by Eliza Wass
“No. That’s not true. I promise you. It works either way.”
NINE
The nurse’s room had been cleared in a hurry. The sheets were stripped and the drawers left open. The air had a thick lemon scent. Roan’s aquarium was on the windowsill, the snake curled in one corner.
Clearly Roan was a liar, the séance proved it. I couldn’t trust anything he said. Someone who had worked inside the castle must have given him information about Nikki. I didn’t know who—probably one of Holiday’s three hundred and sixty-five (give or take) nurses. And now he was using it to take the Bramleys’ money.
If he did have tricks, I thought I would find them in his leather doctor’s bag. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, but I needed to find proof. Proof that he was a fraud. Proof that Nikki wasn’t really there. It wasn’t that I believed Roan had spoken to Nikki—he had been much cleverer than that. He had made me want to believe it.
I rushed into the room and shut the door behind me. I searched the dresser. A couple of torn white shirts, jeans, and boxer shorts were folded inside. I scanned the floor and searched the closet. I even looked in the en-suite. No bag. I got down on my stomach to check under the bed, when I heard Holiday squeal. She and Roan passed through the hallway, her exclaiming, “I want to show you my essential oils!” The wall shuddered as they moved into Holiday’s room.
I was about to back out from under the bed and leave before they came back, when I heard Roan through the walls. “Oh no, no, no.” I moved closer to the wall. “You shouldn’t have your room like this. You’re inviting bad spirits.”
“What do you mean?” Holiday said in a small voice.
“I mean, the way all these objects are arranged. And the coat. And the—Is that a blood-stained sword?” I cringed.
“It’s Nikki’s sword.”
Roan sighed. I heard the squeak of the springs as he sat on the bed. “Don’t you want to attract good spirits?” I wondered if no spirits was an option.
Holiday was quiet for a while, considering. “Is Nikki a good spirit or a bad spirit?”
I held my breath, waiting for his answer. “What do you think?” he finally said, which seemed like a fairly noncommittal answer.
“He didn’t seem very good in the end.”
“Well, do you ever feel like Nikki is in here with you?” Roan spoke very seriously. It was just the way Holiday would want to be talked to, just the way she should be talked to. It made me want to like him. Maybe he was a con artist, but was it possible there was such a thing as a good con?
“No, I suppose not,” Holiday said.
“So we change it. Make it more of a haunted hangout.” I smiled. Why hadn’t I—or any of us—tried to change Holly’s bedroom?
“How do we do that?” she said.
The bed squeaked again, and I heard Roan move through the room. “I mean, that’s a start. I can show you how to build an altar out of all that stuff on your dresser. And you need to have this coat cleaned. And the sword, too.”
“But it’s Nikki’s blood,” Holiday said. “And maybe Nikki is a bad spirit. He’s in hell. Because of what he did.”
I lost my breath, fast. My ear thudded as I pressed it against the wall. “He’s not in hell,” Roan said.
“How do you know?” Holiday’s voice was strange with hope.
“Because there is no hell. I’ve seen into the afterlife, remember? There’s no hell, but don’t tell anyone, or they might start thinking there aren’t any rules.”
I slid out from under the bed, opened the bedroom door, and ran smack into Roan.
“I was looking for you,” I said, messing with my jacket.
“Looking for me?” he repeated, like he knew exactly what I was looking for.
“And Holly.”
“She’s taking a nap.” He slipped past me into the room. He set his doctor’s bag down on the floor. “The afterlife can be draining.” He rubbed his eyes, then pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it into an open drawer. His flaming tattoo rippled like real fire.
I shut the door behind me. “You were very good.”
His shoulders stiffened. “Are you in love with me now?”
“Not really, mate.”
He laughed and hopped onto the bed. His chains rattled. “Well, you wouldn’t be the first.” His stomach muscles contracted as he propped himself up.
“Funny he didn’t want to talk about the canal,” I edged.
“It’s not surprising.”
“Why not?”
“The dead can see the future. Or maybe time doesn’t exist for them.” He fluttered his hand dismissively. “Either way, they’ll never share information that might interfere with something that’s, quote-unquote, ‘supposed to happen.’”
“Why quote-unquote?”
“The dead are all about fate. It’s like a cult up there.”
“How convenient,” I said. He pulled his bag off the floor and rifled through it. I leaned forward, trying to glimpse inside. “Now about this other cult. How long do you think it’s going to take to track them down?”
“It’s better if you don’t think in terms of time.”
“You better be joking.” I was getting a little tired of his philosophical posturing. He pulled rolling papers, a bag of herbs, and the silver lighter from his bag and set them on the dresser. “You can’t smoke in here.” Was he mad? This was a thousand-year-old castle. Every room was fitted with sprinklers. And while I didn’t know exactly what he was smoking, I doubted he bought it over the counter.
“I can see the future, remember? I’m not going to start a fire.” I rolled my eyes, and he rolled his cigarette, then stuck it between his lips and lit it. “They’ll come when you’re ready, so get ready.”
“And how do I do that?”
He expelled smoke. “Maybe you should try to understand what it is you’re looking for. You know where to start.”
I moved toward the door, put my hand on the knob as my heartbeat fluttered, tickling me awake. Because I wanted to ask him one last question. I wanted to ask why he’d said I love you more. But I couldn’t escape the feeling I would be asking the wrong person.
I kept Mum’s things in a box at the back of my closet. They seemed to get smaller every year, even though I never used them. I moved my winter boots out of the way and freed the cardboard box from the closet, dragged it out onto the rug in front of me.
It was filled with mystical things Roan might recognize—the half-burned sage Nikki had used to draw a protection circle, several seven-day Seven African Powers prayer candles, crystals, and saint cards. I took them all out, arranged them in a circle around me.
I reached the bottom of the box and lifted out Mum’s book, set it on the floor at the center of the circle. It bulged in a triangular shape, chock-full of pictures and cutouts.
I cracked open the cover.
I didn’t know much about the origins of Mum’s book, except that she made it when she was young and trying to figure things out. On the inside cover she had written in colored Sharpie pens that bled three pages deep, The Book of Saints. Every page thereafter identified a saint or a god or a deity from any and every religion, all over the world. So Damballa was followed by Allah and Yama, and St. Joan of Arc shared a page with Santa Muerte. Each page had a picture, drawn or printed or painted, and a list of their specialties, which ranged from mercy, wisdom, and virtue to court cases and drug trafficking.
There was no explanation of what you were supposed to do with the deities, and Mum had never explained to me why she had to collect them all, but I still got gooseflesh as I turned the pages. Even though they were born in cultures and worlds and generations apart, when placed side by side without preference or prejudice, I could see the threads that connected them all. An army of saints.
The picture this book conjured up, the way all the saints ran together, made the Life and Death Parade take shape in my mind—in a train of belief, like a snake, like a ribbon, all connected, all c
onnected to life and death in a way I wasn’t. I set my jaw. I had to keep Roan close, even if I couldn’t trust him—at least until I knew more about the Life and Death Parade. I sensed they had answers, about more than what had happened that night.
I didn’t believe in magic. But what if I could?
My favorite saint was the last one, although I knew it couldn’t be serious. It wasn’t the last page in the book, but it was the last one Mum had filled—a photograph of herself printed on cheap computer paper. Her name was at the top: Darlene Damice. And underneath were all the powers she gave herself.
grief
creativity
new life
It was the middle of the afternoon, if the clocks were to be believed. I was wandering. I was hoping to find someone specific.
I passed along the perimeter of the library, the oldest part of the house. I heard tired sobs, like they were running out of the force that powered them. I stuck my head under the arch. All the lights were out. And because the windows in the library were stained, they held the dark.
“Hello?” I stepped deeper into the library. “Hello?”
I saw her there, on Nikki’s chair, curled up in a ball.
“Holly, what is it?” I knew immediately, but I told myself I shouldn’t guess. She blew her nose on her sleeve. I searched her person—for what? I told myself I didn’t know. “What is it, Holly?”
She wiped her cheeks again, her face swollen. “It’s Nikki.” The answer I expected still hit me hard.
“Nikki. Where’s Nikki?”
Holiday pushed herself up on one elbow. “He said they were going to die. He said all of them were going to die.”
“All of whom?”
A scream answered. Not from Holiday but from far away, buried somewhere in the castle. I ran.
Not the Great Hall, not the dining room, not the automaton room. I listened for a sound to guide me, but I didn’t need one. My feet took me there, straight to the weapons room. The Bramleys had an extensive collection of swords and rifles and bayonets.
Nikki was at the center of the room, surrounded by a crowd, and it was so much like it used to be—him entertaining the tourists—that hope wrenched my stomach. Until I saw the pistol.
The crowd remained in a mesmerized semicircle. The guide was losing color by the minute.
“You’re in for a real treat; this is a three-hundred-year-old flintlock pistol.” Nikki cocked it to demonstrate. “It’s been used to kill people—what a piece of history! Now, on the Bramley tours, we don’t just like to show you history; we like to make you a part of it.” He aimed the gun coolly at the crowd. “Any volunteers?”
“Nikki.”
He spun and the gun pointed at me. “Kitty. You’re just in time. Would you like to play Russian roulette?” His face was like a flower closed for the night. “I’ll go first.” A ripple of astonishment ran through the crowd as he pointed the gun at his temple, eyes on mine, and pulled the trigger—never flinching—again and again and again.
That marked the end of the tourist season at the Bramley Castle, or as Nikki termed it thereafter, “hunting season.” The Bramleys paid to keep it out of the papers. There was open talk of putting Nikki somewhere, but everyone knew that once he was gone, he wouldn’t be back. And if he didn’t seem like Nikki anymore, and every day the resemblance was less and less, there was still something of a physical nature—as his hair whitened and his bones sharpened and he seemed to move on invisible strings rather than by muscle and bone—so even then we kept him, we allowed him, like he was the villain we deserved, because we refused to let him go.
TEN
Lord Bramley agreed to the new nurse—why wouldn’t he? It was the twenty-fifth nurse he’d hired that year. It wasn’t until supper that he saw his little princess hanging off Roan and Lady Bramley beaming her approval. Roan had put his torn shirt back on, and his chains rang as he helped Holiday into her chair.
Lord Bramley sat at the head of the table. Roan sat in Nikki’s chair. I hesitated and took my seat. Sonoma served the supper. The room was quiet; Roan’s every jingle sounded like the sharpening of a tiny saw.
“So.” Lord Bramley picked up his silverware. “Can someone tell me why we’ve hired Jim Morrison to look after my daughter?”
I laughed, turning it into a cough inside my fist.
“Can you not see the change?” Lady Bramley scooted in her seat.
“Yes, darling, but I’m somewhat concerned about what it might mean,” Lord Bramley said.
Roan pursued his supper with a placid expression. Macklin, who supported his dad on everything, was suspiciously silent.
“Oscar, you promised.” Lady Bramley put a hand over his wrist, but he moved away.
“Where are your parents?” he said.
“I’m sixteen.”
“That’s not what I asked.” Lord Bramley’s lips thinned. I wondered how much Lady Bramley had told him. How much he would be willing to put up with. “We’re paying you rather a large sum.”
“It’s all relative.”
“If it’s a large sum to me, I can’t imagine how much it is to you.”
There was a tightness, just circling Roan’s lips. “Well, you don’t have to pay me and I don’t have to stay.”
“Glad that’s settled.”
The lights flickered. Holiday glared at her father, ready to pounce. I had to do something, now, before it was too late. I opened my mouth. I made words come out.
“Don’t you think that’s sort of irrational?” I said. Wrong words.
“I beg your pardon?” Lord Bramley sat up straight. Macklin dropped his fork. Holiday grinned and moved forward in her seat. I didn’t look at Roan.
“I just mean that—it seems like…” I drifted off. Lord Bramley cleared his throat, then picked up his knife like that was the end of it, when I suddenly plunged on. “I just mean that no one can ever know, in this life, what happens after, right? I mean, there have been much smarter people than you—I mean, me. I mean, all of us.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Macklin lifted his glass.
I shot Macklin a look. “So,” I pressed. “You’re left with a choice between two options—neither of which can be verified either way as being true, so you can’t compare their merits on that basis.” Lord Bramley’s eye tightened. “You can choose to deny. Or you can choose to believe.”
“And I suppose his wages are my tithing?” Lord Bramley tilted his head in Roan’s direction.
“Just because his choices benefit him doesn’t mean you should make yourself less happy out of spite. Holiday likes him. He’s helping her.”
“All right, Kitty,” Lord Bramley said.
By his tone I knew the conversation was finished, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I just think that if you ask him to leave, it would seem like you wanted everyone to be miserable.”
“All right, Kitty.”
Macklin’s eyes were double-wide, warning me to stop. But what if Lord Bramley did make Roan leave? I sucked my lip so hard my piercing throbbed. “I just think, with Nikki—”
The table shuddered as he bolted up. “Katherine Damice, that is enough. You’ve made your point, dear.” He spoke calmly, but there was an angry twist to his lips, and I knew we had gotten very close to the breaking point. What I didn’t know was why I wanted to get there.
The room went quiet and I said “Sorry” to fill the space. Macklin was shaking his head. I finally caught Roan’s eye. A smile stung the corner of his lips. My cheeks burned.
“This reminds me of something a spirit told me once.” Roan leaned speculatively over the table. “It was something his father said to him, actually. ‘You have a good life. You’ve been given everything a boy could possibly want. Why are you determined to ruin it?’” Lord Bramley’s head shot up. The air around us seemed to fall. “This boy, he said, you know…” Roan waved his finger like he was trying to remember. “He said he wished he’d listened to his father. He wished he’d been a better son, f
or him. But”—he shrugged—“there you go.” He went back to his salad.
Macklin gasped. Holly’s jaw dropped. Lord Bramley’s eyes had filled with tears. I’d never seen Lord Bramley cry before. I didn’t know it was an option.
Lady Bramley’s chair scraped back. “Oh, darling!” She threw her hands around his neck. He cried into her shoulder, the way Macklin cried, with perfect posture.
Roan must have quoted something Lord Bramley had said to Nikki once. But how had he guessed? It wasn’t impossible. He probably suspected Nikki was a tearaway; he’d died at seventeen. Maybe it was something all fathers said to lost sons. But it was still very, very good.
I ran into Macklin going up the stairs. He had a bewitched look on his face. It was a symptom of Roan.
“That was something, wasn’t it?” I said.
Macklin tugged at his cravat. “Yes, well, I don’t really know quite what to think about all that. You certainly stuck your neck out.”
“He was going to make him leave.”
“Why do you want him to stay?”
I considered telling him everything, about the psychic and Mum and the LDP, but we had already gone too far. There were too many holes I would have to fill in first, to put the story together, to make it all make sense. I wasn’t even 100 percent sure I understood it. So all I said was, “I don’t know. I like him. I think.”
Macklin toyed with his collar. “There are certain people, you know, that have charisma. It makes you like them even if you don’t want to. It’s chemical.”
I smirked. “Why, do you like him?”
“No.” The horrible thing about being so pale was that you painted yourself with embarrassment. “That’s not what I’m…He’s a grifter. He’s a charlatan. It’s his job to make people like him. It’s not real.”
I sighed. “What is real?” Roan would say it was my choice. Mum would say it was someone else’s. “Anyway, you all right?”
He frowned. “I beg your pardon?”
I never asked Macklin how he was. Never. My chest hurt, like my heart was opening in a way I wasn’t comfortable with. “I said, um, you all right?”