Grim Haven (Devilborn Book 1) (18 page)

They seemed to understand, and we talked mostly about food and books—Lydia and I shared a love of reading—until we finished eating. Then Max, with a plate of hand pies and a fresh glass of milk, went back to the living room to watch a movie. Wulf and Jack Nimble walked on either side of him like bodyguards as he left the dining room.

Martha watched me, watching him go. “Did you know him, as a child? Before?”

“Yes,” I said. “He was… more normal, then. But I remember he was always very sweet.”

“He once told me he was frozen, at the age his so-called accident happened,” said Lydia. “I guess he was nine.”

I nodded. “And I was eight. We were both in third grade.”

“His
accident
,” Martha said, with a viciousness I wouldn’t have guessed her capable of. “I’ll tell you what, Amias is just lucky he’s dead. And Madeline Underwood, too. I’d curse the both of them myself, if they weren’t.”

“Amias. Of course.” I closed my eyes, as if I could fend off the obvious. Why hadn’t I connected those dots before? “Of course my father did that to him.”

“Oh, drat, I’m sorry,” said Martha. “I don’t think before I speak, sometimes. But I assumed you knew.”

“I knew it was no car accident,” I said. “But I never found out what really happened.”

“All we’ve ever been able to get out of Max was that he saw something he shouldn’t have, and the devil broke him for it,” said Phineas.

“Balls,” I muttered.

“You’re not going to blame yourself for that too, surely?” Lydia asked.

“Of course not. But it’s not easy knowing I come from… that.”

“Well, Phineas is your family too.” Lydia patted her husband’s shoulder. “And he’s the best man I’ve ever met. His parents are really nice, too.”

I smiled, trying to take comfort in that.

“So,” said Lydia. “What’s up? And don’t be shy about asking questions in front of Martha. She’s a good enough witch to rival Wendy’s Granny.”

“Oh, I don’t know that I’d say
that
,” said Martha, but she sat up straighter, clearly pleased with the compliment.

“All right,” I said. “Cooper told you guys that Cillian Wick wants to use Bristol in a pretty nasty way. I’m working on what you might call a built-in defense system.”

“More place-magic?” Lydia asked.

“Oh, I find this whole idea of place-magic
fascinating
,” said Martha. “I’d never heard of it, until Lydia told me about what happened at the hotel.”

But I shook my head. “What happened at the hotel is exactly how we know place-magic alone won’t do. As Lydia found out the hard way, the Mount Phearson’s brand of sanctuary can’t completely protect us from our enemies. So I had this idea, that maybe I could build on it.”

“With what?” Martha asked.

“Devil-magic, I suppose,” I said with a shrug. “I need to make Bristol a safe haven. And we know something like that’s been done before.”

“You want to make Bristol your sanctuary?” Phineas asked. He didn’t look pleased by the idea, and who could blame him? For all he knew, I was the apple that wasn’t falling far from the tree.

“Not
my
sanctuary,” I assured him. “I want it to be a sanctuary for…” I was about to say
everyone
, but then I thought of the Garden Club, who wanted no protection from Cillian Wick. “For
itself
, I guess. Nobody could harm my father in Bristol. His enemies couldn’t even find him there. I want a deal like that, except for the whole town.”

“Do you think it can work like that?” Phineas asked. “How do you get a place to give shelter to itself?”

“I don’t see why it couldn’t be done,” said Martha. “Amias’s sanctuary spell was attached to a place, as well as a person. Each got something out of it.”

“And each had one end of the bargain to keep up,” Lydia said. She looked intrigued, which gave me confidence. “So you want a similar spell, that would benefit Bristol, but leave out the Satan-wannabe.”

I nodded. “That’s the general idea.”

“But the whole thing is based on an exchange,” said Martha. “You would almost certainly need something to trade. Or at the very least, a sacrifice.”

“I think that probably all depends on exactly how my father worked the magic,” I said. “If I understood his spell, I might be able to modify it to fit what I need. Which is where you guys come in. You broke his sanctuary; you must know how it worked.”

“Well, it wasn’t his spell, for one thing,” Lydia said. “It was Letitia who cast it.”

“Who?”

Lydia reached for the coffee pot, and refilled my mug as she spoke. “Okay, so the witch who brokered the sanctuary deal was the wife of one of the town founders. Letitia Tanner Pierce was her name. She was Amias’s daughter.” She gave me a look that was suddenly slightly alarmed. “That makes her your sister, actually.”

My what?

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Phineas said with a laugh. “Half-sister, obviously, but it’s still funny to think of you having a sister who died two hundred years ago.”

“Yeah,” I said, a little weakly. “Funny.”

“Anyway,” said Lydia, “according to Letitia’s terms, the deal was only good as long as there was a living Tanner—that was Letitia’s maiden name, her mother’s name—in Bristol. It was an insurance policy, to protect her family. So that Amias would never hurt any of them.”

“She was afraid of her own father?” I asked.

“She was smart to be,” Phineas said tightly. “We’re pretty sure he killed her mother.”

“I see.” I took a moment to sip my coffee. I supposed I should be grateful that my own mother had died of natural causes. “So the spell was bound in the blood of this Tanner family. But other than that it was like Martha said, a straight exchange. My father’s sanctuary for Bristol’s prosperity.”

“Right,” agreed Lydia.

“What about the spell itself?” I asked. “Do you know what it involved?”

“You mean like step-by-step instructions?” Lydia shook her head. “That much we couldn’t tell you.”

“No one can, actually,” Phineas added. “After we broke the sanctuary—”

“How?” I interrupted. “How did you break it? I’m assuming you didn’t just go out and kill everyone with Tanner blood.”

“There actually wasn’t any Tanner blood left,” said Lydia. “Which backed your father into a corner, until he found a way to bring the ghost of Letitia’s daughter back to life.”

I looked at Phineas. “The spell you told me about. To give a ghost a new body.”

He nodded. “Lydia broke that spell, banished the ghost, and destroyed the sanctuary for good.”

“At which point, Amias went looking for a new spell,” said Lydia. “Which is how we know there isn’t one.”

“He threatened some of the most talented witches I’ve ever met, trying to force them to recreate the sanctuary spell,” Phineas said. “But they never found an answer.”

“It must have been quite a ritual,” said Martha. “To seal terms like that, to ward off
every
enemy from Amias
forever
? And then to bind up the spell with an entire bloodline. I’ve never seen anything so complicated accomplished with a single spell.”

But I shook my head. “She didn’t bind it up with a bloodline, though. This wasn’t blood magic. It was more like soul magic, or something.”

“I’m not sure I take your meaning,” Martha said.

“Well,
a living Tanner
seems to have meant a living
soul
,” I said. “Otherwise, bringing the ghost back to life wouldn’t have worked.” I looked at Lydia. “You did just say there wasn’t any Tanner blood left, right? It was just her spirit, in a living body.”

“Right, and that’s a good point,” Lydia said.

“It’s interesting,” said Martha, “given how often magic does involve blood.”

I sighed. “Interesting, but I’m not sure it helps me. And frankly, I’m not sure anything will.”

“What makes you say that?” Phineas asked.

“If the most talented witches you’ve ever met couldn’t come up with a sanctuary spell, I don’t see how I can hope to.” My idea seemed foolish now. Presumptuous, even. But at least I’d gotten to see Max.

“I don’t know, you are Letitia’s sister,” said Lydia. “Maybe you think like her. Maybe you’ll see a new angle, or something.”

We spent some time talking over details—rituals Martha knew, ingredients and incantations I might try to build from—until Max came back into the dining room to announce his movie was over.

“Oh, and Jack Nimble needs to be home by seven.” Martha said. “So we’d best be going.” She got up, then gave me a hug when I stood as well. “It was lovely to meet you, Verity.”

“You too,” I said.

“You can come visit us sometime,” Max said. “But you might have to wear a blindfold on the way in, so you won’t see the address.”

I smiled at him. “One way or another, I hope to see you again, Max.”

He nodded, solemn as ever. “You will.”

I sensed that he was right, but the thought was a murky one, tinged in swampy green. Not an illness, I hoped. We’d had more than enough of that.

Phineas walked Martha and Max out, while I helped Lydia clean up the last of the mess.

“Well,” I said when we finished. “I’d probably better start back, too.”

“Not so fast,” Phineas said. I hadn’t heard him come back, but I turned to see him leaning against the kitchen doorframe. “There’s something else we need to talk to you about.”

“We didn’t want to ask you in front of Martha,” Lydia added. She was drying her hands on a dishtowel, looking down so I couldn’t see her face.

But Phineas’s tone—that of a parent about to force an uncomfortable conversation—gave me a decidedly bad feeling.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Please tell me,” Phineas said, “that Cillian Wick doesn’t actually have any sapwood seeds.”

What I’d failed to take into account—probably because I’d only learned about it a week before—was the ability of phantasms to travel easily between worlds.

“This world is our favorite destination, but it’s not our only one,” Phineas said. “We go to all sorts of places. And study them.”

He and I were back in the dining room with more coffee by then, and Lydia had gone to walk the dog. I’d answered most of their questions honestly, admitting that there were enough sapwood seeds in this world to grow a new forest, if the Wicks got a hold of them.

Surely that wasn’t an unforgivable betrayal of Cooper’s secrets, not when Phineas clearly already knew so much.

“So you’ve been to Cooper’s world?” I asked.

“No, I’ve only heard about it from my parents. Which explains why I couldn’t place Cooper when I met him. I knew he wasn’t human, but I didn’t know what he was.”

“So why didn’t you just ask him?”

Phineas shrugged one shoulder. “You guys were being pretty hush-hush about things, and there were other people around. I figured if you wanted to be secretive about Cooper, it wasn’t my place to speak up. But as soon as he said that thing about Wick wanting to use Bristol like a battery, something clicked in my head.”

Lydia came in while he was talking and sat beside her husband, while Wulf promptly threw himself down at her feet and started to snore. “But then of course we got distracted by the car accident, and me getting sick,” she said.

“It was just yesterday, actually, that I finally put it all together and remembered,” said Phineas. “The vitals, the feeders. It was an awful tragedy, when their world was destroyed.”

Lydia looked at him. “You should look up anything you can find on the feeders, when you go home. Know thy enemy, and all that.”

He nodded.

“You’re going home?” I asked.

“Course he is,” said Lydia. “First thing he does when there’s a problem is hit his library.”

“Me, too,” I said with a smile, which Phineas returned.

“Must run in the family,” he said. “I need to look for anything that might help with your spell. I agree with you; if Wick’s got his eye on growing a sapwood forest around Bristol, the town needs protection.”

“That’s nice of you,” I said. “But it’s really not your problem. I don’t want to put you through any more trouble—”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Lydia interrupted. “No offense, but we have friends in Bristol besides you. And if there are feeders setting up shop in this world? That’s kind of everyone’s problem. Or at least, it could become everyone’s problem. From what Phineas has told me, it’s insanely dangerous to give them any kind of foothold here. As in, the-fate-of-mankind-hangs-in-the-balance kind of danger.”

“No pressure, though,” said Phineas with a grin.

“Well, but that’s why we’re going to help her,” said Lydia.

I mumbled my thanks, but I was a bit baffled by these two. From the second I’d met them, they’d taken on my troubles, Cooper’s, Bristol’s, all as if they were their own. And why? Because Max and his spiders had told them I needed help?

Because you’re family.

There was that. And it would take some getting used to. It had been over a decade since I’d had a family.

I still felt guilty for opening up to them so much. Not all of my secrets were my own. I hoped Cooper would understand.

If I ever even see Cooper again.

I stood up and thanked them for their hospitality. “I’d better get back.”

“It’s pretty late,” Lydia said, glancing out the window at the darkening sky. “You wouldn’t rather stay the night? It’s no trouble.”

“Thanks, but Cooper left this morning. I need to see if Wick has been sniffing around looking for him.”

“Be careful,” said Phineas. “If they’ve already figured out he’s gone, they’ll start watching you more closely.”

I nodded. “I wouldn’t want to risk leading Marjory to Max. I won’t come back any time soon.”

“I’ll be in touch with you at the hotel, if I have anything for you,” Phineas said.

Once I was out on the highway, despite my assurances to Lydia that I was fine driving, I kept the music at full volume. Both to keep myself awake, and to drown out all the jumbled, overwhelming thoughts in my head.

I’d inherited a fortune, and a nearly crippling amount of responsibility. For saving my hotel, my hometown. And if Lydia was to be believed, maybe even all of mankind.

I’d found a cousin, fended off a curse, kissed Cooper, and then said goodbye to him.

And I’d found out worse things about my father than even the stories and the rumors and that lovely word
Devilborn
had led me to imagine.

Balls, no wonder I’m so tired.

Lance and Agatha had long since retired by the time I got to the Mount Phearson. I would have to settle for Jamie, who was half-asleep at the desk, his head in his arms. He jumped when I approached, and pretended he’d been reading something.

“Any messages for me?” I asked.

He checked the computer. “Nope.”

“Or… anything weird happen here today or tonight?”

Jamie smiled at that. “It’s the Mount Phearson. There’s always something weird.”

“I mean unusual-weird.”

“No.”

“Seen Marjory Smith around? Or Asher Glass?”

He was looking increasingly curious about this interrogation, but he just shook his head. “No and no.”

Thus reassured, I went to bed and slept for nine straight hours without so much as turning over. I woke up the next morning relatively refreshed, and ready to tackle my sanctuary problem.

First order of business: figure out what that even meant. All I really had was a fairly vague idea that I wanted to do something like what my father had done all those years ago. And an even vaguer idea of how he’d gone about it.

I knew now that it was Letitia—my
sister
Letitia, which was not an easy way to think of a woman who’d lived two centuries ago—and not my father who’d cast the spell. But that didn’t help me with any of the specifics. Was there an incantation? A sacrifice, like Martha had suggested? How had Letitia cast it? How had she sealed it?

She’d bound it to the life of her family, I knew that much. But not their blood, which was unusual.

I also now knew that my father, and some talented witches he’d threatened, had tried to find or recreate the spell after it was broken. I’d gotten the sense from Phineas that they’d devoted considerable resources to the attempt. But they still failed. Which meant I was unlikely to just find the spell in some old book lying around in an attic.

And like I’d said to Phineas, if all those others couldn’t do it, how could I hope to?

I knew I had a lot of power. Even an extraordinary amount.

(Extraordinary. Cooper thinks I’m extraordinary.)

But I was young, and my experience was limited.

Limited to defense.

That much was true. I specialized in protection. And now I owned the Mount Phearson, a place that also specialized in protection. Surely that combination had potential?

Maybe I could start with the hotel, hoping its particular virtues might give me a boost, and once I’d mastered that, work my way outward to the rest of Bristol.

But what would protection even mean? Barring someone from entry? Who? Wicks, specifically, wouldn’t do. They had friends, and they might always make more. A list of names would be impractical.

Anyone without an invitation, then? I thought there was something about the protection afforded by your threshold and hearth that I might be able to tap into. But that would hardly work for a business that relied on strangers being able to access it freely.

Maybe I could set it up so that anyone with ill will or harm in their hearts was kept out. Except that applied to pretty much everyone on the planet. Everyone wished
somebody
ill.

I thought all this over while I had breakfast, took a walk around the grounds, and then, when I was no closer to any answers, a hike in the woods. Eventually I had to face the hard truth that I simply had no idea what I was doing.

For the first time in a long time, I regretted my solitary existence, and wished I had a friend to talk to, to bounce ideas off. Or a mother I could ask for advice.

Lydia and Phineas wanted to help, and maybe Phineas would find something in his library. But I couldn’t count on it. Wendy Thaggard was a skilled witch, but asking for her help would almost certainly mean betraying more of Cooper’s secrets, with no guarantee she’d even have any brilliant ideas. On the other hand, she might hear all about the sapwood seeds from Phineas anyway.

It was while I was considering this that I came to the end of the trail at Greyhill, a ruined (and purportedly haunted) old house whose chief function now was serving as a place for the local high schoolers to drink and have sex. Needless to say, I hadn’t spent any time there when I was a high schooler myself.

I felt a small flare of curiosity about this place I’d always heard about—and even, I’ll confess, occasionally dreamed about—but had never been invited to. I stepped forward for a closer look.

The house itself wasn’t the main hangout, judging by all the debris around a fire pit a short distance away. That made sense; in a town where at least half the inhabitants believed in a devil, rumors of ghosts were likely to be respected.

I walked for a few seconds among the empty beer cans and chip bags, but I didn’t feel any wistfulness for the teenage partying I never got to do. I was too old to be anything but annoyed by the litter, the carelessness. At least, I reflected as I poked aside a leaf with my toe to reveal a condom wrapper, they were practicing safe sex.

I turned my attention to the modestly-sized and mostly-intact stone house. It was crumbling on one side, where the roof had fallen in a bit, and had gaping holes where the doors and windows once were. Everyone said it was haunted, but I’d never heard by whom. I supposed it was too much to hope it would be by a friendly ghost who could give me some tips on sanctuary spells.

As soon as I walked through the ruined threshold, I knew there was nothing friendly—or even neutral—there.

On the surface, it was unremarkable, just a rotting floor and a stone hearth and the smell of rodents and decay. But beneath all that it was pure sadness, pure spite. Pure
wrong
.

Even the feeling that it was haunted was wrong, off somehow. I could see why people said it. There was certainly the impression of something left behind. But it wasn’t quite the same as a restless spirit. Was it place-magic that I was sensing, possibly in its purest and most intense form?

No, that didn’t seem right either. It wasn’t just Greyhill I felt. There was something personal about the energy there. Something human, but not-human at the same time. Ghostly, but different.

And if that sounds completely incoherent, it’s because that’s exactly what my thoughts were. I couldn’t place the feeling, familiar and yet wholly unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

I returned to the hotel unsettled, and with no better an idea of what I was doing. Like my newfound cousin, my first instinct was to look to the library for answers. But I wasn’t even sure what the questions were. There was nothing to look up. I was already familiar with the entire magic section, and I was certain I’d never come across anything there about a sanctuary spell. Although, I supposed it was likely they’d gotten a new book or two, since I’d been away.

Then again, maybe that was the wrong section to focus on. As I walked through the Mount Phearson’s lobby, my eyes went automatically to the fireplace, as they tended to do. But this time I stopped, taking in the small display on the hotel’s history—Colonel Phearson’s estate, its conversion to a hotel by Silas Underwood at the turn of the twentieth century—that I passed every day, but never noticed anymore.

If memory served, the Bristol Public Library offered several volumes on local history. Maybe my sister was there, waiting in some forgotten old book to help me from beyond the grave. Letitia was the only witch I knew of who’d ever worked sanctuary magic successfully. Surely I ought to find out all I could about her.

I decided it was worth a shot, and went to the library that afternoon. As I walked through the doors, I was struck by the familiar smell—paper and, always incongruously, mud—and couldn’t believe it was the first time I’d been there since my return to Bristol. It had, after all, been my own sanctuary as a child. But I supposed I’d been busy, what with all the vitality vampires and curse-casting witches and high school classmates I had to fend off.