Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2) by Aaron Schneider (best color ereader .TXT) 📗

understand that he was in control. It couldn’t know how desperately he needed its help, or else it would use its low cunning to extract something from him, and Milo was scared to admit to himself how much he would sacrifice.

“Very well,” came the petulant groan, and the specter imploded with a hiss of tightening strings.

A second later, the collapsed fold burst open, and Imrah’s human guise emerged from the waist up like a gory fresh blossom.

“Does this suit you better, master?’ the shade asked as it trailed fingers through the crimson fluid that coated its hallucinatory flesh.

“I’m growing bored.” Milo sighed and bent to pick up the lock in front of him. “Maybe we can talk when you are in a more serious mood.”

“NO!”

The shade’s cry had a desperate, piercing note that made Ambrose wince and shuffle a bit, but Milo only paused, his fingers hovering over the lock.

“If you want to have your time out of the box,” he began matter-of-factly as though speaking to a rather slow child, “you need to behave correctly while you are out.”

The shade’s gleaming eyes tried to burrow into Milo’s gaze but found no purchase in the glassy surface of his pale blue eyes. It may as well have tried gouging an iceberg with a teaspoon.

“I’m sorry,” the shade muttered softly. “It was worth a shot.”

Milo gave the wraith a long, sardonic stare until it flinched.

“No more warnings,” Milo told it, praying he wasn’t painting himself into a corner with all this tough talk. “Behave yourself, or I’ll have your remains sent to the bazaar in Ifreedahm to be ground up for essence. I imagine you would fetch a pretty penny.”

The shade drooped slightly, looking up with teary eyes, but upon seeing Milo’s face, the tears dried with incredible speed.

“As you wish.”

Milo sensed an undercurrent of sinister will behind the obedience, but for now, he was glad she wasn’t testing the limits he knew he wouldn’t keep to.

“Good,” Milo said and held out his hand behind him.

Stepping reluctantly forward, Ambrose opened the envelope and placed the knife in Milo’s hand before backing away once more.

“Have you brought me a gift?” the shade asked, leaning forward so her blood-soaked hair dripped phantasmal blood on the dungeon floor. “Or is this something even more precious than a gift for your old teacher?”

Milo remained unmoving, glaring until the specter of Imrah leaned back, after which he held the knife out for a visual inspection.

“This knife was used in the murder of two fey, and it clearly has magical properties,” Milo explained. “But it is not necromistry. I need to know as much as Imrah knew about what it might be.”

The shade’s gaze had remained fixed on Milo’s face, a wide smile spreading from human teeth to the overlapping fangs of the ghul.

“I see, I see,” it purred, still refusing to even look at the blade. “Dead fey? Not easy to do. Is that smoke-sucking strumpet one of the two? Is this a quest for vengeance? Are you on a quest to avenge your slain lover?”

The words rolled out of the shade’s throat with an unctuous timbre that roused Milo’s anger, and when his command came, it seared the wraith-like flame.

LOOK

REMEMBER

There was an instant of resistance, but the shade’s pseudo-will snapped beneath the driving piston of Milo’s command. Its head twisted around, and its eyes wrenched wide open to look at the knife. Milo could feel something shifting within the slippery phantom as deeper recesses of echoes and their fractured memories bubbled up to the surface like the last gasps of a drowning man. Milo held the shade through will alone until he felt its essence heavy with congealing memories.

“Enough!” it cried. “I remember! I remember! Please! Enough!”

Milo released his command and watched as the shade clutched its skull, swelling like a balloon until the locks of bloody hair were stretched over a grotesque bulb.

“What did she know?” Milo asked, channeling Lokkemand’s utter and certain command.

The shade’s neck bowed under its immense, wobbling head, struggling to raise a hateful glare to meet Milo’s gaze. Its fingers trembled over bulging veins on its distended skull as though trying to come to grips with what had happened to, its bitter stare never leaving Milo’s unflinching gaze.

“The blade is curzed,” the specter hissed through a scraping thicket of fangs. “It’z been touched by a dark hex.”

Milo didn’t allow his determined expression to so much as flinch as he slid a glance to the blade and back to the shade.

“Curse? Hex?” Milo mused. “I haven’t read about anything like that in the texts.”

“Becauze it is not ghul magic,” Imrah’s echo snarled, the very effort of speaking the memories seeming to be accomplished only with significant discomfort.

Milo couldn’t keep the eagerness from his voice as he leaned forward.

“What sort of magic is it?”

“Err! Wretch…agh! Wretched fey witchery! Ahhh! It hurtz!” the shade gasped, squeezing its skull until the flesh was dimpled and he could see tiny rivulets of glittering ectoplasm leaking between its fingers.

Milo frowned at the shade’s behavior, sensing an undercurrent of movement, like a loose thread being jerked fiercely. Could some of the memories be potent enough, dangerous enough, that clear remembrance put the shade in danger of losing cohesion?

Milo wasn’t sure, but that uncertainty made him wary of pushing much further.

He knew it was fey magic, a hex, or a curse, and that would mean he would need someone to tell him about their magics. It seemed a cruel irony that the very one he was saving was the very one he could trust to give him advice on how to handle this curse, but then again, Milo remembered he was Russian, and expatriate or not, cruel irony was par for the course.

“How do we undo the knife’s curse?” he pressed, his words coming out fast as he watched the shade digging fingers deeper into the pulsing skull, gouging past the first knuckle.

“Kn-knife izn’t, ugh, c-curzed,” it moaned. “The hex is the owner’z. Knife iz hiz, zo-erkh! Zo