by Leo Hunt
I come and stand next to Ash at the foot of the bed. The girl lying there, motionless, is the one-armed girl I saw in the field behind my house. The same girl I saw in Ash’s kitchen. Lying here, in human form, I see both her arms are intact. So why is her ghost missing an arm? The girl’s hair, long and tangled, is bunched up around her face and neck. She’s dressed in a mint-green hospital gown. Her pale feet, sticking out from beneath her bedsheets, are bare. Her face, although difficult to see under the breathing and feeding tubes, is Ash’s face.
“You’re —”
“Twins,” Ash says. “Identical. I’m about an hour older. Her name is Ilana Ahlgren.”
Ash brings two chairs through, and we sit at the foot of the bed. It’s hard to know where to look. Watching Ilana feels like an intrusion somehow. Ash barely takes her eyes off the monitors.
“I hated to do this,” Ash says. “We have private home care in America. Very best. Bringing her over here was the hardest part. But I had to.”
“Why?”
“Her spirit wanders at night. You already saw her. There’s no way of stopping it. I’ve tried everything. She’s very . . . trusting. She needs the Widow with her, to make sure nothing tries to hurt her. But I needed the Widow here as well, so there really wasn’t another way. I couldn’t leave Ilana in California.”
So the Widow guards Ilana and Ash. I had worked that much out for myself.
“Why did she come to my house?” I ask.
“I don’t know. She has strange ideas. Her mind isn’t right.”
“So you don’t have a clue why she might be interested in me?”
“We share a lot of stuff. . . . It’s hard to explain. Sometimes I have dreams where I am her. Sometimes she knows things I know without me telling her. I think she knew I wanted to ask you for help. That’s why she went to find you.”
“Well, I suppose it worked,” I say. “In a way, she brought me here.”
“I guess so.”
“So what happened to her?” I ask. “Why’s she in a coma? Why does she climb out of her body at night and wander around?”
“Your father happened to her.”
I look at Ilana’s face, eyes closed, thin plastic tubes snaking into her nose and mouth. I look at the displays on the machines, pulsing red numbers and oscillating bars, measuring her life out in beats on a screen.
“Horatio didn’t even know us,” Ash continues. “I doubt he gave me or Ilana a second thought. He sent his demon, the Fury. He was thousands of miles away, back home safe in England with you and your mother.”
“I’m sorry, Ash. I never knew.”
“So you keep saying,” Ash says. She leans forward, looking down at the floor, one hand gripping the rail of Ilana’s bed. “That’s what makes this worse for me. You grew up without knowing about any of this. You didn’t have to run away from home in the middle of the night, six years old, everything on fire behind you. You haven’t spent your life looking after Ilana”— she smacks her hand against the bed for emphasis —“moving her from country to country under a fake name. Wondering if Horatio would ever send his Host back to finish us off. I never even cried for the first few years. I couldn’t.”
“It’s not fair,” I say.
“No, it wasn’t. We’d never hurt anyone. I only remember pieces of that night. The Widow and the Errant woke us up, and there was smoke everywhere. . . . The house was burning, and I didn’t know where to go. They wouldn’t tell me what was happening. It came up behind us when we were in the courtyard. Nearly winter, snow on the ground. It looked like the smoke at first, rushing at us, and then I saw it had a shape, like a dog . . . a big hungry dog.”
“I’ve seen it as well,” I remind her. “It nearly killed me, too.” Of all my father’s servants, the Fury scared me the most. There was some stiff competition, but at least the Shepherd was human once.
“I think it was after our sigils,” Ash continues. “Horatio ordered it to break the Ahlgren Host. Ilana was just behind me. It could’ve been the other way around. She could be sitting here in this chair, looking at me. It lashed out once with the whip, and it caught her in the arm, the hand with her sigil. Demons’ whips, they can’t hurt your body, but your spirit . . . they go right through it. She lost that part of her spirit, and your dad’s demon ate it right up.”
“So that’s why her ghost is missing the arm?”
“The Errant flung himself straight at Horatio’s demon. It ate him, too, of course, but he saved us. I barely remember anything after that . . . just Ilana screaming and the Widow carrying us through the snow. Ilana went the next day. Fell asleep. She hasn’t woken up properly since.”
Ash falls silent. Her eyes are closed, and she’s gripping the end of the bed. I have this urge to hold her, but I can’t bring myself to do it. She clenches her jaw. The muscles in her neck tense. After a long silence, Ash shakes her head and opens her eyes again.
“Sorry,” she says.
“Do you need time alone?”
“It’s hard to remember anything about that night,” she says. “It’s hard for me.”
“My dad was a real bastard. I’m glad he’s gone.”
“Me too. But it’s not enough.”
I want to ask Ash what would be enough, what exactly she wants from me, what she’s going to do with the Book of Eight, but she sighs and stands up. I realize Ilana is standing to the right of the bed. Or rather, her body is still in bed. Her spirit stands beside it, one-armed, smiling at me and Ash. She says something in her strange language.
Ash answers in the same singsong voice.
“What language is that?” I ask.
“We had our own way of talking,” Ash says. “Twin-speak. We grew up together. . . . Magnus kept us hidden away. We only had each other to learn from, a lot of the time. We spoke English and Swedish, too, and we got some Latin from our Host, but this was our special way to talk. After the demon cut away a part of her spirit, she started to lose her mind as well. Our twin language is the only one she remembers now.”
Ilana chirps to Ash again.
Ash responds, then turns to me. “She’s hungry.”
“What do you mean, hungry? I didn’t know spirits got hungry.”
“It’s best if you see this. So you understand.”
Ash calls out to Ilana in twin-speak, and Ilana smiles broadly. She glides across the bedroom, straight through her own body and the hospital bed, and stops right in front of Ash. They link their hands, each a warped reflection of the other, white-haired girl and one-armed ghost. Ilana moves even closer to Ash, brings her lips to her sister’s. Ash breathes something out, like solid light, a shimmering white mist, and Ilana drinks it in.
It goes on for a while. I’m standing by my chair, not sure how to react, poised to move quickly away from them if it seems necessary. Ilana is pulling something out of Ash, the same kind of light I’ve seen linking my body and soul when I spirit-walk.
Eventually Ash pulls back, breaking the connection. Ilana chirps and tries to lean back in, but Ash stops her, snapping at her twin. Ilana protests, then turns and sees me. With a wide smile, the ghost glides across the room, holding out her single hand. Ash yells something in twin-speak. Ilana doesn’t listen. I’m pressed up against the wall, with the ghost’s smiling white face right in front of me. Her hand strokes my head, sending waves of cold through my face and neck. I can’t move. I can’t turn away from her.
“Please . . .” I say, barely managing a whisper.
Ilana’s blue eyes shine with happiness. She dips her mouth to mine.
There’s a flash of searing light, and the ghost shrieks and flies up through the ceiling. Ash is in front of me, left hand outstretched, breathing hard.
“Sorry,” she says. “Sorry. I’ve told her again and again . . . it’s only for her and me. Nobody else.”
“What was happening?”
“You saw her wound,” Ash says. She sits back down in her chair, looking at her sister’s body, the machines thr
eaded into it and around it. “The demon’s whip took her left arm, but only in spirit. That wound can’t be healed. She’s losing herself, day by day. Her essence is leaking out. It’s like a loose thread in a sweater. She’s unraveling — she has been for ten years. The only way I can keep her alive at all, keep her from disintegrating completely, is by giving her my own life force. I used to share it once a year, on our birthday. That kept her going. Then it was once every six months. Then every three months, then every full moon. Now it’s once a week. This past week, it’s been more than that. She asks me every night. It’s killing me, Luke.”
“Then don’t do it,” I say.
Ash doesn’t respond.
“You shouldn’t have to kill yourself to let her live. Not like this. If she properly understood what she was costing you, she wouldn’t do it. You’ve done more than anyone could ask from you.”
“She’s not just my sister,” Ash says softly. “She’s me. She’s my other half. We came into the world together. We’re one person. What would you give for someone you love? I can’t live without her. I love her. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
I think of Mum, Elza, even Ham. The people I love. I can’t say how far I’d go to save them, keep them alive. I hope I’ll never have to find out.
“I understand,” I say.
I look at Ash, slumped in her chair, and Ilana, her body asleep in the bed. Two broken things, clinging together as best they can. My father did this to them. He tore their lives apart and probably never thought about them again. He never even mentioned them to me. I wonder if he even knew that Ashana and Ilana Ahlgren existed when he ordered the attack. Does that make it better or worse, if he didn’t know? Ilana’s heart rate rises briefly, and then returns to normal. I look down at my muddy shoes, then back at the girls. They haven’t moved. Ash doesn’t look frightening anymore, just lost and scared.
“My hair started growing in white a year ago,” Ash says. “My eyes are gray and they’re supposed to be blue. I love my sister, but she’s killing me.”
“So what do you want me to do about that?” I ask.
“I need the Book of Eight. There’s a way to heal Ilana, make her whole again. I know it exists. But only the Book itself will give me the knowledge I need to perform the rite.”
I consider this.
“I’d need an afternoon with it,” Ash says. “That’s all. I have reading equipment, page sequences, everything else. I just need to know how I can save her. I want you to want to help us. I’m asking you. Begging you.”
“I do want to help you,” I say.
Ash looks at me.
“I know you’re a good person,” she says. “I can tell.”
“You’d only need to read it once,” I say.
“There’s no other way. That’s all I’m asking. I know the Book of Eight is dangerous. That’s why I’m not asking you to read it. I’ll take the risk.”
I close my eyes. This has been one of the longest, strangest days of my life. It must be dawn by now, Wednesday morning. It’s the first of April. I’ve been in this house all night. In a few hours it’ll be time for school. I need to get home before Mum knows I’ve been gone.
If I’ve got a chance to fix even one thing my dad broke, wouldn’t that make everything that’s happened to me worth it? If there’s a chance the Book of Eight could do someone some good, I’d like to take it.
“I’ll help you,” I say.
Ash engulfs me in a hug. Her white hair is surprisingly soft against my neck and chin. She breathes into my chest.
“Thank you,” Ash says. “Thank you so much.”
It’s dawn when we leave Ash’s strange, empty house. The sky is a watercolor wash of pink and yellow, the sparse clouds tinged with peach. The air has a bite to it, although the sweater Ash gave me is thick and warm. I stash my hands deep in my pockets. The menace that clung to the building site at night has faded with the darkness. Ash leads me to her car, and we climb in. The inside smells stale and old, and the passenger seat sags when I put my weight on it. She must’ve gotten this third- or fourth-hand. She could afford something much better, I’m sure, but the thing about this car is nobody would look twice at it.
Ash starts the ignition and backs out of the garage. I was right to think she’s done this a lot. She could easily pass her driving test if she were seventeen. I’ve managed to convince Mum to let me back the car out of our driveway a few times, no more than that.
“How are you allowed to drive?” I ask as we pass by the half-built houses.
“I’ve got a U.K. license,” Ash says.
“But you’re not old enough.”
“My license says different.”
“So it’s fake.”
“There are still people out there who respect my family name,” Ash says quietly, and I decide to leave it at that. We pull out onto a main road, no real traffic at this time of day. I’m wondering how stealthy my body was about leaving Wormwood Drive. If Mum realizes I’ve been gone, I’ll be in deep trouble. Did it lock the door behind it? Maybe Ham got out. These are all minor concerns compared to what could’ve happened to me, but they’re concerns nonetheless. Ash slows the car as a black cat darts out of the hedgerow and across the road, out on some early-morning mission.
“How did you get my body to come to the house?” I ask her after a while.
“Oh,” Ash says, “that’s simple. As long as you can find the link, it’s easy to summon an earthly vessel. I’ve never done it in real life before, but I knew the theory.”
“What would happen if someone did that to Ilana?”
We’re driving through Kirk’s estate now. We just went past his house. We used to be best friends, and we haven’t said a word to each other in months. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked Ash about her sister. She’s looking at the road ahead, hands clamped on the wheel.
“Ilana doesn’t have a proper link to her body, so it wouldn’t work. That’s her main problem: the bond between her animus and soma is almost totally broken.”
“But I thought when it broke —”
“You die, yes. What happened to us doesn’t seem to have ever happened before, or at least I can’t find records of it. Ilana should’ve died years ago. My life force is keeping her here. The Ahlgren Host was broken, destroyed. Magnus was the Host’s necromancer and he died, but his sigil and our family’s Book of Eight were destroyed as well. Neither of us can inherit. The Host is gone. But he’d already made us minor masters of his Host, and that binding wasn’t fully broken, so . . . I don’t know. We’re like a wheel without a hub. It’s unstable.”
“What is a minor master?”
“I suppose it’s like a sublet. You give someone limited authority over your Host. Most necromancers wouldn’t even dream of it, but it’s perfectly possible. It’s old magic, blood magic. Usually works best if you extend it to family members.”
“So you’re both bound to the Widow? She takes your orders.”
“Yes. But I can’t summon or bind new spirits. I wouldn’t try it even if I had the Book of Eight. Ilana’s situation is so precarious . . . even trying to summon a new member of our Host might tip her over the edge into death. She was a minor master, like me, but her sigil was destroyed. . . . It’s complex.”
Despite never having read the Book, Ash seems to understand far more of the theory behind necromancy than me.
“I thought Hosts were eight ghosts,” I say.
“Yes,” she says. “Hosts are made from nine spirits. Eight dead servants, one living master. That’s always been the way. The master can assign others as minor masters, but their authority is limited in some ways. And most necromancers don’t do it at all, because it can unbalance the Host if you have too many masters.”
Is that why Dad never gave me a minor sigil? I suppose I could always track him down and ask him.
“That does seem complicated,” I say.
“I can give you some reading if you like. There’s this great treatise from fifteenth-centur
y Germany that outlines most of the theory —”
“I think I’m all right.”
We drive through the estate. We pass a milk van, stopped outside one of the identical redbrick houses, engine still running, pumping out a gray haze of exhaust. The sun is peeking over the horizon. Birds crowd the telephone lines. We drive past Dunbarrow High, school gates still padlocked. There’s a single jogger making her way uphill, struggling along in black-and-pink sneakers, panting out white billows of breath as she runs in the cold. I look at her face as we pass her, but she’s fixated on some point on the horizon.
“And Mark’s in a hotel,” I say.
“Luke,” Ash says, “we’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t trust me. Why would I hurt him? Where would that get me? He’s in a hotel in Brackford. He’s being paid.”
“He agreed to this?”
“He thinks he’s consumer-testing the place.”
“And why does he think that? How do you . . . I mean, why did everyone think you’re an exchange student? Are you, like, a hypnotist? How does that work?”
“By magic,” Ash says, which I suppose is a pretty obvious answer. “And I’ll give you Mark’s room number and check-in date if you don’t believe me. You can go talk to him if you like. But you’re going to have to start trusting me sometime.”
We drive through town and climb the long hill toward Wormwood Drive in silence. Ash knows which house is mine without being told, which is unsettling but not surprising. We come to a halt just shy of the entrance to our driveway. The street is deserted. I unclip my seat belt.
“Well, it’s been an interesting night,” I say.
“Likewise,” Ash replies.
“I suppose I’ll see you at school.”
“I guess so.”
She taps her hands on the steering wheel, biting her lip, then cuts the engine.
“Can I see it now?” she asks.
“See what?”
“The Book of Eight.”
Her gray eyes search mine.
“No.” I shake my head. “Absolutely not. It’s, like, five thirty in the morning. How’s it going to look when Mum wakes up and finds you in the house?”
