Kit slowly came around to what felt like the rocking of a ship at sea. For a moment, he thought he was back on his personal vessel, which he had outfitted before his lady began loaning him a portal for longer journeys. He had yet to sell his ocean going home, as he preferred the cleaner air on the water to his London accommodations and often slept there.
Yes, he decided vaguely, he was on a ship. There was the familiar creak and groan of wooden planks, the lap, lap, lap of water against the hull, and the smell of brine. But no flapping of sails when the wind hit them, although he could hear it howling outside.
A ship at anchor, then.
Which was odd, because the last thing he remembered—
His eyes flew open.
That didn’t seem to make much of a difference, with the darkness that surrounded him being all pervasive. Even vampire sight didn’t help. But after a moment, he realized that that had more to do with whatever had been draped over him than any absence of light.
He shoved aside something that felt like a heavy carpet, then another. Followed by a whole mountain of them that must have collapsed on top of him, many still wrapped in the coarse baling material used for transport. But he persisted and his head finally popped out of the heap, his lungs insisting that he should be gasping for breath.
But he found himself catching it instead, as he gazed about in wonder.
He was in the hold of a ship, half buried in a forest of bales, and across from a fortune in blue and white Chinese porcelain. It was peeking out of crates filled with hay to cushion the delicate stuff for transport, although it often didn’t. Which was why the few pieces that did make it intact were so expensive that they were referred to as white gold and encased in silver gilt frames to help preserve them.
Beyond that were sacks of costly pepper, with several torn open and the peppercorns leaking out; a magnificent piece of azure silk with golden flowers embroidered on it glimmering in a stray ray of light from somewhere; and piles of fine damask, exquisite gauzes, delicate taffetas, and more of the flowered silks of Canton, pulled out of bales and thrown about with little concern for their immense cost.
Finally, his eyes encountered the source of the light illuminating all of this treasure, in the form of a lantern held by a young man.
He had a levitating sledge of some kind beside him, with a fortune in carpets and silks piled on top of it. He didn’t look like a war mage, however, in their sleek leather capes and boots, or one of the Circle’s pompous leaders, who dressed like lords and sneered at everyone except the queen. He was wearing a plain outfit of dull brown, frayed about the edges, and stained enough that the marks showed up even in the poor light.
As he looked about a bit more, Kit noticed several other lanterns spread out around the hold, or this part of it anyway, with shadowy figures loading up similar conveyances amid a swirl of spice. It was thick enough to make his eyes water, and glittered like gold dust whenever a beam of lantern light cut across it. A fortune just floating in air . . .
“This was where it all began,” someone said, causing Kit’s head to jerk around.
There were no lanterns behind him, but he didn’t need them. The semi-transparent woman standing beside Gillian was shedding her own light. It was dim, but in the darkness was enough to define her hazy form, which was that of an attractive brunette with bright blue eyes.
Kit stared at her for a moment, caught completely off guard. He blinked and then shook his head, thinking that perhaps the spells he’d absorbed had rattled his brain. And that was certainly possible, as he did feel very strange.
But nothing visually changed. She was still there and still looking like a ghost, or what he’d always imagined one to be. Although that was absurd!
He couldn’t see ghosts.
He could see the slumped body of a portly mage, however, with a bushy brown beard and a slack, dead face, laying at her feet like a cast-off bit of clothing. Which perhaps he was. Kit was no expert on the supernatural realm, having had only a few years to absorb the fact that it existed at all.
But the uncanny blue eyes currently shining out of the ghost’s face had been in that man’s skull when he killed Rilda.
Kit started to get an itch up his spine.
It didn’t help that, when he tried to move out of his costly prison, his arms didn’t respond properly and his legs were almost useless. He started to struggle, trying to free himself, but Gillian saw him and shook her head, her eyes huge. Which he took to mean “don’t attack the ghost,” but wasn’t sure.
It was a moot point, since he didn’t know how to even attempt such a thing. And was a fairly useless lump at the moment in any case. Something that had to change!
He started trying to will strength back into his legs, as well as the new, shoeless foot his probing toes found at the end of a soft shank. It felt like a baby’s bottom, with skin that had never had a callus or a scar. And felt functional enough, if he could get the rest his body to cooperate!
He started massaging his legs as well as he could with only half functioning arms, keeping an eye on the ghost as he did so, although she didn’t appear to notice. She and Gillian were only about ten feet away, in a small walkway between mountains of trade goods. But her eyes were focused on the darkened hold with a strange intensity.
“This is where they laid their trap,” she continued. “The Corpsmen followed us for three days and waited until we’d sold our haul. They did not want to take us in London. Too many eyes there. Too many ears. They delayed until we went back to camp, far away from anyone. That is where they struck.”
“Morgan,” Gillian said, her voice shaky. “I feel for you. I do. But this . . .”
Morgan, if such was the ghost’s name, did not appear to hear her. “We had to go back, you see, for the young ones. Not that we had many. Some had entrusted their children to friends, to be brought up without their birthright; the only way to keep them safe. Others . . . well, a life on the run is dangerous for a child. But some had survived, a handful. We’d left them with the elderly and the injured. Those too weak to fight.
“But the Circle didn’t care about that. They butchered us all, every one. Including the children.”
“I’m sorry,” Gillian said, tears in her voice. “I’m so sorry—”
Morgan glanced at her. “At least it was quick. We put up a fight, but it didn’t last long. They cut us down like a scythe through wheat. You, on the other hand, had a harsher fate. Didn’t you?”
“I don’t think any fate could have been harsher than yours,” Gillian whispered. “But you’re only making things worse by—”
But again, the ghost cut her off.
“Yes, it was here that it started, and we were so happy that night, do you remember? All our little covens plundering their hearts out. And later, in London—oh, the time we had! After we sold our goods, we had money for the first time in ages and drank ourselves silly, dining on fine food at finer taverns until we made too much noise and they threw us out. We went shopping with raging headaches and blurry eyes the next few days, but found everything on our list, and were so laden down with it all that we barely made it back.”
“Morgan—”
“You should have seen James—he’s the redhead who was here a moment ago, you must have noticed him. Tall as a pine sapling and nearly as slender. He took the back off a wagon, slapped on some levitation charms, and lashed the whole ridiculous contraption to a broomstick. He flew it all the way home by himself, laughing all the way for we’d wagered that he’d spill it for sure. But he never did.
“He died first, when they ambushed us. I suppose he made too good of a target.”
“Morgan, please—”
“Ah, here we are!” the ghost’s face became animated as a woman came into view, guiding a floating sledge to the end of the nearest aisle.
“Hoy, Tom!” the woman called to the young man with the lantern. “The other lot found some brocades on their side. They want ter know if ye’ve discovered any jewels—or ingots either, most like.”
He looked up. “As if I’d tell them if I had.”
“We’re supposed to be sharin’—”
“They can share this,” he said, and grabbed his crotch. “Lucky we didn’t hex ‘em all to hell already!”
“That would be no, then, would it?” she said dryly, and went off to rip open some bales.
“Follow me,” the ghost said to Gillian. “But quietly. My people will not take kindly to more competition this night.”
Gillian did as she was bid, staying low and out of sight, which wasn’t difficult. The towers of square bales were taller than a man in some cases, which threatened to block the two women from Kit’s sight. He started struggling harder to free himself; however, they didn’t go far. Just over to the sledge that the woman had abandoned, which contained a wide assortment of items, as if a crow had been gathering anything shiny.
There were painted Chinese fans with curious scenes, open and scattered about as if the woman had been playing with them; ivory statues of curious designs; a huge folding screen of intricately carved wood and painted panels; a great array of silk fabrics worked with metallic spangles; and a mass of fine lacquerware. The ghost indicated an example of the latter, a small chest on one end of the sledge, its shiny black surface covered all over in intricate, mother-of-pearl and gold inlays. The ghost didn’t try to pick it up, just lifted the corner of the piece of silk that was partly draped over it, so that Gillian could see it better.
“He was in here. An ifrit, he called himself, waiting for me like a present.”
“A demon?” Gillian said, backing up a step. “That is a strange present!”
“Aye, a mage imprisoned him there, promising to release him if he served him well. But the man died before he could keep his promise, leaving his servant to waste away. Of course, I didn’t know that then, having failed to get the thing open. But I didn’t sell it with all the rest.
“I could feel the power coming off it, knew it was a talisman and thought to disenchant it when I had time. I didn’t realize: my time was almost up.”
“Why are you telling me this? And why bring me here? And how?”
“Three questions with the same answer,” the ghost began, and then pulled Gillian down behind some bales. The woman who had brought the sledge came back with an armful of colorful cottons with a diadem perched on top that shimmered in a blaze of gold.
It was a beautiful thing, decorated with phoenixes and dragons made of precious metal, and inlaid with some type of tiny blue feathers. It was so delicate that it hardly looked real, and was like nothing that Kit had ever seen. But instead of treating it with the respect it deserved, the woman whisked off her cap and plopped it on her head, laughing at the man called Tom when he turned to look at her.
“What do ye think?” she asked, simpering. “Would I make a good queen?”
“Better’n the one we have, in bed with the Circle as she is,” he said dryly. “And what happened to sharing, then?”
“A queen don’t share her crown,” she said, wrapping herself in a length of silk and giving him an exaggerated curtsey.
“The queen better get back to work, or she’ll be as poor as a pauper after this—”
“We’ll none of us ever be poor again!”
“—whilst the rest of us live like kings!”
“Kings,” she said, brightening. “But then you’ll need a crown to match mine. I’ll see what I can do.”
She dropped everything onto the hodge podge she was collecting and hurried off again, but Gillian and the ghost stayed where they were.
“Alice survived,” the ghost said, nodding after the woman. “She stayed in London when the rest of us left, visiting a friend, for we were coming back there anyway once we’d nursed the injured back to health. We’d planned to escape together, but of course, that didn’t work. She was always flighty and a bit childish, but a canny witch when she needed to be. She disappeared before the Circle caught up with her.
“But Tom died with the rest of us. T’is so strange to see them like this, young and laughing and full of life. And to think how quickly that can change.
“Or change back.”
“Change back?” Gillian said, but Morgan didn’t hear.
“The Circle took everything we had remaining from the haul. All the stuff we hadn’t yet sold, thinking we’d get a better price abroad, and all that we’d bought. I suppose it made sense. The dead don’t need such things, do they?
“But they didn’t find the box. I’d fallen on top of it when I died, and they never bothered to bury us. I’d kept it with me as I didn’t know what was in it or how dangerous it might be, and didn’t want one of the children stumbling across it. And it was dangerous; I had no idea how much.”
“Morgan,” Gillian whispered, her eyes huge. “Tell me you didn’t, that you haven’t—”
“Made a deal with a devil?” the ghost looked at her in amusement. “Of course, I did, once he was sturdy enough. That took ages, and the little cave, more like a cleft in a rock that I found for a temporary hiding spot for the chest, became our home for centuries.”
“Centuries?” Gillian looked like she was having as much trouble as Kit was in parsing all of this.
“Aye. This is a recent memory for you; for me, it feels like another world. I saw our realm change out of all recognition as the years slid by, saw wonders and horrors in about equal measure . . . but I’m getting ahead of myself.
“You need to know how it was, that night. How the Corpsmen came out of the darkness, from sky and land, already firing curses ahead of them; how my people screamed and our children ran and were chased down like animals. There were so many mages, everywhere we turned; we couldn’t fight them all, had no chance. They’d been following us, waiting for us to lead them back to our coven, and we had.
“It was over before it began.”
“I know what that was like,” Gillian said, hugging herself. “It was the same for us.”
“No! Not the same!” the ghost grabbed her arms, and Kit could swear he saw the imprints from her fingers in the cloth of Gillian’s sleeves. “You lived. None of us did. And I was cut down early—they must have known who I was. Five of them targeted me. I was dead before my body hit the ground.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be sorry! Listen!”
The ghost let Gillian go, and turned to walk away a few yards, closer to Kit. Only to whirl back around before she reached him. “I was dead, but not gone. It was the oddest thing: one moment, I was fighting for my life and the lives of my people; the next, I was staring down at my mud splattered face, seeing it go slack in death, knowing what I was before I caught sight of my half transparent hand in front of my face.
“One with no wand in it, for mine was trodden in the mud as well. And no matter, for I could do no more magic. My last spell had died on my lips. All I could do was stand there and watch.
“Watch as the others died, and be unable to help them. Watch as their spirits fled this Earth, as if glad to finally escape it. Watch as the mages finished their work and magicked a mound of dirt over us all. We didn’t merit more than that in their eyes, or perhaps they were just eager to get away, before anyone discovered their crimes.
“Watch as my hand, which lay uncovered, sticking out of the dirt, turned brown and shriveled up and was eventually just a—”
“Stop it!” Gillian tried to grab her, only to find that she had nothing to grip. “You have to let it go, Morgan—”
“I can’t! Don’t you think I’ve tried? Don’t you think I wanted to follow everyone else? To be with them? Instead, I stayed behind, weighed down by what I’d seen, what we had suffered.
“Instead, I stayed with the box.”
“The one with a demon in it,” Gillian said, her face terrible.
The ghost nodded. “I had been drawn to it before death, but afterward—t’was all I could see, once I came back to myself. And passed through the ward around it easily, for I had no body for it to hurt anymore.
“I discovered a half dead demon inside, the most piteous thing you can imagine, curled up in a corner. Fed him some of my energy, hoping to discover what insights he might have on this new existence. I didn’t have a plan then, at least, I don’t think so. I was mostly too stunned to think at all.
“But I knew I’d need allies, and he was the only one who stayed.”
“Allies for what? Morgan, it’s over—”
“It isn’t over! It will be over when the Circle has paid for the lives they stole, the pain they caused. When my coven—and yours—is avenged. When the spell the Great Mothers cast is used against our real enemies, then talk to me about over!”