Chapter 7

The house that Charlotte lived in with her mother and Bridgette didn't look like it had been the sight of a fight from the outside. Only one front window was broken, as Charlotte had said—the one she'd been thrown out. The front door was unlocked, and I stepped in first, peering into the foyer.

I tipped my head to the side and listened hard, but there was no sound and no sense of magic in the house. "No one is here."

"Charlotte's mother is still at work, no doubt. Bridgette was watching over her," Sarge said as he moved into the room.

We made our way through the house, checking each room carefully.

"Did Charlotte say what room they were taken from?" I asked.

"Upstairs, I think." Sarge drew in deep breaths, scenting the air. "So far, just Charlotte, Feish and Bridgette. No scent of Remy."

I could barely focus. The thought that Bree might have to die to save the world, and I might have to be the one to do it, dug at my soul. And it was pushing me toward seeking out the Seer. I would give Roderick the chance to give me a direction but if nothing came of it, by the end of the day I would make the decision.

For Bree, I would do anything. Even face the past that haunted me.

Jaw tight, I climbed the stairs to the second floor. There was a whiff of something, like an old fire, that caught at me a split second before Sarge hurried up the stairs behind me. "There. He took them from upstairs for sure," he said. "I'm getting a good scent off him now." He pointed ahead. "That room, it's strongest there."

Celia floated past us. "I can see an aura around the space. Dark and flecked with sickness—magic that has been tainted. It is not active now but be careful. He could have left a trap."

I didn't question Celia, just stepped slowly into the room. Tension hung in the air, but no trap sprang. In the center of the floor a narrow oval had been burned into the light pink carpet.

Celia floated around it, her face pale. "That's where the opening happened, I'd lay my soul on it."

Around the room things were broken, and I could almost see the scene replaying like in a movie. Magic on magic. The scorch marks in the walls, the shattered trinkets, the bed upside down…

"Charlotte really fought him with all she had," I said. "He came for her. Because Bree has fought to save her before. And he thought she'd be the easiest mark of all of us. The weakest because she is the youngest." I looked at Sarge. "They are trying to force Bree's hand. Using someone she loves to control her."

Celia let out a low series of curses that rhymed heavily with duck, words I'd never heard from her before. "They know she would do anything to save her friends. But he chose poorly in trying to take Charlotte."

Sarge let out a low whistle. "That girl is strong. She beat him back."

That much was obvious. Charlotte had been able to save herself. But from the state of the room he'd tried to use his size against her, not just magic. What a damn piece of shit he was. It was embarrassing to say that we were even related—distantly, but still.

Sarge touched the side of the door, where some of the trim had been pulled off. "Someone clung to the door. Here, her nails dug in. Looks like maybe Bridgette by the length of the gouge."

I looked past him and into the room, still seeing the scene play out in my head. "After Bridgette arrived, Charlotte fought harder, Bridgette came inside the room, maybe grabbed Charlotte…then Remy chased them down the stairs." We followed the feeling of the fight down to the main floor. The broken window was straight across from the bottom of the stairs. "Then he threw Charlotte out the window. He already had Bridgette by then. Feish would have heard all the commotion from…was she in the kitchen?"

Not that it mattered where Feish had been, in the scheme of things. She'd been taken too, fighting Remy.

I could easily see Feish running in to help Bridgette and Charlotte, to protect those she considered family.

So, we knew how it had happened to some degree.

"I want a closer look at the mark in the floor," Celia said. "I want you to tell me what it feels like."

We made our way back upstairs.

I bent and touched the burn mark and jerked my hand back from the immediate sting—sharp, like a thousand tiny needles jabbing through my skin. A wave of nausea rolled over me.

"It stings, like tiny razor blades." I shook my head, trying to clear the sensation. "I feel sick to my stomach, like I could pass out." I looked up at Celia, who'd clutched at her throat. Probably not a good sign.

"That's blood magic. He killed someone in order to make that jump to grab someone to use against Bree," she whispered.

Sarge let out a deep growl. "That's…there is nothing darker. If he's that far gone, there will be no bringing him back. His father, Ivan, believed in him. Maybe he still does. Could we track Ivan easier than Bree or Remy? Or even Feish or Bridgette?"

I glanced at him. "None of them have a bond with someone else here, not even Feish to me, that could be followed. You think Ivan might be helping his son, after all Remy has done?"

He shrugged and wrinkled his nose. "Maybe? They were together the last time we saw them, and Ivan believed that his son was worth fighting for."

"I don't think it would be any easier to find Ivan, Feish or Bridgette any more than Remy or Bree," I said. "I wish it were."

Celia stepped away from the mark in the carpet. "To kill someone, to build your magic on a foundation of death and blood, it is the greatest abomination. Remy will be stronger now than he was before. His soul is darker and sliding further into that soul death from which no one can return."

"There was a line like this in the ground in the cemetery where Bree had been taken," Sarge said.

My jaw ticked. The anger building in my chest had nowhere to go, no one to fight.

There was nothing that could have caused me more chaos than to feed me all that anger without giving it an outlet. I tried to breathe around it, tried to think of a way to find a silver lining. But Bree was the one who saw silver linings, and without her the world didn't seem to shine.

"We know that he is dangerous. That Evangeline is dangerous—that has not changed. But we still don't know where to look," I snarled. Time, it was all about time. Roderick had a few hours and then I would go to the land of faerie. I would find the Seer.

"We need to try to find the three places that Bramble said were options…" Sarge bent and sniffed at the burnt carpet, then stood as he spoke. "We still have the box from Evangeline's grave. There could be a clue there."

"And the journal," Celia said. "There could be something within it."

The strain in her voice suggested she more hoped it than believed it to be true.

"Hope is not something you should lean into at this point," Nancy said with a laugh. I startled, having forgotten that I had the demon infested blade at my side.

"Shut up you, unless you can help." I crouched to the floor, looking over the burn marks again, as if there might be something I'd missed.

"Well…" Nancy let out a long-suffering sigh. "If you want the truth, you forget that I might actually be able to help. You sure you want me to shut up?"

I turned and hurried down the stairs, Sarge and Celia keeping pace. There was nothing else at the house, nothing that would help us find Bree.

"And yet you were quiet back there at the house, speaking only to me. Why is that?"

The blade shivered. "Yeah, well, that witch, Bramble, seems like she knows a thing or two about demonic possession. I didn't want her to know I exist in case she decided to do something about it, and as you felt she was busy doing her thing. Do you want her to know you have a way to offset her magic?"

That led to a whole lot of questions, none of which Sarge or Celia asked. Like were they being spelled and to what purpose? Damn that witch, what had she done?

"You think you can help?" Celia asked. "How?"

I picked up my pace, heading back toward Haven House. Whatever Bramble had done would have to wait. "I'm with Celia. What do you actually know, Nancy?"

The blade grunted. "Well, the thing is, you have a demon helping you, right? That Damian fellow is young, but he's still a demon. You should be asking him if there have been any power surges. Dark power surges—they happen when someone is killed as a sacrifice, and they draw demons to them. The sacrifice needs to be made over the spot the spell is cast. Then you might be able to narrow down the places you need to be looking."

That was actually a decent idea, though there were holes within it. "I'll ask him."

"No thank you?" Nancy whined.

Celia and Sarge both huffed, because they knew as well as I did there were certain parameters for dealing with demons. Mainly: you didn't ever admit to owing one anything.

"I don't thank demons," I said. "It's bad form."

He laughed. "Damn, I was hoping to get you in my debt."

We made it back to Haven House without any incident—and yes, I'd fully expected there to be incidents. At this point in all our lives, I figured we couldn't go anywhere without something happening—an attack, a new spell, a new problem.

It felt like the air pressure had increased because a massive storm was about to descend on us. All this information, but none of it concrete, none of it leading anywhere.

I stepped through the door, fully expecting some of the others to have left, or at least gone to other rooms. But everyone was there, waiting for us.

I shut the door behind me, the reality of what we'd found sinking into me. Feish and Bridgette, both woman who were tied to me, both in my care to some degree, had been taken.

My friends were being hurt, and it made my anger rise higher.

"There was no sign of Feish or Bridgette. Celia said Remy used blood magic to create the portal to jump them through."

Penny and Suzy gasped in unison.

"What's blood magic?" Charlotte asked.

I looked at Penny, not sure how much she wanted to tell the young girl. But the witch nodded.

"He used someone's life force to give himself the strength to create the portal. Someone died so he could steal Feish and Bridgette." I shook my head. And I knew why. Bree would never just do what they wanted. Torture wouldn't get her to budge.

But if they threatened one of her friends in front of her? She'd do what Evangeline wanted.

Which meant there was still something that Bree had to do—voluntarily—in order for the spell to work. That realization did not help my fear for my love.

Charlotte frowned. "That's terrible."

"Yes, little witchling, it is," Penny said. "It is something we never do. He will lose his soul to the darkness for that, and there will be no chance of saving him."

Charlotte's eyes were wide.

I turned to Damian. "The blade made a suggestion. Do you have any way to check for surges in dark power? He said that there should be one connected with a sacrifice like that, and that it could draw demons to it."

Damian gave a slow nod. "I can try. Demons don't like each other. We don't generally play well with others. But I'll reach out, see if any of my connections might have sensed something." He headed for the door.

"I'll go with you," Kinkly said, fluttering toward him. "We'll be back as quick as we can," she added as she flew past my face.

I blew out a breath as the door closed behind them. "We need Robert. He has information still about Evangeline, and he could very well know where she and Bree are. Assuming that he didn't…go to her."

Penny kept an arm around Charlotte. Suzy sat on the little girl's other side, holding a cup of hot chocolate for her. They'd called her mother to let her know that Charlotte was with us. Ryoko had been reasonably concerned, but Charlotte had assured her that she was okay and wanted to stay with Penny and the rest of us until her mom got home from work. We'd asked her to keep it from the police—for now.

"Bramble said it would be one of three places," Eammon pointed out, "We have the church from the journal as a starting point, is that not enough? We start there, we find Bree, we bring her home. Done."

If only it were that simple.

"We have very little time," I said. "The night of the dark moon is seven days away. If we were looking for a single place, perhaps. But even if we divide up, we don't know where each of the places are; where they honeymooned, where they bought land."

The conversation with Bramble had been circling around how to stop the spell, not where Bree was—then the distraction with Charlotte and losing Feish and Bridgette had taken our minds in other directions.

As if we were being purposefully misdirected?

Mistakes that hadn't seemed like mistakes in the moment. Mistakes that now might cost Bree her life. Or her soul. Or both.

Looking at them all, I could see…something, like a glitter here and there around them. A spell? I squinted and took a step back. "Wait."

No one moved as I went to Penny's spell casting table and dug around until I found her bag of salt. Salt would clear a spell, good or bad. And right now I wasn't sure which I was dealing with.

I took the bag to the kitchen and set the tap running as I put the plug in the sink. I dumped at least half of the contents of the salt into the sink and swirled it so it all dissolved.

I didn't use my magic often for trivial things, but time was of the essence. I dug my hands into the water and pulled out fistfuls of it, so that orbs of water floated out to me. Water was not a strong element of mine, but the salt helped me hold it together. Salt of the earth and all that.

Moving quickly, breathing hard as I concentrated, I brought the orbs out and dropped one on each of my friends without warning.

Splutter and cursing ensued. But the glitter on their skin, the look on their faces…the spell had cleared.

"What the hellfire was that about?" Eammon flapped his hands in the air.

"Bramble," I said. "I don't know why she did what she did, but it kept us all busy, and circling around."

"Maybe she thought we would be in the way," Celia said, the strain in her voice obvious. I had no doubt she didn't want to believe that her granddaughter was doing something dark.

Penny gave her a withering look. "Or she wanted to keep us from rescuing Bree!"

I held up my hands. "Peace. We can't turn on each other. Let's start again."

Suzy wiped her face clear of the salt water. "There must be something we're missing. What do we know about Robert? What do we know about Evangeline?"

"The box." Sarge pointed at the crumbling box we'd pulled out of the grave.

Eric nodded. "I'll get some coffee brewing; we can do this. We just have to put our heads together."

"Damn straight!" Eammon barked. "Penny and me, we got good at research. Maybe we can find where Robert and Evangeline's ship came in from when they arrived in Savannah. All those records are still there. And the Church of the Holy Trinity. That's where they met."

Everyone was moving, casting out ideas, and the energy in the room had changed. We were starting to hope again. The spell that Bramble had placed on everyone was gone, and action was happening.

"She had an English accent," I said. "Her ancestral home would be in England, I would guess."

Of course, even that could be wrong, but we had to work with something.

The smell of fresh coffee reached us, drawing the group to the newly reformed kitchen.

Sarge set the box on the table and carefully peeled it open. There was a book inside of it, the edges molded and crusty with…if it had been metal I would have said rust. But it was not rust, but blood.

"That's not good." Winnifred leaned over Sarge's shoulder. "It smells not just of death, but of evil."

Sarge blew gently across the journal, and some of the dirt tumbled away. "It has her name on it! Evangeline! This is it, Robert, I could kiss you!"

He carefully touched the front cover and the sound of laughter filled the air. Woman's laughter that crawled across my skin like a deadly caress. Sarge flinched, as did Winnifred, the two of them sliding back away from the table.

"You think I would be so foolish as to leave you a map?"

I wish I could say we were prepared.

But the explosion of the book rocked us all, throwing the table, chairs, and bodies through the air as the laughter seemed to increase until there was nothing else inside my head but Evangeline's mirth.