Anna Dressed in Blood - Kendare Blake [63]
When we move together I feel the power of the spell. I feel us all walking, all of our legs, all of our feet, joined together with invisible thread. The flames of the candles stand up strong without flickering, like solid fire. I can’t believe that it’s Thomas doing all this—short, awkward Thomas, hiding all of this power inside a fatigue jacket. We drift together up the steps, and before I can think, we’re at her door.
The door opens. Anna looks out at us.
“You’ve come to do it,” she says sadly. “And you should.” She looks at the others. “You know what happens, when they come inside,” she warns. “I can’t control it.”
I want to tell her it’ll be all right. I want to ask her to try. But I can’t stop chanting.
“He says it’ll be all right,” Thomas says from behind me, and my voice nearly falters. “He wants you to try. We need you inside the circle. Don’t worry about us. We’re protected.”
For once I’m glad that Thomas reached into my head. Anna looks from him to me and back again, then slips silently away from the door. I cross the threshold first.
I know when the others are inside, not only because our legs are moving as one, but because Anna starts to change. Veins snake up her arms and neck, winding through her face. Her hair becomes slick and shimmering black. Oil covers her eyes. The white dress saturates through with bright red blood, and the moonlight bounces off it, making it shine like plastic. It runs down her legs to drip onto the floor.
Behind me, the circle doesn’t hesitate. I’m proud of them; maybe they are ghostbusters after all.
Anna’s hands are clenched in fists so tight that black blood begins to seep through her fingers. She’s doing as Thomas asked. She’s trying to control it, trying to control the urge to tear the skin from their throats, to pull the arms from their shoulders. I lead the circle forward and she squeezes her eyes shut. Our legs move faster. Carmel and I pivot so we’re facing each other. The circle is opening up, letting Anna pass through into the center. For a minute, Carmel is obstructed completely. All I see is Anna’s bleeding body. Then she’s inside, and the circle closes back up.
We’re just in time. It was all she could do to hold herself in, and now her eyes and mouth open wide in a deafening scream. She slashes the air with hooked fingers and I feel Will’s foot slip back, but Carmel’s thinking fast and lays the chicken feet below where Anna hovers. The ghost quiets, no longer moving, but regarding each of us with hatred as she twists around slowly.
“The circle is cast,” Thomas says. “She is contained.”
He kneels and we all kneel with him. It’s strange, the sensation that all of our legs are one leg. He places the silver scrying bowl down on the floor and uncaps his bottle of Dasani.
“It works as well as anything else,” he assures us. “It’s clean and clear and conductive. Needing holy water, or water from an earthen spring … it’s just snobbery.” The water falls into the bowl with a crystalline, musical sound, and we wait until the surface is still.
“Cas,” Thomas says, and I look at him. With a start I realize that he didn’t say anything out loud. “The circle binds us. We’re inside each other’s minds. Tell me what you need to know. Tell me what you need to see.”
This is all far too weird. The spell is strong—I feel grounded and high as a kite at the same time. But I feel rooted. I feel safe.
Show me what happened to Anna, I think carefully. Show me how she was killed, what gives her this power.
Thomas closes his eyes again, and Anna starts to shiver in midair, like she has a fever. Thomas’s head falls. For a second I think he’s passed out and we’re in trouble, but then I realize that he’s just staring into the scrying bowl.
“Oh,” I hear Carmel whisper.
The air around us is changing. The house around us is changing. The strange, gray light slowly warms, and the dust sheets melt off of the furniture. I blink. I’m looking at Anna’s house, the way it must have been when she was alive.
There’s a woven rug on the floor