by E. E. Holmes
“Jess? What’s going on? Are you okay?” she murmured, her words still slurred and muddied with sleep.
“No, nothing is okay,” I cried, and I cursed loudly as my fingers clumsily refused to press the right numbers to unlock the screen. “Come ON!”
“Jess, you’re scaring me!” Hannah said, reaching over to turn on her own light. “Tell me what’s happening!”
“It’s Annabelle!” I said, my voice rising hysterically. “I don’t . . . I can’t remember her number.”
“It’s in your contacts, just type in her name,” Hannah said in a slow, calm voice, almost a monotone—her attempt to relax some sense into me. “What is it, Jess? What about Annabelle?”
“The picture! Just look at the picture,” I cried, gesticulating wildly at the image now hovering like a specter next to my bed. It took three times to type Annabelle’s name correctly with my shaking fingers, and when I stared down at it—completed, meaningful—I wanted to fling the phone away from me. If I called her . . . if she didn’t answer . . .
I heard Hannah’s quiet gasp over my shoulder as she examined the sketch, but I didn’t acknowledge her. I hit send and waited for the call to connect, my teeth chattering so that I could barely hear the crackling ringing sound.
Please, please, please let her answer. Please. The thought felt less a prayer and more a wild, aimless thing flapping off into the empty air. A prayer had a destination, but these words felt desperately untethered from any comfort that might anchor them—or me—against my fear.
“Hello?”
Had I ever heard anything so wonderful as that voice, shot through with a thread of annoyance?
“Annabelle?” I breathed a sigh that was half a sob. “Is that you? Are you okay?”
“Jessica? Yes, of course it’s me. It’s my phone, isn’t it? Who else would be answering?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in bed, like most normal people at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night,” she sighed.
“And you weren’t trying to . . . get in touch with me, at all?” I asked, looking back over at the drawing.
“Get in touch with you? No, of course not! I was reading a book and starting to nod off to sleep. You are the one who called me, remember?”
“Right, yeah,” I replied, trying to rein in my breathing.
“I know there’s a big time difference, but it’s late for a phone call, don’t you think?” she snapped.
“It’s . . . yeah, sorry about that,” I said.
“Hang on. That means it must be . . .” I could almost hear her calculating the time difference, hear as her annoyance morphed into concern, “. . . four in the morning over there! What’s wrong? Why are you calling me in the middle of the night to ask if I’m okay?”
I cast wildly around for an excuse, realizing that I hadn’t for a moment considered what I would say to Annabelle if she answered the phone, because I was so convinced that she wouldn’t. “I . . . I’m so sorry. I had this awful dream,” I stammered.
“A dream? About what?” Annabelle asked urgently, all trace of annoyance gone. As a sensitive and a psychic medium, Annabelle didn’t underestimate the potential significance of dreams.
I hesitated, then blurted out. “Pierce. It was a nightmare about Pierce. And I woke up so upset. Sorry, I was still half asleep when I dialed the phone.”
“Oh, Jess.” Annabelle sighed, and I was relieved to hear that the fear had gone from her tone. “I understand. I still dream about David, too, every now and then. Do you need to talk?”
“I . . . no, it’s okay. I’ll be fine. Sorry I bothered you,” I muttered. “I . . . how are you? Is everything okay with you?”
“Same old, same old,” Annabelle said. “Shop is doing well. It’s not such a madhouse anymore, but holiday sales are good. The boys miss you,” she added, and I knew she was talking about Pierce’s old ghost-hunting team; Iggy, Oscar, and Dan. “They keep asking when we’ll be off on our next adventure.”
I tried to smile, hoping she might hear it in my voice. “Tell them I miss them, too, and that I’m working on our next gig. I’ll send information along when I’ve got something.”
“I’ll let them know,” Annabelle said. “And you’re sure you’re all right?”
“Yes. Honestly, it’s nothing. I was disoriented from the dream. Sorry I bothered you.”
“Not a bother. Glad to hear from you. Be sure to stop in and let me know when you’re home from Fairhaven.”
“I will,” I agreed. “I . . . take care of yourself, Annabelle.”
“I always do,” she said, and she hung up.
I sat staring at the phone, where Annabelle’s name still glowed up at me from the screen, the length of the call flashing beneath it. I stared and stared at it until the screen went black.
“Jess?”
I jumped, having all but forgotten that Hannah was even in the room with me. Milo was sitting cross-legged beside her; apparently, she had summoned him during my phone call.
“It’s okay. She’s okay,” I said, dropping the phone back onto the desk and my head into my hands. I could feel a bad headache coming.
“Well, if she’s all right, then what’s happening?” Milo asked.
I shook my head, eyes shut tight, warding off the moment when I would have to look at the sketch again. “I don’t know. I woke up from a psychic drawing episode to find that hanging next to me. I panicked. I thought . . .”
I lifted my head to look at them. Both Hannah and Milo were staring at the sketch in fascinated horror.
“You thought Annabelle was dead,” Milo said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“Yeah.”
Hannah was so close to the image now that her nose was barely an inch from the paper. “It’s definitely her. There’s no mistaking it, Jess, your likenesses are too good.”
“I know.”
“So then, why . . .”
“I don’t know!” I shouted, and instantly regretted it. The pounding in my head increased tenfold at the sound of my own frightened voice. “This isn’t how the psychic drawings are supposed to work! A spirit wants to communicate, it reaches out, and I produce an image. Usually it helps me identify who the spirit is, or gives me an idea of what’s kept him from Crossing. But this . . .” I gestured helplessly at the picture again.
“That’s not what this is,” Milo said quietly. “This is . . . different.”
“Yeah. And it scares the shit out of me,” I said. I stood up and paced around the room, my mind racing, my heart refusing to slow its pounding. “Something is happening with my gift. It’s changing. This isn’t a spirit drawing. This is something else. I mean, just look at it. Look at that drawing and tell me what your first thought is when you look at it.”
Milo floated so close to the sketch that his nose nearly brushed against it. “I would think that Annabelle was dead,” he blurted out, as though saying the words quickly would make them less awful to think about. “And I would assume that her spirit was reaching out to me for help.”
I nodded frantically. “Exactly. There’s no other way to interpret that sketch, is there? That is a body and a spirit, separated from each other.”
“And . . . did you notice . . . here, by her hand,” Milo whispered.
Hannah and I both joined him on the bed and examined the spot where he was pointing.
“Is that . . . a knife?” Hannah murmured.
I hadn’t noticed it before, but it was unmistakably a knife lying on the ground next to Annabelle’s limp hand.
We all sat for a few loaded silent moments, letting the horror of it seep into us, just as the life seemed to have seeped out of the Annabelle on the ground.
“So,” I said, looking away from the image and finding my voice again, “I call Annabelle in a panic, and she’s fine. She’s not dead. She’s not hurt. She sounds as though absolutely nothing out of the ordinary has happened to her. ‘Same old, same old’ she tells me. What am I supposed to think?”
>
“Could she be lying to you? Do you think something has happened, and she doesn’t want to tell you about it?” Milo suggested, though without much conviction.
“No, I really don’t think so. Annabelle puts a lot of stock in dreams and visions and the importance of symbols and signs. Everything has meaning to her, everything is worthy of interpretation. If I called her out of the blue, asking if something was wrong with her, and something terrible really had just happened, I don’t think she would ignore that coincidence.”
“Could another spirit be contacting you about Annabelle? Could another spirit be trying to warn you about something?” Hannah asked.
“About something that hasn’t happened yet?” I shook my head. “That’s never happened to me before. I’ve never had a visit from a spirit without getting a sense of who the spirit was. If this was someone other than Annabelle, he swooped in, planted this image, and swooped out again without leaving a single trace of his presence. That just seems so unlikely.”
“You need to bring this to Fiona, too. She needs to see this,” Hannah said finally.
“Yeah, I’ll bring it to her first thing tomorrow, but . . . why is this happening? I mean, I’ve been a Muse for years, and it’s always worked the same way. Why is it changing now?”
Hannah and Milo stared back at me, their faces empty of answers, only reflecting my own questions back to me.
§
I sprinted up to Fiona’s tower first thing in the morning, trying to catch her before the Airechtas session that day, but she did not answer the door. Maybe it’s for the best, I told myself. No need for both of us to be impossibly distracted when we were supposed to be paying attention and voting on critical policy matters. Between my preoccupation with Annabelle and my lack of sleep, I knew I’d be lucky to absorb a single word that was uttered all day.
I did manage to catch Finn before breakfast and tell him, briefly, about the drawing. He agreed that it was best to show it to Fiona, but did not share my sense of panic.
“Spirit drawings are cryptic, Jess,” he said to me in his frustratingly logical tone. “You can’t jump to conclusions about what they mean or how they might be interpreted. Like you said, Annabelle is fine. I’m sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for it.”
I had neither the time, nor the inclination to argue with him, but my gut was telling me that reasonable explanations were quickly turning into a thing of the past.
Finally, after two three-hour sessions and a lunch break, during which I couldn’t even look at food, Celeste’s gavel hit the podium, jolting me out of my stupor and marking the end of the day’s meetings. I jumped to my feet and fought against the tide of Durupinen heading for the back doors.
“Fiona!” I called. “Fiona, wait up!”
Fiona, who had been gathering up her things and preparing to leave the Council benches, paused and watched me elbow my way toward her. Before I could put a foot onto the platform, though, I was intercepted.
“Jess, I’m glad I caught you,” Celeste said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve been asked to give you a message.”
“Message?” I said blankly. I waved to Fiona to wait for me. “What kind of message?”
“A message from your . . . from Carrick,” Celeste said awkwardly.
I looked at her properly, focused for the first time since I’d entered the room. “Oh. I . . . what is it?”
“He says that he would like to speak with you, but that he cannot leave Finvarra anymore. She is . . . she doesn’t have a lot of time left.”
I blinked. “I . . . when you say, ‘not a lot of time’ . . .”
Celeste swallowed hard. “Mrs. Mistlemoore is not sure. A few days. Perhaps less. It all depends on whether Finvarra decides to keep fighting or chooses to let go.”
“Oh,” I said again. I tried to collect my thoughts, to sift through them to find something to say. “Is . . . is he up in her tower?”
Celeste nodded. “He says he understands if you do not want to come, but . . . but that he would like you to.”
My mouth was dry. I had no idea how to respond to the request, so I cast around for something else to say. “How . . . how would we all know if she . . . will there be a meeting? Or an announcement?”
“The castle bells will toll thirteen,” Celeste said. “And black banners of mourning will be hung from her tower windows.”
“I, uh . . . okay. Thank you, Celeste. I’ll . . . I’ll let Hannah know about what Carrick requested,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper.
Celeste squeezed my shoulder. Her face was full of a pity I couldn’t stand to see there. Luckily, she didn’t force me to give any further answer, but turned and headed back to the podium to collect her things.
“Oy! Jess!”
I looked up. Fiona was glaring expectantly at me, and I shook off the numbness of dread as I climbed the steps to reach her.
“Well?” she said curtly. “What is it?”
Without preamble, I thrust the sketch of Annabelle into her hands and told her everything about the previous night’s events. Fiona stared down at the sketch, frozen. She didn’t move or speak for so long that I started to panic. Finally, the anticipation overwhelmed me.
“Fiona, will you please say something before I lose my mind over here?”
Her lips barely moved. “Have you shown this to anyone else?”
“No. Well, just Hannah and Milo, but they don’t really c—”
Her hand shot out and grasped onto my forearm. She pulled me in close to her, so that her lips were brushing against my ear as she whispered, “Meet me up on the fourth floor landing near the East Tower tonight at midnight. Tell no one you are coming.”
“What? Why?” I murmured back, but she was already pulling away, thrusting me from her with a rough gesture.
“Don’t ask me anything else right now. Don’t speak a word about this drawing to anyone else. If you meet anyone else on your way to meet me, lie and say you are going somewhere else. No one can know. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, although I didn’t understand at all. Her look was so fierce, though, that I didn’t dare return any other answer.
“Midnight,” Fiona repeated, and hurried away, folding up my drawing and tucking it into the pocket of her overalls as she went.
13
The Seer
MY TREK TO THE FOURTH FLOOR landing of the North corridor was uneventful, but for the increasingly wild speculation multiplying inside my own head as to why Fiona wanted me to meet her there. I’d told Hannah that I was meeting Fiona, just so she wouldn’t panic if she woke up and found me missing, though I hadn’t mentioned the cryptic manner in which Fiona had demanded the meeting. No need to spread my own near-crippling panic to anyone else, at least until I knew there was definitely something to panic about.
The moon was nearly full—it would be time for another lunar Crossing tomorrow night—and the light of it slanted in through the windows, casting elongated shadows upon the stones and leaching the color and warmth from every surface it touched. My breath preceded me in tiny damp puffs, like I was a jittery steam locomotive mounting the castle stairs.
I think I can’t, I think I can’t.
I turned the final corner to the landing and barely managed to muffle a shriek. Fiona stood so close to the top step that I slammed right into her, nearly knocking the oil lamp from her hand and setting us both on fire.
“Damn it, Fiona!” I hissed at her. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“I’ve not even begun to scare the shit out of you,” Fiona said wryly.
“The details blatantly ripped off from Victorian Gothic novels are helping,” I shot back. “A darkened castle stairway? An oil lamp? For Christ’s sake, haven’t you ever heard of a flashlight?”
“Batteries were dead,” she said dismissively. “Follow me and stop stamping your feet like that. I heard you coming a mile away and so will anyone else if you don’t keep it down.”
&nb
sp; “Where are we—” I began, but Fiona was halfway up the next set of stairs, moving with surprising speed for someone who usually stumped around in leather slippers two sizes too large. I hastened to keep up with her, and though I repeated my question twice more, she had no intention of answering it. I gave up, and used my breath for climbing instead.
Soon, we were hurrying down a corridor I recognized. It was the same hallway that Mackie had lead me down the first time she showed me to Fiona’s studio. It was called the Gallery of High Priestesses, and it was lined with tapestries depicting the High Priestesses through the ages. I had seen the tapestries recently; they had been moved down to the Grand Council Room for the opening ceremonies of the Airechtas. Apparently, someone had decided it was time to relegate them back to their gloomy home in this forgotten corridor. I searched out the face I knew, the face that linked my family, and this place, and the terrible Prophecy that nearly destroyed us all. Agnes Isherwood gazed down upon me from the shadowy folds of her tapestry. The wavering light from Fiona’s oil lamp gave an eerie life to her features, as though the very fibers from which she was woven were now imbued with both sentience and magic.
“In here!”
I tore my eyes from the tapestry to find Fiona beckoning angrily from the end of the hall. I jogged to catch up with her. She was standing directly in front of another tapestry, one I had never seen before, that depicted Fairhaven itself at the center of an idyllic-looking landscape.
“What are we—” I began, but stopped as Fiona located a cord tucked behind the tapestry and gave it a sharp yank. The tapestry slid aside like a curtain to reveal a door hidden behind it. Fiona slipped a massive iron skeleton key into the lock and twisted it with both hands until we both heard the mechanism clunk into position. Then she pushed it open with one hand and gestured me into the darkened room with the other.