“No kitchen staff?” I asked Vegard.
“No signs of anyone being in the house, period.”
“It’s spooky,” Phaelan added.
It was worse than that, but I didn’t need to say out loud what all of us knew-it sounded like a trap with our names on it. Nothing that I had done since I had arrived on the island warranted arrest, regardless of what Carnades said. However, if I got caught in his house, Carnades would have every right to toss me in prison along with my accomplices.
“We’re not going to get caught,” I said to no one in particular.
Phaelan’s grin was crooked. “Damn straight we’re not. Our family pride is at stake.”
And our heads.
Phaelan’s preferred method of theft usually involved a ship, forty cannons, and an overenthusiastic crew. As Guardians, Vegard and Herrick hadn’t been trained in the more subtle points of building entry. If a door or gate was in their way, Guardians would simply get rid it. As a seeker, I’ve had to retrieve objects or people from behind locked and warded doors or cells. I had been taught lock picking by a retired cat burglar. She was retired because she never got caught; as a result, she retired very comfortably.
The locks and wards on the delivery entrance weren’t easy to disable, but they didn’t make me break a sweat, either. That bothered me, a lot. Before turning the latch, I carefully reached out with a searching spell. No alarms, magical or otherwise, had warned anyone of our arrival. Maybe since Carnades was an arrogant jerk, he thought his reputation and position on the Seat of Twelve would protect him and his valuables. Or maybe I wasn’t good enough to sense what he had in place. Only one way to find out. I turned the latch and slowly opened the door. Nothing.
Except a stomach-turning and familiar stench.
Oh no.
Phaelan was wrong, there were people in the house. Dead people. Not just dead, butchered. There were plenty of knives in Carnades’s kitchen, but the staff had been the only ones who had tried to use them. The things that had sliced them to ribbons, eviscerated them, or both, didn’t need knives. Demons had claws, horns, and teeth. I went in, Vegard and Phaelan on my heels, then Herrick with Piaras. I forced myself not to look too closely at what was left of a cook slumped over a chopping block.
The blood was still fresh; these people had been dead an hour, probably less. I looked at Vegard, and the Guardian nodded. I felt him reaching out, careful and silent, searching for signs of life, demonic or otherwise. I did the same in the opposite direction.
Not one breath. Whatever had been here had come, killed, and gone. I got a sick feeling that had nothing to do with dead bodies. If the demons were gone, chances were good that the dagger was gone right along with them. The smart thing would be to get out of here. Now. I was smart, but I was also desperate. Vegard was looking at me, his question unspoken but obvious.
“We have to search.” I said it on an exhaled breath, audible only to those around me. If there was any chance at all that the demons didn’t find the Scythe of Nen, we had to look. We all put our weapons in our hands where they belonged.
I turned to Piaras. He was staring steadfastly ahead and breathing through his mouth. He looked down at me and nodded once, tightly.
Vegard gave Piaras the box that had held the Scythe of Nen. Piaras opened it and laid his hand flat against the velvet lining inside. Unlike myself, he didn’t get kicked across the room. Piaras looked at the lining, concentrating. Normally, closed eyes worked best for this kind of thing. I didn’t blame Piaras; I wouldn’t close my eyes in this slaughterhouse, either. After half a minute, he closed the box and gave it back to Vegard. His brown eyes were distant and focused, though not on anything the rest of us could see.
Piaras indicated an open door on the other side of the kitchen. Even though neither Vegard nor I had sensed anything still among the living in the house, none of us wanted to say anything out loud. The things in Sirens hadn’t been alive, and they’d caused plenty of trouble.
Vegard and Phaelan went to check the door, and more important, what was on the other side. When they’d finished, Vegard looked back at us and nodded.
Beyond that door was a hallway in the back of the house. There were several doors leading off of it and one staircase, leading up, presumably into the main part of the house. Everything was plain and practical; it had to be the servants’ section. I’d expected Piaras to make a beeline for those stairs and Carnades’s study or bedroom. He indicated a door that led to what must have been a common room for the servants. Thankfully, there were no bodies in there. Lamps were lit, but light didn’t make it any better. There was something on the floor that I’d seen before and didn’t want to see again.
Black goo. Undead horde black goo. Along with it was a yellowish, green slime that shone in a thin trail across the room and ended at a closed door. None of us wanted to open that door, but at least one of us had to. I took one step toward it, but Vegard was there first. One hand held his battle-ax, its blade glowing blue in the dim light. His other hand reached for the doorknob. I felt a brush of cold air coming from beneath that door. I swallowed, braced myself, and nodded to Vegard.
There weren’t any demons or undead warriors on the other side of the door, though what was there was just as bad.
Stairs leading down into pitch darkness.
“Why is the spooky shit always in the basement?” Phaelan muttered.
“Piaras, are you sure?” I asked.
He nodded. “What was in this box went down those stairs.”
And it didn’t get there by itself. The demons found it, the demons had it, and now the demons had gone into the basement. And we had to follow them. No choice, no option.
“Let’s get some lights,” I said. “I want it bright as noon down there.”
Down there was packed dirt walls and nothing else. Leave it to Carnades not to have a basement full of junk. The only thing that was there was a fresh hole dug into the wall, about four feet tall. The hole was fresh; the stench was not. Vegard took a whiff and scowled.
I smelled brimstone. I felt something else.
I stood motionless and let the residuals flow over me.
It was black magic, thick and vile. It had been done here, and recently. Raising an undead horde would definitely qualify. It was fetid and dripping with raw hatred. Evil. I felt it through my clothes, crawling on my skin, slick and cloying. I immediately started breathing through my mouth to keep myself from gagging.
The glow increased on Vegard’s ax. “What is it?”
“You can’t smell it?”
“Brimstone?”
I shook my head. “Black magic.”
“You can smell it, ma’am?”
“More like sense, probably through the Saghred. I guess evil calls to evil.”
“You’re not evil.”
“Thank you, Vegard. Tell that to Carnades. Or better yet, save it for my trial.”
“There won’t be a trial.”
“You’re right,” I said, staring down into the darkness where I had to go. “If the demons don’t get me, Carnades will skip the trial and go straight to the execution.”
Vegard opened his mouth to protest and I held up a hand. “That’s his plan-that’s not what he’s going to get.”
“That’s my girl, ma’am.”
I looked at him. “Vegard, when are you going to stop calling me ‘ma’am’?”
He grinned. “When I don’t respect and admire you anymore.”
My throat went tight. “That hasn’t happened yet?”
His eyes shone with unabashed pride. “Not even close.”
I shone my lightglobe into the hole. I wasn’t worried about anything jumping out at me. Whatever had been here had gotten what they came for and was running back to the Hellgate that spawned them.