She hadn’t heard the tread behind her, but the soft voice made Rebecca whirl. Michael stood partly in shadow, his bushy grey-peppered hair smoothed from its usual chaos. His entrancing blue eyes danced with an unusually bright light, and he continued. “I know we cannot always choose whom we love. And I know how it hurts to see the one we love looking adoringly at someone else. I know. I’ve been watching you watch Alexi for years.”
Rebecca registered his words, gaped, flushed and turned again to face the window, attempting to hide the transparency of her heart from Michael’s unmatched scrutiny.
“I cannot replace him,” Michael began again, and waited patiently for her to turn. She did, and saw the same look on his face that she was sure she gave Alexi when he wasn’t looking, the look that Alexi and Percy shared. Rebecca had never thought to see someone turn such adoring warmth in her direction.
Michael continued with a bravery that surprised them both. “I do not fault you your emotions, though I must admit a certain jealousy as to their bent. I do not expect to change anything with these words. I know I am bold, and perhaps a fool. But I will remain silent no longer.” His fortitude flickered, and he dropped his gaze. “I shall now return to a glass of wine. Or two. But as we’re too old to play games, I felt it my duty to speak. At long last. At long, long last.”
He offered her a smile that could warm the most inhuman of hearts, bowed slightly and retreated, leaving the thunderstruck Miss Thompson to stand alone once more, illuminated.
Percy lay tucked beneath the arm of her husband on the alcove cot in his office. They could’ve danced all evening, forgetting the press of a looming battle and the doors that threatened to burst open to begin it. She wished she could have lost herself forever in music and company, with friends, wine and promises of tomorrow, burrowing finally at the end of the night into her husband’s embrace so deeply that no mythic force could ever pry her free. Instead she found herself staring at Alexi’s face, stern even in the deepest of sleep, shaking with nerves.
Surely Alexi only slumbered out of supreme force of will. Perhaps it was the sherry. She couldn’t have slept if she’d drank the whole bottle, though; the building was alive, as restless as she. Her blood and stomach churned. She thought she should go study the map to see if it had changed, to see if some miracle had made the red blazing mark fade blessedly away, but she feared the answer would be no.
She thought about the moment, so recent, when she had stared at her wedding dress and been so purely, incredulously happy. She recalled first glimpsing Alexi at the altar, tall and awaiting her with those glowing jet eyes, pledging his love, the burst of heavenly light that exploded from their vows…Where had that simple yet utter happiness gone? Where was that burst of powerful light to ease the sting of darkness?
Silently, at her sleeping husband’s side, Percy wept.
While there were many rooms amid the individual buildings of Athens in which one might sleep, each felt too far removed. Instead, The Guard tossed mattresses on the floor in locations they deemed strategic.
Elijah stationed himself in the small foyer just outside Alexi’s second-floor office, Josephine near the ground-floor entrance of Apollo Hall. Michael was to monitor the chapel. Rebecca wanted to be nowhere else but in the heart of her beloved Promethe Hall, and so she placed herself in the middle of that entrance foyer, staring up at the youthful ghost in the chandelier who kept tinkling the crystals in agitation. Jane was in the hall between Michael and Rebecca, very near to a few new Whisper-world doors that visibly unnerved her.
After fixing his mattress directly in the centre of the chapel aisle, Michael made rounds. Leaving Alexi and Percy their privacy, he first went to Josephine, who had found paper and charcoal and was furiously sketching. He knelt at her side, kissed her temple and placed his hand over her heart, streaming a flood of relaxation and peace through her. “On this night, make sure you say everything best not left unsaid.” Rising, he was surprised to see Elijah enter the room’s low-trimmed gaslight. “Lord Withersby, I was just about to come and give you a bit of a benediction.”
“One last plea for my mortal soul?” the man asked with a smirk. “No use, Vicar. But it’s a night where certain things must not go without saying. And while I do love you, you weren’t my intended recipient.”
Michael grinned. “Why, Elijah Withersby, I have taught you a thing or two through the years. I’m impressed. Shocked, really.”
Josephine smiled up from her pile of skirts and halo of charcoal dust, but Elijah shooed the clergyman in the direction of the headmistress’s office. “Go shock us in turn and take a bit of your own damned medicine.”
Michael cleared his throat and straightened his ascot. “I’ll have you know, I already did.”
Elijah turned to Josephine with eyes she’d never seen so wide. He knelt beside her and said, “Well, Josie, that settles it—we’re getting married.”
She burst into happy tears and buried her face in his arm. And that’s about the time they noticed the trickle of blue fire snaking about the floor and twining around their ankles, but Alexi was nowhere to be found and they didn’t remember much after that. As if sleepwalking, The Guard shifted, moving where their unconscious minds led, all of them adrift in a sound sleep.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In the middle of the night, as Percy lay attempting sleep, she was roused by a warm tickle on her cheek, what felt like a feather’s kiss. Her eyes opened to find that it was exactly that: a sparkling, floating feather made of blue fire hovered at eye level.
It was a familiar portent. She sat up, knowing she was meant to follow. It had been just such a talisman that once led her from a hospital bed to save The Guard from danger. But Alexi was sleeping soundly by her side. Not in danger. Not yet. Tears prickled her eyes. She didn’t want to go.
The feather became a sacred heart—a strong, pounding heart aflame with power, the same image offered her the last time she was reticent—then sparkled and returned to the shape of a feather. Wafting toward her, it kissed her cheek again and caught one of her tears on its shimmering surface. The drop trickled a moment later onto the floor: it knew her pain but remained on task.
She turned to Alexi, whose powerful presence seemed so terribly vulnerable in sleep. A luminous blue mist hung about his head. Likely this was what kept him sleeping.
“I love you so. I love you so,” she repeated, bending close to kiss him but thinking better of it. He might shift and curl his arm around her, trapping her with his affection. “Not even a kiss?” she murmured to the feather.
It bobbed, impatient. Sparkling. It moved forward and pressed itself to her lips.
“Thank you, I suppose,” she muttered.
Blue fire was a symbol of their Work, an element that Alexi controlled. It came from a mysterious source, the remnant of some splintered god, joined now as one with the bricks of Athens. The force had been a guide to her once before, and she felt she had no choice but to trust it again. Rising barefoot, she slipped from its hanger what she prayed would not become her burial dress—grey, as instructed—and plucked her boots from the end of the bed; she would not be seen in such unfit attire as the last time she was called into this strange service, dashing off in an infirmary gown.
Leaving the alcove, a ghost waltz in her ears, she took a last look around the office, a roomful of books, grandeur, unspoken promises and unfulfilled mysteries, where she’d so often swooned over Alexi. The ghosts, they were waiting. Still. Oddly silent. They hovered in the room, looking at her, and at the feather and the office door, alternately, as anxious as she to see what would happen next.
The feather floated toward the door. The portal wasn’t here, in this office; it awaited her elsewhere.
She fumbled with the buttons of her dress. Taking one last wistful look around, she folded her cloak over her arm and slipped silently from the office. The feather bobbed away down the hall.
She was prepared to meet any number of The Guard along her path. Elijah
was there on the second floor, at his station, but with Josephine tucked up in his arms, both of them sound asleep. A bit of blue-lit haze, a softly musical cloud hovered about them. Percy smiled, tearful, wishing she could remain just as peacefully by Alexi’s side, but the feather bounced, moved close and retreated, telling her not to linger.
Stately yet peculiar, Athens at night was eerie. It had always been a magical place for Percy, but she now had a feeling the grounds were an entity itself. The air had that particular quality, which preceded a great storm, distantly rumbling, charged and ready for lightning to strike. The moonlight managed to cut wide and sweeping swaths in contradiction to the angles of windows.
The feather vanished out the front door of Apollo Hall. Sliding her cloak around her shoulders, she carefully opened and shut the creaking front door as she slipped out, her breath clouding before her in the chill air of the courtyard. Academy ghosts glided there, and each gave her a second glance, always at first fooled that she wasn’t actually one of them. If they spoke, it was in hushed murmurs to one another. Perhaps they were scared of her. More likely they were scared for her.
The angel of the courtyard stood at upright attention as always, a thin layer of ice crusting her fountain basin. But there was something different. Percy’s blood chilled as she noticed that the position of the book in those bronze fingers was now face out for all to see.
The feather halted in front of the statue, and Percy saw the book was inscribed. She almost didn’t want to look, for fear her doom was writ there, but part caught her eye and she eased. The words were familiar:
In darkness, a door. In bound souls, a circle of fire. Immortal force in mortal hearts.
It was The Guard’s incantation, carved into their chapel, writ in their liturgy. Percy was fortified as she turned to the feather, which patiently waited. It wanted her to see this proclamation. It wanted her to know that she and The Guard were not alone, that a powerful magic surpassing their mortal bodies saturated even the mortar here, that the very stones she stood upon could cry out in support.
The feather sparkled, enlarging with pride, then it moved on.
The main foyer of Promethe Hall was lit with its own growing light, an ethereal luminosity most often seen in the body of spirits—or in the particular glow of a graveyard—but now a veritable mist hanging in the air. The fog seemed to favour the main hall, casting a supernatural sheen on the newest doors, giving them glowing auras. The feather let her look a moment before floating down to tickle her fingers, nudging her on.
She looked around for Rebecca, who was supposed to have taken a place at the centre of the foyer. The headmistress was asleep against the side of a huge wing-back chair, her hands pressed primly in her lap. Frederic perched upon a philosopher’s bust nearby, his head tucked into his breast feathers, the dozing picture of Poe’s eternal companion, and Michael sat on an adjacent bench, slouched against the window frame. A book of poetry lay on his lap. Perhaps he’d been reading to the headmistress. His outstretched hand rested on the arm of her chair, reaching for her even in slumber.
The feather drew close and again kissed her tears as Percy’s heart once more swelled. A mist of luminous blue hung over each of The Guard, and she hoped their forced slumber was pleasant. Jane, farther down the hall, seemed peaceful, her white cat Marlowe curled against her shoulder, a bit of blue flame around his tail.
“Will no one wait awake with me?” Percy murmured.
The feather paused at the open door of the chapel, bobbing before the eerily glowing inner white walls. Of course. But this sacred place wasn’t anywhere to be alone. Not now. She agreed with Alexi, wanted to run back across Athens and wake him, force him to stand at the door and wait there for her, but she knew he’d never let her go into the undiscovered country. That was where she was being led. Alone.
“Beatrice, I need you,” she begged. “Come tell me everything to expect.”
The dark portal at the altar was already awaiting her descent. Percy made her inexorable approach down the aisle, scared that this solemn and private ceremony would negate her marriage so a new fate could claim her as its own. But—she recalled the glorious vision accompanying her wedding vows—nothing could undo what had been done by such great light.
She reminded herself that Marianna was somewhere across a further threshold. It was her fault that her friend was there. For these reasons, she stepped through the portal and down the narrow stairs, the stones echoing softly as she entered the sacred space.
No second portal stood open inside, but as Percy stared into the impenetrable darkness beyond the stone column perimeter, she could have sworn the shadows moved and hissed. Snakes. Percy’s blood roared with alarm.
There was a tearing sound, and a familiar form leaped from a fresh portal. “Ah, ah, careful with that light of yours,” Beatrice scolded, her grey eyes feverish. “We can’t give you away now that your disguise is so perfect.” The spirit wafted to Percy’s side, cooling her skin with a ghostly draft. Beatrice poked at her grey skirts. “Good. You’ll fit right in.”
Percy noticed the reactive light burning at her bosom, and made to calm herself. The light receded. “I heard snakes, and that Gorgon—”
“None of that now, it was just your imagination. That thing is still in pieces on the Whisper side.”
“And Marianna?”
“Fading but alive. She can’t stay much longer in our world before losing what colour she has and becoming a shade. I’m glad you’re here. I take it the feather brought you?”
“Yes. What is it, exactly?”
“Part of great Phoenix himself. Part of his spirit, giving us the signs we need when we need them. Our Lady said how much it comforted her when she despaired that she’d never escape. The fire I and Alexi wield isn’t ours, exactly. It is his spirit, and he lends it to us.”
Percy nodded. The portal to the Whisper-world, appropriate to its name, whispered in invitation.
“Ready?” Beatrice asked.
Percy envied the spirit’s efficiency, her unwavering determination. She stepped forward, but what was she doing? Why was she always—all her life—moving blindly toward an unknown end? She hesitated at the portal, heart in her throat.
She turned to Beatrice. “No, it’s too vague. I can no longer live with scraps of prophetic knowledge.” She shook her head, retreating back into the heart of the chapel, her feet firm on the stone feather in the flagstones. “Not until I understand more. Not until you prepare me.”
Beatrice sighed. “We’ve no time—”
“Expediency won’t help us if I’m utterly unprepared!” Percy hissed. “Darkness. I, unlike whatever chose to take this fleshly form, don’t know or remember him.”
The ghost eyed her, and her visible frustration softened. “Of course not. I expect too much of you, continue to consider you her. I am sorry.”
Percy opened her arms, gesturing for Beatrice to go on.
“Our Lady,” Beatrice began, “once explained Darkness as a sad, lonely, misguided force, neither man nor god, neither flesh nor air. The embodiment of disappointment, anger, terror and bitterness, he presides over listless purgatory. While she pitied this creature made from the wastes of man, it was never her intent to keep him company. Her heart chose otherwise, and he had no right to steal her. The imbalance of keeping such a pure, buoyant energy in such a cesspool has done more damage to the worlds than anything.”
Percy took this in. Her Catholic sensibilities sought to gain purchase, clung to the idea that there might be many different names and forms for divine spirits. “But he’s not the devil, exactly…?”
“I don’t know your devil, child. I know that there are evil forces, and there are forces that are not evil. All forces cross into the Whisper-world. Not all of them stay.”
“Where does Darkness fall on the spectrum?”
Beatrice shrugged. “He’s Darkness. Unpleasant. I wouldn’t trust him. Nor do I trust every mortal I meet. I don’t know where evil comes from,
and frankly it doesn’t matter. Not right now. Histories and myths are renamed and reinvented eternally across the world. I can’t speak to that. What I do know? This is your story. We must settle the old score between Persephone, her Phoenix and their lineage of mortal friends, and the one that upset it all in the first place.”
Beatrice bowed as Percy stared at the portal again, stepped toward it. This was her story. However improbable, it was hers. She knew the ending she wanted: for her husband and friends to live in peace. She sighed, closed her eyes, loosed a prayer and lifted her foot.
The threshold was cold as she stepped across. Shivers coursed down her spine, and her eyes snapped open to see spirits careening down a number of different corridors. Indeed, she blended right in. Here, a spirit’s feet remained on the ground, and while white as shrouds, they were solid. It was good her white body wore grey, else the colours of her dress, however muted this world might make them, would make her like a painted daguerreotype, a shock against the monochrome. She was grateful for Beatrice’s order.
The sights and sounds of purgatory were dulled, whispery, liquid. Soft greyscale. Nothing was sharp, everything a bit delayed, slow, eternal. And it smelled stale. Not a foul smell, like rotting flesh, but a dusty moldiness with an oddly sweet undercurrent like an exotic fruit. Percy forced herself to linger no longer identifying that scent, lest she once more retch phantom pomegranate. The air hung weighty with moisture. The floor was wet. The river. She picked up her skirts, not wanting to drag the fine fabric along the muck of mortal misery.
The temperature was a pervasive chill that threatened to worm its way into her. When you finally felt that frost on your bone, Percy mused, you perhaps were here to stay. She wondered how cold poor Marianna felt, and where she was kept in this endless grey-stone labyrinth, and if any number of hearths would ever be able to reverse the damage.
Beatrice placed a solid hand on her shoulder. “Now, I won’t be with you when you meet him—”
The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker Page 26