Tick. Tick. Tick.
And she’s still dead.
The tears slowly dry as I stare into the empty room, waiting for time to pass and for oblivion to take me.
Then I blink slowly, frowning at the dark shape beneath her bed. A box. I’ve never seen it before, and Ella was never one to keep secrets.
My joints click and the wine swoops in my stomach as I wobble up to my hands and knees. What the hell is that box? I helped her clean her room every week, and I’ve never seen it before.
I hesitate just as I’m about to crawl to it. No one has stepped into this room since the EMTs left.
“Pull yourself together,” I mumble to myself.
Ella is dead, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I drag myself across the floor and reach beneath the single bed. Dust catches on my bloody hand, and I sneeze before latching my fingers on to the corner of the box and towing it out.
My lips part as I stare down at the antique wooden… chest? Box? I’m not sure what to call it. It’s a foot wide and double that in length. Filigree and symbols I don’t recognize are carved into the lid and on all four sides.
She’s always been obsessed with her witchy shit, even though I’d tease her about it. Is this another one of the weird holistic things she tried to avoid incurring more medical bills?
I flick the latch and slowly lift the lid, holding my breath for the great reveal.
My stomach bottoms out as the memories hit. I thought the police took this—they took everything else. We were lucky to keep the clothes on our back.
My bloody fingers wrap around the handle, and I bring the antique object closer to my face. It still looks like it was made just yesterday, instead of hundreds of years ago. The silver blade glints against the light as shadows dip into each engraved symbol.
Ella and I never knew what the runelike writing on the dagger meant, and we never got the chance to ask Grandma before she died. We had a long list of theories but no answers. At the end of the day, it was nothing more than a family heirloom.
My sister lit up the day Grandma gifted it to her on her sixteenth birthday. The same way it’s been gifted to the firstborn Eldrith child for generations—or so she claimed.
Back when we still lived at the manor, I would sneak into Ella’s room at night to see her studying it before returning it to her altar with random herbs and stones. It was her most prized possession because she loved Grandma more than anyone else. She basically raised us. But she and Ella always had a special relationship.
I wipe the tears from my eyes.
Why did my sister hide this from me for so long? Honestly, I forgot it existed. And what else was she keeping from me? Why did she stop taking her medication and give up on herself when I was still fighting for her? Why?—
I suck in a sharp breath as a tear drops onto the blade, mixing with the crimson stain from my hand. Maybe… maybe I can ask her… I mean it’s… What have I got to lose?
If it doesn’t work, then I’ve lost nothing but time. It’s probably a bunch of hocus pocus bullshit, but what if itistrue…?
I lower the dagger back into the box, which I cradle to my chest before taking the grimoire from her bedside table. Ella and I have flicked through that book of spells more times than I can count, and there’s one in particular I remember talking about with her.
I leap to my feet and run to my room to get changed before grabbing my keys.
I’m going to try to summon my sister.
2
Lynx
Another sinner. Another soul that belongs in Hell.
The first strike of my whip still echoes in my ears, even after all these untracked centuries of monotonous agony. I hated it at first. It was the sound of torture—the sound that signified someone was about to endure excruciating pain and bleed every drop of their blood onto the stones beneath them.
If the soul’s weakness was physical pain instead of mental anyway.
I would take being burned alive, skinned, beaten, and starved over any kind of mental torture. Being trapped in my head and replaying nightmare after nightmare, fear after fear, for what feels like an eternity, only to no longer know what’s real and what’s fake is the worst kind of pain.
