The door opens, and seconds later Gideon tramps through the kitchen. Jestine takes his grocery bag and starts to unload it.
“Theseus,” Gideon says, turning. “How did you sleep?”
“Great,” I reply, which is a polite lie. Despite the jet lag and overall exhaustion, there was too much unease in the air. I lay awake until time didn’t exist, listening to Thomas’s gentle snore. When sleep did come, it was light and laced with menace.
Gideon studies me. He still looks so young. I mean, he looks old, but he doesn’t look much older than he did ten years ago, so that’s young in my book. He’s got the sleeves of his gray shirt rolled up to the elbow above his khaki trousers. It’s a rakish sort of look, a retirement-age Indiana Jones. Makes me wish I wasn’t about to accuse him of being a lying, backstabbing member of a secret society.
“I suppose we should talk,” he says, and motions out of the kitchen.
When we reach the study, he pulls the doors shut behind us, and I take a deep breath. They say that smell is the strongest memory. I believe it. Your brain never forgets a distinctive smell, and the odor of the ancient, leather-bound pages that populate this room is definitely distinctive. I glance through the shelves, built into the wall and stuffed full with not only occult books, but also copies of the classics: there’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, A Tale of Two Cities, and Anna Karenina standing out amid the stacks. The old rolling ladder is still there too, resting dormant in the corner, just waiting for someone to ride it. Or use it, I suppose.
I turn around with a big grin on my face, feeling all of about four, but the feeling fades quickly when I see just how far Gideon’s glasses have slid down his nose. This is going to be one of those conversations where things get said that won’t ever go away, and I’m surprised to find that I don’t want to have it yet. It would be nice to relive things here, to listen to Gideon’s old stories of my father, and to let him show me around. It would be nice.
“You knew that I was coming,” I say. “Do you know why I’m here?”
“I imagine most of the paranormal world knows why you’re here. Your search has been as subtle as an elephant stampede.” He pauses and adjusts his glasses. “But that doesn’t quite answer the question. I suppose you could say I know what you’re after. But not exactly why you’re here.”
“I’m here for your help.”
He flashes a smile. “Just what kind of help do you think I could give you?”
“The kind of help that lets Thomas and me open a door to the other side.”
Gideon’s eyes flicker back toward the hall. “I told you before, Theseus,” he says carefully. “That it isn’t possible. That you need to let the girl go.”
“I can’t let her go. That cut that Anna took after the first ritual at her house. It’s tied her to the athame somehow. She’s breaking through. Just tell me how to get her out, and everything goes back to normal.” Or at least as normal as it ever was.
“Are you even listening to what I’m saying?” he snaps. “What makes you think I even know how to do such a thing?”
“I don’t think that you do,” I say. I reach into my back pocket and pull out the photograph of him and the rest of the Order. Even looking at it in my hand, it doesn’t seem real. That he could have been involved with something like this the whole time, and never spoken of it. “I think that they do.”
Gideon looks at the photo. He doesn’t try to take it. He doesn’t try to do anything. I expected something different. Outrage, or at least backpedaling. Instead he takes a deep breath and slips his glasses off to rub the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.
“Who are they?” I ask when I’m sick of his silence.
“They,” he says ruefully, “are members of the Order of the Biodag Dubh.”
“The creators of the athame,” I say.
Gideon puts his glasses back on and walks wearily to sit behind his desk. “Yes,” he says. “The creators of the athame.”
It’s what I thought. But I still can’t believe it. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. “All these years?”
“Your father forbade it. He broke with the Order before you were born. When he grew a conscience. When he started to decide which ghosts would be killed and which to spare.” Fire briefly blooms in Gideon’s voice. Then it’s gone again, and he just looks beaten. “The Order of the Biodag Dubh believe that the athame is pure of purpose. It is not an instrument to be wielded according to someone else’s will. In their eyes, you and your father have corrupted it.”
My father corrupted it? That’s fucking ridiculous. The athame and its purpose have driven me my whole life. It cost my father his. The damned thing can serve my purposes for once. I’m owed. We’re owed.
“I can see into your head, Theseus. Not as well as your psychic friend upstairs perhaps, but I can see. My words aren’t swaying you. None of it is getting through. The Order created the athame to send the dead. Now you want to use it to pull a dead girl back. Even if there was a way, they’d rather destroy the knife than see it happen.”
“I have to do this. I can’t let her suffer there, without trying.” I swallow hard and grit my teeth. “I love her.”
“She’s dead.”
“That doesn’t mean to me what it does to other people.”
A blankness washes over his face that bothers me. He looks like someone facing down a firing squad.
“When you were here last, you were so small,” he says. “The only thing regularly on your mind was whether or not your mother would allow you two servings of apple cake.” His eyes drift to the rolling ladder in the corner. He’s picturing me there, laughing while he pushed it along the shelves.
“Gideon. I’m not a kid anymore. Treat me like you would have treated my father.” But that’s the wrong thing to say, and he squints like I struck him across the face.
“I can’t do this now,” he says, to himself as much as to me. His hand waves dismissively, and the way his shoulders hunch as he lowers into his armchair, part of me wants to let him rest. But Anna’s scream is forever in my ears.
“I don’t have time for this,” I say, but he closes his eyes. “She’s waiting for me.”
“She’s in Hell, Theseus. Time has no meaning for her, long or short. The pain and fear are constant, and any minutes or hours that you spare her, you will find, will prove irrelevant.”
“Gideon—”
“Let me rest,” he says. “What I have to say is of little consequence. Don’t you understand? I didn’t send you that photograph. The Order did. They want you here.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The door slides shut softly behind me. I’m surprised, because I want to slam it, rattle it around on its track. But Gideon is still in the study, thinking quietly, or maybe even napping, and his voice in my head says that throwing such a fit just won’t do.
“How’d that go?” Thomas asks, poking his head out of the kitchen.
“He’s napping,” I reply. “So what does that tell you?”
Walking into the kitchen, I find Thomas and Jestine seated together at the table, sharing a pomegranate.
“He’s old, Cas,” she says. “He was old the last time you were here. Napping is nothing out of the ordinary.” She spoons up a load of the purple fruit and chews carefully past the seeds.
To my right, Thomas crunches through his pomegranate and spits seeds into a mug.
“We didn’t cross an ocean to cool our heels and ride the Eye,” he snaps. At first I think he says it for my benefit, but no. He looks irritated and surly; the shower-wetness of his hair gives him the air of an almost-drowned cat.
“Hey,” I say. “Don’t bite Jestine’s head off. It’s not her fault.” Thomas curls his lip, and Jestine smiles.
“What you two need is a distraction,” she says, and gets up from the table. “Come on. By the time we get back, Gideon will be up.”
* * *
Someone should tell Jestine that distractions only work if
you don’t know you’re being distracted. Someone should tell Thomas too, because he seems oblivious to everything but her; they’re talking animatedly about astral projection or something. I’m not sure really. The conversation’s taken at least six turns since we got off the Tube at London Bridge Station and I haven’t bothered to keep up. Jestine has won him over with witch talk. The fact that she’s an attractive girl didn’t hurt either. Who knows, maybe she’ll help him get over Carmel.
“Cas, come on.” She reaches back and pulls me up alongside by my shirt. “We’re nearly there.”
The “there” that she’s referring to is the Tower of London, the castle-like fortress that sits on the north bank of the Thames. It’s touristy and historical, the site of numerous tortures and executions, from Lady Jane Grey to Guy Fawkes. Looking at it as we cross the Tower Bridge, I wonder how many screams have bounced off the stone walls. I wonder how much blood the ground remembers. They used to put severed heads up on pikes and display them on the bridge until they fell into the river. I glance down at the brown water. Somewhere underneath, old bones might still be fighting their way out of the silt.
Jestine buys our tickets and we go inside. She says we don’t need to wait for the tour guide; she’s been here often enough that she remembers all the interesting parts. We follow her as she leads us through the grounds, telling stories about the fat, black ravens toddling across the lawn. Thomas listens, smiles, and asks a few polite questions, but the history doesn’t quite hold him. About ten minutes in, I catch him gazing wistfully at Jestine’s long blond hair, a hangdog look on his face. It reminds him of Carmel, but it shouldn’t; Jestine’s is shot through with those streaks of fierce red. She doesn’t look anything like Carmel, really. Carmel’s eyes are warm and brown. Jestine’s look like green glass. Carmel’s beauty is classic, where Jestine is mostly just striking.
“Cas, are you even listening?” She smiles and I clear my throat. I’d been staring.
“Not really.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Once. That summer when I was visiting, Gideon brought me and my mom. Don’t feel bad. It was pretty boring then too.” Wasting time like this, my mind turns to Anna. She suffers in my imagination and I suffer with her. I picture the worst, every pain I can conceive of, to torture myself. It’s the only penance I can do, until I get her out.
Behind us, one of the Beefeater tour guides is leading a group of visitors, making wry comments that lift good-natured laughter from their throats, telling the same jokes he tells a dozen times a day. Jestine watches me quietly. After a few seconds, she leads us on, up into the White Tower.
“Wasn’t there anywhere to go that has fewer stairs?” Thomas asks after touring the third floor. It’s full of shields and statues of horses and knights in chain mail and armor. Kids ooh and aah and point their fingers. Their parents do it too. The whole tower vibrates with footsteps and chatter. It’s warm from the June heat and too many bodies, and the buzzing of flies is audible.
“Do you hear that buzzing?” Thomas asks.
“Flies,” I reply, and he gives me a look.
“Yeah, but what flies?”
I look around. The buzzing is loud enough to be the inside of a barn, but there aren’t any actual flies. And no one else seems to notice. There’s a smell too, cloying and metallic. I’d know it anywhere. Old blood.
“Cas,” Thomas says in a low voice. “Turn around.”
When I turn I’m looking at a display case of used weapons. They haven’t been cleaned or polished, and are caked with drying red and bits of tissue. One half of a long spiked mace has a piece of scalp and hair hanging off of it. It was used to cave in someone’s head. The buzzing of phantom flies makes Thomas swat at the air even though they aren’t real. Looking around, the rest of the exhibit is the same. Case after case filled with relics of war, splashed and streaked with red. Beneath one of the knights’ armor, a curl of intestine shows a rubbery pink. My hand strays to my pocket, to the athame, and I feel Jestine touch my back.
“Don’t go pulling that out again,” she says.
“What’s going on here?” I ask. “It wasn’t like this when we came in.”
“Is it the way they were used?” Thomas asks. “Did this really happen?”
Jestine looks around at the gory display and shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s quite possible. But maybe not. It might just be a show, impotent anger from the dozens of dead things running through this place like a current. There are so many that they don’t have separate voices. They have no idea who they are, anymore. They just manifest, like this.”
“Do you remember this from when you were here, Cas?” Thomas asks. I shake my head.
“I thought you’d have been tuned to it right away,” says Jestine. “But maybe they didn’t show you. Most people can’t see it of course, but the last time I was here, a little girl walked in and started to cry. No one could make her stop. She wouldn’t say why she was upset, but I knew. She walked around this room with her family, crying, while they tried to get her to look at the disemboweled knight, like he would cheer her up.”
Thomas swallows. “That’s disturbing.”
“When did you first see it?” I ask.
“My parents brought me here when I was eight.”
“Did you cry?”
“Never,” she says, and lifts her chin. “But then, I understood.” She tilts her head toward the door. “So, do you want to go meet the queen?”
* * *
The queen is in the chapel. She sits in the first row, silent, far off to the left. Dark brown hair hangs down her back, and her posture is straight, strapped into a bodice. Even standing in the back, thirty feet away, there’s no mistaking that she’s dead.
The chapel is in between tours at the moment, and a young couple was just finishing taking a picture of the stained glass as we came in. Now we’re alone.
“I don’t know which queen she is,” Jestine says. “Most say that she’s the ghost of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII. But she might be Lady Jane Grey. She doesn’t speak. And she doesn’t resemble any of the portraits.”
This is weird. There’s a dead woman in front of me like dozens of other dead women I’ve seen. But this one is a queen, and a famous one. If it’s possible to be starstruck by the dead, then I guess that’s what’s happening.
Jestine moves to the back of the chapel, near the door.
“Does she respond?” I ask. It’s unlikely. She isn’t corporeal; if she were, she’d be visible to everyone, and the couple in here snapping photos had no idea they had company. I wonder, though, if she’ll show up in a few of their developed shots and give them a good story to tell their friends and neighbors.
“Not to me,” Jestine replies in a whisper, as the queen turns, in a slow rotation, to face me. The movement is regal, or careful. Maybe both. She is balancing her severed head on her neck. Below the cut, she’s nothing but blood, and there’s something else. I can hear the rustle of her dress against the bench. She’s not just vapor anymore.
I’ve never seen the portraits Jestine mentioned, so I can’t speak to any resemblance. But the woman facing me looks not much more than a girl. She’s tiny, thin-lipped, and pale. Only the eyes are beautiful, dark and clear. There’s a delicate dignity about her, and a little bit of shock. It’s how any queen would react, if she were suddenly presented with a kid with hair hanging in his eyes and wrinkly clothes.
“Should I bow or something?” I ask out of the corner of my mouth.
“You should hurry up, is what you should do,” Jestine says, peering out the door. “The next tour group is going to be popping in here in two minutes.”
Thomas and I exchange a look. “Hurry up and do what?” I ask.
“Send her,” Jestine whispers, and arches her brow. “Use the athame.”
“Has she killed people?” Thomas asks. “Has she even harmed people?”
I doubt it. I doubt if she’s even scared people. I can’t im
agine that this girl, this one-time queen, has ever implied a threat to anyone. She’s somber, and oddly at peace. It’s hard to explain, but I think she’d find the whole concept rude and inappropriate. The thought of stabbing her, or “sending” her, as Jestine apparently calls it, makes me blush.
“Let’s get out of here,” I mumble, and walk toward the door. In the corner of my eye, I catch Thomas sketching an awkward curtsy as he follows. I glance back one more time. The queen is no longer facing us. She resides in her church with no care for the living, balancing her head on her ragged neck.
“Am I missing something?” Jestine asks once we’re back in the open air. I lead them quickly toward the exit. Gideon’s got to be up by now, and I’ve had enough of this place.
“Hey,” she says, and takes my arm. “Did I offend you? Do something out of order?”
“No,” I say. Deep breath in, and out. She’s brash, and sort of pushy. But I’m trying to remember what she already apologized for; her habit of running in fists first, without thinking. “It’s just that … I don’t ‘send’ ghosts unless they’re a threat to the living.”
The look on her face is genuine surprise. “But that’s not your purpose.”
“What?”
“You’re the instrument. The wielder of the weapon. It’s the weapon’s will that’s important. Not yours. And the athame doesn’t make distinctions.”
We’re stopped before the steps near the exit gate, facing each other. She said the words with conviction. With belief. She’s been indoctrinated with that law probably for as long as she can remember. The way she’s looking at me, right into my eyes, it’s a challenge to tell her different. Even if it won’t change her mind.
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