Kelley Armstrong - Haunted

And so it was done.

The Nix returned to Paris, where she knew Marie-Madeline would be swiftly apprehended. Taking a quiet room in an inn, she lay down on the bed, closed her eyes, and recited the incantation for ending the possession. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes and lifted her hand. Still human.

With a grunt, she closed her eyes and repeated the spell. Nothing happened. She snarled, gathered her spirit form into a ball, and flung herself upward, saying the words again, voice rising, filling with fury as her soul stayed lashed to this human form. For two hours, she battered herself against the flesh walls of her prison.

Then she began to scream.

Nicolette peered out across the crowd amassed in the courtyard, praying she'd see no one she recognized. If her mother found out she was here-she shuddered, feeling the sting of her mother's tongue. Death is not a spectacle, she'd say. Nicolette should know that better than anyone. Yet she wasn't here to see the Marquise de Brinvilliers die… not really. It was the spectacle surrounding the spectacle that drew her, the chance to be part of something that would be the talk of Paris for years.

A young man pushed through the crowd, hawking pamphlets describing the torture of the Marquise. When he saw Nicolette, he grinned as his eyes traveled over her.

"A pamphlet, my lady," he said, thrusting one at her. "With my compliments."

Nicolette glanced down at the paper he held out. Across the front was a crudely drawn sketch of a naked woman, her body arching as if to a lover, limbs bound to the table, a funnel stuffed into her mouth, face contorted with agony. Nicolette shuddered and looked away. To her left, an old woman cackled. The pamphleteer pressed closer to her, mouth opening, but a man cut him short, and sent him off with a few gruff words.

"You should not be out here, my lady," the man rumbled near her ear when the pamphleteer was gone. "This is no place for you."

No, her place was up in the balconies, where she could watch with an unobstructed view, dining on cakes and wine. Nicolette had tried to disguise herself, to blend in with the common folk, but they always knew.

She was about to move on, when the prison doors opened. A small entourage emerged. At its center was a tiny woman, no more than five feet tall, her dirty face still showing signs of the beauty she must have possessed. Dressed in a plain shift and barefooted, she stumbled forward, tripping and straining at the ropes that bound her, one around her hands, one around her waist, and a third around her neck.

As the guard yanked the Marquise back, her head rose and, for the first time, she saw the crowd. Her lips curled, face contorting in a snarl so awful that the old woman beside Nicolette fell back, hands clawing for her rosary. As the Marquise snarled, her face seemed to ripple, as if her very spirit was trying to break free. Nicolette had seen ghosts before, had been seeing them since she was a child-as did her mother and great-uncle. Yet, when the Marquise's spirit showed itself, everyone around her fell back with a collective gasp.

Nicolette snuck a glance around. They'd seen it, too?

The guard prodded the Marquise into a tumbril. No horse-drawn gilt carriage for this voyage. Her conveyance was a dirty cart, barely big enough to hold her, filthy straw lining the bottom. She had to crouch in the cart like an animal, snarling and cursing as the cart disappeared.

Around Nicolette, the crowd began to move, heading for the Notre Dame Cathedral. She hesitated, quite certain she didn't want to see the final part of the Marquise's journey, but the mob buoyed her along and, after a few weak struggles, she surrendered.

They'd erected the platform before Notre Dame. Nicolette watched as they dragged the Marquise up the steps, forced her down, and began cutting her long hair.

Nicolette had a better vantage point than she liked, but the crowd behind her was so thick she had no chance of escaping. As she tried to divert her attention from the platform, a man stepped from the crowd. A foreigner, with olive skin and dark wavy hair. That alone might have been enough to grab her attention, but what held it was his beauty. Nicolette, who considered herself above such things, found herself staring like a convent schoolgirl.

He looked like a soldier-not his clothing, which was everyday, but his bearing. A man who commanded attention… yet not one eye turned his way. To Nicolette, that could only mean one thing. He was a ghost.

The ghost climbed the platform. At the top, he stopped and stood at attention as the guard continued to hack at the Marquise's hair. Clearly the ghost wanted a front-row seat. Had he been one of the Marquise's victims?

Finally, as the executioner withdrew his saber from the folds of his robe, the ghost held out his hands, palms up. An odd gesture, as if checking for rain. His lips moved. Something shimmered in his hands, then took form. A sword. A huge, glowing sword. As he slid his hand down to the hilt, Nicolette realized what he was, and dropped to her knees, crossing herself.

As dense as the crowd was, the angel noticed her gesture, his eyes meeting hers. In that moment, every misdeed she'd ever committed flashed through her head, and her gut went cold, certain she was being judged… and found wanting. But the angel's lips curved in the barest smile, and he tipped his head, as casual as a passing neighbor. Then his gaze returned to the Marquise, and his expression hardened.

The executioner's saber sliced down. A sigh rose from the crowd as the Marquise's head thumped onto the platform. Nicolette didn't see it fall. Instead, she stared, transfixed, as a yellow fog rose from the Marquise's body. The fog twisted and grew dense, taking on the form of a young woman.

The angel lifted his sword, and his voice rang out, as clear and melodious as the bells of Notre Dame. "Marie-Madeline d'Aubrey de Brinvilliers, for your crimes, you have been judged."

As he swung that huge sword, the spirit flowing from the Marquise's body threw back its head and laughed.

"I am not the Marquise, fool," it spat.

The angel's brows knitted in a look of confusion as human as the nod he'd given Nicolette. But the sword was already in flight, cleaving toward the ghost.

The spirit's lips twisted. "You have no jurisdiction over-"

As the sword struck the spirit, it let out a scream that made Nicolette double over, hands to her ears. All around her, people jostled and pushed, trying to get a closer look at the Marquises body as they set it afire, oblivious to the screams.

Nicolette raised her head. There, on the platform, stood the angel, with the spirit skewered on his sword. The thing twisted and shrieked and cursed, but the angel only smiled. Then they were gone.

"COME ON," SAVANNAH WHISPERED, TUGGING THE young man's hand.

She climbed a wooden fence into the backyard of a narrow two-story house.

"Watch out for the roses," she said as his feet threatened to land in the border. "We gotta come this way or the old bugger next door will bitch about me having friends over when no one's home."

"Yeah," the boy said. "I get shit from my folks about that, too."

"Oh, Paige and Lucas don't care, as long as I clean up and don't have any monster parties. Well, they might care if they found out I was bringing a guy over. But if that old man sees me having friends over? He starts telling people that Paige and Lucas are crappy guardians, shit like that. Makes me want to-" She swallowed her next words and shrugged. "Tell him off or something."

I was less than a half-dozen paces behind, but they never turned around, never even peered over their shoulders. Sometimes that really pisses me off. Sure, all teenagers ignore their mothers. And, sure, Savannah had a good excuse, since I'd been dead for three years. Still, you'd think we'd have a deeper connection, that she'd somehow hear me, if only as a voice in her head that said "Don't listen to that girl" or "That boy's not worth the trouble." Never happened, though. In life, I'd been one of the most powerful women in the supernatural world, an Aspicio half-demon and witch master of the black arts. Now I was a third-rate ghost who couldn't even contact her own daughter. My afterlife sucked.