Phantom Eyes (Witch Eyes) (16 page)

twenty-one

The church doors were unlocked. The moon had appeared from between the clouds only minutes before, a slow and methodical fire that burned at my back. The church itself smelled like funerals and spice, of things celebrated and forgotten.

Elle was alone, knelt down in front of the chapel candles, a fire stick clasped forgotten between her hands. She could have been lost in prayer. She could have been dead. It was hard to say. Or care.

“She’s waiting for you upstairs,” Elle said, only moving her lips. “Be careful.”

“There’s not much she can still take from me.”

Elle turned her head to look at me, her eyes sad and serious. “Don’t let her prove you wrong.”

To the right of the chapel was an open door, and behind it, stairs that led up into the darkness. I climbed towards my meeting with Grace, tired of her fascination with heights. I blamed the burn in my legs on nerves, not the climb. Grace had a hundred years to plan for this. I’d had about thirty-six hours.

I came to the crest of the bell tower, which was now apparently just a tower. The axle the bell had hung from was still there, as were the metal links that had helped it sway back and forth, but the bell itself was missing.

“He dares only strike at one a day,” Grace said, again from her perch at the window. She looked out at her city, the belle dame of Belle Dam. It was meant to be ironic, I knew now. A “beldam” was a hag, or a witch. She’d named the city after herself twice. “It must gall him, to dirty his own hands. To have a fraction of his old strength restored, and yet the bells cut through his dark power with every passing hour.”

“Good job. You’ve given him a scare,” I said dryly. Grace didn’t torture Lucien like she wanted to crush him. It was all with an air of grotesque passion. If she was a cat, then he was the prey, and she only toyed with him before the passion to consume him became too much. Until all that was left was to lick the blood from her fingers when she was done.

I just wanted him to suffer, even destroy him if the opportunity presented itself. Somehow, that had become the less creepy alternative. I wanted to become a monster, and somehow that made me the hero.

“Shouldn’t you be out there right now, pulling his pigtails?”

A breeze cut through the open walls, and I had the sense it was raveling around her like a shawl. “You grow bold,” she whispered. “Stupid boy. What would the worl
d lose if the Thorpe line withered where you stood—if I took back the life I returned to you?”

“Did you come here to make threats,” I said evenly, “or did you come to beg me for my help?”

That drew her up short. Grace pursed her lips, magma-eyes churning. “You don’t know any—”

“
—I know
exactly
why I’m here. Do you think I couldn’t figure out what happened? If so, then I’m not the stupid one, am I?”

I’ll give her one thing. The zombie witch with inferno eyes had a great poker face.

I gestured between the two of us. “We’re still connected. You might have taken my power, but I can still
feel
it. I know you tried to have Elle do your dirty work for you, and that didn’t work. I know it’s
killing
her. And as long as the wellsprings are dormant, you’re still trapped in the lighthouse.”

“Abomination,” she hissed.

“Sticks and stones,” I sing-songed. “You wanted his power for yourself, but you ended up trapped. And I unlocked the first wellspring. That’s it, isn’t it? I started releasing that power, and now I’m the one who has to finish it. And you can’t touch a drop of it without me. But you lost control and came after me. Screwed yourself over, didn’t you?” My lip curled. “In all things,
balance
.” It wasn’t quite the B word I wanted, but the meaning was clear.

There was a moment, a single second in space and time, where the fire in her eyes kindled and weighed against itself. I could see it in the glow of her power and in the tension that had thickened the room. On one side of the scale was my annihilation. On the other, my survival. The difference between them was less than a feather’s sigh.

“You misunderstand your position here. Your
purpose
,” she said, the flames devolving down into embers. “You only live because of my mercy. But that doesn’t make you my equal. Remember that.”

“Cut the crap,” I snapped. I was curious how far I could push things. If I was wrong, and Grace
didn’t
need me, there was only so much she would tolerate. But if I was right, then maybe it was the time to redefine some of the boundaries between us. Starting with … “You need me. Actually,” I said, pretending to think, “You needed the old me. The broken, cursed kid who got traumatized every time he took a hotel shower.”

“Your power,” she sneered. “What are you but a pawn in a game you barely understand?”

“What are you but an ancient bitch who can’t get over her ex?”

“You dare—”

“I dare! Of course I do. So if you’re going to kill me, then do it.” There was a moment while the two of us acknowledged the challenge that had been laid down. “You need me. And
he
needs me. But look!” I held up my arm, dangled it out in front of her. “No strings. I’m not your puppet. I won’t dance because you tell me to. So shut up and listen, because you might have gotten used to the
sound of your own voice over the last hundred years, but I don’t
care.
”

“How desperate do you think I am? I don’t bargain with mongrels.”

It was hard to forget that not only was Grace an aged magical revenant hell-bent on revenge, but she was also something of a pretentious bigot. “If you want my help, we’re doing this my way. You’re not just giving me my power back. You’re going to show me how to use it without killing myself. You’re going to help me get the control I need.”

Grace sneered. “If you think I’m going to unleash you with the true weight of your power onto this world, you are sorely mistaken. Imagine the destruction you could sow in just a single lifetime. This will never happen. I will not
allow it.”

“Fine,” I said, thinking quickly. I couldn’t let Grace decide the terms of our agreement without fighting back, but I also couldn’t afford to just let her walk away entirely. “Then give me three days.” My heart squeezed in tight, constricted like a snake had wrapped around the muscle and was slowly pressing the life out of it.

Only three days. How could I do everything and say goodbye to my life in three days?

“
What
?
”

“Three. Days.” I said clearly, like it had been part of my plan all along.

I had caught her off guard. She weighed the words carefully, but if she thought it would be that easy to divine my intentions, she was disappointed. Hell, I didn’t even know my intentions at this point. Confusion lined her face, and the fire in her eyes dimmed. “To do what?” She sounded almost curious.

“You give me three days back in the world. And then we can negotiate what happens to me. Tear out my eyes, lock me in the lighthouse, but there’s no way I’m walking away from this alive. I know that.”

The fire in Grace’s eyes dimmed completely, and for the first time I saw something other than fire—a shifting of shades that ran from crimson all the way to daisy yellow. Reds and oranges and yellows, each as striking as the next, no two shades quite the same.

Grace knew about sacrifice, maybe more than anyone, but it seemed that self-sacrifice still eluded her understanding. “You … would give up your life?” She looked almost human. Almost sad. Almost.

“I know what’s going to happen to me,” I said clearly. I did know. I’d known for a while that some journeys don’t end well. They just end. “If I’m going to fall, I’ll drag him down with me.”

There was a startled pause.

Grace’s voice was pebbles against stone, as gentle and as tentative as she could. “And what could you do in three days?”

My smile was slow and sincere. “I’m going to tear Lucien apart. You trapped him in this town, but it’s become his playground. He has his toys, and his games, and his plans. He has his pleasures, and I’m going to sour all of them. I’m going to make this place the hell you should have made it in the first place. For him.”

“Every cage has its key,” she murmured. Another way of saying
in all things, balance.
If I was going to take something from Lucien, I would have to give up something of myself. That was the true nature of power, I understood it now. For every victory, there is a sacrifice. For every power, there is a price. And there is always a loophole.

“The spell over Belle Dam, the one you used to trap him, that continues because you’re still alive, doesn’t it?” Grace nodded, but my question was rhetorical. I’d already figured out that much on my own. “If I have to bind myself to the lighthouse
, then I will. I’ll give you my freedom and take up your place.”

“The burden of Atlas,” she murmured with a small smile. “Do you know how long a hundred years is in this world?”

“I’ll finally have time to watch all the Lord of the Rings movies,” I offered. “They’re just so long.” But there would be so much I could do before that happened. Heal Riley the best that I could. Save Trey. Protect Jade. Ravage the life that Lucien had built until nothing was left but a shredded, bloodless carcass. Dig out the roots of the feud and pry them from the town so that no one else would get tangled in agendas and dark motivations.

If I could accomplish even half of those things, I could walk away from the world and be okay.

As if she could read my thoughts, Grace’s expression turned severe again. “It is not as easy a thing as this, you understand. There will be factors you haven’t thought of. Prices that will have to be paid. How willing are you to take your revenge? What are you willing to sacrifice? Such things will have the highest of costs.”

I’ve already offered her my life, my powers, my eternity. What else can she possibly take from me?
“I won’t give up Jade and Gentry,” I said, the first thought coming into my mind. “And if we do this, you have to help them put a stop to the feud. You’ll have stopped what you needed to stop. Belle Dam deserves to heal after everything it’s been through.”

She inclined her head as she considered. Another smile. “You will be my hands in the world. If you do everything you agree to, we will be in agreement. I will allow the concessions you’ve requested.”

I released a breath. Okay, okay. This could work. Maybe. I couldn’t trust Grace, not fully. But at least I could hope that any family loyalty she still possessed might be enough to shield Trey and Jade from the worst of what she could do.

“I’m not just going to take your word for it,” I said. “I don’t trust you enough not to turn on me the moment it suits your purposes.”

The Widow of Belle Dam, who was probably used to people dancing along the strings she’d crafted, narrowed her eyes on me. “Is that a fact,” she said coolly. “And will you stroll up to the demon and ask him for a favor?”

“There’s more than one demon in Belle Dam,” I pointed out, my tone just as sharp. “And it says a lot that I’d trust him a lot further than I’d trust you. Matthias can orchestrate a contract as well a
s Lucien can.”

“A demon only ever looks out for his own interests,” she snapped. “What makes you think that the demon can be trusted?”

Because I can give him what he wants. And I can make sure that no one else ever will if he betrays me.
“The Grimm owes me a favor. He knows if I get my powers back, I’m going to have a debt to settle with him. He aided Lucien and his restoration.”

She tapped a finger against her lips. “And you’ll give him amnesty for his crimes against you?”

“So I can nail Lucien to the wall? Hell, yes.”

Grace turned her head away, but not before I saw the start of a smile form.
Had she ever met anyone who wanted to see the demon pay as much as she did?
A moment passed, and then I had to know. “What did he do?” I asked softly. “How did it start? You don’t challenge the powers you challenged without one hell of a reason.”

“We came to this land in search of the lighthouse, a bastion to travel between the worlds. You could enter in this world, climb a thousand times a thousand stairs, and emerge in a world unlike anything else known in this existence. Or so the legends said. But what we found was not another world at the top of the lighthouse. No, what we found was so much worse.”

I remembered the lantern room of the lighthouse, the way one whole side of the room had been smashed in, as though a giant had slammed his fist through the roof and walls in a fit of childish pique.

“Maybe it’s a long-buried instinct in those of us with the power to challenge the gods, the ones for whom magic was truly meant. We seek out the seeds of our own destruction. We stare into the abyss, and pray that it stares back into us. The Riders first taught man to use magic, wizards and sorcerers who were like gods themselves. But those powers came with deadly strings attached. For me, the search for the lighthouse was tantamount to my survival. For you see, my powers, though they were great, were slowly killing me.”

“So it was the same for you,” I nodded. Somehow I knew this, but the idea of Grace as weak and frail didn’t seem to compute in my brain. I could not reconcile the two images.

“Ahh,” she said, another creeping smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, “you don’t believe. But it is true all the same. For you see, our power comes tied to the demons, and only through them can we achieve the true measure of our gift. We are bound to them from our very first breath. The only question is how long they will let us linger with our fantasies.”

Once, I thought that by searching out Grace’s legacy, I might figure out a way to control the powers that I’d been born with. But if it was all a trick—if my destiny had always been to act as a puppet for Lucien’s darkness—then I’d
never
had a chance. My life had never felt as claustrophobic as it did right now. Even though I could look out and see the city laid out before me, the stars in the night sky, the lights across the bay signaling another city … my life was such a small thing. An empty box that never had any hope of being near to full enough.