“You already know them,” the demon replied.

  Ebony ground her teeth.

  “These are your thoughts and your voice,” the demon now spoke through her again, “but you push them away. You pushed me away. You forgot about the contract.”

  Ebony clutched her fists tighter, the equivalent of ghostly sweat building between her fingers.

  The demon was right. She had pushed it away, and now she was paying the price. If only she’d been proactive, she might have been able to prevent this – she could have told someone, anyone, about the demon. From the police to her mother, Ebony could have reached out for help. Instead, she’d remained silent and in total denial.

  Why?

  Because she’d been ashamed – of course she’d been ashamed. She was meant to be a good witch, and good witches don’t make pacts with demons.

  Even though guilt built in her as she realized how foolish she’d been, she still appreciated she could not give in to that feeling completely. Ebony Bell had to focus; she was under contract, and unless she tried with all her might, she would not be able to break it.

  She looked at the demon, but she didn’t let it intimidate her. She kept a certain angle to her chin that suggested, paradoxically, that even though she was looking up at the demon, she was still looking down on it. “Spell it out. No games. If you want something from me, tell me what it is. I’m a magical creature, and I know how this works. There will be a way out of this contract, and you are going to tell me what it is.”

  There was a moment. A long one.

  Time stretched on. The lives of everyone in Vale continued down on the streets below. The wind blew, the clouds in the sky raced, and the waves of the ocean lapped against the shore.

  Ebony stared at a demon on top of a church roof, and she didn’t back down. She focused her gaze on the creature, concentrating her will until it lanced from her eyes like blows from a spear.

  She wanted it to know she was not playing games, and nor would she be played with.

  “Make someone see you,” it finally answered.

  Its words shook through her.

  “Any one of the living. They must see you. You have seven days from the time of your death. If that passes and you fail,” the demon stretched up, its wings unfurling and blocking out the sun as those black forms closed around her like hands, “I embody you.”

  Ebony didn’t shift. Though its declaration should have made her fall, somehow she remained standing.

  That legion of voices rang in her ears.

  “When you are possessed, we will share the same form, the same power, the same understanding, the same goal,” the demon continued.

  Ebony’s lips parted, shaking as they curled over her teeth. “You want to possess me? This is what it has all been about?” she began.

  “No.” The demon snapped its head toward her, its glowing, fire-like eyes a centimeter from her own. “Embody. I do not desire possession but co-residence.”

  Ebony’s eyebrows crumpled, hooding her cheeks into shadow as she leaned her head down. “What’s the difference?”

  “You will be in control. It will still be your body; it will still be your mind. I will only add. We will share a goal, and together we will achieve it.” The demon still had one of its blazing, ruby-like eyes so close to her face that her eyelashes brushed against it.

  She couldn’t hide from it. If she had been exposed before Helka, she was more so now.

  Out in the open, nowhere to hide.

  “Why?” she brought herself to ask the most important question.

  “We share a goal,” it answered.

  “What?”

  “Protect the Portal. Maintain the balance. Should it fall, all kinds will disappear.” The demon blinked. As it did, a slice of air traveled toward Ebony and plastered her fringe against her eyes and cheeks.

  “The people, the witches, the wizards, the ghosts, the demons – all will disappear, all forms, all kinds, all magic, all life,” the demon continued. “A fate I do not desire. So we will embody. I will lend myself. We will share the goal. We will achieve.”

  Ebony forced a slow breath through her teeth. “If you want to help me, why are you doing this? Why have you killed me? Why are you doing this?” Ebony’s voice started to shake, Nate’s grief becoming sickeningly clear in her mind.

  “Contracts bind.” The demon finally pulled away from her, punching its chest out as its head angled down, looking like a sphinx at rest.

  “Why not just ask me for help?” she tried.

  “Contracts bind,” the demon repeated. “People change their minds. Their allegiances and desires shift with time. Demons do not. Contracts bind,” it repeated, its legion of voices resonating like 1000 trumpets all blaring at once.

  The sound of it shook the roof, the tiles, the bell below, her feet, her bones, her hair. Her heart.

  It took a great deal of control and concentration not to fall through the roof, but Ebony managed it.

  “You have six days left. If someone sees you, you live. You go free. The contract is broken. If you fail,” the demon leaned toward her, “the contract remains. We share form. We share goals. We share power.”

  With that, the demon began to disappear into the world around. It shifted backward, the vision of it merging with the bell tower, the roof, and the view of Vale behind.

  It simply stopped being visible. Yet Ebony knew that if she tried, she could call the image of it back to her reality.

  She didn’t, though. She stumbled backward, her feet losing grip on the roof and her body slipping through it.

  She fell all the way through the bell tower and down, down to the church floor below.

  She hit the ground, but she didn’t shatter every bone in her body. She did let out a litany of curses, though.

  Then Ebony Bell ran all the way home. Back to Harry’s. Through the hotels and offices and supermarkets. She caught glimpses of people, cars, animals, trees, furniture – life. Yet she ignored them.

  She had six days left. Six days until a demon possessed her and bent her to its will.

  7

  Ebony rushed through the front door of her shop, not bothering to open it. She pushed herself up the stairs, her feet plunging through the wood, but her concentration still forcing herself upwards. She jumped through the railing until she landed on the floor of her living room.

  Her breath shook in her chest, and she knew her eyes were wide open with fear and shock.

  “You are getting used to being disembodied, I see,” Harry noted as he scratched his neck. He was still sitting on the couch, his arms crossed as he sullenly stared at the view through the window.

  She raced over to him, collapsing on the table again, then shifting through it, then righting herself with a grumble.

  Being able to walk right through things was going to take some getting used to. That being said, she didn’t want to get used to being dead. Not at all.

  She told Harry exactly what the demon had told her.

  There was silence. Eventually, Harry leaned his head back and let out a low and slow whistle. “Ebony Bell, this is serious.”

  She let out a frustrated laugh. “I appreciate that, Harry; a demon wants to possess me.”

  “No,” he snapped his gaze back to her, “not possess – embody,” he stressed the word, voice shaking through the building as he did. The window behind her gave an ominous rattle, the carpet beneath her actually shivering.

  She swallowed. “What’s the difference?”

  “Everything. Possession occurs when a force stronger than another takes root. I possess this bookstore,” Harry brought his feet up and rested them on the coffee table, making it levitate a few centimeters as he did, “because the bricks and mortar cannot resist me. Rick is in part possessed by a demon, because his body cannot push it away.”

  Ebony felt sick as he mentioned that; the same demon that possessed Rick was the one currently after her. She also remembered that Rick had described the demon as “too big” to possess just one body.

  She closed her arms around her middle, huddling into the comfort of her own touch. “But what’s the difference?” she tried again.

  “Possession occurs with the weak, embodiment with the strong,” Harry closed his eyes and gave a sharp shake of his head, “and Ebony Bell, though you were not always, these days you are strong. Wildly so. With every victory, you gain power that would put most of Vale to shame.”

  There was a casual quality to his voice; it was clear he believed what he was saying. She couldn’t accept his assertions so easily, though. She was still coming to terms with her own powers. In fact, it would likely take the rest of her life to truly appreciate how far she’d come. Or not, as her life had technically ended yesterday.

  He looked at her with narrowed eyes before shrugging his shoulders. “You don’t like hearing that, do you? Well, guess what? You can’t hide from that fact anymore. There is a sodding great demon,” Harry pushed himself up, planted his hands on the cushions by his side and angled his body until his head was right in front of hers, “possibly one of the most powerful there is, and it’s coming after you because it can sense your power. And Eb, it doesn’t want to possess you; it doesn’t want to steal what you have; it wants to share.”

  Ebony’s gut shook on the word share.

  Harry gave an exasperated laugh, halfway between pride and fear. “I don’t know who you’ve become to attract that kind of attention, but at least now we know what you are up against.”

  Harry might have been confident they were now onto something, but Ebony was still totally at a loss here.

  She shifted forward until she hardly rested on the coffee table anymore. Even though it barely supported her, it didn’t matter; she was a ghost, and physics no longer applied. “Harry, why on earth does it want to do this?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t restrict our search to earth – try the universe instead. You said yourself that demon said it wants to protect the Portal. Well, it obviously thinks it needs you to do that. You’ve managed to impress a demon, Eb, and being the contractual creatures they are, it’s trying to buy you out. It needs you to secure its future goals, and it’s offering a merger. An aggressive one.”

  Ebony winced, cringing at his words.

  “But you can fight it.” He looked right at her again, and as he did, the floor shook, the blinds straightened, and the fireplace way down in the shop suddenly blew out a cloud of ash and dust. “You know the terms of the contract. So we fight it.”

  We. He’d said we.

  She wasn’t alone; Harry was here and was going to help her.

  Though her heart had been burdened with grief, pain, guilt, and shame ever since her death, now hope kindled within.

  Her bookstore held her gaze for countless seconds until he sucked in a rattling breath. “In a way,” he admitted as he turned and surveyed the bookstore, “it’s kind of nice talking to you on even footing. I mean, you live people can get very boring sometimes, enjoying your foods and drinks and earthly pleasures. You don’t really understand what it’s like to be dead—”

  Ebony didn’t let him finish. She leaned forward and punched him squarely on the shoulder. “Harry, this is no time for jokes; I’m under a demonic contract. One that, if I don’t manage to break, will sell my body to a demon.”

  “Not sell, Eb; you really need to get that through your head. It isn’t going to possess you,” he rattled the floors and walls for emphasis, “it’s going to share you, and you are going to share it. Your power and its power are going to meld.”

  Ebony made a face and stood quickly. To her, that sounded no different from possession.

  She took the opportunity to stare at the store, trying to collect her thoughts as she turned to glance out of the window.

  She knew that down there in Vale, she was considered dead. She knew everyone from her parents to Nate to Ben was now dealing with that fact.

  Knowing that people were grieving over her was somehow worse than being dead (or technically dead). It made her sick whenever she thought about her mother crumpling onto that church floor, or Nate crying in his car.

  She clapped a hand over her mouth as she retched into her sweaty palm.

  All that grief. All that loss. All directed at her. And it was all a lie – she wasn’t dead, or at least not yet. But she couldn’t tell anyone that.

  Harry was watching her carefully. With a narrowed gaze that darted across her face, he said, “before you ask, it’s this afternoon. In true witch fashion, your mother wanted to return you to the earth as quickly as possible. Not, of course, that there is anything to return, considering you aren’t technically dead and your real body has been melted away and stored by a super-powerful demon. But Avery Bell doesn’t know that.”

  Ebony pressed her crooked, tensed fingers into her lips as she tried her hardest not to cry.

  Tears leaked through her defenses, though, and they trickled down her nose and chin.

  She wiped them off with the back of her hand.

  “How do I do it?” she sobbed as she kept staring out the window. “How do I make them see me?”

  “Even if I could do it for you, Eb, I don’t know. The terms of the contract will stop any ghost or demon or whatnot from helping or intervening. Beyond that, it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t have a clue how you can make them see you. I could guess, but so could you.” He let out a frustrated, shaking sigh that shifted through the couch and made the floor give a wobble. “I can’t help you on this one, kid,” he conceded, tone bitter.

  Great.

  She was alone.

  No. Not entirely alone.

  She turned back to her bookstore.

  He was here. Harry.

  If she really had been on her own, she would have gone mad. She would have likely wasted the whole week hanging around her grieving friends and family, without ever finding out about the contract. It had been Harry that had told her what to do. It had been Harry that had told her about the demon. And now it was Harry reminding her she still had to fight.

  He could see her; he could talk to her. And in his presence, she was never alone.

  Even though the great, cantankerous, often rude and belligerent Harry Horseshoe was not a soft touch, that didn’t stop Ebony from walking up to him. She leaned down and thrust her arms forward.

  She hugged him.

  Her arms didn’t glance off, because unlike everyone else in this town, he was dead just like her.

  It took a moment, but then he hugged her back.

  It gave her strength.

  She rubbed her eyes eventually, more tears streaking down her cheeks. Then she took an enormous sniffle and wiped her hand over her nose.

  Harry raised an eyebrow. “Very ladylike.”

  “I’m dead,” she pointed out with another sniff.

  “Don’t go touching me with that hand; that’s very unhygienic,” he added.

  “You’re dead too.” She rolled her eyes.

  “I suppose you have a point there. Still, no more sniffling and whining – time to act, eh?” He got to his feet. “I won’t be able to do it for you, but, Ebony Bell, little witch, not even one of Hell’s greatest is going to stop me from being by your side.”

  She looked up at him slowly, her expression slackening with something like wonder.

  He was with her, and his willingness to help her buoyed her, taking her to a height it felt she could not fall from.

  She was ready.

  They headed out into Vale.

  They had a little less than six days to make someone see her. Anyone.

  8

  Ebony had lived in Vale for most of her life. She liked to think she was connected to the place. Deep down in her bones, there was a little bit of the city, the dust, the ash, the residue.

  However, no matter how much Ebony felt like she knew the place, she had never seen it like this.

  As she walked with Harry – Harry making himself invisible so ordinary people didn’t hear him chatting to a half-dead witch under a demon contract – she stared in wonder at the city around her. Not at everyone rushing past, or the cars, or the buildings, or the plants and animals. Oh no – those were mundane. She chose instead to stare at the things and creatures she had once been too alive and busy to notice.

  The dark.

  “Oh, don’t pay any attention to him.” Harry sniffed as they both crossed the street, unperturbed by a bus rounding the corner and driving right through them.

  Ebony had her neck craned to the side as she stared, wide-eyed, at a strange, black, long creature that was making its slow but concentrated way across the street. It was a little like a worm, working its limbless body up and down in a rhythmic pattern as it made its way through the buses and tires and feet that crossed over it.

  It was evil.

  Ebony knew that; she could sense it. Though she could not practice magic in her half-dead state, that didn’t mean she couldn’t smell, touch, taste, and see the damn stuff. And the weird black worm before her had the distinct appearance of the damned.

  “Ah, just ignore the fella,” Harry admonished her as he waved her forward. “If you pause to ogle every evil insect that crosses our paths, we’ll be here all week. And you don’t have a week – so get a hustle on!”

  Reluctantly, she moved on.

  Though the ghosts and demons and dark creatures they passed noticed Ebony, they didn’t do anything about it. They glanced her way, looked mildly confused at her surprise, and walked or slithered or flew away.

  Which wasn’t what she was used to. Ebony had lived her life thinking the dark side of magic deserved to be eradicated. Any fool dumb enough to align with evil should either be incarcerated or severely punished. Evil was a weed that, if allowed to grow, would take over your whole garden, kill your pansies, and swallow your pets.

  Yet now she was stuck in a realm where only the dark could see her, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

  “Come on, Eb, pay attention; ignore the dark worm inching its dangerous way across the street; we need to prioritize you not being embodied by a demon.”

  It took a few seconds, but eventually Ebony stopped walking backward and staring at the worm, and she turned, just as she walked through a lamppost and faced Harry.

 

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