“It couldn’t be,” Shan muttered, “or we’d fall through the floor.”
Without further debate, I turned the handle, then nudged the door open. Old, unoiled hinges squeaked loud enough to announce our arrival. Peering through the door, I made out scuffed floors and rough walls, some with holes large enough for something scary to have crawled inside.
“This just gets better.” Shan stayed close as I eased over the threshold.
The moment we stepped in, heat sparked over my skin, like passing through a dense, hot fog. The temperature spike blanked my vision for a few seconds, and in that time I heard Butch howling, but I couldn’t see what was distressing him. Shannon held my hand tightly while we waited for the inexplicable blindness to pass. Eventually, the dog fell quiet, but I couldn’t be sure if that was good or bad. Finding him in my purse, I stroked his head to make sure he was all right; he stilled after a few seconds.
When my head cleared, the house was . . . different; it looked dated but cozy enough, full of esoteric tomes and a jumble of arcane implements, more or less, I realized, like the cottage Booke had showed me in one of our shared dreams. A calendar on the far wall showed December 1947. In a way, it was like time had stood still here, capturing a moment.
As the thought occurred to me, movement sounded down the hall. I tensed, taking half a step in front of Shannon. The gentleman who came into sight didn’t look dangerous, however. He was tall and thin with a shock of rumpled silver hair; his face was lean, pale from years of eschewing the sun, and he had gray eyes full of boundless sorrow. Artistic fingers showed their age in a slight thickening of the knuckles and a light dusting of liver spots. As I took stock of him, he extended a hand toward me for a polite greeting. On automatic, I accepted the gesture. Afterward I realized I knew this man. I’d seen his face in lucid dreams, but with thirty years pared away. He had shown me an echo of his youth—clever rather than handsome, but relatively unlined.
“Booke,” I said softly. It wasn’t a question.
“What happened? This better not be Sheol.” Shan knew as well as I that one didn’t pass into the demon realm without sacrificing a soul, so we couldn’t be there.
On the other hand, I did suspect we weren’t in England any longer.
At least, not exactly.
“I wasn’t certain I could get the spell to let you in. It’s been successful at keeping others out—and me in—for quite some while.” His weariness was apparent, and I smelled the magick on him, crackling ozone that raised the hair on my arms.
“You look tired,” I said.
He didn’t deny it. Instead, he gestured toward a grouping of chairs. “Won’t you both have a seat? I expect you have a number of concerns.”
“To say the least,” Shannon murmured. But she chose an armchair before the fire, which crackled merrily.
I had so many questions I didn’t even know where to begin. First, how did he get modern technology, when he was trapped inside some kind of spell? And how did he use it to contact the outside world? But those issues were more my own curiosity, so I put them aside for the moment. Oh, I’d get satisfaction at some point, but his problems took precedence.
“I’m happy to let you explain why you need us,” I said then.
“I feel as though I owe you a story first. Can I offer a bit of something to take the edge off? Tea and sandwiches, perhaps?”
From Shan’s expression, she was relieved that he ate. I didn’t blame her for wondering if we’d stumbled into a ghost story, but things seemed very real here. I nodded, setting Butch on the floor to explore. The dog trotted over to Booke, sniffed him cursorily, and then licked his hand. To my surprise, tears sparkled in his gray eyes as he picked my pet up and stroked his head gently. I could only imagine how lonely he’d been.
“Why don’t you just hold Butch for a minute?” He looked exhausted, trembling with it, and Booke didn’t demur when I added, “If you don’t mind my rummaging in your kitchen, I can fix the food.”
“By all means,” he said quietly.
I supposed it was time to learn all his secrets. When I moved through the cottage, I found the layout of the rooms to be exactly as he’d shown me in our shared dream, even down to the furnishings. It was a little eerie passing through places I’d only seen before in my mind’s eye. Shannon followed me, ostensibly to help, but I think she wanted to stay close to me too. If I passed through another trigger spell, she didn’t want to wind up stuck here alone. Not that I blamed her. After Sheol, I was lucky she was still talking to me. Not only had it been my fault that she was kidnapped, but I’d gone mental due to the latent presence of a demon queen. Now I had a hole in my soul where evil used to be. On top of the pain from losing Chance, I didn’t feel like myself anymore. Even the dream of returning to Mexico and launching my new pawnshop tasted like ashes on my tongue.
In silence, Shannon and I put together a light meal. The mystery remained, but at least we weren’t stranded in an abandoned cottage full of ghosts, rats, and spiders. Frankly, the latter worried me more than the former, as Shannon could command spirits, but rodents and arachnids did as they pleased. When we came back into the sitting room, Booke had his head tilted back, eyes closed, and Butch had settled into the crook of his arm. I let him rest while I prepared my tea with milk and sugar. Shannon and I ate in silence, and as we finished, he straightened in his chair.
“Thank you for that respite. You’d think after so long I would be eager to see people, but it is . . . more difficult than I expected.”
“What is?” I prompted gently.
“Making my deathbed confession.”
“You don’t mean that literally?” Shan asked.
“I’m afraid I do. And it is awful trying to find the words to explain how I came to this pass . . . and what I need from you now.”
If he suggested euthanasia, I was out of here. But I owed it to him to hear him out. So I said, “Don’t worry about framing it. Just tell us.”
“Very well. Long ago, longer than you can credit, I was a vain and foolish young man. I thought I could have anything I wanted . . . without consequence. My father was powerful, steeped in hermetic tradition.”
I nodded. “You mentioned the last part.”
“Did I? He encouraged me in this narcissism, until I became quite intolerable.” He paused, not so I would dispute his claim, but to reflect on some long-ago memory. For a few beats he stared into the fire, and then gathered himself visibly to continue the story. “Eventually, I came across a woman I wanted . . . who would have nothing to do with me.”
Shan eyed him worriedly. “Tell me you didn’t . . . ?”
“No, but that would have been cleaner. I wooed her with expensive presents and minor charms that lowered her resistance. Eventually, I had her.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“1939.”
Eight years before he vanished from the real world. I made a mental note, wondering if it had been shocking for a woman to take a lover during that era. “I don’t see the problem.”
“She was married to my father’s greatest rival.”
Okay, now I see the conflict.
Shan leaned forward, interested by the story. “How long did this go on?”
“Seven years. At first she was a conquest, but to my dismay, I fell in love with her. I tried to get her to leave her husband. I promised her all sorts of things . . . and I considered using magick to suborn her will.”
“Did you?” I asked through a tight throat.
That was one of the darkest sins a practitioner could commit, almost worse than trafficking with demons. If you used your gifts to enslave someone else . . . I shivered at the thought. If Booke had done that, I wasn’t sure I could help him, no matter how much assistance he’d rendered over the years.