Carnival of Souls

CHAPTER 13

ADAM TRAVERSED THE TOWN of Franklin with the same caution he’d once learned as a child in The City. The human world was a lot different from the world where he’d been born and spent his formative years. The primary similarity was that both when they lived there and when they’d fled here, he’d known to obey his sister if he wanted to survive. She was a stickler about caution.

That obsession with caution was nowhere as obvious as it was at the main office. If Mallory were a witch, these were the places that would be safest for her. Since she was a daimon, taking her there was dangerous. The tears in her wards from encounters with daimons he could repair — and he had, every time she’d fought daimons — but if she entered any of the offices, the tears would be too extreme to patch. All of the spells he’d woven onto her aura would be stripped away and the daimon nature he’d worked so hard to hide all of these years would become manifest. At best, Mallory would discover what she was and be exposed to the daimons tracking her. At worst, she’d be dead from the witches’ protection spells and wards.

To him, however, the barriers outside the building were not prohibitive. The air felt weighty as he walked, as if he were wading through water, but it didn’t stop him. If Evelyn wanted to stop him, she could. That thick air could become solid, if necessary, but he was there with her permission, so the barrier was nothing more than a reminder that he was entering one of the most protected areas in this world.

Adam opened the door, registering the gentle shock as the spell identified him. Once inside, there were witches aplenty who could deal with any intruder, but it was unlikely that a daimon would be able to get this far, and any human carrying weapons would be detected and stopped at the door.

The pretty young witch at the reception desk smiled at him as he handed over his company ID card. She scanned it, nodded, and handed it back. “She’s in her workroom, ninth floor, third door on the left. Let me know if you need anyone to show you around the offices or the town.”

“No, but thank you.” He smiled politely. He’d been flattered by the openly inviting offers of witches when he was younger, but he was a father and by law still married to Selah. He hadn’t violated that vow ever. To do so would put the validity of his marriage in question — which would then put his paternal claims to Mallory in question. If Mallory’s biological father, or even Selah’s sisters, thought they had grounds to contest his paternal rights, they’d do so in an instant. They didn’t, but there were still daimons who tried to snatch her away, either to curry favor with their ruler or for whatever other political reasons they had. Those threats he handled. Mallory’s birth family was another matter. Marchosias was inflexible in his adherence to the law, so much so that he still used magic in The City to bind contracts. So, unless she was married, Mallory was Adam’s daughter until she was eighteen. That would change if Adam broke his vows to Selah. No witch, or human, was worth endangering Mallory.

Adam walked up the staircase, nodding at those who greeted him. The precautions employed inside were less obvious than those he’d had to get through to enter the building, but he knew that there were spells that could be triggered by the receptionist or by whatever security guard watched from the observation room hidden somewhere in every Stoneleigh-Ross building. The biggest threat in the building, however, was the witch whose attention he now sought.

He made his way to the ninth floor. Only one witch had offices there. Her work space, office, summoning room, and conference rooms were all on this floor. In his prior visits to Franklin, he’d seen a variety of rooms on her floor, but he still had no idea what all secrets she kept hidden here. He was, however, more than a little certain that there was a gateway to The City. He would call her foolish for having such a door on the one level where no one else could go without her explicit consent, but he’d learned decades ago that calling Evelyn foolish was dangerous.

He knocked at the thick steel door at the top of the stairs and waited for her to lower the barrier. She knew he was there, had known when he crossed the first line of defense at Stoneleigh-Ross, but Evelyn demanded adherence to protocol. She considered it another sort of ritual, and even though they had a unique relationship, it didn’t exempt him from the rules.

After a few moments, the steel door swung open, and he walked down the wood-and-stone hall. He stopped outside the third door and asked, “May I enter?”

“You may.” Her voice was as crisp as everything about her. No one had ever accused Evelyn Stoneleigh of being particularly approachable. Like most witches, she looked significantly younger than she was; she also looked far less deadly. Of the hundreds of witches in Stoneleigh-Ross’ divisions, Evelyn had become the second most powerful — and the most feared. When they first fled to this world, the company had been Ross’ creation. He was the only of the truly old witches to have survived the war, and upon their exile to the human world, he’d immediately begun consolidating their power base under his guidance. Evelyn had stayed loyal and steadily climbed the ranks. Her success in the hybridization program not quite two decades ago had been the final step in ascending to a position of power equal only to that of Ross himself. She wasn’t exactly heartless, but she was practical enough, cruel enough, and thorough enough that she did a great mimicry of it. Adam knew better than most how far she’d gone to achieve the status she held and how it had hurt her.

She stood now within a salt-and-blood circle that enclosed a worktable with herbs steeping in vessels on three separate burners. She held a carved bowl in which she was grinding a fourth substance.

“I assume you’re settled,” she said without looking away from the bowl in her hand.

“I am.”

“You know the truth will be better coming from you than him,” she reminded him. “Tell her what she is. Tell her what she is meant to do. Stop patching her memory.”

Adam ignored her comment.

She took two small vials of blood and tapped them into the ground powder in the bowl. Her attention was on the contents of her potion, but Adam knew that she was still acutely aware of where he was, as well as any number of other details that were fed to her silently from various sources in the building.

The blood circle shimmered as she spoke over the contents in her bowl. The salt crystals absorbed the blood even as the three simmering liquids all began steaming simultaneously. Evelyn didn’t glance his way as she reached into two of the jars. Flames licked up her wrists, and pain flashed on her face.

Silently she drew her hands out and added the contents to the bowl where she’d already added the blood. The fire peeled from her flesh, leaving her skin unmarked. Then, with both hands, she lifted the bowl and poured the entire mixture into the third, still-steaming, vessel. As she did so, the fire retracted into the mixture, held there by her will and magic.

“Sacrificial magic, Evelyn?”

She smiled tightly as she lifted her gaze from the now-mixed potion. “A necessary evil sometimes, Adam, or have you stopped using it?”

“No, but I didn’t think you were still practicing it. Don’t your lackeys work the spells that require pain?” Adam wouldn’t accuse her of weakness, but he wouldn’t expect her to take pain if she didn’t need to do so. That was the privilege of leadership: there were others who could do the unpleasant things.

“Some things are too important to trust to anyone else,” she murmured. Absently she tucked her hair behind her ears, even though it was already tightly tied back in a twist. As a boy, he’d fallen asleep clutching that hair like it was a security blanket. Then, he’d been a child plagued by nightmares of the deaths he’d seen, and she’d been the one who sat beside him in the dark while he wept. Until Mallory, Evelyn had been his entire family; until Mallory, he’d loved Evelyn with a devotion that bordered on zealotry. Now that he had a daughter who could be hurt by Evelyn’s desire for vengeance, he and Evelyn had a distance between them that often felt insurmountable. That didn’t mean that he missed her any less.

As Evelyn crossed the circle, another wash of pain made her hesitate. The salt flashed crimson as new blood was added to it. No mark was visible on her skin, but both the pain and the blood had been drawn from her flesh.

Adam stepped up to the edge of the circle and wrapped an arm around her waist. Before she could object to his support, he told her, “No one will see.”

“You forget yourself, little brother,” she chided, but she leaned on him all the same.

“I do,” he agreed. “I’m sure you can lecture me on it later. It wouldn’t do to admit to needing help for even a moment, not the indefatigable Evelyn Stoneleigh, conqueror of worlds and executive extraordinaire.”

“You’re a nuisance.”

Adam laughed, and then he led her to the door. “Shall we catch up a little while that cooks?” he suggested.

“I already know everything you’ll tell me,” she reminded him, not unkindly.

“Let’s pretend you don’t spy on me.” Adam reached out to open the door, but she had already opened it with a quietly whispered word. He frowned at her stubbornness, but didn’t bother commenting.

“She’s seventeen,” Evelyn said, beginning the discussion they both knew he’d come here to have. “It’s time for her to be put to use.”

“I can’t send her back. I know we agreed, but… she’s my daughter now. That world isn’t any place for her.” Adam accompanied Evelyn down the hall and stopped at the double doors that had swung open as they’d approached.

“Do you think they won’t come in force next year?”

“I know they will.” Adam had spent the last several years trying to think of a way to keep Mallory safe. Until she was eighteen, she was his child by law, but too soon she’d be an adult by both daimon and witches’ law. He’d been preparing her as best he could, teaching her how to fight and use weapons, knowing that if he found no other solution, those skills would become essential. He hoped that she’d stay with him, continue to run, but once she discovered that he’d adjusted her memory, spelled her to hide her nature, and prevented her from disobeying or questioning him, he suspected she wouldn’t want anything to do with him until her temper cooled.

And even if she did keep running, she wouldn’t be able to escape the throngs of daimons who would come for her once she was of age. Their greatest defense to date had been that no one had the right to take her from him. If Marchosias stole Mallory away before she was an adult, it would give Evelyn justification to attack him. Unfortunately, dangling Mallory as bait to get that justification was not outside the realm of possibility with Evelyn.

“So you’re desperate enough now to bring her near me?” Evelyn asked as they settled on the stiff chairs in her meeting room.

“It’s a calculated risk — she will be vulnerable in a year unless you help me. I have to believe that you won’t alienate me to gain one year’s time.”

Evelyn smiled, neither confirming nor denying his theory, and Adam wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed that there were no illusions between them. He liked to believe that he could ask her directly if she meant to cause harm to them, but he knew her well enough to know that her answer would be fluid. There was no person or ideal that she’d put before her vendetta.

“If you want my help, you have only to ask,” Evelyn said.

“What I want is for my daughter never to know Marchosias exists, never to know what she is, never to go to The City….”

Evelyn laughed. “I work spells, Adam, not miracles.”

“I want her to access her daimon side completely without her realizing what she is,” he said. “Let her think it’s witch heritage that she’s just developing. We can pretend her mother was one of us… or even that her unknown father is.”

“That’s not easy,” Evelyn began.

“I don’t have any other ideas left. She has strengths she can’t use without tearing away the spells that hide her nature, and I know there was a daimon who crossed the barrier of the last house — one she didn’t fight.” He hadn’t mentioned it to Mallory since they were leaving anyhow, but the terror he’d felt that night reaffirmed his belief that going to Evelyn was the right choice — the only choice, really.

Evelyn Stoneleigh might claim she was unable to work miracles, but aside from Ross himself, Evelyn was the closest thing there was to a miracle worker in the two worlds. Unfortunately, she was also aware of her worth, and his being family didn’t negate that knowledge.

“I could give her what she needs to face him,” she admitted, “if you meet my terms.”

“Name your price.”

“Vow that you’ll obey when I demand it of you,” she said.

Adam paused. “On the condition that it doesn’t injure, entrap, or kill Mallory, I will.”

Evelyn withdrew a short silver knife and held it out. He knew his sister loved him, but she’d loved their parents and brother too. She was old enough that she remembered them in a way he couldn’t. Their deaths fueled a hatred of daimons that he’d surrendered years ago.

Because of Mallory.

As he accepted the blade, he looked at the only person he loved aside from his daughter. He cut his palm crosswise, and then he held both the blade and his bleeding hand out to her and promised, “You have my vow.”