Page 110 of When Bones Whisper
Our family?
Yes, my name is Delanie Lysanmore.
Goosebumps pricked her soul. No, it couldn’t be. She knew that name. He had mentioned it.
You were Nathaniel’sbetrothed;she realized.
Yes, I have been waiting patiently for centuries to make him suffer. He robbed me of a life where I would become the most powerful witch of all time. Now, I will take the body of the only woman he loved, and you will watch, helplessly, as I make him fall in love with me, and then break his heart as he did mine.
He won’t believe you are me.
Yes, he will,the demon responded, her voice so certain it sent a tendril of dread through Charlotte.
Delanie’s frown deepened, making her wince in pain. It was then she noticed the carved wounds on either side of her mouth. She touched her face, her humorless grin spreading outward.
Charlotte’s heart pounded, the earth reaching her chin now.You have been in my head this whole time. You pushed me from the attic that night. You persuaded me to dig up those bones…oh God.
Yes. They were my bones. You were so susceptible and now all you have will be mine. I will know how it is to live again, while you will take my place in the mirror and rot with the men who you murdered.
No! This couldn’t happen. Desperately, she tried to claw her way out of the earth, but the grips on her soul were too tight.
The last thing she saw, before she was dragged from the graveyard, was Delanie step into her body and awaken to Nathaniel, who held her tighter.
No. No. Please, no!
Mouth wide in silent screams, Charlotte clung to the ground while hands pulled her down the path and toward Lovett Manor.
With a sudden rush, she was back in those familiar halls and up into the attic.
The power of the mirror pulled her closer, and she glared at the reflectionless glass of her eternal prison and the souls behind it who were waiting for her.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The evil attached to Lovett Manor was a suffocating darkness, slowly devouring and eroding any light left in her soul. Days crawled by, and Charlotte discovered time still existed, even though she had believed death erased its passage.
Her uncle’s and cousin’s souls pushed up against hers in the prison behind the mirror, an endless void filled with demonic beings, many of whom appeared as shadow figures with glowing eyes, except for one, a tall man with a chalky appearance, black eyes, wearing a suit and top hat.
Her uncle eyed her, tilting his head, flaring his nostrils. He likely thought it was justice, that she ended up in there with them. In a way, it was poetic how things turned out. Supposedly, whendark magic is used to harm others, it always comes back worse on the caster, although if that were true, then why did a demon win?
Her cousin glared at her through darkening eyes. The only respite from his presence was that they could not speak to each other, not even in their minds. However, she didn’t need that to know the horrid things they were thinking about her. Especially when they came too close, her family’s souls pushing into hers—the only thing they could do to her to cause any discomfort.
Any guilt she’d held for them was long gone. While she couldn’t hear them, she could sense their desire to devour anything innocent. The evil they held while alive followed them into death, and it was growing each day.
She had a lot of time to think on the other side, trapped in limbo with her uncle and cousin, whose hate rippled beyond the dark shadows of the endless void. Her life had ended while she was waiting for it to begin and the only thing that followed her into death was the bitter sting of regret.
There was so much she had wanted to do outside of the expectations that had been placed on her such as building an animal sanctuary to help the local, wounded wildlife. She’d often dreamed of traveling too. She hadn’t seen much of England, let alone any part of the world outside of it. Now, she was confined to one place for the rest of eternity. After all the talk of mortality, none of it mattered. The soul never died and now, just like the vampires, she was forever bound, but without the ability to live a life.
After all the tragedy, she was so close to feeling happy again, but now it was all gone.
After curling herself into a ball, hiding in a shadow, haunted by the hollowness there, she decided to leave the mirror again.
Slowly, she rose to her feet, always cold now, and soul slowly withering under the oppressive energy surrounding her. She’d only left the mirror once, discovering they could leave for a mere hour or two, as long as they remained within the confines of the property, before the curse would drag them back.
She left the attic and ambled through the familiar dark corridors. The wood groaned in the settling walls, and the moth-eaten drapes swayed in her presence. The silhouette of one of the demons detached from darkness, taking shape in the corner of her eye.
All she could think about was Duke and Nathaniel and the desperation to see them again, if only for a moment. Her feet glided over the musty carpet, while a thick layer of mist clung to everything when she heard a familiar sound—her own voice.
She floated down the stairs and into the gray foyer. Thunder rumbled outside, rain hammering down as Nathaniel, Alexander and Delanie, in her immortal body, stood in the open doorway.
