Perhaps she could shift the anchors of the pentagram and nullify the spell that way? Arabella examined the floor, but the lines had been scored into the stone and inlaid with gold. The pentagram was made to be permanent.
Whatever happened to using plain old chalk? Not that it would’ve helped her much. She couldn’t affect the material world. Scuffing chalk lines was outside her scope.
Arabella paced her prison, hoping the exercise would either expose some weakness in the wards or dislodge a brilliant plan of escape from her stumped brain.
Neither occurred, but the activity did calm her down. Her fast, shallow breaths subsided—she wouldn’t think about the fact that she was not actually respiring—and rationality asserted itself.
This isn’t like those other times. It isn’t pitch dark and close. I’m not restrained and I can still see.
Arabella circled her current domain a few more times, then gave up her attempts to secure her freedom. The sight of the ground gleaming through her translucent feet made her feel ill.
She flopped onto the floor and drew her knees up to her chest. With a kind of distant surprise, she noted her clothing had changed. Instead of the shrine cloak and white robes, she wore her new high-necked walking dress of sea green with four inches of silver embroidery at the hem.
Arabella could take no pleasure from her pretty clothing. She was dead and stuck in some necromancer’s workroom.
And to think that only yesterday her biggest concern had been that her generous aunt and uncle had paid far too much for the ball gown she was to wear at Friday’s assembly!
Arabella stared out at the rest of the chamber she could not access. Judging from the thick, leaded windows set at the top of the walls, it was partially underground. The sunlight that flowed in was surprisingly warm and golden. She suspected that some sorcery was involved; a cellar workroom should not be so well-illuminated.
The rest of the space did not match Arabella’s preconceptions, either. The benches were piled with books and mathematical instruments instead of skulls, black candles, and jars of frogs’ toes and newts’ eyes. On the other side of the pentagram was a cleared space, with a practice dummy standing against one wall. Weapons lay in brackets affixed to the stone walls around it: swords of all sizes, a spear, a pike. The shelving underneath held padded armor.
Apparently Lord St. Ash was more into swordplay than potion making.
Arabella scowled as she thought of the young nobleman. He had known from the start, of course. It wasn’t good manners or any interest in her well-being that had caused him to help her.
No, it was his job.
He worked in the Phantasm Bureau of the Foreign Office. Arabella was aware that one of the Bureau’s duties was banishing spirits who overstayed their welcome in the mortal world.
Spirits like her.
He could’ve sent her straight to the Shadow Lands. Arabella shivered at the thought. The Shadow Lands lurked between this world and the afterlife, a place spoken of in whispers, where lost souls and demons and who knew what else wandered.
The pentagram was preferable. Perhaps her captor had a heart after all. A small one.
Arabella tried to recall all she had ever heard of Viscount St. Ash. Surprisingly for a peer’s son, it wasn’t much. The other young ladies never brought up his name when discussing prospective husbands. Aunt Cecilia had glossed over him when doing the same. Her cousin Harry had dropped more detail in passing conversation, but Arabella hadn’t paid much attention. She had never expected to have much to do with an earl’s heir, besides the occasional pre-season dance when Lumen was thin of company. She belonged to less exalted circles.
Arabella wrinkled her nose as she turned over what little she knew of the Shields. They were a powerful magical family headed by the Earl of Whitecross. The Shields were traditionally ferromentalists, magical sword masters, but the man who had imprisoned her in this pentagram had gone in a different direction altogether.
She had heard it whispered that he walked the Shadow Lands and fought against its denizens.
What was it they called him?
The Shade Hunter.
And she’d had the bad luck to encounter him, of all people, this morning. Arabella thought of how delighted and grateful she’d been, and winced. Worst of all, she’d chattered away, never suspecting he was hatching schemes to trap her in a pentagram for his sinister purposes.
Gloomy thoughts such as these occupied Arabella as the hours whiled away. The light changed, shifting across the floor, until it was gone. Twilight filled the chamber, soft and heavy and grey.
Arabella tried to hold on to her outrage, but by that time she was resigned to her captivity. And heartily bored.
So it was with relief that she heard sounds from upstairs—the slam of a door, the scuff of feet. He was back!
Arabella waited, but no one appeared at the cellar door. Instead, noises continued to emanate from upstairs. Several thuds vibrated through the ceiling. Was he dropping books or boots?
Annoyance rekindled inside Arabella. By the saints, she may be a ghost, but she was still a gentlewoman! How dare the unmannerly boor keep her waiting!
Arabella leapt to her feet and shouted, “Help! I’m down here! Help!”
Since she had no throat to feel parched, Arabella thought with malicious glee that she could keep yelling all night. If he doesn’t come soon, I promise that I will haunt him.
The door at the top of the stairs crashed open, then slammed shut. The cellar steps creaked as Lord St. Ash ran down them. Rune lights bloomed yellow in the glass-sided lanterns set into the wall ahead of him.
Arabella put her hands on her hips as His Lordship’s stockinged feet came into view. The rest of him followed, until a tall, lean man with tousled blond hair and wary grey eyes
