“What’s happening?” Eve asked the ghost.
“Prenze lashed out against the whole spirit world,” Zofia explained. “It is lashing back. You will be overwhelmed. I must go and scout.” She disappeared again.
Eve turned to Jacob, reaching up to touch his face.
“We must shield again, just as you did a moment ago, Jacob. How brilliant you were! In the darkness I felt your embrace pull me away from his violence, your blessings sustaining me. I felt my feet underneath me again, representing how you ground me. Right now, we must shield not only from malevolence but from the world of wraiths entirely. It will get very loud in here, even for someone who is spectrally adjacent such as yourself.”
Jacob nodded and went to the bottle of headache tablets he’d brought down and offered a fresh pair. Eve took them and swallowed with cooled tea.
Eve heard it before anyone saw it. “It’s coming…” she murmured. “We should sit.”
Everyone did, just in time for a wave of silvery light to crash over them as if a dam had burst, covering them in cold air that blew their hair back and swept around them in a torrent. The flood lasted a few moments, and the assembled company stared at it, following it to the door and looking out as it swept over the park, collecting more light from the memory of the bones there, and onward downtown, toward its target.
Chapter Twenty
There came a shriek from the most recent occupant of the Tombs prison, groggily rising to his feet, coming to in a foreign, unwelcoming cell of stone and murk.
“How dare you,” Prenze growled, and reached out toward the woman that had been in his mental grasp earlier in the night. But Eve wasn’t there. She’d gotten away and he’d ended up here.… Yet he was still tied to her. He shoved his way back into her psyche.
He gained sway upon her, dragging her under, but she retaliated with fresh strength. She was now surrounded and supported by others. He had no one. Bitterness rose again in him, and he felt his consciousness entirely knocked back into his body as that young bitch cast him out as if he were a demon. Well, then, perhaps he’d act like one.
Prenze’s fresh shriek of rage was followed by the most incredible rising racket: a thundering, tearing, rending, ravening roar that would become legend among inmates.
The sporadic gas torches blew out as if from a great breath. Their pilots would need to be relit lest the gas poison the air, but in this moment the paranormal had taken over and the mortal world was no longer their own. The resulting light that replaced the flame was a luminous silver wave. A dam had burst, and spectral light flowed like water.
The roaring wave poured over the inmates, many of whom shivered and saw nothing, several of whom cried out in fear, a few of whom laughed as if in hope of release. But the silver river pooled and swirled, creating a vortex around Prenze in his stone cell with a cot in the corner where he cowered in his fine suit coat.
“I was done with you! I banished you!” Prenze cried to the wave that was drowning him. “Back, you unnatural wretches!”
It wasn’t one ghostly voice that spoke to him. It was a spectral force, a coalesced army of souls, collected sentiment coming through in choice words curated to address his specific wrongs and what the ghosts of New York, and any other spirit he had wronged anywhere in the world, intended to do about it:
You could have used your near-death moments to see the divine and make a brighter world. Instead, you used powers granted at that precipice for spite and pain. So then must your gift be revoked. You do not deserve it. Be then as you were. We close the spectral door to you but open you to all the suffering you’ve caused.
The light swirled around his head, and he clutched at it, as if trying to peel back an invisible foe. He screamed. A vein in his forehead bulged. A rivulet of blood ran from his nostril.
Collapsing onto the cot, his eyes rolled back in his head.
The scream brought no guard. Screams were common in the Tombs.
Albert Prenze went silent and curled up on his cot as if shriveled and deflated, his world suddenly, painfully small, the weight of consequence crushing the air out of his lungs.
* * * *
Zofia returned to Eve’s parlor in a burst of cold and enthusiasm. “It’s over!” she cried. “It was amazing. There was a whole river of spirits, everything Sanctuary had protected flowed back over the city! And somehow,” she said excitedly, “everyone took Prenze’s powers away!”
“When I was attacked by Prenze, en route to the bridge,” Eve shared, “I lost consciousness, but in doing so, because of being controlled, I had access to his mind and memories. I saw so much of what made him hateful.” She fiddled with a fresh cup of tea as she explained those unnerving moments.
“He was dealt a cruel hand, yes, but also his choice to live in the pain and exacerbate its effects rather than reject it is where he lost his way. I saw his near-death experience. I was with him in the Corridors between life and death when he gained his abilities. I heard that space offer him power. He accepted it as if it were owed him. I suppose what the spirits give, the spirits can take away if the gift is squandered.”
Zofia floated close as if relishing in a secret. “Exactly! And after all that, the best part? Prenze can still see ghosts; he just can’t do anything about it!” She giggled a bit maniacally before sobering. “Serves him right for disappearing my family,” she said, transparent tears suddenly glistening in her greyscale eyes. “It’s my fault, though, Vera and Olga were trying to save me—”
“None of that, little one,” Eve cautioned. “They’d have done it for any spirit, for the whole of the city, buying it time. You know that. They’re at rest. Peace. Not as any of us planned, but peace none the less. There is nothing of their energy the sky won’t welcome as a gift.”
She hoped that was true. In her heart, she felt they were resting after a long, hard life and afterlife of good deeds.
You’re very impressive, Eve, I’m so glad your mind and body could withstand all that has happened, Rachel signed, tears in her eyes. With a smile, Eve rose to her feet and moved to embrace Rachel.
“I live blessed by so many talented people and spirits in my life,” Eve said, squeezing Rachel’s hands before withdrawing a step. “All I know how to do is to try to always do right by all of you.”
Eve wobbled, and Jacob was right there behind her, steadying her with hands firmly on her waist. “Careful,” he said gently.
Eve threaded her fingers through his, and, pulling on his arms so to draw him against her, she leaned back against his shoulders and breathed deeply.
Looking at the lovebirds with a knowing smile, Rachel took the teapot and motioned toward the rear of the house, exiting to refresh tea and giving them a moment alone.
Eve turned to face the man she now was no longer afraid to say she loved, winding her arms around his neck as she spoke.
“The pressure that, for weeks now, has been drilling into my skull, has finally released its torturous grip,” Eve said. “I haven’t felt so good in weeks. Save for the day in the park… Because that day… Before everything went wrong, our day was ecstasy—”
They crashed together in a furious kiss, one devoid of the careful hesitation that happened during the injuries on the bridge, ignoring their still-flaring aches and pains. This was a kiss of release: rough and passionate, made from all their hopes, their fears, and the searing depth of their desire. Jacob sunk with her onto the settee again and only drew back when they heard Rachel’s step in the hallway.
They breathed raggedly and smiled at one another with dazed grins drunk with adoration.
“I am so glad you’re feeling better.” Jacob adjusted his skewed clothes and straightened hers.
Rachel entered the parlor with more tea and another smile. Eve knew she approved of them, so she didn’t feel she had to hide anything; she was among family.
“It’s like the spir
its took the pain away in the torrent, and whatever they did to Prenze cleared away whatever hold he still had on me.” She clapped her hands and darted to the séance table where the Prenze notebook and Spire’s casebook sat lying open.
“Let’s get this case together,” she said, taking one of the notebooks in hand.
“Eve!” Jacob laughed. “You have to rest.”
“We have to charge him,” Eve insisted, “and with solid grounds, before they release him, no matter the effects of the spirit world. And believe me, when one suffers migraines, when it finally leaves, it’s like dawn breaking and energy fills you. I could work for hours!”
Jacob sighed and chuckled, placing his hands gently on her shoulders and bending to kiss her on the head then sitting down beside her. “I’d be angry with you for such bullheaded determination if I didn’t find the quality so attractive,” Jacob said.
Eve turned and signed to Rachel what the notebooks were and continued with an invitation: Would you like to get a read on them, for clues on the page and with the scope of your Sensitivities?
Rachel eagerly joined them, and the three lost track of time, poring over notes and making their own, until each of them fell asleep face forward on the séance table.
Little Zofia kept watch, diligent, loving, and all the brighter a manifestation for all her work on behalf of the living.
Chapter Twenty-One
Eve groggily awoke on her settee at dawn, a stiff pain in her neck, her mind blank as to where and when she was. She listened for her team and tried to extend her abilities to sense them, but she felt no one and saw no ghosts. The world remained disconcertingly quiet. She assumed Cora must still be downtown, Antonia and Jenny still with Gran. Perhaps they’d stayed with Clara in Tarrytown. No one was there, save one beautiful man stirring across the room.
“Good morning, Eve,” Jacob said from the chair where he’d been sleeping, sitting up as she did and rubbing his eyes. “I’d have moved you to your bed, but I didn’t dare be improper and as Rachel had fallen asleep too—I awoke to see her with her head against that Queen Anne chair there—I just couldn’t bear not helping you to something a bit more comfortable than facedown on the table.”
“Thank you,” Eve said, taking in the sight of him.
He’d set his frock coat on the back of the chair. His cuffs were undone and his white collar, smeared with a bit of Eve’s blood, was open with his similarly spattered white neckwear hanging untied aside black suspenders. His disheveled and unbuttoned look created a sensation in Eve that felt like nothing short of a sudden, drastic fever. She didn’t know whether to be frustrated by how overwhelming her emotions for this man were or impressed by what he evoked.
His somewhat impish smile made Eve realize she was staring—gaping, actually—and she blushed and looked away, still unused to the idea that it was all right to be smitten, overwhelmed, hungry. It was still very new to have admitted they loved one another....
He rose to his feet and walked toward her, pausing at a console table where Eve had placed a silver bowl of small mints as parlor favors, placing one in his mouth. Séances often tired Eve’s throat, and she liked to have little lozenges and candies around as an aid. She hadn’t thought about the practical uses of awaking to a lover and wanting a more pleasant kiss.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said, reading her entirely all too well. “You make me feel the same. You…affect me.” He knelt at her side. “To the point I can’t stand it. I’ve just had to be more practiced at not showing what I feel; it is unseemly.” He lifted up a second small mint. Eve opened her mouth. He placed the mint on her tongue. She again kissed the tip of his finger as she had done in the park, little marks of seduction.
“You can always show me how you feel,” Eve said, lowering her eyes.
He accepted the invitation and kissed her deeply, their hands getting ever bolder with one another, until the phone rang and they broke apart with a little moan.
Rising to pick up the phone, when Eve lifted the bell she heard a less familiar voice in a very familiar cadence.
“Eve, darling, it’s me, Maggie, well, Arielle Prenze, but I’m still here. Can you bring the reverend over to get me out? I think I’ve spent too much time in Arielle. I think we’re a bit stuck. Thank you!”
The click of Maggie hanging up, clumsily, in Arielle’s body, was jarring, her request presumptuous but already expected, and it jolted a laugh out of Eve.
“Well?” Jacob prompted, assembling himself.
“Time for an exorcism at the Prenze mansion.”
* * * *
Once a call had been made to the reverends, Coronado tried to hide his excitement at the prospect of being haunted by Maggie again but Eve could hear it in his voice.
Rachel, who was needed by colleague of hers on a trying haunting a few states away, signed to Eve a goodbye and a promise that she would be here for her as things progressed with Jacob, as an advocate and resource. Eve was aware she and Jacob couldn’t court indefinitely without answering to each of their parents, and she had no idea if anyone would be amenable to an engagement should it go that far. There was much to discuss, but for the moment, she just wanted to enjoy having allowed her heart to open to passionate love.
The detective and Eve set off for the Prenze mansion, leaving a note for any of the team who returned and wondered where they were.
“I made a call about a warrant,” the detective said as they hired a carriage waiting at Washington Square Park. Both of them were moving slowly, worn and bruised, and weren’t up for their usual brisk walks or jostling trolley rides. “But an invitation into this mansion is far better.”
Their aches and pains were eased by shifting into a warm, covetous embrace during the trip uptown.
They were taking their time crossing up the walk to the Prenze front door when it opened.
Alfred Prenze, looking rather green, awaited them at the threshold to show them in. Alfred’s general predisposition toward kindness meant Eve wasn’t jarred by looking into such a similar face as her tormentor. This face was ill, tired, and baffled. It held nothing of the contempt she’d fought against. Eve’s Sensitivities were well aware of Alfred’s differences, his softer energy, and wearied—if not a bit cowardly—heart.
“She’s upstairs. Follow me. Thank you for coming. The reverends are already here. With everything we’ve been through, I confess I never thought an exorcism would be part of it.”
Eve hesitated on the landing of the second floor, turning back to Alfred.
“How are you, Mr. Prenze?” Eve asked gently. “I can imagine this is overwhelming.”
“I…I don’t know. Albert drugged me, and evidently has been doing so for weeks, so my memory is hazy. But I hear he hurt someone, trying to get to the spirits. I told him long ago to give up his animosity. But he never really listened to me. I never knew what he was on about. I saw Mother’s spirit; we all did. But she didn’t bother us like she did him. She must have cracked something open in him, and the more he railed against ghosts, all ghosts, the more he saw them and was haunted by them.”
Eve’s tone was grave. “It was us he hurt. The detective and I. Nearly caused our deaths. I hope you can help us with making sure he hurts no one again.”
“I’m very sorry. I’ll do what I can. Arielle told me she gave you Albert’s diary? I have no idea what is in it, so please ask if you’ve questions. He may have painted me in a bad light too, so be advised he’s never been the most reliable of narrators.”
Jacob, who had stood by Eve’s side, stepped down a step toward the pale, weak Alfred. “While I can’t blame you for wanting to protect yourself, sir, with all due respect, I do wonder about your turning a blind eye to something obviously wrong with the accounts. I have the ledgers and an accounting of the London merger, done just before Albert’s ‘death.’ A high clearance in Scotland Yard and an ambassador here opened
some doors for us, and I can’t imagine you’d have built a successful business if you were this open to or unaware of vast sums clearing from the company stores to a predatory artist circle.”
Alfred sighed. “Before he died, Albert told me he’d been supporting a charity he cared for a great deal. After his ‘death,’ I kept the money going, I suppose out of a sense of guilt, out of honoring his memory. I didn’t know what they did.”
Eve bit her tongue so as not to mention Dupont’s transgressions, Mr. Zinne’s blood used for paint, the artist who had gone missing the night Albert died who stood in for his corpse, abandoned as the warehouse burned. All of it would come out; it didn’t have to right now. She motioned to Jacob, and they walked up the stairs as Alfred shuffled away, muttering to himself.
The reverends, each dressed in their black suits with white clerical collars, were already sitting with Arielle in the wide room Eve and Jacob knew from their surveillance position.
Reverend Blessing waited at the back of the room with a slight smirk on his face as Coronado sat at the side of the bed, holding Arielle’s hand and gently praying over her.
“I fear I have a fever, Reverend, tell me, am I warm?” Arielle asked, prompting the reverend to place his hand to her forehead.
“A bit. You’ve been through an ordeal. You’ll be better soon,” Coronado assured her in his light, elegant lilt of an accent born of his youth in Mexico City.
Jacob hung back with the bemused Blessing to ask his thoughts on evidence and mental states of the family. The floorboards creaked as Eve approached the supine woman, and both Coronado and Arielle looked to the foot of the bed.
“Eve!” cried Arielle at Maggie’s prompting.
“Miss Whitby!” Coronado rose and came to clasp Eve’s hand in his. “Are you all right? I heard—”
A Summoning of Souls Page 28