Page 57 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 1

Next to me, Evangeline was pale and wide-eyed, her lips pressed into such a tight, thin line that they’d gone white. I couldn’t imagine I looked any calmer. Nanny Murk’s persistent humming broke out into a full song, her high, raspy voice pronouncing the words as if they were part of some incantation.

“Deep into the inky blue, the frothing drowning crush…” she sang to herself, yanking open one of the dingy cabinets to reveal a dishwasher. “It steals the sailor’s dying breath but gives him such a rush…” The witch began to toss things into the machine, apparently trying to identify them by touch.

I caught Evangeline’s eye and pointed into the room questioningly. She shook her head and pointed farther down the hallway, and I nodded with relief. The dark magic radiating off Nanny Murk was rancid and oily, and I didn’t want to get any closer than I absolutely had to. We turned away and crept down the hall, but Evangeline’s elbow caught the edge of a stack of old wooden crates, sending a tiny bottle of dried seeds tumbling to the rough wooden floor.

We both froze.

Nanny Murk’s singing cut off sharply. I heard the creak of her footsteps coming up behind us, but I didn’t dare turn around in case I made enough of a sound for her to zero in on us. I heard the sound of sniffing, loud and oddly wet.

“Little rats,” she grumbled to herself. “Little rats coming to visit Nanny, nibbling away at Nanny’s things. Well, I’ll make a snack for all those little rats, and then I’ll make myself a lovely little rat pie. Crunch, crunch, tiny wee bones…”

Evangeline’s chest was rising and falling rapidly, and she had her hand pressed over her nose and mouth to muffle her breathing.

We kept desperate eye contact as Nanny Murk turned away and shuffled back into her kitchen. “Time isn’t holding up,” the witch warbled over the clanking of crockery on metal.

Evangeline blew out a quiet breath, her shoulders relaxing a fraction.

“Fuck,” she mouthed silently, but with a great deal of feeling.

I nodded emphatically.

We shuffled down the hallway sideways, excruciatingly aware of how close we’d come to disaster. Finally, we reached the room at the far end of the hall. The frame of the door was spiked with nails, and a string of charms dangled from each, forming a sort of gruesome bead curtain. We crouched, contorting ourselves through a gap in the odd decorations.

The room beyond might have been a study, or it might have been a trophy room. It was actually quite clean compared to the rest of the house, with enough clear floor space to see where the thick carpet of dust had wafted into dust bunnies. A large white table was pushed against one wall, cluttered with oddly shaped glass vessels and twisted roots. Crooked shelves covered every available inch of wall space, each loaded with morbid curiosities. Even the ceiling was being used for storage, with more of the strings hanging down to display baubles and trinkets.

Divide and conquer? I typed out on my phone.

Evangeline checked my screen and nodded, pointing at herself and then at the left side of the room.

I was grateful that the piece of the ascendancy array was at least in a room where everything seemed to be displayed in a single layer, as opposed to heaps and rickety piles, but the room was still overwhelming. It was frustrating, dusty work to pick through all the shelves, made all the worse by having to stay as quiet as possible. The first shelf yielded nothing useful. The second and third shelves were the same. Somewhere around the eighth shelf, I stopped counting. I found a pair of sharp, pearly fangs, clearly taken from a vampire. Shuddering, I set them carefully back down and wiped my hands on my pants, as if that would clean away the sense of wrongness. I licked over the sharp points of my own fangs, trying to settle my nerves. It didn’t work, so I glanced up, blew out a quiet breath, then frowned.

Between the carved bone charms and stones with holes through their middles was a glint of gold hanging down from the ceiling. It was on one of the shortest strings, half-hidden by other trinkets. I padded over to Evangeline and pointed up at the glimmering metal. She followed the line of my finger and pulled a face.

I bent, holding out my hands in the universal signal for giving someone a boost, and she stepped into the grip. I lifted her easily, and she steadied herself with one hand against my head as she worked at the string. The smell of her magic was a welcome reprieve from Nanny Murk’s unctuous stench.

Evangeline patted my shoulder, and I set her down. Beaming, she held out the piece of the array.

“Nice work,” I mouthed, grinning at her.

Just as she had the first time we’d found a piece of the artifact, Evangeline went very still and rigid, her eyes gleaming gold. It only lasted for a moment, but for that moment she looked… regal. Divine. Statuesque. As quickly as it began, it ended, and she came back to herself, businesslike and ready to go.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” she mouthed, tucking the artifact into her jacket. She put one hand on mine, and the other on the portal pendant hanging around her neck. I braced myself for the lurch of teleportation.

It didn’t come.

Evangeline frowned down at the pendant. She tried again, but nothing happened. Our escape plan was dead in the water.

Suddenly, there was a crash from the hallway, then another and another.

“Little rats!” Nanny Murk crowed. “Little rats taking Nanny’s treasures!” She skidded into the doorway, panting and grinning, clutching a huge meat cleaver in one hand. It was the first time I’d seen her face, and I hoped it would be the last. It was pale and waxy, with loose skin hanging as though she’d been halfway hollowed out. Her eyes were simply gone, the sockets overlayed with concave sallow skin. Her teeth were jagged fangs the color of iron.

“I knew I smelled that rat before,” Nanny Murk cooed. “The little hedge-witch who stinks of pretty flowers and old dead books. Robbed me, she robbed me, yes, she did, and she’s back to do it again! Can’t let her do that. Can’t have that at all. Rat pie, yes, yes, and a broth with the bones.”

Nanny Murk licked her sharp teeth with a leathery white tongue and charged.

19

EVANGELINE

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