Blood Spirits

by Sherwood Smith

  She pointed below, at the intersection near the shop where she’d once worked.

  “I just noticed that,” I said. “How the light isn’t getting between that building with the brick decoration and the one with the frog gargoyles, though it gets between all the others.”

  “I see,” Tania said. “And there. Oh! Did that shadow . . .” She swallowed. I heard it. “Move?”

  She didn’t wait for me to answer, but called, low-voiced, “Theresa.”

  The teens were peering at the eastern mountains, impatient for any sign of the sun, and muttering dire predictions as the graying shapes of clouds silently blotted the northern stars. Both turned.

  Tania said, “I think you said you know someone who sees . . . shadows.”

  The way her voice dropped to a whisper on the last word carried such a freight of meaning that Theresa’s jaw dropped, and Miriam gasped, both hands pressed over her mouth.

  Theresa said doubtfully, “Horrible Haru says he does, but . . .”

  “Can we fetch him?” Tania asked.

  Theresa said, “Katrin thinks he’s making it up as one of his horrid jokes. Maybe it would be a good test, eh?”

  I peered over Tania’s shoulder at the girls. “Theresa, show us where Katrin lives, would you? It could be important.”

  That was all it took. The four of us scrambled back into Tania’s room, then Tania uttered a terse order, “Meet at the counter in one minute.”

  They left, Theresa muttering, “But the eclipse hasn’t even begun yet!”

  Since I was already dressed, I stopped by my room to grab that crystal necklace, then I ran downstairs, where I found Theresa lighting three glass-sided lanterns. The girls appeared, tugging and tucking and buttoning various pieces of clothing, Miriam squirming impatiently as she braided her thick red hair. Theresa let hers hang loose, a glossy, straight, black cloak as long as my own hair. Their round faces were solemn in the warm glow from the lanterns; as the flames inside leapt and flickered, our crystals answered with red and blue and yellow glints and winks and glitters.

  “I could only find these three,” Tania said in an apologetic voice. “The summer lanterns are locked in the storeroom, and my father has the key. Shall I rouse him?”

  I felt way out of my depth. “I think we need to hurry. How about I go without, but we stick together and avoid any really dark shadowy places, okay?”

  “I know every step of the short cut,” Theresa said. “If there is a new shadow, I will know it.” She fingered the crystal on a cord around her neck

  ‘Then let’s go.”

  We dashed out of the empty inn, and Theresa led the way between the houses across the street, the lanterns making three swinging, jiggling pools of light.

  In an effort to avoid looking at the lanterns, which would give me light blindness, I peered up and around. On a little balcony overhead, I glimpsed several school children with an adult who lectured about how the moon and the sun interacted to create eclipses. A kid said mournfully, “I see the clouds over the mountain. Will teacher see them, too?”

  We passed too quickly for me to hear the answer.

  “I hope Haru is telling the truth,” Miriam muttered as we waded across a street no wider than an alley. “He put a slug in Katrin’s shoe one day.”

  “Her middle brother Ladi sends him to do it. Ladi thinks the jokes up.” Theresa puffed as we trudged on, the heavy snowfall squeaking underfoot.

  We burst into a small cul-de-sac with a well at the center, an angel carved into the housing above it. Reflections from the gold-lit windows gleamed along its mossy, carved edges and its upturned face. Children’s voices came from somewhere nearby, though no one was in sight on the freshly swept flagstones. Then I spotted the wild swing of lanterns in what had to be a pocket park behind the two biggest houses, as a teenage boy said, “Put out that lamp. You’ll never see anything with that light.”

  The houses were two-story with a narrow attic floor under slanted roofs, cornices and gables with fanciful carvings worn by a century of weathering; Theresa raced to the third house in, banged twice on the door, then opened it.

  Inside was noise, the colorful clutter of a small home inhabited by a lot of people, and a smell of cabbage and pepper and coffee. We set our lanterns on a tiny table just inside the door, then went down a narrow hall lined with galoshes and boots, into a long, narrow kitchen hung with pots and dried herbs and garlic.

  A harried woman in a bathrobe was saying to a couple of lanky teenage boys, “Eat later. You must go outside, too.”

  The tallest boy protested, “We’ll only see a corner of it because of the mountain, and the clouds are sure to come.”

  “The clouds are building now. Nobody is going to see any eclipse,” a newcomer—another teenage boy—said as he stamped in, shedding snow.

  “So I said,” the tall boy said triumphantly as his mother exclaimed about the snow all over the kitchen.

  “I have to talk to Haru,” Theresa said over them. “Please?”

  “What’s he done now?” The mother gave us a distracted glance that turned into quick surprise when she saw me. Then she threw up her hands. “He’s probably in his room.”

  We streamed past the table, on which several steaming bowls of the spiced cornmeal mammaglia sat, one boy drowning his with tablespoons of jam.

  Theresa pounded up two flights of stairs, then paused and said over her shoulder to Miriam, “Get Katrin. She has to be over at the garden.”

  Miriam gave a firm nod, and pushed past us down the stairs as Theresa banged on a narrow door at the top of the stair. “Harulam! I have to talk to you!”

  “What’s the password?” came a boy’s voice. It sounded like he was about eleven.

  Tania pushed past, tried the latch, found it locked, and said, “My password is, I am doing the work of Sanctus Xanpia.”

  A second later there was a metallic cling, and the door opened to reveal a stout boy with bottle-thick glasses who scowled up at us. The scowl eased to doubt. “Tania Waleska?” Then the scowl was back, even more fierce. “Did my teacher send you? This won’t be a good eclipse. The mountain will hide most of it, and you watch, up will come the clouds.”

  Miriam whispered, “Katrin told us you can see the Shadow Ones. Is that true?”

  Haru opened his door wide. The room was no larger than a closet, stuffed with a bed, a trunk, a tiny desk, and shelves. Every surface seemed to be covered with cardboard castles, forest, and paper warriors representing at least six centuries, judging by the armory and weapons.

  “Yes,” the boy said, and then, after a good look at me, more uncertainly, “I see their shadows.”

  I addressed him. “We need you to come and tell us what you see.”

  “I will get my coat.”

  “Don’t you want to get dressed first?” Theresa asked, while I tried not to squirm with anxious impatience.

  The boy jerked up a shoulder. “Who cares?” He pointed in triumph to his pajama bottoms, which were sturdy wool not unlike sweatpants. “Been wearing these for four days. I’m trying to go without changing all the way until school next week.”

  Theresa rolled her eyes, and the four of us pounded down through the house—to fetch up against a tall, lantern-jawed man with thick glasses. “What’s this?” His gaze ranged the row, stopping at me.

  “They want me to see if the Shadow Ones are coming,” Haru stated, his voice shrill with triumph. “Some people believe me!”

  Whatever the dad thought about vampires wasn’t clear. The problem, I realized with a sinking sensation, was with me.

  “I know who you are,” Katrin’s dad said flatly, his gaze narrow and suspicious, his mouth crimped with contempt. “I know who you are. Isn’t there anyone else you can put into danger besides my son? If you ask me, someone should sweep away the whole crooked lot of you, driving each other off cliffs and burning down one another’s houses, like there isn’t real work to do.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said in En
glish, thinking furiously. Dad had always said that you can cut a lot of arguments short by addressing what appears to be the other’s assumptions, rather than loudly defending your own. Saying things like, I know in my heart that Marius Alexander Ysvorod is innocent of wrongdoing, only works in situations where there’s a beautiful soundtrack playing in the background.

  I said, “’The whole crooked lot of you’? ‘You’ as in me, or ‘you’ collectively? Because if your objection is to me as a person—”

  His mouth twisted. “Those of you with venerable, ancient names of honor who run the rest of us.” A volcanic layer of anger heated up every adjective and noun. He swept a hand out toward the darkness. “Is it not your privilege to lead the way?”

  Haru jounced and jiggled in an agony of impatience. “The inimasang ,” he whispered over and over.

  The girls also looked agonized, but the dad was planted squarely in the doorway. I gazed back at him, thinking fast. Mom had always been live and let live. Dad and Gran shared a slightly different view, that every man and woman was king or queen of her own demesne, whether that be a ticket kiosk, a cab, or a kingdom. A notion that had taken on especial poignancy when I’d discovered Gran’s past.

  So here I was in this guy’s house—his castle—and from his perspective, I wanted to sweep his son along on my quest. How could I acknowledge his demesne but hurry up?

  By addressing the assumptions under the most corrosive of those adjectives. “The way I define honor,” I said, “is choosing the right thing to do for the good of all. Even if no one’s looking. Even if it hurts. Anybody can do that, whatever family they are born to.” Haru rolled his eyes, but his dad was at least listening. I said quickly, “I can’t do anything about the rumors, and I can’t prove that I didn’t burn down the baron’s house, but I have two pieces of evidence that the Statthalter is not complicit in the death of his wife, and I am only waiting for irrefutable proof before taking it to the investigative committee.”

  The dad gave a nod at the words Irrefutable proof. “Ah, then. What do you want my son for?” Now he was a wary parent.

  Haru hopped up and down. “I told you, Papa. I told you. They believe me about the—”

  Haru’s dad snapped his fingers, and the boy clammed up.

  “We saw suspicious shadows from the Waleskas’ roof. I want to see if Haru can corroborate them. Or not. Nothing more.”

  “Then I shall go with you,” he said in challenge.

  “Excellent. But we need to leave right now.”

  “Get your charm,” Miriam said.

  “Tchah.” The father waved a dismissive hand. “Anyone who trusts mumbled words over a piece of glass is a fool. I’ll get my own protection.” The dad lunged through another door in the kitchen and came back ten seconds later with a coat, an old rifle with a rusty bayonet attached, and a cricket bat. He held them both out to me. After hesitation, I took the rifle, figuring I would be better with a blade, any blade—and judging from the size of his shoulders, he could make a cricket bat into a lethal weapon.

  Katrin and Miriam dashed up. Katrin was wearing a necklace, I noticed.

  “Where?” the father asked me.

  I turned to Tania. “We’re not very far from the beekeeper’s, right? Could we go there? We could see over the city.”

  No use in describing the next stressful few minutes of toiling and shoving our way up the steep mountainside, lanterns jiggling and jostling over our wrists. I tried not to look at those lanterns, but I kept getting distracted by the zings and glitters of cobalt blue, emerald green, sun-bright yellow, plus orange and purple and ruby as the lanterns and the crystals shot sparkles back and forth.

  Twice we had to make a chain of hands, but we did it, and at last dashed through the holly arch onto the beekeepers’ terrace. Their cottage was lit. Through the uncurtained windows we could see Margit busy in the tiny kitchen.

  “Don’t look at the lights,” I warned belatedly.

  The lights. I remembered Tania’s voice from the day she’d first tested me with the prism. Light from the Nasdrafus . . .

  Haru did a violent about-face, his small body stiff. I had an idea he was torn between the glory of responsibility and a deadly fear of failing, as he took his dad’s hand.

  The girls hid the lanterns behind them and backed up to keep their light from worrying at the edges of Haru’s vision.

  Above the eastern mountains, the thickening clouds faintly glowed with the promise of morning. I whispered to Tania, “Even though the clouds have hidden the eclipse, will it still have whatever effect it’s supposed to?”

  “I do not know,” she whispered back. “It is one of the things we have yet to learn about.”

  As we spoke, Haru moved to the edge of the garden terrace and peered intently at the city below. Then he dropped his dad’s hand, snatched off his glasses and wiped them on his pajama shirt under his coat. He replaced them and leaned forward, as if those extra few inches would afford a clearer vista.

  I shifted my attention to the city barely emerging from darkness into three dimensions, studded by golden or silvery lights where there was electricity.

  “They’re walking,” Haru said at last, unhappily. “The man-shaped shadows are walking.”

  “Are you sure you’re not seeing what you want to see, son?” His dad’s voice was gentle.

  “There’s too many of them.” Haru’s voice was high with tension. “They’re moving.”

  A small sigh behind us, and Katrin whispered in a disgruntled voice to Theresa, “Why isn’t it me? I’d know what to do.”

  I stepped up on Haru’s other side and strained to see what he was seeing. Was that shadow on the street above the inn flickering? Maybe it was my eyes. “Can you tell where they’re going?”

  Haru wiped his glasses again, snorting through his nose as he jerked his head back and forth. His curly dark hair flopped over his ears like his dad’s.

  “There.” A short, sturdy finger pointed . . . at Sobieski Square.

  Theresa’s practical voice echoed from earlier, All the important people will be there.

  The Council building, right on Sobieski Square. Where all the important government leaders would be soon be meeting.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “I’VE GOT TO WARN THEM,” I said, and tossed the rifle to Tania.

  “Haru, you are awesome.”

  “Mam’zelle?” Theresa gasped, as Miriam cried, “You can’t go alone in the dark!”

  Two things at once. Nasdrafus, vampires . . . I smacked my hand over my eyes, and tried to clear my thoughts, but all I saw were the glittering lights—

  Oh. “Tania,” I exclaimed. “Our experiment. Let’s try something right now. Hold your charms next to the lanterns.”

  Tania’s eyes widened. She thrust Haru’s lantern into her sister’s free hand, and brought hers forward. Her charms were on a bracelet, so she held out the lantern with her wrist next to it, the biggest crystal dangling. It seemed to fill with light, twinkling and gleaming. Rays shot out, not behaving like the light we were used to, that is, the rays did not create a circle of light on nearby surfaces, or cast shadows, but they did form a nimbus around the charm.

  “Vrajhus,” Tania and I said together, as Miriam began to squee, “I see it! I see it!”

  Katrin sighed. “It just looks like a crystal with a bit of reflection from the lantern flame. Why can’t I see what you see? It’s not fair.” It was clear that her dad didn’t see it either, but he was listening, his expression wary and puzzled.

  I said to Katrin, “Maybe it functions like color blindness, I don’t know. But here’s what I think is going on. The sunlight caught in these crystals is interacting somehow with the candles in the lanterns, and I believe this keeps vampires at bay. We know that sunlight is poison to them. Spread the word, all right? Get everybody to put their charms and lights together, in every single shadowy place.” Hearing an echo of Danilov’s drawl as we waltzed, I added, “And take swords and hawthorn or yew stak
es as protection. I’ve got to get to that Council building!”

  “You should take a lantern,” Tania called to me as I ducked through the holly arch.

  I paused, peering over the steep street, down at the city below. It wasn’t that far to the Council building, and I saw window lights glowing. I could zigzag between those. Fear prickled at the back of my neck, but stronger was my reluctance to lumber along with a clumsy lantern jiggling and banging against me—and probably going out.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, holding up my crystal necklace. “I’m faster without, and I will feel better if all of you keep those lanterns.”

  I ducked the rest of the way through before anyone could protest, and began sludging my way down the street as fast as I could, my legs sinking to the thigh at every step.

  The streets at the north end of town were terraced into the mountain slope. Scanning ahead for shadows I couldn’t see into, I plunged and skidded and a couple of times rolled downward, my crystal sparkling reassuringly. Much tougher to deal with was lumbering through snow. It seemed forever before I finally reached a cleared street. I oriented myself fast, discovering that I was somewhat north of Nat’s neighborhood.

  And then I heard something pacing me.

  I ran forward a few steps and paused. Yes, those were definitely slushy foot falls, and I definitely had that crawling sensation I get when I’m being watched.

  My charm sent rainbow patterns of glittering light in an aura around me. But every time I looked back, all I saw was Stygian darkness.

  When I reached the open street, the footsteps were on both sides, and getting closer. That’s when I heard the hisses and faint skreeling cries, like distant bats. Sinister bats.

  I whirled—and there, etched against the plaster wall of a building, was a flickering shadow in vaguely human shape.

  Ever stuck your finger in an electrical socket? That’s what the zap through my nerves felt like.

  That thing is a vampire.

  I halted, staring. The shadow shifted and flickered, making it difficult to see. It was like trying to make out shapes at the bottom of a pool after everyone’s stirred up the water, only in photographic image reverse—where you’d see light gleaming, you saw darkness, the facets making the shadow ripple and shift.