Zoe Archer - Sinner’s Heart

“Yet here you are. Safe as virgin in a library.”

“But you didn’t know that when you summoned it.” Fury poured through her. “Is my presence such an inconvenience to your debauchery? Are you too concerned that I’ll disrupt your pursuit of quim? Distract your cock just as it’s about to spend?” She sneered. “Poor Bram. All he wants is to fuck himself into oblivion, but the fate of millions of souls keeps intruding. What a nuisance.”

His face twisted with cold rage. “Quiet.”

“I’ve never been quiet,” she snapped. “Not in life, and most assuredly not in death. And I vow to you, vow, that someday I’ll make you pay.”

“Why wait?” Bram planted his hands on his hips and tilted his chin. “Do your worst, Madam Ghost. For nothing can match the hell I’m in now.”

Anger surged in hot waves, and she embraced it. She’d been trapped within this half state of being, without substance, without feeling, battling an enemy that was and always would be more powerful than she. Mighty men once trembled before her, kneeling in supplication, begging for her aid. Her, a daughter of Rome, a priestess of incalculable strength. Now brought to the lowest kind of existence, and lashed to a man of boundless self-interest.

It was intolerable. Galling. A wound that could never heal.

At that moment, she didn’t care if Bram was crucial to the fight against the Dark One. All she wanted was to hurt him, as she hurt.

“That is one order I’m happy to obey,” she spat. Energy swirled within her, magic she could wield like the fiercest weapon. Once, she had studied ancient scrolls to learn the proper incantations, but she no longer needed papyrus or words. The magic had imbued her very blood. Even in this spectral state, she had power few could match. She had given a Gypsy woman the means to control fire, and bestowed command over air to an English girl.

“I’ve razed buildings of stone,” she snarled. “Torn demons apart with just a wave of my hand. I was the woman who first summoned the Dark One. You are nothing.”

“Tear me to shreds, Madam Ghost.” Challenge glinted in his glass-blue eyes. “The only people who’ll mind are my servants, and simply because of the mess.”

She raised her hands, gathering her power. An Egyptian killing spell, the Summoning of Seth. Bright energy poured from her palms and shot toward him. He did not move from where he stood, waiting.

Before the stream of energy could hit him, it veered away like a bird with a broken wing. It collided with a small table off to the side. The table shattered.

Livia stared down at her hands. Never had that happened before, not even when she was a girl newly learning the ways of magic, surrounded by clay tablets and papyri.

Bram grated out a laugh. “That happens to men sometimes. Not me, though. Not since I was a lad.”

She bared her teeth at him. “It’s only because I haven’t tried to hurt a mortal yet. But my power will soon learn the way.” She flung her hands out again, and another burst of energy rushed from them.

And once more, the energy went astray, digging a deep gouge in the floor.

His laughter was an ugly, taunting thing.

“You ought to visit a clockmaker,” he said. “Get those gears back in alignment.”

“I . . . can’t understand it.” Shame choked her as she once more gazed at her hands. It felt as though her arms had been severed from her body, something crucial missing. “Always, always magic was mine to control. What has happened?”

“Don’t know whether I’m relieved or disappointed.” He crouched next to the gouge in the floor and ran his fingers over it. “Too bad you haven’t any money, for this will take a good bit of coin to repair. And you owe me a table.”

She barely heard him. Instead, she turned her focus inward, searching, seeking. There had to be a reason why her magic had failed. It hadn’t stopped entirely, so it still existed within her. But it was broken. Incomplete.

She inhaled sharply. Incomplete. Half the power it once had. Which meant that the other half of the power was in another place. Where?

Bram rose up from his crouch, sinuous in his movement. And then she understood.

“It’s in you,” she rasped. Drifting closer, she said, “My magic . . . when we were bound together, part of my magic went into you. That’s why my spells don’t succeed.”

His brow lowered. “I don’t feel a damned thing.”

“Because you aren’t cognizant of anything above your waist. But it’s there. I know it is.” Gods, what an agonizing thought. Magic belonged to her and her alone. She shared it with no one, especially not Bram. It was as though she had to share her heart with him, or else the blood would cease to move through her veins.

But she needed her magic. Without it, she was simply another woman. Worse than an ordinary woman. She was a ghost with no strength, no power. As futile as a snake’s dream of flight.

“We need to work a spell together.” She forced the words out.

“You’re jesting.”

She shook her head. “I must have use of my magic. I must.”

“I’ve never performed a spell in my life.”

“You use the Dark One’s magic to get women into your bed.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Entirely different. I’m not a bloody sorcerer.”

“If you just try—”

“No,” he roared. He drew a breath, and dragged his hands through his hair. “I’m no one’s pawn, damn it. Not yours, or John’s, or Mr. Sodding Holliday’s. I have one agenda. One.”

“Your own,” she surmised.

His mouth firmed. “Splendid, Madam Ghost. You have been paying attention.”

“It doesn’t matter if you maroon yourself on an island. The floodwaters continue to rise, and eventually even the most distant isle will be deluged. You’ll drown.”

“I know how to swim.”

“No,” she countered, “you know how to float. Swimming entails effort, and that’s something you are determined to withhold. This selfishness will destroy more than yourself.”

“If this is your technique for persuasion,” he sneered, “it’s no wonder you’re on the losing end. Allies aren’t won through insults.”

“Forgive me. I hadn’t realized you were weak enough to need flattery.”

He spit out a vile curse and stalked toward the door.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

“Doesn’t matter if I tell you or not,” he said over his shoulder. “You’ll wind up there anyway.” Pulling open the door, he then stormed from the chamber.

The moment he left the room, it began to dim around her, as though a heavy veil draped over her eyes. Resentment and anger were her most vivid sensations. She refused to follow him. She’d rather dwell in this half-world of mist and shadow than spend another minute in his company.

He possessed half her magic. When he wasn’t in her presence, the world retreated. Without him, she was reduced to one of those pathetic specters who drifted aimlessly, frightening weak-minded mortals but capable of little else. Yet John’s appearance this night proved to her that the Dark One’s power waxed, and its poison had sunk deep within John’s veins. He belonged to the one he called the Devil—no matter how much the mortal believed he acted in his own best interest, the ultimate victor would be the Dark One.

John planned something, something that would likely engulf the nearby territories of the earthly realm. Yet John had no idea that the Dark One would assume control, destroying everything, devouring the world entirely. She knew this from her own bitter experience. With her lashed to Bram, however, she could do nothing to stop this destruction from happening again.

She needed Bram. And she hated him for it.

* * *

There truly wasn’t enough brandy in the world to solve this. Drink would not take any of it away.

But that didn’t stop him from trying.

In his bedchamber, Bram sprawled in a chair by the fire, drinking steadily from the decanter. He stared at the flames. They shifted and danced, forming shapes that appeared then vanished. Nothing he could hold.

As a child, Arthur had been the one to watch the fire, entranced by its constant change. He would try to tug Bram down beside him, tell him stories about what he saw within the flames. But Bram had always wrested away, impatient. He had wanted to run, to splash through the creek that ran through the northern corner of the estate, to laugh and stage battles with the boys in the village.

It didn’t matter how many times Father caught Bram sneaking back to the nursery, bruised and scraped, his clothes torn and dirty. Father whipped him to teach a sense of decorum, as would fit the child of a baron. None of the whippings made a bit of difference. Bram kept running through the brook, kept challenging village boys to fights.

“Obstinate barbarian,” Father had called him.

Bram remembered standing in the corridor, listening to Father berate the latest tutor for Bram’s execrable spelling and unmannerly penmanship.

“My lord,” the tutor—Mr. Filton? Mr. Finmere?—objected, “the boy simply refuses to be taught. He will not be guided by anyone, even if what one suggests would directly benefit the boy. It must be done at his decision, or not at all.”

Mr. Filton or Finmere had not lasted long. Soon after, Bram was sent away to school. Where he met Whit. They weren’t immediate friends. In truth, they used to beat each other bloody, until mutual antipathy toward another boy became the foundation of their friendship.

Where was Whit now? Still in London? Or had he and his Gypsy woman fled the city in the wake of Edmund’s death?

A furious, aching loneliness gathered in Bram’s chest. He drank more brandy. It did nothing to relieve the sensation.

He wasn’t truly alone. Livia, his own personal Fury, was close by. Not in his bedchamber at the moment, yet she remained near. She couldn’t leave him even if she wanted to. And she wanted to.

Her words echoed. Accusing him of being selfish, concerned more with his own pleasure than the doom of countless souls.

“I am selfish,” he said aloud. “Always have been.” It formed a comfortable cloak, his aggressive egoism, keeping others’ demands at a distance. He needn’t worry about anything but making himself happy.

He laughed into the darkness. Happiness was ever elusive. But he knew its shadowed caricature: depravity. And for years after his return from the Colonies, that had been enough. Or so he’d believed. The Hellraisers had been good company, never asking questions, as intent on the pursuit of pleasure as he.

He didn’t trust John. No reason why he should. And the hard, eager look in his eyes unsettled Bram deeply. Ambushers had the same eyes as they lay in wait. But what was John planning?

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. All of them—Livia, John, the Hellraisers, Mr. Holliday—all of them could go rot. He was beholden to no one. No one relied upon him, either.

Watching the fire as it consumed the wood, he outlined his own plan: Drink until he lost consciousness. When he woke, he would immerse himself in the realm of London’s voluptuaries, and there he’d remain, importunate ghost or no ghost. And if the world burned down, he’d watch it burn, letting the flames engulf his own flesh.

Bram awoke with a pounding head and a ghost in his bed. She hovered near the foot, her upper body emerging from the mattress. Her gaze was distant as she watched him.

Rubbing the heel of his hand in his eyes, he stared at her. “Not a dream, then.” His voice was a groggy rasp, as it always was upon rousing from sleep. He’d no love for the first hour after waking, a relationship made more complicated today by the ill-effects of too much brandy. And the fact that a Roman ghost was there to share the unpleasantness. “Damn.”

“The enthusiasm is mutual.” She glanced back toward the fireplace, where an upended chair and empty decanter gave evidence as to how he spent the rest of his night. “How much did you drink?”

“Not nearly enough.” He raised up on his elbows, the blankets sliding down to his abdomen, and he didn’t miss the way her gaze moved over his bare flesh. She looked at the mark of flame, but moved quickly on to the muscles of his chest, the ridges of his stomach. Her nostrils flared. This ghost was not unmoved by the sight of a nude man.

Neither, it seemed, was the man unmoved by her. The curtains were still drawn, the chamber swathed in shadow, and he could see how her tunic clung to the lush curves of her body. Full breasts, rounded hips. A sensualist’s body. Her beauty was both patrician and earthy. The kind of woman who’d command her slaves to bring scented oils, but use her own hands to rub them on her lover.