Doors To The Dead, Rae Else [classic books for 13 year olds .txt] 📗

here’s someone else as into the otherworldly as I am. What are the chances?

His sluagh shrank away as he scorned her self-image.

Otherworldly my arse.

She liked to think that she sensed what was here. She had this idea that she could feel the ghost. She’d wandered through the house earlier and swore that she had connected with it, that the deafening silence meant something.

But if Von had possessed even a shred of para abilities Theo would have sensed it.

She liked the idea of it, that was all. She was a beautiful idea but otherwise … empty.

Tragic.

What did it matter to him though? He was here for one woman alone. Donna. His dalliance tonight would be with the dead.

Nevertheless, Theo couldn’t resist rubbing Antony’s nose in his powerlessness.

Before he went inside, Theo said, ‘Goodnight, Von Otherworld.’ His smile was just the right mixture of charming and wicked, to be sure to kindle a dozen fantasies.

On his feet, he asked, ‘Richie Rich would you show me a spare room where I can watch for Donna?’

They all laughed as they cottoned onto what he’d nicknamed the ghost. Names were important though. It was why Theo nicknamed everyone the way he did. There was power in naming. You could strip away or add to someone’s identity by casting a name upon them. The donna con il terzo occhi was Donna because that’s all she was. A donna. A woman. One he’d come to claim.

When the night was through, he’d have her. The task could surely be accomplished in the small hours.

After all, even musicians had to sleep.

Theo chose one of the bedrooms on the ground floor. It had a door out to the garden, the side furthest away from the band. The strum of guitars still drifted through the open door and the scent of weed was pungent on the night air. Clearly, they were continuing their journey of self-discovery and altered states of consciousness into the small hours. Before Richie had left, he’d rustled a bag at him and offered him a hit before contacting the dead.

What was beyond Richie’s limited capacity to understand was that the dead were Theo’s hit. His work, his calling, his all.

Theo closed the door to the garden and stood before it. His pale green eyes stared out like a cat’s as if penetrating the night. Yet it was his sluagh that extended his line of sight. He centred himself within, ensuring that his focus didn’t stray.

Ready and waiting.

He closed his eyes. A second skin of shadows moved through the darkness, creeping over the sandstone house. The wooden shutters, shielding the interior from the elements, couldn't keep out the sluagh. They crawled their way through the deep-set windows, sinking into the sandstone, wide floorboards, and grey walls. They flitted through the beams within the terracotta roof like roosting birds. Pervading the draughty building, the smoky forms rooted through the room, their soulfire hunting for the spark that Theo sought.

Everything within the villa was explored by the wandering horde: the worn chairs, the armoire, the dining table and chairs, and the sturdy beds. The sluagh pervaded all. Every practical item and decorative detail was marked by a smoky tendril as if the horde had come to set up home.

The strum of guitars vibrated. The darkness saturating the warm earthy tones quavered. Some of the sluagh slipped back into the vault within Theo.

He opened his eyes and blinked at the grasses, fluttering in the night as if creatures scurried through them.

The sluagh still crawling around the house, told him that the wind had picked up. Otherwise, nothing stirred. No vibration of power sounded at all. Everything his sluagh touched rang hollow. Frustration rippled through him. If Donna was that powerful, if she had para abilities, he’d expected to pick up her soul’s signature quickly.

He’d got distracted that was all.

Donna is here.

She must have concealed herself within something. She must have burrowed deep to be so well hidden. The fact that she was capable of such cunning proclaimed a wealth of power. Hunger sparked through him.

Look deeper.

He cast his sluagh out once more, so that they swept down the dilapidated building, away from the villa itself. His sluagh laced the grounds, sinking into the gnarled vines, the trees and grasses like a blight. Their soulfire pervaded the sandy clay soil, their heat emanating through it like molten lava. Theo lost himself in their curling tendrils until…

The sickly sweet smell of marijuana impinged on his concentration. His sluagh tumbled back towards him as he lapsed again.

Theo massaged his forehead.

What shit luck to have to share with a bunch of pot-smoking wannabes.

If only he’d brought a vamp. He could have glamoured them and sent them packing.

Judging from the ache in his feet, he’d been in this stance for at least an hour. He was surprised that the net of his sluagh, cast so widely and dredging so deeply, had come up empty. A soul was anchored to where they lived or died. She must be here. Unless Donna was so powerful that her soul could wander a much greater distance than ordinary sluagh.

It was a possibility, he supposed. That, or she was remarkably good at hiding. Either way, he needed something to draw her back to the house and the land. Something to coax her out.

Deciding on a different tack, Theo slipped out of the door. He wandered away from the house. There was one sure way to draw a lingering spirit out of the woodwork. Contradictorily, getting a spirit’s full attention required a tangible, sensory offering. It would give him the chance to clear his head too. Hopefully when he returned the garden would be clear of pests.

Once he’d reached the pond, Theo scraped back his sandy hair and tied it back. He took to the water again, opening the Between. This time he exited in the Dolomites in Northern Italy. The waters of the mountain lake were stunningly blue in the day, but night currently painted them in monochrome. He’d