by E. E. Holmes
Phoebe looked blankly around her, like the question was both unexpected and unnecessarily difficult to answer. “No, I… I think I’m all right. Can’t think of nothing else.”
Mrs. Mistlemoore nodded curtly, and turned on her heel, striding back up toward her open office door, muttering unintelligibly to herself.
As I turned to watch her progress, I caught sight of Milo’s face. He was standing just behind me, off my shoulder. His expression was… odd. Confused. He was looking at Phoebe as though there were something not quite right about her.
“Are you okay?” I whispered to him.
Milo replied with a movement that was somewhere between a shrug and a shaking of his head. “I don’t know,” he said, so quietly that I barely caught the words at all. “It’s… there’s something different.”
“What do you…?”
Before I could finish my question, Savvy had plopped herself down on the edge of Phoebe’s bed, nearly upsetting her cousin’s second glass of orange juice. “Oops, sorry, mate!” She steadied the glass of juice and handed her cousin her fork. “Eat up now,” she said encouragingly. “You need your strength. Can’t make a full recovery on an empty belly.”
Phoebe nodded, still looking unsure whether this bright and cheerful version of her cousin wasn’t simply a hallucination. But she heeded her words, stabbing a piece of scrambled egg and transferring it a bit shakily to her mouth.
“That’s it, that’s it!” Savvy exclaimed. “Can’t help spirits lying about in bed like a lump, can we?”
“Suppose not,” Phoebe said with her mouth full of food.
“Jess…” Milo’s voice came through the connection this time, startling me.
“What is it, Milo?” I sent my reply thrumming back along the strings of our connected consciousness.
“Did Mrs. Mistlemoore mention… Is there a possibility that… that Phoebe’s Spirit Sight might still be affected by Charlie’s Castings?” Milo asked.
I shrugged. “I suppose so. They aren’t sure what the lasting effects will be. The recovery is expected to be gradual.”
Milo did not reply, but he was still staring at Phoebe as though disturbed by something.
“Milo, what’s wrong?” I asked him.
“I’m… not sure. Maybe nothing,” Milo replied.
Savvy, meanwhile, was chattering on about this and that, filling Phoebe in on what she had missed, but carefully leaving out all the sad and terrible details of the aftermath of her attack.
“What have you done to your hair?” Phoebe asked suddenly.
Savvy’s smile faltered, and she raised a hand automatically to rub at her neck, now exposed without its thick curtain of ginger locks. “What about it?”
“You’ve gone and cut it all off,” Phoebe said, sounding a little scandalized.
“Oh, yeah,” Savvy said, with a forced casualness. “Gave it a bit of a trim, you know. It was time for a change.”
A soft moan caught all our attention. I glanced over, and saw that Flavia was tossing and turning a bit in her sleep. Her strength, while improving, was nowhere near completely restored yet, and she still spent a lot of time sleeping.
“Hey, Sav, maybe keep it down a bit, huh?” I suggested, nodding in Flavia’s direction.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, mate,” Savvy replied, dropping her voice just a bit, though it still seemed to carry with the force of a megaphone. She turned back to Phoebe, grateful for the interruption so that she could change the subject. “So anyway, once you’re up and about, and all that, I thought maybe we could stay at Fairhaven for a bit, until you’re feeling tip-top. No need to travel all the way back to the country quite yet. Besides, we’re already behind on a Crossing, and I’m getting harassed.”
“Harassed?” Phoebe asked, struggling to smear butter onto her toast. Her hands were still shaking rather badly, as though the knife and a piece of toast were entirely too heavy for her.
“Here, let me do that,” Savvy said, snatching both the toast and the knife from her cousin’s hands and slathering the bread liberally with butter before handing it back to her. “Yeah, harassed,” she confirmed. “You know, by the ghosts that want to Cross. Surely, they’ve been hounding you, too, since you’ve woken up.”
Phoebe shook her head, her mouth full of half-chewed toast. She gave an exaggerated swallow, and said, “No, not at all. It’s just me in here. Well, and Mrs. Mistlemoore.”
“Lucky you,” Savvy said with a wink. “I expect this place is Warded, is it? Well, just you wait until they spring you. You won’t get a moment’s peace.”
Hannah looked around curiously. “Is this place warded? I would imagine so. I’ve never thought to ask.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t suppose spirits really need a hospital wing, do they? And I can’t imagine Mrs. Mistlemoore wants random spirits harassing patients who are trying to get better.”
“Eleanora was in here,” Hannah pointed out. “During the Shattering, remember?”
“Yeah, but she was carried over the threshold as Shards inside the Hosts,” I reminded her. “I don’t know if she could have just drifted through the walls by herself, if she was intact.”
Savvy looked up, joining the discussion. “Well, Milo can get in, can’t he?”
“Well, yeah, but he’s with us,” I reminded her. “He can cross into any Warded spaces, as long as we’re with him. That’s one of the perks of being Bound.”
“One of the only perks,” Milo said, smirking at me.
Phoebe raised her eyebrows. “Milo can get in? Really?”
Savvy snorted. “Well obviously, you git, as he’s here.”
Phoebe blinked slowly. “He’s here? Now? Where?”
We all looked at each other blankly.
“He’s… right here,” I said slowly, gesturing to the space beside me, a horrible thought beginning to dawn.
Beside me, Milo gave a feeble little wave of his hand. His eyes darted to me, and I knew from the panicked light in them that he was already thinking the same thing that I was.
Phoebe blinked again. “Where?”
Milo’s voice was flat, almost morose, as he replied, “I’m right here, Phoebe. I’m right here in front of you.” He floated several feet forward, until he was only a few feet in front of her face. She stared right through him, her expression blank, befuddled.
“I… I can’t see him. Are you sure he’s here?” she asked, her voice very small, betraying just the tiniest amount of something that could’ve been the beginnings of fear.
I looked at Milo again, as though not trusting my own eyes that he was actually there. He was looking solemnly into Phoebe’s face, and he was nodding his head minutely, as though she had just confirmed something for him, something he had already suspected. Phoebe stared right back at the place where he sat, gazing right through him, past him, to the empty air beyond.
I turned to Savvy, and was shocked to see her smiling, looking back and forth between all of us, as though waiting for us to let her in on the ruse. “You’re putting me on, right?” she asked, a trace of a laugh in her voice. “Come on now, joke’s over.”
She looked first at Hannah, who shook her head, eyes wide. Then her gaze fell on me, and I raised empty hands, trying to show her without words that there was no joke, and I wasn’t in on anything. Her face starting to fall, she turned lastly to Milo, who looked straight up into Savvy’s eyes and shook his head once, gravely.
Savvy made a choking sound in the back of her throat. She rose slowly from the edge of the bed. She looked at Phoebe with dawning horror, and backed away a step or two, before whispering, “You mean it, don’t you? You really can’t see him?”
Phoebe scanned all our faces. I watched her fear blossom and her eyes fill with tears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered. “He can’t be here. I’d be able to see him, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I?” she repeated, her voice rising in a slightly hysterical tone.
“I’m going to get Mrs.
Mistlemoore,” Hannah mumbled to me before scurrying away down the hospital ward.
Milo rose from the bed, floating backward until he came to rest right beside me. The coolness of his presence made me shiver, and I felt a lump building in my throat.
“You knew, didn’t you?” I asked him silently, using the connection again, so that Phoebe and Savvy wouldn’t hear. “You knew as soon as we walked into the room, didn’t you? This is what you were trying to tell me a few minutes ago.”
“I knew something was wrong,” Milo replied. “I couldn’t sense the Gateway in her. There was no pull, no lure to come closer. It was like she was just… empty.”
Empty.
I wanted to be sick. Oh, God. What had he done? What had that bastard Charlie done?
Fighting for self-control, I stepped over toward Savvy and touched her arm gently. “Sav? Why don’t we step out for a moment and let Mrs. Mistlemoore take a look at Phoebe, okay?”
Savvy looked over at me, like a lost child. “What?” she asked me blankly. “What did you say?”
“I said,” I repeated gently, “there might be a perfectly logical explanation as to what’s going on. It may not be something to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about?” Savvy asked in a strangled voice. Her chest was starting to heave, as though she could not catch her breath properly.
I leaned in to her, so that Phoebe would not hear. “She’s still recovering. It might be temporary. It might be reversible. She might wake up tomorrow with her Spirit Sight completely restored. We can’t know for sure, and we shouldn’t cause Phoebe to panic just when she’s starting to make some progress. Let Mrs. Mistlemoore work her magic, all right?”
“Yeah… yeah, all right.” Savvy said dazedly, just as Hannah and Mrs. Mistlemoore came hurrying back along the row of bed spaces. “I’ll… that is to say, we’ll duck out for a tick, then, shall we? We’ll see you in a bit, Phoebe.” She hoisted her face into an attempt at a reassuring smile. Then she turned, and let me lead her up the ward and out the doors.
Behind us, I could hear Mrs. Mistlemoore speaking to Phoebe in a gentle, motherly voice. “There now, my dear. Let’s have a little look-see and get you sorted, shall we?”
We trooped out into the hallway, all of us silent, our fear and horror hanging over us like a storm cloud. No one spoke a word, and no one said aloud where we were going, but we all seemed to understand, without discussing it, that Savvy should get as far away from the hospital ward as possible. We walked together down the stairs, through the entrance hall, and out onto the grounds, where the bright sunshine and the warm summer breeze seemed to mock us in its perfection. We walked and walked until we reached the gardens, and the four of us sat along the edge of the fountain and allowed what just happened to settle, to absorb.
Savvy stood up almost at once. “I need a fag. Back in a jiff.”
She walked a dozen or so paces away from the fountain, stopping in a cluster of rose bushes. A few moments later, smoke started to rise from the spot in plumes.
I allowed the connection to unfold inside my head, making room there for two more anxious trains of thought that were not mine. “So, what does this mean?” I asked Hannah and Milo. I felt my question rocketing around amidst our swirling thoughts like an insect trapped in a jar.
“I don’t know,” Hannah replied. “How can anyone know?”
“Milo, you noticed it first,” I said, turning to him. “Can you describe it some more?”
Milo sighed aloud, dropping his elbows onto his knees and his forehead into his hands. “I noticed it almost right away. Being around Durupinen is… very vivid, for a ghost. It’s like… you walk through the world, and all the normal people are like shadows. You can see them, but you don’t… sense them. It always feels like there’s a sort of barrier. Well, I’m not sure if barrier is the right word.” Milo rubbed at his head as though he could massage the correct description out. “A barrier is a solid thing, like a wall, isn’t it? This is more of a film… it’s not tangible except that it dulls and dims everything. It’s like looking at the world through a pair of glasses with dirty lenses. Like one of those shrouds, you know, like they drape over dead people in movies, except you wake up and have to walk around the world trying to see through the damn thing all the time.” He looked up. “Does that make, like, any sense at all?”
“Yeah,” Hannah and I both replied. All our other thoughts had gone still and silent. I had never heard Milo talk about this aspect of his experience before. Neither, judging by the look on her face, had Hannah.
“So, imagine you’re just sort of drifting through the world, and everyone around you is a dull, muted shadow behind this stupid shroud, and then, all of a sudden, you see this light. Like a firefly in the darkness. The film lifts, blown away like cobwebs or dust. And in just that moment, you feel like you’re existing with someone, instead of just on a parallel plane with her. Everything is clear, like she burned the shroud away with that firefly light, and you are drawn to that person, to the sudden clarity of her. That’s the Durupinen.”
I let out a little breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. I’d spent a lot of time thinking about the Durupinen—about myself—in a lot of different ways. But never had I stopped to wonder what we were like from a spirit’s perspective—at least, not so seriously that I’d ever stopped to ask a spirit about it. How was it possible, in all the time I’d been doing this, that I’d never asked that question? Never tried to gain a better understanding of what it must be like for those I Crossed, rather than just for myself as I Crossed them? I began to wonder what this said about me, but Hannah broke through the thought before it could drag me anywhere too dark.
“And just now, with Phoebe?” Hannah prompted, for Milo too, it seemed, had let the thought derail him a bit. “What was it like, when you saw her?”
Milo shook his head. “No light. No clarity. No firefly.”
Fear restricted my throat, and I suddenly found it hard to swallow. “What do you think that means?”
Milo shrugged. “I have no idea. But not being able to sense the Gateway in her at all? That’s… I mean, I don’t really know what the implications of that are, but I can’t imagine that it’s good.”
“What about Flavia?” Hannah asked suddenly. “Did you notice if she…?” Hannah did not finish the question, gesturing instead to her own chest, as though she could feel a light there, a light that radiated out like a beacon.
Milo nodded. “A firefly, just like the rest of you. I noticed it as soon as we walked in the room.”
Hannah’s face scrunched into a pensive frown. “Huh. But that doesn’t make sense. I mean, Charlie did the same thing to both of them. Shouldn’t the outcome be the same? Why would one of them show no presence of the Gateway, while the other remains intact?”
Milo shrugged. “Yeah, it’s really strange.”
“But Charlie didn’t do the same thing to both of them,” I blurted out, my memory stirred. “That is, he tried to do the same thing to both of them, but both attempts failed.” Hannah and Milo both looked confused, so I pressed on in an attempt to clarify. “Okay, so Charlie kidnapped Flavia first. He wanted to bestow her Spirit Sight on someone else, but he still hadn’t quite figured out how to do it, so he experimented. It didn’t work, of course, so he had to try again. But he didn’t try the exact same Casting twice. He already knew that whatever combination of factors he used on Flavia didn’t work. They weren’t right. So, he changed something. He made adjustments and tried them out on Phoebe, with a different result.”
“So, whatever he changed between Flavia and Phoebe… that’s what caused this?” Hannah asked.
“Not necessarily,” Milo said slowly. “There’s another possibility.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Well, Bertie interrupted the process, didn’t he?” Milo said, tapping a slender finger thoughtfully against his lips. “Charlie may not have been able to complete his experiment on Phoebe. So maybe the real
reason for Phoebe’s lack of Sight is that the Casting couldn’t be completed.”
I nodded slowly as I let this idea sink in. “Yeah,” I said at last. “Yeah, that could be it. Terrible things can happen if you interrupt a Casting. Just look at what happened to our grandfather.”
Our grandfather had once burst in on Karen and our mother performing a Crossing. What he thought they were doing, we would never know, but he rushed right into the Summoning Circle and pried apart their linked hands, making himself a part of the conduit into the spirit world. Because he had no Durupinen blood and, therefore, no protection from the lure of the Aether, his spirit had been pulled partially from his body, and although he had not died, he had been driven instantly and incurably mad with longing to return to the world that he had glimpsed. Even now, he wasted away in a nursing home, constantly medicated to ease the pain of his desperation.
“But… surely there’s no Casting, interrupted or not, that could actually make the presence of the Gateway just… vanish?” Hannah asked, and even though our conversation was happening silently inside the connection, her thought was a tiny whisper of horror. I had to strain to catch the meaning of it as it flitted fearfully across the surface of my brain like a well-skipped stone.
I looked over at Savvy, who was pacing between the bushes now, the cigarette dangling from her lips, her newly cropped hair swung down across her face, hiding all but the tip of her nose and the lit end of the cigarette from view. If I squinted, the tip of the cigarette might just be a firefly.
As I stared at it, she plucked if from her mouth, dropped it to the ground, and put it out with the heel of her shoe.
8
Found and Lost
MRS. MISTLEMOORE COULD CONFIRM nothing conclusively that morning. She encouraged us all to come back later that day, when Phoebe had gotten a bit more rest and time to recover. Savvy refused, choosing to sit on a bench outside the hospital ward, refusing everyone’s company and insisting that she didn’t want to discuss any of it.