Spirit Read online

  I love you, she said in her mind over and over again. The same words she’d whispered in his ear on the beach back on Islay, with only the sea and the wind to hear.

  Sean. Her Sean.

  Sarah caught a glimpse of his profile as they were driving on. His handsome features were tense, tight, but underneath the fear and tension, Sarah could truly see him, his essence – eyes clear as a summer morning and the golden skin of someone who’d grown up in a sunny place, still not faded after months in Scotland and now through the European winter. An image formed in her mind: she and Sean in each other’s arms, alone, in the darkness. But immediately, she chased it away. What was the point, if Sean was convinced they couldn’t be together?

  Her feelings for him had been a galaxy of mixed emotions, from diffidence when he first stormed into her life pretending to be Harry Midnight, to affection tinged with something forbidden – she had been told they were cousins – to the first flickers of love. And then anger when she discovered his lie. Forgiveness had come eventually, and a need for each other that they could not deny.

  And then, the terrible revelation: they could never be together. Another consequence of her curse, because that’s what Sarah had decided being a Secret heir was: a curse. It all came down to a lottery of blood, and she had lost. Big time.

  Children of a Lay man – a non-Secret – and a Secret woman carry no powers, and Sean, loyal to the oath he’d made to the Secret Families, could not allow the Midnight powers to be lost. Sean was a Gamekeeper, and he had sworn to serve the Secret Families with all he had. His oath was his whole life. He would never break it.

  If she survived all this, Sarah knew she’d have to marry another Secret heir and carry children with pure Secret blood, keeping the net of protection alive around the world. Made to breed like a thoroughbred horse, not like a woman with a heart and soul.

  Once again, as they drove along snowy fields under a white sky, Sarah contemplated the full extent of the destruction her Midnight blood brought her and those around her. She was locked in a life of violence, she was denied the love of her life, and what was worse – infinitely worse – she’d hurt those dearest to her. She thought of her aunt Juliet, miraculously alive after a terrible attack. She’d believed her dead for weeks, until she heard her voice in a quick, heart-rending phone call she’d made from Islay before leaving for her final quest. She remembered her heart stopping as she heard her aunt’s voice, like an echo from the afterlife.

  The images of her loving aunt being torn apart by a demon tormented her every day, every night. The Midnights brought devastation on everything they came in contact with, on everything they loved. Was Aunt Juliet really safe? And Bryony, her best friend? Had the demons got them, since the last time they spoke? She had no way of knowing. She didn’t dare call them again, in case it would bring danger on them, and herself and her friends.

  “Are you okay?” Sean asked her, interrupting her thoughts. Sarah couldn’t stop her lips curling slightly. Are you okay was his favourite question, and had they been in different circumstances, it would have been followed by the offer of coffee. For such a fearless warrior, strong, often ruthless, Sean had a soft, domestic side to him that always made her smile.

  Sean smiled back. “I know, I know. I ask you all the time.”

  “You haven’t asked me in a while, actually,” she said.

  “I still kept an eye on you. Always.”

  “I know.”

  There was a moment of silence, and Sarah hoped he’d take her hand again, but he didn’t. She wondered when, if ever, she’d feel his skin against hers again. She watched the snowflakes land on the car window, tiny and perfect and intricate like lace, and the wintery landscape around her mirrored the bleakness in her heart.

  2

  Guilt

  The North

  Gives us refuge

  Micol lay on her bed, alone in her room in the heart of Palazzo Vendramin. Nothing unusual there, she did that a lot. There wasn’t much else to do, given she wasn’t allowed out and her wandering around the palace wasn’t exactly welcomed by the million servants the Vendramin Family seemed to have.

  She studied the frescoed ceiling: a blue sky with gentle, white, fluffy clouds and fat baby angels sitting on them. The place looked like a museum. The whole of Venice looked like a museum. Before long, her thoughts began to wander to her brothers, when they had first come to the palazzo, and the months that followed.

  They’d arrived by boat, in the middle of the night. Micol had been enchanted by the lights on the water and the web of canals they had had to negotiate to get to the palace. In spite of their desperate situation, she had been speechless with the beauty of the city they’d taken refuge in.

  But then dawn rose, and she could see the decay in the buildings, and smell the foulness of the water, and feel in her bones how everything was rotting, how everything was falling to pieces. She decided she hated Venice. “The most beautiful place in the world,” Vendramin had said around the breakfast table, and her brothers had agreed – because they had to be polite, Micol guessed.

  She had wanted to be back home so badly. The Tuscan countryside, with its sun-baked hills and the scent of greenery, and not a black canal in sight. She had sat at the huge antique table with a piece of bread and jam in her hands, not wanting to put it down in case Tancredi fretted she wasn’t eating, but unable to bite into it. She couldn’t cry, of course, though she had wanted to.

  Just at that moment, Ranieri had started raving about how the whole city was beautiful now but one day it would be filled with oil and lit up by fire-breathing rats. The onset of his delirium was always sudden, unexpected. The first time it happened was in church. Afterwards, their mother had cried. Micol saw that her mother knew what the episode meant, that the Azasti had begun in her eldest son’s blood, and there was no way to stop it.

  His crises were short-lived, but horrible. It was so strange to see her sensible, wise, strong brother shout nonsense, and in the worst moments, scream and cry and rip his hair out. Of all the scary symptoms he was suffering – the blue nails, the copious bleeding from every little cut, the weight loss that had wasted his muscles and turned him into a shadow of himself – the madness was the worst. It felt like her brother was vanishing, leaving a stranger in his place.

  Tancredi had begun coaxing Ranieri towards his room. As they stepped out of the dining room, Vendramin said a servant would knock on their door later with something to calm him down. Micol had gasped silently. What were they going to give him? Some evil medicine? Maybe that was why Lucrezia was that way, the silent girl she’d only caught a glimpse of when they had arrived the night before. She had lay on her bed, pale and immobile, her lips moving in quiet, indiscernible whispers. They’d been told Lucrezia was ill, but was it her family who’d made her that way, or something else? They knew little about the Vendramins, after all. They had been brought together by the culling of the heirs, but they had never met before. And although the Vendramins had come to their rescue, Micol didn’t trust them.

  Left alone at the breakfast table, she had looked around from beneath her eyelashes. Alvise, Lucrezia’s older brother, sat across from her. He seemed quiet, and his face was unreadable. He looked like he carried a heavy burden. But then, what Secret heir didn’t these days? Ranieri and Tancredi seemed to like him, or at least they spoke about him with respect. But, Micol thought, maybe it was because they had nowhere else to go, and nobody else to ask for help but the Vendramins.

  Micol could still smell her family’s burning house. She could still see the flames dancing out of the windows as they ran. She remembered the soil demons grabbing her ankles, and Tancredi cutting their white, muddy hands off with his sharp claws – and the demon slaves, the dogs with human faces, hounding them all the way to the hideout her family kept at the edge of the lake. They remained there for a day and a night, listening to the growling and scratching outside, until the Vendramins’ Gamekeepers came to help. It was a miracle they ha
d escaped.

  “You must eat something, Micol,” the housekeeper said, kindly enough. But her stomach was in a knot, Ranieri’s delirious screams coming from upstairs upsetting her.

  The palazzo was huge, but the acoustics were strange. You could hear almost everything from anywhere in the house. Micol wondered if it had been built like that on purpose, to enhance security. She already knew that the Vendramins were paranoid. Apparently, there were traps all around the palazzo. They were meant to keep the Surari out, but Micol suspected they also fit another purpose: to keep her brothers and her in.

  “Sorry, I’m not hungry,” she responded, pushing her plate away and standing. “I’m going to my room.” She wanted to be alone.

  As she sat on the sumptuous bed, the tears she’d kept inside finally fell. She buried her head in the fine silk of her dress – she had brought nothing with her, obviously, and was given Lucrezia’s clothes to wear. No jeans and T-shirts in sight, nothing normal, just long dresses that seemed to have sprouted from an evil fairy tale.

  Micol cried for a long time, her shame in acting weak and vulnerable overcome by grief and fear. She hadn’t even had time to cry for her parents properly, she thought as a fresh bout of sobs broke her. They were barely cold in their graves when everything else had been destroyed.

  Suddenly, there was a soft knock at the door. “Sorellina? It’s me,” a voice said. It was Tancredi.

  “Come in,” Micol replied, in a tone that she hoped was steady enough. Tancredi had enough on his mind without worrying for her too. She had to be strong. She dried her tears the best she could, leaving dark patches on the sleeves of her dress.

  “Hey, you’ve been crying . . .”

  “No. I haven’t. I just washed my face,” she said lamely.

  Tancredi sat on the bed beside her and wrapped her in his arms. She snuggled in, and to her dismay, tears started flowing down her cheeks again.

  Ranieri was the strong one, the one they all relied on. He was brave and generous, but a bit distant, a bit more like a father than a brother. Tancredi, instead, was her best friend. There were over ten years between them, but they were so close that the age difference didn’t matter. The love she felt for him squeezed her heart. Ranieri was so sick; now it was just Tancredi and her, like two castaways in the middle of a hostile ocean.

  “It’s okay, sorellina. You’ll see. We’ll be fine. We’ll find help for Ranieri and go home soon. I promise.”

  Micol didn’t believe him.

  In the weeks that followed, Micol remembered now, still staring at the ceiling, Tancredi had started hiding his hands from her. He’d even taken to wearing riding gloves whenever he could. But it was no use. Micol had seen his blue nails, and knew that the Azasti would come to take her second brother too.

  3

  White Is the Colour of Death

  Orbiting in deepest, coldest space

  Say one word, and I shall be saved

  Poland

  “What are they doing?” grumbled Sean, tossing the remnants of his sandwich into the bin beside the petrol pumps. Niall and Winter had been inside the little shop for some time – too long. They couldn’t linger anywhere. They never knew who’d spot them, especially after the incident at the border. There in the heart of Europe, besieged by demons, on their way to the Gate of the Shadow World, there could be no respite, from demons or from humans.

  “No idea, but they need to come back now,” Sarah replied, looking around her anxiously. She surveyed the scene, checking possible threats. There was an elderly couple hovering around their car, and a mother and child holding hands, heading for the shop. People made Sarah nervous. People could get hurt, or hurt them.

  She’d had a dream the night before – a confused vision of something huge with flailing limbs towering over her, and blue flames everywhere. It had been too blurry a scene to make out exactly what was happening, but she was sure an attack was imminent. Sarah was a Dreamer, and her dreams were supposed to guide them all towards the demons they were supposed to destroy, and warn them of dangers, but these days they were a phantasmagoria of terrifying visions. They were no use. Maybe she wasn’t getting enough sleep. Maybe her sleep was too troubled to go to the place in her mind where the dreams happened. Or maybe Nicholas was messing with her mind again. There was no way to know for sure.

  She slipped her hand into the glove box of Sean’s car and took out her scarf. She tied it around her neck twice, like she always did. It was so cold that she was shivering already.

  In the parking space beside them, Elodie unbuckled her seatbelt. “I’ll go get Niall,” she said, stepping out of Nicholas’ car.

  Nicholas shifted his weight uncomfortably after the car door slammed shut. He didn’t like it when Elodie left him. He wasn’t used to being blind yet, and he feared the complete darkness, the loss of balance, the sense of not knowing what could be lurking around him. On the roof of the petrol station, Nicholas’ ravens perched and waited to resume the journey. Without them, Nicholas would have been unable to guide Sarah and her friends to the Gate. Although he knew the Shadow World like the back of his hand, the loss of his sight had made it impossible for him to orientate himself. The Elementals now saw for him.

  Sarah blew on her hands and rubbed them together. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and her hands kept closing and opening, as if getting ready to summon the Blackwater, even if they weren’t in a combat situation. She was too terrified to switch off, even in her sleep – especially in her sleep, when the jumble of confused, cruel visions made her toss and turn and wake up screaming.

  “Are you okay?” Sean’s question made her jump.

  “Sort of. You?” she said, stopping herself from resting a hand on his arm, from stepping closer to him.

  He shrugged. “I haven’t slept in a week. Apart from that, I’m great.” Their eyes met, saying so much more than words ever could.

  “Hey!” Nicholas’ deep voice came through the open car window.

  “What do you want?” growled Sean in reply. He had accepted Nicholas’ presence: he knew they needed him, but he didn’t trust him, and left to his own devices, he would have gladly given him a piece of his mind – with his fists. Just to remind him where they all stood. But Elodie wouldn’t have let him, for some reason that was known to Elodie alone.

  Nicholas stepped out of the car slowly, leaning heavily on its door. His obsidian eyes, cloudy and sightless, turned towards Sean’s and Sarah’s voices.

  “We need to go,” he said, and the ravens cawed in reply, once, twice.

  “Yes, we know that,” replied Sarah, her voice icy.

  “I mean, we need to go now. Trust me.”

  “Ha!” Sarah turned around, her eyes blazing green with the Midnight gaze. It couldn’t harm Nicholas because he couldn’t see her. Had he been able to, it would have hit him like a blade between his eyes. “We are trusting you, Nicholas, otherwise we wouldn’t be here,” she spat.

  “Here they come,” said Sean with a sigh of relief. Sarah followed his gaze and saw Elodie, Niall and Winter leaving the petrol station.

  “What took you so long, Niall?” she snapped as soon as he was close enough to hear.

  “The man in there had a story worth listening to,” he replied in his cheery manner.

  “A story?” she hissed. Of course, Niall would choose this time to listen to stories, possibly with a drink in hand. Niall was a strong fighter and loyal to a fault, but sometimes he tended not to grasp the gravity of situations.

  “They saw something around here,” Winter explained, gesturing with one hand towards the petrol station. Her other hand held Niall’s.

  They all turned to follow her gaze, and from the shop window a bald man with a black moustache, sitting at the till, met their gaze.

  “Something big and white. Very big,” Niall continued, running a hand through his light-brown hair. “They called it a golem.”

  “Shit. Demons,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “Let’s just go. Are
we still far, Nicholas?”

  “No. Not far. But let’s hurry,” he said. Something in his tone made Elodie’s lips turn ever so slightly blue, as the poison that was her family’s power began spreading in her body, ready to be unleashed.

  “Sean. A demon. Here. Now,” she whispered, her lips darkening even more; her psychic power made her aware of things before they happened.

  Elodie took Nicholas’ arm to help him into the car, when he growled a deep, animal growl that stopped them all in their tracks. Right at that moment, the ravens took flight, their alarmed cawing cutting the sky.

  “Winter, into the car,” said Niall. Winter obeyed at once, blood draining from her face.

  Elodie’s lips were now black. Sarah’s hands were burning. Niall was humming slowly, his song gearing up to hurt and destroy, while Sean’s hand was curled around his sgian-dubh, ready to trace deadly runes. We’re in the open, he kept thinking. People all around. They want to destroy us so badly they don’t even try to hide any more.

  Right at that moment, a terrible scream sounded from inside the petrol station. Sarah narrowed her eyes, peering through the window, trying to spot where the threat came from. The man with a moustache who’d been sitting at the till was now wearing a red handkerchief on his head. Sarah let out a small yelp as she realised that wasn’t a red cloth covering him, it was half his scalp peeled back from his head.

  All of a sudden the shop’s door exploded in a million shards of glass – and something huge, white and hunched made its way out, unbelievably swiftly in spite of its mass, its flat, rubbery face sniffing the air, its long, clawed hands reaching out to grab and mangle. So that’s what she’d seen in her dream, Sarah realised.

  Out of the corner of her eye Sarah registered a couple ducking into their car, an elderly man cowering in fear behind one of the pumps, and a woman with a little girl running towards the forest. A child. Oh God, please don’t let them be hurt, she pleaded, and raised her scorching hands, ready to use the Blackwater. Her eyes flared green with the Midnight gaze. The creature howled and jerked its head away, feeling the power of Sarah’s gaze but not knowing quite where the threat came from . . . until it sensed them.