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“I can’t believe it’s not even eleven A.M. and we’re going to portal-hop over to Ivana’s for tea and a stroll through her ghost garden. Damned Chase and his broken ankle.” Delilah snorted. “He got off easy.”
Smoky leaned down on my left side and whispered into my ear. “Your sister is right. This is truly one of the most reckless ideas you’ve ever had. And later on, I’ll show you just how reckless.” His hair tickled my arm, tracing a sensuous line down it. I shivered and he laughed, low and throaty.
Just then, the portal shifted. I stepped in front of it, and Smoky, Morio, and Shade stood beside me.
“Oh brother, here we go.” Delilah, rolling her eyes, joined us.
As the flicker of energy grew, opening out into a vortex, I heard Ivana’s voice from the other side.
“Witch Girl, hurry up. Don’t dawdle.” As always, Ivana gave me the creeps. She was so far from human that even the timbre of her voice made me nervous. But she was what she was, and the Elder Fae were part of my heritage.
As I approached the portal, I sucked in a deep breath. Since this had been my idea, I was going first. If there were traps on the other side, I didn’t want the others to get hit by them. I glanced at Morio, who gave me a nod, and plunged through the veil of energy.
Unlike the portals set up by the spirit seals, rogue portals were wild and feral, and their energy shifted constantly. I’d been through this one several times, and the first two times, the energy had sucked me in, called to me like a siren song. This time, I found myself passing through a wind tunnel. I shivered, freezing as I struggled to walk against the raging winds. They howled, twisting my hair and buffeting me so much that my ears were beginning to hurt.
Finally, just as I was ready to chuck the whole thing and head back, a light shimmered up ahead, and there was Ivana, peering through the vortex on the other end. Her odd, birdlike face was covered with gnarls and bumps that might have been warts, but I didn’t want to get close enough to find out. She reminded me of a demented bag lady, but I also knew that was simply a disguise. The Elder Fae cloaked themselves under layers of illusion, and unless they chose to reveal themselves, it was almost impossible to ferret through to see the real being beneath the masks.
She waved for us to hurry and, with a gulp and a prayer that I hadn’t made a serious mistake, I leaped out of the vortex, through the crackling veil of power, to land on solid ground.
As I stepped out of the way to allow the others to come through behind me, I was startled to find that I was standing in a vast garden filled with marigolds and primroses and peonies, as well as numerous tombstones that were weathered and aged. The garden—at least a double lot in size—sat behind a charming cottage.
The house was very Cape Cod, relatively large considering the style, and a white picket fence surrounded the entire lot. Beyond the fence, a ravine led into a patch of woods. Although there were electricity lines hooked up to the house, when I tried to gauge where we were, I had the feeling we’d left Seattle far behind.
“It’s lovely.” I inhaled deeply. The air here was clean, though I thought I could still sense a hint of city pollution.
“What did you expect? A gingerbread house and a trail of bread crumbs?”
I started to answer but decided that sometimes, silence was golden. Shrugging, I looked around at the tombstones, wondering who the hell they belonged to.
Ivana hoisted her staff—a silver branch about three feet long—and jabbed it toward the garden. “My garden. I had collected over a hundred ghosts here yesterday morning. Now…” Her voice dropped and a look of sadness veiled her eyes. “Now, they’re all gone. All my lovely ghosts, gone.”
Not sure of how to respond, I just stood there. Yes, Ivana tortured them and made their spirit lives hell, but considering they were the worst of the worst—the angry ghosts, the hungry ghosts who tormented humans, I found myself conflicted.
Shade glanced around at the yard. “What the hell do you keep them here for, anyway?”
I blinked. One simply did not speak to the Elder Fae like that, but then again, he was half dragon, and dragons generally said whatever they wanted to. Ivana regarded him, a nasty crease in her brow, then chuckled.
“You really want to know, Master Dragon? I milk their anger and hatred, and from that delicious brew, I create magic.” She leaned in toward him, and the blur that continually surrounded her form seemed to grow taller. “Do you wish to know what I do with that magic?”
He regarded her quietly, then shook his head. “No, Maiden of Karask. I think none of us wants to know.” He knelt down by one of the headstones that had been knocked over. “You had them firmly bound here, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “Why? What sayeth you, Prince of Bones?”
He touched the stone, and a faint violet light filtered out from his fingertips, sizzling as it came into contact with the granite. “The ghosts were ripped violently from your garden. Plucked like unripe carrots, not ready to come out of the earth yet.” Slowly standing, he dusted his hands on his pants.
“These ghosts…they did not go willingly. Whatever harvested them sucked them out without warning. I’m not even sure if they exist anymore, not as the spirits they were. I believe the consciousness of these creatures is gone. Our enemies were after the energy that kept them active.”
“You mean, somebody killed the ghosts?” I asked, cocking my head.
“Yes, that would be one way to phrase it. Whatever or whoever stole these ghosts harvested them for their essence, and, in doing so, destroyed their conscious selves. They stole the life force that propelled the ghosts.”
Delilah let out a gasp. “Like when the Death Maidens have to cast a soul into oblivion.”
Shade nodded. “Yes, except for one thing. Death Maidens return the energy to the central pool, to be cleansed and reborn anew. Whatever took the ghosts is keeping the energy for its own use. It fed on them.”
Ivana let out an irritated grumble.
As I stared at her garden, the scope of what we were facing started to settle in. Whatever was cleaning out the boneyards was strong enough to destroy a hundred spirits at a time and to harvest their energy and send the souls spiraling into oblivion. We knew Gulakah was huge and powerful, but the fact that he was a god was beginning to ramrod itself through my thoughts.
