Free Magic Rising by Jennifer Cloud Page B

again. “Pretty thing like you can stop by anytime. You can even use the front door.”
    “I’ll remember that.”
    Deirdre walked out the door and got back in her car. She had to get to the main building and see what was there before Niam reappeared to work on his newest charity case.
    Niam Brogens, it had been a long time since she heard that name. So not everyone from Stone House had died. It was surprising considering the circumstances. There wasn’t a reason to go down memory lane with Niam. He couldn’t change. Collar or not, he was still another bastard from her past and one she didn’t want to deal with.
    Him helping the poor? That’s hard to believe.
    The Niam she knew spent his time picking up wretched souls from local bars. The pretty ones he would keep for a few days. The others had a different purpose.
    The old rumors Deirdre heard as a child gave Niam powers close to a god. All those powers he supposedly gained through the taking of souls. That was a prettier way of saying murdered during a painful ceremony.
    Everything happened in the basement. A large circle with designs had been etched in the floor. Protective symbols were on the outer edges to keep any bystanders safe from the evil within. Niam usually led the ceremony.
    Deirdre’s education had had a great deal of religion mingled throughout it. She’d learned of magic at an early age but only the art of death was taught at Stone House. It was considered the most powerful form of magic. Birth and creation were nothing compared to removing the soul from another. Murder was held in the highest regards. Life was simply a means to the power of death. A tortured soul brought more power than anything.
    Deirdre had been raised to be an assassin. It was a precarious position. If she became an excellent assassin, she would be respected. A little better and they might insist she perform ceremonies to gain more dark strength. If she were too good, Niam would want to extract her soul for her power. However, not being good enough was a death sentence involving days of pain in order to strengthen the soul to make it worth taking.
    Needless to say, the group didn’t worry about retirement plans.
    She parked to the side of Stone House, hoping that if Niam arrived early, he wouldn’t notice her presence. There was more left of the building than she’d expected. The front section was a crumbling pile of rubble but the sides had held. She sat there, staring at the structure, at the stones.
    Her entire life, she’d been taught to control her emotions but the last twenty-four hours had her stressed. Now, staring at the source of so much pain and death made her feel small. There had been a few moments of happiness there. Those shared with Scorpion, before she’d been killed. Everything that touched this house died, some days Deirdre wondered if her soul had perished along with everything else.
    Deirdre stepped from the vehicle, and smelled the air. It held the scent of pine, heavily laced with some local flora. Dirt ground under foot where cement used to lay and she couldn’t help noticing that the fountain was nothing more than a broken circle with the smallest bit of black stagnant water sitting inside.
    A smaller stone sat on the path. She kicked it away. It clattered somewhere to the side making her wish she’d not made any noise. She didn’t want to find any more people here or anything else.
    Although she’d been taught to never believe in ghosts, she feared them. She’d never seen a ghost but her lessons in the spirit and soul made the possibility very real. Even now she could sense the darkness embedded in the structure. It was a simple jump to imagine souls torn from their owners, lingering, in pain, wanting freedom.
    She walked to the front where stone columns used to reach up to the roof. The front had been flat flagstone, the sides, rocks from the river. Even in the heat of summer, the building stayed cool and in winter, everyone froze.
    Deirdre