Page 38 of Devils and the Dead
The tree trunk trembled. Blood oozed around the shard. Tinsel’s scream rent the air, then the spirit was abruptly silent. Sylvie turned to me with raised eyebrows.
I let out a breath. “He knows this is going to be painful. But the agony he suffers every day is unbearable. He’ll endure if there’s a chance this might break the curse.”
Sylvie winced. “Okay. I hate that I’m causing him pain, but I’ll proceed.”
She took out another shard from her bag. “Shatter.”
Another scream. Another shard and spellword. Another scream. And on and on until I could hardly bear to keep watching. The tree trembled, blood covering the bark. Tinsel wasn’t the only spirit who was suffering from my sister’s spell. Mist-like forms had appeared around the tree—a dozen of them. The other elf spirits wailed and thrashed as Sylvie worked her magic.
The mirrored shards were embedded in a starburst pattern, and as Sylvie inserted the last one, they all glowed blue and gold. I felt the magic of the curse shift and weaken. The mirror shards snipped tiny threads of the elf queen’s spell, and slowly it began to unravel. I caught my breath, afraid to say anything in case I jinxed the whole thing.
“Shatter, shatter, shatter,” Sylvie chanted. The press of her magic began to feel strained, labored. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead and cheek. Her hands trembled and she clenched them into fists at her sides.
The unraveling slowed. I opened my senses and felt some of the elven spirits slip free. One. Three. Five. Eight.
Go. Go. I silently urged them. Tinsel would be the last to leave, and probably the hardest to free, but I knew he was thrilled that some of his friends were slipping through the weakening curse to their afterlife.
The unraveling spell halted and I felt it tremble. A few more spirits slipped through the bounds, then I felt the magic in the air change. Sylvie gasped and the mirror shards fell to dust, the curse back in place and stronger than it had been before.
“I’m so sorry.” She turned to me and ran a shaky hand over her forehead. “I’m absolutely tapped out. I can’t believe how powerful that spell was. I gave it everything I had, but just couldn’t break it.”
“You weakened it enough to free all the elves except Tinsel.” I closed my eyes and felt the cursed elf’s emotions. His torture had increased tenfold, but he was thrilled that the others had managed to escape.
Sylvie gave me a weak smile. “I’ll try again another time. Maybe if I bring Eshu with me, together we can break the curse.”
If she brought Eshu with her, there was a good chance the curse wouldn’t be the only thing broken. I had no doubt that the trickster could free Tinsel, but in the process he’d probably end up leveling the mountain and killing us all.
“I won’t give up either,” I told my sister. My vow wasn’t just to Sylvie and the werewolves, it was to Tinsel as well. I wouldn’t give up. No matter how long it took, I’d eventually free him.
I turned to tell the werewolves it was safe to come forward, then caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye.
“Down,” I shouted, pulling Sylvie to the ground with me.
A blaze of green light shot through the air right where our heads had just been, then bounced off the trees at the perimeter of the compound. The werewolves yelped and snarled, ducking down for cover, but the light didn’t leave the circle of trees. It didn’t harm the trees either. Taking that as a good sign, I eased to my knees, watching as the green light slowed then pivoted to form six-foot-tall oval next to the cursed tree.
Sylvie sucked in a breath and stood, pulling me to my feet. “It’s a portal.”
It was. And I had a good idea who was on the other side. “Should we run?” I asked her, even though I wasn’t sure where we could go that we’d be safe from the elf queen.
Sylvie pushed her shoulders back. “Hell no, we shouldn’t run. This is Accident. We’re Perkins witches. We’ve blessed and warded this land, andsheis a trespasser here.”
A trespasser who assaulted our residents, who killed and cursed them on our land, on our watch. I pushed my shoulders back as well, my fear vanishing. This queen might be an ancient being with untold power, but I was a Perkins witch, and I would not retreat on my own land.
The green portal shimmered, and a being of light stepped through. The light coalesced, and before us stood a willowy woman about five feet tall. Her golden hair was styled in an intricate up-do and adorned with emeralds and white flowers that smelled like honey and wintergreen. Her eyes were abnormally large and as green as the gems in her hair. I stared at her, thinking she looked like a manga character, then shifted my gaze to her hands. Her long pointed nails were a pearly white—a match to the flowing dress she wore.
I’d grown up around the fae, so her carefully constructed appearance didn’t startle or impress me. The glamour she wore swirled around my body, trying to force me to my knees in adoration of her otherworldly beauty, but we witches were immune to such things. I felt her power, but it didn’t control me. I was pretty sure my immunity might not hold up if she brought out the big guns, though.
“Who dares try to break my spell?” she hissed, her weird eyes darting back and forth from Sylvie to me.
“I did,” I chimed in before Sylvie could respond. I’d rather this elf’s anger be focused on me since my sister was magically exhausted at the moment. “Decades ago you came uninvited to our lands, and dispensed judgement without even consulting us. These elves had our permission to live here, and your assault on our guests is an assault on us.”
I wasn’t sure why I decided it was a wise thing to go on the offense with the elven queen, but my boldness paid off. She blinked and tilted her head as she regarded me. “These elves stole what was mine and ran here to hide. Do you admit that you gave them asylum, knowing what they did?”
I mentally backpedaled, not wanting her to think our allowing the elves to live here was in any way an attack on her. I needed her to see thatwewere the aggrieved party—victims to her trespass, murder, and dark magic on our territory. That wouldn’t fly if she thought we’d somehow shot first by knowingly harboring criminals.
“We had no idea that they stole from you. They arrived in Accident asking to live here as so many non-humans do, and we granted them land and resources. But your murdering and cursing their souls was done on our territory, without respect to our rule of law, and without any due process.”
Clearly I’d been hanging around Cassie for too long. I was beginning to sound like a lawyer.
