The House Saphir by Marissa Meyer - 45

Cobwebs clung to Mallory’s hair as she climbed upward into darkness. Her arms shook the higher she went, but after perhaps thirty feet, her hand struck a wooden surface. With some effort, she managed to find the edge of the panel and shove it to the side.

Dim light filtered in, catching on the dust motes and a long-legged spider that quickly scurried into the shadows. Fresh, damp air greeted her, smelling of rain and dirt and the fervent charge of lightning on the horizon.

She climbed out of the hole. She was behind the potager, where the top of the dumbwaiter had, at some point, been buried beneath a compost heap. The gray sky had grown dark since they’d entered the house.

Fitcher and Constantino stumbled out behind her. They surveyed the house. Mallory expected to see it engulfed in blue flames, but it was intact. There was no sign of the fire in the kitchen that had sent them scurrying into the cellar. It had been an illusion after all.

But part of the roof really had caved in above Armand’s suites. Perhaps Bastien was willing to damage the house, but not destroy it completely.

They slipped out of the garden. As they were passing the terrace, the stones cracked beneath their feet. Mallory was launched forward, barely catching herself before she crashed to her knees.

With a frazzled look at each other, they started to run. Through the overgrown lawns, where vines and brambles grabbed at their ankles. Where the ground trembled and topiaries shaped like nymphs tried to stop them as they bolted past.

Bastien made one last effort to block their path, a horrifying figure screaming with guttural rage as he emerged from the trunk of an ancient oak. Mallory tripped. She fell to the ground, rolling a couple of times before coming to a stop, her body bruised and throbbing. With a growl, she yanked her knife from her boot and threw it at Bastien’s visage. The blade sank into the wood. The tree shuddered. Bastien’s ghost reeled back and disappeared.

Fitcher hauled Mallory to her feet. They did not stop running until they burst into the chapel and slammed the door shut so hard the entire building shook. The three of them fell panting against it.

Anaïs had lit the candelabras around the perimeter of the room, giving it a warm, flickering glow. Armand still sat tied to the upholstered chair, with Anaïs cross-legged on the floor in front of him, having laid out a spread of Wyrdith cards. Recognizing the Acolyte card and the Harvest Moon, Mallory at first assumed her sister was attempting to read his fortune. But then she noticed the betting pool of acorns that lay between them and realized they were playing Enigma, a gambling game that many considered blasphemous.

Anaïs and Armand both gawked at Mallory, Fitcher, and Constantino—torn, bloody, bedraggled, sweating, and livid. So very livid.

“That ghost,” Mallory gasped, “needs to go.”

Anaïs laid down her cards. “What happened?”

Armand added, “Where did Fitcher get a sword?”

Mallory didn’t even know where to begin. Honestly, she’d forgotten about the sword.

Unstrapping it from his back, Fitcher hastily passed it to Anaïs, who eyed it with distaste. “We’ll explain later,” he said. “Mallory, the rings?”

She dug the four wedding rings from her pocket and stormed across the room, jutting a finger at the small bird with ruffled feathers. “Lots of help you were. We could have used some magic.”

With an annoyed squawk, Gabrielle transformed into a human again, gripping the black-and-white feather like a weapon of her own. “I was watching over the prisoner.”

“Well, guess what? Le Bleu isn’t here to possess him right now. But he is certainly in possession of the house. And not just the walls. Oh no, he controls the floors, too. And the ovens. He can make blue fire . We were completely unprepared!”

“Mallory.” Anaïs settled a hand on her arm. “It’s all right. You got the rings. We can end this.”

Mallory glanced at Anaïs’s hand and Gabrielle’s ring—passed down through generations.

On the altar, they had placed a single candle, already burned down to a nub, inside a glass lantern. A pentagram had been drawn in chalk around the candle and decorated with flowers and herbs. Mallory laid the rings around the sigil. Anaïs pried Gabrielle’s ring from her own finger and laid it on the fifth point of the pentagram.

“Should I be doing something?” Armand said. “Actually … if we know that I’m not currently possessed, maybe—”

“No,” said Mallory. “We’re not untying you. Bastien knows where we are and what we plan to do. He will possess you again the first chance he gets.”

The wives appeared then, their hazy forms climbing up from the center of the rings that had been placed around the pentagram, their figures shimmering but whole.

“We tried to find the brute,” said Julie. “He’s become a part of the house again.”

Mallory conveyed this to the others, informing them the wives had arrived.

Gabrielle snorted. “He cannot hide from me.”

Lucienne shrieked giddily. “Gabrielle, is that you? It’s been so long! You look…” She trailed off, cheek twitching, before she took in Gabrielle’s thin, naked figure, feathery hair, twitching movement. “Like you could use a drink.”

Whether Gabrielle couldn’t hear the ghosts or she simply chose to ignore this, she moved to stand beside the ring that had once been hers. “We can begin.”

“What do the rest of us do?” asked Mallory.

“Nothing. Bastien is held by the same dark magic that he has bound us with. Once I summon him into this circle, his spirit will be trapped inside this candle and no longer able to invade the minds and bodies of others. We need only hold him, and when the flame can burn no longer, the death of the candle will snuff out his spirit as well, and the monster will be reclaimed by Verloren.”

“Must we wait for the candle to burn out?” asked Mallory. “Or can we…” She mimed pinching the wick with her fingers.

“Once he is here, the circle is not to be broken,” said Gabrielle. “Do not be impatient.”

“Is this going to hurt?” asked Triphine. “I’ve had a bit of a sore throat of late, and I don’t want it getting worse.”

“Hush,” said Lucienne as Gabrielle began to chant.

Mallory recognized the words from the old language, the same she had recited to open the door to Verloren and summon her ancestor when she was a child. The spell that had brought Le Bleu back to this world.

It began to storm outside, rain pounding at the roof of the chapel, coming down so hard on the stained glass that Mallory worried it might shatter. The candles flickered, as if a wind had coursed through—though Mallory felt nothing but her own shudder.

The flames flickered again, and this time they went out, all at once.

Gabrielle’s chanting grew louder.

Anaïs gripped Mallory’s hand.

Armand looked worriedly at the door. Fitcher tapped restlessly at the closed pocket watch. Constantino thumped an arrow into his palm.

Outside, lightning flashed—brightening the chapel in one blinding instant, thunder shaking the walls.

When it passed, the candle on the altar had burst to life with a single tall flame—burning blue.

Anaïs’s grip slackened with surprise.

Gabrielle fell quiet, the blue flame dancing in her dark eyes. “He is here.”

Mallory inched closer to Armand and crouched beside him. His hand flexed in welcome, and she took it, squeezing tight, her pulse pounding.

The candle was so small—barely more than a wick and a coin-sized ball of tallow. Surely it would not take long to burn out.

After everything, to see the great Monsieur Le Bleu reduced to that tiny, inconsequential flame felt strangely anticlimactic. And perhaps too easy, though she reminded herself that, actually, it had not been easy at all.

The flame brightened and Mallory imagined Bastien, with all his stubbornness and will, fighting the fate that threatened to claim him.

“How do we know for sure that he is trapped in that candle?” Anaïs whispered, sounding a little wistful. “It seems too small to hold him.”

Armand squeezed Mallory’s hand tighter.

Anaïs took a step closer, still clutching the sheathed sword, head cocked as she peered into the blue flame. She stilled, her brows knit. “Something is wrong.”

Mallory tensed. “What do you mean?”

Gabrielle did not react. She and the wives were locked in a trance—their bodies motionless, their focus latched onto the blue flame.

Mallory stood. “Anaïs, what is it?”

Her sister hesitated. “Bastien is here,” she said slowly. Thoughtfully. “But … he is not trapped.” She was motionless, listening.

Lightning flashed again, illuminating Anaïs’s face—and the slow, cruel smile stretching across her mouth.

Backing away from Mallory, Anaïs drew the sword from its sheath, turned to the altar, and drove the blade into Gabrielle’s back.