Pain rose, and she closed her eyes. God, he was going to be so angry at her for doing this! But what other choice did she have? She couldn’t be responsible for his death. She couldn’t live with that on top of everything else.
She continued on. Ahead in the darkness, light beckoned. Someone was humming—a happy tune that set her teeth on edge.
She rounded a corner and stopped. A fire burned within a circle of stone, but its flames were an unnatural purple and green and cast sick shadows across the darkness. A tripod had been set up over it, and from this hung a steaming kettle. To the right of this was a black stone table. On it lay Trina. Even from where she stood, she could see the rise and fall of the other woman’s chest. Relief swept through her. At least she wasn’t too late to stop this madness.
A woman swept in from the darkness. She had sharp features, short brown hair, and a lanky, almost boyish body. Mariel. She hadn’t changed all that much since Kirby had last seen her. She’d gained some height, but other than that, she could still have been the child that had chased them with dead bugs. Kirby flexed her fingers, needing to move, to hide. But the minute she did either, the witch would spot her. All she could do was rema
in still and hope fate was on her side for a change.
It wasn’t.
Mariel bent over the fire, grasping the kettle with a gloved hand. Then she hesitated and looked up. Kirby met her gaze and saw only madness.
“Well, well, this is a nice surprise,” Mariel murmured. Her voice, unlike her gaze, was warm and pleasant, her tone that of a friend rather than a foe. “Please, do come down. I’ve just made a cup of coffee, if you’d like to share it.”
“Thanks, but I’m comfortable right where I am.” Kirby flexed her fingers, trying to ease the tension knotting her muscles. The energy that danced across her fingers shot fiery sparks across the darkness.
If Mariel noticed, she gave no indication. “Maybe so, but I prefer you to come closer—and you will do so, or the tramp on the table shall suffer the consequences.”
She raised a hand and a knife appeared from nowhere, hovering above Trina’s stomach. Kirby drew a deep breath. If she didn’t do what Mariel wanted, if she tried to retreat or attack, it would be Trina who suffered, not her. She stepped into the circle of light provided by the fire and stopped.
“One wrong move and that knife will taste blood,” Mariel said, then bent and poured some water in her mug. “You sure you don’t want a cup?”
Kirby nodded, fingers clenched by her sides. Thunder rumbled, closer and sharper than before. But would it be able to help her this far underground? Or didn’t that matter, given that Helen hadn’t been just a storm witch, but the air elemental?
“Must be a storm brewing,” Mariel commented, holding the mug in two hands, as if warming them. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Kirby shook her head, watching her cautiously. It felt as if she’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. The last thing she’d expected to be doing right now was standing here having a semi-normal conversation with the fiend who’d murdered her friend—her sister.
Mariel considered her for a second. The firelight cast shadows of green and purple across her features, making her face look gaunt, almost skeletal. She seemed in no great hurry to do anything more than talk, and that in itself was worrying.
“How did you find me?” Mariel asked, eventually.
“Does it matter?” Kirby glanced across at the black stone table. The knife still hovered above Trina’s midriff, rotating rapidly, as if it were a drill barely held in check. Attack Mariel, and the knife would drop. Attack the knife, and Mariel would use the moment to attack her. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, wanting—needing—to move, to do something to end this impasse. Every second she delayed bought them a second closer to night and to the witch gaining full strength. Yet right now, she had no other option than to play this Mariel’s way.
“I guess it doesn’t.” Mariel sipped her coffee, watching her steadily, her blue eyes filled with a mix of hate and madness.
It was the hate Kirby couldn’t understand. What had they ever done to Mariel to deserve such depth of feeling? Yes, they’d killed her best friend, but that had been an accident, and Mariel herself had been the fire elemental … Her thoughts stuttered to a stop. If Camille was right, it wasn’t just Mariel who stood before her now, but Felicity—or at least, Felicity’s spirit. A spirit that may well have been dragged from the depths of hell. “Tell me, when did you raise Felicity’s spirit? And why?”
Mariel raised an eyebrow. “You are well informed, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes it pays to know what you’re up against.”
Mariel nodded serenely. “Yes, I guess it does.” She sipped her coffee again, then tilted her head, her gaze narrowing a little.
The sense of danger leapt tenfold, squeezing her throat so tightly that Kirby could barely breathe. Yet Mariel hadn’t moved, hadn’t done anything beyond change her expression. I’m out of my league, Kirby thought, and flexed her hands, her fingers aching with the energy that burned across them. The sparks danced in jagged lines across the darkness, clashing with the dirty light of the fire. Mariel glanced down briefly, a slight smile touching her lips.
“The power of air,” she said. “I’m keen to see how well it stands up to fire and water.”
Kirby wasn’t. The only thing she was keen to do was get the hell out of here. But that wasn’t an option—not yet, and not without Trina. Then she blinked. Mariel had said she was air—did that mean she wasn’t aware that she’d been the binder, not Helen? “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Didn’t I? How remiss of me.”
Her smile was cold, cruel. It whispered of death, of a darkness so deep Kirby felt the chill of it clear through to her soul.
“Do you know how hard it is to find information about raising the dead? It took me five years to find anything decent on the subject. Five years is a long time in hell, you know.”
Her hands clenched around the cup, shattering it. Shards of china clattered over the concrete, a brittle sound that sawed at Kirby’s nerves. “Then you were sixteen when you raised her. So why wait until now to go after us?”