Chapter 48 Delilah
Chapter forty-eight
Delilah
The tomb of Sweet Baptiste truly was a Gothic monstrosity, a sight to behold amongst the more sedate and reasonably designed mausoleums that surrounded it.
Made of spires and peaks that loomed high above me, it blocked out what little autumn sun there was, leaving me feeling cold in its long shadow.
Looming taller than any of the others in the cemetery, it featured white marble, veined with gold and gray accents, looking more like a cathedral than a crypt.
Standing before it, I stared up, taking in the half a dozen arched alcoves filled with carved gargoyles, their faces leering down at me with menacing glee, and an involuntary shiver ran through me.
“I’m here, witch,” Archer said, his large, warm frame pressing against my back and comforting me more than was probably reasonable. “No harm will come to you.”
“Plus, the guy’s been dead for over two hundred years,” Vine offered, a knife twirling casually between his fingers. “There’s not a whole lot he can do from beyond the grave.”
“He can answer some fucking questions.” Archer’s words were final, as though there was nothing he could conceive of that he couldn’t bend to his will.
The more I thought about it, the more I believed him.
“I’m not sure how likely that actually is,” Mex said, staring up at the spires, a thoughtful look on her gorgeous face. “The ways have been closed for over two decades, Archer. How do you expect me to reach him?”
“I have a theory,” he replied cryptically. “Let’s just get inside and see if it works.”
“You got a lot of attitude for a guy who came to my town begging favors,” Mex muttered, but still moved forward, stepping over a low wrought iron fence and approaching the front of the Baptiste crypt.
“Alright, big guy,” she said, raising an eyebrow at Corson.
“Time to put your muscles to work. Get over here and help me open this.”
Vine chuckled, but Corson said nothing, simply taking his place next to Mex without complaint. As I watched, the two of them heaved, grunting with the effort of their work.
“Why can’t you just open a shadow gate?” I asked, wincing as the heavy marble slab began to slide, the sound of stone on stone, harsh in the quiet.
“Tombs are sacred places,” Archer answered, sounding annoyed. “Most of them are blessed by clergy when they are sealed. It prevents me from accessing them with my magic, meaning we have to do things the old fashion way.”
“By breaking and entering?” I teased, remembering when he had accused me of doing the exact same thing in New York.
Archer smiled, one side of his mouth ticking up in a way that sent flutters through my stomach like a giddy girl with a crush.
“Indeed.”
“So, who was this guy, anyway?” I asked, feeling useless as I watched Corson and Mex attempt to shift the giant slab or marble. “And why does he get the nicest place in the cemetery?”
“Jean-Francois Baptiste was a lazy, selfish dandy who used his daddy’s money to cement himself as one of the wealthiest men in Louisiana,” Mex said, her words grunted out between her clenched teeth.
“He started farming sugar cane when he lost a hand of poker. He had inherited a large plot of land when he came of age, and he wanted grow tobacco, because that’s what all the rich men back in Virgina were farming.
But his father—an idiot who never asked his son to work a day in his life—wanted to branch out, try something no one else had attempted.
Jean-Francois threw an epic tantrum, and his father eventually told him they’d wager on it.
One hand of poker, and the winner got to pick the crop. ”
“Turned out,” Vine added, his knife once again spinning lazily through his nimble fingers. “He should have thanked his daddy. Sugar crops were a literal gold mine. Bastard made more money than most men ever dreamed of.”
“And he used it to feed every fucking vice known to man,” Mex added, her and Corson giving one final shove against the marble.
Finally, the door opened, the inside of the tomb appearing to be nothing more than a gaping black maw.
At my chest, Pandora shifted restlessly, clearly uncomfortable with whatever she sensed waited inside, but I only offered a soothing stroke through her pouch before steeling myself for the inevitable.
Entering yet another tomb.
Blowing out a breath, I went to step forward, but Archer’s arm around my waist stopped me up short.
“Wait,” he said, his voice low. “I’ll go first.”
“Who says chivalry’s dead,” Vine said airily, and I laughed.
“By all means,” I said dramatically, waving Archer forward. “Please enter the scary building full of dead bodies ahead of me.”
“Watch it, witch,” he growled, and heat simmered low in my belly. “Sarcasm will get you punished.”
“Kinky,” Vine teased, and this time, I smacked him on the arm as my face reddened.
“If you’re all quite finished, I believe you have a Sugar Baron to talk to.
” Mex stood, arms crossed, glaring at us with mild impatience.
Archer pushed past her, ignoring her dirty look, and I waited as Corson and Vine entered after him, doing whatever big bad demons did when they secured a location, I guessed.
Above me, Mal perched on one of the arches, his beady black eyes scanning the cemetery, watching for trouble.
“So,” Mex began, sounding like she’d rather be anywhere else. “You and the shadow demon, hey?”
I shrugged, unsure exactly what to say. “I guess.”
Mex hummed, looking at me thoughtfully, and I did my best not to squirm under her sharp regard.
“He’d given up on finding his mate, you know?
” she finally went on, and I pressed my lips together, trying not to show how eager I was for information on the taciturn demon who’d anchored himself to me in so may ways.
“We all have, really. After the Fall—” she began, then paused, clearing her throat before starting again.
“When we first got stuck here, things were so chaotic. So many were lost. The battle seemed like it would never end. In the aftermath, everyone had chosen a side, and there was so much work to do that we all just sort of…forgot what else there was to live for.” Letting out a sigh that contained a suspicious amount of longing, Mex went on.
“Now that he’s found you, don’t expect him to let you go easily.
Mates, they’re for eternity, which is something humans consistently fail to grasp.
” Turning her head, Mex glanced across the cemetery, her eyes unfocused as she thought, and I wondered what—or who—she was picturing. “And eternity is a long fucking time.”
I considered her words; the concept of a mate was something I was only vaguely familiar with.
Not all supernatural beings ascribed to the theory that the universe made someone who was destined to be your perfect partner.
Shifters based their entire social hierarchy on them, while vampires tended to treat the concept casually, because monogamy wasn’t really their thing.
Witches didn’t believe in them at all, and after listening to Mex talk, I wondered if it was simply because witches didn’t live as long as the others, so they never got a chance to meet their mate.
The thought brought me up short. As a witch, I would lead a much shorter life than Archer. He’d already been around since the beginning of…well, everything. What could a future for the two of us look like if I continued to age like a human when he stayed the same?
The very idea was unnerving.
“All I’m saying is,” Mex continued, her gaze on me as her words cut into my thoughts. “Try to understand where he’s coming from before you judge him, alright?” Turning to look at the low-hanging clouds, she added softly, “Some of us are still waiting.”
I nodded, although, I was not sure I understood much at all. Behind my ribcage, my bond with Archer thrummed, pulsing steadily, letting me know he was there, he was aware of me.
It was far more comforting than it had any right to be.
I was startled from my musings when Vine popped his head out of the narrow door, grinning like a loon.
“All clear, bestie. Come on in!”
Following him, I stepped into the darkened tomb, coughing slightly as the stale air hit the back of my throat like a sour grape.
“Yeah,” Vine lamented, patting me on the back comfortingly. “That’s a little fragrance I like to call eau de dead guy,” he chuckled lightly. “Takes some getting used to.”
Letting out a chuckle, I summoned a ball of witchlight, sending it over our heads to illuminate the crypt. The demons may not have needed light to see, but I certainly did.
Once I’d blinked away the darkness, my eyes took in the interior of the vault, noting that the decor was unsurprisingly similar to the outside; over the top ostentatious and gaudy to the point of ridiculous.
There were detailed carvings on every spare space, the high quality craftsmanship and insane amount of gilding was indicative of the expense that was clearly put into the place.
It was overly showy, considering no one had laid eyes on it in nearly two centuries.
Well, no one living, anyway.
In the center of the space were two coffins, both made of the same pristine marble as the rest of the tomb, but with clear glass tops, the surfaces covered in a fine layer of dust.
And they each displayed a mummified corpse.
“Is this him?” I asked quietly, my gaze taking in the tight, gray-brown flesh of one body clearly wearing a suit.
The face of the poor man was stretched in a grotesque grimace, the lips pulled tight as the flesh had dehydrated, revealing the yellowed, half rotted teeth of a man who had lived in a time when sugar was plentiful and dental visits were not.
The eye sockets were empty, the dreadful face staring back at me with a tortured expression that made my skin crawl.
“That’s him,” Mex spat, her angry eyes narrowed on the corpse.
“And who’s this?” I asked turning to the second coffin, this one containing the body of a woman.
“That is his long suffering wife, Madeleine.”
Peeking through the glass, I took her in, her face and body in the same state of dehydration, but her ivory lace dress nearly perfectly preserved.
She had long, blond hair liberally streaked with gray and held back from her face with two tortoise shell combs.
On her dessicated fingers she wore several rings, each sporting impressive diamonds and other precious stones.
There was no amulet in sight.
Reaching within myself, I tried to feel for it, searching for that same sensation of a presence that I’d felt in Boston. A hint of direction, a magical tug that told me we were close, but there was nothing.
My heart raced. It wasn’t here. Did that mean that the Order had already claimed it? And if so, how the Hell were we supposed to get it back?
“So how do you want to do this, Archer?” Mex asked, clearly ready to get the whole thing over with and get back to her own life.
“Me?” he asked, arms crossed over his chest as he watched me inspecting the coffins. “You’re the one who communes with the dead.”
“Used to,” Mex corrected, her irritation with her lack of abilities evident in the way she snarled the words at him. “I used to commune with the dead. But ever since the Dark Lord’s disappearance, I’ve been unable to reach anyone. I thought you said you had a plan.”
“I do.” Turning to me, Archer held out his hand. “Delilah will get you through the veil.”
“What?” I gasped at the same time as Mex shouted, “How the Hell will she do that?”
“Archer,” I spluttered. “I have no idea how to speak with the dead.”
Sure, there were witches who claimed to be able to do it, but as far as I knew, most of those were frauds, using their skills as parlor tricks to dupe desperate people out of their money. Actual mediums were few and far between, and I knew for a fact that I wasn’t one of them.
“You don’t need to speak to anyone,” he said, looking at me with a fondness that was almost startling. “You just have to help Mex as she does.”
“You’re telling me this witch can get me access to the underworld? She can help me pierce the veil?” Mex was suspicious, and I couldn’t blame her; I probably looked like a deer in the headlights.
“She’s done it already,” Archer said confidently. “Twice, in fact.”
“Archer, I didn’t do any of that on purpose,” I stressed, needing him to know how I felt about the situation. “I’m not even sure what I did, so how can I possibly do it again?”
“Trust me, witch,” he said, one hand coming up to stroke over my cheek and down my throat, his fingers pausing to dance along the bite mark on my neck.
I had to clench my teeth against the impulse to moan, the contact sending a buzz of heat tingling through my body.
Under his fingers, the shadow collar danced, almost as if it was enjoying his touch as much as I was.
“But moreover, trust yourself. There is nothing you cannot do.”
My heart—that unreliable muscle that was beating rapidly inside my chest—melted at his words. So full of confidence in me, even though I’d given him next to no reason for his faith.
Leaning into his touch, I let him feel the way his words affected me, sending my happiness and gratitude through the bond, and was rewarded when his eyes softened, just a little, but enough to let me know he’d felt it.
And he liked it.
“Alright,” I said, turning to Mex, a new resolve straightening my spine. “What do you need me to do?”