by E. E. Holmes
Trying to make sense of what I was hearing, I replied, “But I thought you were happy when you were Walking? When I first met you, all you wanted in the world was freedom from your body. Aren’t you content to remain in this form, Walking?”
“There was a time when that was true, Northern Girl. But the Durupinen have destroyed even that joy for me. After the attack, my body was hovering so close to death that I felt it anew: The call, the pull of the Gateway. Far stronger than ever before. It was so powerful, you cannot possibly imagine.”
The smallest of sardonic smiles tugged at one corner of my mouth. “Actually, I think I have a pretty good idea about that.” No part of me would ever forget Walking in the world beyond the Gateway.
Irina went on as though she didn’t hear me. “I waited for my body to die, but the Travelers preserved that device of torture, hoping one day to be able to force me to return to it. I can’t be content here in the living world now that I’ve felt the true call of the Gateway! They’ve stolen my last refuge… Walking, ruined forever!” Irina paused, as if she were fighting tears. Then, with her voice slipping into a growl, she added, “But before I Cross, I will forge a path for others to do the same without the Durupinen lording over them.”
I still couldn’t make sense of it. “But why are you here, so far from home?”
“I came for this,” she answered, gesturing to the partially rebuilt Geatgrima. Campbell, semi-conscious and moaning, now lay crumpled beside it.
“Yes, I figured that part out,” I said. “But what possible use can it be to you?”
“I’ve been wandering… wandering for so long… so far, for so long,” Irina began, almost as if she were singing sadly to herself, but her tone quickly turned harsh again. “But if the Travelers will not free me, I will free myself. With this!” She ran a spectral hand along the rough surface of the nearest Geatgrima stone. “This once-beautiful Geatgrima, like so much that’s been entrusted to the care of the Durupinen, was neglected and forgotten—they let it rot in their very hands! But now I will use it to free myself! ”
“Free yourself? Your body is back in England, Irina, but you are always free to Cross. The Durupinen don’t hold spirits—or Walkers—here against their will. In fact, Hannah and I have dropped everything many times to complete an emergency Crossing!”
“No!” spat Irina. “I will free myself apart from all Durupinen, without their opening the Gateway for me. They will not control how I leave this world! And as soon as this Geatgrima is finished, they will no longer control when others are allowed to Cross, either.”
“But how did you find this place?” I asked. Again I saw Finn twitching behind the stones, ready to spring into action. I took a deep breath to cover my gesture to him, bidding him to wait. If I were going to assuage Irina, I needed to truly understand everything she needed to say.
Irina took no notice of my signal, or of Finn himself. “The spirits whispered to me as I Walked—that’s how I came here. They told me there were forgotten places unguarded by the Durupinen. I knew if I could find one, I could Cross in peace, alone. And then I heard this place.” She nodded her head solemnly. “It’s true. I heard it calling to me, singing to me. The song of the Gateway led me here, to this very room.”
“But you couldn’t Cross through?”
“No. This Geatgrima was destroyed long ago, but I knew I could rebuild it, if I could only find a living body to Habitate.”
“And so you forced Habitation on Campbell,” I said, looking back down at him. He was still prone, too weak to do more than stir weakly. “But why him? How did you find him?”
“He was here in this house, walking through its empty rooms, all alone,” Irina replied, looking down at Campbell fondly—as if he were a pet she doted upon. “He looked lost in the place, and lost in himself. So I gave him a purpose—my purpose—that we could fulfill together.”
“But why would Campbell be—Ah, I see, he was touring the place.” I realized the answer to my own question before I had even finished asking it. Campbell had been in real estate; the plantation had been for sale. He was probably looking for an investment. His touring the property at the time of Irina’s arrival must’ve been pure chance—the poor bastard had merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I began to whisper to him,” Irina continued. “Softly at first, and then louder and more persuasively. He was fearful at the beginning, but then he learned to trust me. He thought I was an angel, and I allowed him to believe it; that was how I gained every last bit of his faith and trust. Once I had that, I began bending him to my will.”
“You hijacked his life!” I cried, as my anger started to surface; it mingled with my intense pity for Irina.
“I borrowed him,” Irina said with a shrug. “I would’ve returned him, once we’d completed our task.”
“Jess!” Milo’s voice broke through our connection, making me jump. “The spirits have figured out the Wards are gone. They’re starting to drift down here—they can feel the pull of the Geatgrima now!”
“Have Hannah Call them and order them to stay out!” I thought-spoke frantically. “If we get interrupted now, Irina might panic and flee!”
“Irina?” asked Milo. “Irina from the Travelers? The Walker?”
“Yes! No time to explain. Just keep the spirits out of here!”
“Okay, we’re on it,” said Milo. He withdrew from the connection, freeing the space in my head for Irina’s next words, which she offered without any prompting.
“It wasn’t easy. For weeks—months—I had to coax Campbell into believing he was destined to rebuild this place. We traveled, finding those who were both truly haunted and had the means to fund the restoration. We built relationships with them, gaining their trust. And when we could be sure of their loyalty, we opened Whispering Seraph and brought them here—like one big happy family.” Irina smiled, but it only made her look more unhinged.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to Habitate in Campbell when you first met him?” I asked her. “You could have just marched him down to the basement, used him to rebuild the Geatgrima, and then let him go.”
“I nearly did, but that would’ve been very, very naughty of me,” Irina replied, waggling her finger playfully. “That would have helped me certainly, but what of the others?”
“What others?”
“All of the others forced to wait their turn! All of the spirits left to the mercy of the Durupinen! The Durupinen, who dictate when spirits are allowed to Cross! Why should they have this power over us? I will create a Gate liberated from the tyranny of Gatekeepers! Have you ever heard of anything so beautiful?”
I bit back my argument. I wanted to again tell Irina that the Durupinen weren’t monsters who trapped spirits on earth. I wanted to say that we committed our lives, and sometimes sacrificed them, to ensure that spirits could Cross to the other side. Hannah and I performed lunar Crossings each month, and had performed Crossings by necessity more times than I could count.
But what could these words possibly mean to someone like Irina? Here she was, trapped against her will, held in this state by the Durupinen. This, after years of being denied the freedom to Walk, of being tethered to her body by Traveler Bonds. Any arguments I could make in defense of the Durupinen were directly contradicted by her own experiences—and in truth, the Durupinen were less than black-and-white as far as I was concerned. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t blame her at all. Nevertheless, I had to stop her.
I tried a different tactic. “I understand why you feel this way, Irina,” I said, in as calm and soothing a voice as I could. “No one will ever fully understand what you’ve been through. I don’t blame you in the least for wanting to create a place where spirits can Cross on their own.”
Irina narrowed her eyes at me, as though sure this were some kind of trick. “You’re humoring me. You say what you think I want to hear.”
I shook my head vigorously. “I’m not, I swear to you. The Durupinen
have destroyed your life and now they’ve even stolen the joy of Walking. You should hate them.”
Irina continued to glare at me through narrowed eyes, but she listened without interrupting me.
“But there’s a big problem in your well-deserved plan for revenge, Irina. When this Geatgrima is rebuilt, you’ll have no control over it. The Aether may become more present here than almost anywhere else on Earth, but the barrier between worlds will still exist. Without the Durupinen to open and close the Gateway properly, you can’t know what will happen to the spirits who try to Cross through it. You could risk their getting trapped in the Aether. Is that really what you want—to risk other souls just to satisfy your vengeance? Or worse, to leave an unguarded Geatgrima exposed? The Necromancers will surely regroup someday, and who knows what other threats may be out there?”
A spasm rippled over Irina’s expression. For a moment, she looked tortured and torn before her features settled into a grimace. But when she spoke, her voice was calm and unruffled.
“That’s a chance that I’m willing to take.”
I felt my body tense again. I had heard Irina out, listened to all she had to say. But with the deliberate calmness so evident in her last words, I now knew that Irina would carry out her plan no matter how much talking we did. “I’m sorry, Irina. I pity you, truly I do, but that’s not a chance I’m willing to take.”
“And what exactly to you plan to do about it, Northern G—”
“NOW FINN!” I shouted.
Finn leapt out from behind the pile of stones, flinging the yoga mat out in front of him and shouting the Casting that would seal the Circle as he sailed through the air. As he landed, he curled into an army roll and pulled me to the ground just as the mat slid to a stop right underneath Irina.
For a fraction of an instant, Irina stared down at the mat, perplexed. Then her eyes widened and she looked up at Finn, just as the final word of the Casting fell from his lips. A ripple of energy shot through the air, and I knew the Circle had worked—Irina was trapped within. Almost instantaneously, the realization of her imprisonment hit Irina with the force of a bomb.
She threw her head back and let loose an insane, keening scream of fury. The loose piles of Geatgrima stones—and some from the unfinished Geatgrima itself—tumbled to the floor in a spirit-fueled avalanche. Irina hurled herself again and again at the invisible barriers of the Circle now holding her, but it was no use. She was trapped—as trapped as she’d been when I’d first seen her chained up in the Traveler’s wagon.
At the sound of Irina’s screams, Hannah and Milo came flying into the room, charging blindly into battle. The spirits that Hannah had Called drifted in behind her, ready to be of service, but there was nothing for them to do. They simply hovered, like so many strangely shaped balloons, around the room’s edges.
“What the hell?” Milo muttered. “It was Irina! It was Irina this whole time?”
I didn’t answer him. All I could do was watch Irina struggle, confined in what I knew to be her worst nightmare. As my adrenaline began to wear off, I felt tears welling in my eyes.
Hannah, who had never met Irina, hurried over to Campbell. She kneeled beside him as he stirred. “Mr. Campbell? Are you okay? Can you sit up?”
Campbell struggled into a sitting position with Hannah’s assistance and then gazed around the room, blinking. “What… what happened?” he murmured. “Ms. Taylor? Where am I?”
Campbell’s gaze came to rest on the space above the yoga mat, where Irina hovered. He couldn’t actually see her, but I knew he could sense her presence in some way; Irina’s rage was so powerful that it was radiating through the chamber in dark, despairing waves.
“Can you feel that?” he cried. “It’s so… terribly angry…so very… sad! Is that… is my angel still here?”
“Yes, but she’s no angel, that’s for damn sure,” I said, much more to myself than to Campbell. Under my breath, I added, “And she doesn’t deserve this.”
25
The Tracker Division
AS THOUGH I COULD SHAKE THE SIGHT OF IRINA FROM MY EYES, I shook my head hard. Irina’s screams had ebbed to pained, desperate growls before fading to quiet, but tortured, sobbing whimpers. Having exhausted herself from struggling, Irina’s form had faded into a flickering shadow of her true self, a candle about to burn out.
I turned wildly to Finn. “We can’t do this. We can’t do this to her!” I hissed.
Finn looked startled. “What do you mean, we can’t do this to her? She’s captured, Jess. It’s over. The threat is contained.”
“Look at her, Finn! Look at her! She’s fading, miserable, frightened! We did that to her! And the Durupinen will do far worse if we turn her over to the Trackers.”
Humoring me, Finn cast a cursory glance at Irina, who was now moaning pitifully as she tapped feebly against the Circle’s barrier. “I see her, Jess. I realize she’s upset, but the Circle isn’t harming her one bit. It’s merely containing her. And you’re a proper Tracker now, you have protocols to follow.”
“No, you don’t understand. You didn’t see her at the Traveler camp, Finn. It was horrific! It was torture for her, being trapped there all those years. And when the other Trackers get here, she’s going to be imprisoned all over again! Permanently!”
Finn’s confused expression softened into a pitying one, but his pity was all for me. “Jess, I know it’s difficult for you to see her like this, but we haven’t a choice, you know that. We can’t release her; she’s too dangerous.”
“I know,” I said, with a barely contained sob. “But there must be something—anything—we can do!” I looked desperately around the room, as though I would find a solution scrawled among the runes on the walls. My eyes fell on Hannah, who was still tending to a disoriented Campbell; the patience and tenderness she offered to him inspired the answer I was looking for.
“We can Cross her,” I said, with a note of real hope in my voice. Our goal as Trackers was to shut down Whispering Seraph, and the key to that was stopping Irina. Having her Cross would accomplish the mission while keeping her from yet another Durupinen prison—if she agreed to it.
“Sorry?” Finn replied.
I spun back to him. “We can Cross Irina. Right now. Hannah and I can open the Gateway. If it’s between Crossing and imprisonment, I bet she’ll choose to go. Voluntarily.”
Finn’s eyes widened as though I were suggesting something crazy.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked.
Finn struggled to answer. “I think… it’s admirable, wanting to help her, but…”
“But what? Spit it out, Finn!” I cried.
“It’s not our decision what happens to her, is it? We’ve contained her, but it’s up to the Senior Trackers and the Traveler Council to decide her fate,” Finn answered.
“Screw the Senior Trackers!” I shouted, with a fervor that surprised even me. Finn’s mouth fell open; Hannah’s head jerked up. “They’re the ones who threw us in here on our first-ever case and told us to ‘handle it.’ And screw the Travelers and their Council, too. They’re the ones who used Irina like a lab rat, then imprisoned her when she exercised her free will! If we Cross Irina now, all of her bitterness—all of her thirst for revenge—will Cross with her. We will still have done our job. Please, Finn. Hannah. I can’t hand her back over to them. I just can’t do it.”
Finn opened his mouth, but no words came out. I knew the battle raging inside him; the deepest parts of him were struggling between his desire to do what I wanted, and his almost pathological need to follow procedure. I’d seen that look on his face many times before.
Hannah, clearly caught in a similar struggle, bit her lip. “We might get in trouble, Jess. Shouldn’t Irina have to answer for what she did? She hurt a lot of people.”
“You wouldn’t be asking that question if you’d seen her in the Traveler camp, sweetness,” Milo said, floating forward and inserting himself into the conversation. “They had her caged there
like an animal. In chains. Filthy, too. And half-insane from it all! Jess is right. Irina’s a victim, too. I’m not saying what she did here at Whispering Seraph was right, but she’s served her sentence a hundred times over. She won’t be a threat after she Crosses. You will have still accomplished your mission—you caught her and stopped her plan. But isn’t it time for it to be over now?”
I looked at Milo, and shot a beam of silent, thankful energy to him through our connection; he returned it tenfold. That energy mingled with my sadness, bolstering me against it.
Hannah carefully extricated her hand from Campbell’s grip and stood up. She pressed her mouth into a determined line before declaring, “You’re right, Jess. I’ll help you.” With that, she slipped her Masking bracelet from her wrist; I did the same.
Finn’s expression softened, and I knew the battle within him was over—at least for today. He pulled a Casting bag from his pocket and tossed it to Hannah. “We need to work quickly. This needs to be done before Catriona and the others arrive. And we need to get Campbell out of here. He’s seen and heard too much already.”
Hannah scurried over to the Circle on the yoga mat and began converting the existing Circle into a Summoning Circle. Finn picked his way across the rubble and pulled Campbell gently to his feet. I watched as he guided the weak-kneed Campbell along the outside of the room, then out into the corridor.
With the coast clear, I approached Irina. As gently as I could, I said, “Listen to me, Irina. There isn’t a lot of time. Do you want to Cross?”
Irina’s form became still, even limper. “Cross?”
“Yes. My sister and I want to open the Gateway and Cross you over now, if you’re ready.”
Irina moaned like a wounded animal. “What trap is this, Northern Girl? What trick do you play? Why do you try to ensnare me further?”