by E. E. Holmes
Hannah turned her face to the hallway and watched the Lafayette twins primp each other. Her mouth fell open.
“Okay, they are officially the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen, and you know I’ve seen some horror-movie-worthy stuff,” she whispered.
Oblivious to their appalled audience, the Lafayette sisters picked up their pruning shears from entryway table and walked outside. We watched from the window as they descended the stairs into their garden.
Between choking on the beignet and the spectacle of the Lafayette sisters, I was saved the trouble of having to distract Hannah by continuing my charade. The truth was, I was terrified too. The only other time I’d ever attempted anything that required this much outright acting was when Karen and I broke Hannah out of New Beginnings; in order to gain entrance, I’d pretended to be a strung-out teen in desperate need of psychological help. That day, I’d had some significant emotional investments—utter panic included—to motivate me. But today, we’d be relying on nothing but our own acting skills; like Hannah, I too was scared that I’d blow the whole operation. Plus, if we couldn’t complete our first assignment as Trackers, would the Council keep us on? Then where would we be?
“It’s a good thing we don’t live in New Orleans,” Hannah said, breaking into my troubled thoughts.
“I know, they are so… disturbing,” I whispered, looking out the window where Lu-Ann and Loretta were crouching by a rose bush, pruning with a steady, synchronized rhythm. Despite their age and giant, rusty shears, they still managed to look like children playing a game of hide-and-seek.
“No, I mean, I would probably have a heart attack by the time I was thirty—I can’t stop eating these beignets.”
I tried to swallow and laugh at the same time; I choked again, expelling a small cloud of powdered sugar as I coughed. I was still sputtering as Finn walked into the room.
“Good morning,” he said stiffly.
“Good morning,” I replied. Hannah, her mouth packed with another beignet, could only wave.
At the sight of Finn, I felt the thumping of my heart speed up. He was dressed in a black suit, cut perfectly to accent his broad shoulders. Underneath he wore a gray shirt; a half-tied tie dangled around his neck. For once, he was clean-shaven, and he’d pulled his usually unkempt hair into a ponytail at the nape of his neck.
“I, uh… need some help,” Finn said awkwardly.
“With what?” I asked, mentally shaking myself. “Get a grip, Jess: Not happening,” I thought.
Finn scratched his cheek in seeming embarrassment, then said, “This tie. I almost never wear them. Normally I can get it after a few goes, but…” He gestured to the blacked-out mirror behind him. “You see my problem?”
Hannah looked at Finn’s tie, but shrugged and shook her head. “I’ve never tied one before. I’m no help, sorry!”
I stood up. “I’ll help you.” I walked up to Finn and, without looking up into his face, began fiddling with the tie.
After a moment of my fussing with his tie, he asked, “How, er, did you sleep?” A mundane enough question, but it filled the yawning chasm of silence in the tiny space between us.
“Badly. Really badly,” I answered. I pulled his tie knot out entirely. “Sorry, I have to redo this completely.”
“Why?”
“Well, you’ve got it pulled too far on this side, so—”
“No, I meant, why did you sleep poorly?” Finn asked.
“Oh.” I felt a flush starting to creep up my neck and color my face. “Just being in a strange place, I guess. And all of those porcelain dolls staring at me.”
Finn laughed quietly; I heard the gentle rumble of it in his chest. “I was up most of the night, too. I kept thinking I was going to roll over and find our hostesses hovering over me. Charming lot, those two.”
I laughed, too. “They are truly the stuff of nightmares.” I pulled the knot up to his throat. “There. Much better. Very professional.”
“Why do you know how to do this?” Finn asked. “You never…” he trailed off, but I knew what he was going to say.
“Never had a dad around to practice on?” He opened his mouth to apologize, but I waved him down. “Don’t. It’s fine. In high school, I worked at a restaurant that had ties as part of the uniform. I got really good at it. There was also a really ugly bowler hat.”
Finn chuckled. “You wore a bowler hat?”
“Yes. A red one. And suspenders, too. It was heinous. Let’s not talk about it, okay? I can’t believe I even just told you that.” I was fiddling with tie unnecessarily now, smoothing the collar down around it, breathing in Finn’s smell.
“No, it sounds brilliant! I might have to give Seamus a ring, see if we can’t get the official Caomhnóir uniform changed.” Living in America had been good for Finn in a way. He laughed a bit more easily now, and every now and then he’d attempt a joke. Even a lame one like this.
I laughed and looked up. He was looking down at me. There was so much in Finn’s gaze that I could’ve gotten hopelessly, wonderfully lost falling into. I had to remind myself that finding my way back out would’ve been the hard part.
Finn took a hasty step back so that my hands were left stretched, embarrassingly, out in front of me.
“Thank you,” he said stiffly. “Iggy ought to be here soon. I’ll bring these bags out, shall I?”
My good old defenses kicked in and my embarrassment hardened into something resembling resentment. “Yeah. Thanks. Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll have mirrors at Whispering Seraph.”
Finn dropped his eyes to the bags piled by the door. He picked them all up at once and staggered out the door. I flopped back down into my chair and rolled my eyes at Hannah.
“I guess they should’ve made formal wear part of the Caomhnóir training,” I said, pasting on a smirk.
“It’s okay, Jess,” Hannah replied gently. “You don’t have to do that. It’s just me.”
The smirk slipped from my face, leaving it naked, vulnerable. “Yeah. I know.”
“Car’s here!” Finn shouted from outside.
“Milo, it’s time to go.” Hannah’s voice hummed through our connection like the strum of a guitar.
“Coming, coming! I was about to give up anyway. Ugh, these floaters are trés boring—and I’m pretty sure they were even less interesting when they were alive.”
I chugged the remainder of my coffee and—never one to waste good breakfast pastry—wrapped several more beignets in a napkin before following Hannah out the door.
I stopped short as I spotted the sleek, black sedan. “Hey, where’s my sketchy van and donuts?” I asked to no one in particular.
Finn looked up from the trunk, where he was loading the suitcases. “What?”
“We’re going undercover. I’ve seen the movies. Aren’t we going to hang out in a van with blacked-out windows and eat donuts?”
“I have no bloody idea what you’re on about,” Finn replied. “Is this an American thing?”
“No, it’s an ‘I own a TV and don’t live under a rock’ thing. Never mind.”
“Just get in the car, will you? We’ve got a massive number of details to review before we get to Whispering Seraph,” Finn said over Iggy’s snorts of laughter. “Iggy, you need to slide over. I’m driving. It’s in the plan.”
“Looks like you’ve brought your own donuts, Jess,” Iggy chuckled, nodding at the beignet-filled napkin still in my hand. “Not much we can do about the van part, though.”
I smiled at him. Iggy was always game for a laugh, thank goodness. He was probably the most affable person I’d ever met, even if he did usually look like he belonged in a hard-core motorcycle gang. I handed him a beignet, took one for myself, and crumpled up the napkin before stuffing it into my purse.
“We need to get moving.” Finn scowled impatiently. “Shove over.”
Iggy stuck the beignet in his mouth and scooted—without objection, but with considerable difficulty—into the passenger seat. I’d barely c
losed the car door before Finn peeled away from the curb. Lu-Ann and Loretta waved good-bye, with their lacy white handkerchiefs fluttering in unison like damsels in distress. Creepy, creepy damsels.
“How was your flight, Iggy?” Hannah asked.
“Easy-breezy, short stack!” he said genially. “Slept like a baby from take-off to landing. I can sleep anywhere, you know that.”
“Yeah, including in the middle of an investigation when you’re supposed to be manning the tech,” I said, winking at him.
He threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Hey, if the ghost girls aren’t going to keep things interesting, I’m gonna get some shut-eye.”
“You really need to stop calling us that,” I said. “I’ll let it slide, though, since you look so snazzy.”
Iggy’s typical T-shirt and bandana had been replaced by a dark suit almost identical to Finn’s. Even more astonishing was that Iggy had trimmed his beard to a semi-respectable length.
Iggy grimaced, tugging at the tie around his neck. “Haven’t worn a suit since my pops died in ’94. Hated it then, hate it now.”
“You look very handsome Iggy,” Hannah said, smiling.
Iggy turned around and grinned at her, revealing the great gap between his front teeth. “Thanks, short stack, but I won’t be making a habit of it. I feel like a stiff.”
“No one would believe you work security detail if you’re wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt—especially one that’s nearly as old as Stones themselves,” Finn said, pulling his seatbelt across himself as he drove. “We all need to look the part. Speaking of which,” and he glanced at me in the rearview, “well done staying in bounds with the dress code. I wasn’t sure you were going to.”
I squirmed under his gaze and began smoothing the hemline of my Gucci dress, which cost more than I made in a month at my two jobs combined. “I know how important this is, I’m not going to screw it up over fashion,” I said defensively—all the more so because I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks. “And not a word out of you, please,” I said through my connection to Milo, who had chosen the dress and had gone into paroxysms of glee when I’d stepped out of the bathroom that morning wearing it.
“No, we’ll just find some other way to screw it up,” Hannah said slightly hysterically.
I saw Finn scowl in the mirror. “Is there a problem? Hannah, are you alright?”
“Hannah’s just a little nervous about convincing Campbell of our cover story,” I told him.
“Just write him a check with plenty of noughts at the end. That will be all the convincing he needs,” he replied.
I turned to Hannah, trying to smile reassuringly. “See? Isn’t that exactly what I said?”
Hannah made a movement that was half-shrug, half-nod. It was probably as good as we were going to get out of her with her nerves this highly strung.
“Jess,” buzzed Milo in my head, “I want to do some breathing exercises with Hannah, but I need your help… Iggy can’t really know I’m here. Just repeat what I say.” Then Milo addressed Hannah. “Sweetness, close those baby browns and follow Jess’ voice.”
Milo changed the connection so that only I could hear him. I repeated his calming words to Hannah and directed her breathing per Milo’s technique, with Iggy none the wiser.
We’d told Iggy a sort of half-truth about Milo, even though Finn had objected. But we figured that if both Iggy and Milo were going to be included in this plan, we’d better have a cover: We’d said that Annabelle had helped Hannah make contact with a spirit who had—because of Hannah’s Sensitivity—attached himself to her. Iggy couldn’t know anything about any Durupinen-level stuff, so we merely told him that Milo was willing to help Hannah however he could. To secure the lie, we’d also said that Annabelle had taught Hannah how to communicate with Milo whenever she needed to. Iggy, overwhelmingly thrilled at the idea of real spirit activity, had immediately launched into a million questions, but they all concerned EVPs and tech stuff; any questions about why Hannah suddenly had this spirit attached to her simply never occurred to him.
After a few minutes of guided breathing, Hannah had calmed down a good bit. The technique was apparently very effective on Iggy too—he’d fallen fast asleep in the passenger seat.
“Milo,” said Finn in a hushed tone, “come up here and see if he’s properly asleep.”
Milo uncurled himself from Hannah and floated forward, examining Iggy. “Yep, out cold!” he announced, just as Iggy began snoring softly.
“Right. Before we get there, I have one more accessory for both of you,” Finn said to us quietly. He tossed two small square boxes into the back seat. I pulled the top off of mine to reveal a simple silver bracelet made of two intertwined, ropelike strands. A single, highly polished, oval rose quartz dangled from it.
“It’s… really pretty,” I said, not really sure how to respond. I looked over and saw Hannah removing an identical bracelet from her box.
“You’re not to wear it because it’s pretty,” Finn said a bit impatiently. “You’re to wear it because it’s been imbued with a Casting. Catriona gave me one for each of you before she left.”
“Oh,” I said, turning the bracelet over in my hand. “What does it do?”
“It’s called Masking,” Finn explained. “It’s meant to camouflage your connection to the Gateway, so that the spirits at Whispering Seraph—if there are any—don’t sense it.”
“Really? I didn’t know there was a Casting that could do that,” I replied, keeping my voice low.
“Masking doesn’t last long, and it shouldn’t be used often,” Finn said. “From the outside, Masking works similarly to a Binding—although it doesn’t prevent a Gateway from being opened should the Masked Durupinen choose to perform a Crossing. But, as with a Binding, the spirits won’t be able to sense your Gateway.”
“Wow,” Hannah said, sliding the bracelet on. “I wish we could wear these all the time. It would be nice to control when Visitations happen.”
Your bracelets are for Durupinen, but spirits can use Maskings, too.” Finn said. “We’re not properly sure how they do it, but we do know that there’s a way spirits can Mask themselves. The little information we have points to it being the same Casting—or one quite close to it. I did a study on Masking the term before the two of you arrived at Fairhaven.”
“You were at Fairhaven before us?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.
“Of course he was,” Hannah answered for him. “Didn’t you know the Caomhnóir start a semester before us? It’s like their version of basic training.”
Finn, too focused on the mission at hand for a stroll down memory lane, continued on. “Unfortunately, the more you use a Masking, the less effective it becomes—until it stops working altogether. If this job at Whispering Seraph takes longer than three or four days, we won’t be able to count on the Masking bracelets to hide you any longer.”
“So, what do we do then?” I asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it—if indeed we do get to it. I, for one, intend to be long done with this assignment by the time that Casting wears off,” Finn said firmly, as though his affirmation ensured our swift and successful exit from Campbell’s plantation.
“Oh, well, if you intend it, then I guess we have nothing to worry about,” I grumbled, catching his glare in the rear view mirror and returning it. Even as I watched, his gaze softened so that we both had to look away; he refocused on the road and I turned to watch the rows of historic houses now flashing past.
Looking into each other’s eyes was more complicated than it used to be.
I settled against the back of the seat, grabbed Hannah’s hand without a word, and tried to relax. It was an hour ride from the city to Campbell’s Sanctuary at Whispering Seraph.
13
Jeremiah’s Angel
DRIVING THROUGH THE GATES OF JEREMIAH CAMPBELL’S PROPERTY was like stepping into the nostalgic daydream of a Tennessee Williams heroine: The place practically reeked of So
uthern aristocracy. After gaining clearance from the guard, we entered the property through a set of ornate wrought iron gates, and drove up a long driveway lined with enormous Southern sugar maple trees; great drooping tendrils of Spanish moss hung from their branches. The house itself loomed at the end of the driveway like a monarch awaiting visiting dignitaries. Whispering Seraph was a quintessential plantation house, propped up into a military posture by a row of Doric columns. Long, shuttered windows and a wide front porch that ran the length of the house’s imposing facade completed the effect. Behind the mansion, the lawns swept back, dotted with benches and fountains; a pond with a boathouse and a dock jutting out over it was visible in the distance. A smaller pond sat glimmering in front of the house. Whispering Seraph was breathtaking; I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Scarlett O’Hara storming out the front doors in a fit of passion.
At first glance, we appeared to have stepped back in time. As we got closer though, the carefully hidden modern touches began to appear: Security cameras followed our car with their electronic eyes; rows of golf carts were lined up like waiting steeds inside of an enormous open barn; a satellite dish was tucked discretely behind the massive brick chimney.
“Wow, I guess we now know how the other half lives,” I said.
“Oh, I was so meant to be part of the other half,” Milo whispered into our heads while staring out the window in awe.
“I bet they only serve organic vegan food here,” said Iggy with a horrified shudder.
“Actually, the brochure advertised traditional Southern cooking, with all the comfort foods included,” I said. “So we’ll eat well at least.”
“If he lets us in,” Hannah said. “We haven’t passed the screening yet, remember? I don’t think we’ll be getting any comfort food until then.”
“Well then, let’s nail this, because I’m out of beignets—which is, quite frankly, a travesty. I could go for some home-style Southern cooking,” I said, with much more bravado than I felt. Now that we were staring at Campbell’s plantation, the truth was that I was much more intimidated than I had prepared myself for. This place was a fortress: Infiltrating it would be no small task.
