by Dima Zales
Four days had passed since Graham’s absence was noticed. His escape was a mystery. A tracker had followed his trail from outside his bedroom window to the edge of Cordus’s property, but there was no sign he’d crossed the barrier. Zion, called back from an assignment in northern Virginia, had confirmed the trail but hadn’t been able to get a fix on Graham’s current location, which suggested he was far away. Cordus had people combing the city anyway and was checking with more distant members of the organization. No one had turned up anything.
Back and forth he walked. Back and forth.
This was the first time he’d questioned me. Only that morning had Gwen told him about my visit to Graham. Weirdly, she’d forgotten about it, and apparently no one else had known of it. I hadn’t mentioned it myself. I hadn’t thought it mattered.
“Why did you go see him?”
“I was hoping he’d explain what he’d done. It was bothering me.”
“Were you lovers?”
I bristled. What business was that of his? Rather than snap at him, I just didn’t answer.
He looked at me sharply, like some bird of prey seeing movement in the grass. Slowly, he came to a standstill.
“And what story did he spin for you, pray tell?”
“He said he’d been sentenced to death, and Lord Limu used that to blackmail him.”
Cordus cocked his head, continuing to stare at me.
Did he really think Graham would’ve told me about his escape plans? That wouldn’t make any sense.
“What else did he tell you?”
“He said he’d slept with Kara.”
“And what else?”
I stared at Cordus, trying to decide how to answer. Graham had said not to mention the mouse, but it was just a mouse. Why should it be a secret?
I thought of his face, pale and lovely, touched with sunlight and shadow. And suddenly I knew: at the very last, he’d said one true thing. A tiny gift, one without cost. But perhaps priceless.
“He didn’t say anything else.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Cordus stalked toward me. He loomed over me for a moment, then reached down for my hand and pulled me up. He stepped closer, then closer still, leaning into me. I couldn’t look away. I watched the tawny starbursts in his irises expand as his pupils dilated. My heart rate spiked. He traced a pattern on the back of my hand with his thumb. I jumped as his other hand slid around behind my neck and into my hair. He lowered his lips to my ear. On the way, they brushed against my cheek. A little sound came out of me before I could stop it.
“Miss Ryder,” he whispered, nuzzling my hair, “why are you lying to me?”
His breath was warm. Awareness of him flooded my body. I saw only him, heard only him, felt only him. Desire pooled in my belly, hot and insistent.
“Tell me what he said.”
His lips brushed over my cheekbone to my temple. He released my hand and drew his fingers lightly up my arm. His thumb brushed the side of my breast. I shuddered.
“Why would you lie for him?” he murmured, his lips moving slowly down to my jaw line. “He sent you to an isolate. He searched for Limu, intending to buy his freedom with your life.”
He kissed my cheek, ever so lightly, then moved toward my mouth. My legs would barely hold me up.
“He sent you to a land of monsters. Did he try to save you? No, not once during all those days.”
His breath was sweet. When he spoke, his lips moved against mine.
“And yet you lie for him?”
I stood there, eyes squeezed shut. If I spoke, if I moved, if I looked at him, it was all over. Second after second, we stood there, me shaking, my breath coming in gasps, him utterly composed.
Finally, he stepped back.
“Very well, Miss Ryder.”
I reached out and grabbed the back of the chair I’d been sitting in, almost upsetting it.
He moved away, unconcerned.
Warily, I watched him retreat behind his desk and begin to sort some papers.
“It may interest you to hear that Mr. Ryzik went through the carven strait. Two different trackers confirmed his use of it this morning. I had thought the strait wholly out of reach. It seems that little is impossible when it comes to that one.”
He tapped a sheaf of paper on his desk, then slid it into a folder.
“He is trapped in an isolate, and I shall very much enjoy hunting him down. You may go.”
I made my way to the door, feeling like I was about to fall down. As I turned the knob, his voice stopped me.
“Miss Ryder.”
Filled with dread, I turned.
He looked up, meeting my eyes.
“I hope you will remember what did not happen today.”
Mouth too dry to speak, I nodded.
He looked down.
I opened the door — too fast — and left. I made it around the corner before my legs went all bendy, and I had to stop and lean against the wall.
Oh shit. I’m so screwed.
He hadn’t bothered to use his mind-control thing on me. He hadn’t needed to.
I felt dirty. Not because of anything he’d done. Because of what I’d done. What I’d wanted to do, anyway.
How am I going to live in this place? How can I stay here and still be me?
I looked around, desperate for some kind of anchor. The hallway was all pale, immaculate carpet, smooth walls, porcelain sconces — perfectly tasteful, yet empty. Cold.
You can’t, that hallway seemed to say. You won’t.
Epilogue
Ghosteater emerged from the silence into the springtime forest.
He had left the émigré’s home some days before, angry at the man’s refusal to hand over Ryzik, the golden-haired native. The émigré had spoken for hours. Laws had been invoked, wrongs had been weighed, a compromise had been sought. None of that meant a thing to the beast. Either blood would be shed over the matter, or it would not.
In the end, Ghosteater had chosen not to defend his claim. He’d staked it on a whim, and fighting the émigré might be fatal. It just wasn’t worth it.
But anger, oh yes, there was anger. And disgust at these late-born creatures who knew no honesty. Their brains were too big for it. Revolting.
As the beast left the émigré’s land, the wind had curled around his ears, whispering, suggesting a path. Ghosteater panted, taking in the air, tasting what it offered. Incompletion, fragment. He knew that scent: the strange woman, Justine. Tears and sunlight. He knew that one as well: the pup, Beth. Heat and serpents: the émigré. Old blood. Salt water. Bronze and burning sand. The breath of one with an empty stomach. Liquid rock in the darkness.
Great hunt, the wind murmured. Hunt for home.
Intrigued, Ghosteater turned aside and took one step on the wind’s path, then another. Soon he was on his way.
The path led a few hundred miles north. After several days of travel, he recognized his destination — a strait that had appeared recently in a small human structure some ways inland. He had noticed it during his last wanderings through the area, perhaps two hundred years ago. Made of heavy logs locked together, the structure had been built as a place of refuge during warfare. Perhaps the rage and hatred and blood of the place had drawn it closer to the other world. It was hard to say. Wild straits were strange, fickle.
Ghosteater stepped into the roofless dwelling. Unlike the carven strait, which contained its own capacity, this one did not tug at him. It would have to be forced open. His ability to do such things is what made him, like the man Cordus, a power and an émigré. Once, in the distant past, he had opened a strait without understanding what he did and had crossed through, finding himself in another world.
The other world. Unlike most émigrés, he did not consider that place his home. This continent of this world would always be his place, however changed it might be.
Still, the scents on the wind were interesting, its words tantalizing.
Nos
ing at the air, he could barely feel the strait’s presence. It was so young. He sensed the very edge of it and seized it, then adjusted his grip. When he had it firmly in his mind’s teeth, he touched his vast strength and worked the marrow of being, sending a filament of space spooling out through the silence between worlds, connecting the place he stood to somewhere on the other side.
Where it went, he didn’t know, but it smelled of trees and horses and dusty roads and fat, stupid deer. And of incompletion, tears. Sunlight, serpents. Vast sky.
He cocked his head and listened again to the voice of the wind. Then he stepped through.
The End
The series continues in Solatium.
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The Medium
Emily Chambers, Spirit Medium: Book 1 - C.J. Archer
1
London, Spring 1880
Whoever said dead men don't tell lies had never met Barnaby Wiggam's ghost. The fat, bulbous-nosed spirit fading in and out beside me like a faulty gas lamp clearly thought he was dealing with a fool. I may only be seventeen but I'm not naïve. I know when someone is lying—being dead didn't alter the tell-tale signs. Mr. Wiggam didn't quite meet my eyes, or those of his widow and her guests—none of whom could see him anyway—and he fidgeted with his crisp white silk necktie as if it strangled him. It hadn't—he'd died of an apoplexy.
"Go on, young lady." He thrust his triple chins at me, making them wobble. "Tell her. I have no hidden fortune."
I swallowed and glanced at the little circle of women holding hands around the card table in Mrs. Wiggam's drawing room, their wide gazes locked on the Ouija board in the center as if Barnaby Wiggam stood there and not beside me. I too stood, behind my sister and opposite the Widow Wiggam who looked just as well-fed as her dead husband in her black crepe dress and mourning cap. However, where his face was covered with a network of angry red veins, hers was so white it glowed like a moon in the dimly lit room.
"Are you sure?" I asked him. If he knew I suspected him of lying, he didn't show it. Or perhaps he simply didn't care.
"Sure?" Mrs. Wiggam suddenly let go of her neighbor's hands. My sister, Celia, clicked her tongue and Mrs. Wiggam quickly took up the lady's hand again. It's not as if anyone needed to hold hands at all during our séances but my sister insisted upon it, along with having candles rather than lamps, a tambourine and an Ouija board even though she rarely used either. She liked things to be done in a way that added to the atmosphere and the enjoyment of the customers, as she put it. I'm not convinced anyone actually enjoyed our séances, but they were effective nevertheless and she was right—people expect certain theatrics from spirit mediums, so if we must put on a performance then so be it.
Celia had taken it one step further this time by wearing a large brass star-shaped amulet on a strap around her neck. The recent purchase was as unnecessary as the hand-holding but she thought it gave us authenticity amidst a city filled with fake mediums. I had to admit it looked wonderfully gothic.
"Sure about what?" Mrs. Wiggam asked again, leaning forward. Her large bosom rested on the damask tablecloth and rose and fell with her labored breathing. "What does he want you to say, Miss Chambers?"
I glanced at Mr. Wiggam's ghost. He crossed his arms and raised his fluffy white eyebrows as if daring me to repeat his lie. "He, er, he said … " Oh lord, if I repeated the lie then I would be contributing to his fate. He could not cross over to the Otherworld until he was at peace, and he would not be at peace until he let go of his anger towards his wife. Lying to her wasn't helping.
On the other hand, it was his choice.
"Emily," Celia said with the false sing-song voice she employed for our séances. "Emily, do tell us what Mr. Wiggam is communicating to you. Give his poor dear widow," she paused and smiled beatifically at Mrs. Wiggam, "some solace in her time of mourning."
"Mourning!" Barnaby Wiggam barked out a laugh that caused the edges of his fuzzy self to briefly sharpen into focus. For a moment he appeared almost human again. To me at least. "Tell that … that WOMAN who sits there pretending to be my demure wife that there is no fortune."
"He says there's no fortune," I repeated.
A series of gasps echoed around the small drawing room and more than one of the elegant ladies clicked her tongue. Mrs. Wiggam let go of both her neighbors’ hands again. "Nonsense!" Her gaze flitted around the room. "Tell that lying, cheating, scoundrel of a husband that I know he amassed a fortune before his death." She placed her fists on the table and rose slowly to her considerable height, well above my own. She even dwarfed her ghostly husband. "Where is he? I want to tell him to his face." She reminded me of a great brown bear at the circus Mama had taken me to see as a little girl. The creature had expressed its displeasure at being chained to a bollard by taking a swipe at its handler with an enormous paw. I'd felt sorry for it. I wasn't yet sure if I felt the same emotion towards Mrs. Wiggam.
I must have glanced sideways at her husband because she turned on the spirit beside me even though she couldn't see it. He took a step back and fiddled with his necktie again.
"I know there's money somewhere." Her bosom heaved and her lips drew back, revealing crooked teeth. "I deserve that money for putting up with you, you wretched little man. Rest assured Barnaby dearest, I'll find every last penny of it."
A small, strangled sound escaped Mr. Wiggam's throat and his apparition shimmered. Fool. He was dead—she couldn't do anything to him now. Her four friends shrank from her too.
My sister did not. "Mrs. Wiggam, if you'll please return to your seat," Celia said in her conciliatory church-mouse voice. She ruined the effect by shooting a sharp glance at me. Mrs. Wiggam sat. She did not, however, resume handholding. Celia turned a gracious smile on her. "Now, Mrs. Wiggam, it's time to conclude today's session." My sister must have an internal clock ticking inside her. She always seemed to know when our half hour was over. "Everyone please close your eyes and repeat after me." They all duly closed their eyes, except Mrs. Wiggam who'd taken to glaring at me. As if it were my fault her husband was a liar!
"Return oh spirit from whence you came," Celia chanted.
"Return oh spirit from whence you came," the four guests repeated.
"Go in peace—."
"No!" Mrs. Wiggam slapped her palms down on the table. Everyone jumped, including me, and the tambourine rattled. "I do not want him to go in peace. I do not want him to go anywhere!" She crossed her arms beneath her bosom and gave me a satisfied sneer.
I'm not your husband! I wanted to shout at her. Why did everyone think I was the embodiment of their loved one? Or in this case, their despised one. I once had a gentleman kiss me when I summoned his deceased fiancée. It had been my first kiss, and hadn't been entirely unpleasant.
"Let him go," Celia said, voice pitching unusually high. She shook her head vigorously, dislodging a brown curl from beneath her hat. "He can't remain here. It's his time to go, to cross over."
"I don't want to cross over," Mr. Wiggam said.
"What?" I blurted out.
"Did he say something?" Celia asked me. I repeated what he'd said. "Good lord," she muttered so quietly I was probably the only one who heard her. Especially since Mrs. Wiggam had started laughing hysterically.
"He wants to stay?" The widow's grin turned smug. "Very well. It'll be just like old times—living with a corpse."
One of the guests snorted a laugh but I couldn't determine which of the ladies had done it. They all covered their mouths with their gloved hands, attempting to hide their snickers. They failed.
"Tell the old crone I'm glad I died," Barnaby Wiggam said, straightening. "Being dead without her is a far better state than being alive with her."
"No, no this won't do," Celia said, thankfully saving me from repeating the spirit's words. She stood up and placed a hand on Mrs. Wiggam's arm. "Your husband must return. We summoned him at your behest to answer your question and now he nee
ds to cross over into the Otherworld."
Actually, he probably wouldn't be crossing over. Not while there was so much lingering anger between himself and his wife. He needed to release the anger before he could go anywhere. Until then he was tied to this world and the Waiting Area. That's why some places remain haunted—their ghosts aren't willing to give up the negative emotion keeping them here. Although Celia knew that as well as I, she couldn't be aware of the extent of Barnaby Wiggam's sour mood. She certainly couldn't have known he deliberately lied to his wife about his fortune.
I sighed. As always, I would have to explain it to her later. After we returned the ghost to the Waiting Area. "You have to go back," I urged him. "You shouldn't be here. Tell your widow you're sorry, or that you forgive her or whatever and you can cross over and be at peace." At least that's what I assumed happened. Since I wasn't able to summon anyone from the Otherworld—only the Waiting Area—I couldn't know for sure what occurred in their final destination. For all I knew the Otherworld was like a political meeting. Endless and dull.
From what the spirits had told me, all ghosts ended up in the Waiting Area until they'd been assigned to a section in the Otherworld. Which section depended on how they'd behaved in life. However, none knew the fate awaiting them in their respective sections. It caused many of the ghosts I'd summoned an anxious wait.
"I'm not sorry." Barnaby Wiggam sat in an old leather armchair by the hearth and rubbed his knee as if it gave him pain although it couldn't possibly hurt now. He seemed so at home there, nestled between the enormous rounded arms and deeply cushioned high back, that I wondered if it had been his favorite chair. "I think I'll stay a little longer. I rather fancy haunting the old witch. It'll be a jolly time."
"Jolly!" I spluttered. I appealed to Celia but she simply shrugged. "But you can't do this!" I said to him. "It's … it's illegal!" Nothing like this had happened to us in a year and a half of conducting séances. All our spirits had duly answered the questions their loved ones posed then returned to the Waiting Area, content and ready to cross over. Then again, we'd never summoned anyone who clearly wasn't a loved one.