The damned woman had escaped him again. Jessamine had a way of disappearing into a crowd that he would never understand, considering he was a god directly connected to her, and he should have been able to follow her anywhere. But then someone had grabbed his arm, asking him a question like he was the man he was pretending to be. He’d shaken them off, only to be waylaid yet again.
But this time it was the man who had warned him off in the garden, the young man who now had wild eyes and looked very much like he’d seen a ghost.
“What?” Elric snarled.
“We have to leave.”
“Leave? Do you think I would even entertain leaving without my lady on my arm?” Elric wanted to punch a hole in a wall. At least then, maybe it would feel like he was doing something.
But the young man shook his head frantically, his hair flopping in all directions. “Listen to me. I know what they’re doing. I know there is a risk that you cannot take. We have to go.”
“There is no risk too great for her,” he muttered, looking through the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of raven hair. “If you wish to run, young man, you should.”
“We can’t stay here! Someone needs to survive—”
Elric reached out and snagged the young man by the lapel. Dragginghim so close he could see the young man’s pupils dilate with fear, he hissed, “Who are you? And how do you know so much about all this?”
Hands wrapped around his own, but the man wasn’t struggling. Not in the slightest. He was just holding on to Elric for dear life. Fear ran throughout his entire form, but he was clutching Elric not with fearofhim, but fearforhim. “I will gladly tell you everything you wish to know if we leave this place!”
“Then you should leave. I have a house at the end of Rose Street.”
“The haunted one?”
“Yes. Meet us there when you can, And if you touch anything that is my property, I will flay your skin from your form and make you eat it piece by piece. Do you understand me?”
He hadn’t thought the young man could get any paler, but there it was. The last bit of blood rushed out of his features and away from his lips, leaving him rather corpse-like in appearance.
But then the young man ran from the room, pushing and shoving people out of his way as though there were hounds nipping at his heels. A murmur rose through the crowd. Obviously people were getting uncomfortable with so much activity. Elric couldn’t blame them. This was supposed to be a party full of people reveling in their own power, yet there had now been instances of four peoplerunning.
He would have found it all amusing if he didn’t feel the tingle of magic running through the room. He hadn’t felt even an ounce of it before now. Jessamine was whispering a request through him, and he knew that something terrible was about to happen.
He helped her with a protection spell but felt the magic still building around him, like a lightning storm was brewing where he least expected it. The power actually lifted the hairs on his arms, and he hadn’t been around a spell like that in a very long time.
Strange. Even stranger that no one around him seemed to react to it. Most people were milling about the main area of the home with the black-and-white-checkered floor. They lingered by the stairs, clearly expecting Fortuna or someone else to appear at the top of them. And yet, Elric stillhad the sensation that something terrible was about to happen. Something he couldn’t control.
This magic wasn’t his, but it was familiar. There was but one god who had given their people the ability to cast spells like this. The Crone and her priestesses had magic born from the heart. It was, essentially, magic created from emotion. The greater the emotion, loss, rage, fear, the better the spell. He hesitated to use his magic to prod at it, because he wasn’t sure what it would do in response.
Could a priestess of the Crone have survived this long? He doubted it. The Crone wasn’t able to control life or death. Her priestesses died far more often than his witches, in fact, because they were usually too pious to sell their souls to him.
But why was there priestess magic in this room?
Hissing out a long breath, he tried to move through the crowd unseen, but another older gentleman grabbed his arm. “Martin! I haven’t seen you in years.”
“Always good to see you, old chap,” he muttered, slapping a hand a little too hard on the man’s shoulder and trying to disentangle himself.
“Do you still have that… playroom?” Something disgusting twinkled in the old man’s eyes. “I would love to come up to your hunting cabin and experience it for myself again. I did very much enjoy my time there with you.”
“I’m sure you did.” Elric wanted to put his fist through this man’s chest and yank out his still-beating heart. “But unfortunately, I sold the cabin.”
“Whyever would you do that?”
“Too many dirty old men soiled it.” With a snarl, he ripped himself free from the old man’s grasp and moved through the crowd again.
There it was. A boiling, crackling sensation that only got worse the more he focused on it, like a bubble of magic building around them. Something was about to happen. He knew it. And then… it burst.
An icy tingle ran down his spine, like water dripping from the nape of his neck all the way down to the backs of his knees. Then the first persongroaned. It was a woman next to him, her bright red corset making it hard for her to bend at the waist where she was clutching her stomach. She moaned again, her voice carrying over the sudden silence in the room as everyone seemed to hold their breath.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” the man beside her asked, placing his hand on her back.
