Page 13 of Haunted Heart
“What am I seeing?” I ask, flashes of darkness flickering deep in his vision like there’s a cyclone inside of him.
“Hell,” she states.
“What?” I look up at her and drop Dylan in shock.
His head hits the floor with a heavy thunk, and I wince down at him for a moment before I go back to her.
“What do you meanHellis inside him?”
“It’s notinhim. You’re seeing what he sees.”
“But he shouldn’t be in Hell.”
“You killed the soul of the one who lusted after you,” Julia says. “He’s not dead, but his soul has gone to find its place in Hell until his body succumbs.”
No… no, that can’t be right. “That’s not what the spell said.”
“It is if you had read it untranslated.”
“Untranslated…” I exhale and pinch the bridge of my nose. “The pages are enchanted to alter themselves to rhyme in the reader’s language?”
“Did no one tell you how the black-page books work?”
“No.” I inhale deeply and let it out slowly. “I may have stolen this from my grandmothers’ library without their permission.”
“Genevieve,” she says my name, scolding, and then cups my face with both of her hands. “You can’t use spells you don’t know the provenance of.”
I know.
She knows I know.
I take another deep breath, and when I exhale this time, it’s like the determination that had buoyed me drains out. “I just needed him to stop.”
“I understand that now.” She places her forehead against mine. “I thought you wanted him dead, so I didn’t intervene.”
“Didyouwant him dead?”
She tips my face up so that I meet her haunting eyes. “If this hadn’t worked, he would have had an accident tonight that he would not have walked away from.”
I believe her.
“I don’t want him dead, I just want him to be my friend again, with no expectations.” I chew on my lower lip for a moment, and then I ask, “How do I get their souls back?”
SIX
Julia tucksa piece of my hair behind my ear. “Come with me… there is a spell in your black-page book that can open a portal to Hell… or there used to be, assuming no one has torn it out.” She grimaces, and the memory of Minnie doing just that makes my skin crawl.
She rises through the ceiling, but I have to take the stairs.
I hurry up them, carefully, and find her waiting for me.
She reaches for The Book, swiping her hand, and it flies open as her fingers pass through it.
“Sorry,” she says, almost sheepishly. “Old habits die hard.”
“It’s okay. It’s familiar.” I could do with familiarity right now.
She flutters her fingers, a small whorl of air flipping through to one of the pages at the very back of The Book and then floats out of the way. “It has some… odd requirements.”
