Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
“Spirit rise and answer my call,” Edwina said, her voice echoing through the room. She sent a pulse of magic through the ring.
Anger reflected back at her. A psychic screech of rage.
Edwina shivered as Sterling’s fingertips squeezed her own.
“It’s going to fight you,” he told her. “It’s more powerful than I’d imagined. However she died—” And they could both tell it was a she. “—it was painful and unexpected. I’m picking up hints of distrust.”
So am I. She squared her shoulders. “I ask you twice,” she called, sending power through her words. “Spirit rise and answer my call.”
The ring began jittering across the floor as if something violent shook within it.
Edwina brought all her will to bear on the object. She could do this. She’d been fighting to prove herself for years, and no mere spirit was going to defy her.
“If it’s not going to obey you,” he said, “then you need to shatter its hold on the ring.”
The spirit lashed back at her, screaming, screaming in her head—
Edwina held on grimly, squeezing tightly, clenching her will like a vise.
And it hurt, because she was one with the ring and the spirit, one with the curse.
A flash of image went through her mind’s eye. A girl with tangled dark hair on her knees, holding her head in her hands and screaming.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Tell me your name.”
No. The spirit was fury and rage, twisting viciously beneath her hold.
But she’d expected malice and viciousness, not….
Fear.
It stole her breath. Stayed her will.
For she suddenly realized that whilst she could crush the soul with her will and shatter its hold over the ring, she owed the spirit more than that. She owed it peace.
Someone had murdered this girl.
Someone had bound her life force to the ring.
And that same someone had then handed the ring over to the original Lady Willoughby, hoping that it would kill her.
“Focus, Edie,” Sterling whispered. “Command it one more time.”
Command it and force it to her will. Break it.
It was the way she’d been taught.
But she couldn’t stop herself from feeling empathy.
“I have to put the ring on,” she whispered, suddenly understanding how to break the curse.
Sterling’s head snapped up. “Don’t you dare.”
“Anchor me.” Edwina drove the ring onto her ring finger, and as Sterling cried out and reached for her, she felt her eyes roll back in her head.
Edwina stood on barren ground, the world strangely gray and devoid of color. Cracks speared through the brittle earth beneath her feet.
The ghosts of trees speared into the skies, blackened with decay, and several nearby houses lay in ruins.
It was the village of Bletsoe, but as seen through a demonic lens. A hellscape of maybe. Hopefully not the future, she thought. An echo of the real world, drained of color and life and hope and warmth. And this restless soul had been trapped in here—in a psychic echo of the world—since her murder.
“Hello?” Edwina called, turning in slow circles. “Is anybody there?”
Movement shifted at the corner of her eye.
But when she spun around there was nothing there.
“Hello?” she called again. “My name is Edwina. I’m here to help you.”
There. Behind her.
She turned around as a dark figure dashed toward her.
It was a young woman with long, ratty black hair, clawed fingernails and cracked skin around her mouth. She threw herself at Edwina and the pair of them hit the ground, rolling over each other.
Strong hands locked around her throat.
“I’ll kill you,” the girl hissed.
Edwina grabbed her wrists, fear giving her a surge of power. She kicked and wrestled and—
Suddenly realized that none of this was physical.
“Begone,” she gasped with a surge of her will, and then the girl flew free, hitting the ground and rolling onto her knees.
“You’re a witch!”
Edwina staggered to her hands and knees. “I’m a sorceress,” she corrected. “I serve the Light disciplines, not the Dark. I’m here to help you.”
“Help me?” the girl spat.
“Yes, help you.” She pushed to her feet. “Do you know who you are? Do you remember your name?”
The girl threw herself forward, lunging in attack, but Edwina clapped her hands together and summoned manacles of golden light to cage the spirit’s wrists.
A scream tore through the air. The furious cry of something wild and bitter.
“They won’t hurt you if you stop struggling,” she called.
“Let me go! Let me go! You’re a monster!”
“I’m here to help you!”
“That was what she said too!”
Edwina stilled. “She?”
“The witch said she could help me!” The girl cried. “All I had to do was bind myself to the Willoughby family jewels, and he would choose me. And not Annabelle.”
Witchcraft. Another word for black magic. Edwina’s gut curled as she realized that this poor spirit had been as tortured as both Lady Willoughby’s.
“She lied,” she whispered. “She bound your soul to the ring, and with it your lifeforce. You died, didn’t you? And then she presented the ring to Lord Willoughby as a gift for his bride.”
A sob burst from the girl’s throat. She had to have been young when she died—perhaps seventeen or eighteen.
“What’s your name?” Edwina tried again.
“Clare.” The spirit froze as if she hadn’t been able to recall for such a very long time.
“My name is Clare Worthington.” She suddenly sucked in a sharp gasp, the darkness beginning to fade from her eyes.
“Oh, my goodness. Mama. Mama?” She turned around in circles.
“Where is my mother? Where is my sister? Mama! I’ll be good, I’ll be good. I promise I’ll be good!”
“It’s been a long time, Clare. Your mother has passed on.”
“No, no, no, mama….” Tears bled down the spirit’s face. “Is she in Heaven? Is this Hell?” Fisting her fingers, she turned around desperately. “I’m in Hell, aren’t I? Oh, mercy me. I sold my soul to the Devil, didn’t I? Please! Please help me.”
“We’re not in Hell,” Edwina soothed, stepping forward warily. “This is some sort of spirit world within the ring, I think. And we’re both trapped here, unless you choose to move on.”
Clare clutched at her throat and for the first time, the cloudiness left her eyes. “It hurts. It hurts. She’s strangling me. I can’t breathe.”
Edwina took a step toward her. “It doesn’t have to hurt anymore. I can help you—truly help you. I can set you free. And perhaps there is a heaven waiting for you, with those you love.”
“I don’t want to lose him!” The girl cried.
“He promised he’d marry me. He promised we’d be together forever.
He promised… if I just…. If I let him….” The words stalled, and then Clare forged on as if trying to convince herself.
“He loved me and not her. His mother was forcing them to marry, but he loved me.”
Edwina suddenly wanted to punch Lord Willoughby—the original—in the teeth.
It was very clear what had happened now.
A na?ve young woman. A handsome young earl.
“He’s gone, Clare.” Edwina caught her by the hands, gasping at how icy they were. “Your Lord Willoughby is gone. You have to give him up, or you shall find no peace for yourself.”
She’d be lost to the ring and the curse would grind inexorably on.
Clare’s eyes were becoming clearer, color bleeding up her arms as if she was stealing some of the warmth from Edwina’s hands.
Dangerous. For the spirit was consuming her heat and warmth and life. But she needed some of it, if she was ever going to be able to move on.
And Edwina made a decision. Curling her arms around Clare, she hauled her into a hug.
“Men make lots of promises they don’t intend to keep.
I’m sorry that he did this to you. It was wrong of him.
Very wrong. But you have to let go, Clare.
Let go of your hate and your rage. Let go of your Willoughby.
You deserved better. Imagine the light. Imagine heat and warmth.
Imagine your family. Your mama. Let go of the past and go be with your family again. ”
Her teeth were starting to chatter.
Her breath began to catch.
Please let go….
With a final sob, Clare vanished in her arms.
Edwina staggered forward.
And then the ruins of Bletsoe began to shake and Edwina realized her mistake.
This wasn’t a psychic world within the ring.
It was an echo of the real world. One forged by a desperate girl trying to cling to the life that had been wrenched from her.
One bound to the spirit itself.
“Edie!”
She lay still and quiet, her skin so pale that for a second Sterling thought she was almost—
No. There was her heartbeat.
“Edie,” he chided, rubbing heat into her hands. Gasping with fear. “Edie, wake up. Come on. Don’t do this to me.”
Don’t you dare do this to me.
But there was some sort of pall hanging over her.
Something… evil.
The ring.
He had to get it off her. But as he tore at it, it resisted him.
“Edie.” He bent down, resting his forehead against hers. “Edwina Sheffield. You wake up right this moment.”
He’d give anything for her to set her hands on her hips and scowl at him right now.
Her lips were like ice, her breath coming weakly.
A shiver ran through her and there was a cut on her cheek, as if something had struck her a blow.
“Edie, come back,” he whispered. “Come back to me. Please.” His breath caught. “I love you. I’m madly in love with you, Edwina Sheffield, and I’ve never dared bloody say it. Please give me a chance to say it.”
He kissed her.
Pouring some of his sorcerous strength through the bond between them. Forcing heat and life and love through the bond.
And Edie tugged back.
Her lips softened, and then she was groaning beneath him, pressing at his chest as if to push him away.
“Edie?”
Her eyes popped open. “Sterling?” she rasped.
Thank all the gods. He hauled her into his arms as she choked and coughed, sounding for all the world as if she’d been underwater for an age.
I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you….
“That’s alright, Sterling.” Her hand cupped his cheek. “I’m right here. You won’t have to find out.”
And he blinked in surprise, because she’d somehow managed to pluck his thoughts from his mind.