Haunted (40 page)

“Magic blocking is tough enough. No sense doing it for a type of magic that no one there will ever use.”

“Hmmm. I’d rather have my sorcerer spells, but witch magic is better than nothing. Now, I guess it doesn’t matter what supernatural race these other killers are, if they’re power-free, but I should ask anyway.”

The Fate rattled off the various races in this particular supernatural serial-killers hell. Mostly half-demons, with one necromancer and one werewolf. No sorcerers, which was all I really cared about, in case they were still able to recognize a witch. Bad enough I might have to deal with that problem with Dachev.

Next, the Fates explained how I’d get out of the hell. I couldn’t just walk out or recite a teleport code—it was locked too tight for that. Instead, they’d give me a hellsbane potion. Swallow it, and I’ll be hell-free.

Finally, the Fates wanted me to do some practice runs with the sincerity-testing spell. As anxious as I was to get moving, I knew time in the throne room areas was slowed to a crawl. An hour spent testing the spell could save me a lot of grief later, and it would only take seconds of “real-world” time.

“Give me the spell and I’ll get testing.” I glanced over my shoulder at Kristof. “I could use a partner for that.”

He smiled. “But of course. A magical lie detector. Just what every good relationship needs.”

40

DESPITE KRIS’S JOKE, I DIDN’T USE THE SPELL FOR REVEALING
his deepest, darkest secrets. What would be the point? I knew them already.

Without the obvious ways to test the spell, I had to get inventive.

“Ginger or Mary Ann?” I asked.

He pulled a face. “Neither.”

His eyes stayed blue, which meant he was telling the truth. If he’d lied, they go black. A growing nose would have been more fun, but apparently the spell’s creator hadn’t been properly schooled in fairy tales.

I recast the spell.

“The Rolling Stones or the Beatles?” I asked.

“The Stones, which I’m sure you could have guessed, if you didn’t already know.” He uncrossed his legs, stretched them out, and leaned back against the wall. “See, that’s the problem. If you know the answer, then you’ll know if I lie, even without the spell.”

“Ah, I’ve got one. Would you rather be smart or good-looking?”

He rolled his eyes, but I held up my hand to cut off his answer.

“Hold on,” I said. “There’s a codicil. If you pick smart, you can’t be good-looking. And vice versa.”

He pursed his lips. “Define ‘not good-looking.’”

“Triple paper-bag ugly. But Nobel Prize–winner brilliant. And dumb as a stump, but drop-dead gorgeous.”

He laughed. “You first.”

“Option B. Gorgeous and stupid.”

“Oh, now, that’d fail the test.”

“Try it and see.”

He cast the spell. When I repeated my answer, he leaned forward to look in my eyes, then nearly toppled backward laughing.

“I don’t believe it. You
are
serious. Either that, or my casting is off, and I think that must be it, because I can’t imagine you’d ever pick beauty over brains.”

“No? Think about it. If you pick brains, you’d be smart enough to know exactly how ugly you were. But if you picked beauty, you’d be too dumb to know the difference. I’d rather be happy than miserable. And I’m sure the sex would be better, too. Well, a lot more plentiful at least. Go with option A, and you might as well join the priesthood.”

He shook his head, still chuckling. “Well, I’m sticking with option A. Brains over beauty for me any day.”

His eyes darkened.

I sputtered a laugh. “Liar.”

He sighed. “You got me with the celibacy angle.”

I laughed. He lifted me onto his lap and kissed me.

After a moment, he pulled back slowly. “I need you to promise me something, Eve.”

“Hmm?”

“If things go wrong in there—badly wrong, and you get into a situation you can’t get out of…” He hesitated, then wrapped his hand around mine. “The Fates said if you change your mind, at any point, and you need to become an angel—”

“No.”

He took my chin in his hand and lifted my face to his.

I shook my head. “I’ll find another way, Kris. There’s always another way. I’ll have the hellsbane potion, remember? Anything goes wrong, I gulp that, and I’m home free faster than the Creator could make me an angel.”

“But if you ever
did
get stuck—if that was the only way out, I need to know you’ll take it.” When I hesitated, he stroked his finger across my cheek. “If it did come to that, Eve, we’d find a way. I’d find one for us. For now and forever. I say it and I mean it. I backed down once, and I’ll never do it again.”

“Backed down? You never—”

“I didn’t have any say in your leaving last time, but I had years to fight your decision, twelve years to say ‘I want you back and I don’t care if it means giving up everything else to get you.’ But I never did. Not because I didn’t love you, or I didn’t love you enough, but because I was a coward.”

“You weren’t—”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t want me back. So I told myself that I’d wait, give you time to come to me, and when you didn’t I convinced myself that my fears were well-founded, that you’d only wanted me for who I was and what I could give you…and even that wasn’t worth staying with me for.”

“Kris, I never—”

“I know. Even then, I think I saw that for what it was—self-pitying bullshit. But it made my cowardice easier to justify. Then I came here, and found you, and I knew I was wrong.” He smiled. “Even as you were telling me to go to hell, and trying to send me there with an energy bolt, I knew I’d been wrong. So I vowed I’d get you back, and when I did, I’d make damn sure nothing got in the way again, not your obsession with protecting Savannah, not ghost-world bounty-hunter duty, not even impossibly good-looking angel mentors.”

“But you’re taller.”

He grinned. “See? You did notice.”

I laughed. When I finished, he touched my chin, turning my face to his.

“The point is that I’m not leaving, and no one can make me. No matter what happens, I’ll fight. If you get stuck in there, absolutely stuck, you don’t quit on me, either—you fight, even if it means you need that damned sword to do it.”

I hesitated, then nodded. “I will.”

When I was ready, Trsiel took me away, to escort me into Dachev’s hell. As we walked through the complex, he gave me some tips about Dachev himself, based on his own encounters with him. I drilled him on that, getting everything he knew about Dachev, from concrete facts to behavioral interpretations to general impressions. Then I declared myself ready.

“He’s right through that door,” Trsiel said.

“Door?” I followed his finger to see a narrow door behind me. “He’s through there?”

“His hell is, at least. You’ll have to find Dachev himself. I don’t know what’s in…” He shook his head. “This won’t work. You need more details. Let me try tracking down Katsuo again. He’s been there—”

“Don’t,” I said. “If I start stalling, I won’t stop. If Dachev’s in there, I’ll find him.”

Trsiel nodded. “But be careful. Remember what I said—”

“I know.”

“Don’t forget, the…men down there, they haven’t seen a woman—”

“I know.”

“They can hurt you, Eve. Really hurt you. You have to be—”

“I know.” I reached out and squeezed his hand. “I know, Trsiel.”

He hesitated, as if there was so much more he wanted to say, a hundred more warnings he wanted to impart, but instead he returned the squeeze and, with his free hand, pulled a vial from his pocket.

“Ah, the hellsbane potion,” I said. “Don’t want to forget that.”

“If you did, or if you lost it, we’d send someone after you. You don’t need to worry about that. No matter what happens there, you aren’t trapped. But try not to lose it. Time is slowed in the hells, so we can afford to give you all the time you need to talk to Dachev. That means, though, that if something goes wrong, it could feel like days before we realized it and came to get you out. It—it wouldn’t be a pleasant stay—”

“I have deep pockets,” I said.

“Good. Put this in the deepest. Now, one last thing—or two last…” He shook his head. “Never mind. Just…just…”

“Go,” I said, smiling.

“And be careful.”

“I will,” I said, then turned and opened the door.

41

I STEPPED INTO A SAGE-AND-GOLD MEADOW POLKA-DOTTED
with jewel-toned wildflowers dipping and swaying in a warm summer’s breeze. Overhead, the sun shone from a perfect aquamarine sky, marshmallow clouds drifting past, but never blocking its bright rays. Birds sang from the treetops. A butterfly fluttered past.

“Serial-killer hell, huh?” I muttered. I started turning around. “Trsiel! You sent me to the wrong—”

The door was gone. In its place was a dirt road, lined with tall grass and more wildflowers. The road led to a cluster of picture-perfect stone cottages.

“Trsiel,” I sighed. “When you screw up, you go all the way, don’t you?”

I took the vial of hellsbane potion from my pocket and peered at the clumps of tarlike ooze suspended in a muddy brown liquid. Yummy. I’d really rather not drink this stuff, only to have Trsiel do a mental forehead smack ten seconds later, realize his mistake, and reopen the door. In the meantime, no harm in checking out this village, seeing what kind of afterlife he
had
sent me to.

As I approached the village, I was struck by the stillness of it. Though the birds continued to chirp and trill, not a glimmer of movement came from the collection of tiny houses. I shivered, reminded of some long-forgotten TV movie from the seventies, one of those Cold War nuclear-disaster flicks. After the bomb went off, the camera had panned around a pretty little town, devoid of life, only the cheerful tinkle of wind chimes breaking the silence.

That’s what this looked like. A ghost town. Only not like any real ghost town I’d ever seen. Walk down any street in our world and, even if you happened to arrive at the rare moment when no one was out-of-doors, you saw signs of life everywhere: a folded paperback under a shade tree, a pair of gardening gloves draped over a bush, an empty coffee mug on a porch railing. But here I saw none of that.

I walked past the first pair of houses, gaze tripping from one to the other. The houses stared back with empty eyes, windows with no curtains or blinds, no hanging plants or gaudy sun-catchers…just blank, dead stares.

I counted eight houses on this street, four to a side, perfectly spaced on postage-stamp lawns. There were no side roads, just this street petering out after a hundred feet to either side of the village, one side ending in the meadow, the other in a forest.

I turned to the house on my left and narrowed my eyes to zoom in on the front windows. Nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing. Damn.

I looked around, but the caution was more instinctive than intentional; there was no one here. I headed up the walk. The house sat at ground level, with no front porch or patio, just a gravel path leading to a door flanked with empty gardens. Above each garden was a single window. I tramped across the dirt garden and peered inside the left one. A bedroom…or so I assumed from the furnishings. Make that furnishing—singular. The only thing in the room was a twin-size bed. Not much of a bed, either, just a bare mattress on a frame. Cozy.

I walked to the window on the other side of the front door. A living room–dining room combo, with a sofa, a dinette table, and a single chair. A crumpled throw rug in the corner caught my eye. No, not a rug…bedding. A sheet and a blanket lay near the corner, rumpled into a makeshift sleeping place, like a dog’s bed.

I looked back at the street. If there had been any dogs here, they were long gone. Not just the dogs, but all animals. The ghost world was like most urban areas—not obviously teeming with animal life, but if you looked close enough, you always saw it—a rabbit darting across a lawn, a gopher peeking from a ditch, a dog stretched out on a front stoop. But here there wasn’t so much as a phantom squirrel scampering past. I could still hear the birds, but caught only the occasional glimpse of one, high above in a tree. An empty world. Maybe an afterlife town in the making, awaiting a population spurt, some disaster in the living world. Yet that didn’t explain that nest of bedding…

As I turned back to the house, I thought I saw a face reflected in a window of the house across the street. I swung around, but there was nothing there. Instinctively I tried to sharpen my sight, then swore when it didn’t work. I scanned the two windows, watching for a shadow, a flicker of movement. Nothing.

Where the hell was Trsiel? I reached into my pocket. As my fingers closed around the vial of hellsbane potion, something rustled beside me. I spun to see a big ornamental bush at the corner of the house, a couple of yards away. The breeze whispered through the leaves. Was that what I’d heard? Must have been, but—

A floorboard creaked. My head shot up and I peered into the house. No way I’d hear a floorboard creak through those thick stone walls. So where…? My gaze traveled to the wooden porch on the neighboring house. Empty. I listened, body tense, but I heard nothing. Nothing. Not even the birds. I turned toward the window again.

“Was sie sind?”

I wheeled. A man stood behind me, a small man, no taller than five foot four, and thin, with skin that looked like it had been left out in the sun and shrunk, tanned and leathery, stretched taut against his bones. His face was a flesh-colored skull topped with sparse tufts of iron gray hair. As he studied me, he tilted his head to one side, then the other, the movement jerky, birdlike. His eyes lifted to mine, dull gray disks, like worn metal washers. He stared at me, unblinking, head jerking up and down now, taking me in from head to toe.

“Was sie sind?”
he said. “Answer. Now. What are you?”

I blinked. As the words switched to English, his lips didn’t follow, moving out of sync, like a badly dubbed movie.

At a noise behind me, I glanced over my shoulder and found a man standing in the living room window. Average height, young—no more than early twenties—with dirty-blond hair that flopped over hooded blue eyes. Those eyes traveled over me, then up to mine, and his upper lips curled back to reveal canines filed to points. He ran his tongue over his teeth.