Page 3 of When Bones Whisper
Charlotte cracked her eyes open just enough to see the shadow of the door. It remained closed, but her heart thundered as her mind raced with images of what might await her on theother side. She moved her gaze across the room. A sliver of moonlight peppered through the closed drapes, and the shadows of the furniture took on a life of their own as her eyes adjusted to the room.
A flicker of movement caught her eye in the corner. She held her breath, but let it out once she saw the brown, glossy body of a cockroach scuttling across the ground before vanishing through a crack in the floorboards.
She closed her eyes, concentrating on the subtle movements in her left hand, willing her finger to lift. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she visualized the movement, and a hot flush crept through her face. A flicker of sensation surged through her wrist, sparking into her fingers. The paralysis slowly receded as she twisted her hand, gasping when she could finally move. She sat upright, inhaling deeply and looked at the door.
Before she could fully catch her breath, a sudden weight landed at the end of her bed. A loud scream reverberated from her throat, and she kicked her way up the mattress until her back was pressed against the headboard.
Her cat’s yellow eyes glistened in the dark. He blinked slowly, tilting his head and meowed.
A sigh of relief whooshed past her lips. “Duke!”
He nudged his damp nose against her fingers, gently nuzzling closer until he nestled himself onto her lap. “Where did you come from?” she whispered, running her fingers over Duke’s silky, black coat. She glanced at the door again, but everything remained quiet, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
She tugged him closer to her chest, holding him tighter as she buried her face in his soft fur. His purrs vibrated against her lips, and she smiled. “Did you sense something was wrong?”
Duke hardly ever came into the house, but she always left the window open for him anyway. Her uncle and cousin didn’t want him in the house, even though it washerhouse, and even the servants would shoo him away no matter how much Charlotte protested.
“You can sleep here,” she said, placing him on the blankets beside her. “Just leave when the sun comes up.
Duke twisted his body, playfully arching his back against the mattress and curling his paws toward the ceiling of her four-poster bed. She dragged her fingers over his belly. Most people believed black cats were dark omens and hated humans, a sentiment she could not understand because Duke loved people. It was just too bad they didn’t like him back.
He fell asleep quickly, his light snores calming the anxiety still buzzing through her veins. He wouldn’t have fallen asleep if there was still something nefarious lurking nearby, but she couldn’t ignore the pit of dread building in her stomach. She tried to think of anything else, but the more she tried to suppress the thoughts of ghosts and death, the larger they grew. Images of her sister and mother’s bones, crawling with insects, flashed through her head.
You are going to die. Just like them.
The thought intruded on her senses, and she jolted. “I am perfectly fine. Everything is fine. I am not going to die,” she said, repeating the same words she’d told herself for the last month.
She pulled Duke closer to her side, turning her mind instead to the problem at hand. The dead could be frightening, but she was far more afraid of the living, and if she didn’t do something soon, she would be forced to marry the most heinous of them all.
Practicing sacrificial magic was something she had never contemplated putting into practice until now, despite soaking in every spell in her great-grandmother’s grimoire. Abstaining from magic had not done her family any good, and it was the only thing that might save her from a most wretched fate.
In just a few days, she would be forced to stand before a priest and commit herself to her cousin. If she didn’t go ahead with the wedding, her uncle would make good on his threats to have her committed. Despite his claims, she was not insane, but that didn’t matter. She was a woman in a man’s world, and no one was going to believe that she wasn’t a witch, especially since she’d accidentally left one of the grimoires out and he’d stumbled across it.
That was a horrific Tuesday. She could still smell the burned parchment in her nose.
Even though her father’s estate now belonged to her, Theodore was the executor of her father’s will, and in the eyes of society, the house may as well have belonged to him. Her uncle wanted it for himself, and the best way to do that was to marry her to his son. She assumed he was angry at his brother for willing the estate to his daughter instead of him as the last living male heir, even though he had no need for more wealth. Theodore had an entire fleet of merchant ships, a house in central London, anda large estate in the country where his third wife lived in seclusion.
His son, William, was just like him—boisterous, impertinent, and greedy. It had been her cousin’s gloating yesterday that propelled Charlotte down the path toward witchcraft. He bragged how he would soon fill her with enough babies that they would be the envy of society.
The thought of visiting his bed sent bile rising in her throat.
An intrusive, sweetly sick voice spoke in her mind again.
Kill them. They deserve it.
She shook her head, and Duke stirred a little. Murder wasn’t a word she wanted to entertain. Taking someone’s life was an abhorrent thing to do, no matter how much she didn’t want to continue living under her uncle’s oppressive thumb. It wasn’t her place to play judge and executioner, but there were other ways to get rid of them.
The mirror.
The voice echoed again. She’d first thought of it last night. The cursed mirror was hidden in her attic, behind a layer of cobwebs and trunks filled with ritual items. She’d promised never to go up there, but of course, that made her want to go even more.
It was the voice in her head, her inner voice, that reminded her of the cursed mirror. The voice appeared after the burial as if her consciousness had fractured from the grief. She had to lock her uncle and cousin away. For the mirror, from what she had read in the grimoires, was an ancient prison, cursed to house the very worst entities. While performing the spell to trap them in there forever was abhorrent, she was desperate.
Her gaze flicked over to the window as she mulled over what her life would be like if she didn’t go ahead with the spell. She would likely be with child soon after the wedding. She wasn’t even certain that her body could withstand that. The mysterious sickness that had plagued her for the past six years wasn’t showing any signs of relenting. Her joints ached no matter how much rest she got, and while she had days or even weeks where she felt better, it was always followed by periods of sheer exhaustion.
Her uncle and cousin already looked down on her for being bedridden a week ago and announced they wouldn’t put up with it anymore once she became William’s wife. In fact, she was given a list of things that would be expected of her once she was married to him.
She grimaced, her stomach churning. The urge to use magic had swirled in her mind for years, but she repressed it. She’d gone back and forth so many times since the funeral, incapable of deciding on whether to use it, but as the night ticked into morning, she realized she had little choice.
