Chapter One #2
“Okay. Let me just…” He trailed off.
“What are you doing?” she hissed.
“I found Archie. He’s unconscious,” Graves said. “Someone got here first.”
“Everything looks normal here. If someone got to Archie before us, wouldn’t they have gotten these wards down, too?”
“Maybe. Just don’t go inside. Whoever can take his wards down is powerful. We’ve no guarantee they’re gone,” Graves said, his words curt. “I’m going to see if I can read him.”
Graves’s magic was knowledge. His touch could read people’s immediate memories, dive into their psyche, and erase. He’d used his powers for hundreds of years for blackmail and terror to run his city. But he couldn’t read her. Not anymore.
“Anything?” she whispered.
Kierse waited on the edge of a precipice. Her stomach ached, and that buzzing was not going away no matter how much she ignored it.
Something was down here with her.
He spat out another string of curses. “No. I can’t see anything even while he’s unconscious. Sometimes I can see flashes, but his mind is too strong. I’m coming down.”
Kierse waited, feeling the weight of ghosts closing in.
She wanted to believe it was simply paranoia.
That ghosts couldn’t possibly exist. But every legend came from a kernel of truth.
If Fae and warlocks and vampires could exist, why wouldn’t ghosts?
And it wouldn’t be surprising if this conjurer had ghosts as added security.
“Graves, be quick. We have a problem.”
“Almost there.”
“Should I…” Walter trailed off.
“Do you think your force fields can repel spirits?” she asked.
He remained silent on the line. A no that didn’t need to be voiced.
Ice settled through her bones. Without thinking, she created another pixie light. At least it would be something to warm her as this place precipitously dropped in temperature.
But that was the wrong move.
A ghost was illuminated before her.
She shrieked and jumped backward, the light going out. Another rush of cold swept through her, and she swore she could feel the ghost trying to settle into her bones.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she breathed into the cold, dark room.
She managed another pixie light, smaller and dimmer than last time.
She could see the fog of her breath. She had no magic to fight off a ghost. Magical intuition?
No. Pixie lights? No. Persuasion? Maybe if she could get it to work.
So far no luck. Portaling? Would only help her escape. Not that she could make it work.
An ugly, deformed ghoul appeared in her vision, and she backed up a step, losing her lock picks in the process. The ghost jutted his jaw forward, opening his mouth as if he were going to devour her.
Kierse jumped away, her back colliding with the wall. “I mean you no harm?”
The ghost loomed ever higher. She reached for her gun at her waist on instinct but released it. What good would it do? Where was Graves?
Time to pull out the last resort.
Kierse lifted the Spear of Lugh from her back, and it settled into her hands like it had always belonged there. Its insidious voice slithered into her ears like a dark old friend.
“Hello, who are we killing today?”
“Currently a ghost,” she gasped, swinging the spear before her.
The ghost made some throttled noise as the spear seemed to connect into its invisible body. Holy shit! It really did kill everything.
“Death! Destruction!”
Kierse would have rolled her eyes, but the damn ghost was coming back. Her muscles trembled. If she hadn’t had the protective weight of the spear in her hands, she might have cowered in a corner somewhere. She did not sign up for this.
Just as the ghost dove back in for another attack, a voice drifted down the hallway, speaking in Latin. The ghost was distracted, and with a growl from the back of his dead throat, he turned from her.
She swung the spear. It connected, and the ghost howled in rage, but Graves kept coming, appearing like a dark knight out of the gloom.
He was in a pitch-black suit with his midnight-blue hair hanging forward over his forehead, and dark-gray eyes almost lightning strikes in the night. He was remarkable and arresting as the golden glow of his magic radiated around him.
The ghost snarled, trying to force his way past the spear toward Graves, but he couldn’t seem to move.
Kierse took aim again, prepared to knock the ghost out of the vaults entirely.
Then with a final wail, the ghost burst. The silvery shimmer dissolved into nothing, leaving them alone at the vault entrance.
Graves held out a gloved hand. “My wren.”
She twirled the spear playfully before returning it to her back, where it lay silent and dormant, then she let him tug her against him.
Though he was her eternal winter god, he always ran hot from all the magic he constantly used.
It was a balm to her. Her body melded with his, and she had never felt more right in her entire life than in his arms. Even with the buzzing still happening, but…
why did it still remain with the ghost banished?
“An avenging angel,” he said, sweeping a loose strand of her hair behind her pointed ear.
“Do angels carry murderous weapons?”
“Assuredly.”
“Maybe just teach me Latin next time.”
“If you insist,” he said, pressing a firm kiss to her lips with a promise for more. A jolt ran through her, and she wished for the hundredth time that she still had the capacity to lower her absorption and let him see into her head.
When they broke apart, she said a little breathlessly, “Let’s get the stone and get out of here.”
“Together,” he said.
“I lost my lock picks.”
But Graves had already made it to the door, jerking it open with one powerful tug. The warding dissolved under his touch as if it had never been.
“That’s one way to do it,” she said, marveling at how easily he had overpowered Archie’s wards.
Then they stepped inside his vault, only to find someone else had been here.
And that someone had remained.
“Hello, little songbird,” Lorcan said.