"The scent of blood to draw him," Carlos said and looked toward me and Mara.
She glared at him.
Carlos watched me and started to reach for my hand.
"No," Mara snapped, her words coming out of her mouth sharp gold and scintillating. "And not mine, either. You know that."
Edward raised a languid hand. "Don't be cruel, Carlos. It's poor form to repay our friends in that coin. I'd give mine, if I had any."
"Maybe your friend downstairs," Carlos suggested. "I could call him here."
I tried to glare at him. "That's not fair."
Carlos growled, "Fair…" Cameron started to say something, but Carlos shut him up with a look. "Very well, then. Cameron, open the door for our guest."
Cameron edged around the circle as Carlos, mumbling something that sounded more like curses than spells, drew a small knife from his clothing. He slashed it across his right wrist.
Nothing happened. Then Carlos closed his eyes. His lips moved but no sound came out. His chest heaved as though from heavy exertion and dark, slow drops of blood welled along the wound, then dripped to the seething floor. They splashed loud as cymbals. Carlos flung his hand in an arc, dark droplets splattering over the organs mirror and stops with the sound of shattering crystal.
Stillness and the sickening stink of corrupted blood held us. I was panting as I called out, "Sergeyev. Grigori Sergeyev. I have your vessel. Come and get it."
A wind burst up from the floor with a roar and a shape rushed through the door. It crossed the edge of the first circle, racing toward me. Mara dropped to her knees and closed her circle with a word. A wall of white light leapt upward. The Grey shape smashed against the barrier and recoiled with a howl of frustration, collapsing into the form of my spectral client, trapped between the two charmed circles.
He cursed us all in vociferous Russian. Cameron stood spellbound by the door and I cowered behind Mara, oppressed by the ghost's withering hatred and battered by my own fear, pain, and exhaustion.
"There's nothing he can do to you, so long as the circles remain intact," Mara whispered, as I held her shoulders. "The only one at risk is Carlos, and no ghost wants a taste of a necromancer's fury if he can avoid it." She looked uncertain and pale with fatigue, hands wound into her circle's spell, keeping the ghost confined between it and Carlos's circle of necromancy. Her own power strained to maintain the circle's integrity as Sergeyev stormed against it. I hoped whatever flowed, pulsing, through me was helping her, but I didn't know.
Carlos reached out and yanked one of the stops out of the organ. Sergeyev turned with a jerk and threw himself against the inner circle with a shriek. The ivory decoration on the knob crumbled to dust and sifted to the floor, frosting the blood with a thin coat of white. Carlos dropped the knob and reached for another.
"Nyet!" Sergeyev screamed, followed by a babble of Russian sounding imploring and threatening by turns.
Carlos answered him. "We come to release you, you ungrateful wretch. Seven hundred years of torment and all you can think of is revenge. Against whom?"
Sergeyev spat out a name, stalking in frustration around the perim-eter of Carlos's circle. His appearance wavered and flickered through a vertigo-inducing montage of every person he'd ever worn, stolen, or devoured. I leaned one shoulder against the wall, which flickered with strange lights.
"Dead," Carlos snapped back. "A long time dead. I knew of him." He yanked out another stop. "From his torments, I release thee. From this prison, I release thee…"
The revenant shrieked and howled, clawing at the air between them and cursing in gouts of fiery storm until my knees shook and I thought my ears would bleed. Carlos screamed back at the ghost, long, entwining words that wove around the spirit, loosening and thinning him as the vampire dashed more and more of the organ to the ground. Music rails and preset knobs rattled to the floor and sloughed into dust. Keys groaned as they were wrenched from the boards and fell away in slivers of memory.
The hallway boomed. I was slow to turn my head, but heard Cameron scream and fall.
"What a lovely party," Alice hissed from the doorway. "And I wasn't invited." The flesh on her face still showed deep gashes, but her hair, face, and dress were covered in fresh blood.
The sight staggered me, and I leaned one hand hard onto Mara. Quinton…?
"Bitch," Edward spat, whirling toward Alice.
She laughed and darted forward, tearing a hole in the circles on the floor. She snatched the mirror from the organ. "Mine!" she shouted. Colors and streamers of power roared around her, twining over and through her. "I am your mistress now. Attack the ones who would harm you!"
Sergeyev howled unholy glee and rushed into the inner circle, pouncing on Carlos and the organ.
Mara sobbed and rocked backward. We lurched back against the flickering wall, cringing.
Edward flew toward Alice, who danced sideways from the circle, clutching her prize to her chest. She howled mad laughter and shouted, "Edward! It's only you I want! Run away, mice! Run and hide, or I'll eat you, too!" She fired a cold glare of triumph at me and laughed harder.
Cameron lurched to his feet near the door, his neck and head looking lopsided and loose. He snatched at her, missed, and swung his arms again.
Carlos had fallen back against the organ, his arms up, warding against Sergeyev's slashing energies. Shrieking faces and savage blades of light lashed from the instrument. Single-minded, the necromancer swiped at the music rail, dislodging the last of the spindles, which dissolved and powdered on the floor as they came away from the instrument. The ghost yowled and wavered a moment, then attacked with savagery.
Mara struggled up out of my arms and flung a ball of blue light at the ghost's back. It splattered across him and he howled as Carlos howled, too.
She winced. "They're too close together. We'll have to reclose the circle. Come and help me."
I tried to move and felt ice tighten on my limbs and a sharp shortening of my breath. Sickness and revulsion held me back with a muttering in my brain: "Neither help nor hinder…"
Mara threw herself onto the floor and began to crawl, drawing new symbols and chanting in gasps. She looked up at me, desperation in her eyes. "Come on!"
I stumbled a step back. If I moved forward I felt the weight of Alice's geas against me. But I could go and nothing would happen to me—she had promised me that, screamed the chittering voice in my head…
Mara tore her gaze from me with a frightened face and kept crawling, painfully, across the floor.
I backed toward the door, curling against the shuddering, battering of the Grey in violent discord, while the double-pronged battle raged around me, cutting me with stray blades of energy that played tearing chords on my chest.
Sergeyev smashed at Carlos, oblivious to every counter his opponent made. Even as his substance faded, his strength, drawn from the artifact, seemed to grow, and his wrath burned a reeking red and black pall around them.
Edward and Cameron flung themselves on Alice from opposite sides and grabbed her. She fought and screamed, slashing and biting, tearing flesh wherever she touched them, a whirlwind of fury. Cameron caught her flailing arm and yanked it backward. A sickening pop and a rending sound—Alice shrieked and wrenched toward him, jaws gaping. Edward snatched at her head, tangled his hands in her flying red hair and yanked, twisted, jerked…
Her neck snapped with a crunch and she flopped onto the floor, thrashing like a gaffed fish and gnashing her teeth. The mirror dropped and smashed. Cameron grabbed the nearest thing: a needlework stand. He knocked the embroidery hoop off and plunged the long spindle of wood down, into Alice's chest.