Chapter 11 #2
The two echoes wove around the body in a confusing, mirrored dance, their ragged edges tangling then untangling as they moved.
The panicked one stared in horrified fascination at the body at its feet, pulling at its hair, while the other glared malevolently between Isa and an unsuspecting Locke, the promise of retribution burning deep at its core.
Their voices overlapped, creating a confusing resonance of the emotional currents gathering around Isa.
Her magic expanded, sweeping the spirit’s chaos into its arms, tightening its hold with merciless bands until there was no escape. Then she dragged the pieces toward her.
They didn’t come easily, twisting and turning in an attempt to get loose as she used the staff to stitch the remnants into one ragged cloth.
Threats and pleas turned into screams as she forced the tattered remains together.
She was relentless, knowing time was of the essence and she and Locke needed answers.
When she was sure the rushed stitching job would hold, she started in. “Name.”
“Owen Havers.” The reluctant admission was half sobbed in fear, half hissed in fury.
“What happened?”
The facial features contorted, shifting from panicked to sly and back. “I don’t… I don’t know.”
The undercurrents said otherwise. There was confusion, yes, but of the kind that suggested Owen wasn’t convinced of his current unalive status, and that feeling was drowned out by an unmitigated fury.
If his anger continued to gain strength, she’d end up with a vengeful wraith on her hands—not something they had time to deal with.
She dug her skeletal fingers into the ephemeral cloth, straining the newly set bindings, and began to slowly shred the threadbare spirit.
Black bled through Owen’s eyes, his scream thin as he bucked uselessly against her hold.
Unmoved, she asked again, “What happened?”
“She was mine first, not his.” He sounded petulant, like a child deprived of a toy.
Owen’s anger and resentment churned through the weaker waves of guilt and empathy, dragging them under until only his darker desires remained.
“But as soon as she realized who he was, she dumped me. Gold-digging bitch.”
Noxious as the venomous bitterness was, her magic fed on it, and the Reaper’s cloak changed from starlight and night skies to an ominous stygian pit.
Images flashed through Isa’s mind sickeningly fast, but she got the gist. The woman on Beto’s arm had been with Owen first—had, in fact, sought him out one night at another club.
Like many twentysomething males, the low-level Charmer had been easily enraptured by her wiles and had stayed that way until she told him they were better off as friends.
That was when Owen realized her approach had been calculated.
As Beto’s assistant, he was just a stepping stone to someone with deeper, older pockets.
It hadn’t taken long for hurt pride and dented ego to shift to fury-driven blame, and he decided she had to pay.
Then he worked to make it happen. With access to Beto’s schedule—the one the businessman didn’t share with his wife—Owen had known the illicit couple would be here tonight, so he’d made his move.
“An email? Really?” Isa asked dryly when a memory flicked past of Owen drafting an email and then scheduling it to go to Beto’s wife.
“What?” The question was an irritating whine heavily seasoned with malicious resentment. “She deserved to know who’s in her bed. If she decides to take the asshole to the cleaners, that’s just karma, right?”
That was not quite how it worked, but Isa wasn’t up to having that discussion.
Instead, she focused on what had happened after.
She saw Owen on the second floor of the Den, waving a nearly empty glass toward the dance floor below as he whined to some faceless guy about how he’d been screwed over but had a plan to make that bitch pay.
As he continued to expand on his revenge plan, his mysterious companion leaned in and offered him a helpful boost in the form of a pill.
The unexpected offer had Isa trying to make out the man’s indistinct features, but between the dizzying dance of the flashing lights and the swirling shadows, she got nothing.
“What is that?” she asked.
A flare of insecurity, edged with guilt, pierced the shade’s bitterness but disappeared quickly under sly consideration. “It’s just something to keep me level.”
“Lie.” With one word, she tore away his self-preserving pretense, exposing his brittle, battered vanity.
The echoes contorted in her grip, trying to evade the metaphoric mirror she held up, but no matter how Owen twisted, the unvarnished truth stared back. He finally relented on a pained sob. “Fine! I needed a boost so she wouldn’t ignore me. He promised it would work, and it did.”
The memories rushed forward, and Isa let them lap around her, watching as he rode the high of his magic.
How he unapologetically lured the woman upstairs into one of the rooms Angel’s VIP guests used to conduct private meetings while fantasies played out in his mind, each more profane than the last. How the woman spiraled deeper and deeper under his magic until she was nothing more than a breathing doll.
Drunk on the unexpected power trip, Owen didn’t notice when his magic turned on him, feeding his depraved hungers until they were all-encompassing.
He didn’t clue in when the woman shook off his unnatural thrall and started to fight back.
She threw a spell, and the air around him thinned, choking him.
He struck out, knocking her into a wall.
The spell shattered, and blinded by fury, he attacked, both physically and magically.
Unfortunately, whatever he was on interfered with his magic but didn’t lessen the brutality of his fists.
“That’s not me. I’m not like that.”
Isa almost missed the horrified whisper.
As the memories played out, she could see Owen trapped inside the monster wearing his face as he viciously continued his attack.
Somehow, the woman managed to get to her feet long enough to use her magic to pick him up and slam him so hard into the drywall he left a body-sized dent in it and a crimson smear along the framing underneath.
He hung there, pinned by her air magic, and she rushed for the door and got out while she could.
Owen writhed against her invisible hold as his innate power turned inward like a ravaging fire, searing away everything he knew. The pain was relentless, leaving no way to escape. It was everywhere, burning him, burning his mind and his world, and it hurt, hurt, hurt, then…
Nothing. Everything stopped for one breathless second.
Isa witnessed how Owen’s decisions played out—how he’d chosen to put his needs first. How his callous disregard for the woman as a person had only deepened his depravity, how the ember of outrage smoldered until it caught fire in a blaze of retribution.
In this in-between world where the Reaper reigned, a scale formed.
In what used to be Owen, realization dawned. “It’s not my fault! I was out of my mind! It’s her fault! If she hadn’t used me—”
Tuning out the excuses, Isa snatched Owen’s hastily stitched spirit and shoved it onto one side of the scale.
Magic locked him in place. On the other side, his intentions and decisions piled up until the unevenly weighted side tipped and slammed down.
Within the consciousness that used to be Isa, the firestorm of judgment twined into an unrelenting gale of merciless reprisal she couldn’t stop.
Not that she had any desire to even try.
It swept through the remnants of Owen and seared away the soul stitching.
His mouth yawned open in a soundless scream as the dark flames of the Reaper engulfed the shredding spirit, leaving nothing but ashes to drift into the ether.