Page 17 of Immortal Sins
I wet my lips. “Not much.Too much.”
He squeezes my free hand. “Your eyes are all white. It’s really freaky.”
If I cast this spell wrong and end up blind…my pulse quickens. “Give me Beth’s mug.”
The arcane focus will condense my attention over what I’m searching for. The mug Beth always drank her tea from should do the trick, and I placed a few petals from her grave into it to strengthen my connection to her memory.
Lydia guides my fingers around the ceramic handle, and the blurry kaleidoscope of colors finally stills. Small shoe prints rise out of the mass. They zigzag from the cabin’s door and back to the trail a few times. Soft, light steps. Beth’s steps.
Every single one of them.
A heavy breath wheezes out of my lungs, and I follow the trail to the cabin’s door. The smoky shape of a hand—a skeletal reminiscence of her physical body—twists open the knob.
The cabin’s entrance is guarded by a powerful alarm spell, but the ghost fragments of Beth don’t trigger them. I’m tempted to follow but know better, so I head toward the large windows instead.
Beth’s silhouette prances around the main room of Oz’s cabin, her long white hair braided over her shoulder. The translucent apparition is blurry, but my heart pangs all the same. All the times she came here, every step she took, and all the laughs she shared in this small cabin are condensed into this eerie, macabre replay.
After a few heart-breaking, atrocious minutes, the ghost glides through the bedroom door. I tiptoe around the cabin to the bedroom window, Flynn’s hand still steady in mine. Thick blinds obscure the inside of the bedroom.
My stomach lurches. “Fuck, I lost her.”
Flynn brushes my shoulder. “Allow me.” I can’t see him, but his heat seeps through my skin despite the spell.
Lydia gasps. “It might trigger the alarm.”
“Then we’ll run,” he says.
“I’m not sure—”
I clench my teeth. “Do it.”
Flynn remains invisible to me, but the blinds are slowly pulled aside and allow a wide view of Oz’s bed. Fresh, angry tears blur my vision, and sweat trickles down my neck. I do not want to think about Beth being in this bed, about Allie…
Next to the queen-sized mattress, Beth’s ghost condenses into complete corporeal form, her body no longer translucent. A rictus of fear and pain deforms her peaceful features. In the middle of her forehead, a gigantic hole oozes blood. The red trickle is thick as syrup, ten times darker than it ought to be.
The boulder stuck in my throat presses my windpipe. This is no longer a remnant of her past, but a fragmented piece of her present. Her horn must be very close to the bed.
Beth slumps to the ground, and I observe the floorboards. An eerie light emanates from the spot right below her ass, and my eyes suddenly see through the hardwood, to a thick, metallic blue safe almost identical to the one Dad had at home for his High Council documents. A Magisterium safe.
Beth gives me one long, haunted look, before she curls over and hides her face in her knees, her green dress in pieces around her calves. Rocking back and forth, she shudders as the door behind her cracks open.
A long wisp of white smoke seeps through the doorway. The newly formed cloud hangs in the air for a moment before it takes shape, swimming through the room like an eel. The spectre whips toward the window, slithering closer, and hisses. Sharp teeth glisten in its mouth.
I’m almost certain it saw me, too.
I recoil from the apparition. I’ve seen something like it before. The first time I spotted Onyx in the woods, the demon had a similar depth and texture, but she was black instead of white.
Before I can move or speak, the mug is snatched from my hands.
A loudclankerupts through the trees, and my vision returns to normal.
Lydia shatters the arcane focus under her foot.
Fire swirls underneath my skin, and I fall flat on my ass in the wet grass. Water seeps inside my jeans, and goo smears my hands. “Why did you pull me back?”
Lydia tugs on her red ponytails. “Something appeared in the window. A nether being. It raised its claws toward you. It was trying to pull you in. Is the horn in there?”
Flynn waves his hand up and down in front of Lydia’s face. “Are you high? A nether being?”
