by E. E. Holmes
I walked away from her as confidently as I could, but my hands were shaking with rage. So, this was why she was really here. Sure, she wanted to try to get her family back in the Council’s good graces, but this was the real reason for her sudden appearance at the Airechtas: to stop Hannah and me from getting that Council seat.
Hannah watched me approach, her face pale and worried.
“What happened? What did Marion say to you? You look furious,” she said as I sat back down in my seat.
Keeping my voice low, so that neighboring Durupinen wouldn’t overhear us, I started relaying to her what Marion had said. With every word of it, Hannah’s wide eyes narrowed.
“That’s why she’s here. We are the ‘sudden emergency’ that meant she had to personally represent her clan this week,” she murmured.
“Yup,” I said. “Someone else could have presented that request to the High Council. In fact, it probably would have gone over better if Peyton or someone were here instead. No, she wanted to be here to argue against any chance we might have to get that seat.”
“Who do you think told her about the nomination?” Hannah asked. She looked around the room as though expecting the culprit to raise her hand. “I can’t imagine Finvarra let many people know about it.”
“Does it really matter? It was probably one of her friends still on the Council. You know she still has allies here, even if she’s been booted out of her seat. Do you remember all the signatures she collected to remove Finvarra as High Priestess? Most of those women are still sitting up there right now.”
“She wanted you to say that we weren’t going to accept the nomination?”
“Yeah. Then she threatened that things would get ugly if we did accept it.”
“And what did you say?” Hannah asked.
“I told her that we hadn’t decided yet, but we weren’t going to be intimidated into refusing it.” I said.
“Really?’ Hannah asked, one eyebrow raised. “We haven’t decided yet?”
“Well, we haven’t,” I said, a bit defensively.
“I know I haven’t. I was sort of under the impression you had, though.”
I shrugged noncommittally. “I told you I would think about it, and I am. Besides, I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing I don’t really want it. If it gives her even a minute of disquiet thinking we’re going to take that seat back, then it’s worth it.”
Even as I looked down at my coffee to take another sip, I felt Hannah’s eyes on me, probing me with an intensity that felt like an X-ray. Luckily, Savvy chose that moment to jump into the conversation, so I was spared more questions.
“What a hideous old harpy she is,” Savvy said, glaring over at Marion, who had returned to her seat with a cup of tea. “Can you believe the nerve of her, even talking to you after what she’s done? I’ve got a mind to walk right over there and offer her a few choice words of my own.”
“Don’t, Sav,” Hannah said quickly. “You’ll only make it worse.”
“She already got an earful from me,” I said. “Trust me, it didn’t make a difference.”
At that moment, the main doors swung open and Celeste swept up the aisle. Her face, though a mask of calm and poise, was very pale. I felt my pulse starting to race. Savvy jumped down off of the table and scurried back across the aisle to her seat. Around us, many other Durupinen were scrambling back to their own places, looking flustered.
Celeste mounted the platform and planted herself behind the podium. “May I have everyone’s attention, please?” she said, although she didn’t need to; silence had fallen and every eye had been upon her from the moment she stepped through the door.
“I am sorry to have kept you all waiting for so long, but I wanted to make absolutely sure I had answers for you before returning here. I have some distressing news to report. Before I explain what is happening, however, I need your promise to listen calmly and to follow instructions. Panic and hysteria will only exacerbate the seriousness of the situation. Please remain in your seats and listen to what I must tell you, and I will take questions in an orderly fashion after I have finished.”
I looked at Hannah. She looked at me. And through our connection, a single word hovered like a specter of nightmares past.
Necromancers.
36
The Shattering
PANIC WAS RISING INSIDE ME, threatening to submerge me. It was the Necromancers, it had to be. Why else would Celeste be talking to us like this, using words like “panic” and “hysteria”? Beside me, Hannah was visibly trembling. I slipped my arm through hers and pulled her in close to me. She snatched my hand and threaded her fingers through mine, grasping them tightly. We did not look at each other, but kept our eyes fixed firmly on Celeste, waiting for the bomb to drop.
“Siobhán has been taken to the hospital wing and has been examined by Mrs. Mistlemoore. The hospital staff have concluded that Siobhán and Catriona’s afflictions are linked. They are both victims of a Shattered spirit.”
A terrified whisper rippled through the room. A few people cried out, but were quickly shushed by their neighbors. I looked over at Hannah, my confusion all over my face, but she shook her head, looking as perplexed as I felt. We returned our gazes to Celeste.
“Please indulge me for a moment as I explain this phenomenon to those among us who have never encountered it,” Celeste went on, and the authority in her tone quieted the rest of the whispering. “Sometimes a spirit, in its confusion, will be drawn to a Gateway without realizing that it is closed. It will sense the presence of the Aether, but it will not recognize the barrier standing in its way. Desperate to Cross, it will try to force entry.”
Amid a fresh wave of frightened murmurs, a vivid memory flashed through my head. A hooded and malevolent spirit in a darkened library bathroom, trying to force his way through a Gateway—my Gateway—that had not yet been opened. It was the most invasively painful experience of my life, and occasional nightmares about it still left me panting and shaking, drenched in a cold sweat.
Celeste’s voice cut cleanly through my thoughts, bringing me back to reality. “Most of the time, the intense pain of the attempt will deter a spirit from trying again. However, once in a great while, a spirit will be desperate enough that it will persist in its attempts until at last, the spirit breaks itself apart.”
A hand shot up to my right. “Please, can you clarify? What do you mean, break itself apart?” the woman demanded, shaking back long, dark hair.
Celeste pursed her lips, but answered the question. “It traumatizes itself so that it can no longer hold its energy together into a form. The energy splits off into pieces.”
The same woman stood up now, not bothering to raise her hand. “But what do you mean? How can a spirit—”
Fiona stood up from her seat and snatched a glass of water from the table in front of her. “She bloody means like this!” she shouted, and threw the glass as hard as she could against the back wall. We all watched in stunned silence as the glass splintered into a hundred sparkling pieces that dropped to the floor with a musical, tinkling sound, like rain.
Fiona let the silence spiral for a few moments before shouting, “Now let the woman speak and hold your damn questions for the end!”
Celeste closed her eyes as though praying for patience, then said, “Thank you, Fiona. As I said, the spirit will Shatter itself. The severed pieces are called Shards. The Shards scatter on impact. They become confused and frightened. They do not remember who they are, or to which complete soul they once belonged. Each Shard only contains a confused smattering of memories that it cannot make sense of until it is reunited with the other Shards. Their only desperate goal is to seek the comfort of the Aether, and so they wander and Habitate in any Durupinen they can find, hoping to find a way through.”
A violent shiver rolled through my body. I didn’t want to believe that any of this could be true, that anything so terrible could happen to a person’s spirit, and yet it made sense. It expla
ined what Hannah had felt when Catriona had been carried past her. The spirits the Necromancers had used to hide Annabelle had been torn apart as well, though by different means. Countless times now, I had felt the shining purity and completeness of souls Crossing through me, one by one. I had connected with their humanity, and shared in the vividness of their memories. For me, the thought of a soul in Shards was as awful to conceive of as a dismembered body. I felt the urge to be sick, and quickly swallowed it back, fighting instead to focus on Celeste’s next words.
“Shards of a Shattered spirit have found their way into this castle. They have nested in Catriona and in Siobhán, whom we now must call Hosts. We are sure now that this is the source of their afflictions,” Celeste said.
Another woman stood up, this time in the very first row, thrusting her hand into the air as she did so. “Permission to speak, please?” she called.
“Very well,” Celeste said, even as Fiona snorted in disgust behind her.
The woman cleared her throat. “So, this is a case of Habitation, then,” she said, in the tone of someone trying to inject sense and reason into the conversation. “Why doesn’t Mrs. Mistlemoore use one of the Caomhnóir to expel the Shards? Surely, we can find a way to contain them once they have exited the body, perhaps with a Caging?”
Heads nodded and murmurs of agreement filled the room, but Celeste put up her hand to quell them. “It is not as simple as that. All of our Castings are designed to work on the spirits—whole spirits—that we encounter in our day-to-day dealings. But Shards are not whole spirits, and our magic is not designed to work on them. Wards have no effect on them, because Wards are meant to keep out spirits that are intact. We have no Casting that will expel a Shard, nor any Circle that can contain one.”
My mouth went dry. What did this mean?
“What about a Crossing?” another Durupinen shouted all the way from the last row of seats. “The Shards want to cross, don’t they? So, give them exactly what they want! Open up the Gateways they are trying to breach and let them through!”
Several of the women around her shouted their approval of this idea, but Celeste was already shaking her head again.
“We cannot do that. It is against everything we stand for, the very reason we are here. To send a single Shard through the Gateway, without reuniting it first with all the others, would be tantamount to abandoning it to wander lost in the Aether forever. No part of that spirit would ever find peace.”
“Do you mean to say,” the woman in the front row went on, her tone incredulous, “that there is no way to help them? That these Shards will Habitate inside Catriona and Siobhán permanently?”
“Not necessarily, no,” Celeste said. “There is one way to facilitate the removal of a Shattered spirit, and that is to get all of the Shards and all of the Hosts together within the boundaries of the same Casting circle. When they have been gathered, there is a casting we can use to put the Shards back together again.”
“Well, you’ve gotten the two of them together into the same room, haven’t you?” Marion said, standing up to join the discussion. “Why can’t you simply join the Shards now?”
“That is the other difficulty,” Celeste said. “We do not know how many Shards there are.”
“You mean to say there could be other Shards floating around this castle right now, waiting to infect the rest of us?” Marion asked, and her voice was higher than usual, betraying her fear.
“Yes, I am afraid that is what I am saying,” Celeste said. She paused for a moment as a panicked wave of cries and shouts rose and then died. “We are still trying to ascertain if Catriona is the source of the Shattering, or if she is simply the first victim of a Shard Habitation. We are investigating her recent activities with the Trackers, attempting to retrace her steps, and learning what we can of her last few days.”
Something clicked in my head as I recalled those terrifying moments in Catriona’s office. My legs shaking, I stood up and thrust my hand into the air.
Celeste looked down at me and nodded solemnly. “Yes. The Council recognizes Jessica Ballard of the Clan Sassanaigh.”
I ignored, as best I could, the feeling of hundreds of hostile stares boring into me. I cleared my throat. “What you’ve just explained to us—about what happens to a spirit when it Shatters—well, it helped me make sense of something I witnessed when I was up in Catriona’s office.”
“What you witnessed?” Patricia O’Toole spat. “What do you mean, what you witnessed?”
“I was there,” I said. “I was there in Catriona’s office when the spirit first attacked her.”
A fresh round of mutters washed over me, and there was no denying the suspicious tone. I waited, gritting my teeth to bite back a nasty reply to the unwarranted hostility.
“There will be silence, please, so that Jessica can speak,” Celeste said sharply. “She has the floor.”
“When I realized that something was wrong with Catriona, I left her with my Caomhnóir, Finn Carey,” I said, pointing to Finn, who smartly stepped out of line and gave a sharp bow to Celeste. “Then I went to find help, but there were several Caomhnóir right down the hall, including Seamus and Braxton.” Again, I pointed out the Caomhnóir, and both acknowledged me with a nod of the head. “As we arrived back at the Tracker office, there was a sort of… explosion. Spirit energy just erupted out of the room, in every direction. It was incredibly violent; it blew us all right off our feet.”
Celeste nodded. “Yes, Seamus mentioned the incident when he reported to me.”
“Well, that must have been it, right? The Shattering?” I asked. “The spirit that was trying to get through Shattered itself at that moment, and the explosion was caused by the Shards that went flying out in every direction.”
Silence hung on the end of my words for a moment, and then Finn took another step forward.
“Permission to speak?” he barked.
“Granted,” Celeste said.
“I must agree with Jessica,” Finn said. My full name sounded foreign on his tongue, like the name of a stranger. “There was a screaming as well, a screaming that traveled out of Catriona and multiplied into many screams that dissipated through the castle. I did not understand what was happening at the time, but the Shattering would make sense of this phenomenon.”
Celeste turned and put her head together with two Council members behind her. A buzzing of discussion broke out in small knots all over the room as this information was discussed. Finally, Celeste turned back to the podium.
“I must conclude that you are correct, Jessica. What you and the Caomhnóir witnessed was the moment of the Shattering. We can come to no other logical conclusion,” she conceded.
Fiona stood up, and her face was aghast. “So, this is not a question of an errant Shard or two finding their way into the castle. The Shattering happened here. That means the castle is full of them.”
All terrified eyes were now on Celeste, who said, grimly, “Yes.”
Several cries and soft screams of panic broke out then, and all around the room, Durupinen jumped up from their seats. A few actually started running for the doors.
“Stop!” Celeste was shouting over the chaos. “Stop! Everyone please! Go back to your seats and try not to panic! Caomhnóir, hold the doors!”
As one, the Caomhnóir around the perimeter of the room stomped their feet, pulling long staffs from their belts and thrusting them out in front of them, creating a sort of human fence. The Durupinen who had run for the exits were all pulled up short, piling up on one another as they stumbled back in their haste not to collide with the staffs.
“You can’t do this!” Marion cried, and a dozen shouts echoed her. “You cannot trap us here like sitting ducks, waiting for each of us to fall to these Shards!”
“If everyone could just keep calm, I can explain what we—” Celeste began.
“This is madness!” Patricia shouted over her. “Call off these Caomhnóir at once! We are not obligated to stay here and calmly awa
it our own Habitations!”
“Obligated? Of course you are obligated!” Fiona boomed, her voice like a cannon blast that barreled through the disorder and left it speechless. She stepped up onto her bench, and then up onto the tabletop in front of her, nostrils flaring in her fury. “Two of your sisterhood have fallen! Two of your fellow Gatekeepers are held hostage by forces they cannot fight on their own. And this is what you do? You turn tail and run? Is that what your sisterhood means to you? Is that all it’s worth, that you would spit on it, and turn your back to save yourselves?”
No one spoke. No one moved. All was stillness.
“You disgust me,” Fiona spat, and the words felt like Shards themselves, cutting into each of us. “Where is your courage? You would walk out those doors knowing that to do so means abandoning two of your own? You leave now, and there is a chance Catriona and Siobhán will never recover. They could lie in that hospital wing for the rest of their lives, mere vessels to a hostile spirit that refuses to let them go.”
The shame and embarrassment was palpable in the crowd.
“And if that doesn’t move you, because you don’t give a flying feck about other living people, think of the Gateways! What about the chaos this will cause, with two Gateways permanently crippled, unable to traffic the very spirits we are bound to protect? There are bigger things at play here than if you get inconvenienced for a few days!”
“Inconvenienced? We could be the next victims of this Shattering!” Marion replied, though her tone was definitely more subdued than before.
“Yes, you might,” Fiona said bluntly. “Some of us will surely have to play Host to these things, until all of them have nested and we can reunite and expel them all! There is no other choice! If you consider yourself too good for such a task, do please point out those here present in the hall that you would prefer to do it in your stead.”
Though Marion threw a pointed look in my direction, she didn’t dare meet Fiona’s challenge. Nor did anyone else. It seemed that Fiona took the time to look into every single face in the hall, daring each one to respond before finally saying. “No takers? Very well then. Kindly let your Deputy Priestess continue.”