She sat down next to him, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand. Unable to help themselves, shaded by the enclosure, they turned into another kiss. Glorious and tender. Eve never wanted this bliss to end.
Rounding a corner and trotting ahead, the carriage maintained its speed until Eve and Jacob broke away, gasping and giggling.
The carriage suddenly slowed.
“Watch out!” The driver screamed. The carriage jostled as the horse reared.
Out the window, Eve could see a man she didn’t recognize narrow his eyes. A bricklayer in a dusty coat and thick leather gloves held a sharp spike of building girding in two hands.
She and the ghosts saw it the moment before it happened.
The worker, his face contorted in horror, as if he couldn’t believe what he was doing, turned the pike, the sharp end heading straight for Jacob’s torso.
In that moment the spirit world screamed in a terrible roar. Reflexively Eve grabbed Jacob with a burst of desperate strength and turned him to the side. The pike came around and through the open window. It dashed along her arm, ripping a length of wool and tearing her flesh, puncturing the shoulder she’d raised to block him from the blow. Blood blossomed on her shoulder and cascaded down her chest as the pike clattered to the cobblestones outside.
As she shifted, so did the carriage buck. Jacob was slammed against the side of the carriage door, hitting his head, the door flying open, and his body nearly tumbling out had Eve not already had ahold of him. She hauled him back, and his neck braced on the edge of the seat and his head lolled back onto the cushion, blood spurting from above and around his temple.
Screaming, Eve managed to direct the driver; “Take us to Dr. Jonathon Whitby at Bellevue! Fast as you can!”
The driver veered east, ringing a bell as a makeshift alarm to make way, the reeling horse lurching into a canter.
The wonders of the human body in danger, coupled with the surge of focus in trying to help another, made subjugating Eve’s own riotous agony easier as she tended to Jacob. Never minding the blood all over her fine blue riding habit, she whipped his cravat from where it had been loosely returned to his neck, where just moments ago she’d showered with kisses; she bound the tourniquet tightly around Jacob’s head, knotting it before sitting back, pain flowing through her again. But she was pleased to see the pressure of the bandage stanched the flow.
Swooning against the side of the hack, she needed something else for herself, so she used her own scarf for the same pressure around her arm, though lifting it and her shoulder to affix it was fresh agony.
Part of her was trying to process what happened, how it happened. Prenze was attuned to her; he had a read on her, on her whereabouts, especially, particularly, as she’d been sidetracked by the day. She’d been distracted by nerves and desire, hadn’t thought to bring one of the Bishops’ wards on her person, hadn’t renewed her shield since the park. And Prenze just manipulated the surroundings. Just for a moment. That’s all it took. One window in, one momentary lapse. That’s how much danger they were in.
Likely that moment would be chalked up to some accident of construction: a swinging post without proper clearance and a spooked horse. But Eve knew that it was the forces Prenze could somehow manifest that had caused the incident. But proving that…
As the city raced by, a form loomed before them outside the carriage structure, a terrible fixed point as the city flew behind. The dread presence that child spirits called the shadow man. Albert Prenze projected his image next to them, and his echoing, eerie voice was like gargled sulfur, gritty and foul. The foul projection began to coax.
“Give up, Detective. Just let go. It’s best this way.”
Eve felt energy drain from her as if she were a suddenly flowing water tap. The idea of giving up, giving over, letting blood flow, just resting… It was appealing. She looked to Jacob, and something changed over his body, a shimmer of silver and white. A form superimposed over his face. A luminous, greyscale version of Jacob over his living, beautiful self…
A cry surged up from the depths of her, in fury and terror.
“I renounce thee!” Eve screamed at the scourge outside, the fire in her mental and psychic shielding blazed across her vision, and she felt herself pulling back the energy that was draining away like dripping blood.
Seizing Jacob’s body, she held fast.
“Oh, no…no, you don’t, Jacob Horowitz, you are not going to become a ghost!”
His spirit, partly outside his body, looked around then detached, separating out to sit upon the enclosed carriage bench opposite, staring at Eve.
“Eve,” he said fearfully. “Am I…”
“No! Not yet, you can’t,” Eve refused, clutching his body. “Stay with me. Stay here.”
He turned, and his spectral eyes focused on something ahead of him, something unseen by living sight. He was at a turning point, a crossroads. His form flickered and then faded invisible, losing manifestation when traveling over thresholds.
She had to go after him. His spirit could be in the Corridors between life and death, a liminal place accessible to talented Spiritualists. She could persuade him back, but she’d have better luck if she were there with him.
The deep diving in that she’d done to try to find Maggie she’d do again, in the inelegant space of a carriage. They might arrive both at Bellevue in a slump, but they were en route to help. In the meantime, Jacob needed rescuing that she was uniquely suited to provide.
Tuning out all the madness of the surroundings speeding by, Eve closed her eyes, said Gran’s benediction for descent into the tenuous realm of long, shadowed halls; she felt herself falling with a dizzying swiftness into mental darkness. Perhaps the times she’d been in Sanctuary had made this spiritual journey betwixt living and dead easier. She grew more efficient in the ability to detach body and spirit, for better or worse.
He was there, walking ahead of her, pausing to look around at the walls of the Corridors, shimmering walls that looked like deep water or endless sky, porous and yet still a boundary. The air around her was slightly less polluted than when she’d last visited their halls, but it looked like dark clouds were ahead of them.
“Jacob! Stop!”
He paused and turned back to look at her.
The vague walls of the Corridors showed shimmering, luminous images, like floating pictures at an exhibition.
It wasn’t that one’s life flashed before the eye before or in the process of death; there was a sequence of images, and if spectrally attuned enough, one could walk that walk of memory for oneself or a loved one.
Behind them, Eve recognized some of their moments together; other moments Eve didn’t recognize, images of spaces and vistas, buildings, perhaps his synagogue, embraces with family and friends.
The closest image to them, seemingly framed in bright light, a passionate picture just to the side of their stopped bodies was clearly the two of them, arms around each other’s necks, pressed together in a furious kiss. A recognizable moment, from just moments ago…
It was behind them.
There was nothing yet ahead of them. No images. Just a void. Possibilities hadn’t yet been dreamed up.
And that was the most terrifying thing Eve had ever seen.
They had moments yet to make. Moments yet to live for.
“You must come back with me.” She grabbed his hand, pulling him back around to face her.
“Why?” His voice seemed far away, as if in the throes of laudanum, the curious disorientation of a spirit in its first moments. “This feels nice, here.…”
She could feel the initial lethargy that so many of her operatives described, the desire to simply lull into an echo of existence.
Eve had yet to experience the moments of death and following a spirit into this place. She’d never had to, certainly not for someone she…
&nb
sp; “No, Jacob, it isn’t good to be here, you must fight to revive!”
“What’s wrong, Eve?” he asked sweetly, handsome and dear, even at the point of terror. “You seem upset. Where am I?”
“You’re in the Corridors between life and death, and you can’t be here; you can’t be a ghost.”
“But you like ghosts,” he said, with the innocence of a child.
“Yes, but it isn’t your time. I can’t let you die!”
He blinked at her then turned back toward the Corridors as if drawn. “Is that your call to make?” he asked, his voice far away.
“Listen to me, Jacob Horowitz! You can’t die”—grabbing him by the shoulders, she forced him away from the mesmerizing surroundings to look at her—“because I love you. I cannot let you go when I’ve only just kissed you and I want so much more with you! I want a life with you!” Tears streamed down her face. She clutched his hands. She didn’t dare actually kiss him here. That’s not what the moment framed as perfect in the Corridors depicted. “We have to go now; we’re already endangering your body. Come.”
A wind picked up around them. Faintly Eve heard singing, from what she could catch of it, in Hebrew.
“You love me?” he asked, incredulous, his voice full of joy.
“Yes, Jacob, I love you,” she cried.
His glassy eyes suddenly focused with fire and purpose.
He closed the distance as if to kiss her—grabbed her around her waist—and Eve used that moment of momentum to pull. To fall.
Chapter Nine
With a wrenching gasp, the next thing Eve knew was that she was tangled in an embrace with Jacob, on a cot in a clean, white room, a gurney rolling away to the side, likely whatever she’d been laid out on, and it was as if Eve had fallen on top of him yet again, souls crashing into bodies once more. Nurses and doctors shouted.
“A miracle!” one nurse cried to the woman next to her. “I thought they both were passing!”
Her father came rushing in. “Eve, oh my goodness, what—” He carefully extricated her from Jacob and began to examine her wound. Only then did Eve realize how much pain she was in. Her legs gave way, and her father guided her into a chair beside Jacob’s bed.
“Hello, Father, I’m very sorry—”
“I’m sorry for nothing now that you’re safe. Let me just see how deep this is,” he said, peeling back the shredded layer of her dress, over her arm and the rip along her bodice. “What happened; were you stabbed?” he asked.
“I don’t know what happened. I think someone was manipulated in trying to strike us.”
Jacob was delirious, but coming to, murmuring.
“I’m here, I’m here, Jacob,” Eve said, trying to pull away from the examination. “I’m fine, Father. I’m sure it looks worse than it is.”
“It needs stitches,” her father countered. “You did well with stanching blood flow but it needs to be sewn up.” He looked between Eve and Jacob and seemed to understand something. “Talk to him a moment then we’ll have you both patched up. I’ll get everything ready.”
Her father motioned to the nurses, and they exited to prepare, giving the two a moment amid the white cloth screens. Eve was grateful for the scrap of privacy.
Eve sat at Jacob’s bedside, taking his hand. “I’m right here, Jacob; it’s me, it’s Eve. You’ll be all right.”
He stared at her in wonder and hope. “You said…you told me…”
She leaned close to his ear, the act of which was agony, but her murmured words lessened the pain. “I said that I love you. And I do love you.”
Jacob released a happy sigh. “My love,” he whispered, and seemed to drift off into a light sleep as one of the young nurses returned. Rushing to the bedside, the nurse tried to keep him awake and lucid, for fear of aftereffects of a concussion, and he maintained a sleepy, limited responsiveness.
Eve wanted Jacob to declare his heart back to her in turn. She didn’t like having been so vulnerable, having given her truth away with nothing sure in return, but that was perhaps too much to ask considering the circumstances. “Will he be all right?” Eve asked the nurse.
“From what your father said, loss of blood caused his weakness, and he has a concussion that needs to be monitored. But he should recover after rest, aches and pains notwithstanding. His parents have been notified,” the nurse said. “We took his card since he’s an officer of the law. It was easy to reach them; they’re on their way.”
Eve couldn’t be sure if anyone else heard their exclamations of love or not, but she knew her heart, finally, and couldn’t fight it anymore, and didn’t want to. Seeing his ghost was clarion focus enough. They’d all be ghosts eventually, but not until she’d had a life holding on to his warm, living body.…
But the danger, this terrible turn, his near death… It was all her fault.
The sinking certainty of just how much he was in danger because of her hit her like a repeat blow. Her loved ones were going to continue to get hurt if she didn’t change the dynamic.
If Prenze wanted her dead, he’d likely have found a way to shoot her, though a bullet was a far clearer charge of murder than these roundabout ways he was spectrally trying to maim them and threaten them off his tail. She was likely a part of the great experiment that Dupont had warned them of. People like Jacob were in the way.
Gritting her teeth against searing pain, she stood and listed between the screens, shuffling toward the first door of the wing she could see, desperate to be somewhere alone, away from this place of pain, death and hopeful recovery, needing to think about her next move. Truth be told, she wanted to run again to Sanctuary, to be let in and to never to come out, to do all her helping of the mortal and spirit world from within, keeping everyone around her safe by removing herself physically, not psychically.
As she was about to wander into the next hospital corridor, her father called out.
“Just where do you think you’re going?” Dr. Whitby said in his most fatherly tone, full of British indignance masking a distinct fear.
“I’m…fine.” The lie came out as a mumble. The pain was escalating; the tricks of the body that made one feel invincible in the heat of danger were subsiding to a wave of incapacitating agony. She swayed on her feet.
Her father put steadying hands on her shoulders. “I said we were getting you stitched up, and that’s what we’re doing.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. In part to keep back tears, in part to keep from the room spinning.
“You’re still in shock. Please, just let me take care of you,” her father pleaded, as if that’s all he’d ever wanted to do and the dangers of their lives just kept getting in the way of it. A neutral man of kindness and diplomacy, her father didn’t often take either a firm or pleading tone. It was especially important to note when he used both.
Folding against his side, she let her father collect her, her head falling on his shoulder, allowing herself a vulnerability she’d tried to block out and steel herself against since childhood. When the paranormal aspects of her life strained her relationship with her parents, she’d tried to brick a wall around her heart. But there was no need of that here. Her father had always silently understood. He couldn’t pretend to know how she was haunted any more than she could know the ways in which he had been. Haunting, like spirituality, faith, and one’s connection with the divine, was entirely personal, and no one’s experience trumped another.
Never minding fresh drops of her blood on his crisp white coat, Dr. Whitby led Eve back toward the room she’d wandered from. She let pain overwhelm her into motionlessness as he guided Eve to a bed near where Jacob lay, the nurses washing his wounds and preparing him for stitching too. Administered a sedative by a calm nurse, she drifted off into an unsettled half rest as the sting of the stitches sent her into a pain-induced dream state.
* * * *
Eve awoke to
familiar, nearby voices. Four hushed, concerned tones. Before she opened her eyes, she thought to herself how to appear composed to these people. Her mother, Gran, and Mr. and Mrs. Horowitz. They’d all met, in the most unfortunate way, but they were making pleasant small talk, discussing their mutually loved Rachel Horowitz.
Commonalities, making inroads, making connections: all of this was so important, but Eve needed to retreat from it all. Loved ones, especially in the case of Jacob, meant potential casualties.
The agony of nearly losing him, of the truth of her heart—it was all too much, and she didn’t want any of them to see her awake, so she squeezed her eyes closed, but not before tears flooded out.
She wanted to stay sleeping until everyone went away. Given great talents, she was hardly powerful enough. She was only good enough to get noticed and targeted, not talented enough to have solved anything; yet anyone near her was in a radius of danger.
“I confess, I’m not sure what to think about all this,” she heard Mrs. Horowitz say quietly.
“He’ll make a full recovery,” Dr. Whitby assured her.
“And I thank you for that, Doctor,” Mrs. Horowitz said.
“Indeed,” Mr. Horowitz agreed. “We are in your debt for quick work. I simply would like to know what happened here.”
Jacob sat up with a groan, and his outburst made Eve’s eyes shoot open, reflexive to the sound of him. He looked at her first, smiling; the physical pain on his face washed away, replaced by a certain wonder, as the dawning of what had passed between them seemed to illuminate him and if Eve wasn’t mistaken, he whispered, “My love…”
It drove Eve’s pain even deeper, and she subtly shook her head, mentally asking for him not to make this harder on her.
Jacob looked at his family, who had jumped to either side of his bed. “Hello Mother, Father,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what happened—it was all so sudden—but Eve moved me aside, from a man swinging something toward us. She put herself in the way, getting injured in the process, but if she hadn’t, the pike may have gone right through me.…”
A Summoning of Souls Page 16