Chapter 15
The Viking went still and so did I. His voice was soft when he spoke.
Despite the echo effect of the small room, I knew he was standing on the opposite side of the raised coffin from me.
I held my breath while I gently patted the ground for the key.
I had to find it. If we couldn’t lock him in, we wouldn’t be able to bind him and keep him here.
The Viking continued muttering and it sounded almost like a prayer.
Was he so old that he was praying to Odin or had he been converted to Christianity by King Olaf Haraldsson during his reign in the first and second milleniums?
Gah! Why was I thinking about Norse history now?
Stupid brain! Did it matter which god he prayed to?
Not if he got his hands on me it didn’t.
I continued to pat the ground. I couldn’t leave without the key.
Then I heard the rustle of his clothes and the tread of his step.
He was coming around the coffin. I had to get out of there, but I needed the key.
If I left without it, then this would all have been for nothing.
I felt the hysteria rise inside me and I wanted to scream.
If I could just have a fucking sliver of light to see!
As if I had manifested it out of my panicked need, a bright beam suddenly flared through the small stained glass window at the top of the back wall, and I heard a disembodied voice speak in Old Norse and it said one word in a thunderous command. “Bieja!” Pray .
The Viking shouted in surprise and dropped to his knees. He had taken the command to heart. I could tell by the cadence of the words and the fervency in his voice. While he was occupied, I glanced at the floor, looking at the colorful pattern on the marble.
The key! I grabbed it and lurched to my feet, throwing myself at the door. I wasn’t coordinated enough in my panic to actually move my limbs, so I rolled out between the iron gates with all the grace of an overheated water buffalo on dry land.
I slammed onto the stone steps, clipping my jaw, but I ignored the pain that lanced through my face. Instead, I spun around and slammed the doors. Then I jammed the key into the lock and twisted it until it clicked.
The light that had been shining through the stained glass window abruptly disappeared and a cry of fear echoed against the marble-lined wall of the chamber.
I staggered away from the iron doors just as the Viking launched himself at them.
The doors rattled and I yelped. The Viking thrust an arm through them, reaching for me.
His fingers were about to close around my arm when I was yanked out of reach.
“Good work, love,” Jasper said. He pulled me in for a hug, and even though I wasn’t the hugging sort, I let him. After the last few terror-filled minutes, his warmth was as welcome as a weighted blanket and just as comforting.
The doors rattled on their hinges as the Viking shook them with all his might, bellowing his displeasure. It was terrifying, but I made my voice calm when I said, “I have no doubt that the tomb is sturdy; I just don’t know if it’s enraged-Viking sturdy.”
“Quite right.” Jasper let me go. We both ignored the Viking, who was now muttering what ominously sounded like a curse upon our very souls. “Let’s get on with the binding. Olive texted the instructions to me.”
“Olive knows how to bind an undead person?” Why this information surprised me at this juncture, I had no idea. I supposed I was taken aback that this sort of thing happened frequently enough to have a ready-made binding spell.
“Olive knows a lot of things,” Jasper said.
I could only imagine.
He swiped his thumb across his phone and read aloud, “Draw the needle through the captive’s hat or shoe and he can’t escape.”
“What needle?” I asked.
“This one.” Jasper pulled a black velvet pouch out of the inside pocket of his coat and retrieved a thin silver needle from inside it.
“What’s so great about that needle?” I raised my voice to be heard over our furious tomb guest, who had resumed yelling as he reached through the gate with both arms, trying to grab us.
“It was used to sew the burial attire of a corpse.”
“Oh.” I stared at the needle that glinted in the moonlight. “That’s it? We just pull it through his shoe.”
“Yes. Of course, we have to do it with intent so we can focus the magic into our desired outcome.”
“It’s that belief thing again?” I asked.
“Exactly. Witchcraft is actually a very quiet undertaking, which is why so many people are cursed and they don’t even know it.”
“You mean when they drop their phone in the toilet, spill coffee all over their best outfit, or miss the last train out of the city? That’s not just happenstance?”
“It could be,” he said. “But more likely, they’ve been cursed, especially if all those things happen on the same day.”
“Now I have to reassess every moment of my life to date.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Hollywood hasn’t gotten the memo on the quiet part.”
“Good. I’d hate for real magic to become common knowledge.”
I couldn’t argue that.
We both glanced at the Viking, strategizing how we were going to manage this.
The Viking had his face pressed between the decorative iron bars that made up the doors.
He was breathing through his nose, making his nostrils flare, and his eyes blazed with a rage so fierce I was surprised we didn’t feel the heat searing our skin.
I glanced down at his shoes and noted they were moccasin-like, with a leather upper that appeared to be soft. It might not be that difficult to get the needle to pass through. Of course, if we stabbed him in the foot, that could cause a problem.
“How’s your sewing?” Jasper asked.
“I can manage to fasten a button if required. You?”
“I’ve sewn up more wounds than I can count, including some of my own.”
“You’re the seamstress, then,” I said. “I’ll distract him while you slip the needle through his shoe.”
He made a face and I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t trust me to distract the Viking or he didn’t want to go near the man’s feet. I didn’t bother to ask, as our guest was rattling the wrought iron so ferociously I was afraid he really would the rip the door off its hinges.
“Get ready,” I said to Jasper. He nodded, slipping his phone into his pocket and holding the needle between his fingers.
I crossed to the statue of Gerard and snatched the grimoire off the marble box in his hand. The Viking went instantly still. His eyes went wide as he looked at me holding the book. I knew I had to keep his attention while Jasper attempted to bind him.
I held the book up high over my head while Jasper crouched low, preparing to approach the tomb. The Viking’s eyes locked on the book, tracking it as I twirled in place and chanted nonsense.
When Jasper moved in, I leapt from side to side, raising my face to the sky as if imploring the gods to help me raise the dead. We were in a cemetery. I assumed the Viking would expect nothing less. I kept going and going, hoping Jasper completed his task before I ran out of gibberish.
“Done.” Jasper leapt back from the gate. I lowered the book, wondering if such a simple thing as a needle could really hold captive two hundred pounds of furious undead guy.
I watched as the Viking gripped the bars. His gaze still on the book. When he tried to reach through the iron gate to grab it, his hands didn’t move. He couldn’t let go. He was locked in place. I felt my jaw go slack as the Viking went into a frenzy, rattling the door of his prison.
Jasper didn’t seem to notice as he took what looked like a smudging stick out of the same black velvet pouch from his coat and lit the end on fire.
Blowing out the flames, the clump of herbs started to smoke.
He extended his arm away from his face and said, “Don’t breathe this in.
It’s a strain of nightshade that will vanish you and I don’t have the antidote on me. ”
I yanked my pajama top up over my nose and mouth and stayed upwind.
I watched as Jasper circled the tomb, waving the smudging stick up and down.
The Viking watched him, too, yelling at him when he passed by the doors.
I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but the Viking’s voice grew quieter with each pass and he seemed to fade like an old photograph until I couldn’t see or hear him at all.
Jasper stopped walking and dropped the stick to the ground, where he extinguished it beneath the heel of his shoe.
“There.” Jasper brushed his hands off. “Our work here is done.”
“What did you do?” I asked. “How did you get rid of him?”
“Oh, he’s still there. That’s a masking spell—from Tariq,” he said. “That particular smudging stick causes whatever being its used on to be rendered mute in all forms. They can’t be seen or heard or smelled.”
“So no one coming to the cemetery will know he’s there?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
I stared at the tomb. There was no sign of the enraged warrior who had terrified us all evening, but even through the smudging spell, I sensed him.
I could feel his malevolent gaze upon us and it shook me to my core.
I had no doubt if I ever ran into him again when he was loose, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me.
“Who has access to this tomb?” Jasper asked.
“My friend Agatha Lively,” I said. “It belongs to her family.”
“You’ll need to tell her to stay away from here and to make certain no one else goes near it either, at least until we can get rid of her new tenant,” he said.
“All right.” I couldn’t wait for that conversation.
Jasper tapped a quick text into his phone. “Olive and Miles know what happened. We’re all in agreement that you can no longer stay in your house.”
“Funny you should mention that.” I stared him down in the darkness and asked, “How did you arrive at my house just when I was in need of assistance? And how did you just happen to have a needle that can hold someone captive and a smudging stick that could render them invisible?”