Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Over the years, Charlotte persevered through the pain, her body screaming as she pushed on despite the searing agony in her joints and the overwhelming fatigue.
No matter how awful it became, that unyielding tenacity helped her as she anchored herself in front of the mirror, holding fast against the desperate entities preparing to escape.
She wouldn’t relent and spread her arms over the inside of the glass, so she could come out first, if it worked, but they still didn’t know her true name, nor was Charlotte sure how they were going to get her into the attic.
Candles flickered in silence as Katherine prepared for the ritual on the other side. It was her fault that she died. She could have confided in them, so they’d hide her brother, or have him escape, but she poisoned her and handed her over to the Avery witches.
She didn’t trust her for a moment, but she trusted Nathaniel, and he believed Katherine wouldn’t fail. Not with her brother’s life on the line.
Alexander climbed inside, with Duke in tow, holding the grimoires he’d retrieved from Sallow Manor.
“Thank you,” she whispered, barely looking at him as she kneeled to sift through them.
“You broke my heart, you know that,” Alexander said, now they were alone, or he thought they were.
“It wasn’t you I betrayed,” she said simply. “I was protecting my brother.”
“You could have come to me. We have been friends for a long time, but you trusted Gertrude Avery over us, the same woman whose family killed yours.”
“I didn’t enjoy it,” she snapped, quickly reining in her tone. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Alexander, truly. As for Nathaniel and Charlotte, I could not care less.”
“She’s a good person,” he stated, sitting on a large, wooden chest next to an old cot and rocking horse, both covered in a layer of dust.
Her nostrils flared, mouth pulling into a grimace. “So I keep being told. Where is Nathaniel? That demon is going to flee the moment she figures out what is happening. He is fortunate she was sleeping when he came up here, but that won’t last, and he can’t restrain her alone.”
“Zachariah and Irene are in the foyer. I believe they’ve already confronted her. They’re almost here. I can hear them.” Alexander pointed at the opening as footsteps pounded from the corridor below, pleading erupting in Charlotte’s voice.
“What are you doing? Nathaniel! It’s me. It’s Charlotte.”
Charlotte’s stomach dropped from inside the mirror as she listened intently, her uncle's soul slowly oppressing her from the side, but she did not budge, even though her energy was quickly waning.
The floorboards groaned under Nathaniel’s weight as he appeared first, his fingers gripping the thrashing arms of the demon, pulling her up until Charlotte could see Zachariah and Irene, both of them holding one of her ankles each.
“Alexander!” Nathaniel barked and he raced to help them, forcing her down onto the ground. “Tie her legs to that ceiling joist.”
Alexander grabbed the ropes Katherine had infused with rosemary and magic, not that it would hold her for long, but with the strength of the four vampires, the demon wasn’t going anywhere.
“Don’t hurt Charlotte’s body,” Nathaniel ordered as they tied her up, keeping their hands on her.
“What are you doing?” the demon pleaded in Charlotte’s soft voice, the tone cracking halfway through.
Zachariah grimaced. “Are you certain it is not her?”
“Yes,” Nathaniel said with a low growl, positioning himself behind her head as she lay on the ground, his hands tight around her head, glaring into her eyes. “What is your name?”
“Charlotte,” the demon crooned. “Your Charlotte.”
“No, what is your true name?”
“I’ve already told you,” she cried, screaming when Nathaniel forced her to face the mirror.
“Then look at your reflection.”
Charlotte gasped when she saw her body and the demon writhing inside of it, pupil-slitted eyes focused on the glass. She snarled, averting her eyes, her lips twisting into a sinister grimace.
Duke jumped beside her, his angry, yellow stare pinned on the demon, his fangs bared.
“I knew it. Now tell me your name!”
She spat in his face, tugging on the herb-infused ropes. “Never.”
Nathaniel’s eyes cut to Katherine’s, who was flicking through a grimoire. “Anything?”
“There’s one part,” she stated, “about The Smiling Woman, but it doesn’t say much, only that she has been trapped in there for centuries.”
It’s Delanie! Charlotte screamed in her mind, but it was no use.
“Tell us, or we’ll make this hurt.”
Her lips twisted into a grin, a low cackle erupting from her lips as she hissed, “I do not fear pain. Like you, I consume it. It strengthens me.” Tilting her head, she added, “Your beloved is gone, Nathaniel, and she is never coming back.”
“Now, Katherine,” Alexander barked.
Charlotte watched as Katherine turned her attention back to the grimoire, before speaking the words in a slow, shaky voice. “Audite me, vires daemoniacae. Relinquite hoc corpus, spiritus impure. Sub potestate noni sanguinis, vobis impero ut corpus quod abstulistis relinquatis.”
A growl erupted from the throat of the demon as the flames grew taller, flickering shadows over the narrow walls.
The demon twisted her head to the side, her neck cracking as her eyes rolled back to reveal the bloodshot whites.
Katherine repeated the words, the low hum of magic pulsing through the ground, until Delanie’s eyes snapped back, her instructive stare boring into Nathaniel’s as she darted her tongue between her teeth with a hiss.
“How does it feel to lose the one you love?” she asked, her voice a mimicry of Charlotte’s. “I will never relent of her body.”
“Fuck you!” he snarled.
Irene grunted as the demon thrashed, wrestling against their hold. “She’s strong.”
“For now,” Nathaniel growled and looked at Katherine. “Keep going.”
“I need her name.”
Charlotte’s fingers gripped the mirror, desperately repeating the name over and over, hoping it could somehow traverse the realms into his mind.
The demon’s voice dipped into a low, hollow tone. “Charlotte is suffering because of you.”
She looked at Katherine, cackling before she taunted, “You do their bidding, even though they will kill you after. I can feel their intentions, their desire to rip out your throat the moment she escapes that prison world.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Alexander warned when blood trickled out of the eyes of the portraits stacked against the wall, the demonic, low distorted laugh echoing around them.
Katherine’s next incantation stumbled a little, but she continued on with a shake of her head.
Exhaustion spread through Charlotte’s body as she watched Nathaniel hiss remarks into her ears, the entities at her back pushing to get close enough that they could come through when it opened.
Her fingers curled into the sides, her energy remaining steady despite the overwhelming desire to give in to their suffocating weight and collapse. Despite having no body, a demon’s energy was unexplainably dense.
“You are so intent on letting the girl out,” the demon said, taunting him as her body writhed. Bloodshot eyes latched onto him. “When you know your love will destroy her. Evil cannot nurture good. You do not deserve love after everything you have done.”
“Enough,” he said, nostrils flaring. “You speak to me with too much familiarity. Who are you?” he yelled, his voice making the rest of them flinch.
“Retribution,” the demon hissed.
It wasn’t true, and Charlotte wished she could tell him how much good he had done for her.
In the moments when she felt herself drowning in grief, he was there, pulling her back with comforting words, bringing clarity to thoughts she didn’t understand.
He showed kindness too, in ways that were unexpected, to his staff, to Duke, to Alexander, even forsaking his own mother to stop her cruelty against the innocent.
“Enough!” Nathaniel yelled, squeezing her head tighter, when Alexander grabbed his arm.
“Don’t,” he warned. “That’s not the demon you’re hurting. Ignore her.”
Delanie. It’s Delanie. Delanie.
Charlotte’s fingers began to slip as she watched Katherine, who continued spilling Latin from her trembling lips.
Her body convulsed as Katherine’s words echoed louder, and the demon let out a loud growl, her neck twisting at a contorted angle as she peered at Katherine with slitted pupils. “You made a mistake in siding with them against me,” she hissed. “Your potion didn’t remove the hex. It transferred it.”
Katherine swallowed hard, the spell dying as she lowered the grimoire, wild-eyed. “No. It removed it.”
“Don’t listen to her lies,” Alexander said. “She’ll say anything to stop this.”
Fangs protruded over the demon’s lips, vying for his wrist.
With a grunt, he pushed Delanie’s head to the side, palm pressed to her cheek, forcing her to look at the mirror.
“Look at what you truly are!” he shouted when she clamped her eyes shut.
“You might have her body, but you will never be free. Look at what you have done to your soul. I might be evil, but I am alive, free to walk this world while you are nothing but a parasite, desperate to hold on to a body for a glimpse of what you lost.”
Leaning down, he hissed into her ear as her eyelids cracked open. “Don’t you see, there is nothing to redeem, no point in trying to become human again. You are too rotten for this world,” he spat. “There is no climbing out of the darkness you created.”
“I am what you made me! You robbed me of the life I deserved. You, the devourer of innocents, will get what is coming to you.”
His muscles tensed, lips falling open as he blinked rapidly. “Delanie?”
The name left his mouth in a rasp, his jaw slacking.
Yes! Charlotte gripped the mirror, her eyes closing as exhaustion flitted through her core. She could feel herself fading. The mirror trembled, its surface distorting and swirling. Charlotte felt the magic surge, rattling the glass, the tremors humming through her fingers.