“What do you want to do?” Pirate asked. “Because in a minute, I’m going to need to start rolling in the leaves over by that dead thing. I can’t help it. And you’re going to get all mad. And you’re going to give me a bath. I hate baths. But I can’t help it. Haven’t you ever heard of instinct?”
Hells bells.
“Okay, come on,” I said, heading for the path.
He popped his head up, scattering leaves. “We’re going back?”
“There’s nothing out here.” Cripes. “At least it’s nothing I can detect.” I’d never missed my demon slayer intuition more.
“Cheer up,” Pirate said, taking the lead, “at least we know nothing’s gonna eat us this time.”
Small comfort.
We wound back up the path, past all three twists. I kept an eye out, although I didn’t know what I expected to find different this time. Whatever it was, I didn’t see it.
“We missed something,” I said, once we’d reached the dry fountain.
It was the only explanation.
It killed me. We were blowing a big chance here. This could be the break we needed. If only I were in tune enough to see it.
Pirate turned in a circle and sat. “So what are you going to do if we bump into something creepy? Or find one of these markers?”
Hopefully not run for my life.
Something was here. I knew it, even if I couldn’t sense it anymore. It was evil. It had already infected at least one person I cared about, and it wanted me.
I needed to learn more about the threat before I had any hope of discovering exactly what was happening here.
He stood and shook off. “Okay. Well, let’s try another path.”
“That’s not the solution,” I said, a little harsher than I’d intended.
“You got a better plan?” My dog asked, rounding the fountain and taking off down a different trail.
“No,” I said, following. He disappeared around a corner. “Hey,” I said, picking up my pace, “Don’t get too far ahead.”
But Pirate had begun to run. Curse it. His ears flopped, his tongue lolled to the side as he took one corner, dashed hard and took another one.
“Wait!” I stopped cold.
One corner. Two corners.
I took off after him. If I had to guess right, we’d round a third corner—which we did. Before the dead end.
Pirate sat in front of a wall of ivy, exactly like the one we’d broken through. He was panting, happy. “Nothing to see here!” He said, a little too gleefully for my taste.
“Wrong, buddy,” I said, catching my breath, a wave of dread crashing over me.
There was a reason the air felt heavy here, why plants died and no insects screamed. I hadn’t noticed the utter, deeply disturbing silence before, probably because I’d been so consumed by the ghost. Now, it was all I could do not to escape, run and keep going.
“Pirate, we found the third marker. Remember the way it looked back at the observatory? The centerpiece, the six wavy lines coming off it. Three turns each.”
We weren’t looking for it. We were standing on it.
***
I have never gotten out of somewhere so fast in my life. I didn’t even care that a startled Dyonne saw me racing back into the house.
She almost dropped the platter she was rinsing in the sink. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”
I blew past her and barged down the hallway to the sitting room.
“Where’s Rachmort?” Groupings of Dimitri’s relatives looked up from their tea and coffee. I must have missed dinner entirely.
“I’m here,” he said, emerging from the dining room, pipe in hand. “You ran right past me.”
I really was losing my edge. “We need to talk. Somewhere private,” I added glancing at the crowded sitting room, the group playing cards over in the dining room.
He nodded, as if this were not at all unusual. It made me wonder exactly what he did in his normal job.
Meanwhile, Pirate had found Ophelia and her leftovers. I left him to it.
“This way.” Rachmort led me up to the second floor, then down the hallway to a small doorway that led to another, more stark landing.
“You know this house better than I do,” I mumbled as we began to ascend the steep, narrow servant’s stairs.
“My room is up here,” he said, with his trademark good humor.
“We can get you switched.” I was embarrassed my mom did that.
He shook his head. “I asked for it. I like my privacy,” he said, producing a small vial of liquid from his coat pocket.
The hallway was undecorated, the doors stark and old. We stopped at the third door down and Rachmort dabbed a fingertip’s worth of the liquid on the lock. It clicked open and he led us inside.
His room was Spartan, containing only a small bed and a dresser. I didn’t feel comfortable sitting on either one, so I remained standing. “I found the second marker.”
He nodded solemnly. “I thought you would.” He looked at me closely, caging his words. “Dimitri showed me the photo you took of the first marker. I’ve seen it before.”
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” I could tell by the way he was acting. “Don’t sugar-coat it. I need to know what I’m dealing with here.”
He nodded, still watching me. “The markers are very specific calling signs. They’re meant to gather power, to direct it.” He stepped closer, towering over me. “Lizzie, I’m afraid these markers are pathways, designed to enable a demon to cross over.”
Oh my God. “What if we destroy them?” I could take a hatchet to the stone one. Maybe. I didn’t know how I’d level half the garden.
“You’d need to find them all first.”
“Maybe I did,” I said, wildly hoping. Praying.
“There are always three,” Rachmort said. “And if they are drawing planetary power, they will be arranged in a straight line. It would be my guess that the observatory is the first marker.”
“Okay, so the garden is the second. Come to think of it, if we cut a straight line from there, we’d hit the observatory.” Dang. Rachmort really was good.
He placed his glasses on the dresser. “So you have the observatory,” he said, positioning them toward the back. “Then the garden maze,” he said, digging in his pocket and producing a pink-and-green flecked gem the size of a golf ball.
“What is that?”
“Limbo bargaining chip,” he said, dismissing it. “Now where is the third marker?”
“Let me think. We have the herb garden, some crazy statues, the back porch… The house.” A chill prickled through my veins.
Holy Hades.
“It might not be a straight line,” I said, grasping for straws at that point.
“Come,” Rachmort said, leading back out to the stairs, up to another landing, and another. There was a locked door at the top. He took care of it in an instant with his little vial.
“I need to get some of that stuff,” I said, as he applied it to the lock.
“I’ll take you to see RaeRae next time we’re in limbo.”
“Oh, great,” I said, my enthusiasm waning. RaeRae, an otherworldly oddities collector, drove a hard bargain.
We walked out to the center of the parapet. “Dang. You can see everything from here.”
Rachmort pointed. “There’s the observatory.”
It was a small tower among the trees at the back. “There’s the fountain Pirate and I saw.” The rest of the marker was hidden under the trellises, but the center of it lined up perfectly with the observatory.
They were spaced evenly, about fifty yards apart. And fifty yards in, in a straight line from the fountain, was the house.
“We’re standing on top of it,” I said, fighting the urge to flee, to run, to leave and never come back.
Rachmort took me by the shoulders, forced me to look up at him. “You can fix this, Lizzie.”
“Maybe so, but we need to get my family out of here.” Yes, Hillary had picked this evil house. I had no doubt now she’d been compelled into it. She’d told me she had to have it. She didn’t even understand why. Now I knew. Something wanted me here.
“You can’t leave,” Rachmort said, the wind catching his wild gray hair as the sun set behind him. “The demon has a hold on someone. That person can’t leave now or the demon will remain with them. They’ll deteriorate, Lizzie. They’ll lose their soul.”
“So then forty other people have to stay?” They’d all be in equal danger. This was a nightmare.
“You have to make the choice, Lizzie.”
It was crazy. “How can I possibly choose?” I couldn’t.
That’s when it hit me: would I leave if Dimitri were compromised? Never. Grandma? No. One of his new clan members? I was ashamed at the direction my thoughts had taken.
“Okay,” I said, “nobody comes, nobody leaves. I’ll destroy all the markers.”
“At once,” Rachmort said. “You must destroy them all at the same time.”
He had to be kidding. “How am I going to do that?”
“I don’t know. You’re the demon slayer. Once you do that, the demon can no longer use the markers to draw power, and then all you have to do is exorcise the hell spawn.”
Oh, sure. Piece of cake.
I’d figure it out later. “We need to warn everyone,” I said, heading for the stairs.
“No.” Rachmort caught my arm. “You absolutely cannot tell anyone. Not even your fiancé. Whoever is compromised will tip off our target.”
“I’m marrying him in two days and I can’t even tell him this?”
“You can’t even tell your dog.”
I couldn’t believe it. “What if you’re compromised?” I asked.
He shot me an apologetic glance. “Then you’re screwed.”
We tromped down the stairs, my mind swimming with possibilities. I couldn’t imagine whom the demon had targeted, or when they would attack.
“Act as normal as possible,” Rachmort instructed. “Be on your guard. We must not tip off the possessed. Hopefully, we’ll catch him or her during his next attempt on your life.”
“Now doesn’t that make me feel good?”
“This isn’t about you, Lizzie. It’s about finding that marker.”
“I will,” I told him. I didn’t have a choice.
Chapter Fifteen
I searched for Dimitri and found him in his room as he was coming out of the shower. Just my luck, I didn’t even get to appreciate it.
“We need to search the house,” I told him.
He paused before he finished wrapping a towel around his waist. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“I feel great,” I said, knowing neither of us remotely believed that. “Besides, we have bigger problems. What if there are more weapons hidden in the house?”
Like a third marker.
It was a plausible explanation, without telling him anything. Hades, I felt like a jerk.
He watched me, running a hand towel over his hair, spiky wet from the shower. Water droplets clung to the strands at the nape of his neck. God, he was sexy. He also knew I was holding back on him. I could see it in his eyes.
“Let me get dressed,” he said simply, before grabbing a pair of jeans off the end of the bed. Dang. I loved that curve of muscle at his hip, the long sinewy lines of his body. He tugged on a black T-shirt. “Enjoying yourself?”
“Next best thing to undressing you.”
He gave me a saucy grin as he sat on the bed and tugged on a pair of motorcycle boots. “You’re going to pay for that when you’re feeling better.”
I watched as the muscles in his chest and arms worked. “I hope so.” I couldn’t even tell he’d been hurt.
“So you think there’s something dangerous here.” He stood, tucking in his shirt. “Is there a particular place you want to start?”
That was the trick. “I have no real leads. Only a feeling.” The knowledge that we would find the third marker somewhere in the house.
He nodded. “Then let’s start at the top and work our way down.”
We headed for the stairs Rachmort and I had used. He seemed so sure of himself and the direction we were headed. “Wait. Have you been up here before?”
“I was curious,” Dimitri said, opening the door for me. “I saw the towers from the outside, and wanted to see where they led.”
We started climbing. Dimitri and I both liked to explore new places. At the same time, I had my suspicions about his time in the towers. “You were avoiding my mother, weren’t you?”
He grunted. “Name one guy who goes to a bonbon party.”
“You.”
“Not for long.”
Touché. I struggled to keep my breath even. The steep stairs were doing a number on me since the attack. My legs ached, my chest heaved. The adrenaline I’d had while running up with Rachmort was shot. I didn’t need Dimitri to see I was struggling, lest he send me back to bed.
At last, we made it to the top.
Dimitri tried the door to the parapet. “Locked,” he said, giving the handle one final twist.
“It wasn’t before?”
“Not a few days ago, no.” He gave a final glance at the door. “I can fly up and take a look on the parapet if we don’t find anything inside the house.”
“It can wait,” I said. I’d get Rachmort to take me back up, in case Dimitri was compromised.
God, I hated to think of him housing a demon, all because of me. I hated lying to him. Damn, this whole thing was so frustrating.
“Hey,” he said, taking my hand. “What’s that look for?” His lips brushed mine. “If there’s something in this house that can hurt you, we’ll find it.”
“Thanks,” I said, hugging him tight. Hades, I wished I could be sure it wasn’t him hurting me. That would kill him.
His arms wrapped around me lightly, and he patted me on the back. I could tell he was a little confused. Oh, well. He was going to marry me. He’d better get used to it.
I drew back. “Okay, let’s see what we find.” And hope we got lucky.
The start of our search was less productive than I’d hoped, mainly because most of the rooms on this floor had been taken over by Dimitri’s relatives, and the doors were locked.
I was willing to bet there was nothing in the demon slayer handbook about that.