Chapter 26

Phillipa sat across from me. "My sister is very afraid. I think that's what made her do all the terrible things she did. Fear."

I fought to school my expression because I didn't want to be all ‘Jaysus gawd in heaven girl, she killed you because she was an evil bitch, not because she was afraid.' You can't say things like that to little girls. Not even little girls who've been dead for a couple of hundred years.

"Okay." I put an arm on the table. "Her being afraid doesn't change the fact that she's planning on raising an army of the undead. And that she's trying to kill me to do it."

Phillipa sighed. "But is she? I mean, I understand that she's a vampire. I get that. But I don't think…Well, let me start at the beginning. Right when she killed me."

I did pull a face then, and even Alan grunted like he'd been punched in the gut. "You sure you want to do that?"

"I think it's important," Phillipa said. "I'm not a mage like Vesuvius but?—"

I held up my hand. "Wait. Full stop. Vesuvius is a mage?"

She grinned. "Yes. A very powerful one. We would have called him a wizard when I was still alive, I guess you'd say."

I looked to Alan. "Isn't that the ghost you met?" I mean, I was sure that was what Alan had said, but I was second guessing myself.

"Yes." Alan nodded. "That was his name. He's a wizard?"

"A quite good one too." Phillipa smiled. "Thumping good, you might say. He knew more about the spell than anyone else. He ranted and raved about how much Evangeline was getting wrong. But he is trapped…very few people can see him. It's part of his curse."

My jaw dropped. "Are you kidding me?"

She shook her head. "He said it was important to finish the spell once it was started, to trust the process. But he never found someone who could see ghosts—that's what he said. He said it would take someone who could see and interact with ghosts—someone like you, to understand the spell completely."

"Someone like me." I stared at her.

She smiled, a dimple showing up on her left cheek. "Yes. You have a connection to the dead. You can call them to you. I feel the draw even now. That's why I could leave the boundary line. You could call any of the dead to you."

I already knew that I had a connection to the dead, this wasn't news. "Even vampires?"

"No. They aren't truly dead, are they?" Phillipa shrugged. "I need to tell you my story though. First. Then we'll move on to Vesuvius."

I tapped the table. "We are safe here, and we have time. I think."

I hoped.

"My family came here, ?le Cachée, for a summer. Father was ill, and the doctors thought the fresh seaside air, away from the factories, would be good for him." Her eyes went distant as she recalled the past. "Eva said that this was a special place, that she felt a connection to it. Even then she was dabbling in magic. She'd found a book of spells, more like a journal, really and she was using it to call on spirits and force them to do her bidding."

Alan paced behind Phillipa, his fist under his chin. "That seems like a poor decision. Even to me."

Phillipa slumped a little. "Yes, indeed. The spirits bided their time, and eventually one of them took her over. A demon. It spoke to me at night through her mouth, but it was not her voice. It was the voice of…darkness and death."

Chills swept through me. "Why are you telling us this story? Truth now, Phillipa."

"That same spirit is still in her. It drove her to become a vampire. It drove her to kill us. It drove her to this spell. It…it is the monster who is in control, not Eva."

I was impressed that Alan remained quiet with that announcement.

"You think she can be saved?" I tried very hard not to sound incredulous. "That's why you wanted to tell me this story?"

Phillipa looked past me, to the doorway. "She took me to the tidal pools to find starfish. She told me there was a purple starfish. She…she had me go to my knees, to peer into the depths of a deep tidal pool." Her eyes closed and a tear tracked down her face.

"She pushed you in?" Alan asked. "Or did she just hold your head under?"

I glared at him for interrupting her, but she didn't seem to mind. "She held my head under. I felt the sharp barnacles on my hands and my knees as I tried to get away. But…as terrible as that is, it is not the most important part of what happened that day."

"Okay," I said. "What was?"

Phillipa reached over the table and put her hand on mine. "I want you to see it."

The room disappeared, like a wave had crashed over me, and suddenly I stood on the edge of the ocean, rocky ground beneath my feet. Wind and water whipping around me as if a storm had risen. I blinked, my long blonde hair sweeping around my face. I looked down at the pinafore dress, the same color as Phillipa's.

Another blink, and I was staring at a body slumped into a tidal pool, the upper half enveloped by water, as if half eaten by a monster. Blood tinged the water, mostly from the hands of the little girl.

"No." A whispered word turned my attention away from the body of young Phillipa, to her sister.

Evangeline stood just behind the body, her hands and upper arms still dripping with water. "No, no, that's not…you said…you said…"

Her head snapped to the side and rolled back to the front, and a new voice rumbled impossibly from her, throaty and dark. "I said I would give you power, girl. Power to save your father. You said you'd do anything. This is the cost."

A scream ripped out of Evangeline as she fell to her knees and pulled her sister from the tidal pool. "No, no! Phillipa, come back! I didn't want this! I didn't want this!"

She sobbed and shook her sister's body. "No, please no! Come back, please…" Her voice cracked and broke as she clung to the drowned girl.

"Eva? Philla? Where are you?"

Evangeline groaned and rocked where she sat. "No. Please not her too."

"You said anything. Anything to save him."

"Not…not this! You didn't tell me?—"

Her head snapped back and forth, so far that I wondered how the motion didn't break her neck. "You promised me your soul, girl. You said you'd do anything to save your father. This is part of the cost, too. You will bear it as is the bargain."

A woman in a light blue gown made her way across the rocky shore. Calling to her daughters. Calling and then…crying out…screaming for her child. Pain tore through my heart, slicing at my mind.

I jerked myself out of the memory, yanking my hand free of Phillipa's.

Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. "Now do you see? She is infested with a demon so dark…so devious…it controls everything. That's why she's so much stronger than anyone else. That's why…that's why you need to help her too."

I put a hand over my face. "She wants to kill me, Phillipa. How can I help her? How can I free her from a demon when she is a vampire? If anything remains of the girl that she once was…how do I find that piece?"

I wasn't really expecting an answer. Because I didn't think there was one. This request felt like the hope of a child—a need to believe that someone you loved, someone you looked up to wasn't really a monster. It was something I'd learned as I'd grown up—people were often exactly what they seemed to be. But Phillipa had never gotten that chance.

I looked over her head at Alan, who was frowning deeply, then back at the little girl's ghost. "So you think she can be saved? Despite everything she's done?"

"It wasn't really her fault. She was trying to save our father," Phillipa whispered. "He was very ill."

I closed my eyes. I'd made a deal with a demon myself. So I couldn't really be all that judgey about Evangeline's choice. "And did she? Save him, I mean."

"He lived." Phillipa stared at the table. "He survived the sickness. But was killed a year later by a runaway carriage, and his spirit moved on, unlike mine and our mother's. Before she turned fifteen, Evangeline was an orphan."

Alan rubbed a hand over his forehead. "So let me get this straight. Your sister is being controlled by a demon. Why would it want her to be a vampire? Aren't they basically a different type of demon?"

Phillipa shook her head. "I don't know."

But I was pretty sure I did. I'd seen what had happened to Stavros when he died. How his demon had crawled away from him, free to start again. It had been happy. And he had been killed by another demon that had recognized him.

So what was the difference between him and Evangeline?

I sighed. "My best guess is that this particular demon likes its host. If its host died, it would lose its ability to walk about in the world. I've seen it happen. Maybe, by being a vampire, it protects itself more?"

The creak of the ladder below about stopped my damn heart.

A hand appeared on the ladder, followed by the top of a head.

"Or hides itself." Bramble said as she pulled herself all the way into the space. "I mean, if we're talking about the demon that is holding onto Evangeline?"

Alan and Phillipa backed away as Bramble stepped fully into the room. "You're talking to ghosts, aren't you?"

"Yes."

I wasn't sure how I felt about her. I knew she'd saved me when we'd come out of hell. I knew she was my cousin. I'd seen her acknowledge me earlier, when Remy had been searching for me, and she hadn't handed me over.

But I didn't know her. I didn't remember her. She'd used her magic to erase herself from my life.

Bramble sighed. "I don't have long. But I think I can get you back to Savannah."

My heart leapt. "How?"

"I can get you to a doorway, to the pathway of the dark fae. I will get Crash to meet you, and then you'll be safe." There was nothing wrong with what she'd said, only the words felt…off.

"You can't leave!" Phillipa wailed. "You are the only hope I have of freeing my sister!"

Bramble stared at me, but I looked past her to the little girl. "Phillipa, I can't save her."

"You have to! We are all trapped! We…we all need you, ghost walker!"

That was a new one. Ghost walker. I wanted to grab Bramble's hand and run for the hills. "The spell is still active, though, isn't it?"

Bramble's jaw tensed. "I won't lie to you. It is, and at the moment of your death, whether it be now, or a hundred years from now, it will activate."

"That's not true! She is lying!" Phillipa yelled. "My sister doesn't understand the spell! Vesuvius said so! You…you need to talk to him. You need to learn the truth. Everyone thinks they understand, but they don't! And then they keep telling the same stories, over and over, and they keep changing what they say, but none of them are right!"

She had stepped up, so she was positioned between me and Bramble, yelling right in my face. I put a hand to her shoulder and gently pushed her to the side.

The thing was, I was inclined to side with Phillipa. A spell needed three things. Ingredients. Words. Intent.

They didn't just activate on their own. Which meant Bramble was lying.

"Bramble…I need to think?—"

"What is there to think about?" she said. "You need to be safe, so we can figure out what to do about the spell. But this place is not safe. Even if Evangeline were somehow out of the picture…Remy is still up to something."

My heart clenched. "You mean they aren't working together?"

"She thinks they are. But he…" Bramble slid into a chair with a heavy sigh. "Bree, I know him. He was my husband for nearly ten years. I left him and then wiped his memories once I realized just…how deep the darkness in him went."

Holy shit. He certainly had a type, going after Evangeline, Bramble, and myself.

"How deep did it go?" I asked. "Did he hurt you?"

"He…has been consorting with a demon. One of the very worst. It has convinced him that he has to kill everyone he has ever loved in order to take the power he wants. His mother—no matter how distant. His father. His wife." She choked up. "His child. And now…now you too."

Well duck me. That was not what I'd been expecting.