Plague of the Shattered

by E. E. Holmes

  “Very well,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said, dropping her arms and with them, her resistance. “I won’t pretend the situation isn’t desperate. But I am going to oversee your attempts, and I will summon the Council at my discretion, is that clear?”

  “Yes, of course,” Fiona said at once.

  “And, if asked, I will say you told me that this was all being done on the Council’s orders,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said sharply. “And you will corroborate that story. I will help you, but I will not shoulder any blame for it.”

  “Agreed,” Fiona said. “And let’s be honest, the Council will be more than ready to believe that I lied to you. They’re itching to slap me with some kind of a sanction, so they’ll be grateful for the excuse.”

  “Fiona, I don’t want you to get in trouble over this,” I told her, but she snorted loudly.

  “Trouble? Me? Jessica, I thought you knew me better than that, but you seem to have mistaken me for someone who gives a damn.”

  I grinned. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

  “Too right you won’t,” Fiona said. “Let’s go then.”

  17

  The Girl in Pieces

  THE HOSPITAL WARD WAS UTTERLY STILL. In a long row along both walls, the Hosts lay on their backs, hands folded on their chests, staring unblinkingly up at the dark ceiling above them. There were ten in all now, more than I’d even realized. In the bed closest to the door, Savvy was barely recognizable as the boisterous friend I had grown so fond of; her usually ruddy cheeks were wan and chalky, her thick red hair limp and damp around an expressionless face.

  “I’ll wait by the door,” Finn said in a stiff voice. “I will alert you if any Council members approach from the hallway.”

  “Thank you,” I said, looking away from him. I was scared enough. I didn’t need his disapproval to make this even harder.

  “Right, then. Jessica, over here in the circle,” Fiona said, pointing to the large chalk drawing in the very center of the room. “I know circles aren’t meant to keep out Shards, but there’s no harm in taking advantage of any modicum of safety this might provide you.”

  “Okay,” I said weakly, and took my place at the heart of the circle. I felt the hum of energy as I entered within its boundaries. The familiar sensation calmed my pounding heart just a bit.

  Fiona followed me into the circle and knelt down beside me, placing the rolled-up sketches on the ground beside me. “I think we should treat this like a Summoning,” she said. “Have you got your Casting bag?”

  “Yes,” I said, pulling it from the pocket of my jeans. “Never leave home without it, right?”

  “Cast a Summoning, and invite the Shards in. I know Castings aren’t meant to work on Shards, but if this spirit really was a Durupinen, then she will recognize a Summoning, and the familiarity of the invitation might put her at ease,” Fiona instructed. She reached into her own pocket and lay several items on the ground within reach of my hand: a gold dip pen with a pot of ink, a charcoal pencil, a paintbrush, and a tiny pot of oil paint. “These will give the spirit some options, if she’s particular about her method of communication. Many of them are.”

  “You just happened to have a Victorian-era dip pen sitting in the cup on your desk?” I asked incredulously, picking it up to examine it.

  “Yes, of course,” Fiona said, scowling at me.

  “Right,” I said, putting it back down again. “Sorry. Please, continue.”

  “Just talk to her, whoever she is. Try to get her to connect again. She may respond, or she may not. We won’t know until you try,” Fiona said.

  “Okay. Well, we’re wasting precious time here, so let’s do it,” I said, with as much confidence as I could muster.

  “I can call in my staff to help if the Hosts need to be subdued,” Mrs. Mistlemoore assured me.

  “Good to know,” I said. I took a long, deep breath but the air seemed to meet a barrier in my lungs. “Let’s just do this before I lose my nerve.”

  Finn made a strangled sort of sound, like he had started to speak and then cut himself off. I swallowed hard, pretending I hadn’t heard it.

  Fiona backed out of the circle and squatted down just on the outside of the border, like an animal tensed to spring. She nodded at me. “I’ll feed you instructions. Give a go, now.”

  I spoke the words of the Summoning as I retraced the circle with my own chalk. My voice echoed softly in the cavernous room, but faded quickly. As I finished, I held my breath, waiting for a sign of life or response from the Hosts around me. Nothing happened.

  “Talk to her,” Fiona whispered. “Remind her what she looks like, who she is.”

  I nodded and cleared my throat. I unrolled the sketches in front of me and smoothed them so that they lay flat against the floor. “I’m speaking to the spirit who is residing here in these Hosts,” I said tremulously. “I know that I have connected to you before.”

  Still no one moved. Nothing stirred. I felt no pulses, no thrums of energy. All was still.

  “I don’t know your name,” I said, imagining that the girl in the sketch was sitting across from me, that we were merely friends having a chat over coffee. “But I know what you look like. When we connected, I drew you. Do you remember? Do you remember who you are?” I picked up one of the sketches and held it up, turning on the spot with it like a teacher making sure each of her students could see the illustration in a picture book.

  As I displayed the sketch to the very last of the beds, there was a sudden rustling sound. The figure in the bed sat up with alarming swiftness, staring intently at the sketch I held out before her.

  It was Catriona.

  “Breathe, Jessica,” Fiona whispered to me, and I drew in a ragged gasp of air I didn’t realize I was holding. “Keep talking.”

  “I know this is you,” I said, holding the picture out further, closer to Catriona. “Do you recognize yourself?”

  Very slowly, Catriona raised a shaking hand to her own face and caressed it, tilting her head to one side, her expression bewildered. All around the room nine other figures sat bolt upright in perfect unison. As I looked around me in terror, each made the very same motion, running her hand gently over her face and cocking her head to the side. Every set of eyes, fixed on the sketch in my hands, was identical—deep, dark, nearly swallowed by the black of the irises.

  “Christ on a bike,” Fiona muttered. Over by the door, I could hear Finn quietly cursing under his breath.

  It took several attempts to find my voice again as I fought my own panic. She’s just a girl, I told myself. A girl like me. She’s just lost—in pieces. She needs help. “That’s it,” I said, trying to sound warm and encouraging. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

  Ten heads nodded slowly at me.

  “Good. That’s very good,” I said, attempting a friendly smile. “I want to help you. I want to help discover who you are, so that we can put you back together again. You’ve been… broken. Broken apart. But I can help you. Do you want me to help you? Isn’t that why you reached out to me in the first place?”

  Again, ten heads nodded at me. Ten hands dropped from ten cheeks into ten laps.

  “Do you want me to draw for you again? If there is something you want to say, something you want to show me, use me again,” I said, and I pointed to the supplies Fiona had placed in the circle.

  As one, all ten Hosts bent over their laps and began to mime the act of writing, just as I had seen them doing the day before.

  “The pen,” Fiona hissed. “Use the pen.”

  But I was already unscrewing the lid from the ink pot and flipping the sketch over to reveal an expanse of blank surface on which I could write. Then I took the pen in my hand, dipped it carefully in the ink, and set it to the paper.

  I closed my eyes, feeling out into the mental space around me, trying to find a presence to latch onto. What I found instead was disturbing. The points of light that would have guided me when dealing with whole spirits were absent. What I found instead were flicker
ing sparks that sputtered and died before I could connect with them. They darted around, dull and fluttering. They did not pull upon my senses, as a whole spirit would, but instead they left me feeling disoriented and confused, like a traveler trying to follow ten different sets of directions at once. The pen did not move. I felt no intervening consciousness, no drive to create taking control of me.

  “She’s not connecting, Fiona,” I murmured. “I’m not sure if she just can’t or won’t. I’m not getting anything at all.”

  “That’s not surprising,” Fiona answered. “There’s a good chance this will all be for naught, Jessica, but we’ve got to keep trying. Start asking her some questions.”

  I returned my concentration to the energy in the room, reaching my mental feelers out as far as they would stretch, looking for something to latch on to.

  “Can you help me write your name?” I asked. “Or maybe a place that you remember?”

  The sparks wandered aimlessly, helplessly, exerting no pull upon me.

  I tried again. “You wrote before that ‘The Caller betrayed’ you. Can you tell me what that means?”

  I was so intent on the sensation in my hand—on trying to encourage the artistic connection—that Fiona’s tense whisper startled me.

  “Jessica, don’t move. She’s right beside you.”

  “What?!”

  My eyes refused to open; they were glued shut with abject terror. Suddenly, I heard a slight shifting—a gentle rubbing sound of fabric against fabric—from just beside me. Then a ragged, labored breath caressed my ear. Every hair on my arms stood up as I battled my instinct to jump up and out of that circle as fast as I could. My own breathing sped up.

  I heard a quick scuffling step, and then Fiona hissed, “No, Finn! Stay in position!”

  Slowly, I forced my eyes open. Catriona crouched next to me like a skittish animal, her face inches from my own, staring at me with those haunted, borrowed eyes. I tore my gaze from her and looked around the circle. Every Host was crouched in an identical position all along the edges of the circle, their breaths coming in perfect unison.

  She’s just a girl, I repeated to myself. She’s just a girl in pieces and she needs my help.

  I forced myself to look back into those eyes. “Do you know your name?” I asked softly.

  Catriona just stared. I couldn’t even tell if she recognized that I was speaking words.

  “Can you tell me who the Caller is? How did she betray you?” I asked, trying again.

  Catriona leaned in incredibly close and whispered, with terrifying intimacy. “Promises. Shattered. Agony.”

  All around me, the Hosts echoed her words, and each whisper of a voice throbbed with pain. If Mackie had been here, she would surely never have been able to bear it. Even my heart ached with it, and I was not an Empath.

  “Ask her something else, Jessica,” said Fiona, a warning in her voice. “If she gets too upset, too worked up, you won’t get anything useful out of her. Go back to the sketch. That’s what got her to listen in the first place. Bring it back to the sketch.”

  I wasn’t at all eager to give up on that line of questioning, but Fiona was right; we didn’t want to push our luck. I reached down slowly to pick the sketch up off the ground and held it up so that Catriona could look at it.

  “You were beautiful,” I said softly.

  The borrowed eyes filled with tears that spilled over and ran down Catriona’s cheeks. She reached a tremulous hand out and touched the picture gently with one finger. All around us, all the Hosts mimicked her movement.

  “Look here, at your neck,” I told her, pointing to the place. “This necklace, here. This isn’t a real necklace. It’s words, see? These are words you wanted me to know. It says, “little book.” Do you know what that means?”

  Catriona’s head snapped up and her mouth began to move in a rapid, silent mantra. I leaned in, so close to her lips that I might have kissed them. I watched as they formed the same words over and over again, heard the breath rushing in and out, carrying them just far enough to reach my ears.

  “Little book. Little book. Little book.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Little book,” I told her. “What is the little book? What does it mean?”

  “Little book, little book!” Catriona cried imploringly, but her voice was suddenly ten voices. Every Host was repeating it now, and every face was alight with desperation.

  “What is the little book?” I repeated.

  Every Host immediately dropped into a sitting position and began to mimic the act of writing.

  “Give her the pen!” Fiona whispered to me. “Give her the paper!”

  I slid the piece of paper across to Catriona and very carefully slipped the pen into her moving hand. At once, words began to appear in a messy trail behind her hand. “Dear Little Book, Dear Little Book, Dear Little Book.”

  “She’s writing, “Dear Little Book,” I told the others excitedly, before addressing Catriona again. “Was the little book yours? Was it some kind of… journal, or diary?”

  Catriona dropped her pen abruptly and placed her hand upon her chest. “Little book!” she answered, nodding vigorously.

  “Where is it? Is it here? Does it still exist? Can you show it to me?” I asked her, my heart beginning to pound with anticipation.

  With alarming speed and agility, Catriona leapt to her feet and dashed to the window overlooking the grounds. The rest of the Hosts followed like so many puppets controlled by a single set of strings. I watched in fascination as each of them raised a violently shuddering hand and pointed off down the path into the darkened grounds beyond.

  I stood up and joined them at the window, squinting into the gathering darkness. I turned to the Host right beside me and realized with a start that it was Celeste.

  “Is it close?” I asked her. “Here on the grounds?”

  She nodded solemnly.

  “Can you show me?”

  Every head nodded before turning again to stare off into the night. Every mouth began working in the silent mantra again. “Little book, little book, little book.”

  I turned back to Fiona, Finn, and Mrs. Mistlemoore, all of whom were standing and watching with their mouths agape.

  “We need to go where they lead us,” I said. “We can end this tonight.”

  “I’m going to alert the Council,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said at once, turning and hurrying toward the door.

  “No, you can’t do that yet!” I cried, running after her.

  She turned around to stare at me. “Why ever not?”

  “They’ll just hold us up!” I said. “Let’s just go, let’s just find this book and see what it says!”

  “Jessica, I have indulged your whim, despite my reservations, and I do not doubt that it has paid off. But I will not proceed any further with this new information until I alert the Council and they give us their instructions.”

  “I’m on the Council,” Fiona said, crossing her arms. “Can’t you just take my instructions?”

  “You know very well that I cannot,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said impatiently. “Letting you in here is one thing, but letting any of them out,” and she pointed over to the Hosts still crowded around the window, “is another matter entirely. It would mean breaking the quarantine. It would also risk one of the Hosts escaping, and we cannot possibly risk that without authorization. If one of the Hosts escapes, we won’t be able to reassemble the Shards or expel them from the rest of the Hosts.”

  I let out a deep sigh of frustration. “They will find a way to screw this up, I know it.”

  “That is a chance I am willing to take,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said. She had nearly reached the door when Carrick came shooting through it.

  “Mrs. Mistlemoore, we need…” Carrick began, but stopped abruptly when he caught sight of me. His face went blank. “Jessica? What are you doing here? Where’s Hannah? You’re not… she’s not a Host?”

  “No, no, we’re fine,” I assured him. “But are you? Is everything okay?�
��

  “It’s Finvarra.” Carrick said shortly. His face spoke volumes.

  “Is she…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, as my heart had risen into my throat.

  “No. But she is failing quickly,” Carrick said. “Mrs. Mistlemoore, we need you in the High Priestess’ chambers.”

  “Oh, Carrick, I’m so sorry,” I said. I took several steps toward him, my hand reaching out, but then I abruptly stopped myself. What exactly did I want to do? Hold his hand? Hug him? I didn’t really know, and I certainly didn’t have the emotional capital to invest in figuring it out. So, like any mature adult, I pretended it hadn’t happened. Luckily, Mrs. Mistlemoore burst through the awkward moment, popping it like a bubble.

  “Of course, I’m coming now,” she said, snatching a large, black leather bag from a nearby table before turning back to me. “I must go tend to the High Priestess. Stay here. I’ll speak with the Council and return as soon as I can.”

  She gave a stern, lingering look at Fiona before turning and heading for the door.

  “I must go with her,” Carrick said, and there was something of an apology in his voice. “Are you… you’re alright here, are you?” He asked the question with a quiet sort of desperation, a tone that indicated that he could only bear to hear one answer.

  And so, I gave it to him. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  He nodded in grateful acknowledgment of the lie, and shimmered out of view just as Mrs. Mistlemoore pushed the door open and Frankie stumbled in, looking startled.

  “Frankie! What are you doing here?” I asked, momentarily distracted.

  Frankie answered nervously, her eyes darting around and taking in the bizarre scene. “I went with your sister to find Celeste, so that I could tell her I wanted to start my training, but we never found her, and then a couple of those big burly guys came and took Hannah away.”

  “They wanted to ask her some questions about the Shattering,” I said, attempting to keep the anger out of my voice.

  “Yes, that’s what they said, but… she seemed kind of freaked out,” Frankie said. “I went to Celeste’s office, but the Caomhnóir there told me she was down in the Grand Council Room, and that she would be back later. I waited for a while, but she never showed up. So, I decided to come down here and see if I could find out how Savannah was doing.”