Portraits of the Forsaken

by E. E. Holmes

  Alice, in an attempt to detract from the bleakness of it all, had forced cheerfulness into every depressing corner of that flat. Photos of babies dressed up like flowers hung on the walls, and brightly colored knitted quilts and shams covered every available surface. The fridge door was hidden behind a mass of inspirational sayings, cut out of magazines and scribbled on Post-it Notes, each one designed to draw the eye away from everything in the place that was falling apart.

  I had lived in too many shitty apartments with my mom to feel much shock over Savvy’s living conditions. I knew what it was like to kill cockroaches and hear mice scurrying around in my walls, or to live off microwaved food because we didn’t have a working stove. But for all of the challenges that Savvy’s family faced, that flat was always full of the two most important things: good food, and loud, boisterous laughter.

  Alice peeked her head out of the bedroom when she heard us come in. She was wearing a voluminous nightgown covered in garish tropical flowers and a hairnet over foam curlers. “Oh, hello, loves,” she said, as though it did not surprise her in the least to see us all standing in her sitting room dressed to the nines.

  “Hey, Alice,” we all said, including Milo.

  Alice brightened at the sight of him. “Hey there, lamb! My Melding is still working from yesterday, look at that!” she said, waving her wrist around. I could just make out the faded mark of the runes we’d drawn there so that she and Milo could work together on his latest design.

  “Hey, sweetness,” Milo said, blowing her a kiss. “You are rocking that South Sea tropical look, let me tell you.”

  Alice grinned. “Oh, stop it,” she said, though it couldn’t have been clearer that she was pleased. “Well, you all look right dapper, don’t you? You lot all right? You want me to knock you up something real quick?”

  “Nah, we got leftovers, Mum,” Savvy said. “Did Phoebe get in all right?”

  Phoebe was Savvy’s country bumpkin cousin and the other half of her Gateway. Savvy couldn’t stand her, but was forced to see her out of the necessity of performing Crossings together, as well as other clan business. They were the first in their family to become Durupinen, and so they had none of the traditions but all the same responsibilities. They also lived several hours apart, but as Savvy point-blank refused to travel out into what she called “that godforsaken sheep-infested no-man’s land,” Phoebe traveled into the city whenever they had to briefly tolerate each other’s company.

  Alice frowned. “Phoebe? You expecting her again, love?”

  Savvy rolled her eyes. “It’s nearly the full moon, mum. She’s coming in for the Crossing, remember?”

  “Oh, that’s right. Sorry, love, I keep forgetting,” Alice said, slapping herself enthusiastically in the forehead. “All this moon cycle nonsense. Why don’t you all just use calendars like normal folks?”

  “I dunno, do I? It ain’t my decision, that’s for bloody sure. She was supposed to come in on the five o’clock train from Paddington. You sure she didn’t come by for dinner?” Savvy asked.

  “I think I’d notice if there were an extra person sitting at the table,” Alice scoffed.

  “Wouldn’t count on it,” Savvy muttered under her breath, then added, so that Alice could hear her, “Get yourself back to bed, we’re all right.”

  “All right, all right,” Alice said, turning back to her room. “You lot help yourselves to whatever you like and mind you don’t wake your sisters, Sav.”

  She shut the door with a little wave. Savvy rolled her eyes.

  “What you going on about that bloody stupid nightgown for?” she asked Milo grumpily as she pulled open the fridge door. “I’ve been trying to get her to bin it for ages.”

  Milo beamed. “Alice is my girl. I like to keep my favorite seamstress happy.”

  I flopped onto the couch and gently eased the shoes off my swollen feet. A blister was starting on my heel. Savvy tossed a few sodas across to us and then tiptoed over to her bedroom door, making sure her sisters were asleep and pulling it fully closed before sitting down beside me.

  “Right,” she said, uncharacteristically serious. “What’s this all about, then? Because I know you ain’t hungry.”

  She, Hannah, and Milo were all looking at me in tense, expectant silence.

  “I didn’t want there to be any chance that Ambrose would hear what I’m about to tell you,” I said. “Bertie’s not back, is he?”

  “Nah, he was still on duty at the wedding when we left,” Savvy said.

  “What’s going on, Jess?” Hannah prompted.

  I inhaled deeply. “I saw Finn.”

  “What!?” all three of their voices cried out together.

  “How? When?” Hannah sputtered.

  “At the wedding. He was there on the grounds, providing extra security,” I said.

  “When were you on the—” Milo gasped.

  “I wasn’t,” I said. “One of the Caomhnóir passed me an anonymous note with my food, telling me to go to the powder room in the lobby. When I got there, Olivia was waiting for me.”

  “Olivia? Olivia?!” Milo voice was rising in pitch so fast that only dogs would be able to hear it.

  “Yes,” I said. “I was shocked, too. I thought for sure I was about to be kidnapped and hazed again, but instead she took me up a hidden servants’ staircase to the top floor. Finn was waiting for me up there.”

  “Blimey,” Savvy whispered.

  Hannah’s hands were pressed to her cheeks. She looked like she was about to cry.

  “What… what happened?” Milo asked tentatively, and without a single trace of his usual thirst for gossip.

  The details were not hard to recall. If anything, it felt like my mind was clinging to them so tightly that it was hard to loosen the grip. But I told them everything, sharing all of it. Because maybe if they all knew it, kept it in their memories, too, it would be even more real. Even more lasting.

  No one spoke at first. Hannah crawled up onto the couch and curled up against me like a cat. On my other side, Savvy stroked my hair. Milo, who had settled on the floor at my feet, rested his cool energy against my legs.

  I sniffed. “If you guys could all stay just like this forever, that would be great,” I said. Savvy chuckled softly. Hannah tucked the top of her head even more securely against my neck.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I know,” I told her.

  “This is bollocks,” Savvy added.

  “It is, indeed,” I said, with a nod.

  More sniffing. More silence. More hugs. The hugs were helping.

  “What… what are you going to do? About what he told you about the Caomhnóir at the príosún?” Milo asked finally.

  “I don’t know,” I said with a helpless shrug. “It definitely sounds weird. He was really freaked out. I know he can overreact sometimes—read into stuff too much—but this was different. He was disturbed about it. If there’s one thing Finn knows, it’s how Caomhnóir are supposed to act, and this isn’t it.”

  “And why’s he telling you?” Savvy asked. “I get that he trusts you, but you’re not exactly in a position to act, are you?”

  “Exactly. Why couldn’t he have told one of the other Caomhnóir while he was at the wedding? Plenty of the Caomhnóir from Fairhaven were on duty,” Milo said.

  I shook my head. “You know them, they’re all obsessed with procedure. They’d likely just tell him to inform a superior, or else, just to let the superiors handle it. Besides, he’s nervous. He doesn’t know who he can trust, apart from me.”

  “There’s got to be a way to get the message back to Seamus and the other Caomhnóir leadership without tipping them off that you and Finn have spoken,” Hannah said, looking pensive.

  “If there is, I haven’t thought of it,” I said. “How could I possibly give Seamus that information? I can’t admit I’ve talked to Finn, and Finn is the only possible source.”

  “But you’re not the only possible person he could have told,” Savvy
said slowly.

  “What do you—” I began.

  “Bertie!” Savvy said, throwing her hands up into the air like they were full of confetti. “Get him to help you!”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Tell him what Finn told you. He’s been loyal to Finn ever since Finn rescued him on the Fairhaven grounds during the Necromancer invasion. He absolutely bloody worships him, do anything for him, I’d bet my life. All you’d need to do is tell him that Finn needs his help, and he’d be on board, no questions asked.”

  I was still skeptical, but Hannah was nodding slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, that might work,” she muttered.

  “What’s this ‘might work’ nonsense? It’s brilliant!” Savvy said defensively. “Listen, Bertie and Finn were both at that wedding, yeah? They could have talked then, couldn’t they? It’s the perfect cover to explain how Bertie got the information. And then Bertie can go to Seamus and report it.”

  Milo did not look convinced. “But, isn’t Bertie kind of… well…”

  “A useless prat?” Savvy supplied helpfully. “Well, yeah, but, like I said, he thinks the sun shines exclusively out of Finn Carey’s arse. There’s nothing he won’t do to pay him back. ‘A debt of honor,’ I’ve heard him call it. You leave it to me, all right? Bertie and me, we’ll get it sorted good and proper.”

  Savvy looked so utterly sure of herself that I felt the last of my reservations drain away. “Okay,” I told her. “To be honest, I think it’s the best chance we’ve got. Thanks, Sav.”

  “Don’t mention it,” she said, then dropped the smile. “Been feeling like shite about the Finn situation for ages, so I’m glad there’s something I can do.” She jumped up from the couch. “Actually, two things I can do.”

  “Two things?” I asked, frowning.

  “Well, yeah. I mean, we never did get to have any of that wedding cake, did we?” she said as she began pulling plate after tin-foil-covered plate out of the fridge. It was like watching Mary Poppins pull floor lamps and potted plants out of her carpet bag—impossibly, they just kept coming.

  “Scones, strawberries, clotted cream, treacle tart, custard pie, and half a trifle,” she announced. “Let’s help Jess eat her feelings, shall we?”

  I managed to laugh. She handed me a spoon.

  Feelings, it turned out, were delicious with clotted cream.

  §

  After a cramped night’s sleep on Savvy’s sofa, we arrived back at our flat the next day around noon, still slightly hungover and stuffed full of custard. Part of me wanted to fall into bed and stay there for several days, but the universe had other plans.

  And by the universe, I actually meant Tia.

  “Hey! How was the wedding?” she asked.

  The answer to that question was so complicated that I decided to avoid it completely. “Never let Milo pick my shoes again,” I replied.

  “I saw the pictures on the blog. You all looked gorgeous!” Tia said.

  I turned to Milo. “How did you find time to get pictures up on the blog already?” I asked incredulously.

  Milo shrugged. “I have my ways,” he said cryptically.

  “He made you do it during dinner, didn’t he?” I asked, turning to Hannah.

  She smiled sheepishly. “He kept guilting me by reminding me that he couldn’t eat.”

  “I never posed for any more pictures at the venue,” I pointed out.

  “Candids,” Milo beamed.

  “Did you get any shots where I didn’t have my mouth full of cheese?” I grumbled.

  “It was a challenge, but yes,” Milo said. “And they are getting a lot of internet love, particularly you, I might add,” Milo said. He was already hovering over the open laptop, which was permanently open to his blog home screen so he could keep tabs on it.

  “Yeah, right,” I scoffed.

  “Yeah. Right,” Milo said pointedly. “Turns out you’ve got some smolder after all.”

  “Shut up.”

  Tia laughed. “Did you guys decide to stay over?”

  “Yeah,” I said, without specifying where, and quickly changed the subject. “So, anything exciting going on here? Did you and Charlie hang out last night?”

  Charlie and Tia had been seeing rather a lot of each other since Charlie’s invitation to “grab a quick bite” after the museum tour had turned into a three-hour dinner, a trip to the movies, and then dessert and coffee into the wee small hours of the morning.

  “No, he couldn’t last night. He needed to study for a test,” Tia said, and though she sounded reasonable enough, I caught an edge of disappointment in her voice.

  “Maybe you should start dating slackers so this kind of thing doesn’t happen,” I suggested.

  “Oh, yeah, who wants to get stuck with a future doctor?” Milo interrupted.

  “What does it matter? She’s going to be a doctor herself,” Hannah pointed out. “It’s not like she needs to land a rich or successful husband, Milo. This is the 21st century.”

  Milo sighed. “You’re all missing the point. God, I would have been such a great trophy wife.”

  “Anyway,” Tia said, with the air of someone trying to force the conversation back onto the tracks before it derailed completely, “he said he’d call me later today. It was a blessing in disguise, actually. I finished my paper on bacterial meningitis.”

  She looked so delighted with herself that I didn’t even have the heart to make a snarky comment. I really must have been tired. “Well, since I don’t have to write any papers about bacteria, I think I’ll go lie down,” I said.

  “O-okay,” she said, and I could hear the hesitation and concern in her voice that meant I wasn’t doing a very good job of concealing my mood. Rather than give her the chance to ask me what was wrong, though, I avoided her eyes and made a beeline for my bedroom, closing the door quickly behind me.

  I didn’t bother to turn on my bedroom light or pull the blinds. If I was going to have a good, long, heartsick cry, I was going to do it old school—in the dark, snotting into a pillow, maybe with some really emo music blasting from my headphones until I gave myself the mother of all headaches.

  I wriggled out of Milo’s dress and left it in a wrinkled heap on my floor, where it joined several other items of clothing. I flung the torture bra directly into the trashcan where it belonged and dug my oldest, rattiest, and most comfortable sweatpants and sweatshirt out of my drawer. I had very nearly completed the cocooning process, and was just about to pull my blankets up over my head when I caught sight of a stack of books perched on the corner of my nightstand.

  They were the books that Hannah had brought home for me from the library at Fairhaven—the ones I had requested, with all the information about Skye Príosún. They had sat piled there, untouched, since she had brought them home two weeks ago. I’d been too much of a coward to open them, both eager to know more about the place Finn had been banished to and scared of what I would find out. If the Elemental was any indication of what Durupinen príosúns were like, I feared the details of Finn’s new reality would be too much for my already crippling guilt to handle.

  Even as I thought these things, half-curled under my comforter, I wanted to slap myself. I imagined Walking right then and there, slipping the bonds of my body, and turning to face the pathetic reality of post-heartbreak Jess. Is this seriously what I was turning into? Was this what happened when people decided to open up and love each other, or did I just particularly suck at it? I always thought I was stronger than this, that I was tougher than other people because I didn’t need anyone. Now it was obvious that I avoided needing people because I would come to need them too much.

  Where was my fight? Why was I letting this separation from Finn destroy me like this? Did I think I deserved it? Was I punishing myself for being foolish enough to let someone get past my guard? Probably. There’s self-care, and then there’s giving up on yourself, and I was forgetting the difference. I imagined Walker-Jess grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me like a rag doll.


  WAKE UP. SNAP OUT OF IT. DON’T WALLOW, FUCKING FIGHT!

  I threw the blanket off myself. Finn needed my help. Something strange was happening at that príosún and he had risked serious trouble to find me and tell me about it. I might not be able to storm the place, or even pass his message along, but I could open those damn books and arm myself with knowledge, and that was a start. And then… my eyes lingered on my sketchbook, which I had barely touched in the last few weeks, except when a Visitation forced a pencil into my hand. I’d felt resentful of my artwork since it had become the wedge of evidence that had separated Finn and me. Maybe it was also time to stop blaming the art and start using it to help myself move forward.

  The Walker-Jess in my mind nodded her approval as I pulled the first dusty old volume toward myself and opened it. I wasn’t done crying, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to drown in the tears.

  16

  Fallen

  I WAS SO LOST in my reading that the buzz of my cell phone made me yelp in surprise. I glanced over at the clock and received a shock; I’d been reading, uninterrupted, for nearly four hours. Savvy’s freckled face grinned up at me from my phone screen.

  “On a scale of one to ten, how epically hungover are you?” I asked by way of greeting.

  “Jess, something’s wrong.”

  It was the tone of her voice, more than her words, that pulled me up short. Savvy’s usually jovial sound was flat, scared. I sat up straight.

  “Sav, what’s going on?” I asked.

  “I… well, I’m not really sure, but… we can’t find Phoebe,” she said.

  “What do you mean, you can’t find her?”