He couldn’t care less that the first rule of magic was to do no harm. The curse of Red Death would blanket the village of Thornfield, affecting residents before they knew it was upon them. It would slip under doors and find its way through windows and hop from person to person; the more you loved the more you would spread it with a touch or a kiss. Breathe in and it had you, breathe out and you passed it on. Tom Lockland liked the irony of the curse. The closer you were to people, the more likely you were to become ill.
He opened The Book of the Raven to the page upon which the Red Death had been written in blood and ink and spoke the first words of the malediction.
The rain will rise and fall. It will undo you and all who you love. Their souls, their hearts, their livers, their lungs. Use with caution and with care, use only in the most dire circumstances.
There were field mice living in the house, but they had all fled. Nothing living dared to be near. The bats in the rafters were gone as well, out into the darkening net of the sky. Tom brought out a handful of grass poppets bound with black thread meant to represent the people in town. He took a knife and slit his skin so that he might sketch a map with his own blood on the floorboards. There was the church, there was the inn, and the library and the school, the market and the dress shop, and the teahouse. And there were the people, those who had dismissed him, defied him, ignored him. They would get what they deserved, each and every one. Mud and earth, belladonna, lords and ladies, straw and grass, and black thread and horse nettle, so poisonous a user had to wear gloves when handling the herb to make a tincture that would produce the hex. He tore his clothes, then threw the poppets into the fire. It should rage, it should bloom as if it were blood, causing the clouds above to fill with illness.
Kylie stood by in shock at all he was willing to do to hurt others. She had been enchanted, she had been a fool; it had happened to other young women, and would happen again. “You said you would help me break the curse!”
Tom had read the last page, and now understood how a curse could be broken. A life for a life. “Are you willing to die?” he said mockingly. Kylie lifted her chin, defiant, and he saw that she was. He lost his temper then. He’d never had patience for fools.
“When my curse is set, yours will be unbroken, and you won’t have to die, you fool. The people in the town fulfill the curse’s bargain. Let them take your place.”
He had revealed himself to her. There was nothing but darkness looming inside him.
“I’m not willing to have them take my place,” Kylie told him.
“But I am. That’s what matters.”
He’d guessed she might resist him, that was why he’d stowed a pair of handcuffs in his bag. He seized them now, shoving one of the bracelets over Kylie’s wrist, and clasping the second cuff around his own. Iron stole a witch’s powers, but these cuffs were made of brass, unbreakable even with the use of magic.
“Take them off,” Kylie demanded, as if she would be the one to command him.
If she kept her power from him, he had little choice but to take it from her. The ritual would last all night, into the next day. But as far as Tom was concerned, he had all the time in the world.
They sat there through the night, with Kylie thinking of every way in which she might flee.
“It won’t work,” Tom told her. The hours had passed in the gloomy dark. It was already morning, though no birds sang. “The time is here.”
The fire flamed higher as sparks rose into the air, red glowworms of light. The cuff was digging into Kylie’s wrist as Tom dragged her closer to the fire. He chanted the invocation to call forth the plague, and as he spoke the smoke turned from gray to red and rose up through the chimney to become clouds dispatched by the wind. The Red Death spun through the air, carried toward the village. Already, there was a net of mist that was turning to rain. Tom was intent on stoking the fire, and he took no notice of the shade on the staircase. The dark girl with pitch-black hair and gray eyes. People say a ghost cannot look at you, for if it does it will reexperience the pains of being mortal, but this one did, it looked directly at Kylie and held her gaze as it began to disappear. Kylie understood the shade’s meaning even though it wasn’t spoken aloud. It was then Kylie thrust her wrist forward, and Tom’s was pulled along, for their arms were now locked together as one. In an instant, their flesh was in the flames, the handcuffs burning red hot.