“To say the least,” Shannon murmured. But she chose an armchair before the fire, which crackled merrily.
I had so many questions I didn’t even know where to begin. First, how did he get modern technology, when he was trapped inside some kind of spell? And how did he use it to contact the outside world? But those issues were more my own curiosity, so I put them aside for the moment. Oh, I’d get satisfaction at some point, but his problems took precedence.
“I’m happy to let you explain why you need us,” I said then.
“I feel as though I owe you a story first. Can I offer a bit of something to take the edge off? Tea and sandwiches, perhaps?”
From Shan’s expression, she was relieved that he
ate
. I didn’t blame her for wondering if we’d stumbled into a ghost story, but things seemed very real here. I nodded, setting Butch on the floor to explore. The dog trotted over to Booke, sniffed him cursorily, and then licked his hand. To my surprise, tears sparkled in his gray eyes as he picked my pet up and stroked his head gently. I could only imagine how lonely he’d been.
“Why don’t you just hold Butch for a minute?” He looked exhausted, trembling with it, and Booke didn’t demur when I added, “If you don’t mind my rummaging in your kitchen, I can fix the food.”
“By all means,” he said quietly.
I supposed it was time to learn all his secrets. When I moved through the cottage, I found the layout of the rooms to be exactly as he’d shown me in our shared dream, even down to the furnishings. It was a little eerie passing through places I’d only seen before in my mind’s eye. Shannon followed me, ostensibly to help, but I think she wanted to stay close to me too. If I passed through another trigger spell, she didn’t want to wind up stuck here alone. Not that I blamed her. After Sheol, I was lucky she was still talking to me. Not only had it been my fault that she was kidnapped, but I’d gone mental due to the latent presence of a demon queen. Now I had a hole in my soul where evil used to be. On top of the pain from losing Chance, I didn’t feel like myself anymore. Even the dream of returning to Mexico and launching my new pawnshop tasted like ashes on my tongue.
In silence, Shannon and I put together a light meal. The mystery remained, but at least we weren’t stranded in an abandoned cottage full of ghosts, rats, and spiders. Frankly, the latter worried me more than the former, as Shannon could command spirits, but rodents and arachnids did as they pleased. When we came back into the sitting room, Booke had his head tilted back, eyes closed, and Butch had settled into the crook of his arm. I let him rest while I prepared my tea with milk and sugar. Shannon and I ate in silence, and as we finished, he straightened in his chair.
“Thank you for that respite. You’d think after so long I would be eager to see people, but it is . . . more difficult than I expected.”
“What is?” I prompted gently.
“Making my deathbed confession.”
“You don’t mean that literally?” Shan asked.
“I’m afraid I do. And it is awful trying to find the words to explain how I came to this pass . . . and what I need from you now.”
If he suggested euthanasia, I was out of here. But I owed it to him to hear him out. So I said, “Don’t worry about framing it. Just tell us.”
“Very well. Long ago, longer than you can credit, I was a vain and foolish young man. I thought I could have anything I wanted . . . without consequence. My father was powerful, steeped in hermetic tradition.”
I nodded. “You mentioned the last part.”
“Did I? He encouraged me in this narcissism, until I became quite intolerable.” He paused, not so I would dispute his claim, but to reflect on some long-ago memory. For a few beats he stared into the fire, and then gathered himself visibly to continue the story. “Eventually, I came across a woman I wanted . . . who would have nothing to do with me.”
Shan eyed him worriedly. “Tell me you didn’t . . . ?”
“No, but that would have been cleaner. I wooed her with expensive presents and minor charms that lowered her resistance. Eventually, I had her.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“1939.”
Eight years before he vanished from the real world. I made a mental note, wondering if it had been shocking for a woman to take a lover during that era. “I don’t see the problem.”
“She was married to my father’s greatest rival.”
Okay, now I see the conflict.
Shan leaned forward, interested by the story. “How long did this go on?”
“Seven years. At first she was a conquest, but to my dismay, I fell in love with her. I tried to get her to leave her husband. I promised her all sorts of things . . . and I considered using magick to suborn her will.”
“Did you?” I asked through a tight throat.
That was one of the darkest sins a practitioner could commit, almost worse than trafficking with demons. If you used your gifts to enslave someone else . . . I shivered at the thought. If Booke had done that, I wasn’t sure I could help him, no matter how much assistance he’d rendered over the years.
He shook his head tiredly. “No. I couldn’t. It became an obsession with me—that I should win her heart fully or not at all.”
“What did she decide?” Shan wanted to know.
“To break with me and stay with her husband. She was with child, you see. And she thought it would be less scandal for a child than a divorce. At the time . . .” His voice trailed off, a helpless, wounded expression on his thin, pale face.
“The baby was yours?” I guessed.
“I suspect so, though in those days there was little way to be sure. The right spell might have told me, I suppose, but she wouldn’t consent to it. The child was her husband’s, she claimed, in the eyes of the law, and she couldn’t see me anymore.”
“I bet you didn’t take that well,” Shannon said.
A half smile quirked one corner of his mouth. “Rather the contrary. But I left her alone, as she asked, while I wallowed in wretchedness.”
“That doesn’t explain how you ended up stuck here.”
“It doesn’t. Ironically, after the child was born, she felt honor-bound to confess all to her husband. He forgave her . . . but he did not forgo vengeance.”
Aha. Now everything makes sense.
“So you’re stuck here because your former lover cleared her conscience at your expense,” Shannon summarized.
“Not as I would have put it, perhaps, but yes.”
“What are the specifics of the curse?” I turned my thoughts to practical matters, as I imagined he wanted help in destroying the spell. At this point, I wasn’t sure why that would bring about his death, but I needed information.
“Yeah, what
is
this place?” Shan added.
“It is the country cottage my father purchased just before the war, where I retreated to lick my wounds after Marlena refused me. It’s also where Donal Macleish confronted me for my sins against him. We . . . fought. I had some mad idea of making her a widow, claiming the child as my own.”
“You lost.” From the state of the house, that much was obvious.
“Yes. The result was the isolation you behold. He set the spell so I could never interfere in another marriage, never touch another woman.”
“But how?” Shannon demanded.
“This place is . . . between,” Booke explained. “Slightly out of step with the real world. Impossible for me to leave, impossible for anyone else to get in.”
“In time or space?” I asked, trying to understand the challenge we faced.
“Both,” he answered, “so far as I can tell. The spell does not respond well to any attempt to meddle with it. Or at least, it didn’t for many years. In the past six months, however, I’ve noticed a decay in its potency.”
I nodded. “No spell can remain intact forever.”
“Not unless it’s tied to a permanent power source.” Booke gestured. “But there are no ley lines here, no pocket of crystals in the earth. Macleish was a powerful practitioner, but he has been dead and buried these many years. His casting wanes.”
Shannon frowned. “But that’s good, right? I mean, you’ll get out soon.”
His expression twisted with melancholy. “Dear Shannon, I was thirty-six when Macleish confined me here. Do the math, my girl.”
I could tell Shan was crunching numbers by the way she looked upward and to the left, chewing on her lower lip. The truth dawned on her around the same time I worked it out. He
looked
sixty or sixty-five, tops. But he’d been trapped in this cottage, counting the solitary years until it was a wonder he hadn’t gone mad.
“You’re one hundred and two,” she breathed. “How is that possible?”
Booke explained, “Time passes at a one for two ratio here. I suspect that’s part of the curse, ensuring I live long enough to despise my own company.”
I considered. “So one day here is two out there?”
“Did Macleish send you to fairyland or something? This is like what happened to that Thomas the Rhymer guy.”
He mustered a smile for Shan’s wit. “It wouldn’t surprise me if a similar spell inspired the original tale.”
“So the curse is crumbling, which means you’ll die when you rejoin the normal time stream. All the years will catch up to you at once.” I thought I understood what he wanted of us now.
Booke shrugged. “It may not be instantaneous, but certainly my days are numbered once the magick fails.”
“You want us to fix the spell?” Shannon asked.
He shook his head, fingers lacing tightly around the bone handle of his teacup. His knuckles burned white. “I want you to crack it. I’ve had enough waiting. I’m beyond tired, and I’m ready for it to end. I am selfish enough, however, that I do not wish to die alone. I don’t want to be an undiscovered skeleton in an abandoned house. I want a proper burial . . . and I trust you to see to it.”
The request hit me like a brick upside the head. His timing couldn’t have been worse; I’d just lost Chance. I wasn’t strong enough to do this for him. My first instinct was to run for the door, but I couldn’t get out, unless I cracked the spell. He didn’t seem strong enough to tweak the parameters just yet, even if I thought he would be inclined to do so.
Shannon set a hand on my arm, soothing. “This sucks,” she said to him. “You’ve hardly lived at all, unless you count those thirty-odd years as a pleasure-seeking asshat.”
“My son died,” he said quietly. “He was only eighteen. His mother wasn’t strong after his birth, and she wasted away. Macleish was alone within a few years of wreaking his vengeance.”
I guessed he’d found out via Internet searches. At this point, I just had to ask. “How do you—”
“Acquire food and modern conveniences?”
Shan looked like she wanted to know too.
“I made a deal with a minor devil. He can’t cross the spell barrier, but he can deliver items inside the house itself. It is easier for me to tweak the spell in order to permit inanimate objects to cross over.”
That was rather elegant, actually.
Shan asked, “You couldn’t summon anything strong enough to break the curse?”
“I have no Solomon blood. Without that surety, it’s dangerous to deal with demonkind. Anything strong enough to smash the magick would also be powerful enough to destroy me or compel me to a situation more dire than this.”
Her face darkened as she remembered her experiences in Sheol; then she gave a jerky nod. Things could always get worse. I respected Booke’s forbearance, since I might well have summoned something just to see an end to the interminable waiting.
I wondered aloud, “Did Macleish think you would starve to death?”
“The magick is sufficient to keep me alive, but I was weak and emaciated when I stumbled over a tome that offered me the name of a bargaining devil.”
“The Birsael,” I supplied. “There are castes of demons.”
Interesting to realize he owed his relative health and safety to a demon like Maury. But my knowledge surprised him. Booke studied me, alert for the first time since our arrival.
“You went to Sheol.” Certainty rang in his plummy voice, no less beautiful for his age. “That’s why I couldn’t raise you in any fashion.”
I nodded. My eyes burned with tears, just from that reference. For a few precious moments, I’d forgotten, absorbed in his troubles, but mine came tumbling down on me like an avalanche. The fact that he wanted me to stand his death watch and handle the funeral arrangements? Inexpressibly painful.
“She went to save me,” Shan said soberly.
Booke’s astute gaze flickered between us, making educated deductions about why our faces already held a funereal cast. “Chance was with you in Mexico, last I heard. Where is he now?”
My throat hurt so badly; I sipped my tea, but it didn’t help. Still, anything to delay saying the words. In the end, Shan said them for me.
“Chance didn’t make it.”
No. He promised me. He said, Even death can’t keep me from you.
It was madness to believe those words, but they were all I had.
“It’s late,” Booke said, seeming to recognize my inability to function. “Perhaps we can continue in the morning?”
That would be four days in the real world. I couldn’t bring myself to care.
He went on, “Things will look brighter then, I’m sure.”
Falling Action
Sleep came in the shape of familiar nightmares.
I couldn’t count the number of times I’d watched Chance die over the past week. To make matters worse, I had to live with the fact that my choices had led me to that dead-end road. I saw Chance’s face; in my sleep, the knife pierced his chest again and again. His blood spilled down the stone ledge, opening a gate for us.
All along, I intended to die, if that was necessary to save Shannon. But it didn’t work out that way. Sometimes no matter how hard you tried there was no good outcome. I would’ve paid any price to see Shannon safe . . . I just didn’t realize it would come down to a choice between my best friend and the man I loved. In all likelihood, I should’ve seen it coming. A trip to Sheol wasn’t a walk in the park—and you didn’t return without dire consequences.
It was still dark when I gave up on sleep. The ticking clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen read 4:45 a.m. Soon, the dawn colors would light the sky; or at least, in the real world, they would. I didn’t know how day and night worked in this tiny pocket universe Donal Macleish had created with a curse.