‘Edita, look. I can help you or not, it’s your choice. And I’ll be honest, I’m not really the helping type, but seeing as I’m the only one who’s noticed there’s something weird going on, it looks like I’m the one you’re stuck with. So, unless your big plan is to send little kids out wandering at night in their PJs for no reason, maybe you should talk to me, yeah? If there’s something you want – preferably something easy – then I promise I’ll try to help…’
‘Look,’ the ghostly voice breathed inside Bo’s mind. ‘Look what he did to me.’
Chapter Nine
Bo fought the urge to yank her hand away from the crystal ball, to sever the connection and run from Madame Curio’s hut. But drawn as she was to the dancing light within the ball, her mind was still her own, unlike when Edita sang after midnight. That small nugget of comfort kept Bo in her seat, her eyes fixed on the crystal.
Edita’s voice had become quiet, but Bo still sensed her there, as though the girl watched over her shoulder. Inside the globe, the light coalesced into vague shapes. No more than suggestions of outlines at first, then clearer and clearer until Bo saw a small stone church surrounded by trees. The building was unfamiliar, but Bo would recognise the trees of Blackfin Woods anywhere. Well, only in Blackfin Woods, but that was the point.
The sun could be seen setting beyond the sharp peaks of the trees, and a faint light shone from the high arches of the church windows. If it wasn’t for the swaying of the trees in the breeze, Bo might have thought she was looking at a painting.
‘What is this?’ she whispered. Bo still felt Edita’s presence, but the voice didn’t answer. Instead she heard laughter. It wasn’t inside her head this time; it was coming from the crystal ball. Edita’s laughter. A moment later, the raven-haired girl came around the side of the church, practically skipping. Even in the fading light of sunset, Bo thought Edita was beautiful. She wore her hair long and tousled, and her dark eyes glinted with laughter. Her lips, previously pale, were painted such a vibrant red that she looked almost vampiric.
‘Edita? What are you showing me?’ Again, there was no answer. ‘Come on, don’t go quiet on me now.’
Rather than hearing a reply, Bo noticed the scene shifting inside the glass of the ball. She was seeing the church from a different angle, just outside its ornately carved oak door. This was the same door where Silas had been attacked by the raven. Or by Edita, depending on how you looked at it. And her devilry, as Silas had called it, had cost him his eye.
Edita stood outside that door now, grinning up at something on the roof. Then she began to hum, her voice sending shivers through Bo as she watched. There came a creak of metal, and now Bo saw what Edita was looking at: a weathervane sitting up on the church roof had begun to spin as though in a gale. But there was no gale, not even a stiff wind. The weathervane was spinning in a cloud of black insects.
It’s her voice, Bo realised. Edita was using her voice to make the swarm of flies do what she wanted.
And now that Bo was watching the weathervane spin, she saw that it wasn’t just any weathervane. She recognised the hollow, narrowed eye, the angry spikes of the cockerel’s crest. It was Silas – or rather, the weathervane everyone in Blackfin knew as Silas. Except Silas’ spirit was presumably not yet inside it in this dream-memory, and the weathervane itself was not yet sitting on top of Blackfin High’s roof.
The metallic screech rose in pitch and volume as Edita’s swarm spun it faster, though her voice was still no more than a humming note. The girl grinned.
‘DEVIL GIRL!’
The bellow sounded from inside the church, and it made Bo flinch. Edita only grinned wider. The bellow was followed by the appearance of Silas in the church doorway.
Silas, Bo thought to herself. How strange to put a human face to the name she had always known as a chunk of metal.
But that face was not as she had seen it in her dream. It was even more haggard, and a bandage covered his damaged eye. It made him look like an injured pirate.
His remaining eye flashed as he glared out into the darkness, searching the shadows until he spotted Edita standing only a few feet away. The second he set foot outside the door, Edita’s insects swarmed down from the roof and buzzed around Silas’ head. He batted them away, cursing loudly in a way pastors probably weren’t supposed to. Within the crystal ball, Edita let out a squeal of laughter, turned on her heel, and set off towards the trees.
‘Not this time, you demon!’ Silas reached back behind the church door and then, with a grunt, threw something at the swiftly moving figure of the girl. It happened too quickly for Bo to see what he had thrown, but as it fell to lie next to the suddenly motionless form of Edita, she realised it was a walking stick. From the limping way Silas now hurried over to the prone girl, Bo guessed it was his.
Edita had fallen when the stick caught the back of her head, but she was not entirely still. She groaned, trying to roll and get her feet under her. Silas reached Edita, pressing his knee into her back, shoving her down into the dirt. This seemed to energise rather than subdue Edita, who turned her head and took a deep breath as though to scream.
Silas clamped his hand over her mouth.
‘Keep that devil tongue silent! I’ve seen how you use it for evil, how you turn your voice to tormenting a decent man of the cloth. I’ll not have it! Not any…’ Silas’ rant turned into a scream of pain as Edita bit down on his hand. When he yanked it away, the girl’s teeth were red with blood. She took a satisfied moment to grin at him before raking her nails over his face, tugging away the bandage to reveal a gaping wound where his eye should have been.
With a wild cry, Silas picked up the walking stick and brought it down once, twice, on the side of Edita’s head.
Bo had never heard a gunshot in real life, but she couldn’t imagine the sound could be any louder than the one the stick made as it connected with Edita’s temple. Her eyes were closed, her body limp, as Silas dropped the walking stick and staggered back from her.
‘Good God, what have I done?’ Hand shaking, Silas raked it back through his hair. ‘You made me do it! I said the devil is in you, girl, and I was right!’
There was no conviction in his voice, though. Only fear.
He’s killed her, Bo thought, forgetting for the moment that what she had just witnessed had already happened, sixteen years earlier. He’s only gone and bloody killed her.
The image inside the glass shifted. When Silas’ drawn face reappeared, he was struggling under the weight of Edita’s body as he dragged her down a set of stone stairs. It was difficult to tell where they were, or how much time had passed, but from the old, churchy look of the staircase, and the fact that Silas probably couldn’t have moved the girl very far, Bo reckoned they were most likely inside the church.
Dots of blood marked each step behind them like gruesome confetti. Silas dropped Edita unceremoniously at the foot of the stairs, then limped away into a dark tunnel. A minute later the tunnel brightened, showing it to be a stone-walled and windowless corridor.
Silas hurried back to Edita. He muttered to himself as he heaved her back into his arms, then began dragging her along that dimly lit corridor.
‘They won’t find you down here, not once I’ve sealed you in properly…’
Silas was now piling up stones to fill a gap in a wall, slathering mortar between them to hold them in place. Bo couldn’t see Edita, and she couldn’t tell what Silas was doing until the flickering light of a torch landed on a pale hand inside the wall he was now frantically sealing off. Stone by stone, the hole grew smaller.
There were other uneven patches in the wall where it seemed as though other such holes might once have been. Was this some kind of crypt, then?
Sweat dripped from Silas’ brow as he worked feverishly, muttering under his breath about ‘devil twins’ and the torment they had inflicted on him. Once the hole was completely filled, he plastered the rest of the mortar over it. It looked like a part of the wall, now, only a little roug
her and darker.
Silas stood, mopping the sweat from his head and looking grimly satisfied.
‘Can’t let anyone know,’ he mumbled. ‘Mustn’t have anyone poking around down here…’
Silas gathered up his tools and took off back along the tunnel and up the stone staircase, emerging into the church through a concealed door behind the font. Then his head snapped up at the sound of a door crashing open. The wind howled outside, but Bo couldn’t look away from Silas to see who had appeared in the church doorway. Silas’ eyes were wide, dark pits as he seemed to stare straight at Bo through the crystal ball.
‘You,’ he snarled.
Chapter Ten
Bo jerked away from the crystal ball, almost tipping over the table as she scrambled to her feet. She felt icy cold, and as she caught her breath she noticed that the door to the fortune-teller’s hut had blown open. The heavy curtains billowed in the sea breeze, looking like a circle of cloaked figures surrounding her.
‘Hello?’ Bo called, popping her head outside. The pier was as deserted as it had been before.
Ducking back inside the hut, Bo rubbed her hand against her chest as if that might help to slow her racing heart. The wind had made the door swing open, that was all. She went to pull it shut, but hesitated.
‘Was that what you wanted to show me, Edita? How you died?’
She waited for an answer, and for a moment thought that Edita had abandoned her. But then that musical voice spoke again.
‘You must see … more…’
‘But I saw him kill you! I know what happened now.’
‘More!’
Bo hissed out a breath between clenched teeth. She didn’t want to watch any more. What she had already seen had been bad enough. What more could there possibly be, anyway? And why did she have to be the one to see it?
‘You asked for this… For weeks now, you have been calling out to the dead.’ Edita laughed, and Bo had the horrible feeling the spirit had been eavesdropping on her thoughts.
‘I didn’t, I…’
But Bo had, hadn’t she? She had been talking to Sky, willing her to send some message from beyond the grave. Had that left her open to other spirits, too? Was that how she had made this strange connection to Edita?
Was she the reason Edita had woken up?
‘You promised,’ Edita whispered. ‘Help me…’
Edita’s voice sounded so close she might have been standing right at her side. Bo shivered again, and shut the door. The crystal ball sat on the small table just as it had before. Bo took a deep breath. Then another. And then she sat down.
‘Right,’ she said, and cracked her knuckles. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
A dull glow swirled inside the ball when she peered into it, but it quickly sharpened once more into an image. She saw Silas inside the church, just as he had been before. But he did not seem to be staring out at her through the glass now. He glared at a tall figure blocking the aisle before him.
Bruno’s hair curled wildly, his eyes like black stars.
‘You!’ Silas snapped. ‘What are you doing in my church?’
‘Where is she?’
Bo gasped at the unearthly sound of Bruno’s voice. It was not like Edita’s, except for the faintly lilting accent. Edita’s voice had seemed to twirl through the air like whispering smoke, but Bruno’s might have been wrenched from some deep, dark part of the world: like a volcano roaring to life, or the metallic groan of a submarine’s hull being crushed in the ocean’s depths.
Bruno had been described in the journal as the silent twin, the one who never spoke. In the dreams Edita had shared with her in her trance state, Bo had never heard Bruno speak before. Now she saw why.
Bo braced herself as the scene in the glass continued to play out, and Bruno spoke again.
‘I feel her … near. She is in pain. What did you do?’
The sneer wilted from Silas’ face, and all the colour drained from it. The dirt smeared on his cheeks from his recent endeavours in the catacombs stood out in stark condemnation. He straightened, seeming to gather his nerve.
‘To the best of my knowledge, she isn’t hurt,’ Silas said with only the faintest tremor, and Bo could tell he thought he was being clever with his half-truth. ‘And she isn’t in this church. Feel free to look around if you wish. Perhaps the Lord’s light will reach you if you stay awhile.’
Bo couldn’t believe how pompous Silas sounded. He’d just murdered a teenage girl and concealed her body in an underground chamber, and now he was goading her brother for looking for her.
Bruno didn’t seem able to believe it either. Bo sensed some invisible charge building around the boy, like the build-up before a lightning strike. Or the stillness before a tsunami. He raised his hands, and for a moment she thought he might hit Silas, but he forced them to his sides and spoke through clenched teeth.
‘Don’t lie, preacher. I feel her pain.’
Was Bruno sensing Edita’s death, and just unable to figure out what exactly he was feeling? Bo’s little brothers did creepy twin things like that from time to time, so she couldn’t dismiss the possibility. She heard a high-pitched screech, and a web of cracks spread through the stained-glass window nearest the pair.
‘I know she has upset you with her games, but she meant you no real harm. Tell me where she is, and I will make sure you never see either of us again; our troupe leaves in just a few days.’
With each word, the cracks spread through the glass like broken veins, threading across one window, then the next. Then the pews began to tremble slightly, but then more, as though they sat upon an enormous bass speaker instead of a stone floor. Silas’ gaze followed the movement instead of focusing on the boy. Sweat beaded his top lip.
‘No real harm? She took my eye!’ Silas’ mask was slipping now, and he pointed unnecessarily at the bandage covering his wound. Bruno just stared. It took a moment for Silas to compose himself. ‘I … I did see her, but it was earlier. Much earlier. In the morning. She said she was going into town.’
‘Liar.’
‘No, you must believe me, I…’
‘Liar.’
That unearthly voice rose to a roar, a sound something no human or animal should have been capable of. The glass burst outward from the windows, leaving their arched frames empty. Through the trees outside, Bo thought she saw flickers of orange light, but her attention was pulled back to Bruno as he closed the distance between him and the Reverend.
‘You are a hell-creature,’ Silas whispered. ‘Go back to the abyss you crawled out of.’
Silas backed up a step, but he was pressed against the curtain hiding the secret door, and he could go no further without Bruno seeing it. Instead he darted across the chancel to a narrow staircase leading up.
Bo followed his panting form as he struggled up the stairs, emerging into a circular stone space with open windows that had never contained glass, as far as she could tell. There was a great brass bell hanging in the middle of the space, and a rope dangling from it through a hole in the floor.
Silas slammed the trap door he had just come through and stood on it, searching about him for some way to hold it shut.
‘He’s coming,’ he whispered. ‘He’s coming!’
Bo couldn’t hear anyone running up the stone steps below, or Bruno’s awful voice bellowing to be let through. For a moment she wondered if he had left, but then she saw him through one of the window-spaces. He stood outside the church, looking up from the treeline. Even from this distance, his voice carried as though he stood only feet away.
‘Tell me where my sister is, old man, or you will die in your little tower. My sister’s gift compels the small creatures, as you know, but mine … my power is far more terrible. I can make the sky bleed fire. I will bring you death.’
If Bruno had sounded angry before, his tone was now eerily calm. Too calm. It held the promise of absolute destruction.
‘Go back to hell!’ Silas roared, flecks of spittle arcing out over t
he sill. His knuckles were blanched white against the stone window frame.
‘Edita!’ Bruno boomed. The ground shook under the weight of his voice, and Bo saw Silas stumble as the vibrations reached him in the tower. Wind howled around the building. Biting shards of hail that hadn’t been in the air moments ago now hammered the roof tiles. ‘EDITA!’
There was a groan of splintering wood, and the tall oak nearest Bruno began to sway. Bo’s heart stopped for a second when it seemed like it might land on the boy, but he stepped smartly out of the way and let its great trunk come crashing down onto the church. Silas screamed as the roof below the bell tower caved in around the tree, spitting out slate shingles like teeth in a bar fight.
‘She’s dead!’ Silas shrieked. ‘It was an accident!’
But Bruno shook his head angrily, jerking a finger at his temple. ‘Not dead. I hear her. She is hurt and she is afraid, and cannot see where she is, but she remembers seeing your face last. Now where … is … she?’
One high wall of the church crashed inward, leaving it looking more like rubble than a building. A great, gaping crack threaded up the tower, right to the sill where Silas still clung. He leapt back with a screech.
‘You’re going to kill me, you damned idiot!’
In reply to this, Bruno drew in a deep breath and bellowed wordlessly, the tendons in his neck standing out taut under his skin. The crack in the church steeple widened, large chunks of stone falling away to crash onto the debris below. The sounds of destruction continued long after Bruno’s roar ended.
The stone floor of the inner steeple began to crumble, and Silas practically danced in his efforts to avoid falling through the dark spaces appearing at his feet. Bo leaned in, willing him to find a way out of that tower. She might not like Silas, but she didn’t really want to watch him die, either.
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