Page 593 of Flirting with Darkness

He didn’t try to dissect that, either.

* * *

He spent the rest of the climb downstairs in that state.

By the time they reached the bottom, and Ghost stepped out onto the black stone tile, he felt oddly, preternaturally calm.

The servants fanned out on either side of him once they reached the larger space.

Immediately, they began lighting candles and torches all along the walls.

When the space opened up for the second time, displaying that dizzyingly high ceiling, several of his father’s people walked up to the area where the black stone lectern stood with the massive, leather-bound book that lay open on top.

Bending their knees, they immediately began lighting candles.

The Count acted as if they weren’t there. He walked around them like they were furniture, or some well-trained breed of domestic cat.

Without even looking at them, he approached the podium with his book of spells.

Ghost started to follow, but his father turned sharply.

He held up a commanding hand.

“No,” he said, his voice an open warning. “Not yet, my son. My people have access to the sacred circle, for they helped me to build it the first time. You do not have this access. Not yet, at least. Once the ritual starts, I will open the wall. Until then, stay outside… or you will only be knocked out again.”

Ghost stayed where he was.

He watched his father’s servants move reverently in and out of the edge of the circle cut in the black stone, the same one Ghost noticed right before he got knocked out the first time.

That’s when he heard it.

The sound of water dripping.

No. Not water.

Something else.

Ghost looked up, then around at the rough, black walls.

It took him only a few more seconds to find it.

A dark red line ran thickly down a curved indentation in the wall. It traveled steadily down the length of the rough black stone. It reached the floor, then funneled into a deeper trench cut there to collect it. Ghost followed the length of the trench with his eyes, and realized the blood was slowly filling the circular indentation around where his father stood.

The same circle marked the boundary of his father’s magick “wall.” It surrounded the place where the arch and clock and lectern stood, in the exact center of the room.

Ghost looked at the clock with its pale blue face.

It had already begun to glow more brightly.

The odd, symbol-like numbers began to grow distorted as the blue light grew.

Ghost watched his father lift his hands.

He listened as the Count began to intone strange words.

Ghost didn’t recognize any of them.

Whatever language he spoke, it wasn’t one of the Latin languages. It wasn’t Russian, or Polish, or Czech or Romanian. It wasn’t the Traveler language, the pidgin used by the Roma and their tribes. It wasn’t Hungarian, or Arabic.

---