Bereft: Foretold

37 | A Witch in Red

"What do you mean?" I demanded, resisting the urge to grab onto the cell's bars. "What do you mean I'll have to die?" 

Cage pressed a finger against his lips, either to indicate that I should lower my voice or to suppress further laughter. "Did you think the solution would be easy? If it was easy, you dolt, you would have heard of it before!" 

I searched the pockets of my borrowed coat for the square piece of runed shale Lucian had handed me. It would unlock the cell—and the sooner I unlocked the cell, the sooner I could strangle Cage. 

"The soul of a person is not a dog," the black mage sneered, tone dipping into aggravated octaves I hadn't heard him use before. Outside this place, Cage was a jovial, ambivalent man with little care for rules or societal norms—but here, bound in this cell not fit for a rabid animal, he was considerably less cheery. "It does not come when bid. When a person dies, their soul doesn't remain here, Darius. It's gone. They're gone."

My breathing was loud in my ears. "What do you mean?" I repeated as a sharp, prickling pain seeped through my chest. "Are you saying it isn't possible?"

He shook his head and shoved a hand through his matted hair. "No. I'm illustrating the enormity and the unpredictability of the task before us—and trying to impress upon you the urgency of getting this godforsaken door open!"

I found the cut bit of shale and laid it within the corresponding slot on the cell door. The space was snug, and the stone snapped into place, the colored veins worked within the minerals spiraling outward into the barred door. This odd "key" worked to disrupt the magnetic mechanism sealing the mage's confinement. My ears popped as the air pressure changed and the solid metal of the door leaned its weight on rusted hinges.

Cage pushed his branded hand against the script-covered metal, grinning as it swung outward—but that grin swiftly morphed to a grimace as I grabbed the man by the collar of his ridiculous coat and slammed him into the wall.

"Darius, don't do this now—!"

I growled, the sound more animal than man as I pushed on my arms until the flexed muscles trembled. "Tell me how!"

His hand moved and I reacted, slapping the appendage away, sending the invocation born by Cage's discreet finger motions flying. The invisible blow hit the bars of an adjacent, empty cell, and sung through the long corridor. 

Cage choked but didn't attempt another spell, instead holding his hands prone at his sides in show of his cooperation. "Listen to me. Explaining the process will take time—time we haven't got at the present. Release me, Darius. Release me so we can retrieve the witches and leave this absurd place."

I didn't let up. If anything, I pushed harder, unable to see past the red clouding my vision. He'd lied. He'd lied to me, and there was no hope of ever—!

"Retrieving the girl will take a guide, of sorts," the man rushed to say as he sensed my mounting fury. "A guide to return the metaphysical to a source of energy capable of manifesting a physical form—or have you forgotten that she hasn't a body anymore? That her body is dead and rotting in the graveyard at Crow's End?"

How could he possibly know that? Amoroth had informed me that everyone who'd died that night—Cuxiel, Balthazar, and Sara—had been interred in the manor's cemetery by Lust and the Baal. As surprising as it was for the Baal to stoop to such cheap ceremony, it hadn't taken more than an iota of thought and effort for the King Below to break the earth and place the bodies in its cold embrace. 

Amoroth had noted how he'd lingered at Cuxiel's grave the longest—but this was information Cage shouldn't be privy to. The man had a knack for knowing things nobody else should.