Page 114 of When Bones Whisper
“Yes,” Nathaniel said with a low growl, positioning himself behind her head as she lay on the ground, his hands tight around her head, glaring into her eyes. “What is your name?”
“Charlotte,” the demon crooned. “Your Charlotte.”
“No, what is your true name?”
“I’ve already told you,” she cried, screaming when Nathaniel forced her to face the mirror.
“Then look at your reflection.”
Charlotte gasped when she saw her body and the demon writhing inside of it, pupil-slitted eyes focused on the glass. She snarled, averting her eyes, her lips twisting into a sinister grimace.
Duke jumped beside her, his angry, yellow stare pinned on the demon, his fangs bared.
“I knew it. Now tell me your name!”
She spat in his face, tugging on the herb-infused ropes. “Never.”
Nathaniel’s eyes cut to Katherine’s, who was flicking through a grimoire. “Anything?”
“There’s one part,” she stated, “about The Smiling Woman, but it doesn’t say much, only that she has been trapped in there for centuries.”
It’s Delanie!Charlotte screamed in her mind, but it was no use.
“Tell us, or we’ll make this hurt.”
Her lips twisted into a grin, a low cackle erupting from her lips as she hissed, “I do not fear pain. Like you, I consume it. Itstrengthens me.” Tilting her head, she added, “Your beloved is gone,Nathaniel, and she is never coming back.”
“Now, Katherine,” Alexander barked.
Charlotte watched as Katherine turned her attention back to the grimoire, before speaking the words in a slow, shaky voice. “Audite me, vires daemoniacae. Relinquite hoc corpus, spiritus impure. Sub potestate noni sanguinis, vobis impero ut corpus quod abstulistis relinquatis.”
A growl erupted from the throat of the demon as the flames grew taller, flickering shadows over the narrow walls.
The demon twisted her head to the side, her neck cracking as her eyes rolled back to reveal the bloodshot whites.
Katherine repeated the words, the low hum of magic pulsing through the ground, until Delanie’s eyes snapped back, her instructive stare boring into Nathaniel’s as she darted her tongue between her teeth with a hiss.
“How does it feel to lose the one you love?” she asked, her voice a mimicry of Charlotte’s. “I will never relent of her body.”
“Fuck you!” he snarled.
Irene grunted as the demon thrashed, wrestling against their hold. “She’s strong.”
“For now,” Nathaniel growled and looked at Katherine. “Keep going.”
“I need her name.”
Charlotte’s fingers gripped the mirror, desperately repeating the name over and over, hoping it could somehow traverse the realms into his mind.
The demon’s voice dipped into a low, hollow tone. “Charlotte is suffering because of you.”
She looked at Katherine, cackling before she taunted, “You do their bidding, even though they will kill you after. I can feel their intentions, their desire to rip out your throat the moment she escapes that prison world.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Alexander warned when blood trickled out of the eyes of the portraits stacked against the wall, the demonic, low distorted laugh echoing around them.
Katherine’s next incantation stumbled a little, but she continued on with a shake of her head.
Exhaustion spread through Charlotte’s body as she watched Nathaniel hiss remarks into her ears, the entities at her back pushing to get close enough that they could come through when it opened.
