Page 11 of The Shadow Bride

“Why isn’t Coco’s blood summoning her?” Reid asks. “I thought the magic would—lure her, somehow. Pull her toward us.”

Expression contemplative, Odessa continues to stare at the pentagram like it’s a riddle she cannot solve. She doesn’t notice the ice crystallizing in her hair. The rest of us do, however, and Beau gapes at her as she says, “The blood should allow Filippa to traverse the space between us, similar to how Célie can project in her sleep. Perhaps it cannot force her to do so, however, if she is unwilling or unable.”

When lightning flashes again, tendrils of my own hair begin tofloat weightlessly around my face. I hook a foot around the table to keep my chair on the floor. “I don’t know what this is,” I say, unease creeping into my voice, “but it shouldn’t be happening. We should stop before—”

The candle flames shoot upward in response.

As one, we recoil, our eyes widening as the table begins to spin—slow at first, then faster and faster, until the candles fly in every direction. Instead of crashing to the floor, however, they hover overhead like the ghoulish fingers of a puppeteer, tipping to drip wax onto Reid’s and Beau’s heads.

“Blargh!” Beau leaps from the table, breaking the circle, and clutches his magnificent hair. “Knock it off, Lou! Thisisn’t funny—”

“It isn’t me!” Swaying again, Lou lifts an incredulous hand to her nose, from which a trickle of blood has appeared. Odessa nearly breaks my wrist as I lunge, crashing into the table before forcing my body to still. My lungs to cease. Panicked, Lou tries to magic the blood away, but at the flick of her wrist, the peonies wither instead. They curl and shrivel as if diseased, and Lou’s knees give out. Reid catches her just as another flash of lightning illuminates the kitchen. Illuminates theirskulls.

Though Coco stumbles forward to help, she stops short after a single step, her eyes fluttering before rolling back in her head. Beau leaps to her side in panic. “Coco—”

Her body jolts with the next clap of thunder, however, and she blinks, shaking her head. “I’m all right,” she reassures him, wiping incredulously at the blood seeping from her ear. “At least, IthinkI’m all right—”

“What ishappening?” Lou looks wildly around the room, struggling to rise. “Is Mila still here, Célie?”

I dare not open my mouth to answer.

“I don’t know what this is!” Mila drops to her feet like a sack of potatoes, but no one hears her now except me. “This is—I feelheavy,” she says in wonder. “Célie, the veil—it must be—”

My fingertips slip from the table’s edge, and Melisandre bolts from beneath the settee to tangle in Beau’s feet. With a curse, he topples to his knees in an attempt to avoid her, but Melisandre is no longer there; yowling, she rises into the air like the candles and levitates above his head. My chair already bobs amidst the copper pots.

Beau swats furiously at the candle attacking his head. “We need to close it!”

He’s right, of course. I summoned Filippa, not whatever magic this is, but I cannot bring myself to move—tobreathe—as Lou and Coco huddle near the window, cringing with each streak of lightning. Fresh blood trickles from them both now. Even Reid seems weak and unsteady as he stands on a chair to rescue Melisandre. Below him, Mila gapes at the amber hue spreading across her hands. Odessa now resembles a macabre ice statue, her beauty sharper and brighter than before, and icicles sparkle in her hair as diamonds. The table still spins. It creates a draft through which Beau struggles to regain his footing. “Célie—”

In the next second, however, white light bursts from the pentagram, and cold wind blasts our hair backward. “Nobody move,” Odessa says sharply, but Mila’s chin has already snapped toward the pentagram. Her eyes widen in horror at whatever she sees there.

“Someone is coming,” she whispers.

And I can’t help it now—I lean forward in anticipation, heatblistering up my throat as I lean forward and ask, “Filippa?”

No one responds. The very room seems to hold its breath as the strange light vanishes once more. As the candles flicker once, twice, before an invisible force douses the flames.

All of them. All at once.

A beat of heavy, sentient silence follows—oppressive and unnatural—like a great beast waking from deep slumber and drawing his first breath. “Fuck,” Lou says tremulously. “Fuck, fuck,fuck—” The silence exhales then, and with it, an overwhelming scent of roses engulfs the kitchen—roses and candle smoke. The latter curls toward us like fingers in the darkness, and I choke as they wrap around my neck.

Not Filippa.

Stumbling backward in blind panic, I wrench my hand from Odessa, attempting to break the connection, to locate the pentagram. Odessa refuses to let go, however, and even with my vampiric vision, I cannot see through this blackness. The shadows remain absolute. If not for her hand in mine—viselike, as if she too hangs on for dear life—it would feel like we’ve plunged headfirst into absolute nothingness. Into the abyss.

“What is this?”

Beau’s voice rises over the sudden scrape of chairs, the franticthump,thump,thumping of my friends’ hearts. In the next second, he crashes into me, pulling me into his arms with Coco, who says quickly, “Everything is going to be all right—”

Even she sounds terrified, however, her heartbeat spiking,deafeningin my ears. The sharp scent of her blood collides with the smoke, the roses, until my head spins in a delirious jumble of sensation. Her fingers clamp against my arm. Beau’s heart beatsagainst my cheek. So warm. So hypnotic.

“Focus, Célie.” Odessa squeezes my hand to the point of pain, but I can’t—Ican’t—and without my sight, the onslaught of scent is too much. I can taste the roses now, can taste the fear, themagic, and my fangs punch through as something fetid slithers across my skin—less scent or taste and more awareness. Like someone is watching me. No. Like someone hasfoundme, and the weight of their gaze threatens to smother my consciousness until I become the darkness too. My eyes flutter back into my head. “Focus on my voice,” Odessa says, louder now, as Lou and Reid lurch through the darkness in search of light. “You need to close the veil—”

“The matches are on the mantel,” Reid says swiftly.

“They aren’there—”

Lightning forks through the windows, illuminating a gloved hand reaching up through the pentagram.

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