Page 15 of The Lies We Conjure
The Hegemony cousins watch—Auden tense as he cradles his grandmother, Winter batting at her mascara-bleeding eyes, lips trembling, in Evander’s firm grip. Yet none of them wear an ounce of surprise.
The plume of smoke shifts and swirls, until it forms a ghostly rendition of Ursula. The likeness hovers high above our heads, easily visible to everyone.
It’s… like nothing I’ve ever seen.
The apparition’s mouth opens, and Ursula’s voice fills the night, as clear and strong as just minutes before, when she was upright, powerful, and missing exactly nothing with those blue eyes.
“I, Ursula Elvire Muscatel Hegemony, High Sorcerer of the Four Lines, commit that this is my soul’s truth, for any and all living creatures to witness.”
Gooseflesh erupts on my forearms, peaked with specks of blood.
“My truth is this: I have been murdered.”
Something cold drops in my gut.
She—it, the voice—sounds so real. My brain tells me this is some sort of effect, maybe a type of audio/visual combination. But there’s no tinny feedback from hidden speakers, or misdirected sound. It’s from her. Clear as a bell and loud as before.
“The staff have been bodily quarantined. The Hegemony Manor Estate is locked down.”
I shoot a glance at that waiter, his white suit jacket stark on grass that seems less lush than before, suddenly brittle, sapped and faded under his weight.
“To the ears left hearing my truth, know this now: to leave the estate, you must complete my final requests set out for you within my last will and testament.”
The image pauses, its vibrant eyes seeming to take in our reaction as if it can truly see all of us staring back at it. Somehow satisfied, it continues, every word measured.
“If these requests are not completed by midnight on the third day, you will be locked upon the grounds of Hegemony Manor forever.”
My fingers begin to tremble. I try to stamp my numb feet, to will my flesh and blood still.
Nothing works.
Then right there in Auden’s lap, the bodyshrivels.
Ursula’s refined features suddenly wrinkle and spot, her lovely raven tresses graying and thinning to nearly nothing at all. She ages in rapid time—thirty, forty, fifty years added on to her corpse in a matter of moments—until she’s more of a husk than a human.
I blink once. Twice. Again.
The body is still there, skin and bones, as if every ounce of fluid fled with her life, her beauty, her soul.
It looks like magic.
It has to be a trick.
“I haven’t seen an honest-to-Merlin soul’s truth in twenty years,” Luna announces as if she’s just spotted a bald eagle in the trees. Then the old woman waves a hand at the Hegemony cousins. “Best move, children, the earth’s about to claim what’s left of her. Preservation is necessary when murder is involved—the soul will seal her up to avoid tampering.”
Auden, Winter, and Evander silently exchange looks, and, strangely, more than one set of eyes falls to me. To Wren.
What do they think we’ll do?
A low rumble rises in the air. First just a warning, then the lawnbeneath our feet begins to tremble worse than my panicking body. The smashed porcelain on the tabletop clatters, bubbly sloshes against crystal.
The sound sends the Hegemonys scattering, Ursula’s shriveled corpse in the limp embrace of newly dry grass blades as Winter’s shoulders heave into another sob. Auden attempts to tuck her under his wing, but she slinks away on unsteady feet, preferring to wind her own limbs about her quivering frame in comfort. Evander withdraws and then thinks better of it, leaning down and removing something from Ursula’s hand before backing away for a second time.
The earthly trembling becomes an all-out shake as a seam forms from Ursula’s well-appointed heels to the cottony ends of what’s left of her hair. Her body slumps inward, as if the seam will rupture into a true, gaping crack and devour her corpse in one earth-rattling gulp.
Instead, the opposite happens.
Flecks of soil as fine as sand rise from between the weak blades of grass, shimmering darkly in the golden glow of the downed chandeliers. They swarm together like starlings, dancing and swirling above Ursula’s body.
