Page 40 of The Heartless One
And when the old woman finally stopped laughing, running her finger underneath her eye to catch the tears, she said, “Now that is a woman I’lltie myself to. I told myself when I was very young that I would do whatever it took to get what I wanted out of life. I killed two husbands, and look at how far that’s gotten me. If I’d decided to marry you, I might have been better off.”
Jessamine arched a brow and nodded. “Might have been. It took death for me to learn how to be this ruthless, however.”
“I have no interest in dying, not even if your man can raise me back.” Agnes gestured with her hand, and her grandson helped her stand out of her rocker. It took a few moments, but together, they finally put her up on her feet so she could waddle in front of Jessamine. “You’ve won me over, girl. What does it take to be part of this coven?”
She didn’t have the faintest idea, really. Elric was the one who decided who stayed and who was sent packing. Thankfully, the god answered for her.
“A sacrifice,” Elric replied. “She might be the gravesinger, but it is still my coven.”
“Ah, a sacrifice. Now, is that in the form of a pig?”
He nodded his head toward Elissa. “She sacrificed a cow.”
“How gruesome.”
Elissa nodded vehemently from where she sat. “It was not something I would repeat. The blood waseverywhere. I had to throw the clothes away. Who knew there was so much blood in a cow?”
Well… Jessamine knew. She made a face when Sybil had to cover her mouth behind all of them. But at least she managed to not let out the giggle that was being contained behind that hand. If she had, then the entirety of the room might have broken out of this solemn spell.
Taking a deep breath, Jessamine glanced up at Elric. “Does it have to be an animal?”
“No. Sacrifices are the meaning behind whatever someone offers. Usually it is enough to give something up.” He knew her too well at this point, though. Because his lips twisted in a slight smile before asking, “What do you have in mind, gravesinger?”
She shrugged. “Fortuna gave us an opportunity to see her. The ball is an actual event, I assume.”
“Fortuna’s ball has been months in the planning. How do you know about it?” Agnes asked.
“We peeked inside her bedroom and found the flyer. I have a feeling she wants me to be there.” Jessamine tilted her head to the side, watching the old woman’s features. “I think a sacrifice in the form of an invitation to that event might suffice.”
“If she wants you there, then it’s a trap.” Agnes looked a little unsettled that Jessamine was even asking. “But I can prepare you the best I can for it. And I can get you an invitation if that’s what it will take.”
“Two invitations.” Jessamine gestured to Elric behind her. “A gravesinger goes nowhere without her god, after all.”
They stayed with Agnes for the night to avoid suspicion. Even the elderly woman made it very clear that they would not be leaving, and certainly not first thing in the morning. She still needed to figure out how to get them the invitations, not to mention that she didn’t want anyone to talk. If people were coming to visit her, and if her grandson, of all people, had let them in, then they would not stay for barely an hour and then leave.
Decorum. All the flashing pageantry of what it was to be a noble. He’d forgotten what it was like to uphold standards.
There was so much gossip here, it seemed. The Pleasure District was certainly run like the city he remembered. Even in two hundred years, they might have changed what they sold, but the people were still the same.
Elric had been given his own room, and when he’d started toward Jessamine’s, the old woman had been right there to beat him back with that cane of hers. “If anyone overhears I allowed an unwed couple to be in the same room overnight, I’ll never hear the end of it. Get back, young man!”
He might have ignored her if she hadn’t called him a young man.
When was the last time anyone had called him young? Perhaps one of his siblings back when they were alive. They’d all considered him to be younger than the rest of them, but he was still an ancient compared to everyone in this household.
So he’d listened to her request and returned to his bedroom full of priceless artifacts and its comfortable bed before he decided he was rather bored.
Elric didn’t like being in a bed by himself. He’d been asleep for hundreds of years, put there by witches just like the coven that was being built. Too many dark memories tried to sink their claws into him, and he didn’t have the patience for them. Instead, he wandered the halls of this sleeping household to see what secrets Agnes had hidden.
Peeking around a corner, he used some of his power to turn into shadows. At least no one would find him if they got up to get a glass of water. But as he passed by the room where all the women were sleeping, he discovered runes there that locked the door to men.
“Sneaky, sneaky,” he muttered, shaking his head at Agnes’s ingenuity. The woman wasn’t a witch yet, but she certainly behaved like one.
He found the locking mechanism quickly enough. It was a spelled stone placed outside of the door. Bending, he picked it up and tossed it into the air, catching it lightly as the runes etched on the rock flashed with the movement.
A pretty spell. An easy one, too. But he could feel that it was old and long-lasting.
Curiosity burned in his chest. He wanted to know how Agnes, a noblewoman of all people, had access to magical objects. This woman had eyes on her the entirety of her life, and yet somehow had never been jailed for accessing such objects. He could feel the magic, and it was faintly familiar, as though he recognized the signature from a long time ago—and it was one that rang a bell of warning in the back of his mind. Perhaps it was time he ask Agnes herself, and understand where all the magic in her home came from.
