The Skeleton Key (15 page)

When my eyes met hers she mouthed the words, ‘They're. Up. To. Something.'

Yes
, I thought.
They are.

I felt compelled to thank Samantha for the warning, but I couldn't without Athanasia spotting the exchange.

‘Well, I'd better get going,' I said. I figured I should tell Celia about the couple outside. Was this a normal sight in Spektor that I'd somehow missed before? Though I knew the suburb had many mysterious residents, most of whom preferred to stay hidden, I hadn't seen or heard of anyone like that hanging around before.

I traversed the lobby and pressed the button for the lift, not letting go of the rice in my left pocket. ‘Bye then,' I said, and stepped into the old rattling lift when it arrived. I watched the Sanguine in the lobby through gaps in the iron lacework as I rose up through the house. They were all still smiling at me. All except Samantha. She looked concerned. It was a relief when they were out of sight.

Yes. They're up to something.

I watched the second and third landings pass, a cool dread growing in my belly. When the doors slid back on the top floor, they revealed someone standing near the entrance to the penthouse.

Or not standing, exactly.

‘Miss Pandora English. The Seventh,' Dr Barrett said, and gave a little bow.

Well, isn't everyone friendly this evening
. ‘Hello, Dr Barrett,' I said.

The psychical scientist was in the same three-piece suit with that wing-tip white shirt and cravat, the brass goggles sitting up on his forehead. Behind his head was another one, I knew, though from this angle I could not see it. The doctor hovered strangely above the ground. He cast a faint shadow on the floor of the landing, I noticed, and he was not as transparent as most ghosts.
What is he exactly?
I wondered again.

Barrett had clearly picked up on my concern. ‘Do not worry. I am here for the moment,' he said, though that did not seem an overly reassuring statement. ‘I must speak with you.'

Reluctantly, I stepped out of the elevator. ‘Yes, you said something about that,' I responded warily, watching his eyes and keeping my distance. ‘You said you had a warning.'

Barrett respectfully stepped around to give me space as I made my way to the penthouse doors and got out the key. I knocked, then unlocked the door and held my hand on it, propping it open with one foot, ready to leap inside if that thing on Barrett's back woke.

Dr Barrett watched me, clearly noting that he was not welcome inside. He brought his hands together, as if in prayer. ‘Miss English, listen to me well. It is vitally important that you comprehend the significance of this place and the dangers lurking here,' he explained gravely.

I didn't like the sound of that.

Dangers like bloodsucking Sanguine, and green-eyed monsters, and . . . what?

I turned and faced him squarely, despite my fear. ‘Tell me.'
Tell me now before your eyes turn that glowing green, or just close.
‘Is this something to do with that woman on the street? She was like a walking corpse. There was another one, too. A man.'

His thick, bushy grey eyebrows rose. ‘Oh dear,' he said. ‘So it is already starting.' He looked both ways to see if anyone was listening, affording me a brief but grim glimpse of his passenger. ‘Miss English, this house was built on an entry to the Under­world.' He pointed to the floor beneath us with one finger.

Now
that
was not what I was expecting to hear.

I blinked really, really slowly, and when I opened my eyes Dr Edmund Barrett was still hovering before me, footless and with a strange creature fused to his back. And he'd still said that we were at an entrance to the Underworld.

I swallowed. ‘The . . . Underworld,' I repeated with a long pause between my words.

I'd read about the Underworld of ancient myth, with Minos judging the dead and the nightmarish black Tarturus where the guilty were trapped, starved and tortured. I'd read of the beautiful green pastures of the Elysian Fields, where legend had it the blessed dwelled for a thousand years before their spirits were cleansed with forgetfulness and they happily took on new mortal bodies. Did such places exist
literally
?

‘It is only one of several entrances, scattered around the four corners of the world,' he explained.

‘I see,' I said, though that was an overstatement.

I'd read from time to time about supposed portals to the Underworld. There was a rumoured entry to the Underworld in the mountains of Spain, where hikers sometimes got lost in the fog and returned hours later, remembering nothing and believing only a few minutes had passed. And in caves on the Yucatan Peninsula, a labyrinth filled with stone churches and passageways had been discovered that locals believed led directly to the Underworld. And wasn't there a place in Scotland, in a hill? A place of Celtic legend?

‘Each is difficult to find, of course. The portals like to remain hidden. That is how it must be. They do not wish to be found, except by the psychopomps who lead the spirits of the dead to their rightful place.'

Psychopomps.
Guides for souls. It was such an odd word.

‘You see, Spektor is a place of great significance,' Barrett explained. ‘When I discovered the portal, I built the mansion here, right on top of it.'

Right. On. Top.

The entrance to the Underworld was what made Spektor invisible to so many. It was not the house, but the
place
. Or perhaps the two were inseparable now. It had seemed to me at times that the house itself was alive somehow. That it had its own will. My goodness, the sounds beneath the floor were coming from the realm of the dead? That was what was beneath the floor? Beneath those cracked tiles at my feet? Was Spektor some kind of pit stop between the realm of the dead and the realm of the living? Was that why so many spirits congregated here? So many members of the dead and the undead?

My head swam.

Yep. That was some kinda news
, I thought. ‘How many people know that this is an entry to the Underworld?'

‘People?' He shook his head. ‘No, very few of the living have this knowledge.'

And what about the undead
, I wondered. Did Deus know? And what about my great-aunt? Had she been told? She'd told me the house had not offered all its secrets to her. Was this what she meant?

‘Can I tell anyone?'

‘Only those who are destined to know.'

What does that mean?

‘And so, young lady, you can see why I had to return to tell you this,' he explained. ‘The time the prophecy speaks of is approaching. You must prepare yourself.'

I nodded.
The revolution of the dead.
‘But how do I prepare myself?'

‘Only the Seventh can know that, I am afraid. But it is vital that you realise the importance of this time, this place, and your role.'

I kept hearing that being the Seventh was important, but no one seemed to be able to tell me how.

Barrett turned his head suddenly and I flinched. Would his passenger wake?

‘For now I must go. My wife needs me,' he said, and a chill went up my spine. ‘She is the other reason I came. But I should like to speak to you later, if I may,' he added with a little bow.

‘Sure,' I said. ‘Um, I'll be around.'

He could not come into the penthouse, I figured. Not with that thing on his back. Our protection spell would prevent that thing from entering the space, and although Barrett appeared nice enough, that seemed like an awfully good thing, all things considered.

Dr Barrett turned and ‘walked' away, moving on footless legs. At his back the passenger's head slumped forward, sleeping, the wild white hair swinging back and forth, obscuring that terrible face. When he reached the edge of the railing, rather than stop, he floated up over it and disappeared down through the house.

My jaw dropped.

I opened the door of the penthouse and hurried inside. It wasn't a moment too soon.

T
hings were pretty uneventful on Wednesday and I was darned grateful for that, I can tell you. Skye DeVille did not show up with her new blood buddies to enact bloodthirsty revenge on all of us at the office, and the grind of the new coffee machine and the workload as Pepper Smith's assistant seemed to agree with me just fine. I spent the whole day sorting emails and taking calls, thinking about what Dr Barrett had told me.

An entry to the Underworld?

Could such a thing be real? Celia had suspected something like what Barrett had told me, but had not known for sure, she'd said. Yes, there had been clues – the cryptic warnings, the strangeness of Spektor, the way the whole suburb preferred to remain hidden. The sounds under the floor, even the sulphur smell in the stairwell. But how could I have guessed the reason for those things? There were so many questions I wanted to ask Barrett, so many things I wished I'd said. Yet despite his claim that he wanted to speak to me again, the evening came and went without his presence, so I didn't get the chance.

By the time Thursday night arrived I was champing at the bit, wishing there was some way I could call Dr Barrett as I'd once been able to call Luke, despite my intense dislike of the ‘passenger' on his back.

I had to know more.

So it's already starting
, he'd said, when I'd told him about the zombielike pair on the street. Had he meant that the revolution of the dead had already started? Or only the ‘agitation' Celia kept talking about? I'd been so absorbed in Barrett's other news that I hadn't thought to ask him.

‘Great-Aunt Celia, what should I do?' I asked on Thursday night. I sat on Celia's leather hassock in the lounge room of the penthouse, sipping the soothing tea that I was rapidly becoming addicted to. ‘Dr Barrett said he had more to tell me but I haven't seen him for a couple of days now. I'm getting worried. There are so many things I wish I'd asked him.'

My great-aunt sat back in her reading chair. ‘Well, you could head downstairs and see if he shows.'

I bit my lip. At the moment the thought of all those smiling Sanguine worried me almost as much as Barrett's passenger. What if Athanasia still wanted to kill me, despite the order that I not be harmed? What if she'd risen from the grave having finally outgrown her Fledgling OCD?

‘Or you could rest up and conserve your strength,' Great-Aunt Celia said, in that familiar tone that suggested it was the correct option. ‘As I rather think tomorrow will be more eventful.'

She finished her cup of tea and placed it on the silver tray.

‘Tomorrow? Why?'

‘Tomorrow is Friday the thirteenth,' she reminded me.

I hadn't realised. ‘Should I expect some homicidal maniac to burst in on my date with Jay, wearing a hockey mask?'

She did not miss my cynical tone. ‘Darling, friggatris­kaidekaphobia is not entirely unfounded. But those silly eighties horror movies are quite another matter.'

‘Frigga-what?'

My great-aunt crossed her ankles and brought one pale, slender hand to her chin. ‘As you well know, Frigga or Frigg is the name of the Norse goddess for whom Friday is named, though some also believe it was named after our friend here, Freyja.' She looked down at the namesake of the Norse goddess of love, beauty and death – the one who rides a chariot pulled by felines. In response Freyja meowed and nestled her head into her furry paws again.

I did recall Frigga's relationship to Friday.

‘Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number thirteen,' Celia explained. ‘Hence friggatriskaidekaphobia – the phobia for this day.'

‘But why are people afraid of Friday the thirteenth? Is it bad luck because of the Knights of the Templar?'

That was one of the popular views on why it was cursed, I'd heard.

‘Because the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, was arrested and tortured, along with a lot of other Templars?' Celia replied. ‘Well, no. It was a bad day for them, to be sure, but the idea that it is the cause is a recent invention. Friday the thirteenth has always had a strong magick, since well before the Templars and their Christian army went down in 1307. Fridays have long been considered inauspicious days to begin new journeys or projects, even if few actively believe that now. Even before the “Last Supper”, there has been a superstition that having thirteen people seated around a dinner table will end in the death of one of the diners. Twelve is considered a complete number – a full dozen, the signs in the zodiac, the hours of the day, months in the year, the number of apostles in the bible, twelve days of Christmas, the Twelve Olympians of the Greek pantheon, and so on. Thirteen, on the other hand, is the number of mystery. It has a strange, unpredictable magick. This dates back quite far.'

‘Friggatriskaidekaphobia . . . did I say that right? It's quite a mouthful. So tomorrow really is bad luck?' I said.

‘Like so many superstitions, there is a grain of truth in it, but the true meaning has been lost. Did you know that so many people avoid doing things on Friday the thirteenth that it is one of the safest days on the calendar? No, Friday the thirteenth is not unlucky, per se, but rather there are certain powers at work on these special days. It can be either a lucky day or an unlucky one, but it is almost certain that it will bring surprises.'

I felt pretty unlucky at the moment, so I worried about which way my luck would fall.

‘No,' my wise great-aunt said, perhaps again reading my thoughts. ‘Tomorrow will not be unlucky, but my feeling is that it's sure to be eventful.'