Page 33 of The Filigree Key

A soft green light glowed from my palm. Normally all a witch needed to do was to slip her magical perception—that inner eye—into a crystal and carefully peel back the layers to discover what lay within, if anything. It was the same passive action as looking through a pair of binoculars to spy on the birds enjoying their seeds on a birdfeeder across the yard. Your presence didn’t bother them, nor did your magnified scrutiny. But I knew to expect trouble, or at least resistance, from the wight, hence the magical defense.

The cloch’s structure wasn’t orderly like that of a crystal. Crystals were basically composed of square building blocks, just on a microscopic level, and thus easy to penetrate and navigate. This cloch’s matrix had the same twists and turns of a beehive that hadn’t been given frames to guide the structure of its combs.

In short, a labyrinth.

I was no better than Theseus with a ball of string, except I had to fortify my passage with magic. Despite the incoherent path, I never had to double back.

The wight was guiding me straight to it.

I’d heard its voice the moment I’d slipped my perception into the cloch. At each intersection, I had only to listen to where its voice came through the strongest and turn in that direction.

It was . . . muttering. Maybe humming. But the kind of tune you used to distract yourself from the hardships of your current situation. Much like the von Trapp children used “My Favorite Things” to block out the thunderstorm in The Sound of Music.

The wight reminded me of Shari.

Except Shari didn’t know Gaelic. Or Faerish.

Now on the other side of the cloch’s barrier, I watched as the wight swirled in various shades of gray, muttering and humming. Much like how it was perceived in the physical realm, the wight resembled a vaporous cloud. It bounced off the smooth walls of its prison like a firefly does when caught in a Mason jar.

“Dia dhuit?” I ventured, hoping my measly grasp on Gaelic proved useful. Hello?

The cloud spun. Between one heartbeat and the next, its pale gray vapor condensed into the darkness of a thunderstorm. It was no longer a faceless cloud that lunged for me, but the fanged maw of a wolfhound made of shadow.

A flashback of my battle with the hellhound at the manor all those months ago hit me out of nowhere. The storm, those glowing red eyes, the horror in the library, those claws ripping down my arm—

I screamed, escaping the way I had come in the blink of an eye and closing the way after me. The wolfhound wight slammed against the barrier and dissipated into roiling vapor once more. While it hadn’t been able to pursue me, I still heard its voice inside my head.

“Betrayer!” it had bellowed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“What happened?” Ossian demanded. His grip tightened painfully on my hip and elbow, and he gave me little shake when I didn’t answer immediately.

Excuse me for catching my breath! Apparently I needed more than one, realizing in surprise that over an hour had passed.

“Meadow!”

“It’s pissed, that’s what,” I snapped back. I tried to shake him off—I needed air—but he only tightened against me.

Despite the lock he had on my elbow joint, I’d managed to jerk my hand away from the cloch. He forced it back against the crystal. Inside, the wight swirled angrily, recognizing my touch. “Again,” he ordered. “If you cannot do this, what chance do you have against an Unseelie heart? This is a lamb compared to that lion. Again, Meadow.”

This time, the wolfhound wight was waiting for me.

It railed against its prison, pitting its will against mine for access to the tunnel I’d created.

“Betrayer,” it screamed.

I fortified the cloch, keeping its structure intact against the wight’s assault. My access tunnel through the matrix was the same as a fissure, and one it was determined to exploit. “I’ve betrayed no one.”

“Lies!”

At this rate, there would be no winning it over with affectionate ear scratches. This was a beast I would have to pin down and keep down until I broke its spirit.

“A green witch, a daughter of Nature itself,” it sneered, “and my kin’s carcass on her finger!”

Arcadis’s ring! Grandmother had said it had taken five diamonds to hold the wight’s power. Power—that’s how I’d understood it. Not a pure spirit’s body hacked into five pieces and stored as if in canopic jars. Oh my Green Mother . . ..

“I didn’t slay this creature.” Even my excuse sounded hollow in my ears.