by Leo Hunt
“I know this is the right place. Floor seven. What does it say for seven? That was where they were.”
“There’s nothing listed for that floor,” says Elza. “Blank space.”
The elevator rushes upward. Ham grumbles, but I place a reassuring hand on his head and he settles. After a few moments the doors slide open.
The lobby of Berkley & Co. has vanished. The secretary’s desk, the leather benches, the stack of rumpled magazines — gone. The room is bare concrete and brick. Someone is halfway through stripping the wooden paneling from the walls. There are big sheets of transparent plastic to catch the dust, and power tools lying on the floor.
“Looks like they’re gone,” Elza says.
“This isn’t happening . . .”
I move into the lobby and pass through one of the doorless entrances toward Berkley’s office. This hallway is stripped, too, with a pile of tiles lying under plastic at one end. The walls of his office have been hacked away with crowbars, revealing the insulation foam and wiring beneath. I cast one desperate look around the bare bricks and then come back through into the lobby. Elza is talking to a man in a fluorescent yellow jacket and work boots.
“You can’t be here,” he’s saying. “No safety gear or nothing. Bringing your dog up and all. Dunno what you’re playing at.”
“What happened here?” Elza asks.
“Renovation,” he says, rubbing his face. “This floor’s been closed for months.”
“I was here just this week! What happened to the old tenants?” I ask him. “They’re my lawyers.”
“I don’t bloody know, do I? I’m a contractor, mate. Go ask downstairs if it’s that much to you. Bye-bye.”
“All right,” Elza says. We retreat into the elevator.
“Well, that didn’t work out.”
“Indeed. Merde.”
“I can’t believe it,” I say. “Gone within a week.”
“Are you sure he was a real lawyer?”
“He had a big office and an expensive suit. I didn’t ask beyond that. That guy said this floor’s been empty for months . . .”
“All right, so Berkley and Company are obviously involved with the Host somehow. Did you see them handle any other clients?” Elza asks.
“None.”
“Further confirmation they knew what was going on. Do you think the Shepherd put them up to this?”
“It seems like his style.”
“Weird that you had to sign for them at all,” Elza remarks. “Who knew black magic involved so much paperwork?”
“Maybe it’s like with vampires. You have to invite them in. But I don’t see why the Shepherd would want me to sign for them. All they want is to be freed.”
“Perhaps someone has to actually be their master before the bonds can be broken,” says Elza. “Otherwise they’d just end up bound forever, without anyone they could even kill. That would give them plenty of motivation to set you up like that.”
“Makes sense. So Mr. Berkley was working for the Shepherd.”
“I think so.”
We’re wandering and talking. Elza is so aggravated, she’s walking at double pace, elbowing past shoppers and businesspeople. It’s nearly five o’clock, and the storm clouds are turning a plummy purple in the low sun. The street is gray, everything in Brackford is gray: the people, their coats, the flat shapes of the buildings, the gauze of rain. We make our way to the city center, a paved plaza with a tall monument to some war hero, looming over the crowds. Among the jumble of gray and black I catch a hint of something luminous and unearthly.
“Elza.”
“What?”
“They’re here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! Right in front of us. It’s him.”
The Shepherd seems less to stand up than to unfold like an awful black wing. I notice the small gold clasps on his boots as he adjusts his trouser legs. He tugs at his beard with a fungus-white hand and grimaces.
“Master Manchett, with hound in tow, and surely this is Ms. Moss?”
“What do you want?” I ask.
“I want nothing. I have everything I need.”
The Shepherd grins. His teeth are as regular and gray as the buildings that press around the square. He seems larger today, fuller, somehow brighter than even the living people around us. The lenses of his eyeglasses, previously dark, shine with an internal light. Ham growls like a band saw and spools himself around Elza’s legs, ears tucked back against his head.
“I told you, Luke, this witch child can’t save you.”
“What do you know about me?” Elza asks him.
“It speaks,” the Shepherd says. “The witchlet speaks. Well, hear this: I lived for ten centuries and my life-in-death has lasted two more. Your hedge magic holds the bare scrapings of power. It is power’s palest reflection. Stand with Luke and you too shall fall.”
“If you’re so strong,” Elza says, “why am I still here? If you’d really won, we’d both be dead already, but here we are. I’m alive, and Luke is, too, because you can’t kill either of us. And since you’re so good at magic, I know you know what this is.”
She holds up her wyrdstone for him to see.
“A trinket,” the Shepherd says, “nothing more. On Halloween, with the dead’s power at its height, I believe we shall come for you first, witch child. We shall see how your talisman helps you then.”
They’re standing almost face-to-face. Elza moves her hand with the wyrdstone until it’s almost touching his waxy face. She stares into the glowing lenses of his glasses. Ham cringes back. The people walking through the plaza are moving to avoid us, although they don’t seem aware they’re even doing it. The Shepherd shakes his head.
“A brave show,” he says, “but I feel her fear. Now, I came to say something to you, Luke. My colleague the Prisoner, although not exactly talkative, has ways of communicating when there’s a need. He mentioned something to me about a party tonight? A girl. Holiday?”
I clench my fists in my pockets.
“If you dare . . .” I begin.
“We’ll be there,” the Shepherd tells me. “What is a Halloween celebration without its ghosts? We shall manifest at the Simmon girl’s house. We shall see how brave —”
Elza thrusts the wyrdstone into the center of the Shepherd’s face. He explodes soundlessly, ripping apart like a cloud of smoke in a sudden wind, and he’s gone. Elza lets out a heavy breath.
“I’d heard just about enough from him,” she says.
“What happened?” I ask. “Is he gone?”
“For now. Wyrdstones protect against evil spirits, like I said. The Shepherd, things like him, they can’t touch me if I’m wearing it. But if it touches them, there’s a reaction, and they find they have to be somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” Elza shrugs. “Somewhere that’s not here. That’s always seemed enough for me. So you can see, I’m safe. Now let’s go home.”
Back at Elza’s house, we’re having our first real argument. We sit in her kitchen, a pan of water hissing on the stove while we hiss at each other. What’s happening is my fault. I signed the contract for the Host, knowing it was wrong even if I didn’t know why. Holiday has no idea what’s been happening to me, has no idea how bad the trouble I’ve gotten her into is. I keep replaying the scene in my mind: Holiday talking to me, all smiles, with the tongueless Prisoner leering over her shoulder. Listening to every word we say.
“We don’t even know if they will go there,” Elza’s saying for the hundredth time.
“He was pretty specific about it.”
“It’s so obviously a trap. They want you away from your house and away from here.”
“They’ll kill everyone at the party if we don’t do something.”
“The Shepherd never said that,” Elza says, sounding like she’s not even convincing herself.
“Who’s stopping him? Should we call the police? They’re evil spirits. They’re da
ngerous, you said it yourself. We have to do something.”
“I know,” Elza snaps, “I know, but what? What can we do? The Book’s a blank, this lawyer Berkley has vanished into thin air. We’ve got a sigil you don’t really know how to use and a wyrdstone with enough juice to protect just me. That’s all we’ve got. How do we keep a party’s worth of drunk Dunbarrow High kids safe?”
“We bluff the Host,” I say. “We show up with the Book and sigil and we bluff.”
“I thought you said the Shepherd was an old dead necromancer? He’ll sniff you out a mile off, Luke, like he did already. You don’t just point and shoot with black magic. It takes years, decades of learning . . .”
“So what’s your plan?”
“We stay here, work on the code. I’m sure there’s something in your dad’s notes, the numbers . . . I need more time with them.”
“Work on the code? That’s your only plan, sorting through Dad’s stuff. It’s gotten us nowhere. I’m supposed to sit and look at a book while all my mates get killed?”
“Knowledge is everything in this situation.”
“You know what? You don’t even care, do you? You don’t like Holiday! You said it yourself. You don’t care if they die.”
Elza fixes me with a look that could melt glass.
“Of course I care if Holiday Simmon dies. The whole reason I’m helping you is to stop people from dying!”
“All right. So help me. I’m going up to Holiday’s house. Either come or don’t.”
The clock on the kitchen wall ticks. I watch the second hand flick around the clock’s face, slow, unstoppable, time passing like the tide coming in.
Elza winds and unwinds her hair in her fingers.
“I’ll come,” she says at last.
“You will?”
“I mean, it’s obviously a trick. You’re nuts to be falling for it. I don’t support this at all. I think it’s reckless and will end badly. . . . But I see that I can’t convince you of that. We’ll have to do the best we can.”
“All right. Thank you.” I stand up and breathe deeply. What’s going to happen at Holiday’s house, I can’t imagine. Showing up with Elza Moss in tow will raise more than a few eyebrows, but I need her help.
We eat, barely speaking, and then shut Ham in Elza’s kitchen and leave the house. I’m wearing the sigil on my right hand, and Elza has the Book of Eight in her backpack. It’s past dusk, and Towen Crescent is lit by street lamps. I can smell wood smoke. The moving shadows of tree branches are spidered across the road. A toad sits in the gutter by Elza’s gate, slimy shoulders tinted orange in the lamp’s glare. It sees us and flees across the road, moving with jittery haste. I press my hands down into my pockets and start to walk, heading against the wind.
Holiday lives at the top of Wight Hill, the classiest part of Dunbarrow, where every front lawn is as soft and green as the felt on a pool table. Her house is mock Tudor, white walls ribbed by dark wooden beams, with first-floor windows textured by interlocking diamonds of lead. It has a two-car garage and a large front lawn full of well-behaved shrubs. Elza walks beside me, head down, wrapped in her outsize man’s coat. I’m thinking how out of place she’s going to look, how awkward this is going to be. The drive widens into a turning circle at Holiday’s front door, which is painted sunrise-pink. I have to really punish the doorbell before I can get any attention. I see someone moving behind the door’s pane of frosted glass, and for a horrible moment I expect the Shepherd to emerge, waxy face twisted into a smile.
Holiday opens the door, She looks bemused.
“Hello?”
“We’re here for the party?”
“Well, of course,” Holiday says. “You brought Elza, too?”
“Uh . . . we were walking the same way.”
“Oh, OK. Where were you today? You remembered it was a costume party, right?”
Holiday looks, as always, stunning, wearing a slim black dress, a pair of felt ears perched above her sleek hair. She’s painted whiskers on her cheeks. I try to focus on the mission, the horde of evil spirits that might arrive at any moment.
“Well,” Elza says, “clearly we didn’t.”
To her credit, Holiday’s smile looks only a little fake.
“Why don’t you both come in?” she says, taking my hand and pulling me into the house.
I follow her into the kitchen, which is spotless, tiled in slabs of rough gray stone. There’s a long table covered in bowls of sweets, popcorn, large plastic bottles of cheap cider, and soft drinks. I see bat-shaped streamers hanging from the curtain rods, a pumpkin with a jolly face carved into it. There’s a woman staring into the open fridge.
“Mum,” Holiday says, “what are you doing here?”
“You father forgot the cherries. Is that a crime?”
Holiday’s mum smiles at me and Elza, so we know the joke was for us as well. I force a little grin. Elza’s standing behind me, as far from Holiday and her mother as she can manage.
“This is Luke,” says Holiday. “And you remember Elza Moss?”
“Hi,” I say.
“Thanks for having us, Mrs. Simmon,” Elza says.
Holiday’s mum is tan and thin, wearing a cream sweater and faded jeans. Her hair is cropped short, and it looks like she dyes it, but aside from that, you’d think she was barely ten years older than us. Good genes. She gives us both an A-list smile.
“Oh, it’s Elza! We haven’t seen you for a while! And Luke, so nice to meet you at last. Holiday tells me you’re keen on rugby.”
“I play for the school, Mrs. Simmon.”
I’ve actually missed all the practices this week, another sacrifice I’ve made since the Host arrived in town. I’ll catch some grief from Mark tonight for that. It’s weird how far away all of this seems. I thought I didn’t believe in ghosts, but I’m starting to feel more like it’s my real life that I don’t believe in.
“Well, Dad’s the man for that, isn’t he?” Holiday’s mum says to Holiday.
“Don’t make him talk to Dad . . .”
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?” her mum says to me. “The ingratitude of some children. Don’t fret, your father and I are firmly decamped to the summer house for the duration. I’d hate to make you look quote-unquote lame in front of your friends, ha-ha-ha.”
She doesn’t so much laugh as loudly pronounce the sounds laughter would make.
“Mum —”
“All right, all right. Come on, Bach.”
Holiday’s mum scoops up a white cat, and leaves, having forgotten the cherries. Holiday grimaces.
“She’s so annoying.”
I think about Mum lying in the dark, face drenched in sweat. I remember all the days I’ve left for school and come home in the evening to find her still sitting in the same place. I think of her now lying motionless, her body a glacier.
“She seems OK.”
“I can’t believe she — like, I don’t talk about you! I mentioned you once. She makes it sound like I’m your fan club or something!”
“When nothing could be further from the truth, right?”
“Shut up. Look, come on, we’re watching trash TV. I’ll get you a beer?”
“Sounds great.”
I’ve got no intention of drinking a drop, but I’m not about to explain that to Holiday. Elza has moved past both of us and is staring out the windows at the far end of the kitchen, looking into what must be the backyard. I tense up, thinking she’s seen something outside, but then she turns away and gives me a little shrug. I can’t feel the icy cold that accompanies the Host, so I presume we’re safe for now.
Holiday presses a beer into my hand.
“Can I get you anything?” she asks Elza.
“I’m not drinking tonight,” Elza replies.
“Oh,” Holiday says, “are you doing a detox?”
“No. I just think, you know, what if something terrible happened tonight and I was drunk? I wouldn’t be able to deal with it.” Elza fixes me with a volcanic
glare.
Holiday, who is either an amazing actor or genuinely the kindest person in the world, appears to be giving serious consideration to this. “Sure,” she says. “I get anxious, too, you know?”
I’m not really drinking, I mouth at Elza behind Holiday’s back. Act more normal.
“I think the only sane way to live,” Elza says to Holiday, “is anxiously.”
Standing in my crush’s kitchen, waiting for the arrival of my dad’s horde of evil spirits, listening to Elza and Holiday coproduce a strong contender for Most Awkward Conversation of the Year Award, I decide that I am going to have a drink after all.
The living room is twice the size of the kitchen, done in whites and creams, with a sixty-inch plasma screen installed in a cavity at one end. There’s a real log fire, grumbling to itself behind a black fire screen. The party so far is nonexistent. There’s just a few of the top-tier girls from my class, dressed as cats, nurses, and Disney princesses. They all look up at me and Holiday and Elza as we enter. I feel like I’m on display, a show pony she’s leading into the ring. The reaction to Elza is more like she’s been buried up to her neck in an anthill. None of Holiday’s friends say a word, but I can see their expressions, tiny communications as they catch one another’s eyes: scorn, shock, amusement. It’s like watching a group of sadistic computers communicate via Wi-Fi. I pretend not to notice and sit down with Holiday on the largest sofa, facing the television. Elza stands against the far wall and looks at her boots.
“So we’re watching, like, this totally ridiculous show,” Holiday’s saying. “Nightwatch. They’re having a marathon of it, since it’s nearly Halloween. Have you seen it?”
Ouch.
“Never,” I say.
“Oh, it’s just the best,” says Holiday. “The guy who presents it is, like, this total weirdo. He’s called Dr. Manchett —”
“No relation,” I say with a forced grin.
“I heard he, like, just died, or something?” one of her friends says.
“Yeah, they had that on the news the other day?” says another.
“Really,” I say.
The screen is dark. I can see stars, a suggestion of trees in the black against black. There’s the crunch of footsteps.