Page 26 of Warlocks Don’t Win (Singsong City #9)

Chapter

Fourteen

I went directly to the large family mausoleum where my father’s bones were kept.

Everything should be there for reanimating him, and I needed a perspective that wasn’t skewed by human emotions.

If anyone knew about dark societies that spread like a canker across the land, it would be him.

Also, if anyone were pure evil, it would be him.

Tolly found me on my trek through the woods and fell in beside me, her company much easier to handle than Winston’s. My husband. Maybe Rasputin would have some good advice on how to break those bindings along with Dame Winston’s curse.

To enter the mausoleum I had to first clear off fifteen years of vines. I forgot which side the entrance was on, so I spent an hour hacking at it in the growing dark, getting my hands all sticky with angry vines. Probably poisonous. Winston wasn’t wrong about my growing up in a poisonous garden.

He loved me? Why would he say that? What could a manipulative snake like him know about love? I also knew nothing about love, which is why I’d fallen for him. It was probably something other than love. Like indigestion. Stuffed crust pizzas were probably terrible for me.

I’ll eat it, Tolly said, looking up from the vine she was nibbling on.

“Thanks, but some things are worth dying for. Stuffed crust pizza is definitely one of them.” Too bad I didn’t get the tiramisu, but Cara was too perfect, too much of who I’d wanted to be.

I’d been so close to really nailing the part, but then I had to ruin everything by murdering my mother.

Then again, would Winston really have married me if it was all just a game to him?

He’d played it so well, right up to the moment he found me covered in my mother’s blood.

Finally, I got the way cleared, then spent another fifteen minutes pounding on the door with my shoulder until the swollen wood gave way, opening into the darkness.

I fell, sprawling onto the dark stones while a slimy toad leapt past me, fleeing into the garden, disappearing in the darkness while I stayed there for another few beats, trying to get my breathing under control.

I was the scary thing in the dark. Yeah.

I mean, have you seen my hair? Scary. Especially because it was stuck on purple and green like me and Winston were the theme.

We were not the theme. Nothing was more terrifying than the idea of loving him again, opening myself up to that kind of pain.

I pulled myself to my feet groaning, and lit the magic torches lining the steps down with a gesture of my hand. The scent of brimstone swelled for a moment as the bright torches flared and then settled down to their usual green glow.

It was a bit eerie to be honest. I hadn’t been exposed to creepiness for too long, and the torches with their green flickers and scent of pain were only the beginning.

Skulls, rats, creepy designs cut into the stones stained with blood, it had been my childhood normal but now struck me as overkill. I guess it was part of the presentation. My mother was an evil witch. If she dragged you down here, she wanted you to know it.

I wrinkled my nose. The stench was bad enough. Rotting bodies…I took a deep breath, accepting the inevitable. The sooner I got used to the scent the better. I breathed through my mouth as I descended, smoothing down my striped duster and floral pants.

At the bottom of the steps was the bone room, the room of raising, the square of containing. Many a demon had been raised in this place. My mother’s demonstration was very memorable, but she hadn’t liked dealing with demons. She couldn’t drain their lives and bury them in the yard.

My father’s bones were laid out on the stone altar in the center of the creepy space, shelves holding bones surrounding it.

I turned and closed the lower door, sealing myself in with him.

If this went badly, it wouldn’t do to let the neighborhood know about our mistakes.

That’s what my mother said, but I think even she didn’t approve of animated undead terrorizing the community.

She’d certainly always put a quick stop to anything like that from our coven.

A shimmer of green appeared at my elbow and she was there.

“What are you doing, Clary? Demons are not going to help you break the bindings with the Warlock. You need to drain him like you should have done in the first place when he interrupted your murder. I can’t tell you how proud of you I am, draining me exactly how I taught you. ” Her ghostly smile beamed at me.

I sighed and walked through her to the row of vodka bottles that lined the crypt. I pulled out the bottle I’d taken from Winston’s cook and set it down in the row.

“Is that good vodka?”

“There is no good vodka. Quiet. I’m trying to focus.”

“You don’t need to focus, not with our combined magic.”

I put my hands on my hips and faced her. If she was going to be here, maybe she could be helpful. “Do you know anything about a dark secret society of witches who killed Winston’s parents?”

“They come and go. Typically devoured by their own members before they become a problem to the greater society. Were his parents killed by them? Or was it misdirection? Perhaps someone told him that there was a dark cult to focus his attention and sharpen his sense of vengeance. That Dame Winston…” She shook her head.

“Too subtly diabolical for me or anyone else to follow. Her schemes have schemes.” She sounded impressed, one diabolical witch to another.

I touched my shoulder where it throbbed. Now both throbbed thanks to my efforts with the door. It was good to be symmetrical. “That wasn’t very helpful.”

“Well, you did murder me. If I was more vindictive, I would be haunting you much more elaborately. Convenient that the house is already giving you sink floors and slivers so I don’t have to waste the energy.

And your reflection is already horrifying enough to give anyone nightmares.

” She smirked, so proud of her hair curse.

“Thanks to you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said warmly.

I rolled my eyes and started the process of bringing my father’s bones to life, which involved soaking them in vodka and burning chicken feathers. I hated the scent of chicken feathers, particularly mixed with moldering flesh.

It was more than that. I mingled my magic with the traces still remaining in his.

I had DNA from those remnants, so it wasn’t difficult.

Easier for me than my mother, which is why she’d been having me do it since I turned eleven.

Such sweet family memories. Winston’s dad played catch with him.

Rasputin had also thrown things at me, but mostly skulls and curses.

Not the magic kind, but the Russian kind.

He’d taught me so many excellent curses in his mother tongue.

I smiled slightly as the bones stirred and dark flickers mixed with the green as his magic came to life. His magic was black with silvery flecks, like ashes.

In a whoosh he came together, the dark warlock with glowing green eyes, dressed in the cloak he always pulled together with his magic. My mother had tried to replace the old tattered thing with something more elegant and dramatic, but he’d vaporized it with a look.

He focused on my mother’s blurry green ghost and said in his thick accent, “You seek revenge on your mother’s soul?”

I cleared my throat. “Not exactly. Actually, not at all. I wondered if you could give me some advice on breaking a death curse. Moridia Fleur.”

He glowered at me, eyes glowing brighter. “You dishonor your mother and refuse to destroy her killer? Vengeance is required by her blood!” His voice was so awful, nails on chalkboards and death knells of doom, not to mention the English, so broken it was practically unintelligible.

I cleared my throat again. “I killed her so…Nope. Just looking for advice on breaking a curse tied to Sage House. How can the curse come from our house when no one was here?”

He stared unblinking with those glowing eyes while he considered. “You killed her? Why?”

“Because I fell in love with a Warlock she was going to kill.”

His eyes flickered brighter before he shrugged his shoulders. “Love is a curse.”

“Absolutely,” I agreed wholeheartedly.

“Moridia Fleur is a much more interesting curse. It’s tied to energy exchange, something you understand well. Are you certain your mother didn’t spell the curse in her death throes?”

“I didn’t,” my mother’s ghost protested.

He hmphed. It was like old times. For some reason, hearing my parents like this made me want to burst into tears. Why couldn’t I be normal? Or at least not have murdered my mother? I grabbed the bottle of vodka and took a swig. It burned and I choked and coughed before I got it together.

“Father, would you mind explaining the curse to me in simple terms I can understand?”

He stepped down from the altar, lines of darkness spreading with every footstep. He stretched out his arms and lines of flickering light appeared between his hands like a lightning cobweb.

“Energy must have a source. Sage House is based on the original explosion of violence, magic, and hatred. Some places of power are based on other feelings, love being one of them. Not many of those.” He flexed his fingers and the white lightning turned red like blood.

“Moridia Fleur is the death flower, the flower of death, a curse that grows, feeding on the victim’s life and magic while it feeds the surface level of strength.

I knew one who used Moridia Fleur on himself in order to increase in strength and vitality before he cut off the curse. ”

“He was able to cut off the curse? How?”

Those eyes flickered at me while he flexed his fingers. “He created the curse, he fed the curse, he stopped feeding it to kill it.”

“You’re saying it’s an organic curse that grows and feeds on the host.”

“Casting Moridia Fleur is usually death for the caster, as that’s where the root is.” He shook out his hands and the light show disappeared. The next thing I knew, he was stealing my bottle of vodka and pouring it down his throat, soaking his robe.

I sighed. Once he started drinking vodka, there wasn’t a lot of useful information you could get out of him.

“Because the house started dying as soon as it cursed her. So I should burn the house down.” I was saying words that I didn’t understand, but that’s usually how it went when one descended into the box of bones.

He took a break from vodka long enough to say, “Burning the house will only hasten the curse. Moridia Fleur feeds on flames.” His eyes sparked brighter green and then he tipped back his head and drank.

“What about secret societies of evil? Any way that’s connected to anything?”

He kept drinking. I leaned against the stone door and waited until he’d drunk enough to sprawl back onto the stone altar, bottle falling from his bony fingers.

I flexed my magic and it wrapped around him, sucking the life away and leaving him nothing but ashes and bones.

I gathered up the bottle, put it in line with the others and then headed for the door. He’d given me more information than I’d expected. I should consider it a win. Unfortunately, I still had absolutely no idea how to end the curse.

I took a deep breath and headed out. I had things to do. I was still a bit blurry from the vodka. Strong stuff. Good stuff. That’s why he was so helpful instead of trying to kill me. Of course, I was Rasputin’s daughter. Killing me wasn’t easy.

The second I came out of the mausoleum a fireball came out of the darkness. If I ducked, it would hit the family mausoleum. No more family reunions with vodka and stench.

I formed a barrier with my hands, something Rasputin had taught me when I was just little. This time it was strong enough to not only block the fireball but send it rebounding towards the thrower. A scream and a gurgle came before a figure encased in flames raced away from me.

They’d attacked my family mausoleum. No one got to do that. I brought the poisonous cemetery garden to life, vines snapping at attention and wrapping the person in its coils, putting out the flames and dangling them in the air.

Naturally, the garden’s next target was me.

I didn’t have time to check out the victim when I was running for my life.

My magic was strong, and it’s a good thing because I had to use the knife edge of it to cut my way through the yard to the kitchen door.

Once inside, I collapsed on the floor, heart pounding, lines of blood on my cheeks from the whipping tentacles of greenery.

My skunk climbed through the window over the sink, landing in the basin and gripping the edge while she studied me with her big eyes.

Now what?

That was the question. Actually, I knew exactly what I had to do.

I pulled the bottle of furniture polish out of my bag like a trophy.

“Now we find the missing way door and retarget it to Singsong. We need the house’s blessing.

I need to research more about sentient houses than I can find here.

I need to get to the Library of Antiquities, and I need to do it without Winston or anyone else.

” Was Portalia really part of a dark society?

Someone in Singsong had told someone here that I was coming.

But to knock on my front door? So bold. Like her hot pink turban.

I found a bottle of King Crown elixir in the pantry and drank while polishing. It was like old times, only I was the one singing and weaving while I polished the house into submission.