by E. E. Holmes
“What did you just say?” I repeated.
She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “What are you talking about?”
We stared at each other for a moment. Had I imagined it? “Didn’t you just say something to me?”
“No, but I will ask you this: how are we meant to get through all of this if you can’t focus on one simple task?” Catriona snapped.
“I… okay. Never mind,” I said, too confused even to retort. I looked back down at my paper, trying to find where I’d left off. I groped around on the desktop for the pen and had just set it to the bottom of the first page to sign when it happened again.
“What is this place?”
There was no mistaking it this time. Catriona had definitely spoken. That was unmistakably her voice. I looked up at her again and saw her just as before, poring over the book in front of her, seemingly oblivious to what I had just heard.
“Catriona?” I said tentatively.
She did not answer. Was this supposed to be some kind of a joke? I leaned in, taking a closer look at Catriona’s face. At first glance, her eyes had seemed focused on the page in front of her, but now that I was looking more closely, I could see that her eyes had glazed over and slid out of focus.
“Catriona?” I said, louder this time. “Can you hear me?”
No response. No acknowledgement of my presence. A creeping feeling began to steal across my skin, plucking at the hairs and raising gooseflesh. Only one thing could cause that feeling, and yet, how was it possible? This office, like many of the rooms in this castle, was Warded.
“Finn?” I called out. My voice cut through the silence, higher and sharper than I’d intended, and the door flew open so fast it was as though he had already had his hand on the knob, anticipating trouble.
He barely managed to cling on to his detached demeanor. “Jess? Catriona? Everything alright in here?”
“No, there’s something wrong with Catriona!” I said, not taking my eyes off of her.
“What do you mean, wrong?” Finn asked, taking a cautious step forward.
“She was complaining of a bad headache when I came in, and then we were just sitting here, going through these papers and she started… talking.”
Finn frowned at me. “Talking? And that’s strange?”
I shook my head impatiently. “She was just sort of blurting things out, but she didn’t seem to know she was doing it!”
“What sorts of things?” Finn asked.
“I think the first time she said, ‘Where am I?’ and the second time it sounded like, ‘What is this place?’ She didn’t even hear herself do it!”
Finn’s expression turned wary. He threw a cursory glance toward the doorway to confirm what we both already knew: the room was properly Warded. Then he took several cautious steps toward Catriona, who continued to stare blankly down at the book in front of her as though she were in a trance.
“Catriona?” Finn asked, his voice light and friendly. “Catriona, can you hear me?”
A shudder ran through Catriona’s face, making her mane of hair tremble, but otherwise giving no indication that she had heard him.
“Catriona, can you answer me? Can you tell me if you are alright?” Finn said as he slowly rounded the corner of the desk. He kept his hands up and visible in front of him, to show he was not a threat to her.
Several long seconds of silence, and then, “Where am I?”
Catriona’s voice was completely devoid of its signature lazy drawling tone. Her words were quick, light, and higher pitched than any I’d ever heard her utter. They also sounded scared.
Finn glanced quickly at me, then back at Catriona.
“You’re in your office at Fairhaven Hall, Catriona,” I said.
Catriona raised her head and looked directly at me, and it felt as though all the air had left my lungs. Her eyes, usually a bright blue, had been swallowed into wells of darkness. In that moment, there was one thing of which I was absolutely certain: the face may have been Catriona’s, but the person staring out of those eyes was a complete stranger.
Catriona—or whoever she was—cocked her head to the side. “Who is Catriona?”
6
Possessed
FINN AND I LOOKED at each other again. I saw my own fear and confusion reflected in his eyes. He had no more idea what was happening than I did. I took a breath and tried not to panic. We were Durupinen. We spent our lives surrounded by the dead. It wasn’t so strange to think that one might be using Catriona to communicate. After all, they used me all the time; they just tended to use my artistic skill rather than my voice and my body. It didn’t necessarily mean that anything was wrong.
“You’re Catriona,” I said to her, trying to sound as reasonable and matter-of-fact as I possibly could. “That’s your name.”
Catriona shook her head so hard that her hair whipped around her like a tornado. “No, I do not know that name.”
“Oh no. No, this isn’t right,” Catriona whispered, as sudden animal panic distorting her features. “No, this isn’t right.”
“What isn’t right? I asked her.
“Closed! Closed! Locked up tight! She promised! She promised me!”
“Who promised you?” I asked. I kept it all conversational, like two friends chatting over a cup of tea.
Catriona’s face, already porcelain, drained to a milky pallor. Her eyes widened. Then, with no warning at all, her arms began to flail. Her entire torso started shaking. She knocked the lamp and papers from her desk as the tremors became convulsions, and slid out of her seat onto the floor.
“She’s having a seizure!” I cried, jumping up from my chair and darting to the other side of the desk. Finn ran over to join me, and we both knelt beside her, watching helplessly as she writhed.
“What should we do?” Finn asked, knocking the chair away from Catriona before she could concuss herself on one of the legs.
“I don’t know!” I cried. “Fiona had a seizure kind of like this once, but it was a psychic drawing. This seems more like a Habitation, doesn’t it?”
“There’s a spirit in there, certainly,” Finn said. “But I don’t dare try to expel it, not without knowing more about how it got in there in the first place.”
A loud, popping sound made both of us jump. A log on the fire had broken as it burned, and tumbled in two smoldering pieces onto the bed of ashes in the grate.
At the sound of it, Catriona opened her mouth and let forth a scream unlike anything I had ever heard. It seemed to contain several voices at once, each in terrible agony. Her back arched right off the floor, as though she were being lifted to her feet by an invisible hook attached to her sternum. Impossibly, she rose to her feet. Finn and I scrambled back from her in alarm as she continued to scream, but she was not looking at us. Her eyes were fixed, with breathtaking terror, on the fireplace at the far side of the room.
For a long, breathless moment, we both just sat there, immobile, watching her. Then she launched herself toward the fire.
“No!” Finn and I both shouted together, scrambling after her, but she didn’t fling herself onto the flames. Instead she wrenched an enormous tapestry off of the wall and began using it to beat and smother the fire into submission. Choking smoke and ash filled the room as we dashed toward her. Finn reached her first. He threw his arms around her waist and heaved her away from the hearth. I tugged the heavy tapestry out of the embers and stomped on it where I could see the dry old fibers had begun to smolder. Catriona continued to kick and scream, flailing with unnatural strength to return to the fire, to dash it out at all costs.
“Jess, go for help!” Finn grunted as he struggled to keep a hold on Catriona.
“Finn, I can’t leave you here! What if she—”
“Jess, go! Now! I can’t hold her like this for much longer. We need help!” he growled. “Just listen to me for once and go!”
I was too scared to deliver my usual withering retort. I turned on my heel and fled the room. I tore down the
hallway, skidding around the first corner and then nearly crying with relief at the sight of Seamus and two other Caomhnóir striding up the hallway. They froze when they saw my panic-stricken face, and without my even having to say a word, started running toward me.
“What is it, what’s wrong?” Seamus called. One hand had flown to the Casting bag tied at his belt.
“It’s Catriona,” I said, turning and jogging with them back toward the Tracker office. “We were in a meeting together. One minute she’s talking about paperwork, and the next she’s possessed!”
“Possessed?” Seamus repeated, sharply. “What do you mean? Clarify yourself.”
How much clearer did I need to be? “I mean that there is a spirit inside of her, and it took over her body!” I panted. “At least, I think that’s what happened. Then she tried to attack the fireplace. Finn is in there with her right now. He’s restraining her, but he needs help!”
We were heading straight for the doorway to the office. The Caomhnóir pulled ahead of me with their powerful strides. Braxton reached the office first, and had just put a foot over the threshold when it happened.
Catriona let loose a gut-wrenching scream, and an explosion of spirit energy burst from the room. All three Caomhnóir were blasted off their feet and slammed into the walls. I dove around the corner that led to the stairwell, tumbling down four stone steps before I could catch myself. I felt the blast of energy blow past the top of the staircase, and heard the stained-glass windows on both sides of the hallway above me explode. The rainbow shards hit the wall over my head and showered down on top of me like little daggered raindrops.
Catriona’s scream went on, but no longer from the direction of the office. It was a part of the energy that had erupted outward, and I could hear it traveling through the halls above me, echoing off the stones, so that more and more screams seemed to join the first. Then all the screams died away, leaving a hollow silence in their wake.
For a long moment, nothing happened. I stayed frozen where I was, huddled on the stairs with my hands thrown over my head, braced for another explosion, but nothing happened. Gingerly, I pulled my arms away from my head, examining them as I did so. They were peppered with tiny cuts and gashes, a few of which were bleeding. I shook the bits of glass out of my hair and carefully clambered to my feet. As the shock wore off, my legs began to shake under me.
I peeked cautiously around the wall into the corridor above. All three Caomhnóir lay in heaps on the floor. Seamus and the young Caomhnóir were stirring, trying to pull themselves into seated positions. Braxton, who had taken the brunt of the blast through the open doorway, lay motionless against the wall at the base of one of the shattered windows.
I stumbled toward the office, terrified of what I might find on the other side of the door.
“Finn?” I called, my voice high and cracked with fear.
“Jess?”
I let out a cry of relief at the sound of his voice as I entered the room. Finn was still clutching on to Catriona, who now lay as limp and senseless as a ragdoll in his arms. The room had been utterly destroyed by the force of the blast. The massive desk had been flipped upside down, papers strewn everywhere. The chairs were little more than splintered piles of wood, and the windows here, too, had been blown out.
“Are you okay?” I asked him in a shaking voice, mastering the impulse to throw myself at him. “And Catriona… oh, God, is she…” I swallowed the word, unable to utter it.
“She’s alive. Her pulse is racing, but she’s breathing alright,” Finn assured me. I noticed he had his fingers already pressed against Catriona’s wrist.
“What happened in here?” I asked. “What caused the explosion?”
Finn lowered Catriona carefully to the floor, gently placing her head to rest against his leg. “She did it. Or the spirit did it, I suppose. I was struggling with her to keep her away from the fireplace, and then she just… lost it. She went still for a moment, and I thought she was giving up. And then suddenly she… well…” he gestured weakly around the room to indicate the destruction. “As soon as the explosion happened, it was like whatever was inside her was gone, and she went limp.”
“So, you think the spirit is gone?” I asked.
Finn nodded. “I do. If that wasn’t the spirit leaving her, I’m not sure what it could have been.”
Seamus stumbled into the room, squinting dazedly around. “Everyone alright in here? What the bloody hell is going on?”
Finn launched into an explanation of what had happened. I was barely listening. I was staring at Catriona, whom I had never seen have a vulnerable moment since I’d met her. She was unfailingly in control, often bordering on apathetic, in every single interaction I’d ever had with her. Dramatic and emotional situations did not phase her. Devastation sometimes downright amused her. I had never even thought her capable of vulnerability, and so to see her there, huddled against Finn like a sleeping baby, was unnerving.
“I’ll check the integrity of all the Wards here,” Seamus said. “They must have been compromised, though how, I could not say.”
“Not necessarily,” I said, tearing my eyes from Catriona.
“Pardon?” Seamus asked. If he was trying to keep his disdain for me out of his voice, he was failing spectacularly.
“I just mean that, whatever spirit that was, it might have attached itself to her before she got to the office,” I said, trying to sound reasonable instead of snarky. “Isn’t it feasible that she and that spirit came into contact somewhere other than in this room?”
Seamus seemed too distracted to consider this properly. He acknowledged my words with a vague, “Mm-hmm,” while he began an investigation of the office, examining all of the markings that adorned the doorframes and windowsills.
The young Caomhnóir poked his head in the door, clearing his throat to announce his presence. “Begging your pardon, Seamus,” he said, and there was a tremor barely detectable beneath the forced toughness of his voice. “Braxton is still unconscious, sir. He’s taken quite a knock to the head. I think he may need medical attention, sir.”
Seamus did not pull his eyes from his work, but waved a hand over his shoulder. “Catriona should go to the hospital ward as well. Arrange it, Charles, and swiftly. Alert the Council. This matter will not go uninvestigated. Hostile spirits are not meant to enter this castle, and so if one has managed to breach the defenses, it must be addressed at once.”
Charles clicked his heels together in a smart salute and bowed himself out. I stood awkwardly, unsure what I could do to help anyone in the room.
“Should I go and get help, too?” I asked.
Seamus shook his head. “Charles will take care of it. Stay here. The Council will no doubt have questions for you, and they cannot ask them if you are off traipsing about the castle.”
I opened my mouth to argue that I had never traipsed in my life, thank you very much, but Finn shot me a warning look and I changed my mind. It was no good stirring the pot with Seamus, especially given his previous knowledge of my relationship with Finn. For something to do, I pulled the tapestry further away from the still leaping flames in the fireplace and used the golden fire irons to sweep the scattered ashes back into the hearth.
It did not take long, though, for Celeste, Siobhán, Fiona, and several other Council members to arrive, along with Mrs. Mistlemoore, who ran the hospital ward. Behind them followed their assigned Caomhnóir, all on high alert like attack dogs that had scented something threatening in the air.
“What’s happened here?” Celeste asked, wringing her hands. “Charles said Catriona has been attacked?”
As Mrs. Mistlemoore hurried over to examine Catriona, Finn and I tried, as best we could, to explain what had happened. With each word, the Council members’ faces grew grimmer and grimmer. Meanwhile, Mrs. Mistlemoore was assessing Catriona. She pulled out all the things I would have expected to see in a medical bag; a blood pressure cuff, a stethoscope, and thermometer. But she also examined Catriona wi
th a wide variety of Castings, encircling her head with a glossy black feather, then pressing an amethyst to various points on her body, and finally using a waxy pastel to mark her chest with a rune of protection.
“She’ll need to be taken to the ward,” Mrs. Mistlemoore announced, getting to her feet with some difficulty. “Something is Habitating inside her, that’s certain. I’ll need to perform further Castings to learn more, however.”
“It’s still in there?” I asked, surprised.
“That’s what I said,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said brusquely. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, it’s just… we thought the explosion was something leaving her,” I said. “What could that have been if it wasn’t a huge burst of spirit energy?”
Mrs. Mistlemoore sighed. “There’s no telling until I examine her further. But I will say that something still resides within her, and whatever it is has taken a very firm hold.” She nodded to the Caomhnóir by the door, and then slipped past them to examine Braxton, who still lay motionless where he had fallen.
The rest of us watched in silent horror as Catriona was carried out on a canvas stretcher by two of the Caomhnóir.
Celeste turned to me. “Jess, we will undoubtedly need to speak to you and Mr. Carey further, but I can’t say for sure when that will be. We will need to wait for Mrs. Mistlemoore to finish her examination, and for Seamus to finish his investigation here.”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, a tremor in my voice. “Whatever you need. I’ll be back in my room.”
Celeste nodded, then looked expectantly at Finn.
“I’ll report back to the barracks now. You can reach me there,” he said promptly.
“Very well,” Celeste said. “I’ll send for you both soon.”
Interpreting Celeste’s words as a dismissal, Finn and I exited the room. When we had put two floors safely between us and the chaos in the Tracker office, Finn reached out and gave my hand a quick squeeze.
“You’re alright, are you?” he asked in a low voice as he strode along.
“I guess so, yeah,” I said. “Kind of freaked out, but otherwise I’m okay.”