“And I’d never want such a thing!” Aodhan exclaimed.
Beatrice folded her arms, looking coldly furious. “A sin. The Grand Work sounded my death knell and I stepped forward to meet its chimes. If Ibrahim and I hadn’t gone in when we did, none of you would likely be alive. Sacrifices are sometimes necessary.” She vanished back into the darkness, the portal flickering as she did.
Aodhan sighed. “I’ll see you soon, Jane, my love. I’ll wait for you ever and always. Don’t rush to be with me.” He bowed, and just as Percy echoed his last word, the portal snapped shut. Jane stared, and her fingers absently caressed the air where the portal’s edge had wavered.
“My first friend was a spirit. Who is to say whom we mustn’t love?” Percy asked. “Why, for that matter, Alexi suspects I may not be human.”
Jane wiped her eyes and stared. “Why would that matter?”
Lifting her teacup, Percy swirled her spoon around a few stray leaves. “What might it mean for our future? Am I really free to be here, to be Alexi’s, or am I still bound elsewhere—in the spirit world? He’s quite worried about fate.”
“Then perhaps he should enjoy you while he has you. We’re being too quiet, too careful—all of us.” Jane straightened, her cheeks flushed. Her tone was suddenly righteous. “Josephine and Elijah should’ve married years ago. Michael, for the love of the Holy Saints, should bloody tell Rebecca how he feels. Rebecca needs to stop pining over your husband, and your husband shouldn’t give your past a second thought. And I should be able to love my blessed Aodhan!” Her face was scarlet but proud. “There. I said everything, and I haven’t even had a drink.”
Percy grinned. “Cheers.” She raised her teacup. “Thank you.”
“What would calling hours be without gossip? The real task is up to you. Since you’re new, sweet and unassuming, you must convince us to stop worrying and love what we have. Otherwise we’ll end up with nothing.”
The following day Percy was deep in translation, happily busy in her office at Athens, when she heard a knock at her door. “Percy!” came a familiar call.
“Marianna, do come in!”
The door swung wide and her friend, blonde hair slightly askew, came flouncing into the room. “Oooh, what a palace!” Percy rose from behind her desk to give the German girl a hearty hug, but Marianna pulled away with a pouting lip. “I knew it would be different. I knew I’d hardly see you.”
It was true; she’d seen her best friend so little since the wedding. She’d hardly had a chance to catch her breath. “Are you all right, my dear?” she asked. Marianna looked more tired than usual, her eyes a bit sunken.
“Quite well, thank you. A bit fatigued, I confess. And you?” The girl drew back and whirled about the polished floor of the office, her eyes devouring every detail. “Life as Mrs. Rychman?”
Percy blushed. “Still incredible.”
“How close does he look after you?”
Percy paused, surprised. She considered the bruise on her arm and told the truth. “He’s very protective.”
“And his estate…?” Marianna offered a baiting grin.
“Not to be believed,” Percy said. The two shared a familiar, girlish squeal. How many times had they shared fantastic dreams of marital bliss, dreams Percy never expected to come true? “Oh, Marianna, come tomorrow for a visit. You received a card, didn’t you?”
“Ah, yes, so I did.”
“Now that I’m staff…I’ll excuse you from class.” Percy grinned, sitting at her desk and scribbling a note. She tucked a bill in the paper. “There’s fare for the driver. Alexi makes sure I always have money; just this morning he pressed it into my hand and said, ‘I’ll have you want for nothing.’ And it’s true—I want for nothing more than him.” She was eager to share the happiness of her good fortune rather than dreadful portals and ghosts.
“Just so long as he doesn’t leave you alone,” Marianna replied. When Percy furrowed her brow, her friend explained. “He broke your heart once, remember? That other woman in the courtyard?”
Percy blinked. She wasn’t sure what she’d told Marianna at her infirmary bedside in the haze of that fever just before all hell broke loose. She must have mentioned seeing Alexi strolling with that monstrous woman Lucille Linden. Shaking the memory from her mind, she said, “Yes, but that was all explained. There’s nothing but confidence between us now.” She handed Marianna the note.
Her friend’s eyes, while sparkling with the usual mischief, held something else as well—an odd, detached distance. She said, “Of course. Now I’m off to torment Edward; your marriage has inspired me. Tomorrow, then! Your estate! I cannot wait to see where he keeps you!”
Percy frowned as Marianna gave a giggle and trotted out of the room, but before she could wonder if the tenor of their friendship had indeed changed forever, there came a shimmering dark portal in the centre of the room. There was an odd silence within. Percy had prepared herself for the infernal nursery rhyme, but this silence was more frightening.
Beatrice stuck her head out. Percy started. “Dear God, Beatrice, this business is increasingly unnerving!”
“Only the beginning, princess. My. It’s coming along nicely. Any day now, really.”
“What?” Percy asked with dread.
Beatrice hopped out of the portal, and it closed behind her. Shaking her head she said with forced patience, as if addressing a child, “I’ve told you before: the worlds will become one and the real fight will begin. It’s almost joined.” She patted at the air where the portal had been. “I’m grateful for these paths the goddess created, otherwise I’d never be able to get around. He’s got everything locked down, now.”
“What—?”
“Of course, to bring things to their inevitable head, there’s still the key you’ll have to get from Darkness. That’s what we really ought to be training you for.”
“But I…” Percy trailed off. Beatrice concentrated fiercely on the wall.
“Come on,” the ghost encouraged the wooden panels. As if in response, suddenly there was a new wooden door, narrow and thin, next to the one into the hallway from Percy’s office. A faint blue light pulsed around its slender width. Beatrice snorted in triumph.
“I don’t understand, Beatrice. How do these new doors differ from the dark portals? Are we to open them?”
“Not yet. But when the time is right, they’ll need to be flung wide so that reinforcements can fly directly to your aid. There will be a great swarm, like water through a tiny hole. We can’t be congested, the floodgates must rise!”
“Reinforcements…?”
“Darling, you put the key in the chapel lock. You saw the map. There’s another key. It’s there, inside.” Beatrice gestured toward the Whisper-world. When Percy grimaced, noticing a few stray bones cluttering the corridor beyond, the ghost added, “Oh, don’t mind those, he’s dredging the river to make things exceedingly unpleasant.”
Percy shuddered.
“The second key you’ll bring back to Athens, take it to the second lock upstairs, and the merger will begin. The chapel map is there so that The Guard can watch you while you’re in there.” Beatrice pointed again behind her.
Percy shook her head. “Not only am I not sure what you mean, I’m terrified to go.”
“Darling.” The ghost clucked her tongue. “You’ll find this will make sense once you just trust your instincts. It was your plan, after all.”
Percy balled her fists. “I’m not—!”
“The goddess. I know, I know. It’s true, you’re mortal flesh.” The spirit looked at her gravely. “But you’re also more. You’d do well to believe it.” A moment later saw Beatrice’s departure.
Percy sighed, baffled. Thankfully, Alexi’s instincts hadn’t been piqued and he hadn’t come running. How she was to relay this latest exchange, she didn’t know. Some time to determine a course of action was welcome.
She turned to her desk. In one last attempt at being a diligent professor, Alexi had left a bo
ok upon it with a note: I ought to have tried this before. Indulge me, will you? Percy opened it. The book was a Grecian tome on mathematics. Perusing it, a flood of disparate pieces fell into place in her mind, and she sat stunned as her barriers and blockades fell away amid the Greek characters and explanations. She chuckled. Thank goodness they hadn’t tried this successful combination; otherwise the private tutorials that brought them together might never have forced their hand! Maybe her failures, too, had been somehow designed to bring them together. She had to tell him.
Traversing the familiar path to Apollo Hall, a familiar, titillating thrill worked through her body. She’d felt it on many a walk toward his classroom, that place she’d always both anticipated and dreaded. Strangely, Percy found her feelings unchanged; though her love had grown, so, too, had her fear of proving a fool.
Outside, she peered past those familiar Gothic arches and into his classroom. He paced to and fro, in the midst of some maelstrom of algebraic explanations, and she grinned, watching his beautiful and fearsome presence rule the room. His emphatic points caused some of the younger students to jump. She was sure she’d jumped just the same.
A rustling noise made her turn. “Hello,” Percy said to the flustered boy who approached, books for Alexi’s class under his arm.
“Late. Again. I suppose he’ll have my head for it.”
“It’s all right,” Percy reassured him. “He’s not always terrible.”
The boy peered at her. “That’s right. You married him, didn’t you?”
Percy blushed. “Yes.”
“Hmm.” He stared at her a moment, and Percy braced herself for an insult. Instead: “Can he be kind, then?”
Percy smiled. “Quite.”
“Proof,” the boy said, raising a finger, “that no one is to be underestimated.” And with that, he held his breath and entered the classroom.
Alexi whirled at the sound of the opening door. “Mr. Andrews, you are late again, making it four times within…” He trailed off, staring through the door.
Percy waved, allowing herself a rushing thrill that she’d derailed this fearsome academic’s train of thought. She blew him a kiss, then withdrew, lest she prove a further distraction. A few students fell to gossip, and she could only imagine what they had to say. Perhaps the moment alleviated Mr. Andrews’s punishment. But soon the class was silenced with a fearsome clap upon the podium that could be heard down the hall, and Percy giggled again. She’d await him in his office and practice how to both inform and reassure him of the tasks ahead. But how could she reassure him when she herself was terrified? She’d toss in the conversation with Beatrice amid a few correct geometric problems and hope he’d be too shocked and thrilled to care.
Ascending to his office, she noticed more strange panels that hadn’t been present before, more doors fit smoothly into these wooden panels. The few students she saw wandering the halls seemed oblivious to their existence; but as only select people could see ghosts, she wondered if this was the same. Not many saw spirits. Of those, only a select few became The Guard. What would her poor friends have to withstand? And Athens? What was the plan of her divine predecessor? There was more guesswork to Prophecy than seemed fair.
Having been left a key to Alexi’s office, Percy let herself in. She stared fondly at the innumerable bookshelves, the open room with its vaulted ceiling and Gothic arched windows, the moody and intense gilt-framed canvasses on the wall, the fireplace behind the lavish marble desk topped with candelabra, and Alexi’s huge leather chair. Memories washed over her: The time Mozart’s “Requiem” beckoned all the ghosts of Athens to dance. The time he taught her to waltz. Their first kiss. Wonderful things had happened here, but then frightening things, too. That spectral dog sniffing her out. The time he cast her aside, thinking there’d been a mistake in destiny…
Ghosts wafted in and out through the walls of bookshelves. Moving to the chair opposite Alexi’s, she had to remind herself of her purpose. A desire struck her that she should send for tea, but it seemed this office, however fine, was not equipped with a bellpull. Yet, there was a service on a fine, wheeled tray, near the lilylike bell of his phonograph. Tea sat at the ready, the diffusers full beside the saucers, water in the cups. But how would it be heated?
Percy laughed at her silliness. “Of course. My husband is magical!” Despite the unknown terrors that lay ahead, there were simple yet awesome comforts to their odd world.
Just as she was smiling over this, she heard Alexi’s step on the threshold. She turned and ran to him, offering her husband a brief but adoring kiss. “Hello, love. I was about to ready tea.” She moved to set the diffusers to steep.
“Step back, dear,” he instructed. Waving his hand, he summoned a burst of fire above the kettle and cups.
As they settled in their chairs and Percy was about to launch into her news, there came a knock at the door. “Come in,” Alexi called.
“Would you like me to—?”
“Just stay and sip your tea, Percy. We’ve nothing to hide. Not anymore.”
The door opened and the Apollo Hall librarian, Mina Wilberforce, glided in, her beige frock a contrast to her dark skin. She nodded to them both. “Professor, Mrs. Rychman.”
Alexi stood. “Hello, Miss Wilberforce.”
Percy jumped up. “It’s so good to see you, Mina! Would you like some tea?”
“Hello, Percy, and yes, thank you. I daresay I’ve never seen either of you with such a glow. This new life certainly agrees with you.”
“Indeed.” Alexi smiled, pulling another chair to the desk as Percy brought over full teacups. Alexi bade them all sit. “To what do we owe the honour of your visit, Miss Wilberforce?”
Mina stared at the floor as if counting the boards. “I wish I came with nothing but friendship on my mind, but I’ve been noticing things.”
Percy withheld a shudder. Alexi’s face was blank.
“Heavens forgive me for saying so,” the librarian continued awkwardly, “but, Professor, you’re not the average gentleman. There’s something special about you; I’ve always thought so. And, Percy, you’re hardly ordinary yourself. I’ll hope you’ll not deem me mad when I say that the building and grounds of Athens are changing. Subtly, but I’m sure of it.”
Alexi and Percy glanced at each other, then at Mina.
“For instance, the cobblestones,” she continued. “They’ve always been laid in triplicate. Not in septuplet.”
“The stones now sit in patterns of seven?” Alexi clarified.
“Yes, Professor. Athens has gone entirely to sevens. Wall panels and cut-glass windows—there were five diamond panes and now seven. The classroom numbers are different, as if we’ve suddenly more rooms. All in multiples of seven. Is there something that confounds science at work here?” It was more consternation than concern in her expression, as if a supernatural answer would be an irritation rather than a fright.
Alexi set his jaw. “So it would seem, and I cannot offer explanation. Thank you, Miss Wilberforce, for bringing this to my attention. I shall look into it. Is there much gossip among the students?”
Percy wondered how much Elijah would have to clean up.
Mina gave a small smile. “I doubt a soul loves this building more than I, save, perhaps, the headmistress. Athens is sacred to me, and I notice everything about it. I doubt the student body at large would catalogue such details. But, thank you for confirming that I’m not mad.”
“No, you’re not mad,” Alexi replied. “But if you’d mind not causing any uproar, the headmistress and I would greatly appreciate it.”
Percy glanced at her husband, surprised he would be so forthcoming.
The librarian nodded and set her tea on the desk. “Tell me what’s magical about the two of you,” she said. “And about Athens. Please?”
Percy bit her lip, wondering what Alexi would do.
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
Mina sighed. “When I met you, Professor, and then you, Percy…I thoug
ht you might be one of those persons with a sense beyond what is immediately knowable.”
“Indeed,” Alexi said, not a confirmation, not a denial.
“Is there some way I can help?”
Alexi’s face remained blank. “Pray, Miss Wilberforce.”
“That I do.” Mina wrung her hands. “Every day.”
Alexi stared at her. Surely some mesmerism was employed. Percy thought she glimpsed blue fire in his eyes, and Mina rose, calmed. “Thank you for tea. Do tell me if you determine the cause of transformation,” she murmured. “I’d like to know if God—or the devil, for that matter—is a mathematician.” She went out.
As the door closed behind their visitor, Percy stared at Alexi, who went to the window to gaze down at the cobblestones. He said, “Well, it seems we do have friends on that other side.” Turning to Percy, the stained-glass window behind him giving him a halo, he added, “At least it’s seven. That’s our number. Not his. Beatrice did say something about troops, yes?”
“Yes. Troops we’re to set free.”
“Troops. That swath of blue on the map.” His eyes lit, and he gave her a hopeful smile. “Thinking on it, that’s the best news I’ve heard since you first said you love me.”
Percy grinned. “And how about this news? That book you gave me?” She reached for a paper on his desk and scribbled out a few theorems she now knew to be correct. She looked up at him and giggled, Shakespeare ever the best retort; “In the end it would seem it was ‘all Greek to me.’”
Alexi laughed loudly and spun her about. “Come, let’s have a meal, and then on to a drink with the others. I must toast to the fact I’m not a failed professor after all.”
La Belle et La Bête was well-worn with loving use, and Percy drank in every detail of the place Alexi had oft mentioned but that she had yet to visit. He led her through the front door, where the paint of some hundred years had chipped in ringed layers. She glimpsed several familiar faces of The Guard already inside.
The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker Page 22