House of Chaos Read online

  Vel, now standing outside the circle, coughed. The wolf shifters also sniffed, Gideon rubbing his nose and Adam backing away.

  It was so blistering in here, thin cotton of my T-shirt was stuck to my back in sweat. Gazing into flames did not help.

  I rested my palms on my knees, looking into the triangle for grounding and focus. I saw my mom at work, talking about the craft, then the stones I used to have all over shelves and desk and bedside table, Dad telling about the properties of each mineral. He’d worked in banking, had a love of history, but this was his hidden passion. The spells, techniques, and strategies they had developed over years were unique to them. Neither had the curse but they’d been really good at this anyway.

  I sat up straight, pulling down to the ground for calming energy, calling on my mom, channeling her magic and purpose as much as I could imagine.

  Long, deep breath in through my nose, shut my eyes. Two more like it—long in, slow, deep, out. Count slowly to three, three times on each one. Feeling the magic beginning to crackle over my skin. Three candles burning brighter.

  It didn’t matter that I didn’t know the exact spells or details. I could do this. Wade could help somehow. And maybe I would try the polite approach with Vel.

  I opened my eyes, gazing into three little flames on the floor.

  Gideon and Adam had moved beyond the light. When I glanced up, they weren’t there. The archway also was empty. Heart hammering, I looked around. Vel was gone. From right beside me, Wade was also gone. I sat alone in the middle of the dark room, the flames of three candles flickering violently before me, nothing but blackness all around.

  3

  “Wade!” I almost shouted the word, yet it came out strangled, terrified as I recoiled, so scared I felt sick, stomach leaping into my throat and regretting the two boxes of reheated Devil Wings I’d had for supper.

  Something grabbed my arm. I screamed, leaping back, kicking out, casting up a blaze of green and white light that exploded from my hands in a splash of energy that was good for nothing—only panic and the need to escape.

  “Ripley! What—? Christ!” Wade hit the floor, dodging the magic. Right there beside me.

  I scrambled away like a crab and bang, hit someone else.

  Vel jumped aside, narrowly avoiding being plowed to the ground by the blow but catching himself on light feet. I was the one who fell, up to a sitting position in another second, looking wildly around as Wade said my name, Gideon hurried over, and the three flashlight beams became clear again.

  “You’re all here,” I gasped, shaking.

  Even Fulco, staring with blank eyes from the dark archway, was just where he’d been.

  Gideon bent to grab my shoulder. “Ripley? What is it? What did you see?”

  “You… Gone,” I panted, almost tearful. “You were all gone, and I was alone in the room when I opened my eyes. But you…”

  “Haven’t budged worth a shaved whisker,” Adam said.

  “It was just a trick, Ripley.” Wade was a bit winded after his near-miss from my lashing out.

  “Maybe keep your eyes open next time?” Gideon advised, tipping his head, frowning at me with concern but not frustration.

  “At least you cast to protect yourself before beginning.” Fulco sounded bored.

  “I’m fine.” I shook Gideon off, face burning even more by the time I returned to sitting in front of the candles. They’d already been staring expectantly at me. Now the stares were so much worse, I felt them beating on me with the range of feelings from worried to amused to contemptuous.

  Wade offered his hand. I wanted to say, “Whatever,” and keep going and tell them all to find someone else for their evening’s entertainment. But not as much as I wanted them here.

  I took his hand and held on while I started over with the focus and grounding and breaths and channeling Mom and Dad—now having to work a lot harder at it.

  “Will everyone sit and keep still. Anywhere in the room. Just be still so you don’t disturb the air.”

  Fulco didn’t move, but he was so far away it shouldn’t matter. The three shifters seated themselves. Gideon and Adam in front, facing Wade and me in the center of the circle, Vel behind and a bit to my left. I held Wade’s left hand in my right while he still held a flashlight in his right, aimed at the ceiling to reflect around us.

  Count to three, three times, each breath in, then out, call up magic, think of the energy and purpose. This time, I never shut my eyes.

  The room became still, the flames settling to gentle, smooth glows like a photo of a lit candle.

  I knew a bit about detection, and general energy and sending something out there to seek a response. It was sort of a spirit phone call. Send out magic, see if anything came back, watch the candles. We already knew something was here, aware of us, and didn’t care for us staying. Sinister as it seemed, that was a good start. I just needed a way to communicate that we wanted to help, wanted to finish the journey with it to cross over, and open some sort of communication with magic energy and candlelight. Then … just … open a rift? Send it off? Somehow.

  I opened my mouth, ready to talk this out—the way people talk while using sign language, cover all the angles. But I didn’t get as far as saying anything. I’d just taken a last long breath, pulse settled down, when someone knocked on the door.

  4

  No one moved. The candles did not flicker.

  It came again: knock-knock-knock.

  Perfectly normal, daylight sort of sound. Like a neighbor had popped by to borrow an egg or leave mail that had been put in the wrong box.

  I would have asked if anyone else could hear it, but there was no need.

  At the first sound, Wade’s hand in mine had become a death grip. While the two wolves in their “skin” before me had stiffened, turning their heads to look at the archway where Fulco still stood, with the front door beyond that.

  “I guess…” I whispered, heart in my throat, desperately wishing my parents were here—not in spirit but doing this themselves like they were supposed to. “We keep going.” Voice a mere breath yet rattling anyway. I glanced at Wade.

  “Yeah.” He nodded, throat working as he swallowed. “It’s just a distraction…”

  “Sure sounds like solid folks,” Adam said softly. “Felt the vibration of it.”

  “Does anyone know we’re in here?” Gideon asked.

  I shook my head. “We’ve had the lights on. A neighbor might be in charge of watching out for the place. Maybe they called the cops?”

  “Not cops,” Vel said—disdainful. “They announce themselves.”

  “Not always,” I said. “If they’re coming to deliver bad news on TV they just ring the bell and stand there and you don’t know until you open the door that something terrible has happened.”

  “Right…” Vel drawled. “Could be they’re here to deliver terrible news…”

  Knock-knock-knock. Louder and more urgent.

  “Reckon someone saw the lights and stopped over?” Adam asked.

  “It’s no one.” I tried to convince myself with them. “You guys would have heard a car—you hear everything.”

  “That’s right,” Gideon said. “Not a whimper.”

  “Fulco,” I said, “can you look out the window? Anyone real on the porch would have a light.”

  Adam stood. “Maybe shouldn’t split up.”

  “Let him go. I don’t think he’s effected by illusions the way living flesh is.”

  Fulco, who’d clearly heard the knocking, turning his head, though otherwise unmoved. Only grudgingly shifted his carcass from the archway, he walked out of sight.

  Adam took a couple steps to watch into the next room, where Fulco presumably walked to the window.

  Why couldn’t we have come to another vampire house? As creepy as the last place had been, at least there was something to punch, or blow the head off of as the case may be. It took skills to hunt undead but it didn’t exactly require a college degree. Hunting
spirits, or far more terrible, demons, needed finesse, powerful magic, know-how, and a good team. You had to watch out for each other, know their tricks. I had some ideas about the tricks. But how far would that get this team? I was the one who had asked them here. Even if I hadn’t already been feeling something more than team loyalty for Wade and Gideon in particular, I still had to look out for them. What happened if I couldn’t look after us had already been demonstrated by my parents.

  I scrambled to my feet. “You know what?” Pulling at Wade’s hand while he only looked up in bewilderment, still seated. “We shouldn’t be here. I don’t know why he thought it was a good idea to bring us to a place with a bad spirit reputation straight out of the gate, but they obviously don’t want guests. This is the second time we’ve been called to the door. So let’s go.”

  “We can at least try.” Wade followed me. “We haven’t even started.”

  “They don’t want us to start, obviously, and, you know…” With a big shrug. “That’s okay. It’s their space. We’ll try some other places first. Vampires first. We’re supposed to be rounding them up. That’s fine. We didn’t need to come out here.” I was speaking too fast, babbling.

  Wade shifted the light to squeeze my arm, facing me. “This might be a learn-as-you-go sort of thing. And now’s the chance to learn something…? If you’re sure, though, we should go.”

  The front door opened.

  I turned to the archway. Gideon got to his feet. Slow and tense, Vel also stood to my left.

  “Adam?” I whispered.

  Adam shook his head. “Can’t see him. He stepped into the foyer.”

  We didn’t hear the cops or a neighbor. Only silence.

  My lungs felt as big as daisy petals, the sweat pouring down my back like a faucet, hand tight on Wade’s.

  “Fulco?” Adam asked, taking a step. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t even speak in a normal conversation voice. All the same, it seemed both the word and the step boomed through darkness.

  Vel crept to the archway to peer out.

  I shook myself, swallowed, and looked down at the candles. Wade was right. If I didn’t fight now, when? Maybe we should go, but … before we’d even tried? That was a real failure.

  I faced the triangle of candles, pulled my hand free from Wade’s, held both over the flames, sent out energy for detection and clarity, and said, “We’ve come to help you crossover and find peace in the afterlife. Show us you understand and we will find a way to help you and complete your journey from this lifetime.”

  In the same instant that the front door slammed, the candles went out.

  5

  “Oh, shit,” Wade whispered.

  My thoughts exactly. We still had the flashlight, but I eased backward, away from the smoking candles, as if groping in the dark. She’d talked about flickers and growing and shrinking flames, and finding a rhythm when communicating with spirits. She’d never mentioned the candles going out.

  All the same, there was no mistaking the message. Some spirits didn’t want to go. To some…

  “Might have sounded like a threat?” Gideon said just as quietly. “Sending folks to cross over?”

  “Yeah.” I looked up. “Fulco?”

  “Right there.” Adam said. “I could already see him heading back when the door closed.”

  “Fulco?” I repeated a bit louder, needing him to answer—know it was him and not Adam seeing things.

  “No one there,” he said with usual cold condescension. “Shocking.”

  I let out a breath as he reached the archway and Vel hissed at him. Fulco ignored him.

  “We’re leaving,” I told him. “This is obviously a tricky situation. I’d hoped to jump straight in but it would be smarter to start small. Let’s focus on the vampires in town at first.”

  He gave me a blank stare. “I thought your intention was purging Midway City. If you were seeking the wading pool, why come to this town at all?”

  “Doesn’t have to be in this order,” I said.

  “Yet you may find that a house has a memory. Now that you are here…” he trailed off delicately, looking around as if taking in fine art on the walls.

  Wade glanced at me. “You said we shouldn’t meet for an interview inside because … hauntings.”

  The others were also watching with interest.

  “You figure once a spirit varmint is tipped off, he’ll get extra rowdy if you don’t go for the throat?” Adam asked.

  “No better way to lose a hunt than lose the first stalk,” Gideon said.

  “We shouldn’t have come in here.” I scowled at the vampire.

  He sighed. “Yet here you are.”

  I stepped closer, anger keeping down some of the fear. “Why bring us? Why not go to vampires if that’s really the help you want from us?”

  “That is what you wish to discuss here and now?” Facing me squarely, he met my eyes in the dim light. “Because I have all night, Miss Ahearne. Do you?”

  I remembered to break eye contact. Still, I longed to hit someone. Was he trying to get us killed? Make the deal only to lead us to the most dangerous house and hope it did us in? Then why not leave? He could have taken off and didn’t. Sure, I’d given him a lift, but not too far for him to walk back home. Maybe he was testing us? He hadn’t been impressed with us last night on his own turf. I’d given them a trial. Now this was all of ours?

  Whatever it was, at this moment, did it matter?

  “How about moving on to the banishing or crossing over or whatever?” Adam said. “If that doesn’t work at least you’ve given it a chase.”

  “The energy, or energies, needs to be present before they can be sent anywhere,” I said.

  “Blew out your candles,” Gideon said. “How much more present can you get?”

  “I’ll try. Wade? Can you scry? Do you know any detection magic? You can get a sense of a spirit presence that way. You try that while I try calming and suggesting relinquishing this realm. That’s the first step … I think. Banishing is even more difficult. Usually, they have to be willing to go, and you have to…”

  “Convince them how nice it would be to die all the way?” Vel asked.

  “Something like that…”

  “Want more from the kit?” Wade asked, offering rune stones.

  “No idea.” I took the first stone that presented itself, praying it was a soothing force.

  I didn’t think about it this time, just sent out what felt right. Stepping into the center of the circle, facing the cooling candles and incense that also seemed to have died, the odor fading strangely fast. I cast my caterpillar light, imagining the bright glow and power behind it turning into a portal to send a willing spirit from one realm to the next, gateway to peace. At the same time, I willed that presence forward.

  For you, I told them, then aloud. “Let us help you. You don’t have to be trapped here anymore.” I held up one open palm and the stone, tingling with magic, thinking of those who came before, of channeling and succeeding, and why wasn’t Wade lifting a finger?

  The light was almost blinding, yet it was the energy vibrating off it that made it so grand, seeming to hum through the air, like the music swelling on stage until you’re breathing with it, spellbound, on the edge of your seat.

  Could this actually work? Could it be this simple? For one glorious moment I imagined so as everything seemed to be coming together.

  Someone yelled. Gideon dived to his right, my left, toward the archway. There was a scramble and shouts.

  I had to abandon the faux portal to whip around.

  6

  It took me seconds to realize it was Vel and Fulco crashing back into the wall, apparently wrestling each other, that made the noise.

  The wolves had stepped forward, but didn’t intervene, more interested in the combat than in disrupting it.

  “Grab him,” I snapped. “He could be possessed or delusional.”

  “Possessed?” Wade’s voice nearly squeaked. “They can do that?”<
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  “It comes to the same thing if they make you see and feel enough that isn’t there.”

  While we spoke, Gideon grabbed Vel’s hand and twisted his arm so violently behind his back, Vel was thrown to his knees, contorting his body to escape the pressure and avoid a broken wrist. The stake in his hand fell to the floor. Adam grabbed it.

  “What are you doing?” I hurried to them in the archway. “What did you see?”

  “He saw nothing!” Fulco was almost shouting, his back against the wall in the next room, panting. “I had to turn away from that inferno of light. He had been waiting for a chance since we got here!”

  “Seriously?” I demanded of Vel, right before Gideon had him flat on his chest on the floor, squirming and snarling words in a language I didn’t know. “Right in the middle of this? I mean, angels and demons, do you have no boundaries at all? You can’t postpone your vendetta for a few hours? Okay, Gideon! We get it—you’re boss. Let go!”

  Vel gasped in the dust, turning on his side at mine and Gideon’s feet, reclaiming his own arm as Gideon straightened up. Gideon curled his lip as he glared down at the other shifter. I didn’t think for a second he was upset about Vel going for a vampire, a shared enemy, but Gideon was a creature of packs, a team player, and he’d already had it in for Vel since last night anyway.

  “It didn’t break, did it?” I asked Vel, who could hardly speak. I glared at Gideon. “Don’t do that. We’re working together.” Back to Vel. “How are we going to know if someone is flipping out on us because of spirit interference if you go around attacking each other just for giggles?”

  “Ripley?” It was Wade. “Shouldn’t you finish? That seemed like it was really doing something.”

  Had it? It had at least looked good.

  With a deep breath I turned back, shooting another glare at Adam when I noticed him grinning. Vel didn’t get up with Gideon still looming over him. Nor did Fulco come any closer, remaining in the other room. Flustered, angry, sure it wasn’t good for the process to be all split up like this, I stepped back into the circle with Wade to have one more go.