The Complete Trilogy: The Books of Conjury #5 Page 7

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said.

  “Well you can be thankful I’ve practiced the correct wards.” He straightened the bottom of his waistcoat. “The demon shan’t trouble you again, I’m fairly certain. Driven off—I felt the shift in the air as he fled. Usually a good sign.”

  “It was the one?”

  “I believe so. The revenants reacted to it instantly—yet this time, they remained firmly under my control. My technique needed some minor adjusting, but it worked. Now to make it permanent, which will require some additional glamouring of these two. But I believe they’ll afterwards be exquisitely tuned to the presence of any demon who might come sniffing around you. You’re welcome, and I think it confirms again that my guesses about your nature are correct. Your natural protection appears sufficient, or has until now—but I think some reinforcement is called for.”

  He slid the watch from his pocket again.

  “If you are in fact a witch—again, I believe we may answer that in the affirmative—there may be some value in your being here. I’m no believer in fate, mind you. But I am a believer in opportunity. We may have one, thrust upon us as it may be.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, for even then my pulse hadn’t returned to normal. How he’d been able to think so quickly through all the ramifications of my circumstance, thinking four steps ahead through the implications it meant to his work, to my well-being, all of it—well, if that wasn’t genius, I wasn’t sure what else it might have been.

  He turned. “So much work to do—but let me give you your first, and perhaps most important, lesson in sorcery: know when you’re nearing a mistake. It’s an instinct that takes years to hone, but there is no more crucial skill. Exhaustion has no place around such beings, and as eager as I am to see what we can do here, all it takes is a single mistake for it to turn fatal in an instant. Can’t have that, can we, Finch?”

  Remembering the people who’d met their ends at the hands of the demon now banished, I nodded in agreement.

  He raised the pocket watch and whispered. Both of the revenants staggered to the barn door, slipping out of the fading shadows of night. Swaine slid the timepiece into his pocket and wiped his hands on his breeches. “And what say you now of sorcery, Finch?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, aside from being overwhelmed. Overwhelmed at having just seen walking corpses. Overwhelmed at feeling magic crash over me. Overwhelmed at all I’d seen, heard, learned. I suspected that wasn’t the answer Swaine was looking for, however. “It’s impressive, sir. And—and genius,” I said, grasping for something positive.

  “Yes, well—once I have considerably more confidence in the disposition of my revenants, we can explore the proper adjectives. Until then, we’ll make do.”

  Sunrise wasn’t far off. No birds joined in a song to greet the day and the silence unnerved me. It all looked so desolate, hardly less frightful than when the night smothered it from my view. I wondered what my future held in store.

  “Sir?”

  “Pardon?” Swaine said, engaged with his watch. He didn’t look up.

  “If—well—about me, sir.” I shifted.

  “Yes?”

  “What about me, sir?”

  “You have somewhere pressing to be?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And you have your pendant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. You must never remove it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is the correct answer. As for the rest, I shall give it some thought.” My questioning of how my fate had become Swaine’s decision to make must have shown on my face. “Now, now—no sour frowns here. Believe me when I tell you I already have enough to think about, thank you very much, and the question of a young witch’s fate isn’t among the additions to that list I was in any fashion keenly hoping for. And unfortunately, I can hardly allow you to stroll off, head full of a rather extensive sense of my work here, ready to reveal every last detail the next time you stumble into trouble, which seems to be your forté. No.”

  He turned back to his watch, winding a nub on the side of it.

  “Listen, Finch—until I can think of a place for you, I’m afraid you’re stuck right here. Make the best of it.”

  7

  Fifty-Nine More Minutes

  I wasn’t about to remain in that horrifying situation, of course. The decision was mine. And so it was when Swaine—exhausted, curt, and complaining about every little thing by mid-morning—announced he needed to sleep, I saw my opportunity. First, however, I had to help him as though I’d been his personal servant for years. Bed-warmer, filled and inserted in his silken sheets (he claimed his skin was too sensitive to sleep within anything but) for precisely one quarter of an hour. Water drawn from the well, stationed at bedside table, one glass, one pitcher, one sprig of mint fetched from a tin in the kitchen. Curtains pulled, every shard of daylight hunted down and eliminated. No noises were to be tolerated. I was to rest in the kitchen until called for, and should further have a meal and tea ready for him within ten minutes of his awakening. As for when that would be––why he could hardly anticipate the hour he would wake until he’d slept. With a final reiteration that I wasn’t to wander, he ordered me from his bed chamber, whereupon I padded downstairs to the kitchen. I waited to see if sleep would claim him, or if he’d stomp around, calling out for me for some final chore to ease him into slumber.

  A glimpse into the actual price of dealing with a genius, I was learning.

  I remained mouse-quiet, listening to the creak and sigh of the manse, wind and sunlight popping a board or window frame here, whispering with a draft there. Resting my eye for just a moment as I leaned back in the lone chair at the pine table—I fell asleep, exhausted.

  No dreams troubled me until I snapped awake hours later, confused and startled, stiff in the neck and my tongue dry as old paper. Sitting up, I saw the sunlight had crawled across the floorboards of the kitchen, the western-facing windows shining. I listened and heard no sounds from above.

  Hurrying, cursing myself for having slept, I quickly scrounged a few days’ worth of supplies—biscuits, a slice of honeycomb wrapped in a sheet of paper, two carrots and a handful of wrinkling peas, still shelled—and put them into an old sack I found and shook free of cobwebs and dried crumbs. Each step I took and each item I gathered sounded cacophonous in the silent manse. I judged that I had at least a few hours of daylight with which I might put distance behind me. Not pausing, I tiptoed along the hallway, over the glamour, and out the door, quietly closing it behind me. With a glance at the barn and stable—and all the madness they contained—I followed the overgrown lane down the hillside, eventually breaking into a sprint and hurrying out of sight of the property.

  The lane bent southward away from the ruins of Salem, the forest soon closing in. My footsteps accompanied the sigh of wind and branch, and the distant murmur of the ocean. Again, I heard no birds. No passage of squirrel, deer, fox, or whatever else might make its way through an afternoon. While I knew little besides London, the oppressive silence around me was queer. I wondered what potent magic had driven off everything that crawled, trod, or flew. And the witches: what of them? Had they been pummeled, strangled, dragged down into earthen graves? Hunted down by ravenous demons? Been turned to stone or wood, never to move again?

  I hurried, hoping to outrun such thoughts. After a while, the path crossed a river, half a dozen paces wide and slow. A plank bridge spanned it. The wind dragged brown leaves across the water. It was at that moment that the skin between my shoulder blades broke out in gooseflesh. Before I let myself grow any more frightened, I stepped onto the bridge, my weight making a loose board thump. A curling reflection of the sun rode the river’s surface. At the far side I stopped, and the lane continued on, empty, edged with stretches of hobblebush and buckeye, fern and hazel.

  That’s when I smelled the ripe stink of decomposition, heavy in the air. A stir of wind brushed the back of my head and something
moved in the shadows beneath the bridge. I stepped back, telling myself that my imagination had taken flight; of course it had, after all I’d seen and heard. But, no—scraps of darkness gathered, seeping out of the empty air and spinning like leaves caught in a whirlwind. The temperature plummeted as the inky darkness grew in height, assuming a ghastly shape of stooped shoulders from which limbs angled queerly, stretching to the ground, trailing into black tendrils. A long shape I took to be a head, sprouting pointed horns in twisting clumps, darkened in the center around five shining orbs of violet light, the sickly color of deep bruises.

  The overwhelming sense of malice nailed my shoes to the ground, stunning me with its ferocity. Swaine’s warnings replayed themselves in my head. The demon—for I had no doubt as to its nature—lifted from the surface of the river. As it moved closer, more shadows gathered around it as though its presence wrung the leftover midnight from the air. A deep throbbing vibrated in my chest, in the soles of my feet, with a pressure in my ears. A terrible fear crashed over me. The paralysis broke, and I turned and fled. I stumbled as I looked over my shoulder, just managing to not fall. The demon followed.

  I ran faster than I’d ever run, and then faster still. So fast that I came upon a pair of riders before they even noticed me.

  The older of the two men wore a gray shirt that strained at the girth of his belly, while his younger companion had a dark vest over a loose, stained shirt, a faded tricorn tipped back on his head.

  I waved my arms. “Help! Please. Help me!” They reined their mounts to stop.

  “What troubles you, lass?” the older one said. The other rider pulled a pistol from beneath the fold of his shirt.

  “It’s coming after me. Please, sirs—we need to leave,” I huffed, winded from running. I kept glancing back, waiting for the sight of the phantasm to loom into view. A twitching along my neck told me the demon neared.

  “Aye, we’ll help thee,” the one with the gun said. He swung off his horse. “Come on, then. Climb up here, and I’ll deal with whatever this be. This road’s not one to wander, miss.”

  I hurried over to his horse. The rider stepped in front of me, quicker than I’d expected, grabbing me by the collar of my dress. I yelped, startled. The barrel of his pistol kissed my temple.

  “I bloody remember you,” he said. “And you’re not going anywhere.”

  I couldn’t breathe. He pressed the gun to my head until I couldn’t lean away any further from it. My insides turned to water.

  “How’s she alive?” the older one said, still on his horse said.

  “Because Flynn and that bald friend of his are idiots,” the one who held me said. He spat. “They’ve probably been searching all night for this one.”

  As he spoke, a jolt of recognition slammed through me—I’d heard that voice. Raining bodies today, lads, he’d called out from the ruined house where I’d nearly been murdered.

  “Told you Flynn’s useless,” the mounted man said.

  The skin on my arms rippled. Without warning, both horses spooked, the nearest rearing up in the air, the other trying to toss its rider.

  “Jesus,” the older man said. He rose in the saddle, yanking the reins, trying to calm his horse. The man pulled the gun from my temple, raising his arm to shield himself from the terrified horse next to us. He dragged me to the side of the lane—much as I tried, I couldn’t tear myself from his grip. The horse kept trying to buck the older man off, while the other horse walked backward, swinging its head back and forth, snorting, eyes rolling back, nostrils flaring.

  Without warning, the shadowy demon burst from the trees and into the older man, sending him flying from the saddle, one boot coming off in the stirrup. He landed with a bone-crunching crash on the lane. Both horses screamed and bolted, smashing into the underbrush that lined the way, disappearing into the trees.

  My skin crawled, my bones and stomach, too.

  The demon—dark as thunderheads—swooped onto the downed man. A horrified yell tore from the man as he dug his heels into the ground and shoved himself back. He didn’t get far. As the shadows enveloped him, frost spread across his face, his chest, his fingers. His shrieks choked off as his head disappeared, smothered. A biting wind howled around branch and trunk. Frost spread across the lane, angling out from where his limbs thrashed.

  The man with the pistol pulled my head back by the hair. “What is this—what have you bloody done?”

  A voice filled the air, speaking strange words. August Swaine stood in the middle of the lane, his hair awry. He wore breeches and a night-shirt, and shoes with no stockings. He held a brilliant silver medallion in his hand. As he approached the demon, the shadows lifted off the heavy-set man and flew at Swaine—but Swaine didn’t slow, didn’t pause, didn’t change his tone of voice. The demon tried to entangle him, gore him, slice him, but couldn’t reach him. The air between him and the demon wavered like water, bright with golden lines of magic. With a crackle, the lines turned bright red, shining like embers—and the demon hurtled through the trees, striking one trunk then another, cracking them both as it flew deeper into the forest.

  The heavy-set man in the lane—now dead—steamed as the ice and frost across his skin warmed in the day’s heat.

  Swaine turned to the man in the hat who held me. “I would advise you to let her go.”

  The ruffian jammed the pistol against my head. “This is your devilry?”

  “Coming from a man holding a gun to the temple of a young woman, I find your choice of words ironic.”

  The man pulled me into the trees. “You want her back—you’ll pay me for her.”

  “You’re in no position to demand much of anything. Release her. Now.”

  “Five crown. And she’s yours.”

  Frost snapped and fractured its way across leaf, blade, and soil, coming from the direction the demon had gone. Reaching for us.

  “He was one of them,” I shouted, all too aware of the barrel of the gun digging into my face. “Where they killed Master Wilkes. Where they tried to kill me.”

  “Liar,” the man said. “Sodding little liar.”

  Our breaths grew visible as the temperature plummeted. I ripped myself from the grip of the man as he stared at the ice crystals spreading across the forest floor.

  “No you don’t,” he said. He swung the pistol to my face and pulled the trigger. The pistol barked and a tongue of flame and smoke jetted from the barrel, not a yard from me. I flinched, expecting to be shot. When the ball didn’t smash into my skull, I opened my eye. The sphere of lead hung in the air, spinning an inch from my face. I watched as a skein of frost covered the ball, just before it dropped to the ground between my feet. The man who’d fired the shot stared at me, the hard look on his face sliding into one of surprise.

  “Jesus bloody—”

  That was as far as he got before the demon hit him from behind. As soon as the warping of the air touched his outstretched hand holding the pistol, the man grunted, jerking his arm back. The pistol—and the hand that held it—fell to the ground. His eyes widened as thin streams of blood spiraled around him as though flying off a potter’s wheel. Shadows wrapped him like ivy, like thorns. He fell—in pieces. As the last slice slapped to the lane, I stared at the heap of shredded bone, organ, cloth, and blood before me, my stomach rising into my throat. The stink of bowels filled the air. The demon reared up.

  Swaine stepped forward, thrusting me out of the way, shouting words that made the air tremble. Again, the demon shot backward, taking branch and bough with it. Swaine watched the destruction—ten yards, twenty, longer until it was out of sight. After a minute, he turned to me. The air was thick with the heavy tang of blood and the cloying stink of offal. I stared at the glistening meat, bone, teeth, and shredded clothes; even the pistol was reduced to slivers of wood and steel, fanned out at my feet.

  “Finch,” Swaine snapped. “Are there others?”

  I lifted my gaze to Swaine. “Demons?”

  “Men.”

&n
bsp; “But—”

  “I will handle the demons. Are there more men?”

  “No. I don’t think so. That might have been all of them.” I thought hard about the house where they’d killed Wilkes. I’d only seen a pair of horses, maybe only the ones I’d just seen bolt.

  “Perhaps you believe me now about the dangers of demons,” he said, pushing his loose hair back from his face. “But if you’re going to make a habit of ignoring what I tell you—then you may as well leave, right now. I’ve hardly been waiting for a fourteen-year-old girl to appear to turn my carefully wrought order into chaos. Witch or not. Capable of brewing tea, or not.” He crossed his arms and nodded. “I don’t need the distraction. I only know so much about witches, in any case: there’s little I can offer on that score, fascinating though it may be. So, go. Just leave. I will see that no infernal entity troubles you for the next hour. I suggest you don’t dawdle.”

  He turned and started back toward the manse. I looked at the lead ball between my feet.

  “You stopped the shot from his pistol,” I called after him. “With magic.”

  “No, with sorcery.” He didn’t turn, he didn’t slow. “By the way, the words you’re looking for are ‘thank’ and ‘you.’”

  “Well I’m sixteen,” I shouted. “Not fourteen.”

  “Bravo for you. Fifty-nine more minutes.”

  I watched him go.

  “And not a word to anyone, Finch,” Swaine called back over his shoulder, not stopping. “Or you’ll wish your end will be as gentle as what you witnessed. My demons are familiar with your scent now, and they can find you anytime I wish them to. Don’t think your witch nature can save you every time. Nor the pendant I gave you. Doubting me is a mistake. And while you’re at it, best avoid good Doctor Rush’s witch-poles—this colony doesn’t have much stomach for witches. Adieu.”

  I watched as he disappeared around a bend in the path, hidden by the unruly boughs and trunks of the forest. My gaze drifted to the remains of the men. However terrifying Swaine’s work and powers, he’d saved my life twice since I’d come into his presence. Moreover, he hadn’t died: drowned, strangled, beheaded, crushed. None of those. He’d walked straight at a demon. Fearless.