Levi shook his head. Spencer supposed it was too much to hope he remembered more than flashes of his possession while on this property. “No. What do you think is down there?”
Bones, Fatima said.
“Let’s find out,” Spencer said, pretending he didn’t already know.
Fatima hopped down from the counter to the stairs, running headfirst into the shadows below. Spencer hit a button on the side that looked like it might be a light switch and was pleased to see he was right. Small Edison-style lightbulbs switched on in the stairwell, lighting the way down.
Spencer conjured up a mageglobe with a thought. As it formed, wards became visible on the sides of the hidden stairwell, sigils for containment and protection flaring to life in the face of magic it didn’t recognize. No spellcasting was written on the stairs themselves, so Spencer descended one step at a time, mageglobe leading the way, ready for anything. Levi followed him down, neither of them protesting when Caitlin and her attorney defiantly joined them. Fatima never called out a warning, and when Spencer made it to the floor below, he found himself in what would have been a basement in any other house. Here, it was a mausoleum.
The air below was cold, the chill coming from the overall location of the space itself and the lingering sense of unease permeating the cement walls, floor, and ceiling. The massive pentagram painted over the floor touched every wall, the lines a red so dark he mistook it for black at first. Columns had been shaped out of the cement in each corner, with tiny shelves carved into them to hold dozens of candles. Hundreds more candles encircled the room along the wall in elaborate wrought iron candelabras and sconces. All the wicks were blackened, empty of fire, but the floral scent from the wax lingered in the air. In the center of the hidden basement, surrounded by the polygon heart of the pentagram, was a marble plinth with a gold-edged wooden coffin resting on top.
Hanging on the walls were four portraits of a man who Spencer recognized only because the poltergeist had manifested the form before it had tried to murder him in the forest. The man’s features were more distinct in the old oil paintings than they had been the other night. The clothes in one of the full-body portraits were an exact match for the spirit’s. The full beard he sported couldn’t hide the stern expression he carried in every portrait, nor the prominently depicted pendant he wore, resting over the silk tie.
Spencer stepped closer to the portrait hanging on the wall to his right, careful to step over the pentagram’s lines. The ouroboros on the silver medallion made Spencer go cold. Covens carried symbols of the god or goddess they tended to worship, but Spencer wasn’t familiar with whatever deity this pendant represented, if it even was a deity they worshipped. He turned to look at the coffin, at the way it was displayed like an altar and the space around that could so easily be meant for prayer.
No, he didn’t think it was a god or goddess the Cascade Coven worshipped.
Levi circled the coffin, studying it. “A private residence isn’t zoned for the dead like this.”
“It’s a focal point to our religion. We worship our ancestors, and such worship is allowed under the law,” Caitlin said flatly.
“That might be true, but there are also laws on where you can pray if the dead are involved.”
Caitlin stiffened. “I don’t care for your implication.”
“I got possessed in this house, Ms. Adler. You have a dead body down here that you and your coven apparently worship. Necromancy is illegal in the United States for a reason.”
“Howdareyou accuse me of such blasphemy.”
Despite the coffin and the eerie cold feeling in the basement, the magic used down here wasn’t in the realm of black or blood magic. Neither did it feel like how Spencer knew necromancy did. That metaphysical stain wasn’t present, but that didn’t mean how the Cascade Coven practiced wasn’t suspect.
“The coffin will need to be removed from the premises.”
“Your warrant doesn’t encompass what is down here,” Caitlin’s attorney shot back. “That fact aside, my client and her coven have a right to worship how they like.”
“They can’t worship the dead like this in a residential neighborhood. If it was ashes, then that would be fine.”
“I’m going to strenuously protest the removal of my client’s religious altar.”
Levi opened his mouth to respond but never got the chance to as an otherworldly force exploded outward from the coffin, catching them all up in the concussive wave. Spencer hastily erected shields around himself and the others, but they only padded the impact so much. Spencer crashed into the wall, and while the air wasn’t driven from his lungs, it still rattled his teeth.
He shoved himself upright, pouring raw magic into his mageglobe, the dark green sphere crackling in the air. The chill in the basement plunged so low he could see his breath fog the air in front of his mouth and nose. The cabinet door slammed shut upstairs as the ceiling lights in the basement flickered rapidly for a few seconds before going out. The only light left came from his mageglobe, casting an eerie dark green glow through the shadows. That glow was swiftly joined by the candles in the basement burning to life all at once.
Spencer slipped his sight sideways, nearly blinded by the vicious glow of the poltergeist hovering over the coffin. As he watched, the shape of it twisted into the figure of a man who was a dead ringer for the one in the portrait.
Fatima growled viciously, her form blurring as she bridged the distance between the mortal realm and beyond the veil.
“Fatima!” Spencer shouted, slamming his magic outward to form a cage.
She lunged toward the poltergeist but never made contact. The poltergeist exploded like a star gone nova, leaving the basement along the lines of the pentagram. The only thing that remained was the afterimage of its incorporeal self, burning in Spencer’s sight. He blinked his vision back to normal, trying to get rid of the colored spots floating across his sight. Fatima’s claws caught on the side of the coffin and tore into the wood for a few inches before she launched herself off it and back to the floor.
The pentagram’s lines glowed with otherworldly magic that rapidly faded. Spencer was careful of where he stepped as he met Fatima over by the stairs. Levi looked shaken but in one piece, while Caitlin and her attorney weren’t much better.
“What in the world wasthat?” the lawyer demanded in a high-pitched voice.
“Ms. Adler’s ancestor,” Spencer said, looking right at Caitlin.
She stared back wide-eyed and tight-lipped, sickly pale in the still-burning candlelight. Caitlin neither confirmed nor denied his accusation and let her attorney continue to speak for her. “The government hadno rightto disrupt the Cascade Coven’s religious space.”
