by Natale Ghent
ALSO BY NATALE GHENT
Piper
No Small Thing
The Book of Living and Dying
All the Way Home
The Odds Get Even
Gravity Brings Me Down
Against All Odds
Millhouse
Copyright © 2015 Natale Ghent
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication is available upon request
ISBN: 978-0-385-66733-3
eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-36819-5
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover image: (sky) Jozsef Bagota / Shutterstock; (businessmen) LANTERIA /
Shutterstock; (blood) siam sompunya/ Shutterstock; (girl) commodore /
Shutterstock; (skull) © Hery Siswanto /Dreamstime.com
Cover design: Kelly Hill
Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited,
a Penguin Random House Company
www.randomhouse.ca
v3.1
For Darcy
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
1 - Cadence
2 - Meg
3 - Abduction
4 - The Frequencies
5 - Hex
6 - The Mouse
7 - The Dreamers
8 - Missing in Action
9 - Poe
10 - The Guides
11 - Hunted
12 - Kenji and Co.
13 - The Mark
14 - The Speaker
15 - Blood
16 - Ol’ Silver
17 - Murder
18 - A Rare and Unexpected Opportunity
19 - Unforgiveable Sin
20 - A Big Mess
21 - The Dark Enters
22 - Vengeance
23 - Black Rain
24 - Secrets
25 - Fugitives
26 - Trust and Treachery
27 - Seeds
28 - The Visitor
29 - The Dark Rises
30 - The Darkest Hour
31 - Into the Light
Caddy’s Song
“The connection must be severed completely,” Francis said. He had his thumbs hooked through the belt loops of his faded blue jeans, acting casual.
Skylark stared at the demonic entity across the dingy hotel room. Francis called him the Speaker, but she could think of a few other choice names for him given the way he was dressed. He was lethally out of place with his flawless grey suit and carefully sculpted white hair. His face was emotionless and smooth as polished marble. But it was his eyes that disturbed her the most. They were the colour of ice chips and twice as cold. Just looking at him made her bad arm start to ache. She leaned toward Francis, whispering, “Are you sure he can’t see us?”
Francis shook his head. “We’re on a different frequency. He can’t see us until we engage him. Then there’s no turning back.”
“My scar hurts,” Skylark said. She rubbed her right arm, easing the pain in the scar that ran in a lightning bolt from her shoulder to her index finger. She could feel the binding strands of the healing cord beneath her sleeve and prayed it would keep her arm strong until she had a chance to shoot.
“Just stay focused and be ready when I give you the signal,” Francis said. “It’s gonna happen soon, I can feel it.” He began worrying the fringe of beard along his lower lip.
This was not a good sign. Skylark looked at the other man in the room, the one sitting on the edge of the bed sweating in his undershirt. He was human. Not so dangerous, she thought—at least, not to anyone but himself, it seemed. In one hand, he held a revolver. In the other, a half-drunk bottle of whiskey. What would the Speaker want with this train-wrecked guy? More important, what was she doing engaging a demonic entity of the Speaker’s calibre? She was just a recruit. She barely had any training other than a bit of target practice. But Francis had insisted, going on about the element of surprise, despite the directive from head office. He was supposed to bring Kenji, not her. Kenji had been on the case since the beginning. They were going to catch hell back at headquarters when Timon found out about their cowboy antics, that was for sure. If she had any brains, she would jump out now, before things got critical.
“Do you really think this is a good idea?” she asked.
Francis ignored her, pushing his white Stetson High Point down firmly on his head. Skylark reached up to stroke Sebastian, the mouse sitting on her shoulder. He’d been tickling the hairs on the back of her neck the whole time with his little paws, trying to calm her. He didn’t agree with this half-baked escapade either, though there was little he could do to prevent it. The role of animal totems was to guide but not interfere. Any recruit knew that. “Don’t look him in the eyes,” Francis said. “And whatever you do, don’t listen to his voice.”
She nodded, tugging the cuffs of her shirt over her knuckles.
The Speaker moved toward the bed and there was the faintest sound of tinkling glass. Skylark shot Francis a look.
“I hear it too,” he said. “Those are the soul vials of the ones he’s gathered.”
She opened her mouth to speak but he waved her quiet. The mouse reared up and grabbed two fistfuls of her black hair, preparing for whatever was coming.
The Speaker raised a small metal funnel to his lips. He sighed into the mouth of it, and to Skylark’s horror, a dark tendril wriggled from the end. It squirmed, reaching across the bed and working its way into the man’s ear. The man’s shoulders slumped and his head tilted to one side as the tendril wormed deeper. His eyes fluttered and his hand relaxed, dropping the bottle of whiskey to the floor.
The Speaker’s voice was an opiate lulling the man into submission. Skylark cleared her mind, protecting herself from his words.
“There’s nothing left to live for,” the demon said. “Everyone will be happier when you’re gone.”
The man sobbed and cocked the gun. He pressed the tip of the barrel to his temple, the sweat trickling in rivulets down his face. Skylark glanced at Francis. He held up his finger.
“Wait for it …”
“It’s so easy,” the Speaker crooned.
The man exhaled, slowly squeezing the trigger.
“Now!” Francis said.
In a blinding flash, Skylark transformed, her gold breastplate gleaming, her raven hair now white and flowing. She winced as she drew her bow and arrow, the scar on her arm flaring with pain. But she held steady.
Beside her, Francis had also changed. His cowboy boots, hat and jeans had transformed into white sandals and a long robe that shimmered like river-washed opals. His hair and beard had turned from grey to silver, but his eyes remained the deepest shade of blue. A beam of light blasted from his palms and he trained it full strength on the gun. The muscles in Skylark’s hands jumped, preparing to fire, but she skipped a beat when the holographic face of a girl appeared in front of her. It was Caddy—that pretty loner with the hazel eyes who�
�d stolen her boyfriend’s heart. What was she doing here?
“Shoot!” Francis shouted.
Skylark gritted her teeth and fired. A streak of light seared from her bow and her soul leapt because she knew the shot was good. There was an electric snap and a crescendo of breaking glass as the arrow sliced the tendril in half, its severed tail a live wire whipping back into the funnel. The Speaker didn’t falter. He snatched the arrow from the air and hurled it in her direction. This she had not anticipated. The arrow had blackened at his touch and it flew with unimaginable speed, piercing the small gap between her breastplate and shoulder armour.
“Francis!” she cried, and collapsed, her bow clattering to the floor. From the corner of her eye she could see the mouse lying next to her, unmoving, his grey fur blue with frost. “Sebbie …” There was a gunshot and moments later Francis was kneeling beside her, his concerned face fading in and out of focus. She wanted to tell him something, but the shivering had started and she couldn’t make her mouth move properly. In fact, she couldn’t move at all. Her whole body was cold as ice.
Francis gathered her in his arms. “Hold on, sweetheart.”
“The g-girl …” Skylark tried to tell him through the cold. “I—I saw the girl …”
CADENCE
Caddy lay on the bed, her long auburn hair a tangled halo around her stricken face. It was coming, the bad feeling. She could tell by the warning smell of burnt toast in her nostrils and the way her hands were shaking. She didn’t want to go—not now, not again. Clenching her fists, she dug her nails into her palms, nearly breaking the skin. But the pain couldn’t stop the swell from taking her under. It rose in her stomach, rushed through her chest and spilled into her head.
“No …”
The wave hit, dragging her to the place she called the Emptiness. She’d called it that since she was a child. And it was always the same. Bitter cold. Wind clawing at her hair. Her bare feet half buried in the ash that flew through the frozen air and collected in long, lifeless drifts across an endless expanse of grey. It wasn’t the icy wind or ash that she feared most. It was the faces of the dispossessed pushing through the ether. An eye. A nose. An open mouth. And then the moaning would begin.
Caddy shivered uncontrollably, her lips turning blue, her eyelashes gathering frost from the moisture in the plumes of breath that curled from her mouth. She covered her ears and hummed her shining song, the one her mother used to sing to her when the bad feeling would come. “There is a light that shines in the night … there is a light …” The voices were only whispers then. Now they were angry and loud, demanding that she listen.
“Please, stop,” she begged.
The mouths twisted and gaped. Gnarled fingers punctured the grey. They reached for her, grasping her arms and legs and clothes until she doubled in half and screamed.
The sound zippered shut and Caddy fell back into the now. She lay on the bed, rocking back and forth, hazel eyes open, glassy, waiting for the shivering to stop. When she was sure it was over, Caddy rose, slowly, steadying herself on one elbow before sitting up on the edge of the bed. Hands stiff with cold, she took the brush from her night table and moved it in deliberate strokes through her hair. Such a simple act. It grounded her. Kept her from disappearing altogether. At seventeen, she was more frightened than ever by the Emptiness.
“It’s a gift,” her mother used to tell her when she was small. “One day you will understand its purpose.”
To Caddy, the visions were a curse, bleeding seamlessly through the ages along her father’s ancestral lines, haunting generation after generation, to rest here, in the nightmares of a frightened and reluctant girl. This was her legacy. And no matter how her mother tried to convince her otherwise, Caddy knew the visions were the furthest thing from a gift. She was marked, not chosen. Born to suffer in confusion and fear, like her father and the dozens of equally cursed relatives that came before him. Whatever purpose the visions served, she wasn’t ready to know, nor did she think she’d ever be. She’d grown up hearing her father crying out in the night, and her mother’s voice, soothing him through the agony of his helplessness. There were too many souls in the Emptiness, too much pain. He couldn’t help any of them—no one could. Why did her mother and father expect anything different from her?
The visions made her an outcast, a freak. She kept to herself, didn’t make friends because she never knew where or when the bad feeling would come on or how much it would take from her when it happened. The threat of it followed her relentlessly, a malevolent spectre.
And after her mother died, it got harder and harder to take. The car accident had killed her instantly. It had robbed Caddy of her father, too, but slowly, one drink at a time. He’d always taught her to be self-reliant and strong. In the end, he was the one who gave up. Now she had to deal with things on her own. There was no one to put her back together once the bad feeling came on.
Caddy stopped brushing her hair and listened to the silence. Her father hadn’t come home last night. Or somehow she’d missed the familiar sound of him stumbling to his room and his usual loud argument with the dark. Cleaning the hair from her brush, she tucked the little nest of auburn strands into the small linen bag she kept in her night table drawer. She would burn the hair outside, later, along with her nail clippings, the way her mother had shown her. It was meant to protect her from “bad intentions.” This had stuck with her as a child because she wasn’t really sure what “bad intentions” meant, or who was behind them. Her mother never explained that part. Whether the hair-burning ritual worked or not, Caddy had no way of knowing. She instinctively feared things would be worse without her mother’s superstitious practices, so she performed them without question.
Caddy changed out of her nightgown into a pair of old jeans and a blue T-shirt. She checked the clasp on her necklace. It was a simple gold chain with a small oblong stone of polished green fluorite her father had given her for her fifth birthday. A talisman to ward off negative energy. She called it her “safe stone.” She never left home without it.
Grabbing her phone off the dresser, Caddy quickly pinched her cheeks to bring the colour up. She didn’t need a mirror to know how thin and pale she looked, especially lately. The bad feeling was coming so often these days it left her drained. “I’m still here,” she said to no one.
Her father’s door was half open. His bed was unmade and empty. It was always unmade, unless she made it. But empty? Never. Not this time of day. She checked her phone. He hadn’t called. She surveyed the mess in his room for clues, her eyes skipping over the endless bits of nature he’d collected over the years—bird eggs, dead bugs, leaves, stones. And seeds. Always the seeds. Gathered from every plant he found and kept in little bowls and cups and envelopes scattered throughout the house. He insisted on teaching her the names, including the Latin. He’d even taught her how to germinate them, their pale green shoots pushing up through the soil, searching for light.
Caddy closed his door. There was nothing out of the ordinary in his room as far as she could tell.
In the kitchen a chair lay on its back like the victim of a bar fight. Dirty dishes crowded the sink. She tested the taps for water. The pipes whined and sputtered, coughing out rust. No surprise. It was water-rationing season. Sometimes it got so bad the dishes would sit in the sink for days.
Abandoning the taps, Caddy righted the chair and checked the living room. An empty whiskey bottle and a newspaper lay where they’d been dropped by the couch, next to a yellowed glass ashtray mounded with spent cigarettes. The room stank of stale smoke. She shook her head at the sight of the newspaper. It was another one of his eccentricities. No one read the paper anymore. He wore an old watch, too, the wind-up kind, one his father had given him as a boy. And he read books—real ones. So few people did. She used to poke fun at him for that, calling him a relic. But she never chided him for leaving the TV on. It helped drown out the loneliness, she knew that.
The TV flickered, soldiers marching soundlessl
y across the screen. “A simple show of force.” That’s what the government had said it would be. Then one country pushed another too far. Now there was talk of bloodshed and bombs.
Caddy stared at the screen. It was too horrible to fathom. Was the world really heading for war? She looked for the remote. When she couldn’t find it, she turned up the volume manually. The marching soldiers were interrupted by a blare of music, and the bright face of a young girl appeared. She smiled hopefully into the camera, holding a small sheaf of wheat in her perfect little hands. “Real solutions for a better world,” the voice-over proclaimed. “Brought to you by the Company.”
Caddy scoffed. The Company never did anything for anyone unless there was money to be made. It squeezed oil from sand to keep the cars running, bottled and sold water to the highest bidder, mined uranium and dammed rivers to keep lights burning. It even developed seeds guaranteed to solve world hunger—for those who could afford it. Yeah. She knew all about the Company. It thrived when everything else failed. It shuffled employees like playing cards and tossed them just as easily. And somehow, its hands were always clean. Her own father had been thrown on the discard pile along with so many others. He’d worked in the company research department doing … something. She didn’t know what exactly because she’d never asked. When he got fired she just assumed he’d locked horns with someone he shouldn’t have over something he cared about. That was his problem. He cared too much. At one point in his life he actually thought he could change things. It didn’t take a genius to see that the Company was self-serving and corrupt. And someone like her father, no matter how brilliant, would inevitably become a problem.
“God bless the Company,” Caddy muttered. She searched for the remote again, stumbling over the whiskey bottle and upsetting the ashtray on the carpet in the process. Yanking pillows from the couch, she found the remote wedged between two cushions. She aimed it at the TV and pressed the power button several times. Nothing. She checked the batteries. Missing. Typical. She tossed the remote back on the couch, shut the TV off, and retrieved the newspaper to scan the headlines, even though there was no point. They were always the same. War, drought, epidemic, jobless rates. Then this: One-Armed Bandit Strikes in South Town.