by E. E. Holmes
Instead, Keira stepped forward, placed a hand on my shoulder, her eyes glassy with emotion, and said, “Yes. Our sister has earned the peace of the Aether.” She turned to address the room at large. “We will close out this Casting and return the Hosts to their beds. Then we will allow this soul to Cross at last. Jessica and Hannah, would you please do the honors?”
Hannah stepped forward eagerly to stand beside me. If any of the other Council members had objections, they did not voice them. As soon as Keira muttered a quick incantation, they all came forward into the center of the Circle to assist in moving the Hosts back to their beds. Mrs. Mistlemoore called out instructions, hovering like a bee at a blossom over each bed in turn, ensuring that the occupant was okay. Under cover of the general commotion, Hannah and I knelt down beside Eleanora, who was still trying to control her crying.
“We are so very sorry for everything you went through,” I whispered to her.
“I was such a fool,” Eleanora gasped. “I oughtn’t to have allowed myself to be taken in like that. But I was so lonely and so desperate and Lucida said so many of the things I needed to hear.”
Hannah knelt down beside me. “I know exactly what you mean,” Hannah said. “It wasn’t your fault. Lucida is a master manipulator. She is to blame, not you. Please let that go. Don’t carry it with you to the other side. It’s not your burden, and you shouldn’t have to bear it.”
I nudged Hannah with my elbow so that she turned to look at me. “I think I know someone else who would be a lot happier if she took that same advice.”
Hannah blushed and dropped her eyes, a tiny smile appearing on her face. “Yeah, I think I do, too.”
I squeezed her shoulder before turning back to Eleanora. “Hannah’s right. And anyway, it’s much more my fault than yours. You tried to reach out to me, but I didn’t know what it meant. I only wish I could have discovered who you were before the Shattering happened. I could have prevented all of this.”
Eleanora looked up at me, her face glazed with tears. “Reached out to you? What do you mean?”
I frowned. “The sketches. The psychic drawings I did of you—the ones that I showed you to help you remember who you were.”
Eleanora looked blank. “What about the drawings? I didn’t have anything to do with them.”
“Of course you did,” I said, half-laughing. “You had to have reached out to me those nights while I was sleeping. How else could I have drawn them?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Eleanora said. “I never saw the drawings, or you, until the moment you showed them to me. How could I have? I was still trapped in the príosún, unable to communicate.”
I simply stared at her. Her words made no sense. “But how did I—”
“Eleanora? Are you ready now?” Keira came to stand beside us. I looked up, startled. The Hosts lay in their beds, and the Council members were all standing around expectantly.
“Oh, yes,” Eleanora breathed, rising and smoothing her dress in one of those endearing human habits that sometimes carried over into spirit form. “I have been ready for a very long time.”
“The Council promises a full investigation into the injustices perpetrated against you,” Keira said. “You have my word on that.”
“Thank you,” Eleanora said, bowing her head.
Keira turned to look at Hannah and me. “Clan Sassanaigh, whenever you are ready.”
Hannah and I took hands, the power of our gift—our destiny—coursing between us like the blood we shared.
§
“So obviously, you lot are never allowed at another Airechtas,” Savvy announced, slapping me on the back.
Hannah, Milo, and I were all sitting around her bed in the hospital ward, waiting for her to finish lacing up her boots. Three days had passed since Eleanora had Crossed, and the Hosts were finally being cleared for release by Mrs. Mistlemoore.
“Oh, come on,” I cried. “Even Marion can’t pretend we were responsible for this one.”
“It’s got nothing to do with responsibility, mate. You’re just bad bloody luck. You attract it, just like I attract blokes who like to mess me about,” Savvy said matter-of-factly. “The sooner you accept it, the easier life will be.”
I just laughed. I was so happy to have Savvy back that I didn’t even bother crafting a scathing reply.
“What’s the matter then, Hannah? You don’t agree?” Savvy asked, nudging her on the arm.
But Hannah hadn’t been paying attention. She was staring at something across the hospital ward. “Huh? What? Oh, sorry. What did you say?”
“She ain’t awake yet,” Savvy said gently, cocking her head in the direction that Hannah had been gazing. “Mrs. Mistlemoore said the effects were harsher for Lucida, what with her being the point of entry for the spirit and all. They don’t know how long it’ll take for her to recover.”
We all looked over at the bed in the far corner. A privacy curtain blocked Lucida from view, but the four Caomhnóir standing guard around her were clearly visible.
“And when she’s well enough they are transferring her straight back to the príosún at Skye,” I said firmly. “She’ll be gone again before any of us even have to look at her.”
“I personally still haven’t ruled out a long, dramatic telling-off,” Milo said, his eyes narrowed in Lucida’s direction as though he could shoot laser beams of sass right through her privacy curtain.
“Have they decided when the sessions will start up again?” Savvy asked, swinging her legs down off of the bed and getting to her feet. She was still moving a bit gingerly, like she had spent too long at the gym or something.
“Day after tomorrow,” I told her, extending a hand in case she needed it, but she waved it aside with a snorting sound. “There’s a lot for them to sort out, and all of the clans need to make new travel arrangements so that they can stay longer. If Lucida was looking to cause a logistical nightmare, she definitely succeeded.”
We walked out of the hospital ward, moving a bit slower than usual to accommodate Savvy, and found Frankie waiting on the other side of the door. She was holding a notebook and looking sheepish.
“Oh, hi,” she said, twisting the end her braid around her finger nervously. “I… some of the other girls at breakfast said that a few of the Hosts had been released today, so I came to see if… how are you feeling?” she asked Savvy.
“Right as rain,” Savvy replied with a cautious smile. “Or I will be, when the muscle pain subsides. Nice of you to come and look in on me. Cheers.”
“No problem,” Frankie said, looking tremendously relieved at Savvy’s friendly tone. “I just wanted to apologize for before… it wasn’t really you, I just couldn’t handle all of this.” She gestured vaguely around her, but Savvy nodded knowingly.
“I could tell you a story or two about how I rebelled when I first came here, if you like,” she said, grinning. “I had my teachers in a right state, I can tell you. Fancy a walk?”
Frankie returned the grin, nodding. “That would be great. I started doing that log thing you told me to do—keeping track of the Visitations.” She held up the notebook.
Savvy held her hand out for it, and Frankie gave it to her. “We’ll catch up with you all later, then?” Savvy said, turning to me.
“Absolutely. Go be all responsible and stuff,” I said.
Savvy winked and headed off down the hallway with Frankie, already beginning to thumb through the notebook.
“Jess!”
I turned to see Celeste walking toward us, a warm smile on her face. Carrick was hovering just behind her, following like a shadow.
“Celeste, hi! We saw you’d already been released. How are you feeling?” I said.
“I’m well, thank you,” she said. “Although every time I think about how much work there is to do salvaging this Airechtas, I have a strong urge to climb right back into one of those hospital beds and refuse to come out.”
“Don’t try to do too much at once,” I told her, noting t
he lingering pallor in her complexion. “Take it easy, or you might land yourself right back in there.”
Celeste reached out and squeezed my shoulder. Then she turned to Hannah. “Hannah, I owe you an apology. I would give it to you before the entire Council, but I think you’ve probably had enough of being called in there, haven’t you?”
Hannah smiled. “Probably.”
“I didn’t mean for you to feel attacked. I only wanted to be able to ask you some questions, so that we could ascertain the meaning of Eleanora’s message. We were all rushed and panicked and, I don’t mind admitting it, scared that we would be next. It was never my intention to—”
Hannah raised a hand to silence Celeste. “It’s okay, Celeste. I understand. I know you trust us. I just wish the other Durupinen would do the same.”
Celeste sighed. “They will, in time. As we learned from the tragic tale of Eleanora Larkin, our fear of Callers and Prophecies has been ruining lives for a very long time. It is going to take quite a while to repair it all. But repair it we will, I promise you that.”
I managed a small smile, but didn’t reply. I didn’t feel that was a promise that Celeste could keep—at least not on her own.
“Anyway, that’s not why I came to find you,” Celeste said. “I am under strict instructions to deliver this message to you.” And she handed a folded piece of paper to Hannah.
Hannah took it, looking both puzzled and wary, but her expression cleared as soon as she read the words on the page. “It’s from Karen! She won her case!”
“That’s excellent!” I cried. “I mean, of course she was always going to crush it, but now it’s official!”
“And she’s going to be on the next plane out. She’ll be here tomorrow,” Hannah went on. “So, she says we can head home and she can represent the clan for the rest of the Airechtas.”
“Oh,” I said blankly. “I… can she do that? Can a clan switch representatives once the Airechtas has already started?”
“Yes, they can,” Celeste said. “It will mean a bit more paperwork for Bertie, but it is allowed. Several other clans will likely have to do the same, now that we are so far off from our original schedule.”
Hannah handed the note to me. “That’s good news, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, really good news,” I replied automatically, looking down at the note.
“Well, if you all will excuse me, I’ve got a frightening amount of work to do,” Celeste said with a little bow. “I’ve got a meeting with Finvarra upstairs that I mustn’t be late for.”
“How is she?” I asked, looking straight past Celeste to Carrick, whose stony expression faltered.
“She is… much the same. Failing,” he said brusquely, keeping his eyes trained on a spot somewhere over my shoulder. “But she is determined to see this Airechtas out to its conclusion, and I have never known her to falter in any task to which she sets her mind. She has stabilized in the last day or two. Gathering her strength, I assume, for the days ahead.”
“Please send her our best,” Hannah said, when it became obvious that I didn’t know how to respond.
Carrick jerked his head in acknowledgment. “I shall do so. Thank you.” And with one last gesture, somewhere between a wave and a salute, he followed Celeste down the hallway.
Milo sighed. “Wow, you’d think that over time that relationship would get less awkward, but it just doesn’t, does it?”
“Yeah, estranged ghost dad isn’t really a role that deepens with time,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“At least he’s… trying? Kind of?” Hannah half-asked.
“Trying is generous,” I said. “But he’s got a lot going on right now.”
Hannah and Milo nodded. We all knew what the real implications of that sentence meant, but no one wanted to say it out loud. Suffice it to say, if we were ever going to have a chance to salvage any sort of real relationship with our father, we were quickly running out of time to do so.
“Jess. There you are,” Finn’s voice rang across the entrance hall as we descended the stairs. The place was empty, except for the Caomhnóir guarding the front doors.
Speaking of salvaging relationships…
“Hey, Finn. Sorry, were you looking for us?” I asked, sounding as casual as I could manage. Hannah and Milo muttered cursory greetings to Finn, but immediately slunk away toward the couches near the fireplace. I glared at them. They had the subtlety of a jackhammer, those two.
“Yes, I… I’ve just been informed that your Aunt Karen will be arriving on—”
“Yeah, we know. Celeste just caught us upstairs and told us.”
“Oh. Very good, then,” Finn said, looking almost disappointed.
“We’ve hardly seen you,” I mumbled. “Seamus has had you all very busy over the past few days, huh?”
Finn nodded, squaring his shoulders in a characteristic show of pride in his duty. It was kind of adorable, actually—like a little kid throwing out his chest to have a merit badge pinned on. “Security has been stepped up with Lucida here. We’ve been in shifts in the hospital ward and around the perimeter of the grounds. We don’t want to take the chance that the Necromancers might get wind of her whereabouts.”
“What interest could they have in her now?” I asked, my eyebrows contracting in confusion.
“She is a powerful Durupinen with a grudge and an unusual gift,” Finn said. “She could still be very useful to them, if they were ever able to break her out. As long as she lives, she is a threat to the Northern Clans.”
I shivered involuntarily. “Well, she’ll be locked back up in the príosún soon, and hopefully none of us will ever have to hear her name again.”
“Indeed,” Finn agreed. “And when she’s gone we will all return to our regular duties. We… that is to say, we will have a chance to—” he cut himself off, throwing a nervous glance over his shoulder at a knot of Caomhnóir gathered near the front doors. His eyes full of things he couldn’t say, he clicked his heels together, and marched away to join them.
I turned back to see Hannah and Milo both looking at me with sympathetic frowns on their faces. I joined them on the sofa and pointedly avoided looking at either of them, choosing instead to watch the flames dancing in the grate.
“It’ll be okay,” Hannah said quietly. “We’ll be heading home as soon as Karen arrives. You’ll have plenty of time to talk then.”
“I know it will be fine,” I lied. “But Finn and I will have to wait a little longer than that for a heart-to-heart.”
“Why?” Milo asked.
“Because we can’t leave when Karen gets here. We need to stay,” I said, still looking at the fire.
“What for?” Hannah asked. “You heard Celeste: Karen can take over on the voting. There’s no reason to stay.”
“Actually, there’s a very good reason. Finvarra is still going to offer us that Council seat.”
Hannah laughed bitterly. “Jess, forget about it. I know I said we should consider it, but that was naïve. Just look at how the Council treated me this week. It was ridiculous to think we should run for that seat. No one wants us here.”
“You’re right. But that’s exactly why we should run for it,” I said.
Hannah’s mouth fell open. “Jess, you have got to be kidding me.”
“Nope, not kidding. Completely serious.”
Hannah laughed incredulously. “Jess, you’re not making any sense! You hate it here! Everyone turns on us at every possible opportunity. I just spent two days being interrogated and placed under house arrest. I think they would have thrown me into the dungeons if they thought they could get away with it. And now you want to stay here?”
“I know it sounds crazy—” I began.
“Because it is crazy,” Hannah pointed out.
“But I realized something this week. Everything you’ve said is true. The Council hates me and is scared to death of you. I can’t imagine anyone voting for us even if we do decide to run. But I think we need to do it a
nyway. Well, actually, I think you need to do it anyway. I think you should be the one to run for the seat.”
“Me?” Hannah asked weakly. “Jess, come on. You’re not making sense.”
“Look, just hear me out, okay?” I said, taking both of Hannah’s hands in mine. Our connection zinged beneath my skin, invigorating me and filling me with a sense of rightness in the words I was speaking. “We both know it can’t be me. I’ve got a big attitude and an even bigger mouth. I don’t argue things rationally. I let my emotions run away with me, and it clouds my judgment. They would be sanctioning me or kicking me out of every other meeting.”
“No lie there,” Milo said. I grinned at him.
“But you! You’re incredible! You find a way to be rational and level-headed, even when you’re scared to death. You never let them get the better of you. You could be a real voice of reason in there!”
“But Jess, it doesn’t matter how much sense I make if no one will listen to me! No one trusts me!” Hannah said.
“But that’s why you need to do it! No listen!” I cried, because she showed every indication of interrupting me again. “The Council mistrusts you because they fear Callers. They’ve been fearing Callers for centuries. In fact, most of the major crises they’ve faced have sprung from their own fear. The Silent Child, Lucida, and now Eleanora—and who knows how many others? The Council has been letting their fear call the shots for far too long, and it’s caused nothing but catastrophe.”
Hannah didn’t reply, although she was still looking at me like I’d started speaking in tongues. Milo nodded encouragingly. I pressed my advantage and went on.
“You already made the rest of this argument yourself, when Finvarra first told us that she was planning to nominate us. We could make a quantifiable difference. We could change the perception of who we are and what we mean to the Northern Clans. We could propose new rules instead of just getting constantly screwed by the old ones. The Shattering might have changed your mind about all of that, but it’s changed mine, too. I’m sick of having to pick up the pieces for people like Eleanora, people whose only crime was existing. It’s time to start shaping things so that what happened to Eleanora—to us—never happens to anyone else ever again.”