Haunts and Howls Where Demons Dwell, page 16
“Willed away?” Demon hunters?
Okay, he’d been really relieved he could talk to someone about magic, and cursed houses, but Lexie was bringing up things that… He sighed. How did he go his whole life without knowing these things existed?
Lexie waved his question away. “Just a demon hunter thing. But now I think about it, if this place had an actual demon in it, the hunters probably would have found it by now. Right? It’s not like the house has been moving around.” She glanced at the ornate living room. “Why all the strange and chaotic construction, though?” She met his gaze. “What were your ancestors really trying to do here?”
That was at least something he could explain. “The earliest relative who inherited the house was also a witch, and he claimed in his diary that building around the original structure helped confuse and contain whatever curse was there. It was a way to trap it so it couldn’t escape. Whatever it was. And he instructed the next person who inherited the house to keep building. What they built didn’t matter, just that they built around the original structure. To hide it from the world and also confuse whatever it was that haunted the place.”
He’d always assumed ghosts of some kind. But demons… Jesus, had they trapped a demon in the original cabin? Were his ancestors nuts?
“There’s a house like that outside San Jose,” Lexie said. “I haven’t been, but the original owner just kept building and building. Doors and stairs that led nowhere. No real architectural plan.”
“I’ve heard of the place.” That particular mystery house was a big tourist attraction. When he inherited his own strange mystery house, it had been hard not to make the comparisons. Except he’d never risk turning this place into a tourist site. Him being here was bad enough. “As I understand it, the owner of that house built to keep spirits away. My ancestor insisted we build to keep…whatever this is in.”
Lexie straightened a little. “Do you still add on to the house, build more around the original?”
“I haven’t yet, but the last owner was still adding things. We don’t own enough of the land around the place now to build out much. So the last cousin built small things like additional closets in weird places, like smack in the middle of rooms.” He sighed. “I’ll probably have to start that soon if I can’t find a way to…end whatever is happening.”
“If we can figure out how to stop the curse, what will you do?” Lexie asked quietly.
And something in her tone was so kind and understanding it made Miles’s chest ache a little. He ignored the sensation. “I’ll probably bulldoze the house and salt the ground and then move back to New York where I was living before inheriting.” He glanced around. “There’s nothing here I’d miss.”
“Bulldoze it? Oh, that seems…” She bit her lip. “Sorry, but the historian in me balks at that idea. There’s a lot of history here. Seems like it should be preserved.”
“You’re sitting in a room that smells low-level like sulfur and it’s the least upsetting room in the whole house. Why would you want to preserve something so disturbing?” He was attached to the history of this place through family blood and he still didn’t want it saved.
“It might feel less…oppressive once the curse is lifted,” she said with a hopeful lilt to her voice that belied her wince.
Since he needed her help and didn’t want to argue, he said, “I can’t make any decisions until I figure out how to actually leave the house without feeling compelled to come back, so it’s a moot point for now.”
She nodded, but she nibbled her bottom lip as she glanced around the ornate sitting room. Then she looked down at the notebook in her lap. “So we can probably assume there isn’t a demon trapped here—a real one—since the demon hunters haven’t shown up.” A crease formed on her brow. “Though as I understand it, they only show up when the demon is about to escape, so… So maybe if it’s trapped, they let it be?”
Demon hunters again. He was having trouble getting over the fact that there was a job out there with the title “demon hunter,” and it was a real job that people did because real demons from multiple realms not only existed but might try to get into this realm to kill people. That he might have a demon stuck in this house, that could get out if they tried to break whatever curse kept Miles there, was…
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
“If it’s a demon, and it’s trapped by all the construction, and I try to break my connection to the house…” He met her gaze. “Am I going to release a demon plague like she did?”
Lexie shrugged, but the crease between her eyebrows didn’t go away. “Maybe. I don’t really know.” She lifted her notebook. “I don’t have any information on that in here. Not specifically. I do know she issued a curse before dying because of course she did.”
Her twist of irony forced a small smile from him, but he was too worried for the amusement to last longer than a split second.
“But I don’t have exact records of what the curse was. No one recorded that.” She frowned. “Which is kind of weird. Witches love to record the exact words and results of a curse. Depending on the witch, that record serves as warning not to issue curses or a template for future curses.”
“Curses a big thing with you witches?” Miles asked. Then winced at his phrasing. “Sorry. I didn’t mean you you. Just…”
She waved away his slip. “You’re upset. No offense taken. Curses are a big thing with witches, but not necessarily casting them. They’re within our…our magical range if you will. Wizards can’t do them nearly so well and their curses are usually tied in with objects. They have to create something physical to contain the curse and carry it out.”
Miles blinked at her a few times. Wizards, huh? Sure. Of course.
Cursed houses and witch ancestors obviously weren’t enough to put him in the know. His research had been…lacking. Which he was actually more upset about than the fact that there were wizards in the world. He was a journalist and prided himself on accurate research. He’d failed to dig deep enough in his own case, only going so far as he needed to find Lexie. He probably should have probed this magical world a little more.
Desperation made him sloppy. He’d have to remember that.
“But for witches,” Lexie continued, not noticing his stunned silence, “curses are really natural to us. Part of the package of our magic, if you will. No need to attach them to an object. And they don’t even have to be person specific.” She gestured to the house. “Sometimes they’re tied to a lineage. But the fact that this curse is tied to her lineage is…strange. She wouldn’t have cursed her own family.” The crease was back between her brows. “Huh. Yeah, there’s no reason she would have cursed her family. She’d have cursed the families of the witch burning fanatics, and maybe the families of her coven since they stopped her. But…why are her own relatives suffering?”
“Another witch cursed us?” Miles offered. “Her original home just carried bad…vibes or whatever and it’s that we’re containing in this monstrosity?”
“That last is possible. And whatever bad was there has leached into the rest of the house. Turning it into a…a thing with a mind of its own?” She winced and glanced around. “I really don’t know for sure. And probably won’t until I see the original part of the house. The curse she issued at death, that no one saw fit to record, probably wasn’t a curse on her own family. Likely more a general, all-who-stop-me-will-suffer sort of thing.” She frowned. “But maybe one of the coven members cursed her old home. Or maybe, like you said, there’s just bad magic mixed into its foundations and that’s what’s hidden here.”
“What do we do if it’s bad magic?” He frowned. “Or a demon? What if it’s one of those actual demons?”
“Maybe you should show me the original house now. There might be clues there.”
He didn’t miss the way she avoided answering his questions.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lexie followed Miles, still carrying her notebook on all things to do with the original owner of this house, and worried at the inside of her cheek with her teeth, which was a nervous habit she really had to break. Still, if there was ever a time to worry, this was it.
She’d come expecting to see a historic residence and maybe study some artifacts. None of what had happened since she knocked on the door of this place had followed the path she’d thought she was walking. Miles was not what she’d been expecting—he was a pleasant surprise—and the reason for her being here was not what she’d anticipated—a less pleasant surprise—and this house was an awful lot more than just a historic residence—a bad surprise.
The corridor Miles led her down was another awkwardly shaped one. Nothing a real architect would purposefully put into a house people were supposed to live in. The ceiling was low, not so low that she or Miles had to duck, but low enough it was noticeable and felt like she might have to duck at any moment. The walls were farther apart here, less of that walking down the aisle of an airplane feel to them, but in combination with the low ceilings, the width still felt…wrong. The walls were painted a dark green color and the parquet floor was bare. No tables, carpet runners, paintings, or decorations of any kind. And the overhead lights were recessed and gave the corridor a weird glow, almost like an office building.
She’d never been so relieved to move from one hallway to another. The small room they passed through was empty but for a single wall mirror opposite a window. There didn’t seem to be any other lights in the room, just the mirror catching light from the bare window, casting enough reflection around the place to keep it bright. At least on a sunny day like today.
And somehow the fact that it was bright and sunny outside, and not dark and stormy, felt at odds with what she was doing. At odds with the house itself. The house seemed to demand darkly atmospheric weather.
Or maybe she was just being dramatic.
The next hallway was shaped almost normally. Not too tall, not too wide, a more Goldilocks hallway with proportions humans would be accustomed to. Another strange scent permeated the air here, though. Strong enough she noticed it even with her bad sense of smell. The hints of sulfur under it seemed old but all the more fetid because of it. And there was something else like burning plant material in the smell, but not the sort of pleasant-to-burn plant material. Not like a campfire, or a nice smelling herb. This was like someone burning stink weed or creosote in large quantities and then mixing in some volcanic rotten egg smell just for the fun.
Not a good smell.
She flexed her nostrils in an attempt to close them to the stench.
“Sorry about…” Miles waved his hand. “I’ve tried to find the source so I can…fix the smell. But whatever it is seems to be part of the corridor.”
“Something died in the walls, maybe?” Which was a horrifying thought given everything else. Except, “Doesn’t really smell like a dead animal, though, does it? Something weirder.”
“Definitely weirder,” Miles said. “I checked the walls.” He shrugged a little. “I suppose I have done some building here. I hadn’t considered that, but I did enough punching holes in walls, looking for the source of the stench, and then had to fix them. So I guess that counts as construction, right?”
He smiled at her over his shoulder, a little crookedly. And she had to smile back. If only they’d met under different circumstances. He’d even lived in New York. They could have met at a bar, or concert, or play, or anything else. Kind of sad they only met because he’d inherited a cursed house.
When they got to the end of the smelly hallway, they moved into a section that looked like it belonged in the castle wing. The floor turned to stone slabs with a long carpet runner down the middle of the room, stone walls hung with tapestries, wrought iron sconces burning pretend fire in between the tapestries, and thick wooden beams lining the ceiling.
“The decor fits the section of the house,” she said, looking around.
“Sometimes. But there’s a room in this wing filled with arcade games and a mini-movie theater so not always.”
“You have a movie theater and an arcade in here somewhere?” Why did that strike her as really odd and whimsical? Probably because those seemed like fun things and there had been nothing about this house that felt fun so far.
“Not actually as cool as you might think,” Miles said with a sigh. “There’s no electricity in that part of the house, so the games can’t work and there’s no way to show a movie without a wireless projector which would be a lot of work, and who wants to go through that much trouble for a single person viewing.”
“Always just one person living here? No families or anything?”
“Just one cousin, with no other family, inherits. Thankfully. It’s not a safe house for kids. Too many weird rooms and closets and things. And any partner would probably immediately leave the poor bastard who’d inherited this place.”
She stared at his back as he led her into another hallway—this one stone and narrow, with arched ceilings and a bare wooden floor. Had Miles had a partner before moving in here? Had he lost the potential of a family when he inherited this place?
She didn’t ask those questions, because they didn’t know each other well enough for that. But she did wonder.
After another couple of uncomfortable, but blessedly short hallways, Miles finally stopped at a stone wall that seemed to lead nowhere. A dead end.
He turned to face her. “I haven’t actually been in this part of the house in a while. I only went in once. I know what’s in there. But I couldn’t go back after the first look.”
“Because something in there is bad?”
“Because every time I tried, the house turned me around and I’d end up somewhere else. It didn’t let me back.”
She glanced past him at the blank stone wall. “Is that what just happened? Are we lost or turned around or…”
“No. We’re here.” He pointed over his shoulder. “That’s got a secret door in it. I’ll open it in a minute. I just…wanted to prepare you.”
“What’s on the other side.”
“The witch’s cottage. It’s enclosed in stone and wood now. The windows are covered. There’s no view of the outside. And there’s more construction over the top of the house. But the original cottage is intact. And it looks pretty much as she left it.”
A part of Lexie rejoiced at the thought, at being able to see exactly how and where the witch had lived. To see her furniture, her belongings, maybe find some of her books. The historian in her could hardly wait.
The more cautious part of her thought maybe going into that space would be a bad idea.
But since she couldn’t explain why she was worried, she pushed the worry aside. She’d come all this way to see this place. She wasn’t about to turn back now.
Especially now that she knew Miles was trapped with this house. They needed to find a way to release him from it. Without saddling some other poor cousin with the place.
“Are you ready?” Miles asked.
“One minute.” She’d dropped her shield spell earlier, while they were in the sitting room talking, when she was certain nothing would jump out at her from the shadows. Now, just in case, she thought having that shield in place again might be a good idea. For both her and Miles.
The instinct to believe him, to trust that this wasn’t some elaborate trap of some kind, fed her need to protect him. She’d spent her whole life trusting her instincts about people. They’d never once let her down.
She’d trust them now. Because her instincts were all she really had.
She tucked her notebook back into her bag so her hands would be free, and then she murmured the spell, forming the few gestures with her fingers required to set the spell. When she flared her hand out, the shield flashed blue in her mind’s eye, a half sphere of light in front of her.
To Miles, she said, “Okay, I’m ready. But once you’ve opened the door, move behind me. Just in case.”
“Why?” He frowned at her, looking at her hand. She held it in front of her, palm facing the wall, holding the shield in place, because unlike her earlier one, this one was designed to protect her and Miles. But since he wouldn’t be able to see the magic, the hand gesture probably looked strange.
“I’ve built a shield against a magical attack,” she said, motioning a little with the hand holding the shield. “You’ll be safer behind me and this until we’re sure there’s nothing…dangerous on the other side of that wall.”
“I’ve been in there before. There’s nothing…nothing obviously dangerous.” Still, he glanced between her and the door. “But I’m not one for unnecessary risks.”
She smiled a little, brows raised. “No jumping out of perfectly good airplanes?”
“No skydiving. No bungy jumping. No climbing Mount Everest.” He smiled and shrugged. “I get enough of an adrenaline rush hunting down a story.”
Lexie realized she’d liked to talk to him about that more. About his job. His hobbies. The things he liked and hated.
But they weren’t on a date, getting to know each other, asking all those kinds of questions. They were standing just outside the house of a witch who’d summoned demons and whose relatives lived under some sort of curse tied to this house. She was here to help with that mess.
The fact that she liked the current owner of the house and wanted to get to know him better was… Well, not something she could worry about in that moment. But she might think about it later.
If they got out of this.
“Ready?” she asked him this time.
He pulled in a deep breath, nodded, then pressed a stone on the wall that looked like every other stone on the wall.
This stone, however, moved inward with a release of air. And then the stone wall swung open like a door.
Miles moved behind her. They both stared at the darkness beyond that rectangular gap in the wall.
“We need a light?” she asked. She could make a magical light to illuminate the space if they needed it. But she wasn’t a powerful enough witch to hold that spell and her shield spell at the same time. She’d need to drop the shield if they needed a magical light.
