Thirteen Days of Midnight (16 page)

The big climax of the show is a midnight exorcism of Coldstane Rectory, with night-vision cameras and heat sensors and something called a Spectral Reader, which looks suspiciously like a Geiger counter with extra parts soldered on. My father, wearing a purple robe, chants and burns various herbs, and then waves his hands around while the camera crew follows him from room to room. The Judge bangs stuff and throws furniture about, occasionally, to my amusement, missing his cue. The Vassal and the Heretic put in guest appearances for the benefit of the heat sensors, walking through the walls and moaning. At the climax of the exorcism, someone cuts the lights in the rectory and the Shepherd himself appears, emitting an aura of green fire that you clearly don’t need second sight to see. Holiday and her mates scream.

“Luke,” Holiday says, “did you see?”

“It’s CGI,” I say.

The credits roll, luminous against a moonless night. Some text informs us that the Aulders remained in the house after the show and have not reported any further paranormal events. The exorcism was successful.

I’m left utterly confused. Dad raised terrifying spirits from the dead so that he could exorcise houses of their resident ghosts? Wouldn’t it be easier to just fake it? What happened to the actual ghost haunting Coldstane Rectory anyway? Where did she go? What was that moving shadow that came from the tree line?

Was that Dad’s demon?

“So do you guys believe in ghosts?” one of Holiday’s friends asks.

“After that,” Holiday says, “I’m not sure. That was, like, the scariest one yet.”

“When the knife was floating —”

“Come on,” I say, “are you serious? Those were the lamest effects I’ve ever seen. It was so plainly on strings.”

“You’re such a cynic,” says Holiday, punching me in the arm.

I just kind of grin and shrug and then we watch some reality show about people with fake tans yelling at one another. They all live in this house by the beach, and the weather is always sunny. There’s still no sign of Elza. I’m not sure what she’s doing, if she’s scoping out the rest of the house or what. I’d like to know what she made of Dad’s show, whether she thought there was anything useful in there. We shouldn’t be separated anyway: The Host might show up any moment, and then I’d need the Book. Holiday’s leg is resting against mine, and I really wish I could just relax and enjoy the night. On TV the tanned people are arguing in their bright kitchen. It doesn’t look like the people on the show ever think about being dead.

By half past ten Holiday’s house is packed. Everyone who’s anyone in our year is dancing in her front room or mixing drinks in the kitchen. Mark and Kirk are here, with the rugby team in tow. They’ve got me surrounded in Holiday’s garden, and they’re all chanting in a tribal way. I’m holding the bottle of vodka they gave me. I lost any hope of finding Elza the second they arrived, and for all I know, the Host is already here, and I can’t explain any of this to them. I end up taking the smallest mouthful of the stuff I can get away with and passing it to the next guy. The drink sears my nose and throat. I’m coughing. Kirk, who’s dressed as Superman, grabs me and pulls me out of the circle.

“Manchett, where’ve you been this week?” he’s asking.

“Ugh. Bleh. Mum’s ill, man. I’ve been at home.”

“Headaches again?” Mark asks. He must have ditched the circle, too. Mark is Captain America. His shield is a painted garbage-can lid.

“Yeah. She just needs me around.”

Behind us the drinking circle is roaring so loudly that I can barely hear what anyone’s saying. I keep scanning the drunk faces around me, waiting to see one of the ghosts, waiting to feel the chill. The vodka isn’t doing my mood any favors.

I feel sick.

“You want to get some home help,” Kirk’s saying. “Get nurses in. You shouldn’t be looking after her by yourself.”

“I’m really fine, guys. Thanks.”

“Only you missed all the practices this week,” Mark’s saying.

“Ah, sorry, man, you know? Really. My head’s just not been in it.”

I try to smile. Neither looks that convinced.

“You’ll have to get back in it,” Mark says. “Coach is about to go nuclear on you.”

“Are you really all right?” Kirk asks. “You look bad, mate. Where’s your costume?”

“Ah, I forgot.”

“Alice was saying you came here with Elza Moss?” Mark says.

“We just walked the same way,” I say. “Barely know her.”

“Alice said you were talking to her yesterday, outside school,” he’s saying with a grin. “She said you were acting really shady about it.”

I’d like to find Alice Waltham and strangle her. I force a laugh.

“Elza just asked me for a cigarette,” I say.

“You’re sly,” Kirk’s saying, laughing. “I know what you’re up to, Luke. You’re trying to get into Elza, aren’t you?”

“You don’t have to be ashamed, mate,” Mark says. “Beggars can’t be choosers, right?”

“She written a poem for you yet?” Kirk asks.

“I need a piss, lads,” I say through a rictus grin, and turn away back to Holiday’s house. Behind me, obviously preplanned, the rugby guys break into a chorus of “Manchett and Elza sitting in a tree.” We mess with one another like this all the time, but I’m really not in the mood for it tonight. They’ve got no idea what’s happening here. Elza’s risking more for me than any of them ever has.

I push my way into the house, through the crowds of people in the back room and kitchen, half of them guys from the year below who didn’t even come in costume, just wore tracksuits and sneakers with neon laces. There are hip-hop videos blasting from the TV in the front room now, no more
Nightwatch.
I find Elza sitting at the bottom of the stairs. She’s staring into space, about as glum as I’ve ever seen her.

“You all right?” I ask.

“Absolutely horrible, thanks.”

“No sign of the Host?”

She shrugs. I sit beside her.

“You think they’re actually going to come?” I say.

“I’m starting to hope they do. I’ve been standing around on my own for two hours, listening to people have the most inane conversations on the planet, except half the time they’re drowned out by the worst music on the planet. Not to mention everyone looking at me like I sprayed myself down from a septic tank rather than showering this morning.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“How are you friends with these people? A guy told me to take my Halloween costume off. We’re
at a Halloween costume party.
Like, the other three hundred and whatever days of the year aren’t enough for you to use that insult?”

“We’re here because of the Host . . .”

“But that didn’t stop you from having a few with your rugby mates.”

“I’m trying to act normal? Fit in? I can hardly explain to anyone what’s going on.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I just can’t wait until high school is over and I’ll be able to go to the college in Brackford or something. I seriously —
AIIIEE!
”

Elza screams like she’s been scalded and jumps to her feet. There’s red running down her face, and I’m grabbing her, thinking she’s bleeding, the ghosts are here, the Shepherd — and then I hear drunk human laughter coming from above us. Alice Waltham and another girl I don’t recognize are standing on the upper landing, looking down. Alice is holding an empty wineglass.

“Sorry, Elza,” Alice says. “My hand slipped.”

Elza stares up at the two smirking girls, wine soaking into her dark cloud of hair, wine dripping from her shoulders onto the cream carpet. There are flecks of pink blooming everywhere around her. I realize I’ve still got my hand on Elza’s hip. She’s vibrating with rage, like a chain saw being revved up.

“Go clean yourself off, you mutt,” says the other girl.

Elza opens her mouth, and I think she’s going to scream at them, but instead she just whispers, so quietly only I can catch it, “I was here to save you.”

She breaks away from me and runs into the kitchen, heading for the door. I’m following her, pushing past groups of lads, past the table with the grinning jack-o’-lantern, out the door, her boots crunching on gravel.

“Elza!”

“I’m going home,” she says.

“Come on, please — I need your help . . .”

“With what? We’ve got no plan. I’m covered in wine. I’m not sitting around in Holiday’s palace for another hour getting drinks poured on me, waiting for ghosts to come and kill me. I’m going home.”

She takes the Book of Eight out of her backpack and thrusts it into my hands, then turns without another word and walks away into the dark. I watch her back as she disappears. The clack of her boot heels fades and then finally cuts out altogether. The night is cold and clear, with stars freckled like white paint on a smooth black canvas. I wait for Elza to come back, but she doesn’t, and after a few minutes I turn back up the drive, to Holiday’s house.

Holiday herself is standing in the front doorway, her body haloed in bright white light, cat ears still perched on her head. Music and loud voices leak out around her into the quiet street. I stop a few paces from the door.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hi.”

“Someone said maybe you left.”

“I came back.”

“Are you all right?” she asks.

“Not really.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Holiday pushes open a white door with a gold
H
nailed to it. Her room is dark, lit by a string of blue and pink lights that are looped over the poles of her four-poster bed. Her hair is threaded with the cool light that seeps from the bed frame. Downstairs, the music is thumping, like a headache you’re about to have.

“I cannot
believe
someone got red wine on the hall carpet,” Holiday’s saying. “Like, all over it! I just barely convinced Dad to even let me have people here . . .”

“It was Alice.”

“Oh, are you
kidding
? That girl — she just spray-painted my bathroom with vom as well, I had to put her to bed in my brother’s room. Thank god he’s not here.”

“She dumped wine all over Elza. That’s why there are stains.”

“Oh.” Holiday sits on the edge of her bed. “That wasn’t kind of her. Is that why you were outside?”

“Uh, yeah. Elza was angry, obviously. She went home.”

“You did come here with her, then?”

“She’s a friend.”

“Only a friend?” Holiday asks.

She holds my gaze with a delicious intensity.

“I . . . Holiday, I can’t do this right now.”

“Can’t do what?” she asks, smiling.

“Look . . . I can’t explain. . . . I’m, like, way over my head. I’m dangerous.”

“What, you’re a heartbreaker?” she says.

“No, look, it’s . . . my dad,” I say, not quite believing we’re suddenly having this conversation. “He died last week. We weren’t close, though.”

“I’d like . . .” Holiday’s saying, “I’d like us to be close, Luke.” She’s lying back on her bed, clearly out of it. I wonder if she’ll even remember this conversation in the morning.

“I’d like that, too,” I say. “But you look like you want to sleep right now.”

“You don’t have to go,” she says, almost a whisper.

“You’re very drunk. I think I should,” I say. She doesn’t answer. Her breathing is slow and deep. She reminds me of Mum suddenly, and I have to turn away. The music has stopped downstairs. They must be changing the track or something. I hope that’s what’s going on.

I open Holiday’s door and come face-to-face with the Judge.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, though I already know.

“Sorry, boss,” he says, rubbing his stubbly head. “Can’t be helped.”

Before I even know what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed him with my right hand. The sigil is cold, freezer-burn cold, like a tiny star of frost on my finger. I grab the Judge around his fat throat and lift him up into the air. He strains and squirms in my grip, his outline starting to blur like captive smoke, but I won’t let him go.

“Boss, please —”

“Shut up. I’m talking. I’m your necromancer. I’ve got the Book,” I say, holding it under his nose with my left hand. “I know how to use it. Where are the others?”

“Boss —”

I squeeze his throat tighter, cutting his protests off into a squawk. The sigil blazes even colder; my right hand feels like a shape carved from ice. Sparks are dancing in my teeth.

“Where are they? Where’s the Shepherd?”

“I’m here, Luke” comes his dry, clipped voice, right behind me.

Still holding the Judge, I turn to face the room. The Shepherd is standing a few feet from me, regarding me through the black discs of his glasses. His hands are clasped at his waist. He looks calm, like someone waiting for a bus.

“I’ve got the sigil here,” I say. “You make one move and I’ll —”

“You’ll do nothing,” the Shepherd says, “or the girl dies.”

With a sick lurch, I realize the shadows clotted around Holiday’s sleeping body have taken a man’s form. The Prisoner is crouched over her, staring down at her sleeping face with rapt delight. With his left hand he’s holding what looks like a thread of white light, which is connected to Holiday’s forehead, between her eyes. He’s pulling it out of her, whatever it is, and in his other hand . . . I see his shears are poised to snip the thread. He gives me a toothy tongueless smile.

“If you touch her —” I say.

“Empty threats,” the Shepherd says. “You have the sigil and Book, but you’re no necromancer yet, Luke. Give them up. Or my colleague will cut her thread and she’ll be gone.”

I’m frozen in place, the Judge still struggling in my grip.

The shears begin to close around the white thread, a millimeter at a time. The Prisoner doesn’t take his empty gaze off mine for a second.

I can’t let Holiday die because of me.

I release the Judge, who gurgles and falls to the ground. I drop the Book of Eight onto the floor and push it toward the Shepherd with my foot.

The Prisoner doesn’t move away from Holiday.

“The sigil as well,” the Shepherd says with a slight smile.

I pull the painfully cold ring from my finger and throw it at his smirking waxy face. He catches it in midair without any apparent effort.

“What are you waiting for?” the Shepherd asks. Is he talking to me? Why would I be waiting for anything? “Could it be you remain loyal to the necromancer?” he continues.