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“You can’t have him!”
I flinch when the demon strikes her, the red marks on her face vivid even through the inky water. I wish I could break through and get to her, but I can’t. I press my fingers helplessly to the ground as he strikes her again, throwing her to the floor.
“He will enter those trials, and he will enter them alone, as are the rules. You cannot stop it, he cannot stop it, not even that half-seraph scum you dally with can stop it.”
Delphine pushes herself up, weak and trembling. She juts her chin out defiantly, scowling up at the parasite even though her bottom lip wobbles. Her mouth opens on a retort, but color and light fracture through the black.
I try to dig my mental claws into the dream, desperate to hold onto it and gain some understanding. But it evaporates between my synapses like a thin mist, replaced instead by the heady scent of bergamot and home.
Chapter Fifty
Bellamy
After a few more sleepless nights of trying to stop Sunday from clawing his own eyeballs out in his sleep, I decide to do something reckless and illegal. It’s not my style, but with no spirit guide to stop me, and Sunday passed out again, I feel like now is the right time to do it.
I extricate myself from his limbs, sliding out of his bed. He wanted to stay in his own bed, and who am I to deny him that small comfort after he fucked me into oblivion?
I wonder if he will be annoyed at me when he realizes I’ve gouged sigils into his floorboards. He hasn’t noticed them yet, but I’m sure he will. Eventually.
Bands of moonlight illuminate the room as I tug on comfy shorts. There’s little I can do about my brightly colored footwear, but the rest of me is easily swallowed by one of Sunday’s oversized hoodies. I pull the hood over my face and slip quietly into the night.
A shroud of gray has enveloped the town, buildings swallowed by the thick blanket of mist. The streetlights are eerie in the quiet dark, making shadows pool in strange, long ribbons as I make my way through the canal district and out the other side.
My feet carry me briskly through the streets, my pulse quickening the closer I get to my destination. Twenty minutes later, I see it.
The pointed arch windows are swathed in red, although I know the building is asleep at this hour. Corner buttresses topped with battlements stretch skyward in gothic prongs, the tips of them disappearing in the heavy fog.
Getting in isn’t a problem. The visceral energy from the Salem Witch Museum fills me, the magic of my ancestors seeking solace in my veins. I can practically hear the stonework whispering to me.
He’s here, he’s here. Ours. Coven.
I have every intention of forcing the door open with my magic, but to my surprise it swings open as soon as my hand touches the wood grain. I stick my head in the door, looking around in case there’s anyone lurking within. Satisfied, I step across the threshold.
It’s almost painful, the flood of magic that enters me. “Holy fuck,” I gasp, clutching at my chest as a near-orgasmic sensation ripples through my body. Salem has a residual level of magic, but the sheer concentration of it in this building takes my breath away.
Taking a few measured breaths until the sensation settles, I move deeper into the museum with my hood still shielding my face. I’m not sure if there are cameras in here, but better to be safe than sorry.
This way. Come.
Turning away from the whispers, I come face to face with a wax figure scene of a witch about to be strung up on the gallows. Pain and sorrow swell inside me, the whispers growing stronger with the flood of emotion.
Don’t look. Not there, here. Come.
Unlike Sunday, I’ve been hearing whispers for most of my teenage and adult life, so they don’t frighten me. I can feel that no harm is meant for me here, that I am being led to something. I’m a spirit witch after all; it makes sense that the spirits of ancestral witches would seek to communicate with me.
I pass more wax scenes, depicting the mass hysteria and accusations, grim history melding into more modern perceptions of the craft. It’s a solemn and thought-provoking place, deeply unsettling in a way. Sunday would probably enjoy it, now that his mind has opened a touch.
The whispers lead me to the very back of the building, to a heavy wrought-iron door that looks very much like it doesn’t want to be disturbed. The thin layer of dust on the doorknob suggests that it hasn’t been, not for some time.
“Is this safe?” I say aloud into the dim space. The sound bounces, echoing and mixing with the whispers.
Death-touched.
The decision is not mine to make. The door swings open with a creak, a gust of impossible wind blowing my hair in wild strands around my head. Nestled within, a book stands on a plinth, illuminated by moonlight and dust motes.
The pages start flicking as I approach, landing on a passage about a young woman bearing the same last name as me, living in a Puritan household. Reading about the strange and alarming behavior of the child makes me feel a little sick. I remember my own childhood. The child depicted in the book was seen to be a victim of witchcraft.
I wonder where along the Parris bloodline we became the very thing we accused.
