Spirit Ascendancy (7 page)

“And you didn’t hear anything that might have explained where he was going?” I asked.

“I could barely hear anything over sounds of the spirit cage,” she said. “Of the entire conversation, I only managed to catch one word.”

“Which was?”

“Fairhaven.” She took a deep breath, which shuddered and caught in her lungs, almost like they had forgotten how to expand. “I didn’t need to hear any more than that. I don’t know who was on the other end of that phone, but whoever it was, they probably saved my life. They gave him the information he wanted, and he didn’t have use for me anymore.”

Milo, Savannah, Hannah, and I all looked at each other.

“I tried everything I knew about spirit communication to find one who could go and warn you, but it was useless. Those that surrounded me were mere fragments by then, incapable of real communication, and the Necromancers had warded the flat against outside ghosts.  I knew you were at Fairhaven, and that Neil must be on his way, but I also knew that he was unlikely to be able to reach you there. That place is supposed to be like a fortress, and I knew the other Durupinen would protect you,” Annabelle said. “But is that why you’re here? Did the Necromancers attack? Did you have to escape?”

“Yeah, about that,” I said, sighing deeply. “Do you want me to warm up that tea for you? This is kind of a long story.”

A few minutes later, when Annabelle’s cup was steaming again, I told her the entire story, from the discovery of Hannah’s Calling abilities, to the Silent Child, to the revelation of the prophecy and our subsequent escape. Annabelle’s eyes grew wider and wider as she listened, and by the time I’d finished, she might have been staring at a fictitious creature of nightmares instead of my own flushed face.

“Well,” she said, when she found her voice at last, “I said it before and I’ll say it again. I knew you were trouble from the moment you walked into my tent.”

“Yup,” I said. “Beware a college girl with a fishbowl; a sure harbinger of the apocalypse.”

“So now you have the Durupinen and the Necromancers searching for you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, congratulations,” she said, raising one eyebrow in her first recognizable attempt at sarcasm. “You’ve brought me to the only apartment in the city of London that’s more dangerous than the one I’ve just escaped.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said.

“And that Tracker you mentioned, Lucida? She’s the one who’s helping you to stay hidden?”

“Yes, and now that you mention her,” I said, climbing to my feet and massaging the feeling back into my right leg, which had gone numb curled up under me, “we really do need to try to get a message to her. She needs to know the Necromancers have been here.”

A sharp sound made us all jump. Finn suddenly appeared on the fire escape and climbed back in through the window. Annabelle actually leapt from the sofa at the sight of him, pressing a hand to her heart as she fought to calm her breath again. Savvy caught her arm as she swayed and helped her back onto the cushions.

“Where the hell have you been?” I asked him.

“I used the Book of Téigh Anonn to seal the flat back up. If they try to get back in, we’ll know,” he said, his expression grimly satisfied.

“Go on, Annabelle,” I told her.

“Where did you find that?” Annabelle asked suddenly, her voice rather sharp.

Finn looked up. “Where did I find what?”

“That book. Did they leave it in my flat?”

Finn scowled. “No. This is my book. I brought it down with me to seal up your flat against their return. Why do you ask?”

“It’s just… I recognize it.”

“What do you mean? Did they use one to perform their castings?” I asked.

Annabelle pointed to Finn. “Yes! They had one of those books.”

Finn and I looked at each other, his face reflecting my own alarm.

“When you say, one of those books,” Finn said, “what do you mean? Just another old one?”

Annabelle shook her head, her curls whipping her face. “No, I mean a book identical to that one. I recognize the design on the cover.”

“But that’s a Durupinen book,” I said. “It has every casting that we learn how to do. Your family probably had one just like it, at one point.  It’s not something that the Necromancers should be able to get their hands on. Is it?” I directed this last question toward Finn.

“No,” he said, staring down at his own book, scowling. “I don’t know how they would have gotten a copy. Of course it’s possible that they’ve had it for centuries.”

“Possible, sure,” I said. “But probable?”

“No,” said Finn. “No, not probable.”

Neither of us elaborated, but I could tell from his expression that we were thinking the same thing. The Necromancers could only have gotten a copy of the Book of Téigh Anonn from one of the Durupinen, so that meant one of three things. They could have had it for centuries, a relic of the power struggle they had lost many hundreds of years ago, and it had only just come to the surface. This seemed, as Finn said, highly unlikely, as the Book of Téigh Anonn was hardly a grocery store paperback romance; there were very few copies of it in the world, and each one was carefully guarded by the Clan to which it belonged. There was no way the Durupinen would allow a copy of it to just go missing, without doing everything in their power to recover it.

The second possibility was that it had been stolen or taken by force very recently, since the Necromancers had resurfaced. It might be easy to penetrate Fairhaven’s defenses, now that we had half-burned it to the ground. And of course, there were hundreds of Gateways all over the world— what if one of them had been attacked? If that was the case, the Council may not yet have realized a book had gone missing, and that was dangerous in itself. The last possibility was the most disturbing of all: what if a member of the Durupinen had actually just… given it to them?

I couldn’t imagine who would do such a thing. All of the Durupinen I’d ever met, even the ones, like Marion, that I wished I hadn’t, were all obsessed with the Durupinen, and treated their status akin to a religious obsession. Even Lucida, who clearly didn’t follow some of the rules, took her role very seriously, even if she only loved it for the glamour and power it gave her. I couldn’t imagine any one of them jeopardizing it. No, if one of them was working with the Necromancers, it was someone on the outskirts of the Durupinen structure, one who felt she owed absolutely nothing to this system, a system that perhaps had even ruined her life.

In other words, someone with whom I’d have a hell of a lot in common.

“But this doesn’t make any sense,” Finn said, breaking into my thoughts. “Even if you’re right, Annabelle—”

“I am,” she interjected, with just a slight toss of her hair.

“—there’s no way that Neil would be able to read it. It’s just not possible.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the Book of Téigh Anonn itself exists under a casting. It appears blank to anyone who is not a full member of the Durupinen or the Caomhnóir. Surely you knew that,” he said to me, in what I thought was an unnecessarily belligerent tone.

“Sort of,” I said, crossing my arms defensively. Now that he had pointed it out, I remembered that it had once appeared blank to me, the first time I’d unwrapped it under the Christmas tree in Karen’s living room. I’d even attempted to use it as a journal, before I knew what it really was. But ever since we performed our first Crossing, the book had revealed its contents to me, every page crammed with runes, incantations, and explanations of the many castings the Durupinen could complete. Amidst all of the incredibly bizarre recent developments in my life, I hadn’t even questioned the sudden appearance of the book’s contents. Of course I had a magical book with disappearing and reappearing text. Didn’t everyone?

“We were just saying that we should send a message to Lucida,” Hannah said, getting to her feet. “We should tell her about the Necromancers having a copy of the book, shouldn’t we?”

“Yes,” Finn said. He looked moodily down at his own copy, as though he blamed it personally for one of its brethren falling into the wrong hands. “Tell her we need a plan to get out of here safely, as soon as possible. There’s no way to know when Neil and the others will be back, and I’m sure they’ll be careful to clean up after themselves before long. It would be careless to leave loose ends lying about, even if those loose ends are supposed to be trapped in a spirit cage.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said, as Hannah turned to leave. “I want to see how this blind Summoner thing works.”

“Okay, sure,” Hannah said, smiling.

“Will you be okay until we get back?” I asked Annabelle, who was staring into her tea again, her eyes fixed and glazed.

“Yes,” she said. “I think… would it be alright if I tried to get some sleep?”

“Of course,” I said. “I’m just sorry we had to keep you up at all. Get some rest. We’ll wake you up if there are any new developments.”

Annabelle had already put her mug down and was curling herself into a comfortable position on the sofa before I’d even finished talking. As I made to close the door behind me, Finn stuck out his battered black boot to stop it.

“I’m coming with you,” he said in answer to my quizzical look.

“Why?”

“Do you really need to ask me that? Because you’re leaving the flat and the Necromancers could be waiting for you. Don’t argue, just go.”

It was only with difficulty that I resisted the infantile urge to stick my tongue out at him. Instead, I just tried to ignore his clunking footsteps behind me as we climbed the stairs to the roof of the building.

Out in the late morning air, the city of London rose and fell in a series of buildings and patches of sky. The Thames was visible only by the break it made as it snaked through the urban landscape, driving the city forcefully to one side or the other of its cloudy waters with all the entitlement of royalty. I was still taking in the view as Hannah folded herself cross-legged into a casting circle already chalked onto the tarpaper of the roof. I plunked myself down beside her.

“I’ve been curious about this ever since you mentioned it a few days ago,” I said.

“It’s really useful,” Hannah said, fishing the stub of a white candle out of her sweatshirt pocket. Above us, the sun played peekaboo in the spotty cloud cover. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it, since Lucida only just taught me how, but it’s actually very easy.”

She lit the candle, rolling it back and forth between her thumb and forefinger until three drops of wax had fallen and splattered on the ground in front of her. Then she closed her eyes.

Without really knowing what she was doing, I closed my eyes too, sure a little additional concentration couldn’t hurt, but before I’d even adjusted to the darkness behind my eyelids, a rustling, breezy presence joined us in the circle, and I opened my eyes again to see who had joined us.

A middle-aged woman, stout and frumpy, stood before Hannah, blinking bemusedly around her as though unsure of how she’d gotten there. Her hands were twisting and untwisting a small tea towel.

“… mustn’t leave the flat, he’ll be so angry with me if I go without telling him,” she was saying in a nervous, fluttery voice. “Where am I? I really do need to get back. He’ll be expecting me to be there when he—”

Hannah held up a hand and the woman was struck dumb at once. Her eyes stopped darting around and instead gazed fixedly, and without seeing, straight ahead of her. The tea towel dropped to her side, forgotten. At the same time, the candle in Hannah’s hand began to spark and the little flame leaped and danced, as though something more than air had suddenly brought it to life.

My heart thudded anxiously as I watched the flame darting…
living.

“Hannah, what are you…?”

Hannah shushed me as she lowered the candle carefully into a teacup at her feet. Then she looked up at the ghost and spoke to it. “Lucida, we need to get out of this flat. The Necromancers have been here. They found Annabelle and imprisoned her. They have a copy of the Book of Téigh Anonn, and there’s a possibility they are headed to Fairhaven. Finn is sending you the photos of the castings they used, because we don’t know what most of them are. Send word or come as soon as you can, please.”

The woman’s ghost turned and shot away without any sign of acknowledgement.

“How does she know where to go?” I asked.

“Once they’ve been severed, they don’t need to be told where to go. The sender’s message and intentions will automatically bring them to the right place. Cool, huh? I still can’t believe I can do it!” Hannah said. She passed her fingers absently back and forth over the flame, which was still jumping wildly despite the lack of wind.

“What do you mean, severed?” I asked

“We want her to bring the message, but we don’t want her to be aware of what she’s doing. That way, if someone intercepts her, or questions her, she can’t tell them anything,” Hannah explained. “We’re using her as a vessel to hold the message, and we need the vessel to be empty. So I performed a severing and channeled her essence into this flame.” She pointed matter-of-factly at the candle.

Nearby, I heard Finn halt his relentless pacing.

“When you say essence, what are you—”

“The part of the soul that makes you human. The part that makes you an individual, with memories and experiences and self-awareness,” she said. She caught my eye for the first time since she started explaining and wrinkled her brow in concern. “Jess, what’s wrong? You look upset.”

I shook my head, trying to voice my concerns without offending her. “So you basically just turned that ghost into some sort of… ghost zombie?”

Yup, that was me, the queen of tact, at it again.

“No, that’s not it at all,” Hannah cried. “It’s just like she’s… hypnotized, or something. When she comes back, I’ll release her from the flame and she’ll be as good as new. Lucida told me that it doesn’t hurt them.”

“Hannah, I’m sorry, but I don’t like it. You’re telling me that you’re sapping spirits of their humanity just so they can play messenger for us? Doesn’t that sound completely wrong?”

“It does when you put it like that!” Hannah said, tears springing into her eyes. “You make it sound awful, but it’s not like that. We need to get word to Lucida and this is the only way to do it safely. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a very serious situation we’re in.”