Spirit Prophecy

by E. E. Holmes

  Then it was nothing but silence.

  The first thing I registered was that I was not dead. The second was that I was upside down, my face and hands pressed against the surprisingly soft roof of the car. I could feel my seatbelt cutting into my thighs, holding me suspended. I turned my head and saw Savannah staring back at me. Her eyes were wide, but very alive, and they blinked several times. They were almost all I could see in the darkness.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I dunno,” Savvy said, blinking again. There were several small cuts on her cheek, and a trickle of blood was snaking its way down into her hair. She raised her hand and felt the blood. “I feel like I ought to be covered in this. You alright?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, making a rapid mental inventory of my body. I could feel everything, and though I was sore and aching, nothing was in terrible pain. “I think so.”

  “What about Finn?” she asked. “Finn?” I called into the broken, smoking darkness. I held my breath through an agonizingly silent few seconds, and then called his name again. “Finn?”

  Nothing. Fear began to flood through me, rising inside me, threatening to drown me before I could do anything to stop it. He came here to save us, and if he was dead, it was all my fault. All my fault.

  “I can smell petrol,” Savvy said. “I think we should try to get out of here as fast as we can.” She was already trying to wedge herself out of her seatbelt straps.

  I felt around and found my seatbelt buckle and tried to undo it, but it was jammed. I clenched it tightly between both hands and squeezed as hard as I could. Finally it popped apart with a muffled click and I crumpled into a heap on the roof of the car. A moment later, Savannah fell with a loud curse.

  “Finn?” I called again, and my voice broke with fear at the answering silence. “Savvy, we have to get to him, we have to get him out of the car and get help.”

  “There’s no way we’re getting out this side,” she said, gesturing to her own window. She was right. The car had slammed into a tree, leaving barely six inches of space between the shattered window and the splintered trunk.

  With difficulty, I twisted my neck and examined my window. The glass was gone, and there was a clear five or six feet between the car and the nearest tree. “We should be able to escape on this side,” I said. “Hang on, let me get out and I can help you.”

  I grasped the window frame and braced my other hand against the back of the passenger seat, using my legs to push off against the seat above me. I cried out as my back slid across the glass-strewn roof beneath me. As my head and shoulders emerged through the window frame, I was able to brace a hand against the frame of the car and push myself the rest of the way onto the cold, wet grass, where I gladly could have lain and not moved again for the rest of my life. Instead, I got to my knees and reached my arms back through the window. Savvy grasped hold of them and together we pulled her out beside me, panting and groaning.

  “You alright?” I gasped.

  “Dizzy,” she said faintly. “I think it’s the fumes from the petrol. Just need to catch my breath.”

  “Are you sure you don’t have a concussion?” I asked.

  “Mate, I’m barely sure that I’m alive.”

  “Stay here, I’m going to check on Finn,” I told her, and stumbled to my feet.

  It seemed to take forever to reach him; my vision was strangely tunneled. I rounded the front of the car and reached his window.

  Please don’t let him be dead. Oh, please, please don’t let him be dead.

  Finn’s eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open, his head resting against the steering column where the air was hissing quietly out of the airbag. His cheek was covered in small gashes, but I couldn’t see any more blood. “Finn, can you hear me?” I asked in a hoarse whisper. He did not stir. My eyes blurred with terrified tears. “Jess, there’s fire back here!” Savvy called. “Is he okay? Can you get him out?”

  “I don’t know!” I called back. “I’m going to try!”

  I wedged my head into the window frame and reached across Finn’s body to release his seatbelt. I pulled his limp arm through it, grabbed him under his armpits, and pulled as hard as I could, bracing my legs against the door. He slid out onto the grass, his head coming to rest on top of my thigh. I had vague memories of being told you shouldn’t move someone who had been in an accident in case of head injury, but it was too late for that. I bent over him, brushing his hair out of his face and tapping it gently with my fingers.

  “Finn? Finn?”

  I bent close to his face so that his lips were brushing my cheek. With a surge of relief, I felt his warm breath against my skin.

  “He’s alive, Savvy!” I called, my voice hitching over a sob.

  Savvy gave a strange whoop of relief. The sound of it seemed to rouse Finn a bit, and he groaned quietly in my lap.

  “Finn?” I asked again, pressing a hand to his forehead to wipe away a trickle of blood before it dripped into his eyes.

  His eyelids fluttered and opened. He looked right up into my face and seemed not to know me for a moment. Then he reached a trembling hand up and stroked my cheeks. It was such a gentle touch that my heart gave a strange flutter in response.

  “Are you okay?” he mumbled. “Are you hurt?”

  I actually laughed with relief. “You’re the one lying on the ground unconscious, bleeding from the head, and you want to know if I’m hurt?”

  “Yes,” he said, as though the question confused him.

  “That’s a Caomhnóir for you, never off duty,” I said.

  “Answer me,” he said. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m not hurt.”

  His eyes bore into mine, as though looking for something there that might contradict what I’d said. We held each other’s gaze in that one strange, endless little moment, a bubble of silent intensity in the smoking, burning chaos. We were so close that I could feel the heat from his face rising in waves and breaking against mine. My breath caught in my throat. Then he seemed to satisfy himself that I was telling the truth, and in that same moment, realized that he was still touching my cheek. He snatched away his hand as though burned, his softened expression hardening into its usual stoic mask, and immediately started trying to sit up.

  “Where’s the other car? Did it drive away?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “They’re gone, whoever they were. Lay down for a minute and rest. You might have a concussion.”

  I tried to help him into a sitting position, but he batted my hands away, looking almost angry. “I’m fine. We need to get out of here.” He got shakily to his knees and almost keeled back over.

  “Finn, I really think you should —”

  “I said I’m fine! Get out of it!” he said. He gained his footing, steadied himself against a tree trunk and focused on the mangled car for the first time. His mouth dropped open.

  “Oh, my God.”

  I craned my neck so that I could see the remains of the car, too. It was a twisted wreck, the kind of thing they pry bodies from with the jaws of life.

  “Oh sweet Jesus, it’s a miracle,” Savvy moaned from the grass nearby.

  “I know,” I said. “I can’t believe we’re alive.”

  “What? Oh, well yeah, I guess that’s a miracle, too,” Savvy said. “I was talking about these.”

  I turned to look at her. She was holding up a crumpled package of cigarettes and a lighter, which had landed in the grass along with the rest of the contents of her purse. She pulled one out, straightened the bent filter, and lit it with near-euphoric relish.

  “I have never needed one of these more in my entire life,” she said, taking a drag.

  “Savvy, do you wanna do that just a little further from the gasoline-soaked car?” I said in exasperation. “It would suck pretty badly to survive a crash like that only to blow up because you needed a nicotine fix.”

  “Good point,” Savvy said, and crawled several yards further away, leaning against a nearby tr
ee trunk. Finn limped around the car, absorbing the extent of the damage. “You both sure you’re alright? No broken bones?”

  “I guess I could still be in shock, but I really think I’m alright,” I said. With the exception of some cuts and scrapes, and some glass shards that had lodged themselves in my back, I was completely uninjured, as far as I could tell. My overriding emotion was one of stunned relief, although I was pretty sure that, given a few minutes to think about what had just happened to us, I would soon be a sobbing, retching disaster.

  “Me too,” Savvy said, finally exhaling a plume of smoke into the night.

  “Did anyone see what happened to Milo?” I asked. “I know he can’t get hurt or anything, but one second he was in the car with us, and then suddenly, he was gone.”

  “Can you call him?” Savvy asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and closed my eyes. The world began to spin behind my eyelids, and I couldn’t focus on his energy. “I think I’m still too dazed. Either that, or he’s too far away. I’ve never tried from more than a few miles.”

  “Hey, is everyone alright down there?” said a deep voice.

  Finn leapt into a defensive stance and I scrambled to my feet, ready to run if the driver of the SUV had come back to finish us off. But the face that peered down at us from the other side of the twisted guardrail was very old, and he was standing beside a rusty red Peugeot.

  “We’re okay,” Finn called back, waving.

  “What happened to you? Did someone hit you?”

  “No, our tire hit something in the road. It blew out, and I lost control of the car,” Finn said, without so much as a moment’s hesitation. “Do you need me to phone the police? I’ve got a mobile for emergencies,” the man said.

  “No!” Finn said sharply, then calmed his voice. “We’ve already called them. They’re on their way now.” And as though to drive his point home, he pulled a cell phone from his back pocket and held it up for the man to see. “I’ve called my dad as well. Honestly, we’re fine, sir. Well, we won’t be when my dad gets here; this is his car, and he’s going to kill me when he sees it.” He hung his head.

  “Nonsense. He’ll just be glad you’re alright,” the man said.

  “I hope so. I’ve never had a wreck before. Thanks for your concern.”

  “Right, then. Well, if you’re quite sure you’re alright, I’ll be going then. Good luck to you,” the man said, and he returned to his car.

  Finn took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, running both hands into his hair and starting to pace, still favoring his left leg. “Right. He won’t be the only one to stop. We’ve got to get in touch with someone at Fairhaven to come help clear this all up, before the police get involved.”

  “Why?” Savvy asked. She pulled a second cigarette out of the package and lit it right off of the first one, which she flicked into the grass. “Why wouldn’t we want the police to come? You haven’t been drinking and we need to report that prick that hit us.”

  “Haven’t you learned anything? It’s always better for us to clean up our own messes, without the authorities getting mixed up in it,” Finn said. “We want Fairhaven to stay as far off the grid as possible, to avoid awkward questions.” He held his phone up to his face and tried to dial, but seemed to be having trouble focusing on the numbers. He pressed his palms into his eye sockets.

  “So that asshole, whoever he was, is just going to get away with it, then?” Savvy asked.

  “Probably, unless you or Jessica can tell us anything else about him,” Finn said, glancing up from the phone and shooting a dark look at me.

  The longer we stood there, the more aches and pains were surfacing through my shock, and along with them came the panic of earlier that night. I couldn’t be sure that the man who had been following us was connected to the Necromancers, but I didn’t want anyone at Fairhaven to know about him until I could find out more. What if I put Pierce or Annabelle in even more danger? What if the Durupinen decided my loose ends were too much of a liability? What if I managed to reignite a battle that had lain dormant for hundreds of years? Or what if —and this possibility was perhaps even more disturbing—what if someone within the Durupinen was responsible for the attack? Annabelle certainly didn’t trust them, and like she said, they had the means, motive, and plenty of opportunity. There were certainly many on the Council that resented our family and all of the trouble we had caused them. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that one or more of them might be trying to clean up the mess we’d created, whether the other members knew it or not. And until I could rule it out, I had to conceal from them, as much as possible, the truth of the situation.

  “We can’t tell them about this!” I said.

  “What do you mean, we can’t tell them?” Finn snarled, rounding on me.

  “We can’t tell them about the man who was following us,” I said.

  Finn’s expression was incredulous. “And what are we supposed to tell them? How in the hell are we supposed to explain this?” He gestured to the smoking wreck of the car.

  “The story you just told that guy up there sounded pretty good to me,” I said.

  Finn laughed derisively. “That was rubbish! That would never work on anyone who actually took the time to look at the car, and I can promise you that my superiors will be going over it with a fine tooth comb. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to accept the story of a blowout when the tires are just about the only things on the car that aren’t destroyed. And we were obviously hit from behind!”

  “Can’t we just tell them it was…” I cast my brain around madly for a lie. My eyes fell on Savannah, who was now vomiting into a nearby bush. “Tell them it was a drunk driver, some random idiot with road rage, anything! Please, Finn, it’s really important!”

  “And you still aren’t going to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

  “I can’t. I just need you to trust me.”

  Finn snorted. “Yeah, Jessica, because you are proving to be so trustworthy.”

  Before I could respond, Milo blazed into being between us, causing us both to leap backward in shock.

  “Milo! Where did you —”

  “Holy shit, thank GOD you’re alive! I went for help! I thought that maniac was going to kill you all!” he cried. He took in all three of us and the smoking wreckage of the car. “Looks like a freaking miracle you aren’t all floating deadside with me right now!”

  “What help? Who’s coming?” I asked.

  “I went to Hannah, and she told Celeste, and Celeste called in the Caomhnóir. There were about ten of them on the way.

  “Milo, what do they know? How much did you tell them?”

  “Hannah told them Finn was driving you back from London and that someone hit your car. She was too hysterical for long explanations, so they didn’t press her for any more details.”

  “How long do you think it will be before they —”

  Above us, screeching tires and sweeping headlight beams converged on the other side of the guardrail, rendering the rest of the question unnecessary.

  “Connect with Hannah, now!” I hissed to Milo, as car doors slammed and figures started appearing above us. “Tell her we’re okay, and to play dumb about why I was here and what we were doing, please! I’ll explain everything later, but right now —”

  “Jess, there’s something else. I saw who was —” Milo said.

  “Tell me later, Milo! Go! Now!”

  Milo faded from view just as a deep voice called, “Finn? Jessica?”

  “Here!” Finn called back. “We’re down here! We’re okay!”

  There was no time to say anything else. With one last pleading look at Finn, whose expression was completely unreadable, I turned and faced the team of Caomhnóir now climbing down the embankment.

  16

  CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

  “WELL, THAT WAS ONE MASSIVE COCK UP,” Savvy said. “Next time, I’m planning the girls’ night, yeah?”

  We were sitting on a ben
ch outside of one of the Council conference rooms, awaiting a disciplinary meeting, like a pair of pranksters outside the principal’s office. It was humiliating.

  “I’m sorry about all of this, Savvy,” I said, eyes on my knees, which were covered in grass stains and smears of Finn’s and my own dried blood. “I had no idea I was getting us into a situation like that, seriously. I never would have asked for you to come.”

  “Nah, don’t apologize,” she said, nudging my knee with her own. “I’m only playing around. I know you didn’t plan any of that.”

  “No, I definitely didn’t.”

  “And I’ve got to say, that was a damn sight more exciting than any night in town I’ve ever had, even if it was a bit heavy on the mortal danger. You’re a real badass, eh?” She grinned.

  I couldn’t help but smirk a tiny bit. “Yeah, that’s me. Bad to the bone.”

  Somewhere nearby, a clock was ticking ominously. Savvy put a reassuring hand on my knee, which was bouncing up and down with manic, nervous energy in time to the clock.

  “You’ve got to take a breath,” she said. “It’s going to be fine, you know. I’ve had, like, five of these meetings already.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t wreck a car and nearly kill yourself and two other people, did you?” I asked.

  “No, and neither did you. It was an accident! They may be cross about us sneaking out, but even they know you can’t control everything.”

  I found a tiny shard of glass still caught in the distressed web of threads on my jeans, and picked it carefully out with my fingers. No, I couldn’t control everything. In fact, I couldn’t control anything, it seemed. Everything was spinning horribly out of control, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I didn’t know who I could trust, who I could talk to, or what was unfolding in the room behind me.

  We weren’t the only ones who had to endure a disciplinary meeting. Finn had been in there for fifteen minutes, and I couldn’t hear a single word that was being said, though not for lack of trying.