Jacob looked over at Eve, and it was then they all noticed she was awake.
“Thank you, Miss Whitby,” Mr. Horowitz exclaimed. “Thank you for helping him.”
“We are so very grateful,” his mother added. Eve could sense their genuine gratitude in equal amount as their horror at his being a target. Eve understood; she felt the same way.
Eve’s mother and father came to her bedside in turn, her mother leaning down and kissing Eve’s brow. “Your father promised me it’s not as bad as it looks…and I believe him,” she said, keeping her calm, looking between her husband and her daughter. Gran stood at the edge of the partition, between the beds, a consummate diplomat and soothing presence.
“Did you… I’m sorry, Miss Whitby,” Mrs. Horowitz began carefully, “but I have to ask, was it your case that put him so in danger?”
She managed to ask without accusation, simply wanting to know the facts. Mr. Horowitz winced, as if he wished there were some other way to have asked the truth of it. But there wasn’t, and the slow crack threatening to cleave Eve’s heart entirely in two widened. She wouldn’t lie.
“It was. I’m…I’m so sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Horowitz.”
“No, no,” Mr. Horowitz tried to interject, but he trailed off.
“If you ask me, when they got here, it seemed she saved his life,” a young nurse said as she came by with a decanter of water. “It’s like she went somewhere after him and dragged him back here. It’s like he fell back into himself. I’ve never seen anything else like it.”
This rattled Mr. and Mrs. Horowitz as much as anything. Eve grimaced. This wasn’t the way she wanted her spectral dealings to be revealed, in this kind of tense circumstance. She changed the subject abruptly.
“Gran, can I come have a nightcap with you and stay?” Eve asked. “Will you tell the girls not to worry? I need your advice on matters.” Wanting desperately to be out of this place, Eve slowly rose to a sitting position, her mother helping her, her father checking the bandages.
If she separated herself from Jacob and the girls, for their safety, Eve was sure she could do so with Gran’s help and not be reckless about it. They could plan how to extricate her and still solve the case. Gran would know how to hole oneself away to fight a spectral battle and that wouldn’t be as dramatic as her irresponsibly just disappearing.
Gran looked to her father, who nodded. He handed Gran a glass bottle of small white pills, likely aspirin for the pain. “Come by our side for dinner?” he asked hopefully.
She looked at them and said plainly, “I shouldn’t. It isn’t safe. I’m not safe.”
The stricken look that this created on both her parents’ faces was a palpable hit. Eve despaired; she was causing such pain all around her, and in her.
“Let me take her, please,” Gran murmured.
“Yes, the two of you, again,” her mother muttered. “As if the rest of us never faced danger before in our lives.”
Eve sighed irritably and replied in a tense whisper, “You can’t be distressed by my work and then angry when I distance you! I don’t want this man to be the reason your condition comes back, Mother! This is a personal vendetta for Gran and me to fight—”
“We won’t be alone; we’ve an arsenal,” Gran interjected with implacable diplomacy before Eve could drive any wedge further. “This will be over soon. I feel it.”
Natalie Whitby turned to the Horowitz family, contrite. “I’m sorry to involve you in our family drama,” she said. “I’ve always had a hard time reconciling my daughter’s work.”
“As have we, with our son,” Mrs. Horowitz confessed quietly. “It is difficult, sometimes unbearable, to accept a job with constant risk and not feel like you’re abandoning your child to the wolves just by allowing them to do it.”
“Exactly,” Natalie said, as if Jacob’s mother had put the perfect words to her emotions.
“But they are their own people,” Mr. Horowitz added. “We cannot live their lives for them.”
“Indeed. It is wise of you to remind me.” Natalie stepped toward the couple, clasping her hands together and bowing her head slightly in deference. “It was a pleasure to meet you both, Mr. and Mrs. Horowitz. Your son is a treasure.”
“Thank you,” they responded warmly.
Coming back to Eve’s bed, her mother sighed. “You should stay here and rest, on doctor’s—your father’s—orders. But I’ve a feeling you won’t heed them.”
“Correct. But you can help me up,” Eve said, offering her parents her hands. With a tired chuckle, her father took one side as her mother pursed her lips and took the other.
Once she was standing, Gran handed her a wool cape she could throw over her mauled dress once outside. She folded it over her arm.
“I’ll see you downstairs, but give me a moment,” Eve said to her family, looking first at her parents and then at Gran, who gathered them gently and led them out with soft pleasantries, leaving just Eve and the Horowitz family.
Eve turned to Jacob’s parents. She looked down at what they were looking at. They stared at the bloodstains on her dress as if they couldn’t look away.
With a deep, shaking breath, Eve let tumble a rush of difficult words. “I…I can’t decide for your son how he continues to pursue his own aspect of the case. But considering his safety above all else, I’ve made the resolution to separate myself. I am clearly a risk. So, if my presence means a greater threat, it’s for the best.… Please tell him, insist, he keep his distance. I know he has open cases he’d be best to resolve with other colleagues,” Eve said, and turned, fighting tears. Biting her lip to force composure, she turned back. “Please tell your son he’s… the very best. And that the most important thing in all the world to me is that he be safe and happy. Thank you. Take care.”
Both parents opened their mouths as if they thought perhaps they were meant to protest, or say something else, but the silence was strained and Eve smiled at them, bowed her head, and left. She tried to speed out with her usual brisk pace, but the pain slowed her. Throwing the cloak over her shoulders, she buried her face in the corner of it for a moment to dry the sudden stream of tears she could no longer hold back. She breathed in the sharp surgery smell of solvents: alcohol and iodine, like a smelling salt bringing her back around.
With no clue as to what the future held, she had to walk away from Jacob for as long as it would take. For safety’s sake.
The moment she exited the white doors of the surgery wing, breathing in less sharply scented air, she noticed Gran waiting for her, calm and statuesque, her brocade burgundy tea gown a rich contrast to the stark white hall.
“The girls are in the reception area,” Gran said. “I knew you’d have wanted me to send them away, but I couldn’t. It isn’t fair to them. Their lots are all cast in, with this precinct, and with you. If you just tear yourself away without clearance…”
Eve’s sudden rush of exhaustion, concern, and perhaps even panic must have been evident on her face, for Gran continued with a stern tone.
“They’re psychically tied to you, Eve, and to this work. You can’t expect them not to be. None of your gifts can just be turned off when it scares or isn’t convenient for you. They knew something was wrong just as I did, and came. The staff wouldn’t allow them in as they said it was too crowded. I told them to wait outside. I know you want to retreat. Tell them why; give them something to do. You can be involved in separate missions, but don’t you dare let one man break apart your precinct.”
Gran’s command hit Eve squarely, and she didn’t know what else to do but nod.
As they walked down the long hallway toward an exit, Eve’s side was awash in cold. “Oh, mi corazón,” Vera said, appearing on Eve’s left as Gran guarded her right. The spirit’s luminous hand was laid over her heart.
“Don’t,” Eve snapped, hastening her stride. Her Sensitivities in a hospital—a
place of pain, struggle, and unexpected loss strained her ability to reason. “Nothing of the heart. Help numb me. I must be steeled.” Each step jarred her wounds, but she wanted to be anywhere but here.
“I had to walk away from someone I didn’t dare be with.” The ghost circled her as she walked. “Your circumstance was not mine, but pain is pain.” She opened her arms, and Eve’s breath turned to frost. “I give you my cold. You are the lady of the dead. Let the chill of us comfort you until you can make things well again.”
Eve let temperature overtake her like stepping into an icebox. Steel and cold. She had work to do, no time for sentiment. She had to inure herself against psychic and emotional turmoil, harden herself against the danger of love. Of letting down her guard. No matter how much joy she’d just shared. This depth of despair was as deep as her mountain of bliss had been high.
In a white, sterile reception hall that was pleasant only in how much light came in through the windows facing the river, Eve stepped over to a bench in the main reception area where Cora, Antonia, and Jenny sat huddled. When they saw her, they jumped up, and before Cora or Antonia could hug her, Jenny peeled back the layers of her cape, revealing the blood, so that everyone would know to be gentle, as if the little girl sensed the damage before seeing it.
“Hello, dears,” Eve began before any of them could offer sympathies. A harsh tone was all she could muster just to get the words out. “Because everything is being weaponized to hurt those around me, you must keep your distance. I may have to be vulnerable, on my own, to see how Prenze moves. Join the surveillance operation if you must do something. But stop if you or your environments are manipulated. Send spirits only to give me information, because anyone next to me”—tears flowed again, and Eve cursed under her breath—“gets hurt. Keep yourselves safe above all else. And keep Jacob off the case. Far away. It’s my fault, what happened.”
“Will he be all right?” Antonia asked.
“If he keeps his distance. Make sure,” Eve demanded. “Promise you’ll force him back.”
“We can try,” Cora murmured gently. It was she who had been the most resistant to his presence at first. But she seemed very aware of the pain Eve was in. Reaching out, Cora gently took Eve’s hands, and Eve was grateful the gloves Cora wore kept her psychometry from seeing all that had just taken place. “But he’s his own man, as we are our own women.”
Eve bit back the urge to snap orders at them. She didn’t want contention, just distance.
“I’m going to Gran’s, not home,” Eve explained. “Be careful. Have people who Prenze doesn’t have a read on research any clues or paper trails. I can’t have more blood on my hands because we got too close to a wayward monster. I’ll come home to the Fort when I feel it’s safe.”
At this, the girls all protested at once. But Eve walked away as if she didn’t hear it, drawing her cloak closer over her ruined dress. She could tell she was hurting them, excluding them, and she wasn’t proud of any of it: that she’d needed them in the first place, that she’d let them get close, and now she wasn’t even able to fully reject or fire them, send them irrevocably away. She felt impotent and useless, like she couldn’t win and neither could they, living a half life between calling and protection.
Antonia ran after her. “Eve, please. A moment of advice.” Eve stopped and turned back to her colleague. “Those flashes of what I thought might be premonitions? I’m going to follow them if I see them again. I think they correlate to things in motion.”
“All right, dear, as long as you steer clear of my direct path.”
“I saw a forest again,” Antonia said. “And I realized it was familiar. Likely Sanctuary.”
“Sanctuary may indeed need protection too. It is wise to consider. Go nowhere alone.”
Antonia cocked her head. “You presume to act alone and tell us we cannot do the same?”
Eve sighed and turned away. “Do not attend Sanctuary alone, that’s all I have to say.”
Despite significant bodily pain, Eve moved quickly to the front doors to avoid any other emotional exchange. All she could see was Jacob’s handsome face after their kisses, and that same gorgeous visage bloodied after the attack, two images in horrific contrast that made her sick to her stomach.
Downstairs at the patient exit of the grand brick building along the busy East River, she embraced her parents. Her father helped her mother into a carriage before returning with Eve to Gran’s vehicle.
“Thank you, Father, for everything.”
Both he and Gran helped her, grimacing and wincing, into the carriage.
“Take care of her, will you?” Dr. Whitby begged Gran. “Maybe she’ll listen to you if you tell her to find some other case to solve that doesn’t have it so out for her?”
“We’ll get through this,” Gran promised.
Eve wasn’t feeling so hopeful for herself, but she would draw danger away from her loved ones.
“Shield,” Gran commanded as the carriage rolled away. Both women did so, and Eve felt the energy of the carriage become a fortification. Staring out along the river, she wondered how to draw Prenze just to her. Gran circumvented her. “Don’t you dare do anything drastic.”
Eve turned to her, exasperated. “I’m letting myself go with you, stay with you so that I don’t! Help me live apart from everything until this passes and the case breaks for the better. I’ll commune with spirits remotely, and you can collect the evidence and bring it to the girls. They won’t drop the case, but I need them away. And keep Jacob entirely clear. I’m too dangerous. Will someone promise me that?”
“What happened to the detective today is not your fault.”
This time, Eve leaned against her fortress, her dearest confidante, and let loose a sob.
“He nearly died, Gran; it was so close! He was being leaned on, psychically, by Prenze, to let his spirit go. To give up. I had to go into the Corridors after him. . . .”
Gran embraced Eve as she wept. The passion of the day was her secret to keep, but she had to tell someone her heart. The idea that just hours ago they were entwined in the park… Tears pooled on her hands.
“I told him I loved him.” Eve choked on the words. The searing, overwhelming truth of how much she loved him, realized in this stark turn, caused as much terror as it had joy. “With that confession, I won his spirit back; I think the truth of my heart was what did it. But I do…love him, to the point where I’m terrified. It makes me sick. I can’t be the reason.… I can’t bear what might happen to him.”
“We’ll stop Prenze,” Gran reassured her.
“But how?” Eve wailed. “We’re trying with finances, surveillance, paperwork that doesn’t yet add up, anything we can yet use in court proceedings, and every day anything could strike us. He’s not letting us get closer.…” An idea struck her. She sat up, dried her eyes, and stared at Gran. “I’ll host a séance. Just me. Invite him to my mind. His bait. To see what’s next.”
Gran sighed. “Just like your mother.”
“What?”
“Not precisely, but your mother played this game, to entrap the creature that attacked your father. I never thought it would play out again. She likely senses it, fears a parallel.”
“The family legacy,” Eve said grimly. “But this time, I’m no longer your student. This is now between me and the ghosts, and I have the ghosts to help. Whatever the ‘great experiment’ is, I’m a part of it.”
“I was a part of the experiment too, Eve,” Gran insisted sharply. “I’m wrapped up in this just as you are. And your team, they are their own people, Eve, and they care about you.”
“If I have to fire them and evict them from my home, I will! I won’t have any harm come to them when I am the one he wants. The ghosts and I, we’re the ones to confront him.”
“Whatever he thinks about spirits, he’s not giving them much credit,” Gran scoffed. “He
doesn’t know how they can fight. For now, you must rest. Thank you, at least, for being willing to come with me. Your grandfather is away on business; he’s been traveling more these days, and during this bout with Prenze, I’ve encouraged it.”
When they arrived at the house, Gran left Eve in the parlor with some peppermint tea so she could attend to telling the very small household staff, save for the security staff Gran kept on retainer, that they were getting a few days off; limiting collateral damage.
The tea mirrored the taste of Jacob’s kisses. Eve had to bite her tongue nearly to bleeding to keep herself composed.
Closing her eyes, Eve begged the spirit world’s guidance and felt it rustling around her like the leaves in these sharp last days of autumn, turning brittle and whirling in winds.
Vera appeared and wafted to the parlor wall to ponder the art as Gran entered with a tea tray full of small bites and savory treasures.
“Antonia has gained precognitive visions, Gran,” Eve said. “She’s seen a forest that may be Sanctuary. I know Clara Bishop said she’d set wards, but we may need greater protections.”
“Noted.”
A roaring in Eve’s ears accompanied more tea being poured into her cup. A different kind of pressure than the recent bout with the children and their resolution. Eve sighed irritably at the sudden pain.
“What is it?” Gran asked, pouring herself tea.
“There’s a grip on my skull. I don’t know if it’s the worry of spirits or Prenze trying to worm deeper in. I’m tired of being reactive, Gran. I began this precinct without constraint. I began fearless. I want to regain that strength and return to principle. Alone. I have to fight back.”
“So, challenge him,” Vera said, floating near enough for steam from Eve’s teacup to make her image waver in mist. “Provocation will throw him off. He wouldn’t expect it of you.”
“What sort of provocation?” she asked the elderly ghost.
A Summoning of Souls Page 17