by E. E. Holmes
Carrick drifted toward me, blocking the door. “Jessica, if you don’t calm down, we can’t help you!”
Behind him, the door flew open and Finvarra stood silhouetted in the lamplight, her face blazing and stern.
“What is going on here? Jessica, how dare you —”
“How dare I? How dare YOU!” I shouted, lunging forward as Hannah caught my hood to restrain me.
Carrick thrust out a hand and I was lifted off my feet and hurled through the air. My back slammed into the stone wall and I slid down to the floor, the wind completely knocked out of me.
Carrick started toward me, his face full of horror at what he had done. “Jessica, are you alright? I didn’t mean to —”
“No!” Hannah cried, and with the force of her own hand, Carrick too was driven backward, pinned to Finvarra’s open door, unable to move.
“Hannah, don’t!” I wheezed.
“Everyone, stop! Stop this at once!” Finvarra shouted.
An odd, tense stillness fell over us. I lay against the wall, gasping for air.
Finvarra looked from Carrick to Hannah, her expression extremely wary.
“Carrick, are you alright?” Finvarra asked slowly.
“I can’t move,” he said. It couldn’t have been clearer that he was stunned by this realization.
Finvarra turned to Hannah. “Hannah? Are you restraining him?”
Hannah tore her blazing stare from Carrick with seeming difficulty. When she found Finvarra’s eyes, she suddenly looked terrified. “Yes.” She sounded almost surprised.
“Can you let him go now, please?” Finvarra asked, her voice a gentle lull. Hannah continued to stare at her, as though she couldn’t understand the words that Finvarra was saying to her. Her hand began to tremble.
“Go on, then. Just relax yourself. He’s not going to hurt Jessica.”
Hannah seemed on the verge of tears. “He did, he hurt her, he —”
Carrick inhaled sharply and cast a panicked look at Finvarra. She froze.
I suddenly realized, as I looked back and forth between them, that Hannah was actually hurting him. Carrick was a ghost. Ghosts couldn’t feel physical pain. Could they?
Milo stood so close to Hannah that, if he’d been alive, his body would have been pressed right up against her. He laid his face against her cheek.
“Sweetness, I want you to listen to me. Let’s do what we always do when we get upset,” he whispered. “Close those baby browns.”
Hannah’s eyes fluttered shut.
“Now take a nice deep breath with me, and when we let it out, we’re just gonna blow all those bad things away. Just send ’em out into the world and far away. And when you do, you’re gonna let Carrick go. He’s not going to hurt Jessica any more. Carrick, go on and tell her.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt her to begin with,” Carrick said, his voice strained. “And I will not hurt her again, I give you my word as a Caomhnóir.”
“There, see? Isn’t that nice? You’ve protected her. She’s safe. You got me?” Milo cooed.
“Yes,” Hannah whispered.
“That’s right, sweetness, Milo knows what he’s talking about, just like always. Now, deep breath in.”
His face still pressed to hers, they inhaled slowly and deeply. Then, in a movement that relaxed Hannah’s entire being, they exhaled. Her arm dropped limply to her side, and as it did, Carrick slumped forward and away from the door, apparently unrestrained once again. He traded one, meaningful look with Finvarra, who nodded slowly in relief and turned, smiling gently to Hannah.
“There now. Now that we’ve all calmed down, please come in and sit down, so that we can discuss whatever it is that has brought you here tonight,” she said, with a wave of her hand toward her office door. I didn’t need the warning look that Finvarra gave me, the one that clearly said, “Keep calm.” What Hannah had just done had shocked me into submission, and I followed quietly.
Hannah walked in almost automatically, staggering slightly, and collapsing into the nearest chair, where she closed her eyes again and tucked her knees up to her chin, tears streaming down her face. Milo curled like a cat beside her, his expression just this side of threatening as the others eyed them.
Finvarra took her time pulling the door shut behind us, then strolling over to the windows to pull the long silken hangings. She seemed to be giving Hannah as much time as possible to calm down before addressing us again. Carrick was hovering around in her wake like a shadow. Finally she sat down behind her great stone table and folded her hands.
“Before we address the reason for your visit, we must discuss the rather significant event that has just occurred outside my office,” Finvarra said.
Carrick drifted forward, so that he came to rest beside Finvarra. He was looking back and forth between her and Hannah with a worried expression.
“Hannah, I think you must know that what you have just done is extremely unusual for Durupinen, perhaps unprecedented. Granted, we have little documentation on the abilities of Callers, as there have been so few in our history, but it is not generally in our nature to have any control over the spirits we communicate with. It is for this reason, in fact, that we have the Caomhnóir for protection.”
What little color ever resided in Hannah’s face was receding rapidly, and she looked like she might be sick.
Finvarra continued. “You were able to restrain Carrick and, if I am not much mistaken, to cause him discomfort. Carrick, is that accurate?”
“Yes.” Carrick said, although he seemed hesitant to admit it. I wondered if this was simply a result of Caomhnóir culture — this male inability to admit weakness before the woman he was honor-bound to protect.
“Have you ever done this before?” Finvarra asked.
“No,” Hannah said. “I just…panicked. He hurt Jess. I just reacted.”
“And can you think of no other instance in which you have had control over a spirit in this manner?”
Hannah shot me a frightened look. I shook my head as minutely as possible.
“No,” Hannah said.
Finvarra studied her for a long, tense moment.
“If I may, High Priestess,” Carrick said hesitantly.
She turned to him. “Yes, Carrick, what is it?”
“It is possible that Hannah was experiencing a burst of powers she does not generally possess, just as other young Apprentices sometimes experience gifts that are not a permanent part of their spirit interactions. Non-Muses have been known to produce a single psychic drawing, and non-Seers have been known to experience a single, unexplained premonition. These moments often come in times of extreme distress. Perhaps this was simply one of those moments, and nothing more.”
Finvarra seemed to consider this. Slowly she began to nod her head. “This is a wise observation, Carrick. I think you may be right. We will let it go, and say no more about it. But if anything of this nature occurs again, Hannah, you must tell Lucida at once. Is that understood?”
Hannah nodded. Behind Finvarra, Carrick looked as relieved as I felt, which seemed odd. I had no time to dwell on it, though, as Finvarra returned at last to the reason we had come.
“Now that that is settled,” she said, “please tell me your reason for coming here tonight. Jessica, you are obviously quite upset.”
I tore my eyes away from Hannah, and looked at Finvarra, and in that moment it all rushed back upon me, breaking through the temporary dam of Hannah’s actions. I couldn’t restrain the shuddering quake in my voice as I was forced to say it out loud, this devastating, irretrievable thing. “Pierce is dead. Someone killed him.”
Unbidden, those three echoing knocks reverberated in my head.
Finvarra’s face was utterly blank. She had no idea who I was talking about, couldn’t spare a tiny fraction of her thoughts to remember the man who had played such an integral role in my life, and this thought only choked me with darker, thicker anger.
Carrick, however, moved closer to me, his brow furrowed in c
oncern. “Pierce? You are speaking of David Pierce, the professor you associated with at St. Matthew’s College?”
I was momentarily pulled up short that he would know this when Finvarra did not.
“Yes.”
“And how is it you know that Dr. Pierce is dead?” he asked.
“He appeared to Fiona in a psychic drawing trance. I thought he was trying to get to me, so we performed a Crossing, and… ” Tears swallowed the rest of my sentence, but he did not seem to need it.
“And he Crossed. You saw his memories and you recognized him,” Carrick said softly.
I nodded, wiping my still-streaming eyes.
“And why is it exactly that you think someone has killed him?” Finvarra asked, in what I considered to be an unnecessarily skeptical tone.
“I saw it!” I cried. “I watched it from his perspective. He was lying on the ground and there was blood all around his face, and there was a man there, and I knew him, too!”
Finvarra and Carrick traded looks. “You’re saying you know the man who killed him?” she asked.
“Yes. His name is Neil Caddigan. I met him on Pierce’s investigative team. They thought he was a demonologist, but he’s not. He’s a Necromancer.”
Finvarra and Carrick merely stared at me as though I had shouted something in an unknown language.
“What about the Necromancers?” Carrick asked blankly.
“They killed him! The Necromancers killed Pierce!” I said again.
Finvarra was already shaking her head. “The Necromancers have been dismantled for centuries. We have seen very methodically to their destruction as an organization. They are in no way a threat to us in these modern times.”
“Everyone keeps saying that, but you’re wrong! It was him, I’m telling you, and he was wearing their symbol on his shirt. We recognized it from class!”
I turned to Hannah and Milo for support this time, and they both nodded in confirmation.
They still looked skeptical, and so I plowed on recklessly, “And there’s more. When I went to London and we were in the car accident on the way home, it wasn’t a drunk driver who caused it. It was Neil. Milo saw him behind the wheel of the car right before we went off the road.”
Milo nodded again. “He was wearing that symbol, I’m positive about that.”
Finvarra came forward and placed a hand on my shoulder. When she spoke, it was with the air of someone trying to inject sense into an absurd conversation. “Jessica, you are tired and upset. I don’t blame you. I know how much this man meant to you. He was there for you at a time when we were not, and we must all be grateful to him for that. But you are not being logical. This Neil Caddigan, whoever he is, is not one of the Necromancers. It is simply not possible.”
“But it is possible!” I cried, knocking her hand away. “The Necromancers are back. They killed Pierce, and they tried to kill me. I don’t know what they want or why they’ve targeted me and the people in my life, but you’ve got to do something!”
“I think I can be trusted,” Finvarra said, every trace of warmth gone from her voice, “as the High Priestess of this order to have a clear understanding of the dangers we face. Far clearer, I assure you, than any Apprentice, and certainly clearer than an Apprentice such as yourself, who as yet has only scratched the surface of what it means to be one of us.”
“Don’t you get it?” I shouted, jumping out of my seat. “People are dying! I was almost one of them! Pierce is gone, and you should have protected him! He never should have been a part of this mess, but you and your Council screwed it up, and now he’s dead! If you honestly can’t see past your own arrogance and accept that you’re wrong —”
“Enough!” Finvarra said quellingly. Her whole presence crackled with authority, and I lapsed into stony silence. “I have tolerated your behavior tonight because you are upset, but I will not entertain wild theories based entirely in hysterical speculation. If you continue to pay attention in History and Lore, you will learn that the Durupinen have utterly routed the Necromancers. We have desecrated their halls. We have captured and locked away their relics. This very castle holds their only remaining traces in the bowels of its dungeons. They are gone. Let me hear no more about it.”
We stared at each other for a long silent moment. My whole body shook with rage.
“You’re wrong. Accept it and put your resources into finding the Necromancers, or the Durupinen will be in trouble, and you will have no one to blame but yourself.”
“You are dismissed.”
And just like that, she slammed the door on the conversation. There was nothing I could say that would convince her. I turned without another word and walked to the door. I felt rather than saw Hannah and Milo follow me.
“Jessica.”
Her voice made me pause, but I did not look back.
“I am sorry about your friend. I promise I will put our full investigative powers into discovering what has really happened to him. We will put your doubts to rest.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” I said quietly. “Not ever again.”
18
THE UNCAGING
I DID NOT SLEEP THAT NIGHT, and I did not go to class the next day. Hannah crept back up before Siobhán’s class carrying a plate of eggs, sausage, and toast. She left it on my bedside table, where it still sat, cold and congealed, when she returned to check on me at lunch time.
I couldn’t close my own eyes without seeing Pierce’s final moments through his. I fought against sleep because I knew what horrors I would see when I succumbed. Blaming Finvarra was the most satisfying outlet I could find for my pain, and I gave over to it completely, seething in it. She had left me to stumble blindly through the early days of my gift, forcing me to find this man and seek his help. Everything he knew and suspected about me was because of her, and it was this knowledge that had gotten him killed. I’d never have been able to accept the truth of it if I hadn’t felt, within my own body and heart, the actual physical loss of him.
I was helpless. I had no way of contacting Annabelle, and even if I could, there was no way I could meet with her again; it was far too dangerous. And since I couldn’t do anything to help her or Pierce, I didn’t do anything at all. I laid on my bed for the better part of two days, getting up only to go to the bathroom and once, after a terrible nightmare about Pierce’s death, to wretch emptily over the trash barrel near my desk. Once, Celeste stopped by. Mackie brought cookies, which Savvy ate when she came to check on me later. Hannah spared me their sentiments and condolences, and sent them away quickly. She and Milo stayed in the room with me a lot of the time, but they didn’t speak to me much. There was nothing to say.
When she slipped out on Saturday night, I thought she was just trying to escape the pall of melancholy I was casting over the entire room. It was late, perhaps even after curfew, but I couldn’t even summon the interest to check the clock on the wall. I dropped into a fitful doze.
“Jess?”
Hannah had crept into the room. Savvy and Mackie were right behind her.
I didn’t answer, but looked back up at the ceiling as the three of them shuffled in. They approached my bed the way some people approach an open casket at a wake; hesitant and a little afraid of what they would find there.
“It’s Saturday,” Hannah said.
“Is it?”
“This is the night we all agreed we would try to Uncage the Silent Child.”
I felt a dull pulse of something under my smothering blanket of misery. Was it guilt? I hadn’t spared a single thought for the Silent Child, or anything else really, in several days.
“We’ve got to do it tonight,” Mackie said, “or else we’ll have to wait another month.”
Still I said nothing. I was searching, searching for the part of me that still cared about things. It was doing a damn good job of keeping itself hidden.
“We set everything up,” Hannah said. “The whole circle is cast out in the memorial yard in the East garden. We just nee
d you.”
“Can’t you do it without me?” I asked.
“We thought about that,” Savvy said. She sat on the bed next to me, and I turned my head to avoid her gaze. “They were all for letting you be, up here all by yourself, but I told them it wasn’t right.”
“And she’s got a point,” Mackie said. “The Silent Child chose you. You’re the one she wants to communicate with. If we try to do this without you, she may not cooperate, or even turn up at all.”
“You’re the best chance we have of freeing her,” Hannah said. “Don’t you understand, Jess? She needs you. And I know it’s hard, but you need to be there for her now.”
Finally, I turned to look at them, three blurry shapes behind the film of tears clouding my eyes. “I don’t think I can. Honestly, I am completely useless right now. I have nothing left.”
Hannah sat on the bed beside Savvy. “Jess, you have plenty left. You can’t feel it, because you’re in a lot of pain right now, but you’re still there — behind the pain, you’re still there. And when the pain fades, you’ll realize that you’re still here.”
“I don’t want to be here.”
“Yes you do!” she said, her voice rising so sharply that I looked her in the eye for the first time. “It seems to me that your friend Dr. Pierce died trying to protect you. And if that’s true, the best way to honor him isn’t to curl up in a ball and give up. You need to honor him and keep doing what he always wanted to do himself; help the spirits.”
The tears and the beginnings of a smile fought for dominance on my face. “You are just too smart for your own good, you know that?”
She smiled weakly back. “I know. It’s a character flaw.”
I sat up, trying and failing to run a hand through my matted hair. “Okay. Someone get me a hairbrush and something to eat and let’s go.”
“That’s our girl!” Mackie said. She pulled my hairbrush off of the desk behind her and handed it to me.
“And obviously I’ve got the food covered,” Savvy said, holding out a napkin containing an apple, a muffin, and two cold sausages.