Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
“Cursed?” Sterling bolted after her as Edwina scurried toward Willoughby Hall. He’d managed to grab a sackful of salt from the kitchens, his pentacle, and a ritual knife, and had had to run to catch up to her.
“Yes, cursed!” She held fistfuls of her skirts in both hands as she hurried along the lane toward Willoughby House. “My clairvoyance finally lit up and I could see a malevolent shadow hovering over Lady Willoughby’s ring. That’s what is causing these fits of death-like sleep!”
“You do realize that for a curse to take hold, a life must have been lost?”
Cursed objects were nasty things. They required an enormous amount of power and ritual to create, but at the heart of it all was a sacrifice.
The soul was bound to the item, where it inevitably soured with bitterness as elements of its personality were slowly eroded over the years.
Finally, all that remained was rage and pain, and the effect of that wielded terrible power over the aura of the bearer or wearer of the object.
Some people suffered hallucinations, or personality shifts.
Some could barely bring themselves to remove from bed.
Others turned violent, or turned to liquor or opium.
And some even suffered harm if the cursed soul was powerful enough to manipulate physical matter around them.
“Yes. And someone had to have borne the Willoughby’s a powerful grudge to have laid such a curse in the first place,” Edwina said grimly. “Yet, by all account the Willoughby’s are happily married, with no enemies and few that might wish them ill.”
“I wonder….” If the Willoughby’s were anything like his family, then heirlooms would have been passed down through the family. His older brother, Hart, had received the Clarenvale jewels for his bride, Olivia, leaving Sterling with little choice but to purchase his own for Edwina.
“What?” Edwina threw over her shoulder.
“Lord Willoughby’s grandmother fell ill with the same affliction. What if the ring is a family heirloom?”
Edwina stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh, goodness. Of course! Lady Annabelle—the first reawakened dead lady—is alleged to have stolen the original Lord Willoughby’s hand in marriage from a local girl.
I heard it in the tavern last night, but didn’t give it much thought at the time as it didn’t pertain to the current Lady Willoughby. ”
“There’s your grudge.”
“Sterling, that was decades ago. A curse like that….”
She didn’t have to say it.
Curses only grew in power as the soul fed off the life force of the bearer of the object they were bound to.
“We need somewhere safe where we can lay a circle of protection,” he said, capturing her arm. “It’s going to have to be chiseled into the stone. Anything else—chalk or salt—might be blown away in a flurry if the entity can manipulate raw matter.”
Edwina bit her lip. “Best if it’s laid in a place of power too.”
Sterling couldn’t stop himself from grimacing. They both knew where the best place to lay the curse to rest was going to be.
“St. Mary’s church.”
Hallowed ground. Blessed with years’ worth of prayers and belief.
The sexton was just going to love that.
Edwina sighed. “You go fetch the ring and Lady Willoughby—they’ll respond better to a fellow peer of the realm—and I’ll go talk to the priest and the sexton and set up the circle.”
Lady Willoughby reclined in the sunroom, soaking up the sunlight again. Her olive skin seemed to be a little ashen still, but it was as though the sunlight gave her some measure of life.
As it probably did.
Sunlight was anathema to creatures like ghosts and succubae, and even curses and black magic waned within its direct influence. She probably wasn’t even aware of why she desperately wanted to lie in the sun, though survival instinct probably told her she felt better in that moment.
Lord Willoughby hovered nearby, ostensibly reading a book.
The two of them looked up when the butler announced him.
“Lord Sterling.” Willoughby snapped his book shut. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
Willoughby’s words were polite, but he didn’t entirely look pleased to see him.
“I have a favor to ask,” he replied. “You’re not going to like it, but we may have an answer to her ladyship’s mysterious affliction.”
The color drained out of Willoughby’s skin, but he nodded. “What do we have to do?”
By the time Sterling arrived at the church with the Willoughby’s, Edwina had managed to talk Father Marlowe into allowing her to desecrate the ancient stone of the chancel and vestry with paint.
It wasn’t as foolproof as chiseling a ring into the tiled floor, but it was all the priest and sexton would concede and it would have to do.
Lord and Lady Willoughby hesitantly ducked beneath the lintel, the lady slowly lowering her ink-colored hood from her flaxen hair. Sterling appeared right behind them, towering over Lord Willoughby.
“My word,” Willoughby muttered, staring at the circle she’d drawn on the church floor in order to contain the sorcerous energy they’d need. A pentagram would have been better, but she wasn’t going to push her luck.
“Pink?” Sterling looked aghast. “Pink paint?”
“It was the only tin I could find,” she told him.
“The innkeeper painted his daughter’s room last month.
” She smiled at Lady Willoughby. “And I thought it might prove cheerful. We’re going to banish this evil spirit if it’s the last thing that we do, so that Lord and Lady Willoughby can return to their lives. ”
“Can’t we simply lock the ring away?” Willoughby didn’t look very convinced.
“The problem is that cursed objects tend to feed upon their host once they’ve been given a chance to bond,” she gently explained.
“Perhaps we might be able to negate the link. But then the ring would need to be sealed in a lead-lined box, and buried deep in a hole beneath concrete, with spells of protection woven over it. Their magic doesn’t fade over time, and it would spend the next couple of decades trying to find a way back to Lady Willoughby. ”
“And that’s, of course, only if some adventurous treasure hunter doesn’t hear tales of a cursed ring and come to try his luck.
Or someone building a house over the curse-trap within a decade or two,” Sterling muttered.
“Then it’s nightmares for the family, the lady of the house sleepwalking, or little Timmy trying to dig through the cellar at night with no idea why.
We’ve had a devil of a time keeping objects of power restrained in the past.”
She smiled weakly. Lord Willoughby looked as white as a ghost himself.
“The soul bound to the ring is very hungry, and they tend to exert enormous emotional energy upon those within their circumference. Depending upon the strength of this one, it may be able to haunt the entire village. I’m actually surprised that it didn’t impact your grandmother further. ”
Her words seemed to break his trance. “I think she locked it away with the rest of the family jewels upon grandfather’s death. It reminded her of him, she said, and only brought pain.”
Pain. Or perhaps the curse’s influence.
And then, years later, Lord Willoughby had gone searching for a ring for his beautiful new bride—one to honor the woman he adored. And there it was. A sparkling diamond. A sentimental heirloom.
And no doubt the curse wanted very desperately to find a new victim to feed upon.
He wouldn’t have even felt its influence.
“Willoughby,” the lady whispered, touching his arm. “I just want it gone. Please.”
Willoughby finally sighed. “Fine. Destroy it. Or whatever you plan on doing.”
“We’ll need the ring,” Edwina said, holding out her palm. “And then you’ll need to return Lady Willoughby to the manor and let her rest within a circle of salt. When we break the binding, it may lash back upon her, and she’ll likely be unwell for several days.”
“It won’t harm her, will it?”
“No, no.” Sterling clapped his hand on the lord’s shoulder. “I’m very experienced in these matters and Edwina’s cast the protective circle perfectly.”
They all looked at the pink ring on the flagstones.
“Here,” Lady Willoughby said, removing the ring and placing it on Edwina’s gloved palm. “I never want to see the blasted thing again.”