by E. E. Holmes
“I’ll call him right now,” I assured him, before hanging up and dialing Charlie’s number. He picked up right away.
“Hiya, Jess,” he said politely. “How’s it going over there with the ghostbusting?” He chuckled good-naturedly at his own joke.
I forced a chuckle in return. “Oh, pretty good. We heard quite a few bumps in the night. Listen, could you do us a favor down at the museum?”
“Certainly,” Charlie said. “What do you need?”
“Well, I had to head out, and forgot to leave the keys with Iggy,” I said. “So silly of me. Would you mind popping over and locking up, so that the team can head back to their hotel?”
“Of course!” Charlie said. “No problem at all. I’m heading out in a few minutes anyway, to meet Tia for brunch.”
“Oh, that’s great!” I said, smiling in spite of my tension. At least something in the universe was going right at the moment. “This won’t make you late, will it?”
“No worries at all,” Charlie said. “I can manage it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I really appreciate your help.”
“Certainly. Out of curiosity, where was it you needed to go?” Charlie asked.
“Oh, uh, we figured out that the ghosts were attracted to some of the daguerreotypes in the museum. Shriya told us there are more of them, so we are just headed over to the storage locker to check them out,” I said.
Charlie laughed again, sounding skeptical. “Daguerreotypes? Really? You’re putting me on! What in the world would a ghost find interesting about a daguerreotype?”
“I’m not really sure yet,” I said. “But we’re going to try to find out.”
“Well, listen, that storage locker is a bit of a death trap,” Charlie said. “Why don’t you let me go down there for you? I know it like the back of my hand, after all. I can find what you need and meet you back at the museum, if you like. It’s no trouble.”
“No!” I said, a little too quickly. “I mean, that’s okay, really. Shriya gave us the address and the code. Go enjoy your brunch with Tia. We’ll give you a call if we need anything.”
“Fair enough,” Charlie said. “Right when you walk into the storage locker, on the left, there’s a step ladder you might find handy. Oh, and mind the back set of shelves. They’re a bit wonky.”
“Okay, thanks a lot, Charlie,” I said. “And tell Tia I said hi.”
“Will do. Ring me if you want a hand,” Charlie said brightly, and hung up.
“Who were you talking to?” Catriona asked. She had finished her phone call and was now putting all her concentration into aggressively cutting people off on the motorway.
“First, Iggy called me,” I said. “They can’t lock up because I took the keys with me, like an idiot. But it’s okay,” I told her before she could agree with what an idiot I was. “I called Charlie, Shriya’s assistant. He’s going down there now to lock up so that we’re free to head right over to the storage locker. He offered to meet us over there after he locked up, but I told him not to. We don’t need him breathing down our necks while we try to figure this all out.”
“Well played, that,” Catriona agreed, nodding her approval. “If I have to keep putting on that buggering American accent, I’m going to bludgeon myself over the head just to stop the sound of my own voice.”
“I’ll be sure to sound extra-American, then,” I muttered as I texted Iggy the update that Charlie was on his way to lock up.
The noise Catriona made in response might have been a laugh, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Who did you call?” I asked her when I had finished my message and pocketed the phone again.
“Trackers,” Catriona said bluntly. “They’re going to pull up everything we have on Neil Caddigan, see if we can’t connect him to this collection.”
Hearing the name fall from her lips made me want to scream and throw things and punch my fists right through the windshield of the car. Somehow, no matter how hard I tried to put that man behind me, the effects of his machinations just seemed to rear their ugly heads again and again, dragging up every hateful, bitter, violent feeling I’d worked to leave in the rearview mirror. He may have Crossed forever on the day the Gateway reversed, but in many ways he was like a ghost, lingering in the dark corners of my life, finding little ways to let me know that he would always be there, whispering my name in quiet moments, breathing down my neck, appearing just in the corner of my eye.
You can’t Cross a memory. Nightmares don’t seek the Aether.
§
The storage facility was wedged between two grubby apartment buildings in a London neighborhood I’d never been to before, though it had the same air of neglect and run-down appearance as Savvy’s neighborhood. The man working at the entrance pointed us toward the appropriate section without asking for any kind of identification or indeed looking up from his magazine at all.
“I’d say ‘Securi-Tite’ is a bit of a misnomer,” I muttered as we walked through the warehouse. The ceilings were high and crisscrossed with pipes and flickering bays of fluorescent lights dangling from chains. The floors were bare, echoing concrete. Within the massive footprint of the facility were row after row of corrugated metal lockers of various sizes, some as large as shipping containers, others stacked on top of one another like gym lockers or safety deposit boxes. We couldn’t hear a single sound in the place except for the hum of the ventilation system and our own footsteps. It seemed to be totally empty except for us.
“Here it is,” Catriona announced after several long minutes of turning up and down narrow corridors. “Number 1502, is that right?”
“Yup,” I said, handing her the paper. It was a large unit, with a metal door rather like a manual garage door, with a handle at the bottom, secured to a ring in the floor with a padlock. Catriona squatted down and fiddled with the padlock for a few seconds, before giving it a sharp tug and tossing it aside.
“Give us a hand here, will you?” she asked. Together we grabbed ahold of the handle and wrenched it upward. The door rose with a deafening, grating screech of metal on metal, sliding up and back along the track in the ceiling. Then Catriona groped around for a moment and found a light switch, which lit a single fluorescent tube set into the wall.
“Bloody hell,” Catriona cursed, looking into the depths of the unit. It was packed full of boxes, piled onto shelving units and in stacks along the walls, with only narrow paths between them. “We’re going to be here forever.”
“Maybe we should have just let Charlie do it for us,” I agreed. “But Shriya said the box would be labeled with the date, so let’s start there. Charlie said there would be a step ladder… yup, here it is.” I said, after a cursory glance into the corner, where the step ladder was revealed to be exactly where Charlie had said it would be.
We began the slow, tedious process of pulling down box after box to check the dates, which, unhelpfully, had been written on the tops of the boxes rather than on the fronts, where they might actually have done us some good. We’d been at it nearly an hour when Catriona cried out, “Ah-ha!” like a crime novel detective.
“You’ve got it?” I asked, excitedly.
“No, I shout ‘ah-ha!’ for laughs when I’m bored,” Catriona said blandly. “Yes, of course I’ve got it, get your arse over here!”
I picked my way carefully through the box towers we’d dismantled until I came to crouch beside her in front of a large cardboard box with a tightly taped cover. Apart from the date printed on the top were the words, “Caution: Sensitive to Light. Handle with Care.”
“Do you think we can open it?” I asked.
“Well we didn’t come all this way to admire the box, did we now?” Catriona snapped.
“I know but… do you suppose the light will… damage anything?”
Catriona calmed her snark and considered the matter. “Shriya said that daguerreotype plates were light-sensitive. You never know, there may be some of those in there, never used. But the actual images themselves w
ere hanging in the museum in broad daylight for years with no adverse effects. I think, for our purposes, a bit of dim fluorescent light won’t hurt.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said. “How do you want to—” But before I could even finish the question, Catriona had pulled a Swiss army knife from her pocket, flipped it effortlessly open, and run it along the edges of the box top, unsealing it in one smooth, fluid motion.
“Right. With your knife. Obviously,” I said under my breath.
Catriona took a breath and then seemed to hold it as she prised the lid off the box. The inside of the box had been divided into compartments with cardboard partitions, neatly separating the contents. Three of the four quadrants were empty.
In the fourth quadrant was a stack of small squares, diligently wrapped in gauze and bubble wrap. Catriona pulled the first of them off the stack and unwrapped it. Out fell another daguerreotype in a polished wooden case. This portrait was also of a man, middle-aged, wearing a black robe.
“Well, isn’t that bloody interesting,” Catriona murmured, holding the portrait close to her face.
“What’s bloody interesting?” I asked.
“It’s new,” she replied.
“What do you mean, new?” I asked. “How can you tell?”
“Well, to begin with, there’s this,” she said, turning the casing over and showing a tiny ‘made in China’ label that had been partially ripped off. “But that could simply mean that the casing itself has been replaced recently. But look at the plate. It’s in pristine condition—none of the spotting or discoloration, like the ones we took from the museum.”
“Maybe it was just stored more carefully?” I suggested.
“I don’t think so, unless the subject is a bloody Time Lord,” Catriona snorted. “Look closer at his left hand.” She dropped the portrait into my hand.
I looked down at it. At first, I couldn’t understand what Catriona was talking about. There didn’t seem to be anything that suggested the image was any more modern than the others we had seen. Then the man’s wrist caught my eye. A watch was peeking out from the robe.
It had a digital display.
“What the hell…” I muttered.
I flipped the casing over, but there was no date or name written upon it, nothing to suggest when it was taken, who had taken it, or who the subject was.
“The robe is a dead giveaway,” Catriona said. “Ceremonial robes like those have been used by the Necromancers for centuries.”
I vaguely remembered learning this information in Celeste’s History and Lore class years ago, but had forgotten about it. Repressed was probably a better word. I tried to think about the Necromancers as little as possible.
“This man was a rank and file Necromancer,” Catriona explained. “Those higher up in the Brotherhood wore stoles of various colors to denote their rank. Some even had medals. They liked to reward themselves based on the magnitude of their own crimes, naturally.”
“So, do you think that all of these portraits are recent, like this one?” I asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Catriona said.
We pulled out the other daguerreotypes one by one, unwrapping each and laying them out upon the floor in rows. Then, when only six of them remained in the box…
“Holy shit!” I cried, dropping the daguerreotype in my shock. It clattered against the cold, hard floor.
“What? What is it?” Catriona asked.
“Neil. It’s Neil Caddigan. There, that’s his photo,” I whispered, at once embarrassed by my overwhelming fear and yet unable to shake it off. I felt tainted, like I’d just picked up something poisonous.
Catriona reached down and plucked the portrait from the ground, turning it over. The protective glass was now marred with a thin, jagged crack, but there was still no doubt about the face that stared out from beneath it. White hair, silvery eyes, and a smug, self-satisfied turn to his smirking lips—Neil looked just as I remembered him, just as he sometimes appeared in the twist or turn of a roiling nightmare. He looked so sure of himself, so confident as he posed, one hand upon his knee, the other resting on the arm of his chair. Several ornate rings adorned his fingers, and a wide stole lay draped over his robe, along with a large collection of medals and badges.
“He was really important in the Necromancer hierarchy, wasn’t he?” I breathed as I stared down at him.
“The highest of the high,” Catriona said, nodding. “Grand High Master, if I’m reading those medals right. None of the Necromancers who survived the attack on the castle would answer any questions about him, so I cannot say for sure, but based on our research and the evidence, he was the big boss.”
“He’s dead, though. What does it matter if they tell the Durupinen about him?” I asked.
“The Necromancers are notoriously tight-lipped, even under torture. It’s one of the reasons they have proven so difficult to dismantle and destroy. Usually, in other criminal organizations, you can… erm… persuade one member to crack and provide you with the critical information you need to take down the whole bloody lot. Not the Necromancers, though. They choose death over betrayal every time.”
“You mean we actually… kill people?” I asked.
Catriona looked at me sharply. “Do you think that a Necromancer would give even a moment’s thought before taking your life?”
“No.”
“The same is not true of us. Let’s leave it at that,” Catriona said curtly.
It was clear she didn’t want to say any more on the subject, and I reluctantly swallowed about a hundred questions. Did the Caomhnóir do the torturing, or was that the Trackers’ job? Had Catriona ever had to do it? Was this what lay ahead of me as a Tracker? Would I one day be asked to take part in something heinous like that? Then I thought of Neil and wondered if I wouldn’t have happily turned some thumbscrews, or whatever outdated medieval torture methods existed in dank, príosún basements. Then I wondered what the hell this said about me, that I wanted to cause pain to someone else and promptly shut the whole train of thought down. There was no time for that kind of self-examination right now… or probably ever. So I changed the subject.
“So, these portraits—or whatever they are—someone is still making them?” I asked.
“Yes. Or were, up until a few years ago. How else could there be portraits of these more recent Necromancers?” Catriona said.
“But… are they just portraits?” I glanced uneasily down at the silvery eyes. “Or are they something more than that? I mean, spirits are actually drawn to them. There has to be a reason.”
“I think the reason is in the other image,” Catriona said, and her voice was deadly serious. “The one of the woman that we found overlaid on the portraits. We should see if the new ones have the same effect.”
I held the daguerreotype of Neil level with my eyes and tilted it back and forth, trying to see if it had the same, strange image overlaid with it.
“The lighting is too dim in here,” I said. “I can’t tell if these ones have the image of the woman.”
“Here, hand it over. I’ll bring it out in the hallway where the light’s better,” Catriona said, holding out her hand and snapping her fingers impatiently.
I dropped the portrait into her hand and turned back to the box as she picked her way carefully through the maze of boxes and back to the storage locker door.
“What do you think happened to the rest of the stuff?” I asked her, over my shoulder.
“Can you be a bit more specific?” Catriona drawled.
“I’m talking about the rest of the stuff that’s supposed to be in this box. This collection wasn’t just daguerreotypes. There was supposed to be equipment and notes, too.”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Catriona said. “Blast it!” she added as she tripped on the step ladder on her way out the door.
I pressed my hands against my head, which was starting to pound with the beginnings of a stress headache. I pushed my palms against my eyeballs,
causing abstract shapes and colors to appear behind my eyelids. “Okay,” I said letting out a slow, deep breath. “Think, Ballard. The portraits are of Necromancers. The portraits also have images of a Durupinen hidden in them. The men in the portraits have silvery eyes. Durupinen are being attacked and found with silvery eyes. This fits together somehow, but I just can’t figure it out! Think!”
But my brain had officially ground to a halt.
“Catriona, you’re the brilliant Tracker mystery solver. Can’t you Poirot us out of this shit?” I called.
There was no answer.
“Cat?”
A strange muffled thump met my words, followed by a clatter.
“Cat? Are you still there?”
There was another sound, but I couldn’t quite make it out. A moan? Heart pounding, I stood up too quickly, the blood rushing to my head, throwing me off balance so that I had to lean on the wall as I hurried through the maze of boxes. As I emerged around the last set of shelves, I saw Catriona lying on the ground just outside the storage unit, her blonde hair spilling across her face, one arm stretched out in front of her, as though reaching for the daguerreotype that now lay on the ground a few feet away.
“Oh my God! Catriona!”
As I started toward her, I had one last fleeting glimpse of her face. Her eyes were open, her mouth gaping. She seemed to be trying to say something to me. Her head shook “no.”
Then, from behind me, an arm grabbed me around the shoulders. A hand clamped roughly over my mouth as a heavy blow struck the back of my head. Then a sharp pain shot through my neck, and everything went black.
20
Betrayed
THERE WAS NO LIGHT. There was no sound save for my own ragged breathing. There was nothing. I shifted my body.
Oh God, except for pain. Blinding, sickening, agonizing pain.
I tried to think through the pain, to use my senses to figure out what the hell was going on, but every pulse of agony that shot through my head and down my body erased my capacity for rational thought anew. Fighting roiling waves of nausea, I held myself perfectly still, hoping and praying that it would pass. After a few moments, it dulled enough that the fog in my brain cleared, and I was able to begin to process my situation.