Mother May I (Knight Games Book 4) (12 page)

“Part of her is in you. I feel it. Even now, sitting across from you, I sense her under the surface. I don’t remember the rest. I wish I did. It would make this easier.”

“I know.”

“I believe you, about our history, but Grateful, last night…”

“We moved too fast.”

“No, not that,” he said, surprising me. “What happened to me, when I changed, it was excruciating. It felt wrong, forced. It was torture.” He stared at his hands, a slight tremor forming in the fingers. “I’m afraid of it happening again. I want to be what you need me to be, but I can’t do that again.” He shook his head, then shifted away from me, eyes drifting to the fire.

A lump formed in my throat. It was devastating to see him like this, like the pain of shifting had broken him, and to know I was responsible. I cleared my throat. “I have a theory about what happened.” Actually, it was Julius’s theory, but given the night Rick was having, I kept that nugget of info to myself. “I think Tabetha’s spell wiped out more than your memory. I think you lost a piece of your power. Maybe a piece of our connection. I’m going to find out what’s missing and give it back to you.”

“And then what?”

“And then it shouldn’t hurt anymore when you shift.”

He scrubbed his face with his palms. “Why is this so important to you?” he muttered under his breath.

I crossed to him and placed my hand on his shoulder. Eventually, he lifted his face to mine. “It’s only important to me because I want you to be able to protect yourself. You’re immortal, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be captured, tortured, even torn apart. If something happens to me…”

His eyelids drooped and his head wavered. He was falling asleep sitting up.

“You’re tired,” I said.

He opened his eyes a crack. “I suppose I am. Is this a common problem with too much drink?”

“Very common. Come on.” I helped him from the chair to the bed and tucked him between the sheets. On a whim, I leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “I love you, Rick,” I whispered. “No matter what. Whether or not you can shift.”

He didn’t open his eyes.

* * * * *

Back downstairs, I pulled up a chair across from Polina, who sat alone in a dark corner with a glass of something pale yellow and bubbly. A heavyset black vampire onstage sang “I Put a Spell on You” by Nina Simone. Couples swayed on the dance floor, the night’s earlier fight forgotten for more romantic pursuits.

“Mind if I join you?” I asked.

She motioned her red head toward the chair next to her. “Julius said he needed to take care of some business before we embarked on our quest to find a water witch.”

“Did you ask what kind of business?”

She shook her head and lifted her glass. “Better if I don’t know. I’ve got a real problem trusting that guy, Grateful. I understand involving him is necessary, if we are to have any hope of keeping you alive, but”—she shivered—“he gives me the creeps.” Raising her glass, she took a deep swig.

“What are you drinking?” I asked.

“Champagne. 1926 Dom Perignon. The vampires don’t like it. Charged me six bucks.” She laughed.

“That champagne is priceless.”

“I know!”

I raised my hand to call over the brunette waitress with the fangy overbite. “I’ll have what she’s having.”

“You didn’t come down here to drink. What happened to your caretaker?”

“Asleep. Too much laced blood.”

“Probably a good idea he gets his rest. We need him at his best.”

“That’s what I came down here to talk to you about. I need your help.”

“Helping you unite the elements isn’t enough? You need something else?”

The waitress arrived with my drink, and I took a long swig. “I need to do a spell to find out what happened to Rick after I died in 1698. Julius thinks he didn’t just forget me. He thinks part of my caretaker spell was corrupted by Tabetha’s magic.”

“Do you think he’s right?”

“I’m starting to. When I tried to use my magic mirror with him—the one you made for me—it felt like something was missing. And then last night, when he shifted, it was excruciating for him, almost like he didn’t have enough magic to complete the transition. I had to use my power to help him. There’s something going on. This can’t all be due to his memory loss.”

“Julius should send someone to get your grimoire. You could ask it to show you the day you executed the spell.”

“I thought of that. The problem is that my grimoire can only show me my own experiences. I think what Rick lost happened after I was dead.”

“That would be a very unusual spell. It’s more likely you completed the spell before you died, and then Rick triggered the magic posthumously. You might be able to see that.”

“But I won’t know what I’m missing because I can’t see what I can’t see.”

“True.”

I finished my champagne and decided to go for broke. “I was wondering if you could use your crystal ball to show me what happened to Rick after I died.” I scraped my teeth over my lower lip. I didn’t even know if it was possible, but since the mirror Polina made me could see into the future, I thought it might be possible for her to see into the past.

“Crystal ball won’t work. It’s round, you know, like a planet. It’s more of a logistical tool. You want to travel to another dimension, the ball is your tool.” She pointed at me.

“I understand. I’ll find a way to get to my grimoire and hope for the best.”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t do it, just that I wouldn’t use my crystal ball. A mirror is a much better tool for your purpose.”

“Do you have one with you?”

“A small one. Not big enough to see what you want, but I can make one.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll show you. Come on, we’d better do this before Julius gets back.”

“Why?”

“He kills my vibe.”

“Fair enough. Where should we start?”

Chapter 15

Old Demons

P
olina found the items she needed behind the bar. The bartender wasn’t happy to have her rummaging in his territory, but once I reminded him I was Julius’s special guest, he didn’t deny us. “He’ll be very angry if you’re the reason we can’t complete our duties,” I said. All hail the vampire bond. If I had to be associated with a vampire, I might as well partake of the benefits.

We ended up in a guest room that was barely larger than a closet and contained a single, thankfully empty, guest coffin. Spooky, but private.

“Candles, please,” she said. We sat across from each other, a deep silver tray between us, large enough to sport a Thanksgiving turkey. The candles themselves were already set up around the room. What she wanted was for me to light them.

“Got it.” I took a deep breath and blew. The wicks ignited, one after the other, until the entire room was bathed in candlelight.

“Good. Now I need your ring.”

“My engagement ring?” The bed of blue stones I wore on my finger was my most cherished possession. Rick had given me the ring the first time we were married and every time after that. Multiple lifetimes. Multiple weddings. I couldn’t fathom the idea of losing it. “You won’t, like, melt it down or anything, will you?”

“I won’t do anything that can’t be undone.”

“Hmm.” For some reason, that didn’t make me feel any better. Reluctantly, I offed the ring and handed it to her. She tossed it into the pan where it rolled and clanked.

“I hope this works,” I muttered.

“No guarantees. I’ve never done this, but in theory it’s a simple spell.”

“In theory,” I mumbled, reaching for my ring.

She grasped my hand out of the air and leaned over the tray. “
Amani novato morae
…” she began to chant.

I didn’t understand the spell, but I opened up and allowed the magic in. Our power swirled, weighing down the air. The ring rattled in the pan. In the tempest of magic, the candles flickered, causing shadows to dance across the silver. Polina’s chanting had a meditative quality, and my mind blanked until I simply existed. My consciousness was a boat, bobbing on a sea of words and power. I’m not sure how long she chanted. Time became meaningless, and maybe that was the point.

The silver tray melted, flowing like mercury to thread through and around my ring, stretching and smoothing over until the reflection filled the room with light. And then we were there.

“Burn her! Kill the witch!” a woman in black wool and a white starched collar yelled.

We stood on the edge of an angry crowd. At the center, a beautiful woman with a long dark braid, brown skin, and full red lips struggled against the push and pull of angry hands. Isabella. This was my first incarnation. The townspeople, invoking the demonic spell from
The
Book of Flesh and Bone
, dragged her away from us, up the hill to the church grounds.

I’d experienced this memory once, using my grimoire. Only then, I’d been inside my body looking out. It was worse watching it from this perspective, helpless to change anything. More horrific to be among the crowd. The hatred among them was toxic. It made me want to cover my ears. And they were thin, skeletal, starving. Tortured souls owned by the evil on their lips.

“Stop!” I yelled.

“They can’t hear you,” Polina said. “We are just observers here.”

They forced her against the stake and used a braided cord to bind her. How easy it would have been for her to hover off that stake, had it not been for the spell holding her to her human form. Men pushed through the crowd to pile wood around her feet. I had to look away.

When I did, I saw Rick. At the back of the crowd, he paced, his hands balled into fists, his face lined with tears. There was nothing he could do. He didn’t look any younger than the Rick I knew, only more innocent; the shine in his eyes and the way his full lips parted suggested a younger soul. It was the look of panic and helplessness on his face that broke my heart. He was human, utterly vulnerable, and completely broken.

The crowd parted and Reverend Monk emerged.

“Monk,” Isabella sneered.

Reverend Monk was a man of small stature and the book he carried dwarfed him. I recognized the tome right away,
The
Book of Flesh and Bone
. The pages were made of flayed human skin, the cover layered with the same. The ink contained human blood, and the inlaid design on the spine was not pearl but human teeth. According to legend, it was written by the Devil. I wasn’t sure I believed in a devil, per se, but if there
was
a source of all evil and darkness, it certainly dwelled in that book.

“Finally, justice,” Monk said.

“Justice? You call this justice? Burning an innocent woman without so much as a trial?” Isabella spat.

“Innocent?” Monk laughed. “The fire will prove your innocence.”

“If I burn, I’m innocent, and if I don’t, I’m a witch? That is my trial?”

Monk turned away, and one of the men approached, torch in hand. Isabella panted with fear, eyeing the book in Monk’s hands. As the flames caught and licked up her body, I had to look away again. I couldn’t force myself to watch. The screams were awful, worse when I smelled the burning flesh that used to be mine.

“Don’t turn away, Grateful,” Polina said. “This is the important part.”

I turned back just as Isabella’s left hand, charred and blackened, rose to waist level. Light shot from her fingers straight into Rick as her final words bubbled from her dying lips. “
Caretaker of the light, always
.”

Rick’s body seized, flopping to the ground and contorting in pain. The crowd turned in confusion.

“What’s happening?” a woman cried.

“He is possessed by a demon,” an elderly man chimed in. “The witch’s lover. Burn him.”

It was not Rick’s seizure they should’ve feared. At that moment, an earthquake shook the crowd. Monk’s parishioners screamed and gripped each other, cursing Rick for causing the violent quake. Darkness came on the wind. Thunder. Lightning. The earth split. Hellfire erupted from below. A woman in a full black skirt fell screaming into an open chasm. Reverend Monk burst into flames, dropping the cursed book, and one by one, the entire crowd met their end in fire and brimstone. The ground shifted, rolling their bodies into unmarked graves before closing around them. When the shaking stopped, the entire populace was buried.

All but Rick, who trembled at the base of Monk’s Hill.

The wind picked up, and a giant saber-toothed cat with a forked tail burst from the forest. It scooped up
The
Book of Flesh and Bone
in its teeth. Looking right through me, it returned the way it had come.

“What type of creature was that?” Polina asked.

“Nekomata,” I answered, desperately wishing I could kill the beast before it got away. “Migrant shifters who collect magical objects. He’ll bury that fucker in the empty plot behind us, in what will become the foundation of my house. Caused me a world of pain last year.”

Polina squeezed my hand. “There’s nothing you can do.”

I scowled as the beast’s backside disappeared into the forest, then turned my attention back on Rick. “This is it,” I said. “Something should happen now that completes the transformation and gives Rick his magic.”

Rick was unconscious, twitching from Isabella’s spell. Watching him like this was difficult, curled like a bug in the dirt, the fires of hell burning in places on the hill, and the charred remains of Isabella looking over all of it. Aside from the occasional rustle of wind through overgrown grass, all was quiet.

All at once, the gray sky parted and a column of light descended, burning like a beacon and connecting the heavens and the earth near Rick’s feet. The heat and power coming off the light blew my hair back and warmed my face.

“Do you feel that? That’s not supposed to happen. We’re not really here,” Polina whispered. “What the fuck is that thing?”

The column of light took shape, gathering into a bright silhouette. The creature was humanoid, with flowing rays of light that trailed behind it like I’d never seen before—almost like wings.

“An angel?” I asked Polina, but she was struck dumb by the vision. Tears flowed down her cheeks. I was crying too, overwhelmed by the warmth, love, and light. I thought it must be an angel, but in fact, I had no name for what I was seeing. Humanoid, yes, but entirely made of light. The being placed what amounted to hands on either side of my caretaker’s face.