I shouted the banishing words, blasting the nearest ghost with necromantic power. He vanished, but his neighbour descended, yelling in rage. Ghostly hands grabbed at me, tugging at the essence of me. “Come with us, Gatekeeper.”
“Where, the Vale?” I asked through gritted teeth. “I’d love to meet the person you’re working for.”
“Oh, you won’t,” said the ghost. He kept tugging. I let him, and power built behind my hands, pulled straight from the book. “You’re coming to the Vale so you can wander there forever, while we take back what’s ours.”
His hands latched onto my spirit and pulled. I let go, soaring out of my body, power blasting the faerie ghost onto his back. Grabbing his throat, I let him struggle, squealing in astonishment that I was attacking him as a ghost.
“Do none of your people know who I am?” I asked. Damn. He’s not faking. It came as no surprise that the half-faeries didn’t know how powerful the book was, but made it that much harder to guess the perpetrator. “Tell me who you’re working for. It’ll go easier for you. I can walk in and out of the Vale any time I like. Understand me?”
The ghost paled. “I—I don’t want to die.”
“You’re already dead.”
Tears spilled from his eyes. “This is all her fault. We’re stuck here because of her, and now we can’t come back unless we help them.”
“Who?”
Fury sparked from his eyes. “Ivy Lane. She condemned us to this.”
“What? How?”
He shook his head, tears spilling. He was really young, despite his ghostly state. They all were. Ivy Lane? She did this to them?
“I can help you move on,” I told him. “It’ll be fast. But you need to tell me what you know.”
He sobbed again. “I’ve been stuck in the Vale for so long… I had to get out. There were other half-bloods, they told me to help them. They told me to bring you with me and I’d get to live again.”
“They lied. You can’t raise the dead permanently, not in the way you want. If it’s any consolation, the Sidhe are the same.”
The book’s power filled me, the image of the gates appeared at his back, and he faded from view, disappearing beyond.
The spirit sight receded, greyness fading to be replaced with bright light and a burning smell. My heart lurched.
Smoke poured from the roof of Agnes’s shop despite the rain, and River emerged with Everett leaning on him. Behind, Agnes stormed out, coughing and swearing at full volume. Relief filtered through. They’re okay.
The remainder of the crowd dispersed pretty quickly when Agnes unleashed several firework spells into the sky. I saw the necromancers casting suspicious looks at me, but none of them seemed to want to get too close to the burning shop. Hazel stood talking to two of them, presumably giving them a human-friendly explanation. Even a village full of supernaturals had little chance of banishing faerie ghosts. It was seriously luckily none of them had been wraiths.
Everett stepped away from River, eyeing him suspiciously. “You certainly have a good sense of timing.”
“The ghost of old Graves warned me,” I said. “Are you and Agnes all right?”
“We’ve been worse,” he said. “We have healing spells. The fire’s out, but the spells need to… settle down.”
Agnes snarled, throwing a spell over the house. The smoke dispersed. “You can all stop looking at me like you’re expecting thanks for doing nothing,” she growled at the remaining necromancers, who fled as far as possible from her condemning stare. “Useless, the lot of them.”
“Who started the fire?” asked Hazel, striding over. “The necromancers said the ghosts appeared at the guild first.”
“Bastards,” said Agnes. “Those ridiculous sparks of theirs got into the shop and hit my entire display of elemental kindling spells.”
“We can salvage the rest,” Everett said consolingly. “It’s not the first time the shop’s been attacked.”
“No, but it’s bloody annoying,” Agnes said. “Our house is two minutes from here. The faeries wouldn’t have the nerve to torch that.”
“We’ll come and check.” To my immense surprise, River moved to help her walk. He’d distrusted the old mage when we’d first met, even going as far as to believe she was working against us.
She shot him an aggrieved look. “Do you think me incapable of walking by myself?”
“You were attacked in a room full of volatile spells. Both of you are lucky to be alive.”
“Is he always like this?” said Agnes, jerking her head at him.
She’d probably meant to say, does he know what I’m capable of? I answered both: “Yes. His mother is the leader of Edinburgh’s necromancer guild and his father’s a lesser noble in the Seelie Court.”
“Royalty.” She snorted, but allowed him to help her. River didn’t appear to have suffered any injuries, to my relief. Nor had the others. Hazel checked on the houses as we walked, making sure the faeries hadn’t left any damage, while Morgan and I checked the spirit realm. Quiet. Obviously, it wasn’t a coincidence that the ghosts had targeted the village the instant we returned from Faerie, but they hadn’t been an organised collective. They’d been angry, chaotic.
I’d been wondering if I’d see Ivy again ever since her unexpected appearance in the Lynn house, but if she’d left those half-faeries to suffer in limbo, maybe I was better off sticking with the handful of allies I had. I pulled up my hood against the rain, daydreaming longingly of the warm café in Edinburgh, secret dates with River, the closest to calm I’d known in a long time.
I sighed in relief when we entered Agnes and Everett’s bungalow, the warmth of the fire driving the chill from my limbs. I hadn’t been here in years, but it kind of amazed me how much junk Agnes and Everett had managed to cram into one room. There was hardly enough space for the four of us to file in, and a single armchair was the only spot free of trinkets and half-made spells.
Agnes marched to the armchair and sat in it as though daring the rest of us to challenge her. We filed in behind her, standing with our arms against our sides to keep from knocking things over. Everett cleared his throat and went off into the adjacent kitchen, switching the kettle on.
“Will one of you tell me where the bloody hell those ghosts came from?” Agnes said.
She was looking at me, but Morgan spoke first. “Out of the Vale, probably.”
“Really.” She turned her gaze onto him. “Are you certain?”
“Yeah. That’s where they’re operating from, I s’pose. Someone’s giving them orders.”
“They seemed to think they could come back to life,” I said, wishing I had something to lean against. Using the book’s magic again had left me feeling as drained as running two necromancer patrols back to back. “Sounds like that’s what the enemy is promising them, anyway.”
Agnes accepted a cup of tea from Everett. “You spoke to them.”
“In Death? Yes.”
Everett passed the tray of tea cups and biscuits to Morgan, who proceeded to surreptitiously conceal them on the already-crowded bookcase. Everett’s baking was known to occasionally turn people into household objects, and it usually wasn’t worth the risk. When River shot me a confused look, I whispered, “Trust me, it’s not worth it.”
The bookcase wobbled and Hazel moved in front of it as Agnes looked in that direction. “Er, so is your shop insured?”
Agnes scowled. “Well, I own the place, so it’s not insured. Most companies don’t offer magical protection for highly dangerous spells, let alone in places not on the map. But we can fix the damage.”
Morgan said, “They used to say the shop is dragon-proofed.”
“Dragons have better manners than faerie ghosts.”
“I don’t even know if you’re being serious or not,” I said. “Has this been happening since we left?”
“No, but I heard you caused a stir in Edinburgh after I left,” said Agnes. “I have to apologise for leaving the way I did.”
&nb
sp; “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Believe me, we have bigger problems. Someone yanked our house off the Ley Line and stole the gate from the garden.”
Everett’s eyes widened. “Someone stole the Gatekeeper’s gate?”
His wife, however, looked as unperturbed as ever.
“Yes.” Hazel’s hands clenched at her sides, her knuckles whitening. “We went into Faerie overnight and everything went to hell. Now we’re stuck here with no magic.”
“If you need any spells, you’re welcome to any from the shop,” Everett said.
“And if you want to go to Edinburgh,” Agnes said, “I do have a way. I’d have to make a few phone calls first, but I think they’d make an exception for the Gatekeeper.”
“We might have to take you up on that offer,” I said. The house might be unprotected, but the Ley Line went through the whole country. In Edinburgh, we had a whole team of potential allies. If only I could say the same for the Seelie Court. “But we need to find the gate first before we handle anything else.”
Hazel caught my gaze and nodded, her grim expression a reflection of my own.
9
“I hope you have a plan,” Morgan said when Hazel unlocked the front door of the Lynn house. “Because I think Edinburgh’s a safer bet than Faerie.”
“And I think the answers are in the Court,” Hazel said irritably. “They must be. The Court—someone in Faerie stole my goddamned gate.”
“It’s not yours,” said Morgan. “It’s the Court’s property.”
“Then they should be lining up to help me.” Her face was flushed and her whole body shook with rage. She was used to stepping up and taking charge, while I was used to standing invisibly in the background. So was Morgan, come to that, but he looked equally pissed off.
“Guys,” I said. “Calm down.”
Hazel shot me a glare. “Do you have any idea how much trouble we’re in? Mum’s supply of cash is gone. So is mine.”
“What, you still use magically generated money?” Morgan snorted.
“The Sidhe don’t know how to use human banks, obviously,” Hazel said. “So they use magic to make the money appear in the house, in Mum’s secure deposit box. The money’s always there. Except it isn’t, because there’s no magic here at all.”
“Obviously,” Morgan said. “We can survive a few weeks, and if it all goes tits up, we might not have to worry about that at all.”
“Morgan, you’re not helping,” she snapped. “I’m not relying on charity, especially as this is my fucking job.”
“No, it’s our mother’s job. And what’s she done? Got herself kidnapped.” He stormed into the living room, where River wisely glided out of the way. I was tempted to grab him and run somewhere quiet—like the library—but without the house’s magic running, anything they broke would remain in pieces.
“At least I’ve never stolen from anyone,” Hazel shot at Morgan. “From my family.”
Morgan scowled. “I wasn’t in my right mind back then.”
“And you never freaking apologised.”
“Guys!” I said.
“Who even fucking cares? Those were faerie antiques. It’s not like she or the Sidhe were ever going to use them,” Morgan said.
“Want to know why I care?” Hazel said. “This is my life. I have given my entire life to the Sidhe, and this is how I’m repaid for it. I nearly lost both of you.” Her voice cracked. “And they don’t care in the slightest.”
“Haven’t the rest of us been telling you that all along?” Morgan folded his arms. “This isn’t news.”
“Then stop blaming it all on Mum,” Hazel snapped. “She was an only child, so she always knew she was born to this. She never had to pick her family over the Sidhe, because her family already served them.”
“She wouldn’t pick us over the Sidhe,” Morgan said.
“Yes, she would,” I interjected. “Both of you, calm the hell down.”
River cleared his throat from behind us. “You have a visitor,” he said.
The doorbell rang. I frowned and tapped into my spirit sight. Holly? It must be her. Who needed a security system when you had the ability to peer at someone’s very soul?
Hazel walked to the door first, with the rest of us behind her, and pulled it open. Holly stood with a couple of books in her arms, her circlet gleaming bright blue. Full power. It hadn’t been evident to me until now how like Hazel she looked, despite the generations separating each half of the family. She had the same confident stance, the same aura that drew attention even when she wasn’t trying to. She’d dyed her hair black and clipped it to chin-length, which made her pale skin look paler and her blue eyes more startling.
“Hazel,” said Holly, breaking the imposing impression. Her teeth ran over her lower lip not unlike Hazel when she was nervous. “I came to speak to your sister.”
“Me?” My brows rose. “You told me to go away before.”
“I know I did.” She glanced over her shoulder at the garden. “What happened here?”
“Faeries,” I said, like that explained anything. “Actually, I’ve no bloody clue. None of us have.” Telling her Summer was in trouble wasn’t a wise move, not now she was interacting directly with the Sidhe. But maybe she’d guessed. Who knew how much more information she had access to now she was properly immersed in Gatekeeper training?
“I came to help you,” Holly said. “Believe it or not.”
“Go on,” I said warily. She showed no outward signs of hostility, but I wouldn’t trust her until I knew she hadn’t in any way been involved.
“Ilsa,” she said, almost hesitant. “I… when I returned to the house, my magic restored it to the state it was in before the Winter Gatekeeper’s magic destroyed it.”
“Yeah, I figured. But that won’t help us with ours.”
“That’s not what I wanted to say,” Holly said. “My mother… when she was scheming, she ordered that bird of yours to bring her some books from your house. They burned with the house, but my magic brought them back.” She held out a book, a thick ancient tome with a velvety red covering. “I can’t make up for what I did, but I can at least give you this. I think it’s how she found out about the Gatekeeper’s magic, and it was what I used… you know, when I was trying to work out if the Gatekeeper’s powers would be able to save her.”
I blinked, startled, but took the book from her. It was surprisingly heavy. “Wow. Faerie magic’s really something, huh.” I should have thanked her, but it felt too awkward and strange. And I’d dearly like to know how magic had managed to restore something that had been completely destroyed. I hadn’t really thought about how Holly was in the same position Mum had been in—as the only child, the only contender for heir, her role had been set before she was even born. Same as her own mother. Maybe that was why Aunt Candice had been so determined to break the curse.
Holly passed me a smaller notebook, too. “This is your aunt’s diary. I didn’t find much in there, but maybe you’ll be able to get more out of it than I did.”
“Great-Aunt Enid.” I took the book from her, feeling her hand trembling. “Thanks. A peace offering, right?”
“I don’t want to fight with you,” Holly said. “I’m not my mother. And… I don’t know what happened to your house. I’m sorry.”
“I think there’s a traitor who stole our gate,” I admitted. “In Faerie. They have their magic to protect themselves, but… the village doesn’t.”
Her eyes widened. “They stole the gate?”
“When we were in Faerie,” I said. I doubted she’d use the information against us, and it wasn’t like we had a whole lot in the way of information anyway. “God knows how, but we’re off the Ley Line. We have other ways to get around, but not to Faerie.”
“Ah. I’m not allowed to let anyone through Winter’s gate, and I don’t think you’d survive it anyway.”
“No worries. We’ll figure it out.”
The books in my hands called to me like a siren’s song.
With this information, I had a proper guide to the Gatekeeper’s magic. Finally.
“If you need my help, just ask,” Holly mumbled. The words sounded like they pained her to speak aloud, but I gave her a smile. It probably wasn’t very sincere, but she gave me an equally false attempt at a smile back. And then she turned away.
“Hang on,” I said. “How did you get here, from the Ley Line? Where is it?”
“Over the hill,” Holly said. “My house is exactly where it always was. I didn’t even know yours wasn’t there until I went to check on the village.”
“Have you seen Arden?” asked Hazel. “He’s been missing ever since we went to Faerie.”
Holly shook her head. “Sorry, no. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Sure. See you around,” I said.
And she left. Hazel closed the door. “Damn, Ilsa. What’s in those books?”
“Answers. I hope.” I took both books with me into the living room. “Let’s see what the last Gatekeeper has to say.”
The book, it turned out, wasn’t a guide to the Gatekeeper so much as a tome of advanced necromancy. The sort of book that would have been kept in Lady Montgomery’s office at Edinburgh’s necromancer guild, out of the way. It wasn’t a magical book, but a dryly written technical manual of how to do dangerous things like disconnecting from one’s body, exploring the spirit realm without a tether, and removing a force possessing a living person. Nothing I hadn’t done already, but it was nice to have an explanation for how it all worked.
Great-Aunt Enid’s journal was less useful. Most of it was old letters written in her almost-illegible handwriting. In the back were drawings and odd words scribbled down. Faerie… Gates… Ancients… and no context. Helpful. Maybe she was writing down her thought process, but I’d need to read the whole book to make heads or tails of it. Morgan and Hazel seemed to have forgotten their argument and lapsed into silence, so I went to my favourite spot in the library and prepared to do some serious digging.
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