I didn’t have the strength to banish a wraith, but the wraith’s master didn’t have to know that.
Rather than back down, the creature pulled a smoking envelope from the depths of its robes and passed it between the bars of the empty cage. Before I settled on a plan of action, he popped Keet like a snack into his absent mouth and vanished in a whirl of black mist.
“Keet.”
I spun in a circle, my mind touching on every corner of the collapsing wards, but I already knew what I’d find.
Keet was gone.
I spent the better part of an hour restoring the wards and rousing Woolly from her drugged slumber. The fact my house could be knocked unconscious terrified me. Whoever had controlled the wraith had managed to slip inside with a nasty bit of work that overlapped one of the weakened points in the wards.
I snapped pictures of the combined sigils the intruder had used to gain access so I could show Odette later, then scrubbed the foul ink until red bubbles frothed through my fingers. The anchor wards surrounding Woolworth House were carved into the stone of her foundation. A little bit of blood shouldn’t have overpowered inset patterns woven together by a master necromancer, but these had, and I worried this was more proof the old girl’s strength mirrored mine.
At least my puny magic wasn’t at fault for the breakdown in communication between Woolly and me. As it turned out, someone had eroded key points in the sigils that had slowly eaten away at our link until the only time I registered the interference was when I made a focused effort to check the wards.
Flicking the light on my phone, I started the grueling process of examining the foundation. I didn’t have to look far before I spotted the first missing sigil, gouged from the stone with sharp claws. Great. Permanent damage. How was I supposed to repair this? It’s not like I could lift up Woolly and slide a new slab under her.
I found five more missing sigils that corresponded with the thinning of the wards I’d been sensing over the past several days. For now, the best I could do was dip my brush and swipe on fresh symbols. Those would keep until it rained, or at least until the dew faded them.
After examining the patchwork wards with a critical eye, I decided they would do and capped my ink.
As much as I hated leaving Woolly while she was vulnerable, I had to honor my promise to Amelie. We both needed our jobs, and being Haints paid better than anything else we could do while keeping our night-owl schedule.
I trudged up the steps and entered the house. “Will you be okay for a few hours?”
The foyer chandelier dimmed to near blackness before surging.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of.” I patted the doorframe. “This is my fault. I should have pulled my head out of my butt sooner.” All that wallowing hadn’t gotten me anything except a violated home and a stolen pet. “If I had taken the minor attacks more seriously, I might have noticed the damage to the sigils before the wraith…” I spun on my heel, thought trailing, marched to Keet’s empty cage and fished out the envelope. “Why am I not surprised?”
A nearby floor register ticked on and set a curtain wriggling in anticipation.
“It’s from Dame Lawson,” I told her, and opened the envelope with care. “Guess I didn’t RSVP fast enough for her.” I skimmed the first line then read the rest aloud for Woolly’s benefit. “Dearest Grier, I do hope you’ll reconsider my previous invitation. Being named the Grande Dame of the Society for Post-Death Management is a momentous occasion, and I expect all my family to be in attendance. That includes you. Our relationship has been strained these past few years, but I hope to rectify that soon. Proof of my good intentions should be evident by now. You are standing in your own living room, reading this letter, are you not? You can thank me for that with your presence.”
The tinkle of crystals in the chandelier laughed at her gall in claiming me now that I’d been exonerated.
Again, I rolled the vampire’s warning around in my head. What did Dame Lawson want from me? What did he want? Why did anyone want anything from me at all when I had nothing but the clothes on my back and the roof over my head to my name?
Dame Lawson hadn’t just dispatched one of her lackeys to leave her calling card. Whoever the architect of this infiltration was, he was brilliant. And the energy, now that I’d had time to reflect, had definitely been male.
With those grim thoughts circling, I walked into the kitchen, scooped up the invitation, and dialed the gas burner high on the stove. Then I took Boaz’s advice and burned them both to cinders.
The floor register gusted air in a relieved sigh as I swirled the ashes down the sink.
“We ought to be safe. For now.” A tired exhale parted my lips. “They got what they wanted. A hostage.”
The letter hadn’t mentioned poor Keet, but it would have been incriminating if it had, and you didn’t get to be the Grande Dame by making such rudimentary errors. The message was clear. Her wraith postman had done his job well, proving she could get to me and mine inside the wards, inside the house. But why she would demand my presence at all stumped me.
I was a half-trained assistant with no title and no prospects. The Society had already added my inheritance to their coffers. They had seized control of my assets at my sentencing. Woolly had been the only thing I fought tooth and nail to keep. At the time, she had been flush with Maud’s power, and no one but me could have given her to another master without her consent. So, really, that had less to do with my wishes and more to do with hers.
A sliver of fear pierced me through the heart. What if that was the game? Letting her rot these past few years without a necromancer tending her wards? Woolly was weak, a shadow of her former self, but she would fight a new master to her death, of that I was sure. But did the Society care?
Woolly was more than a house, more than my family. Her basement was a library full of books written in Maud’s own hand. Her entire brilliant career, every experiment, every memory, every theory, penned in leather-bound volumes. The collection was priceless, and the magical locks protecting her life’s work could not be shattered without Maud’s blood. And that was long gone.
“I’ll be back as soon as my shift ends,” I comforted the house. “You remember how to use the phone?”
The landline was a luxury I almost couldn’t afford, but the connection to me soothed her.
“Call if you need me.” I checked to make sure my cell was fully charged. “I promise I’ll come straight home tonight. No pit stops.”
The phone in my hand blared Miranda Lambert’s “The House That Built Me,” and my heart cracked open wider. She didn’t want me to go. For once, her paranoia was founded. But that didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t hole up here forever. We needed money to keep the power on and the pantry stocked. And though I would never say so to her, Dame Lawson had proven I was no safer here than I was out in the wide world.
“I’ll start making inquiries, see if I can’t find someone willing to help me repair the foundation.” Odette was my best bet. Others would ask more of me than I could give. “Just sit tight.”
The old house creaked a pitiful sound that stoked the fire smoldering in my belly.
“Everything is going to be okay,” I promised her, and I hoped it wasn’t a lie.
Leaving her unguarded made me feel just as helpless and alone as Dame Lawson had no doubt intended.
The ride to work blurred, and the tours dragged into eternity. Tips were low, more salt in the wound. I couldn’t blame my victims, though. Tonight my heart wasn’t in spooking people, not when I had been so thoroughly spooked myself, and it showed. On my way out the door, I paused to beg a favor of Neely then cut a path through the gloomy parking lot.
I pulled up short when I noticed a man inspecting Jolene with a covetous eye. No, not a man. A vampire. The one whose warning had come too late. “Not you again.”