Page 8

CHAPTER 8

VIOLET

T he circle awaits its completion. The vessels call to their purpose. The words from that bloody business card kept echoing in my mind as we left the archives. Something about this situation felt pointed. Like we were being targeted. If I was right, it could mean we were being led to where the leader of the cult wanted us. I hoped the ancient texts about binding magic and shade creation would offer us some insight that could inform me one way or another. It seemed like a long shot.

The sun had nearly set and was painting the snow in shades of crimson. It felt entirely too appropriate given our situation. The weight of this case grew heavier on my shoulders as we loaded the ancient texts into Fiona's car. My fingers tingled where they touched the spines of the books. Old magic recognizing old magic. The sensation reminded me of the time my gran had let me help organize her grimoire collection. Each tome hummed with power as we carefully arranged them in the boot.

"Careful with that one," I warned as Fiona hefted a particularly ancient volume bound in what looked suspiciously like dragon skin. "We don’t want to find out what happens if we drop it."

Aislinn nodded in agreement. “I think that’s dragon skin which means it could melt us into puddles of goo.”

"I do not want to know how they managed to get their hands on something so rare," Fiona replied as she gingerly placed the book among its fellows.

"My mind keeps going back to the question we asked Gadross." I said as I looked down the street. "Why Hambledon? I mean, yes, there's the ley lines and the ancient wine cellars, but as we discussed before there are other places with more magical convergences. We are no closer to finding answers."

"Location, location, location," Fiona quipped, though her expression was serious. "I’ve been thinking about it too. It’s a small town with little oversight. It also has the perfect cover with the various energies of the wineries. Who's going to notice a few more mysterious magical signatures?"

"Plus," Aislinn added, "it's far enough from London that Gadross and his Department can't keep as close an eye on things. Well, usually."

"The Department," I snorted, wondering why Britain's officially unofficial magical oversight committee doesn’t expand their numbers. "I've heard they’re a bunch of stuffed robes who wouldn't know real magic if it tap-danced on their desks wearing a top hat."

"Based on that disc Gadross has, I would call bullshit on that assumption," Fiona pointed out. “That is a powerful relic designed to be used by any supernatural being.”

"True. Making something that works so well by someone without witchcraft isn’t easy. It has to work with Gadross’s elemental magic when its nature would be to fight it," I explained .

"We've got company," Aislinn interrupted as she nodded toward the road.

"What are they after?" I muttered as we watched the police cars pulling up to the curb. Their blue lights painted the snow in alternating patterns that made the magical residue shimmer like oil on water.

Three police vehicles had arrived. Fiona closed the boot of her car and moved closer to me and Aislinn. The nametag on the guy who stepped out of the lead car said, Detective Inspector Matthews. He looked like he'd been sucking on particularly sour lemons.

"Ladies," he called out as he approached with that measured stride coppers use when they're trying to look non-threatening while actually being very threatening. His coat flapped in the bitter wind, and his breath fogged in the freezing air. "Quite the coincidence, finding tourists at our accident scene."

"Is it?" Fiona asked as she channeled her best innocent American tourist voice. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the ancient tome she was trying to hide behind her back. "We're just doing some local history research. Fascinating stuff about the wine industry."

"You know," Matthews said in a deceptively casual tone, "I've been doing this job for twenty years. I’ve seen all sorts of strange things. Things that don't quite add up." He pulled out a small notebook that looked worn and well-used. "Like what happened at the accident site today."

"Stumbling on that was awful," Aislinn lamented. "We're just here for the wine tasting and came across that tragedy."

Matthews raised an eyebrow. His weathered face creased with suspicion. "Do you know anything about the strange marks in the snow that vanished before our forensics team could photograph them? The witnesses who saw them seem to have forgotten crucial details. Although they all mentioned speaking with you three? They also mentioned you wandered into the woods where we found faint traces of blood. Those are just coincidences too, are they?"

"Memory can be tricky in traumatic situations," Aislinn pointed out. She was the picture of confused concern. “That’s why eyewitness accounts of an incident can vary, right? As for why we wandered into the woods, I thought I heard someone calling out. We didn't find anything.”

While she spoke, I wove a subtle forgetting charm into the air around us. I wanted to make our presence seem less noteworthy with each passing second. I doubted he would let this go otherwise. The magic settled like frost, delicate but persistent.

"There's something not right about all this," Matthews insisted. It was difficult to bite back my smirk when his voice had lost some of its certainty. He pulled out his notebook, flipping through pages of observations. "The strange marks in the snow, the witnesses who can't quite remember what they saw... and these temperature fluctuations that no one can explain."

"I know from the hospital I worked at for twenty years that people see all sorts of odd things when they're stressed. It might be nothing," Fiona insisted.

I reinforced the forgetting charm and watched as Matthews' expression grew increasingly vague. But something caught my attention. One of the officers behind him, a young woman, was fighting the magic much harder than she should have been. Her resistance wasn't natural. It felt more like... "Fi," I whispered and nudged her slightly. "The one in the back. By the second car."

Fiona glanced over and narrowed her eyes. "Well, shit," she muttered. "That's not what we needed right now."

The officer's eyes had taken on a familiar purple tinge when she looked directly at us. It was the same shade we'd seen in the wine cellars. Someone had gotten to her. Just like they'd gotten to Peterson. The binding magic practically radiated from her. Would she be a shade soon? My gut told me the leader wasn’t telling his minions everything because this woman looked like she was well on her way.

"Perhaps we should continue this discussion down at the station," Matthews was saying when I turned my attention back to him. Though he seemed to have forgotten exactly why he wanted us there. His notebook had disappeared back into his pocket, and his stern expression had softened into mild confusion.

"Oh, I don't think that's necessary," I said, pushing more power into the forgetting charm. The magic swirled around him like invisible smoke. "We've told you everything we know about the accident. I'm sure you have more important things to do. Probably loads of paperwork waiting, yeah?"

Matthews blinked slowly and looked around as if he'd forgotten where he was. The charm had taken full effect. "Right... yes... carry on then. Enjoy your wine tour." He turned and walked back to his car.

My gut twisted into a knot when I noticed how the female officer remained. She was watching us with those unnaturally purple-tinged eyes. She didn't move until Matthews called her name. Even then, her movements were too smooth, too controlled. Exactly, like a puppet being guided by invisible strings. When the other officers began clearing the scene, she drifted away from the group. Unlike her colleagues, who headed west toward the station, she slid into her patrol car and turned east. Her movements were still unnaturally precise.

"Ten quid says she leads us to something interesting," Fiona murmured as she opened the driver’s door. "Come on, while she doesn't notice."

Aislinn grabbed her sleeve. "Following a police officer who's acting like a marionette? That's somewhere between stupid and suicidal."

"Exactly why we should do it." Fiona grinned. "When have the obviously bad ideas ever steered us wrong?"

Aislinn snorted. “I’m not going to answer that.”

I chuckled. "Good choice. Though perhaps we should follow with a bit more subtlety than usual?"

"I'm always subtle!" Fiona protested as we piled in. The ancient texts in the boot rattled ominously as she started the engine.

"You challenged the evil Fae Queen at Pymm's Pondside before we even had a proper plan," I reminded her. "In your own garden, no less."

"And won!" Fiona's eyes gleamed at the memory. "Though having home-field advantage helped. All those years of my family laying protective wards paid off when I took her out. But really, she was asking for it. She was threatening me and everyone I love."

"You kicked off a war with the Fae King in the process," Aislinn muttered from the back seat. "He put a price on your head, and you had to close the portal for a time."

"But we beat him in the end, too. Which opened the spot for Argies’s brother and saved all of Eidothea from destruction." Fiona grinned.

The police car ahead of us turned onto a side street. Fiona carefully followed at a distance. "Anyone else wondering why there's another possessed police officer in this quaint little town?"

"Having two of them is too much to be random," I mused. "It has to be connected to the reason the leader chose this area."

"Agreed. Nothing's random," Aislinn added quietly. "Whatever's happening here, that officer's involvement isn't a coincidence. "

"Story of our lives," Fiona sighed, keeping her eyes on the vehicle ahead. "We just wanted a nice wine tasting holiday. Was that too much to ask?"

"We already know the answer to that." I smiled grimly as we followed Carter's police car at a discrete distance.

Magic slithered toward us. It was oily and wrong and had me fighting the urge to gag. Aislinn was already reacting. Magic poured from her hands as it grabbed the falling snow like it was her personal toy box. The flurries thickened into a miniature blizzard behind Carter's car. They did double duty. They kept our asses hidden while marking her like a giant ‘follow me’ sign.

The effect was like something out of a weird Christmas movie gone wrong. Carter's patrol car pushed through the darkness with its own personal snow cloud. It was like a demented version of Rudolph. This glow was more ‘potentially lethal’ and less ‘festive holiday cheer.’

"Do you think the leader is slowly making his minions shades?" I asked as we turned onto a less populated street. The purple tinge in Carter's magical signature pulsed in time with her heartbeat. "It's similar to what we saw in Peterson's magical signature at the wine cellars."

"I’m not sure, but speaking of Peterson," Fiona said as she carefully navigated through the worsening weather, "anyone else wondering where he disappeared to after our little cult encounter? Because, I'm thinking he's probably not filing his incident report like a good little cop."

"He’s probably groveling at the feet of the guy who's really running this show," Aislinn suggested. "The kind of power we saw in those cellars took serious magical juice. He would need people to continuously feed him power. Taking from a handful wouldn’t keep it going long. He also needed someone to teach them how to use those Fae wine cellars for storing corrupted energy."

"About that," I said, frowning as I recalled something from the archives. "One of those books mentioned something about 'vessels of power' being used to store and amplify magical energy. I don’t think it was talking about wine cellars or physical containers."

"Let me guess," Fiona said grimly. "It meant people."

I nodded. "I think you’re onto something, Aislinn. Living vessels would offer more. Especially if they are willing and bound by a series of rituals. The text was pretty vague about the details, but it mentioned something about emptying the vessel to make room for power."

"Well, that's properly horrifying," Aislinn muttered.

Carter's car veered onto one of those creepy-ass back roads that screamed ‘potential dismemberment ahead.’ Where every horror movie victim's last words are, ‘I'm sure it's perfectly safe out here.’ The fields on either side stretched forever. They were covered in pristine white snow that was just begging for a body or two to mess up its perfection. Yeah, that's how my brain worked now. Thanks to the supernatural shit-show that was my life.

That nasty energy from before? It was back with a vengeance and hitting us like a wave of rotted magic that made my insides do the cha-cha. The corruption in it felt like someone had taken normal magic and let it sit in a dank basement for a few centuries, growing all kinds of nasty. My skin broke out in goosebumps. And not the fun kind you get from watching hot guys at the gym. No, these were the ‘something really bad is about to try to eat us’ kind. Again.

"I know this road," I said, recognizing the ancient stone walls that lined the way. The sight sparked a memory from childhood. It was one of my gran's many warnings about places better left alone. "It leads to the old Blackwood estate. It’s been abandoned for years after some sort of tragedy. Gran used to say the place was cursed. Something about the original owner dabbling in powers he shouldn't have."

"Maybe that has to do with why this area was chosen," Fiona muttered as she squinted through the windscreen at the deteriorating road conditions.

"Your gran mentioned this place?" Aislinn asked as she leaned forward between the seats. "What else did she say about it?"

"Not much," I admitted. "Just that old Blackwood was obsessed with immortality. He spent years researching ancient magic and collecting artifacts. Then, one night, some kind of ritual went wrong. The whole family disappeared."

"Disappeared?" Fiona asked. "Or disappeared ?"

"Bit of both, probably. The police found evidence of a ritual circle in the basement. They confiscated a lot of ceremonial implements and that sort of thing. But there were no bodies. I believe Gadross swooped in and confiscated everything. Last I heard, the Department sealed up the house."

"And now someone's unsealed it," Aislinn observed. "It sounds like the perfect place for storing corrupted spirits and prepared vessels. Especially if it already has the right kind of magical infrastructure."

The Blackwood house squatted in the Hampshire countryside like a middle finger to good taste and proper British sensibility. Some Victorian-era twat had clearly gone nuts with their inherited fortune. They’d built the kind of place that made the local historical society weep into their tea. It was red brick and soot-stained stone. There were enough pointy spires and gargoyles to make Notre Dame look understated.

Most of the windows were dark. Many of them were straight-up broken. Ivy had gone to town on the facade. It was probably trying to do the neighborhood a favor, and hide the whole mess. The place looked like it had been lifted straight from one of those penny dreadful novels. Minus the charm with a healthy dose of "dear god, why?"

The aesthetic disaster wasn't what had my magic doing the macarena under my skin. No, that honor went to the energy oozing from the place like toxic waste from a badly sealed drum. Obviously, this night needed more nightmare fuel.

"Bloody hell," I breathed as we parked a discrete distance away. "Look at those wards. I've never seen anything quite like them."

The house was surrounded by layers of protection spells. They weren't the usual kind meant to keep things out. These were designed to keep something in. The magic pulsed with that same sickly purple light we'd seen in the wine cellars. Sticking with the cliche, the shadows around the building moved in ways shadows shouldn't.

"Those are containment wards," Aislinn observed as we carefully approached on foot. Our boots crunched in snow that seemed unnaturally dark. "They make me think of those used for holding powerful spirits. But there's something odd about them. Are they inverted?"

"Looks that way to me. They’re doing double duty," I added as I studied the complex magical patterns. "They're corrupting the spirits as well. No doubt, changing their very nature." The realization made me feel slightly ill. "This could be where they're keeping the shades between ritual attempts."

"And probably where they're 'preparing' new vessels," Fiona said grimly. "Which would explain why the bodies keep disappearing. They're bringing them here."

We huddled behind what was probably once a fancy wall but now looked like someone had played Jenga with the stones. And lost. Badly.

Carter's car crept around the back of the house like a mouse sneaking past a sleeping cat. A really big, probably murderous cat. That was the kind of night we were having.

The snow had dropped right out of existence about twenty feet from the building. It was falling everywhere but close to the place. Like it hit an invisible ‘screw this, I'm out’ barrier. Even nature knew better than to mess with whatever corrupted magic was oozing from this place. And yet, we were going to go inside.

The magic here writhed around us like a nest of pissed-off snakes. It carried that special kind of tension that usually meant someone was about to try to murder us in creative ways. You know, the kind that makes your shoulder blades itch and your fight-or-flight response start packing its bags for a tropical vacation.

My mouth filled with the taste of copper. It was like I'd been sucking on pennies while licking a battery. It was always a fantastic sign when your taste buds decided to join the ‘something's wrong’ party. Really. It was just peachy. This night needed more warning signals that we were about to do something monumentally stupid.

"Is it just me, or is anyone else's magic doing the supernatural equivalent of drunk-dialing an ex?" I whispered. My power kept hiccupping like it had knocked back one too many shots of tequila.

"Containment wards," Fiona said, as if that explained everything. When I just stared at her, she added, "They're sucking up magic like a middle-aged divorced dad with a Dyson. And guess who's getting the power boost?" She jerked her chin toward the house. "I bet 'I-wear-fancy-robes-to-feel-special' is in there taking what he needs to get past the blow we dealt him at the cellars."

"That energy..." I shuddered, recognizing the ancient resonance we'd felt in the cellars. "It's like dinosaurs-were- babies old."

"Fan-fucking-tastic." Fiona's eye roll could have won Olympic medals. "This isn’t how I planned to spend my Saturday night. I had a date with a bottle of wine and that new serial killer documentary."

"Well, technically, we might still see a murder," I offered helpfully. "This one will have more potential for world-ending consequences."

"Gods." Aislinn pinched the bridge of her nose. "We really need to revisit our definition of weekend plans. Normal people go to brunch. We track down ancient horrors with a body count."

"Don't forget the part where we save the day and no one ever knows," Fiona pulled out her phone and checked the time. "Three hours until midnight. Any brilliant ideas for getting past those wards without dying spectacularly?"

"I might be able to create a temporary breach," I said, studying the magical patterns more closely. "See how the binding runes overlap there? It's creating a weak point. If we time it right..."

"We could slip through between pulses," Aislinn finished. "But we'd need a distraction. Those wards will alert someone the moment we start tampering with them."

"Leave that to me," Fiona grinned. That look usually preceded property damage. "I'm great at distractions."

"The thing with Grams doesn't count as a recommendation," I warned her.

"Hey, taking Grams skydiving totally worked! And the wings thing was completely accidental."

"Things are always accidental with you," Aislinn muttered. "Don’t do something like telling a magically de-aged ninety-something to 'think happy thoughts' mid-freefall. Shit always goes sideways for us."

"Details," Fiona waved dismissively. "The point is, I can get their attention while you two work on the wards. Just... maybe stand back a bit when I do."

"How far back are we talking?" I asked. "Regular 'oops' distance or 'Fiona's getting creative' distance?"

"Just regular distance," she assured us as she began pulling various items from her pockets. "Simple stuff. A bit of transformed matter, a touch of kinetic enhancement, and maybe a small temporal displacement..."

The business card in her pocket pulsed again, casting purple light that made the shadows dance. New text appeared. The vessels gather. The circle nears completion. We will succeed.

"Anyone else really tired of this thing's cryptic messages?" Fiona asked as she glared at the card. "Would it kill them to be more specific? Like 'Hey, we're going to do the apocalyptic ritual in the basement in one hour. Bring snacks'?"

"At least it's keeping us updated," I pointed out. Although, I had to agree. The dramatic messages were getting old. "Even if it does sound like a particularly pretentious fortune cookie."

"Remember the rules," Aislinn said as we prepared to move. "No unnecessary risks, no solo heroics, and absolutely no challenging ancient entities to any kind of contest."

The wind picked up and carried with it the sound of chanting from somewhere inside the house. The words were in that same ancient language we'd heard in the wine cellars. "Right then," I said, gathering my power and preparing to breach the wards. "Everyone clear on the plan?"

"Create a distraction, break through the wards, find out what's going on inside without getting killed or possessed by ancient spirits," Fiona recited. "What could possibly go wrong?"

"Don't," Aislinn warned. "Every time you say that, something explodes."

"Usually," Fiona agreed cheerfully. "But hey, at least we brought that bottle of Winter's Embrace. You know, for after."

"We're going to need something stronger than wine after this," I muttered, watching as more figures arrived at the house. Their movements were too smooth and coordinated, like pieces being moved on a game board. "Look. More victims of the head arsehole. Maybe we can take out all of his people."

"If only we were that lucky. The vessels gather," Aislinn quoted from the card with an eye roll.

"Lovely, isn’t it?" Fiona sighed. "I’m all for stopping an apocalyptic ritual, but do we have to do it without hurting a bunch of possessed idiots?"

“Not necessarily. They volunteered for this, which means they’re willing to cause problems,” Aislinn pointed out.

"Next time," I said as I started to weave the spell that would breach the wards, "we're definitely going to ask Artemis to help ensure we get our spa weekend. We’ll go somewhere nice and boring, where the biggest threat would be an overly enthusiastic masseuse."

“If only,” Fiona said as she threw something toward the front of the house. It was now or never. I cast the spell to widen the gaps enough that we could fit through. Whatever waited inside, whatever ancient horrors and bound spirits lurked in its shadows, we'd face it together. We always did.