Dark Lies: Chapter 36

Savannah

We raced back down the two-track trail on the back of a commandeered Harley. I clung tightly to Jaxson. It was dark, and the road was poor, and we didn’t have helmets. I closed my eyes against the dust and pressed my cheek into his strong back.

After just a few minutes, Jaxson slowed the bike, and I looked up. We’d reached the clearing surrounding Pere Cheney cemetery.

The graveyard was dark and mostly abandoned. The cursed bonfire had burned to embers, and most of the agents and their detainees had taken transport charms back to Magic Side. The clouds that had been spiraling like a cyclone above the ritual were mostly gone, and the stars were bright. Without the diffuse reflection from the overcast sky, everything was far darker than before.

Jaxson parked the bike, and we dismounted. He surveyed the shadowy edge of the woods. “Where to?”

I rested my fingers gently on his jacket. “I should go alone. I don’t think you’ll be able to see the ghost, and she might not show up if others are around.”

He took my hand softly but possessively. “You don’t know that’s the case.”

His touch made we want to never let go, to take him with me. But he was over-protective, and this was my task.

I checked the woods ahead, then turned back to him. “Normally, the ghosts only appear when no one else is there, so I’m afraid you’re out. Trust me. I have a gut feeling about this one.”

Jaxson ground his teeth, but after a moment, he inclined his head—just slightly. “Okay. But ghosts can be dangerous. Speaking with the dead is generally forbidden in our pack.”

“I’ll be fine. Our pack is superstitious.”

He gave a low, appraising growl. “You called it our pack.”

He’d caught that. And I could tell from the tension in his body that this was a question. An important one.

They were my pack now. All I had.

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Our pack. Still too superstitious, especially now that you have a sorceress in your midst. I will be fine, Jaxson. The only ghost that’s given me any trouble is Dragan.”

He let me go. “All right. Just don’t get possessed by some ugly old witch.”

I pulled my hand free and smirked. “Yeah, I’m definitely leaving you here. It’s a diplomatic decision now.”

He grunted, which I took as a laugh. Striding with far more confidence than I felt, I turned and headed into the woods in search of a ghost.

With the firelight gone, the forest was darker than before. At least the clouds had parted. Patches of the strange grass, old leaves, and twigs crunched beneath my boots as I wove my way through the trees. Soon, their overhanging branches were dense enough that the leaves blocked out almost all the starlight.

I could have turned on my flashlight, but my sensitive werewolf eyes quickly adjusted to my surroundings, and it seemed more appropriate to hunt for the ghost in the dark.

Passing agents and werewolves had trampled the brush down, and the scent of our pack was everywhere. Their passing had revealed old, hidden gravestones—once part of the perimeter of the cemetery, now overgrown by forest.

I’d hoped to find the exact spot where I’d seen the witch before, but it was impossible in the dark, so after a while, I simply shouted, “Hey! I’m looking for the witch of Pere Cheney! I think you helped me tonight?”

I held my breath. A minute passed. Nothing.

Cupping my hands to my mouth—and with no real conviction that I had any idea what I was doing—I called out again, “Hello! Ghost! Thank you for your warning. It saved our pack! But I need your help again!”

Still nothing.

I gritted my teeth. For all the sneaking up on me that ghosts had been doing, shouldn’t they have the decency to come when I called?

Since I didn’t have a Ouija board and didn’t know the first thing about summoning ghosts, I just kept shouting.

Pretty soon, my vocal cords began to itch. The stars turned overhead, but no ghost appeared. The whole thing was futile.

“Savy, it’s time to get out of here!” Jaxson shouted from a surprising way away. “This isn’t working. It was a good plan, but we’ll find another way.”

I sucked my teeth. Crap. He was probably right, and I’d wandered far.

With nothing left to do, I gave the gloating trees the look and shouted one last time, “Hey, ghost lady! Show the fuck up!”

Nothing. Just dark, smug trees rustling their leaves gently in sarcastic applause.

“Yeah, screw you, too,” I muttered, and turned back—straight into the pale, intangible face of the witch.

Too shocked to scream, I stumbled back, tripped over a broken headstone, and landed in some brambles.

The ethereal figure floated over and looked down. It was the woman who’d warned me earlier. She was young—maybe eighteen—with ratty hair and a soiled dress. Although she was translucent, I couldn’t see through her.

My wound began to ache, and a frost crept from it across my body.

Her head twisted, and she gave a hungry grin as she held out her hand. “Have you come to bargain for your soul?”

My breath hitched, and I dug my fingers into the dirt. “What? No! Absolutely not!”

“Pity.” The young woman drifted between the trees.

With a sharp intake of breath, I scrambled to my feet and began to draw shadows to me out of instinct.

The ghost laughed. “Ah, yes, such deliciously dark magic, so deliciously cold!”

I couldn’t tell if it was just the shadows or the trees themselves, but they seemed to bend and bow with her passing as she circled around me.

“Please, I need your help,” I begged, slowly turning to follow her spin.

She stopped short. “I already helped you. I will not do so again—not without a bargain.” Then she slipped half behind a tree.

The word bargain sent a shiver down my spine, but I licked my lips and took a step forward. “Why did you help me? Why not again?”

In a flash, she was inches from my face. “I helped you because you are one of us.”

My skin turned to ice—because of the deep cold that radiated around her, and because of the words she’d spoken. “I don’t understand. Because of your magic?”

She pointed at my shoulder. At my wound. “Because you are dead and with us in the underworld.”

The frost on my skin penetrated deep within my gut. “I’m not dead.”

“A part of you is. A little sliver. It’s here with us.” She laughed and zipped away.

I touched my wound. A little sliver of my soul was dead?

Fuck.

But there had to be more. “Dragan is dead, too, but you helped me. Why?”

The ghost slowly turned and laughed in a far too sweet trill. “He won’t be dead for long, my love. Not if he can bring back your god. The Dark God will give him a new form, and no one wants that—not the living or the dead.”

I swallowed, though it made no difference to my dry throat. “Then please, help me!”

She twisted her hair and came so close that my teeth began to chatter, and my wound screamed. “Help me. Then I’ll help you.”

Jaxson’s voice echoed through the woods. “Savannah!”

He was closer. I turned and shouted, “I’m all right! Give me a minute.”

When I turned back, the ghost was gone.

Damn it!

I spun, searching the trees. “I’ll help you—how?”

Silence. Then a voice whispered in my ear, “Bring me a gravestone. A beautiful one that will never fade.”

I yelped and spun around, finding myself once again inches from her.

My breath caught as she pulled down the high collar of her dress and held back her head so I could see the dark bruises ringing her pale, translucent neck. “They left me hanging in these woods—never gave me a proper burial. Left my bones to be taken by wolves!”

I raised my hand to my mouth. “I’m so sorry. Why—”

She unleashed a wail that pierced the depths of my mind, and I squeezed my eyes shut, as if that could block out the unearthly sound. “They accused me of witchcraft and threw me out of my town. Hanged me from a tree!”

The ghost slumped down at the base of an oak and began to sob gently with her hands over her face.

I wanted to reach out to her, but every instinct told me not to touch. “I’m so sorry.”

Quelling her tears, she folded her hands in her lap, straightened her spine, and spoke in a soft and controlled voice that burned with underlying intensity. “I showed them. I brought plague and disease and misery until they and all their children were buried. Until not one person remained. Now they are forgotten.”

My stomach tightened at her gentle smile. She rose and sashayed from tree to tree. “Now their headstones are rubble. Their graves are looted and forlorn. Bring me a gravestone that will never crack, that will never weather, and I will be able to rest knowing that of everyone who lived in that cursed town, I will be the only one remembered!”

I needed her help, so I nodded. “If you tell me what I need to know, I’ll bring you the gravestone.”

She shook her head. “A poor bargain. Bring me the stone first, and then I will tell you anything you want to know.”

“I can’t. I need the information now. It’s now or never.”

The ghost witch slowly started to stalk toward me. “Very well. I will give you three answers, but you must swear an oath to fulfill your part of the bargain.”

“I will.”

She suddenly vanished, and cold crept over my back. I didn’t move a muscle as she whispered in my ear, “If you betray me, I will hunt down that missing sliver of your soul and make sure you never sleep again. That every waking moment of your life is filled with cold and pain.”

Okay. Ghosts were bad.

But Dragan was slipping away. No ghost had ever talked to me before like this, so the witch might be my only shot. And she only wanted a headstone.

Muscles tense and aching, I turned to face the phantom. “I swear I’ll bring you a gravestone if you answer my questions. The ghost of Dragan possessed our friend. How do we stop him from taking control?”

The ghost cackled and drew back. “You didn’t need me for that. Kick him out with an exorcism, of course!”

I ground my jaw. “But how do I stop him from possessing someone else?”

She smiled. “This is a better question. You’ll need to get his bones. A ghost always wants their bones. I wish I had mine, but they’re long gone. They left me to hang like curing meat. The wolves took my flesh and bones.”

The way she looked at me every time she said wolves made my skin crawl. She’d given me an answer, but not enough of an answer. “You haven’t explained what to do!”

“Find someone who can cast a curse, fool girl. Draw him in! Trap him!”

“You’re a witch. You could do it.”

She pulled on her long, stringy hair. “I wish, but you’ll have to find yourself a living witch! Now get out of my woods and bring me my headstone, or I will make you suffer like you have never imagined!”

The ghost whipped through the air like a silver streamer and vanished through the trees.

I looked around frantically. “You haven’t answered all my questions!”

But there was no response.

I’d needed to ask where his bones were, or more about the wound caused by the Soul Knife, and what she’d meant when she’d said I was like them—the ghosts. But that opportunity was gone. Traitorous creature.

Somehow, I imagined she would still have no compunctions about enforcing her end of the bargain.

The pull of our bond led me easily back to Jaxson, though I still had to pick my way carefully through the downed trees.

He was waiting there in the shadows, a deep, warm presence that smelled of amber and moss and pine. Somehow, the darkness made every sensation stronger, bolder, and more enticing than ever.

His fingers ran over my skin.

“You’re frozen,” he said in low tones that sent a shiver down my spine.

I felt the cold so much more now that I was close to him. I nodded and pressed close, relishing the heat of his body. I realized I could see my breath, a faint plume in the warm summer night air.

Jaxson didn’t shy away or do anything except stand, letting me take his heat. Finally, he spoke. “Did you find what you were looking for in the woods?”

“Yes,” I said at last. “But to get the information I had to promise to bring the ghost an unbreakable headstone.”

“That’s going to be tricky. I hope the information was worth it. What did she say?”

“To catch Dragan, we need to collect his bones.”

Jaxson gave a low growl of approval. “Well done, Savy. Did the ghost know where he was buried?”

I gave a deep, forlorn sigh. “I didn’t have a chance to ask. But I think I know who might.”

Aunt Laurel.