Ethereal Entanglements (2 page)

The figure took a step forward, out of the shadow. Usually when he saw her, he’d smile, sigh, or shake his head. Justin did none of those things. Instead, he scanned her and Enion as he drew his sword, a length of plain, silver steel with an unadorned hilt.

Claire watched him approach, raising his sword and staring at her so hard she expected his eyes to turn into lasers and burn holes through her. “Move,” she whispered to Enion, growing terror crushing her voice.

Enion hesitated and looked back at her, plainly confused.

Justin’s pace sped until he ran at them.

“Move! He’s attacking!”

Enion shifted to the side. Justin slashed and connected with Enion’s leg, throwing a spray of too-bright red into the air. Enion roared in pain and scrambled away.

“Is that the only way you’ll face me, witch? On the back of your pet monster?” Justin spoke with a strange accent, saying things he’d never say.

“It’s not him,” Claire breathed. The thought sent a shiver down her spine. Even though Justin outclassed her, she and Enion might be able to get the better of him through luck or cleverness. But she had no idea what to expect from an unknown thing wearing a Justin suit.

“Courage,” she murmured, reminding herself about the first time she’d faced the Heart of the Palace. He’d only wanted her to prove she wouldn’t give up when things got hard. An Ordeal probably had that turned up to eleven.

Enion jumped away from another slash of not-Justin’s sword. Claire gripped her dagger, took a deep breath, and threw herself off Enion’s back. While she rolled to her feet, her dragon retreated, giving not-Justin a wide berth. With no dragon between them, not-Justin raised his sword, held in both hands, and paused.

“Do you admit to witchcraft?”

Claire raised an eyebrow. Justin would definitely never say that. “Uh, no. I’m a Knight, not a witch.”

Not-Justin sneered. “Prove it.”

The expression and words reminded her of the Heart. “Are you actually Caius? Because you sound like Caius.”

Not-Justin scowled. His facade rippled away, leaving her facing a copy of her father, Mark Terdan. His death in the worst house fire ever, along with the rest of her family, had put her into foster care. She’d faced his Phasm before and knew this had no more in common with her father than a puppet with his features. Despite that, her breath caught. She hadn’t seen him as anything other than a misty ghost for six long years. Not even a picture had survived the flames.

He stood before her in his park ranger uniform, holding the fancy sword she’d always thought fake. “Prove yourself!”

Claire wanted to memorize every line, but not that angry mouth. The worst she’d ever done as a child had only made him sigh with disappointment. Once, he’d let his features flicker with true anger. That time, he left the house and went for a ride on his horse rather than shout or punish her and her little brother.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “It’s not him,” she whispered. But she wanted it to be him as much as she wanted it not to be him. For one more chance to hug him, she would sacrifice anything. Seeing him like this scraped at the scab she’d built inside since his death, letting the hollow, empty feeling bleed out again.

Her father relaxed his stance and lowered his blade. “You have to prove yourself, Pumpkin, or you’ll never really be a Knight.”

Claire squeezed her eyes shut. Everything else faded away and she was ten years old again, holding his hand. “I don’t know how, Daddy. Every time I try—” Hot tears burned her cheeks. “All the Knights say I’m not good enough. Nothing I do here will ever be good enough.”

“You’re not trying, Pumpkin. Never trying always fails.”

She swiped her sleeve across her face, smearing streaks of damp gray dirt across it. Opening her eyes, she stood before her father, ready to let him stab her through the heart. She saw the loose dirt beneath her feet and the green light. Behind her father, Enion moved in slow motion, taking his time to position himself for a stealthy charge from behind.

This thing was not her father. Claire hung her head, ashamed of herself for letting it torture her. She knew better and Caius still got to her. “The Palace is the worst place ever. It’s supposed to be a sanctuary.”

Her father stared at her, his brow furrowed. Enion sprang. Claire threw herself to the side. Dragon and man crashed to the ground, throwing dirt into the air. Enion’s wings and tail thrashed as he wrestled with the feisty spirit. The dragon thumped the spirit into the ground and held him there, roaring at his face.

To get through this, Claire had to kill her father. She averted her eyes from his face. “It’s not him,” she muttered to herself, over and over, while Enion held him down. Dropping to her knees beside them, she held her dagger with one hand and blocked his face out of her sight with the other. “Screw you, Caius,” she spat. Then she stabbed the spirit in the leg.

Her dagger slammed through white mist and into the ground. The spirit crumbled and dissipated. For a moment, Claire stared at the ground, too confused and raw to feel the relief of being right. Then Enion wrapped his wings and neck around her, holding her close while she struggled to force all the pain of the past away. She wiped her nose and tugged half-heartedly at her dagger to free it from the dirt.

“You’re tired,” Enion said. “Need sleep.”

“Yeah.” Her dagger remained stuck. “This place plays dirty. And mean.” She scooped a handful of dirt and threw it, watching the dust fill the air and drift to the ground. “Can’t get much worse than having my dead father look at me like he wants to beat me with a baseball bat, though. Right?”

Enion rubbed his nose against her cheek. “Right.”

“How does that even have anything to do with being a Knight anyway?” Claire wiped her face one more time and gripped her dagger. This time, she wanted it free, so the ground released it. She wiped the blade on her leg and stuck it into its sheath.

“Yeah!”

She rubbed Enion’s nose. For some reason, she’d gotten a chipper cheerleader for a sprite. At the moment, she needed that. “Now what? We’re still here, so there must be more.”

Enion looked around. “More wall smashing?”

“Maybe.” Claire checked the dragon’s leg and found no sign of his injury, proving he also healed normally here. With a slow scan of the room, she noticed a shadowed alcove at the other end. “Is that a way out?”

She climbed onto Enion’s back, and he trotted to the shadow. Claire saw nothing but pitch black. The structure around it seemed like it could have a hallway beyond the darkness, or it could be a recessed wall.

“I guess courage would be plunging into it? Or maybe this is about strength of will. If I want it to be an exit hard enough, it will be.” She shrugged. “Let’s try that. Want it to be an exit, okay?”

Enion narrowed his eyes at the darkness and growled. “Out,” he growled at it.

Claire smiled. “Yeah, you stupid place. Take us out of here.” She patted Enion’s neck as he strode in. Complete darkness enveloped them. She saw nothing of the dragon’s metallic skin, not even a vague shimmer.

“Scary.”

“Yeah.” Claire shivered. This place wanted her off-balance and it succeeded, again and again. “Keep going.”

Enion sped to a trot, then a run. Claire felt his back muscles flex, then their bounding rhythm changed to the smooth soaring of flight. A light breeze ruffled her hair, letting her know they moved at high speed.

Claire flinched away from sudden, bright sunlight and screwed her eyes shut. Enion hissed and flipped in a wingover. Though Claire could tell she ought to fall off his back from the tug of gravity, she didn’t. She opened her eyes. If she stretched out her arms, she could almost touch the gray, stone cliff face they’d narrowly avoided crashing into.

Her dragon pushed off the wall with his claws. They rolled and he flew over a valley covered with green fields and vineyards. After watching the landscape zip past for a few seconds, Claire recognized it. She cranked around to see the cliff and the steep switchback path to the top. In Caius’s memory, preserved in the Palace library, a marble temple stood at the summit. She’d observed this specific memory only a few days ago.

“Why are we here? Go back to the cliff, Enion. Maybe I’m supposed to prove I’m a good little Knight by interfering in this memory and stopping Iulia from breaking the seal.”

He flipped over and flapped hard to return them to the cliff. As she suspected, Caius and Iulia sat at the top, the two Ancient Romans enjoying a picnic on a blanket. Caius’s sprite, a large white horse, stood to the side, grazing on tall grass. If Claire remembered right, Iulia, Claire’s ancient doppelganger and the Knights’ all-time supervillain, had already drugged Caius’s wine and now only waited for him to fall asleep so she could steal his sword.

“Yep. Dive, dragon. We have a seal to save.”

“Without seal breaking, no Enion.” He landed on the edge of the cliff and eyed her.

Claire blinked. “I guess that’s true. I hadn’t thought of that.” She watched Caius laugh at something. Iulia gazed at him. “But this is a test for a Knight, not time travel. I’ve got to do what a true and proper Knight would do, which is to prevent that fake Iulia from breaking that fake seal and never mind the consequences.”

Enion had no brow to raise, but she got the feeling he did it anyway. “Knights are dumb.”

“No argument here. Onward, noble steed, to stop the witch and save the Knight.”

He shook his head and charged. Iulia saw them and dove to the side. Claire threw herself at Caius, rolling them both to the other side. While Enion rounded on Iulia, Claire took advantage of Caius’s drugged reflexes to steal the sword at his side. She jumped to her feet and ran for the cliff edge with the blade.

Compared to the last test, this was easy. Claire glanced back and saw Iulia squirm out of Enion’s grip. Startled into action by an unexpected, incoming witch, Claire threw the sword off the cliff edge. The steel blade flashed in the sunshine as it flipped end over end on its way down.

Iulia hit Claire from behind and knocked them both off the edge.

Chapter 3

Justin

“I’m sure Claire’s fine.” Justin sat at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes and flicking the skins into a bucket on the floor. His wife, Marie, stood at the kitchen counter, cutting carrots. He’d already taken their young daughters over to play with Grandpa. Today, he needed peace to mull over everything that had happened yesterday and last night.

“It sounds like she had a rough day and night, that’s all.” Marie dumped the carrot chunks into a pot on the stove. In another hour, they’d cart all this food to her parents’ house.

“She did.” Justin sighed and wished he felt comfortable telling his wife everything. Guilt weighed his shoulders down over things he’d thought while under the influence of a corrupted Phasm. His dead mentor’s ghost had revealed how much of his abusive father lurked inside him, waiting to be unleashed. Thank goodness he hadn’t acted on most of it.

“If I learned nothing else yesterday,” he said as he tossed a potato into its pot and picked up a new one, “it’s that she and her dragon can take care of themselves.”

“Jay, she’s sixteen. Remember what you were like at sixteen?”

“She’s a girl. Teenage girls aren’t as stupid as teenage boys.”

Marie grinned and stuck a carrot chunk in his mouth. “So true.”

He almost felt bad about deflecting the subject. Almost. Someone knocking on the door saved him from whatever else she might say.

Detective John Avery of the Portland Police stood at his front door in a gray suit and tan trenchcoat. “I finally found your home, no thanks to the Vancouver PD,” Avery said with a sigh. “We need to talk. It’s important.”

“I’ll be a few minutes,” Justin told Marie. He grabbed his emerald green cloak from the mud room to ward off the chill in the late November air.

Avery led him halfway up the path to the clearing for chopping firewood. Another thirty feet along this path, on the same property, lay Marie’s parents’ house. “I was able to smooth things over last time, Justin. Hell, it was mostly my fault you trashed the downtown police station. I know that. I took care of it. Wrongful arrest can clear up a lot of messes.” He crossed his arms and gave Justin a stern glare. “But this crap you pulled yesterday? There’s an animal services guy in critical condition at Providence, a cop who needed surgery, and another cop who had to stay overnight for observation. What the hell happened?”

Justin sat heavily on the stump in the center of the clearing and rubbed his eyes. He should’ve expected this, but it somehow came as a surprise. If anyone would understand, it would be Avery. He’d been a tainted Knight for a few years.

“Kurt died a few weeks ago. I ran into his Phasm.”

Avery narrowed his eyes, then he swore. “You were tainted. How long?”

“About a day and a half.”

“You caused a lot of damage in that short a time.”

“Thanks.” Justin scratched the back of his head. The subject made him want to curl up and hide in a hole. Knights didn’t do that, though. “Claire killed the Phasm.”

“That’s a blessing, I suppose.” Avery blew out a breath, the tension in his shoulders draining with it. “Where is she?”

“At the Palace, sleeping yesterday off.”

Avery nodded and picked up a rock. He tossed it into the woods and listened while it crashed and tumbled through damp leaves. “Tell anyone else about this?”

“No, I came straight home and slept like the dead.”

“I haven’t been back to the Palace yet.” Avery picked up another rock and tossed it. “But more importantly, you’re wanted for assault on a police officer. Because you’ve done a good job branding yourself publicly as a harmless lunatic, and because the officer in question is a friend of mine, I can fix that if you come down and admit to being drunk. A personal apology to the cop would help a great deal. In writing. On nice paper.

“The horse, though, is a problem. You’re her owner and she almost killed someone. Not my area of expertise, but you’ll at least have to hand her over. Odds are good they’ll want to destroy her. If you claim she’s run off, they’ll slap you with a negligence charge and hang aggravated assault around your neck. If they’re feeling tetchy, they’ll root around here to dig up whatever they can.”