—spiritual energy—proportionate to the Contracted service.
Cristina had only herself to offer, but I consider consuming the client as a very last resort, so I had accepted her pretty funeral dress as payment.
“Oh truly,” continued Cristina dreamily. “Do you mean it? I can go, and I won’t be damned?”
“She’s not a client anymore,” Sarmodel insisted. He lifted the ghost girl’s hand, now clear of the Contract mark. “Look!” She was barely paying us any attention, but her light was beginning to grow; Cristina was getting ready to leave.
“Sarmodel, you cannot possibly be hungry! Only last week—”
“Sebastian Grave of Larnaca?”
A man’s voice shocked us all into silence.
Distracted by the business at hand, I hadn’t noticed the rider approaching up the grassy slope. He directed his horse slowly toward us.
“I am Professor Sebastian Grave of Larnaca, yes. Who goes there?” I demanded through clenched teeth.
I was acutely aware that of the three of us, I was the only one visible to the Mundane; to a casual observer I would appear to be arguing with nobody in a cemetery in the middle of the night.
I prayed that it was dark enough to hide the mess I had made, never mind the naked, mutilated corpse I was discreetly nudging with my foot.
“I am Monsieur Jacques Avenel d’Ocerne,” replied the newcomer, with an accent. He was wearing a broad hat and a scarf that covered the lower half of his face, so I couldn’t see much of him other than his eyes. Then he switched into Provencal Occitan and added, “Son of the Baron d’Ocerne.”
“Ocerne. Your father—Antoine d’Ocerne is your father, sir?” I finally succeeded in tipping Cristina’s body into the grave, where it landed with a wet thump.
Sarmodel—Antoine’s son!
Sarmodel had forgotten the ghost girl for the moment and was watching with great interest. I felt a growing excitement, something between joy and trepidation. This was it! This was what I’d been waiting for—it had to be.
“He is indeed. I will speak plainly, for the journey here was long and I am weary.” He drew himself up.
“Sebastian of—Professor Grave, my lord father summons you to return immediately to Gévaudan with me, to complete the contract which he holds unfulfilled, signed by you at Chateau d’Ocerne and witnessed by the Bishop of Mende in the presence of our Holy Father. ”
“Summons me? Contract unfulfilled?” I repeated, quickly smothering the flutter of fear in my gut. In my mind, I could see the blood on the snow, and the frozen gorge full of roaring white water. “But that was twenty years ago!”
“Just so,” said the young man grimly. “But we must ask your aid once again. The terror of the Red Winter has returned.”
I made a show of packing my tools back into my valise.
It’s not possible, I said to Sarmodel. Is it?
Oh, Sebastian, he replied. Sarmodel shook his head, half sad, half mocking. His childlike Projection faded into shadow and he receded to his customary position in the back of my mind.
“Sir? Will you return with me and resume your charge?” the young man insisted.
“It seems I have no choice, sir,” I replied. “May I go home to set my things in order? I would be honored if you would accept my hospitality tonight. I can be ready to leave at dawn, if it pleases you.”
I seldom do anything because “I have no choice, sir,” but I needed time to think—away from the graveyard.
“I will accompany you to fetch what your work requires.” He looked over the tumbled tombstone to the body in the pit, and then to the shredded skirts half-packed into my valise.
“But I will not sleep in the home of a grave robber. My lord father told me your habits were strange, but this is ungodly.”
Clearly it was not quite as dark as I’d hoped. “I have permission, sir,” I replied, which was mostly not a lie. “I am in the business of finding truth, and all too often it is buried in a graveyard.”
He was looking at me coldly, but then he softened. “Very well. I would indeed welcome somewhere warm to sleep. It has been a very trying journey.”
“No doubt,” I agreed. I glanced apologetically at the white corpse and then motioned for Jacques to follow me down the other side of the hill.
“To whom were you speaking?” he asked as we left the tombstones behind. “Just now, when I arrived?”
“Nobody, sir,” I said, glancing back. Where Cristina’s shade had been, there was now only a soft white gloaming, like the reflection of the moon. Sarmodel’s disappointment was like the weight of a stone in the back of my mind. “Nobody at all.”
1. We have both agreed that “joined” is the most acceptable term for my/our condition—“possessed,” “demoniac” and “abomination” are inaccurate and most offensive.
I often call him my demonic “Guest,” but he’s as embedded in my body as I am.
We are in every sense inseparable, a situation unique (to my knowledge) in the history of the occult, not to mention theoretically impossible.
He is a male Spirit and has had many aliases over the centuries, among them Nott, M’quet and Lariel, but I generally use the one he gave me: Sarmodel.
2. Contracts are the chief means of interaction between the Spiritual and Mundane realms. Truth is one of the most common, but Contracts can govern the exchange of almost anything, including information, money, services or anima.
They’re the main way Sarmodel and I put food on the table, often quite literally.
3. The girl had heard quite enough Truth for one night.
4. Nowadays I will also accept a bank transfer.