I looked over to Sebastian. He was a vampire. She was a witch. I was in the Hushed Woods, what I once believed only existed in folklore, along with everything else I had seen today. I was not well-versed in any of this. Was it wise to give a witch my blood? I looked to him for approval. He nodded once.
“Okay.”
She left for a moment and returned with a glass globe full of water that she placed on the coffee table between us. She held up a fine needle, running it through the flame of a nearby candle a few times. She gestured for me to give her my hand, and I reluctantly complied. I cringed at the sharp prick as the needle broke through the pad of my pointer finger. I suppressed a gag as she squeezed it. A bead of crimson welled up until it dropped into the water. She released my hand as she watched the red feather through the liquid. It dispersed into delicate rivulets, whirling and intertwining.
I glanced over to Sebastian, whose eyes were closed. He appeared to be breathing in deeply. His knuckles white as his hands gripped the armrests tightly. I followed the blood that dripped from my finger onto my gown.
As the red melded with the water and stilled, tinting it a faint pink, she looked up, handing me a cloth for my finger. I wrapped it around and squeezed it tightly with my other hand to stop the bleeding. Sebastian opened his eyes. His restraint was palpable as he kept a calm face.
Her eyes flitted between us. I held her gaze as I quite literally sat at the edge of my seat.
She finally spoke. “You have been tied to another, forever to be within each other’s shadow. It is an odd magic, of another world, though there are some similarities to our world I can see. The path the blood takes suggests a tracking spell.”
“Who—”
She answered before I could ask. “The spell is with whomever roams within your blood.”
A heavy mass uprooted and fell through me. “Alaric?”
“Yes.”
Sebastian stiffened beside me. Thoughts overflowed and seeped out, slipping through my fingers before I could grasp any.
“What exactly does this mean?”
“This Alaric will always be a part of you. He will always be able to find you and feel you. He can look through your eyes. If you give into the spell and accept him, you will become a part of him as well. Though by the look on your face, I don’t see that happening for him anytime soon.”
“Absolutely not,” I whispered, my gaze becoming vacant.
“Though Brennus can protect you from true demons, vampires are not of the underworld as so foolishly believed. And he cannot banish what is a part of you. Alaric is a part of your blood now.Brennus tries to take the magic infecting your body, but the spell cannot be undone this way. The exorcisms will kill you if they continue. As they take parts of him from you, they take parts of you as well. Eventually there will be nothing left to take.”
Her words evoked the echoes of torment that once consumed me. I had never felt such pain, as if a dagger sank deep and ripped me apart at the seams. Now I knew. It was not just the demon as Jameson, an exorcist of Brennus, had said.This pain is not real, Charlotte. You are feeling the demon’s pain. It is not your own.It was not a demon at all. I was right all along. The exorcisms were killing me.
I backtracked as the various revelations fell into place.As so foolishly believed. Sebastian had said that vampires were not demons, and now she confirmed this as well. I floated above the ruins of my beliefs, suspended between decision. To fall within the rubble or reach for something new. Those beliefs had been interwoven into the fabric of my very being. How could it be wrong? And how could I remove what was stitched so tightly?One horrible, earth-shattering moment at a time.
“How did he do this?”
“Tracking spells are an old magic, not often practiced. I have not seen this or read reports of this in a long while. It can be quite dangerous, violating, of course, if not consensual. Though I cannot say for certain how this particular spell was done since the magic is not of our world, typically, the spell is done by taking the blood of two parties and blending it together during the casting.”
When did he take ... my hand rose to the base of my throat, grazing the small, silver scar that sat there. It was the only scar I had, though I didn’t remember how it happened. Father said I had taken a tumble down a hill when I was a toddler, landing in a patch of roses. I couldn’t imagine Alaric having been around that long anyway. I had only been acquainted with the unfortunate displeasureof his presence a year ago when the hauntings started. Perhaps he could have taken my blood in other ways, a way that wouldn’t scar. I shivered at the thought of having no memory of it. Of him being with me in that way, in the way that he was now. Could he feel me now? And what did that even mean? My nerves burned as I wondered if he knew where I was.
“How do I ... remove him?”
“That is what I cannot see. Though I can see the similarities of our world’s magic, I do not have all the necessary information to know how to break the spell.” She turned to Sebastian. “Since Alaric is from Dreigo, it’s worth looking for answers there.”
I glanced over to Sebastian, my eyes slightly wider. This was certainly not what I had expected to learn today. A part of me was not surprised having been familiar with Alaric’s deranged nature. He believed I would be his bride. He had already prepared to turn me. And at some point he tied us so he could track my every move. He was closing every door I had to turn to, keeping me well within his confines.
If I couldn’t break the tracking spell, I would never be free. And the weight of that draped over me like crumbling soil, burying me within what I might never climb out of. The life I had dreamed of: of painting in the gardens, walking along the river, and perusing shop windows without the eyes of others upon me. It all grew further now, to a place I was not sure I would ever be able to reach. I would never relax within the stark lines of normal.
“I will look into this further.” His voice seemed tight, almost restrained, along with his face, as if he were keeping his true expression from me.
“As for what you came here for,” she continued, and I had nearly forgotten what we had come here for. “I’m afraid, despite what the humans may think”—she added bitterly—“I do notknow much of this particular portal, but what I do know of portals is that only the one who had opened it can close it.”
My eyes met with Sebastian’s in understanding, both knowing full well that Alaric would never close it. Which meant there might be no way to close it, and our worlds would be forever linked.
“There is another important note about portals. If you say this Alaric opened it, he had to have had help. A portal can only join two worlds when one from each world joins themselves. Someone in our world helped him to open this portal.”
I had always known the demons to be a plague against us. A tear in our world where evil spilled through. Who in our world would open a portal? Who would want that? My thoughts flickered back to the strange creature we saw in the woods, the faeries, the woods itself, a place I had thought was only a scary story. What did I know? There were beings here I had never thought existed, and I was sitting across from one. Anyone could have opened that portal.
