by E. E. Holmes
“Real talk, sweetness,” Milo said sternly. “You keep me around to guide you, so here’s some guidance. The Necromancers aren’t going anywhere, okay? They never were. Even for the centuries the Durupinen insisted they were gone, they were right there in the shadows, growing like a cancer. Do you know why?”
“N-no,” Hannah stammered.
“Because the patriarchy cannot handle a sisterhood like the Durupinen. As long as women are dominating a realm they can neither control nor exploit, the men’s heads will continue to explode all over everything forever.”
I stared at Milo, mouth agape. To be honest, it was an angle I hadn’t considered much before. It was amazing how a battle between the worlds of the living and the dead could overshadow a classic case of gender politics, but there it was. A moment after feeling surprised, I wondered how I ever could have missed it.
Milo gave us a moment for it to sink in, and then he went on, “I know Celeste is on our shit list right now, but in this case, she’s right. This is the way to deal with them. Every hint, track it down. Even a whiff of a Necromancer, and we pounce. We never let them grow unchecked again. We can’t let fear or denial feed their fire. We snuff those fuckers out at every glimpse of a spark.”
Hannah sniffed, but she nodded. “You’re right, Milo.”
“At some point we are going to have to address the fact that you always sound surprised when you say that. But for today, I’m feeling generous, so I’m going to let it slide,” Milo said with a wink.
“I’m just… I’m letting my fear take over. That’s how they manipulated me in the first place—by stoking my fears.”
“That’s right,” Milo said soothingly. “So, now we make damn sure that they’re the ones who are running scared.”
I grinned. “I like that plan.”
Hannah managed a small smile as well. “Me, too.”
“Fabulous. We agree, then,” Milo said. “Agenda: Kick ass first, take names later, and always in the least sensible shoes we can possibly walk in.”
We were so busy laughing at his subsequent strut to the doors that we were completely surprised as Ambrose swung out from around the threshold, stepping into our path.
“Jesus!” I cried, putting a hand to my heart. “What is wrong with you? Can’t you just clear your throat and announce yourself like a civilized person?”
Ambrose cleared his throat in response. “I just wanted to find out when you wanted to head back to London.”
“And you felt the best way to get an answer was to scare the shit out of us?” I asked.
“Not until this afternoon,” Hannah said quickly, ever the peacemaker. “We need to eat and take a rest. We didn’t sleep much at all last night. Why? Do you need to get back sooner?”
Ambrose shrugged indifferently. “I just want to plan ahead.”
“Let’s plan for three o’clock,” Hannah said, turning to me with raised eyebrows that were clearly begging me not to make a scene in the entrance hall. “Does that sound okay to you, Jess?”
I rolled my eyes at her but decided I was too tired to start real trouble anyway, even for my own amusement. “Whatever.”
“See? Jess is on board,” Hannah told Ambrose. “We’ll see you at three o’clock in the front drive.”
Ambrose looked for a moment like he wanted to argue—maybe he thought he should spend the intervening time hulking outside our bedroom door. Whatever his hesitation, he let it go and instead stalked off toward the front entrance and out into the grounds. We watched him meet up with several other Caomhnóir before the massive doors swung shut, ending our view of what appeared to be a contest to see who could thrust his chest out the furthest.
“Jess.”
I turned to see Fiona standing on the staircase. My pulse quickened at once.
“Hey, Fiona,” I said, offhandedly.
“I need a word,” she said.
“Okay, sure,” I said. I nodded to Hannah whose eyes had gone wide, and made my way up to the first landing of the grand staircase, where Fiona was slouching, arms crossed.
“You go through my notes on your artwork?” she asked without preamble.
“Uh, yeah, I did,” I said. “All of them.”
She nodded curtly and turned to go.
“No wait!” I called. She turned back to me, her eyes sparking with a warning, which I ignored.
I looked quickly around the entrance hall, but Hannah, Milo, and Jeta were the only ones present. Hannah, catching my eye, quickly started pointing to a tapestry over the fireplace and drawing Jeta’s attention onto it.
“How did you know?” I asked Fiona. “How did you find out?”
Fiona pursed her lip into a tight knot, and for a moment I thought she might not answer me. Finally, after looking around herself to confirm that there was no chance of anyone hearing us, she muttered. “Went to visit my mother there. Saw him on duty.”
I was momentarily distracted. “Your mother? What was she doing there?”
“Serving a sentence for her attack on you,” Fiona said in an indifferent voice.
My mouth fell open. “They sent her to the príosún for that?”
Fiona snorted. “I’m not quite sure how this escaped your keen notice, but it was, in fact, attempted murder.”
I scowled. “I know that, but… well, you said it yourself. She’s not right. I mean, they can’t actually hold her responsible for her actions!”
Fiona scratched at her chin, which had a smudge of charcoal on it. “The Council didn’t agree with you. Not that they’ve actually convicted her, mind. They just sent her there for ‘observation,’ whatever that means.”
“Oh, my God,” I muttered, feeling utterly ashamed of myself. “I had no idea. I would’ve… I’m so sorry, Fiona.”
“Nothing for you to apologize for,” Fiona said with a snap in her voice, which I knew meant she was fighting against experiencing an actual feeling. “You didn’t ship her up there, did you?”
“No, but still… I would have said something—told them not to punish her like that,” I said.
Fiona shrugged. “Wouldn’t have made a difference, I reckon. Anyway, she’ll be out in a few weeks. They’ve all but determined that she’s not a threat to herself or others anymore, as long as my sister agrees to keep her well away from Fairhaven.”
I didn’t know what else to say. She wasn’t going to let me console her, and I wasn’t fool enough to try it. We both stood in silence for a few moments until the question that I was trying to avoid asking burst from me before I could stop it.
“Did… did you speak to him?”
“No.”
I felt a lump rise in my throat and the corners of my eyes began to sting, but I smiled and nodded at her. “Okay.”
Fiona’s face was twisted with an odd combination of pity for me and distaste for my display of emotions. She jiggled her leg agitatedly for a moment and then said, apologetically, “I couldn’t, all right? There were too many people around, and he was on duty. But he… he looks… fine.”
I nodded my head, grateful for the information, sparse though it was.
“We shouldn’t speak about it here. Or anywhere, for that matter. Don’t ask me again, you hear?” Fiona hissed.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“And the sketch? The note?” she asked, eyeing me shrewdly.
“Destroyed. I promise,” I told her. Even as I did so, I was visited by the agonizing thought that, if I’d just been careful enough to destroy the sketch I’d done of Finn at the Traveler camp, we wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became.
How stupid we’d been. How stupid and reckless and foolish.
“Good,” Fiona said with a grunt. “Let’s hear no more of it, then.”
There was a look in her eyes, a look that suggested that she might try to console me if only she knew how. But she didn’t. So, she turned and stomped away from me up the stairs and out of sight.
3
6
Setting the Stage
WE WERE ALL STILL SO EXHAUSTED when we got home that afternoon that I fell into bed almost as soon as we walked in the door, and didn’t wake up until the next morning. I should have felt fantastic after nearly fourteen hours of sleep, but I didn’t. It had been an unsettled, restless kind of night, punctuated with disturbing dreams about Flavia. Try as I may to reassure myself that the Trackers would discover what had happened to her, I couldn’t stop my imagination from hypothesizing on the worst possible scenarios. My sleep had been full of masked, cloaked figures, all with mammoth builds and bright, silvery eyes, leaping out from shadowy corners and snatching people one by one.
I also replayed my last visit to Flavia over and over again. We’d stopped by the hospital ward to see her before we left, and though I knew it was the right thing to do, I selfishly wished we hadn’t. It was so disturbing to see her lying there, eyes wide and staring, darting around in their sockets, focused on things she was never meant to see. Her face haunted me more than any faceless fear ever could.
“Wow, you look terrible!” Tia announced as I shuffled into the living room. Hannah and Milo were already there, grouped around the kitchen table.
“Good morning to you, too, Ti,” I grumbled.
“Sorry,” she said. “Can I make it up to you with a cup of coffee?”
“How about a vat of coffee?” I suggested, stifling a yawn.
“Hannah told me about what happened to your friend,” Tia said. “That’s so awful. How scary.”
As I struggled to respond, Milo’s voice drifted through the connection. “We told her about the attack, but not the possible Necromancer involvement. No reason to scare her to death.”
I threw him a grateful nod, then accepted an oversized mug from Tia. “Yeah, it was pretty frightening. She’ll be okay though. The staff at Fairhaven are great. They know what they’re doing.” I said the words as much to reassure myself as anyone else. I wish I felt as confident as I sounded.
I knocked back half the mug of coffee in several long swigs and then said, “So what are you up to today?”
“Actually, that depends on you,” Tia said, grinning shiftily. “Are you free?”
“Uh… yes?” I said uncertainly. “Unless your idea of plans means me quizzing you for hours on communicable diseases, in which case, gee, I’m suddenly all booked up.”
“No, no, I have no intention of torturing you. Besides, we’re done with communicable diseases. We’ve moved on to bacterial and fungal infections!” Tia said brightly.
“Joy.”
“No, I wanted to ask you… well, first let me show you this. I took a message for you, from Charlie’s boss Shriya, at the photography museum.”
“Oh!” I said. Flavia’s attack had driven everything else completely out of my mind, including the fact that I was supposed to be coordinating a paranormal investigation across two continents. “What did she say?”
“She said that she hoped it wasn’t too late, but she just got an invitation to a photographer’s estate sale and auction out of town in three weeks, and she would have to close the museum for at least three days. She thought maybe, if it worked for your team, it might be the perfect time to have the investigation. They can take their time setting up, stay multiple nights—they would have full access and it wouldn’t even interrupt business time. What do you think?”
“I think that would be perfect, if I can get the team organized that quickly!” I said.
Hannah sat up at the table. “Wait, what are the dates?” she asked.
“I’ve got them here,” Tia said, handing me a pink Post-it Note in the shape of a flower.
I glanced down at her inhumanly neat penmanship. “June 26–28th,” I read aloud. “Hey, that’s your birthday weekend!” I said to Tia.
“I know!” she said, “but if you’re thinking of a ghost-hunt-themed party for me, I’m not interested.”
“You spoil everything,” I said, pouting at her.
Hannah, meanwhile, had gotten up from the table and was looking at the calendar on the fridge. “Oh, good. That’s the weekend after the wedding.”
I groaned. “We aren’t still planning to go to that, are we?”
“Yes, we most certainly are,” Hannah said in a scolding tone that made me feel instantly five years old. “We RSVP’d, and it would be rude not to show up.”
“Yeah, well, most of those people already think I’m rude, so…”
Hannah held up an admonitory finger to silence me. “We already had this discussion.”
I was smart enough to recognize a brick wall before I started banging my head against it. I turned my back on Hannah and told Tia, “I’ll get the team on the phone and see if we can make those dates work. Did Shriya say anything else?”
Tia smirked. “Before she hung up, she invited me down to the museum today for a visit. Any chance you’d like to come with me?”
I eyed her suspiciously. “Any chance a certain bespectacled young man is on duty today?”
Tia grinned. “Maybe. He usually is on Sundays, and he was finally starting to feel better when I talked to him yesterday.”
I grinned back, happy to find that I had both a reason and the ability to smile. “Let’s do it. Hannah still hasn’t seen the place. Hannah? Field trip?”
“Sounds great!” Hannah said eagerly. “I’ve been dying to check the museum out since Jess told me about it! Milo, what do you say?”
“Huh?’ Milo looked up from a newspaper article on a fashion show. It seemed he’d only been half-listening to the conversation.
“Pickwick’s Photography Museum. Do you want to go with us this afternoon?” Hannah repeated.
Milo hesitated. “That place was kind of… disorienting. I’ll come, but I might have to check out for a bit.”
Hannah frowned, looking concerned. “You don’t have to come at all if—”
“No,” Milo said firmly. “I’m coming. But I might step out, that’s all.”
Hannah bit her lip but didn’t argue. She was as protective of Milo as Milo was of her.
“I’d love to be able to make some phone calls, to see if I can hammer out the details with the team first,” I told Tia. “Can we wait a couple of hours? It’s only,” I checked my phone, “seven o’clock in the morning over there.”
“Sure!” Tia said. “Charlie is working until five.”
Milo perked up. “Ooh, checking out the boy toy again, are we? I may not blink out after all.”
§
Three hours, several phone calls, and one long, hot shower later, I was almost ready to make the trip over to Pickwick’s. Iggy had assured me that the entire team would make the trip their top priority, Dan had talked my ear off for nearly twenty minutes about a new kind of light spectrum camera he couldn’t wait to test out, and Oscar had read me a long list of other locations he wanted to investigate while they were in London. I then left a message for Catriona, asking if the Tracker office could please handle the travel arrangements and accommodations.
After I hung up on Catriona’s voicemail, I stared down at my phone, taking a long, deep breath. I had one last phone call to make, and I absolutely did not want to make it. I stared down at the name in my contacts for a full minute before I summoned the courage to pull the trigger.
The voice on the other end had a spooky, mystical edge to it.
“Madame Rabinski’s Mystical Oddities welcomes your call. How can we help you reach out into the unknown?”
“Oh God,” I snorted. “Do you really answer the phone like that every time now, or am I just special?”
Annabelle dropped her air of mystery at once. “It’s a new thing we’re trying. The patrons get a kick out of it.”
“Your patrons must be idiots,” I said.
“Almost exclusively,” Annabelle said, and I heard a smile in her voice. “It’s good to hear from you, Jess. How’s London life?”
“Weirder than usual, actually,” I told her and, without further
hesitation, launched into the full story of Pickwick’s History of Photography.
“So now, Catriona’s opened a Tracker investigation into the place, and I’ve got the boys lined up for a trip across the pond to investigate,” I finished.
“Oh my God,” Annabelle laughed. “Iggy and Oscar are going to lose their minds.”
“Already gone, I’m fairly confident,” I told her. “We’ve set an investigation date for three weeks from now.”
“Wow,” Annabelle said with a deep breath. “That’s soon. I’ll have to see if I can get coverage for the shop while I—”
“Annabelle, no,” I said, cutting her off. “That’s what I’m calling to tell you. I don’t want you to come.”
Annabelle laughed. “What? Why not?”
“I should rephrase that,” I said. “Of course, I want you to come. It would be wonderful to see you and we can always use your help, but… well, something else has happened that has made life in London not just stranger, but scarier, too.”
Annabelle’s voice was wary now. “Okay, I’m listening. Let’s hear the worst.”
I told her the worst. I spared no awful detail. There were probably a dozen kinder ways to tell Annabelle what happened to Flavia, but I didn’t want to be kind. I wanted to scare her away from London for the foreseeable future. When I had finished, she was silent for so long that I wondered if I had dropped the call.
“Annabelle? Are you still there?” I asked.
She cleared her throat, but her voice was still hoarse. “Yes. Yes, I’m here.”
“So, you see, that’s why I don’t want you to come. Not this time. What if the Travelers somehow figured out that Flavia helped Irina escape? If the attack on Flavia was retribution, it’s not safe for you to be here. If they know Flavia is involved, they will surely know that you had a hand in it, too.”
Annabelle’s voice shook, though with fear or fury, I couldn’t be sure. “And if the Necromancers are responsible?”
