Thirteen Days of Midnight (24 page)

“Sorry, Mrs. Moss?”

“My daughter is a sensitive and unique child.”

“We’re just friends. Really.”

“I’m not sure what’s going on between you two,” Elza’s mum says. “But I know Elza well enough to know when I’m not getting the whole story. I’m led to understand you have some trouble at home. You’re welcome to stay here again tonight, but I do think it might be best for you to go home tomorrow. And if I find that you’re getting her in trouble somehow . . .”

You have no idea. Absolutely no idea.

“I’m really just lucky to have a friend like her,” I say.

“Well. I remade the bed for you in the spare room.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Moss.”

The wind is pulling at the trees like a hand unstitching threads. Elza’s mum stares into the middle distance, beyond my hooded face. Eventually she shifts her weight and says, “Elza told me about your father. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It’s fine, Mrs. Moss. We weren’t close. Thank you.”

“All right,” she says. “Well. Aren’t you getting wet out there?”

“I’ll be right in,” I tell her, holding up the plastic bag wrapped around my hand. “I need to pick something up.”

Ham doesn’t sleep well in strange places. He never has, ever since he was a puppy. I try three times to say good night and leave him in the laundry room, and each time, he starts ramming his head against the door before I can even get it closed. Eventually I grab a slice of bread and throw it into the laundry room, then shut the door behind Ham while he’s busy eating. With any luck he won’t start howling when he realizes he’s been tricked.

I go upstairs and brush my teeth with the guest toothbrush. When I open the door to the spare bedroom, I find Elza sitting on the freshly made bed. She’s lit by the glow of the reading lamp, casting a tall shadow over the bookshelves on the far wall. Looking at the shadow reminds me of the Fury, towering over us in this same room. Elza risked a lot for me on Sunday. I take a moment to appreciate the Elza-ness of Elza, whole and alive, appreciate the sharpness of her gaze, the crinkled line of her frown. She’s holding the Book of Eight in her lap, looking down at the star on the cover. I sit beside her.

“What’s it like outside?” she asks.

“Cold. Dark. I put Ham to bed. So your mum thinks I’m your boyfriend.”

“I don’t have people stay that often. It’s not surprising she’d assume that.”

We sit quiet for a moment. The books that came off the shelf when the Fury attacked us are still lying haphazard on the floor.

“I know how to get rid of the Host,” I say.

Elza breathes out hard, like it’s more than she was hoping for.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. The information’s in here now,” I say, tapping my skull. “I know what we need to do on Halloween.”

“I’m so glad,” Elza says. “That’s great. At least you got something out of all that time you lost. If you’d just been sitting there for nothing . . .”

“I got what we need. Bound spirits like my Host are difficult to get rid of. The Book says that dismissing a full Host is nearly unheard of, especially all in one go. But that’s what we’ll have to do. There’s a lunar ritual that could do it. It cleanses areas of all spirits residing within them. If I was the subject of the ritual, the rite would banish the Host. Thing is, the moon will be in the wrong phase for another week. We don’t have time. And it would take eight people to perform, and they all have to be virgins.”

“So that’s a no-go,” Elza says.

“Sumerian magicians would destroy spirits bound within the body of an animal familiar. The Book didn’t explain that any further. It didn’t say how you acquire a familiar, or how the process works or anything.”

“Why are you giving me the failed options first?” Elza says.

“I just want you to know . . . we don’t have another choice. This is it. What we’re doing is difficult and dangerous and . . . I mean, you know that. It’s ten past twelve now, October thirtieth. In less than twenty-four hours, it’ll be Halloween, and the Host is as powerful as it’ll ever be. We’ve only got one option if we want to banish them.”

“All right,” Elza says, “one option. I got that. So what is it?”

“It’s called the Rite of Tears. It’ll break my bond to the Host and all the ghosts shut away in Deadside so they can’t hurt me or anyone else ever again. It’ll work really well on Halloween.”

“So far, so good,” Elza says. “What does this Rite of Tears do, then?”

I close my eyes. I can see the incantations of the rite, seared into the darkness behind my eyelids, like the afterimages you get from staring at the sun. Magic circles spin in the darkness like a million demon planets. I can see the shape of the ritual, could draw it out with my eyes still closed.
One to close the circle, one to open the gate . . .

“We’re going to summon the Devil,” I tell her.

Elza puts the Book of Eight down on the floor. For a moment she doesn’t say anything. She gets up, and for a moment I think she’s going to walk out, but then she sits back down again.

“Are you sure?” she asks quietly.

“Am I sure what?”

“This is the only way?”

I think about what the Judge just told me.
The way you might end up, you follow what’s wrote down in there, is worse’n anything we could do.
But why should I trust him? Whatever the rite does, I know the Shepherd and the Fury want me dead, and they’ve made plans to ensure I don’t live through Halloween. They’ve got Mum. They’re not leaving me a choice.

“Yes,” I say, holding her gaze, “it’s the only way. I followed Dad’s notes, followed his path through the Book. This is where it led me.”

“Your dad’s path . . . I mean, Luke, your dad, he wasn’t exactly father of the decade, was he? How do we know his notes are even . . .” She trails off.

I don’t respond.

“Sorry,” Elza says. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You’re the one who was pushing for us to crack Dad’s code, read the Book. Now I have, and you don’t like what I found.”

“I just mean . . . Luke, the
Devil.
Evil incarnate.”

“He grants boons on certain days. Halloween is one of them,” I say, pressing on. “If we make an offering, the Devil will agree to remove the Host from my service and take it into Deadside with him. The Book says —”

“Wait. An offering? What kind of offering?”

“Blood,” I say. “The Devil will appear only if heartsblood is shed.”

“You mean a
person
. . . ?”

“No. The Book just says heartsblood. It must be live and fresh. But it doesn’t matter what it comes from. We can use an animal.”

“Luke —”

“What, you’re a vegetarian, Elza? How many chickens died to make the stupid ‘fingers’ you were cooking? It’d really be so bad if I killed one animal to save myself, save Mum, save you, save half the town maybe? Who knows what the Host’ll do if it escapes into Liveside without bonds? We have no choice. I wish we did. The Rite of Tears is our only option right now.”

“I’m not a vegetarian,” she says quietly. “You’re right about that. But I don’t practice black magic either. I’m a girl with second sight who’s been trying to do the right thing for someone she barely knows.”

“I don’t do black magic either. I didn’t ask for this,” I tell her, although deep down I know that’s not quite true. I didn’t want the Host, but I wanted Dad’s money, and I signed something I had no business signing. I let them in. And if I’m not a black magician already, I don’t know what else you could say about someone after they’ve made a sacrifice to Satan.

“All right,” she says. It’s so quiet I can barely hear her. She won’t look at me. “I’ll do it. If you think that’s best. But you should be careful. You’ve changed.”

“How?”

“You’ve gone . . . you’ve gone deathward. Even having a Host pulls you toward Deadside, I know that much. But you’ve gone further. You lost your body, you were possessed by a demon . . . and then within five minutes of getting your body back, you knew how to unlock the Book of Eight. You said you had a dream or something? You were close to Deadside. The dream might even have been a message from the other side. This has changed you.”

I shift on the bed. I run my fingers over the octagonal stone set into my sigil. I feel different, true, but I don’t see how anyone could’ve gone through what’s happened to me and feel exactly the same about himself.

“Maybe,” I say. “All I want to do is get rid of the Host. That’s all I’m thinking about. We make an offering to the Devil, and he removes them from my service. Mum’s safe, I’m safe, you and your family are safe.”

Another silence. I can hear something clattering in the wind outside, a loose door maybe, or part of the gutter. Elza is looking at the floor.

“Did it say what he was like?” she asks.

“Who? The Devil? No. It called him ‘Father of Darkness.’ Says he will grant any wish that is within his power. That’s all.”

“OK. I’ll talk to you in the morning,” she says. “I suppose we’ll have a lot to organize.”

“All right,” I say.

She gives me a quick hug and leaves the room. I turn the light out and lie on the bed, looking at the doorframe. It’s still lit by soft yellow light cast from Elza’s room down the hall. For a moment I’m struck with a fantasy so strong it startles me — not my usual dream of Holiday, but of Elza, standing in the doorway, making her way across the carpet with bare soft feet, slipping into the bed with me —

The light on the landing goes out. She’s closed her bedroom door. I lie on my side in the dark room, listening to the wind, imagining her doing the same. I lie still and look at the empty doorway.

T
hursday morning, October thirtieth. The light outside the blinds is smoky gray, seeping into the spare room. Shadows are barely darker than the dusty light. I hear the hiss of central heating warming up. I feel like I’m lying in a room that has been walled up for a hundred years.

It’s nearly the end, one way or the other. We’ll start the Rite of Tears at midnight tonight, and by the time it’s completed it’ll be the thirty-first, Halloween. If our plan doesn’t work, the Host will kill me and break free. The ghosts have still got my mum, but what they’re going to do with her I don’t know. The Judge said they’d hidden her, and who knows what that could mean. They might want to possess her, she might be their sacrifice, it could be anything. If tonight goes wrong, I’ll be dead, Mum’ll be dead, Elza will be dead. If it goes right, I’ll meet the Devil. And what that’ll be like I can’t imagine.

I run my thumb over my sigil. It’s become almost a comfort to me. I wonder how Dad lived all those years served by spirits and demons that would’ve given anything to kill him. Did he lie awake as well, running his fingers over the sigil, reminding himself that it was still there, that he was still powerful? Why did he raise a Host? Why did he leave us? Has he met the Devil as well? What kind of man was he?

I can hear movement downstairs, the shrill of a kettle boiling. I ease myself out of bed, wincing as my aching muscles are forced into use. I want to lie here and sleep for about a week, but we’ve got work to do. The Devil won’t summon himself.

Down in the kitchen, Elza is sitting at the table, spreading fat slices of toast with butter and Marmite. Ham, who stands tall enough that his head is at table height, is trying to lick the Marmite jar, forcing Elza to use one elbow to keep him at bay while she spreads.

“I’ll put him outside if you like,” I say.

“He’s all right,” she says. “I didn’t know deerhounds were into Marmite.”

“Ham’s crazy about it.”

I sit opposite her. Elza’s one of those people who coats every inch of their toast with whatever spread they’re using. She works away at each slice until the coverage is perfect. She glances up at me, the first time she’s looked at me since I came downstairs. Her dark hair is tied up into an unruly bun. I look at her freckles, her sharp nose, her small ears, normally hidden by the fall of her hair, and I’m thinking: When did this happen? When did I get so interested in sitting and watching Elza spread toast?

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

“Mum’s already gone to the hospital. Double shift, which is lucky. It’s actually nearly midday; I let you sleep in, seemed like you might need it. So when are we going to perform this ritual? And where?”

“We should start at midnight tonight. When we finish, it’ll be the first minutes of Halloween. As for where . . . the Book says the rite must be performed at a passing place, somewhere the spirit world lies close to ours.”

“Right,” Elza says. “So where’s that exactly?”

“Well, I know of one in Dunbarrow. The standing stones, the Devil’s Footsteps.”

“I thought you said the Host has been active there. That’s where you found your body when you were possessed, wasn’t it? You said you thought they were preparing something at the Footsteps.”

“If the Shepherd intends to perform a ritual of his own on Halloween, it’ll likely be tomorrow night, though I’m sure he’ll use the Footsteps as well. Passing places have power. Either way, the Host will come after us there, no question. It’s dangerous. But we don’t have —”

“We don’t have a choice,” Elza echoes wearily. “I’m not arguing. What do we need for the rite? Do we need herbs, supplies?”