Like I said, there’s nowhere hotter than Helltown.
Finally prying my eyes free of Isobel in all her robes and demon jewelry, I took a long look at the room where I was now momentarily trapped. I was fairly certain that it was underneath the gas station temple. It looked like a basement. There were floorboard joists over my head. The walls were bare concrete stained with moisture. No windows. Just torches. Fucking torches, like we were in the Temple of Doom.
Isobel had three big baskets behind her. She grabbed one of them and hauled it closer to me.
“Let me out of here,” I said.
“Not until you believe me. I’ll untie you once you’ve seen the truth, and you can decide what to do after that.”
She was still on about that? “If you’re stashing kids in the temple, then what comes after that might be a call to the cops.”
Isobel frowned as she dropped the basket at my feet. “Kids? You mean Ann?”
“Is that the name of your little diversion upstairs? How did she end up here? Kidnapping?”
“She’s vedae som matis bougaknati.” Whatever the fuck that meant. “Don’t go near Ann,” Isobel said firmly. “You have to listen to me, Cèsar. I can help you. I want to help you.”
I strained against my bindings. “Yeah, I can tell. That’s why you lied to me about being able to talk to Erin and tied me to a chair.”
Her eyes lit with fire. “Fine. You think I’m a fraud? Let me show you how much of a fraud I am.”
She kicked over the basket. The lid flew off and hit my shins. Bones spilled out—dry human bones. I would have recoiled if I hadn’t been attached to the chair.
There were no drums this time, no fake accent, no chanting.
Isobel extended her hands over the bones in front of her, palms facing the ground. She closed her eyes.
“Come to me,” she whispered.
The magic slapped me upside the head like a folding chair. My eyes burned and sinuses tingled and I sneezed three times in quick succession. The room blurred. All that magic that I had felt in at Shady Groves Cemetery was back, strong enough to choke me.
Once I could see again, all of the oxygen vanished from my lungs.
There was an apparition in front of me. The full figure of a naked, hairless human man, who looked baffled to be in the basement. His dark skin looked inhumanly gray. And—Jesus—I could see the basket through his shins.
He was a ghost.
His mouth moved, but Isobel spoke for him, still whispering, still in her true voice. “Where am I? What’s going on?” Her eyes were empty, like the ghostly figure had taken control of her.#p#分页标题#e#
“Holy hell,” I said.
Isobel stepped around the apparition to touch my shoulder. The ghost’s empty stare followed her movements.
“Do you believe me now, Cèsar?” she asked softly.
Oh yeah. I believed her.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Isobel had parked her RV behind the Temple of the Hand of Death. She dragged me to it, delicate fingers encircling my wrist, eyes on the surrounding road and the creatures milling between buildings.
I must have been unconscious longer than I’d thought—it was starting to get dark by the time we left. Dangerous time to be on the streets of Helltown, even for a woman dressed like a priestess. During the day, only the corporeal, daywalking demons could go outside, making it relatively safe for visiting OPA agents. Once night fell, shit got real.
The OPA specifically forbade agents from entering Helltown in the afternoon to make sure that they wouldn’t be there at nightfall.
I didn’t trust a lot about the OPA right now, but I trusted their sense of self-preservation.
Isobel shoved the door to her RV open and pushed me inside. I held my breath when I stepped onto the upper step, prepared for her magic to overwhelm me. All witches have a habit of marking our territory with wards and curses, which can be enough to fuck up my nose if the witch is powerful. And Isobel was definitely powerful.
Yet I didn’t sneeze. I didn’t feel even the slightest tingle.
The RV looked even more retro on the inside. She had shag carpet, a beanbag chair. Her furniture was upholstered in plasticky white material. All she was missing was a lava lamp. But even though her kitchen counters were covered in jars of herbs and bags of—oh Lord, was that blood? I didn’t see an altar.
“Don’t you cast magic in here?” I asked as she climbed in behind me, slamming the door.
“Not exactly,” Isobel said. She dropped the velvet skirts. They puddled around her ankles, and she kicked them away. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts underneath, which clashed with the remaining corset in a sexy kind of way.