And four days later, we were no closer to accomplishing any of them. Helen and Roderick made one more nighttime visit, but once again our boundaries held. After that they seemed to back off. (And frankly, their silence made me almost as nervous as the attacks.) But we had no such success with anything else.
With Gemma’s help I managed to do a few simple things: change my clothes, make the air cooler or warmer, even cause a little breeze. But when it came to fire, I was completely hopeless. I couldn’t even light a pile of sticks, let alone myself.
It was a long-standing family tradition that my birthday cakes were served without candles. Everyone thought it was some sort of age-shyness thing. But it started because I was afraid of fire. Throughout my childhood and well into adulthood, I had nightmares about being trapped in a burning house. I wish I could point to some early incident—saving a litter of baby wolves from a forest fire would be good—that would justify my cowardice, but I have no idea where it came from. For the longest time, I wouldn’t even light a match.
That was a problem I overcame so I could do the ritual, and I got so I could handle ordinary, friendly fires, the kind you gather around after sledding, or make s’mores with. But the idea of lighting myself on fire stopped me completely.
Tom seemed equally defeated. Gemma’s ward protected him; he saw no more of Helen and Roderick while he was out looking for his watch than we did on his plot. But the watch was nowhere to be found. Nobody willing to talk to him had seen it, and he’d searched the swamp more times than he could count by then. Gemma went to help him look a few times, and even I went once, when I needed a break and a change of scenery. But it seemed his remnant had completely vanished.
Nobody wanted to say we’d hit a dead end, so we just kept on trying. As the days went by, I wondered how close to real time they were, and how long I’d been gone. At night we ate and drank and tried to relax, hoping to sleep free of storms and the cries of evil children, at least, if not of worries.
ELEVEN
* * *
On the fifth day of sucking at our goals, Tom didn’t leave after breakfast as he had the previous four.
“I’m taking a break,” he announced. “Maybe I can help you instead, Lydia.”
“Sure.” I was standing in the front hallway with Gemma, getting ready to go outside and practice. “I can always use a bigger audience for my failures.”
“Well, with that outlook, you’re bound to fail.” Tom opened the door and stood aside with an after-you gesture. Gemma went out first, and I followed.
“Like your attitude is so good?” I snapped as I passed him. We walked around to the side of the yard, beyond the garden, where Gemma had set up a ring of stones with a pile of wood in the middle, like a campfire. It was my job, had been my job, to light it. I was not doing my job.
“Make it a happy thought,” said Gemma, not for the first time.
“Fire is not a happy thought,” I muttered.
“And that is exactly your problem,” she said. “You don’t really want a fire. You don’t want to do this.”
“Well who the hell wants to set themselves on fire?”
Tom made an exasperated sound, but Gemma smiled. “I can see your trouble. But you won’t be able to do it until you can overcome it. You can’t half-will something into existence.”
“Fine,” I said. “So how do I make fire a happy thought?”
“We know how badly Tom wants to go home and see his daughter again,” Gemma said. “What’s waiting for you there that you can hold in your mind, that you would do whatever it takes to get to?”
“My little boy,” I said without hesitation. “Warren. He’s seven.”
“The boy from the locket,” Tom said. I nodded, but he went on looking at me, clearly waiting for me to say more. Oh I get it, the early-twentieth century man wants an explanation for my having a little boy despite my lack of wedding band. Hypocrite. As if he didn’t die and leave Flora in that exact situation, for his brother to rescue.
“Warren isn’t really my son. He’s my brother’s, who passed away. I live with his...” I trailed off before I said other father. I had a feeling that trying to explain openly gay families would take longer than we wanted to spend just then. “It’s complicated. Let’s just say I love him like my own and leave it at that.”
“Yes,” said Gemma. “I said to hold the thought in your mind. I didn’t say we needed to discuss it.” The words themselves were merely cranky, but the tone of them sent a wave of fear down my spine. It was otherworldly, hateful, the voice of an angered goddess. I looked at her, but her face was half-turned away, and half-hidden by her bonnet. I didn’t think I needed to see the look in her eyes to understand what was going through her head, though. I remembered well enough what she’d said at dinner the other night: I couldn’t stand it. The happy family. The less we focused on my (mostly) happy family, the better.
“Set the sticks on fire for Warren, then.” Her voice was more controlled now, but I wouldn’t forget. I liked her a lot, but Gemma was dangerous. Everyone here was dangerous. Maybe even Tom.
It was all for nothing, anyway. Even picturing Warren’s face, laughing at some silly joke of Charlie’s, I couldn’t light the fire.
“Maybe you should practice with a bit of a smaller challenge first.” Tom took off his hat and paced. “Conjure something you’re less afraid of than fire, but still difficult. Spider webs, say.”
“Spider webs? Why would I be afraid of spider webs?”
“Of course you can’t conjure the actual spiders. But if the webs are realistic enough—”
“I’m not afraid of spiders,” I interrupted.
He stopped and looked over his shoulder at me. “All women are afraid of spiders.”
“How sexist of you. But no. I actually like spiders.”
“You like spiders?” Gemma looked aghast at this.
I shrugged. “I used to hang out in our basement a lot when I was a kid. My mother was afraid of spiders, just completely despised them, and it was full of them down there. I was pretty much guaranteed to be left alone.”
“Well something else, then,” Tom said. “What else are you afraid of besides fire?”
“Dentists. But I don’t think I’d be afraid of the chair.”
“This is the wrong way to go about it, I think,” said Gemma. “We should go back to the last time you were successful and build up from there. You’ve managed simple things.” She looked back at Tom. “We don’t need a challenge at all, we need something easy to start with.”
“The first thing I learned to conjure was rye,” he said.
“Precisely. Because it was what came most naturally to you in life.” Gemma rolled her eyes and turned to me. “What comes naturally to you? What are you good at?”
“I... um...” I looked away, trying to think whether there was any less embarrassing way to phrase the truth, which was: I was not good at anything. The only thing that made me special was the switchel ring. The one I was now trapped in. The one I wouldn’t even have been invited to learn to use, if not for my brother. Nat was the one who was smart and talented enough to catch Cyrus’s attention. Nat was the one who started us on this whole adventure.
Nat. Now there was somebody special. But Nat was dead, and the only special things I had were stolen from him. I was living my dead brother’s life, doing his job with the canteen, raising his son with his husband, living in his house. Carrying his picture around my neck all the time. To remind me of him, I suddenly wondered, or to remind me of who I should have been, if only I’d been good enough?
And Nat wasn’t even the good son, not if you asked my mother. But that was a subject for a whole other therapy session. As it was I could feel Tom and Gemma’s eyes on me. I’d stood there like an idiot for way too long, which would not make answering this question any less embarrassing.
“I’m not really good at anything,” I said finally. “I was good at banishing apparitions, but only because my brother convinced Cyrus to teach me.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Tom said. “Everyone is good at something. What does your family compliment you on, thank you for?”
“Oh, switchel in the fridge, something bubbling on the stove. They like when I make pie. I’m a housewife, Tom. Well. Except for the wife part.”
“Then it’s simple,” Gemma said. “The answer’s been in front of us every night. Tom’s been providing our dinners up until now. It’s your turn.”
“I can’t...”
“Of course you can,” Gemma said. “But since you’re so sadly lacking in confidence, we’ll start with pie.”
“Why pie?”
“Because pie is delicious. You just handle dessert tonight, yes?”
“Okay.” For the first time in days, I felt better. That could actually work. Fire was one thing. Pie was quite another. When the time came, I asked them to give me some privacy—I was not doing well with an audience—and went into the dining room. I stared at the empty sideboard.
And I thought about making pie. Key lime, blueberry, pecan. All favorites in my house, but both Warren and Charlie liked the caramel apple the best. I closed my eyes and recalled the feeling of a cool knife in my hand, the firmness of the apples, the grain of the wooden cutting board I used for fruit. The sound of my food processor chopping up the nuts, but not too fine. The smell of vanilla—Tahitian, it’s the only way to go—and brown sugar. (Tom loves vanilla. Yes okay but can we concentrate right now?) Exactly the right amount of nutmeg.
I could smell it baking. The room felt warmer, the way my kitchen always did when the oven was on. In the moment before I opened my eyes, I saw my pie exactly as it would be, exactly as it was: fresh from the oven, steam flowing out of the slits I’d cut in the upper crust.
And it was there on the sideboard. Just as I knew—not merely hoped this time, but actually knew—it would be.
I immediately made two more pies. A one-to-one pie-to-person ratio may have been more than was strictly necessary, but what can I say, I was on a roll. And you can never really have too much pie.
By the time Tom came in to make dinner I was feeling sufficiently sassy to put a big bowl of whipped cream, heavy on the vanilla, beside the warm pies. He smiled at me. “I love pie.”
“That doesn’t make you special,” I said. “Everyone loves pie.”
It’s kind of embarrassing, looking back, that my turning point wasn’t something a little more (or at all) badass. Leaping, spinning martial arts attacks, maybe, or shooting something dead center with a bow from a great distance. Pie is many things, but it is not badass.
Still, it got the job done. It wasn’t enough to know that I could conjure things, or think that I would conjure things. I needed to know that I would. After that, well, I can’t say it was easy. But it was easier.
By the end of the next day, I was able to create a flame in my palm, and hold it there for a few seconds before my mind started screaming at me that I was burning myself to death, and I felt the pain, and shook the fire out of my hand. Only a few seconds, but that was a pretty big breakthrough. I was sure I’d have it down perfectly in no time.
That’s a silly expression, no time. Of course you’re going to need some time.
But in this case, no time was exactly what I had.
The night after I learned to conjure that flame in my hand, Helen and Roderick broke through all our boundaries. I was asleep when it happened, and completely unaware of it until it was almost too late. There was no storm this time, no crying. No warning. Just my eyes opening, a puff of rancid breath on my cheek, a dead-gray face above me. And clawed fingers at my throat.
I screamed and managed to throw Roderick off me before his fingers tore my neck open completely, although I could feel hot blood coming from the scratches. He made a feral sound and crouched by the open bedroom door, considering his next strike while I considered how I’d defend myself from it.
Candlelight flickered in the hallway. Then Helen was standing there, nodding a greeting, like we were at a fucking dinner party.
“I see no reason for this to grow into an ugly incident, dear.” From behind her, down the hall, I could hear muffled shouts. She glanced over her shoulder, then turned back to me with a smile. “I’ve locked them in their rooms, and tied Gemma up besides. She can be so troublesome. But they’ll be able to break through it before long. This isn’t my plot, after all. And wouldn’t it be nice if they didn’t have to get hurt?”
“Meaning just be a good girl and let you kill me without making a fuss?” I asked.
Helen took a step further into the room and ran her fingers through her disgusting child’s hair, looking fondly down at him. Roderick made a sound that I guess was a sigh, and sat down on the floor. He reached over, pulled two books from the shelf, and started inspecting them, like the curious toddler he should have been.
Which I guess was what was on her mind, too, because she said, “Well, it would hardly be undeserved would it? You have to accept the consequences of your actions, Lydia. You put us here.” She nodded down at her son. “You made him into this.”
“I did not. He was a monster before I ever came near him. He killed my brother.”
Something ferocious flitted across Helen’s face at the word monster, but she composed herself quickly. “In self-defense. Your brother attacked us.”
“After you attacked the four-year-old girl living in your house! Talk about accepting the consequences of your actions, Helen! Have you forgotten that? The things you did? The things you did to little children? You were a good mother once. Do you think we should have left you there, hurting other people’s babies?”
For a moment I thought I was actually getting through to her. There was a line between her brows, a vacant, confused look in her eyes. She looked toward the window, then down at her son. Her hands clenched and twisted the fabric of her long skirt.
Maybe I can actually talk my way out of this. She hasn’t always been an evil ghost. Somewhere in there is the Helen she was in life. “You don’t want to hurt other people’s children do you, Helen? The way Jacob hurt yours?”
Too far. The word Jacob hit her like a slap. Her head snapped sideways, and when she turned back to me her eyes were narrowed, her face white.
“This arguing is tedious,” Helen said quietly. “You and I both know how this is going to end. You’ve been here long enough to know how power works here. I’ve got a great deal of it. I can do anything I like to you, and you haven’t learned enough to stop me.”
How power works here. Yes, I had learned a thing or two about that. More than she was giving me credit for, I suspected. Still flushed from my recent success with the fire, I thought I could actually fight back against her. I thought I had this whole netherworld-reality-control project handled.
I wasn’t right.
Slowly, I hoped casually, I moved my hands behind my back. I thought about making those pies. Then I smiled.
“Speaking of how things work here...” I held out my right hand. In it was a large chef’s knife. “Did you know that weapons brought from the physical world do physical damage here? We killed Drayne with this.”
I wasn’t kidding when I said Helen had been a good mother once: the look she gave me was the universal look of mothers to liars, purse-lipped, disappointed. “Drayne was killed with a pocket knife. Cyrus’s remnant, wasn’t it?”
Shit. I’d forgotten about the witness. Drayne’s flunkie must have been telling tales. I recovered as quickly as I could. “Yes, that was Cyrus’s remnant, and this was mine. One of my mother’s old set of knives. My best memories are of her teaching me to cook and bake, in our cheerful yellow kitchen when I was...” I looked down at Roderick and pretended really hard to think he was cute, hoping for a realistic expression of such on my face. “Well, when I was about his age. Did you ever bake with him?”
“Lydia!” Tom, rumpled but still wearing his suit, came crashing into the room. He looked from me to Helen. Then he took a step toward her, put his hands i
n his pockets, and seemed to grow taller as he looked down at her. If Helen had mastered the quintessential scolding mother’s look, Tom had certainly mastered the father’s. “Get out.”
“Tell her, Tom,” I said.
He frowned, but didn’t take his eyes off Helen. “Tell her what?”
“That this knife was my remnant, and that I can kill her with it. Tell her what happened to Drayne. Tell her how that looked.”
Tom, bless him, didn’t miss a beat. “Better yet, how about if I tell her how it smelled?”
“You heard the man, Helen,” I said. “Get out. Before I use this knife to banish your son a second time. I wonder if the world after this one is more or less pleasant?” I was trying to be intimidating, but as the words left my mouth, I felt a sinking fear that I’d botched the conversation yet again. Her son was carved up, Lydia you dumb bitch. And now you’re threatening him with a knife? She’s going to go berserk and kill us all.
But maybe there was still hope. I could hear Gemma struggling to get out of her room. She was pounding on the door now, which meant she’d broken free of whatever Helen had tied her with. Maybe she’d get out in time to save us. Or maybe Helen’s anger and outrage would be so great that she’d lose control and make a mistake. Or maybe instead of flying into a murderous fit, Helen would... burst out laughing.
Which was what she did. Laughed until she leaned forward under the weight of it, hands on her thighs, and actually, I kid you not, snorted.
Roderick, still playing on the floor, looked up at his mother. He watched her for a few seconds, then started laughing himself. His laugh was like a small animal’s death cry. All in all, I’d have preferred the murderous fit.
The laughter was disconcerting, even chilling, but it was also an opportunity to take her by surprise, and I decided not to let it pass. I leaped forward, knife in hand. Okay, it wasn’t real. And she knew it wasn’t real. But it was still pretty hard to see yourself bleed without believing it on some level. And, I guessed, even harder to watch your child bleed.
Ghost in the Canteen (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 1) Page 14