2
CINDER
“Hiding a skull this far from home is a bit excessive, don’t you think?” I mumbled to myself as I rolled my black sedan to a stop behind the church and tightened my grip on the steering wheel.
I supposed Boston was a bit closer to Hingham than Salem was, but still. According to my map app, it would have taken Isabel at least six or seven hours to walk it. And the other hiding spots were even farther away. The woman must’ve been insane.
Then again, if I’d promised my soul and my first-born child’s to a trinity of demon princes, I supposed I’d go to any lengths to avoid paying the price.
The really sad thing was that this whole ordeal…the curse on my bloodline, the promise of souls, the skulls hidden all over…it was all because the man Isabel loved didn’t love her back. How horrible it would be to place all your self-worth into someone else’s hands.
I started to feel sorry for her for a minute there, but I snapped right out of that pity party. Plenty of people had been rejected over the eons of our existences, and ninety-nine percent of us didn’t resort to cursing an entire bloodline. No, Isabel didn’t deserve my sympathy.
Leaning forward, I peered up at the sky and took three deep breaths, centering myself. Wispy clouds stretched across the nearly full moon like silver cotton candy, and an owl hooted from a nearby tree. My stomach growled, protesting the fact that I’d left before Ash could order the pizza.
I was famished, but I’d had to leave before Ember got home from work. Otherwise, she’d have given me the same speech about how I shouldn’t be doing this alone, and who was she to lecture me?
If Ember had her way, she’d bust into the church with her sword ablaze, setting off whatever wards or magical traps Isabel had cast centuries ago and getting us all killed in the process.
And Ash…
Her self-esteem was so fragile. Sure, she was level-headed enough to handle the truth if worse came to worst, but hopefully, I could take care of it all so she never had to know. If I’d told them both what I was up to, they’d have insisted on coming with me…and then what?
Someone from our family had to stay in this realm to run the coven if I didn’t make it back. As the second oldest, that duty would fall on Ember, and Hecate have mercy, she would hate the job. Hopefully, Ash would be her voice of reason, but if they didn’t work together…
No, I couldn’t think like that. I had to get the skull, summon the demon, go to Hell, find our parents, and come home. In and out. Quick as lightning. Easy-peasy. Sure, Cinder. Keep telling yourself that.
With one more deep, centering breath, I shut off the engine and climbed out of the car. The owl took flight, its wings rustling in the quiet night as I crept toward the church, a two-story wooden structure, beige, with a steeple. A waist-high black fence surrounded the yard, and the gate creaked when I opened it, the sound reminiscent of a nineteen-eighties horror flick.
I half-expected to see rotting zombie hands jut from the earth in front of me, but the grounds remained silent. A single incandescent light bulb burning above the back door cast a warm glow around the entrance, contrasting with the silvery sheen from the moon. A set of four wooden steps led up to the doorway, and a dark brown cellar door lay to the right of it.
Stilling, I closed my eyes and focused inward, searching for the bond I had created with Discord.
Yeah, I know. I know. The only interaction a light witch should have with a demon was to vanquish him, but I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Isabel’s map was rudimentary at best, giving five possible locations for three skulls if you could decipher her squiggly lines and smudged ink. And a cartographer I was not.
I’d snapped a photo of it when I was inside the Boston Magic Society’s library, but a five-year-old could have drawn a better map. The damn thing was about as useful as a wad of wet toilet paper.
I was all about working smarter, not harder, so I might have copied down a few dark spells while I was there. And yes, maybe one of those spells had to do with binding a demon to yourself, and I might have used it to find Discord’s skull. Big deal. These were desperate times.
Even light witches had to get a little dark sometimes.
Hell, I was planning to summon a demon prince. That in itself could get me exiled, so why not add a little spice to the good-witch-gone-bad concoction I was cooking up? It was better than my little sister going mad and killing us all.
I took a few more steps toward the entrance. Another deep breath. More focusing inward. “C’mon, Discord. I know you’re in there somewhere.”
A tingle formed at the base of my sternum, and a low vibration spread upward through my chest, heating me from the inside out. “There you are.”
I followed the tug toward the cellar door and hovered my hands above it. No signs of magic pricked at my palms to indicate a ward, so I tapped a knuckle against the wood. When nothing happened, I dared to press my fingertips against the surface, then my palm. I brushed the back of my hand over the latch, half-expecting to get the shock of the century, but again, nothing happened.
“Okay, then.” I gripped the latch and pulled the door open.
A rush of power tingled across my skin, covering me in goosebumps from scalp to toes. I pushed forward, slowly, carefully descending the steps as the remnants of a centuries-old spell clung to my body. Weird. This was a passive ward. The funk of magic filled the stale, musty room, reeking like a gas station toilet that hadn’t been flushed in months. Stay away, it seemed to say, though its voice felt hoarse, like it hadn’t been used in a very, very long time.
Pausing at the base of the steps, I waited as it dissipated, whatever effects the caster had intended dissolving around me as the spell unraveled.
Interesting. The mundane had probably been in and out of this cellar door hundreds of times. I highly doubted they’d felt—or smelt—the spell like I did, so it must’ve been cast as a warning for any witch who might venture inside in search of the skull.
A warning for most, or possibly a beacon for Isabel’s descendants. The seventeenth-century equivalent of a blinking neon sign with a big red arrow that said here lies skull number one. It didn’t matter either way. I’d made it through Isabel’s first line of defense, but I had no doubt it would only get harder from here.
