Tiddly Jinx (13 page)

She nodded, and her eyes met mine. “I killed them, but that could have been me had Corbin not saved me from the illusion.”

Sebastian cleared his throat. “So, there’s a tear to purgatory.”

I watched her shake off her emotions as well as any elf could. “We have to find it. What’s in there shouldn’t be here.”

“Not much lives up here, so it could have opened anywhere, and this was just the first buffet line they found.” Sebastian glanced around. “I suppose we shouldn’t split up. There could be more.”

Selene shook her head. “You guys know what you’re looking for now. This is our world, not theirs. We should have the upper hand. Finding the tear quickly is the most important thing. Frost and I will go left, you guys go right.”

“Frost is hurt,” I objected. “She won’t be a lot of help.”

Frost turned her icy glare to me. “I can take care of myself.”

“Could have fooled me,” I said, not loving the idea of sending my pregnant wife with a completely useless necromancer. Selene could take care of herself, but still.

“I’ll go with them,” Sy said. “I have the gloves in case Frost needs help and I can watch Selene’s back.”

“And if we find the tear, how will we get the rest of you? We’re beyond the reach of cell towers, I think,” Sebastian said, looking at his phone.

I pulled a flare out of my bag and handed it to Selene. “If you find it, use this.”

She kissed me, digging her fingers into my shirt. “Be careful.”

“You too.” I looked at her one more time, my heart hurting for what she suffered and not being able to protect her from it.

CHENEY AND SEBASTIAN MOVED silently into the woods in the opposite direction as us. I turned to Frost and Sy. We needed to do something about the bleeding or every wendigo in the area would come after us. I opened my mouth to say something, but I stopped, pressing my lips together. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. We would make sure the mountain was clear as well as protect Cheney and Sebastian.

“What?” Sy asked.

I shook my head. “Keep your eyes and ears open.”

Sy frowned at me but didn’t push.

I gripped the cold weapon in my hand a little tighter. “Let’s go.” We headed left, weaving through the trees as silently as we could with a full human with us. “Watch the tops of the trees. That’s how they travel.”

“Probably so they don’t leave tracks.” Frost rolled her eyes when both Sy and I looked at her. “I am a bounty hunter. No matter what you elves think, I can take care of myself. I didn’t know I was dealing with the undead. I’m prepared now.”

“Can’t you sense the undead?” I asked.

“Not always. Sometimes I get feelings, though. Like I know you’re carrying the book,” she nodded at my backpack, “but everything with the wendigo happened too fast.”

“How are you going to close the tear?” Sy asked.

I didn’t answer him. I was going to use the book to close the tear. We didn’t have another choice. Frost wasn’t ready to cast and we couldn’t leave a pathway to the underworld open. Anything could escape—who knew what else had already escaped.

“The book,” Frost said.

“What book?” Sy asked.

Her eyes narrowed and a knowing smile spread her lips. “She’s your cousin, right? Well, your cousin’s carrying around some serious dark magic. One has to wonder where she got an item like that. Not something good people typically stumble upon.”

“Enough,” I said. “We’ll worry about closing it when we find it. Doesn’t matter until then. Shut up and watch for wendigos.”

I led the way through the woods, weaving through the trees trying to cover more ground to attract the monsters, but nothing came. No one spoke for the first couple of hours. Frost stumbled a couple times and I caught her telepathically—each time she glared back at me. The next time she caught a root in the thick, dark part of the forest, I let her fall. She landed with an
oof
. Sy looked away with a big grin.

“How’s Femi?” I asked Sy, ignoring Frost struggling to get up. If she wanted to do it alone, fine.

“I don’t know. She hasn’t been in for a while. I think she’s helping Olivia and Holden.”

“What do they have going on?”

He shrugged. “Whatever it is, I’m sure they can handle it.”

Frost finally struggled to her feet without the use of her arms. “Who are Olivia and Holden?”

“None of your business,” I said without looking at her. “If they need our help, we owe them—”

“They don’t.” He glanced around. “Honestly, Femi shouldn’t be involved either, not that she would listen any better than you. Helping them is like ants declaring war on a foot.”

“Who’s the foot?” I asked.

Sy started walking again. I let Frost go in front of me and I took up the rear. Nothing felt abnormal about the woods. I wasn’t the hunter—Cheney was—but even I could tell it didn’t feel like it did when we first got here.

“What are we even looking for?” Frost knocked a piece of her hair out of her eyes, and the muscles in her back went rigid at the movement.

“I take it we’ll know it when we see it,” Sy said. “You should really let Selene try to heal you.”

“She can’t touch me,” Frost said through gritted teeth.

“Witches normally don’t have to,” he said.

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to beg her to let me help her. If she wanted to suffer then we should let her suffer. “There’s nothing here. The tear isn’t here. We should find Cheney and go home.” It was a feeling more than a fact. If there was a tear in the veil between worlds surely we could sense it.

“Then why are we doing this?” Frost asked, stumbling over another root.

I again didn’t answer. No one likes to be told they’re being used as bait.

“There has to be something here,” said Sy. “Where did those things come from? They sure as hell weren’t here before.”

I nodded. He had a point. “We should ask Corbin.”

Sy rolled his eyes. “Why would we ask a vampire?”

“He knows how to walk out of the underworld without a magical assist. If he can walk through, there must be a tear, which means he would know what we are looking for. That’s why we would ask Corbin.” I walked a couple more steps. “And for that matter, whatever your problem is with vampires, see that it doesn’t extend to Corbin. Without him I wouldn’t be here. As far as I’m concerned he has proven himself.”

Frost scoffed.

“You have something to say?” I snapped.

“Without me you wouldn’t be here either, but that certainly hasn’t earned me any trust, has it?”

“You were paid.” Deep down I knew I was being unfair. I didn’t have a problem with Frost, but for some reason just the sight of her grated on my nerves. Perhaps carrying the book was making me irritable. Not that I was turning into Gollum with his Precious or anything, but something was definitely off. I trudged on, trying to hold my temper and keep my mind focused on finding the tear.

“Hello,” Cheney’s voice called out.

“Over here,” I called back before I remembered how I had hallucinated Corbin in the forest in purgatory. What if this wasn’t real? My head darted back to Sy and Frost. “Did you guys hear that?”

“What?” Sy stepped forward, listening.

I swallowed back dread. How could I have forgotten to warn Cheney and Sebastian about that? ”Cheney.”

He lowered his weapon. “I thought we were under attack. Of course I heard it. Why?”

Cheney and Sebastian stepped into sight. I eyed them carefully, looking for any indication they weren’t themselves.

“Nothing. “ Cheney held his arms out. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Do you sense anything unnatural here?” I asked, my eyes flitting from one person to the next. He shook his head. “Ideas?”

“Teaching Frost about magic is still our best option of finding the Pole. Take her back, and the three of us will stay and see what we can figure out here,” Sebastian said.

Cheney agreed, and Sy tossed me the rubber gloves. I pulled on each glove. “You should talk to Corbin,” I told them, then waved my fingers and grabbed Frost before transporting back to the castle grounds.

We walked to the gardens rather than back inside. Magic didn’t have to be performed outside, but I liked it better like that. I instructed her to sit cross-legged on the ground and to meditate, focusing on her internal energy. I took the book back inside to the safe in Cheney’s office. It was still hard to let it go though I didn’t carry it as long this time. Next I headed to my bathroom and rifled through the closet until I found what I was looking for, then I collected a small bag of magical paraphernalia. As I was headed back out, one of the castle guards kept looking at me out of the side of his eye like he wanted to say something, but didn’t think it was the right time. Cheney and I were different. He knew everyone’s name, but he was also very aware of their position and the difference between him and them. Not that he was uppity with anyone, more that everyone had their role to play and he didn’t question those roles. I went back to the man. Though I couldn’t remember his name, I didn’t feel there was any difference between him and me.

“I’m Selene,” I said and offered him my hand. His eyes widened and he looked from my face to my hand. I was breaking protocol, but I didn’t care.

He finally shook my hand. “Heinrich.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Heinrich. Was there something you wanted to say?”

One corner of his mouth rose. “It may not make a difference to you, but if I were you, I would want to know that you and the Erlking have the full support of the household staff in the election.”

I smiled back. “Of course it matters. Thank you.”

“Some people resist change, but I suspect everything changes whether or not we want it to.”

“I think so, too.”

“Have a good day, Your Highness. If you need anything, let me know.”

I patted his shoulder. “Please call me Selene. You have a good day, too.” I waved as I went back toward the garden.

When I reached Frost, I gasped. The grass beneath her was black and withered, and the blackness was spreading like a plague over the ground.

She opened one eye. “Can I stop getting in touch with my feelings? Just tell me what to do.”

I nodded and tossed her the ointment that would help her heal. She opened it and sniffed, wrinkling her nose. “It will help your arms.”

She dabbed it on the left arm, and her face relaxed almost immediately. She took a much larger scoop and smeared it all over both wounds, then stood up. The dead grass finally caught her eye and her face blanched, her small hand moving to cover her mouth. “Did I do that?”

I didn’t know what to say. Obviously she had done it, but she looked so frightened at the notion that I didn’t want to make her feel worse. “Has that not happened before?”

“No…I normally don’t leave a trail of death behind me.”

“Could it be because you were injured? Maybe you were drawing life from the ground to heal yourself.”

“Maybe,” she said, sounding doubtful and glancing back at the grass. After a moment she looked back up with new determination in her eyes. “So, how do I do this?”

I offered her the bag in my hand. She took it, careful not to touch me.

“Get out the chalk dust.” I sat on the bench, instructing her on making a circle of protection and explaining each step as she went. When the circle was complete and the four corners were represented, it was time for the actual magic. “Stand in the center. Now, you have to take the energy you feel inside of you and transfer it to the circle. You are like the battery that powers the circle.”

“Why exactly am I doing this? Is it part of the other spell?”

I motioned for her to continue. “Just like you did while meditating.”

She frowned, glancing back to the grass.

“Don’t worry about that. This is all just energy. Picture it like a column rising up around you from the chalk that nothing can cross through. Like this.” I stood, focusing my energy around me as I slowly lifted my hands from my sides up over my head, stretching toward the sky and arching my back. The air gathered into a tight circle around me, sparkling and glittering as it shot up into the air.

Frost raised a doubtful eyebrow, but her face settled into concentration as she mimicked my movement. The dust swirled up about six inches, then dropped back to the ground with a puff.

“More energy.
Everything
you feel inside of you. All of the anger, resentment, sadness—use it all. Put everything into the circle.”

Frost dropped her arms but kept her eyes closed and took a couple of deep breaths. This time when she lifted her arms, the white dust lifted and swirled around the circle so fast it was hard to see through it. Piece by piece it turned black, but continued to rise towards the sky. I watched in amazement as the glittering black dust shot toward the heavens. The thought that I shouldn’t be teaching someone magic for the sole purpose of doing dark magic crossed my mind.

Frost smiled inside the circle, her eyes open now. Her features looked eerily distorted through the black sandstorm, and each strand of her white hair lifted and danced around her head like Medusa’s snakes. I took the flask of distilled water from the bag and threw it at the column of black. The water slowed when it hit the swirling dust but it still went through, catching her flat in the chest. All the chalk drifted back to the ground, black and unholy now.