Those constricting tendrils had since fled, but a small… twinge of sorts remained. Not painful so much as it was regretful, the soreness more emotional than physical. Almost like I’d needed that squeezing of my spirit, that soul-deep touch that had stirred and sung to me an instant before sending me into oblivion.
As if, with that intrusion, he’d…fixedsomething I hadn’t known was broken, and now whatever that something was longed to be fixed, adjusted… again.
21GRIM
This whole situation kept getting worse and worse. Worse still?
I kept doing shit I shouldn’t fucking do.
I glared hard through the motes and flotsam as I drifted deep in midnight waters half a world away from where Helena waited for my return, the glow of the souls in my hourglass, clipped to my belt, haloing me in murky, parti-colored light.
What was she doing right now? Cursing me, most likely…
While I didn’t like to think I’d made her my prisoner, there was no denying that detaining her—a delicate way of putting it—was exactly what I was doing.
Was she awake yet? She had to be pissed. More pissed.
She had a right to be.
I hadn’t exactly asked her if she wanted to come to the Netherworld and crash on my couch. Nor had I stuck around to explain myself.
A note hardly counted.
Guilt tore through me—though it warred with the conflicting peace of mind that came with knowing that, at the very least, Helena was out of Cedric’s reach.
No measure of magic would allow him entry into my cornerof the Hallowed Halls. And no measure of ingenuity would allow Helena out, either, since the door moved only for me.
While the four luminous souls of those who had lost their lives during that morning’s storm floated above the wreckage of a sunken fishing boat, I surveyed the scattered debris.
In the hours that had passed since the squall, the sea had calmed, and the deep had mostly cleared—not that either storm or lack of visibility would have impeded me or my work if I’d made it here earlier, at the time of death.
My intervention on Helena’s behalf had set my schedule back by several hours—and several souls—however.
Though it could be argued I no longer needed to care half so much about the call of the deceased since I would soon have my title, powers,andsoul stripped from me… I still did. The dead did not stop dying without me, and these waters presented a cold and lonely purgatory.
Aside from that, the necessity of carrying on with my duties gave me the excuse I’d desperately needed to leave Helena’s presence.
After making contact with her soul, brushing my darkness against her light, wrapping her warmth with my frigidity and getting singed like that—like I’d dared to touch the fucking sun—I needed distance.
My goal had been to shift her spirit off its axis by the tiniest degree. So long as I had her soul in my grip, I could physically transport her out of her world and into mine without her presence being detected by one—or all—of The Few. And a slight loosening of her essence was enough to do the trick without unbinding it from her body.
If altering the fate of a soul was forbidden, an even more egregious crime was to tamper with one directly. Killing Cedric—twice now—almost didn’t count because he had no fate waiting in the hereafter. At least none that he hadn’t subverted through his own hubris and hunger for immortality.
Meddling with Helena’s soul, however, had produced a few unexpected… side effects.
For me.
I drifted forward through the water, drawn by the glow of the souls.
With my free hand, I took hold of the first, and like plucking an apple from a tree, I freed it from its invisible tether.
If left to their own devices for too long, souls separated themselves from their vessels. Without my intervention—or Flora’s—they would remain anchored to their earthly figures. Unless the souls jumped to new anchors—places, objects, and sometimes even people. If a spirit’s desire to remain was strong enough, Flora and I would arrive to find empty vessels. Sometimes we could locate the renegade spirits, and sometimes they snuck through the cracks.
Either way, the living called those wayward spirits ghosts.
Some ghosts I came across would go with me. A few rare ones… would not.
Tonight’s shipwrecked souls presented no challenge.
