by Lee Nichols
I nodded. “Her thoughts, her emotions. It’s a little …”
“Disconcerting, I imagine.”
“Yeah.”
He handed me the other sword, and I followed him into the ballroom. I stood awkwardly as he whipped the sword back and forth, trying to get a feel for the rhythm.
“You’re not going to warm up?” he asked.
“No, the … my trainer doesn’t believe in warming up,” I said, wondering why the Rake didn’t appear. Was he lingering just over the threshold of the Beyond, waiting for Bennett’s dad to leave? Why did he never show himself to his ancestors? Was he ashamed of the murders he’d committed to avenge Emma’s death?
Or was he pulling away from me?
I forgot about the Rake, though, as Mr. Stern and I engaged. He was tall and strong, and I felt him holding back. We weren’t in class at Thatcher, so I didn’t feel confined to the rules, but I held back, too, moving a little less hesitantly to try to disarm him.
“Oho,” Mr. Stern said, good humored, deftly defending himself.
I grinned and choreographed a second attack, discovering we were evenly matched as long as I didn’t employ any of the dirty tricks the Rake taught me. We fought back and forth along the length of the room, blades clashing in unsurprising but vigorous moves.
There was no danger, like when I was practicing with the Rake, who’d trained me to kill. Instead it was pure, exhilarating fun, and opened up a side of Mr. Stern I hadn’t seen before—lighthearted and funny.
Then he stepped back. “Very good. Now show me what you can really do.”
I cocked my head. “Are you sure?”
“To me, you’re an ordinary seventeen-year-old girl,” Mr. Stern explained. “I can’t sense ghosts anymore, so I can’t sense your powers, either. Show me the extraordinary side of you, Emma.”
He attacked again, without warning, and something in his face reminded me of Bennett and of the Rake. I deflected his blow, tossed the rapier into my left hand, and lunged for him. He scrambled backward in surprise, then slashed at me as I slipped beside him, hooking my foot around the back of his leg. He dropped to his knees and I stopped with the point of my blade an inch from his ear.
He knelt there silently for a moment, then laughed. “Three seconds! My God, Emma, well done.”
“Thanks. I had an excellent teacher.” I gave him a hand up and we flopped into the white upholstered easy chairs at the end of the room.
“And exactly who was that?” Mr. Stern asked.
That’s when the Rake chose to shimmer into existence. He was rather dramatic about it, somehow adding a little glow to his appearance. Normally, he just looked like a regular person, if dashing and dissolute—and somewhat pale.
Mr. Stern looked dumbfounded. “Is that … ? I shouldn’t be able to see him.”
“The first Bennett Stern.” Well, at least that we knew of. I was pretty sure there was another one who lived back with the Emma in the tapestry at the Knell. “How can you see him?”
“I don’t know. But it happened once before,” he said, “at Bennett’s naming ceremony, which we held in this room.”
Has it never occurred to you that ghosts really do haunt? the Rake asked sardonically. We can make ourselves appear to people, not only ghostkeepers. It just takes some effort.
Is that why you’re glowing in that odd way?
He lifted an eyebrow. You say odd, I say charming.
I smiled. You’re cocky tonight, aren’t you?
It pleases me to see you happy.
You’ve been avoiding me, I accused him.
He shrugged. You don’t need me as much as you once did.
“Why is he here?” Mr. Stern asked. He could see him, but of course couldn’t communicate with him. “Why did he come?”
To see you, the Rake told me.
I shrugged. “I think I remind him of his Emma.”
Less and less, the Rake said. You are growing into yourself.
Is that why you’ve been missing? You don’t see her in me anymore?
The Rake ignored me, stalking toward the window to inspect the darkness.
“This isn’t the first time, is it?” Mr. Stern realized. “That’s why you fight so well. He taught you.”
I nodded. “Yeah, he even fought with me. The day Neos came to kill Martha. He’s been like … a hero,” I finished, wanting the Rake to know how grateful I was to him.
Mr. Stern inspected me. “You’re quite dear to those who care for you, aren’t you? Martha, the ghosts, your friends.” He seemed to struggle with some emotion for a moment. “My son. I can see why he fell in love with you.”
How could he not? The Rake turned back from the windows. It’s destiny.
“Thank you,” I told Mr. Stern.
I wanted to believe the Rake about me and Bennett; but then again, destiny wasn’t always a good thing.
“Is it me, or is this semester a lot harder?” I asked Sara on the way out of Trig the next day. I was beginning to think my teachers had gone easy on me last semester, because I’d transferred in late. Or maybe I just couldn’t deal with everything else that was going on.
“It’s easier if you’re doing homework instead of searching for undead remains,” Sara said, as we wandered the crowded hall together. “Thatcher’s notoriously hard-core. Looks good on college applications, though, even if you get Bs.”
“What about Cs?”
“Cs, not so much.”
I bit my lip. “Will you study for the Trig test with me?” I was even falling behind in one of my best subjects.
“Sure,” she said. “Chais and cramming at my house?”
“Sounds good. I’ve got some great chai Bennett brought—” I stopped, because the thought of Bennett hurt. “Anyway.”
“You still haven’t told me what happened,” she said.
I opened my mouth to explain, but caught sight of Max, waving a pizza and a liter of Coke at me from the end of the hall. I was getting an incomplete in fencing anyway, so I’d been using the period to search more. No reason I couldn’t do it while eating pizza. “I better go see what Max wants.”
Sara gave him a look. “Does he seriously think those pants work for him?” she teased, before she headed down the stairs that led to the girls’ locker room.
“She likes me, doesn’t she?” Max said, when I caught up with him.
“No,” I said bluntly. “There better not be onions on that,” I added, nodding at the pizza.
He grunted as we slipped through the hidden door that led to the ancient servants’ quarters, and I followed him upstairs to Emma’s old attic.
“Whoa!” he said, when he reached the top.
His reaction startled me, and I prepared myself for the worst, like discovering a nest of wraiths living up here. I readied my powers and burst into the room behind him.
Instead of ghosts, I found him staring at the painting leaning against the far wall, with a white sheet pooled around its base. It was the portrait of the first Emma, who looked just like me. Or, I guess, I looked just like her. She wore a French blue dress with tiny buttons down the front and a corseted bodice, and she looked slightly older than me, her eyes both steely and amused.
“God, Max, it’s only a painting. I thought you’d discovered something.”
“Sorry,” he said. “But you have to admit it’s bizarre.”
I shook off my powers and removed a slice of pizza from the box. “Okay, yeah. Totally spooked me when I first saw it. It’s like all the genes skipped five generations.”
“Not all of them. She’s beautiful.”
“Jerk.” I took a bite of pizza.
Max smiled as he cracked the bottle of Coke and took a swig. Then his expression grew more thoughtful. “How did we get here, Em?”
“I don’t know.” I stared at the portrait of my ancestor, wondering the same thing. “Is it all just fate?” I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. All we can do is end it.”
He nodded, and I began
the task of searching the crates, while Max moved a ladder around the room, inspecting the rafters for hidden holes. After a moment, I said, “Thanks, Max.”
“It’s only pizza.”
“You know what I mean.” I was thanking him for being here. For showing up when I needed him.
“Yeah, well, Mom and Dad would’ve killed me if I hadn’t helped.” Which is about as close as Max could get to saying, “you’re welcome.”
When I walked home that afternoon in the biting wind, I was dusty and exhausted, and wanted nothing more than a couple of Anatole’s cookies and a hot shower. I had no idea where Natalie and Lukas were. I tried not to let it bother me, but it did. Last semester, the three of us were inseparable. Classes together, lunch, walking home after school, not to mention all the training and ghostkeeping. I missed Simon, too. Had he been the glue that held us together? Seemed unlikely that a twenty-eight-year-old Englishman who hated teenagers was our one common denominator, but I supposed there were stranger things.
Like seeing Bennett’s Land Rover parked outside the museum. I stopped short, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Was I excited at the prospect of seeing him, or worried that he’d look even worse and hate me for breaking up with him?
Probably a little of both.
I wavered at the gates, one foot on the sidewalk, the other in the gravel drive, debating my choices. My excitement at the thought of seeing him finally won out, and I practically ran the rest of the way home.
Bennett was waiting for me in the front hall, sitting on the bottom step of the grand staircase, playing with his phone. His buds were plugged into his ears and his head bounced to an inaudible rhythm.
He looked up when he heard me and my breath caught. He was skinny and ragged, his gray button-down shirt and tattered, faded jeans hanging off his frame, but I didn’t care. I was so happy to see him, to fall into those blue eyes, even if they were ringed in red.
I smiled, tentatively at first, unsure how I’d be received. But he smiled, too. And slowly the smiles spread across our faces until we stood there, grinning like idiots, just so happy to see each other. I don’t know who moved first, but we closed the distance, and then we were kissing. Until we heard a noise from another room. I stopped, staring wide-eyed at him. Were his parents going to interrupt us again?
But instead of pulling away from me, Bennett dragged me into the coat closet under the stairs, pressing me into the little space behind all the boots and jackets and hats. There was just enough room to stand, and we continued kissing, running our hands over each other’s bodies, shutting out the world, only feeling, not seeing, until we finally felt reconnected and sure of each other.
“You don’t hate me,” he said, pleasure in his voice. I leaned against him, his hand resting in the small of my back.
I kissed him some more as I smiled. “Never.”
He sighed contentedly, and held me tight a moment longer. Then he said, “I suppose we should get out of the closet.”
“We can’t just live here?” I cuddled into him. “It’s all safe and warm. Everything’s okay in here.”
“How would we get food?”
“You don’t eat,” I said, reality already beginning to intrude.
“But you do,” he said. “I suppose you could compel Anatole to cook and Celeste to bring you meals.”
“Mmm, I’m hungry just thinking about it.” I thought about the tea and cookies I’d planned on. “Come with me. I’ll make you my special chai.” I grabbed him by the hand and opened the door of the closet.
“Good,” he said seriously. “I need to talk to you.”
He scooped up his pack, followed me into the kitchen, and sat in the breakfast nook, watching me make us chai.
Anatole and Celeste were conspicuously absent, and I wasn’t sure if I’d subconsciously compelled them to disappear, wanting the time alone with Bennett, or if they’d just recoiled from his Asarum-tinged power.
I remembered the first time we’d been in the kitchen together, after Bennett had dumped me alone in the museum with only the ghosts for company. Which in his mind was fine, because he thought I knew I was a ghostkeeper. I remembered how relieved I’d been when he’d reappeared a few mornings later, scowling at my minuscule, slutty uniform. And how pleased I’d been to know that he was secretly attracted.
What I didn’t know was that it would all turn into this, this driving need to love him. Was it destiny? Or just that I only made sense in his arms, and he only made sense in mine? I loved my other guy friends—Coby and Harry and Lukas—but only Bennett made me feel like this.
I boiled the loose tea in a pan on the stove, and the smell of ginger and cinnamon permeated the room. I poured milk into two cups and used the steamer on the espresso machine to froth it. He smiled at me, and his smile made me a little dizzy—and I burned my finger on the steamer.
“Ow!”
Bennett jumped up from the nook and kissed my finger, then led me to the sink. I leaned against him, my back to his front, as he ran my hand under cold water. I could smell the chai, both familiar and foreign, and felt the heat of his body behind mine, the chill of the water on my fingers, as I melted into him.
I lifted my lips to his and we kissed like that until the tea almost boiled over on the stove and my fingers turned to ice. I poured the steeped tea into the frothy milk and added huge dollops of honey. I handed Bennett one of the mugs, and we sat together at the table, stirring our chais. We sat there for an hour, and he drank the whole cup of tea, which made me infinitely happy. But eventually I took his stained hand and asked, “Are you strong enough yet?”
He didn’t answer for a moment, mourning the return to reality, I thought. Then he said, “To kill Neos? I’ll never be strong enough to kill Neos, no matter how much Asarum I take.”
“Then stop!”
He tucked my hair behind my ear. “Are you strong enough to dispel him?”
“I don’t know, I—yes? No.” I shook my head. “I’ve never really beat him, you know. I’ve never dispelled him, and this time—”
“Yes?”
“This time is the last.” And I blurted the thing I’d been scared of, and had shared with nobody else. “What if he possesses me? What if I’m not strong enough to stop him? I don’t even have my dagger.”
To my surprise, he hardly reacted. “Emma, why can’t you understand? I’m doing this because I won’t let that happen.”
It helped, having him say that. Helped me feel less scared. But it also made me wonder. I leaned against him as I asked, “Bennett, has it occurred to you that I’m not worth it? You’re only twenty. There’s got to be another girl out there who’d make you happy. And you wouldn’t have to do this to yourself.”
“There are only two things in my life that I’m sure of,” he said. “One of them is you.”
I was almost too afraid to ask. “What’s the other?”
He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. “That what I’m doing is necessary.”
“What? What’s necessary? Is this—is this the secret Simon thinks you have? Tell me what you’re planning.”
He kissed me lightly. “I’m going back to the Knell. But when the time comes, I’ll be here with you. It’s going to be okay, Emma.”
After he left, I thought about that final kiss. It didn’t feel like he had a secret. It felt like he’d been saying good-bye.
14
I can’t decide, Coby said. Did he leave you happy or sad? He was staring out my bedroom window at the front drive, and must have seen Bennett drive away.
A little of both, I admitted. Not wanting to discuss it, I said, Did you manage to get closer to Neos? Learn anything new?
The Beyond is weird. I can’t get used to it. He gave me a look. I’m glad I don’t have to.
Reminding me that he expected me to dispel him when this was all over. Well, did you learn anything about his ashes? Or about Rachel? Did you see her?
No, but they’re together. At least, there are whispe
rs of her—I can’t tell if she’s really with him, or just along for the ride. You know how ghostkeepers get when they linger.
Not really.
Crazy. Jumbled and confused, like a tangle of wires. But she wasn’t lying, his ashes are definitely at Thatcher.
I sighed. This wasn’t helping. You don’t know where?
No, he admitted. He wants to possess you, but he’s afraid to attack you openly. He’s got some plan with your ring and his ashes; they’re like … symbols.
Talismans, I said. That’s what they called my mother’s amulet.
Yeah. The ring will give him power, and I’m not sure, but I think he needs his ashes to possess you. You’re Emma Vaile, he can’t take you the normal way.
Ashes …., I said, lost in thought.
What? Coby drifted closer.
I almost told him about the vision with Neos and Bennett, but instead said, It just reminds me of this dream I had in San Francisco before I had any idea I was a ghostkeeper. Of a smoky man made of snakes, inside my house; he was … The snakes were rising from my dad’s collection of funeral urns.
Your dad collects funeral urns?
I almost laughed at his expression. He’s an antiquities-dealing ghostkeeper. But that’s not the worst part. When I brushed my teeth the next morning, there were ashes in my mouth.
Like dead people’s ashes? he asked. That’s just gross.
No kidding. I still don’t understand how they got there. I just hope the dream wasn’t prophetic.
Do you get those? Coby asked. Prophetic dreams?
I thought about my vision in the Thatcher playing field, of Neos standing triumphant while Bennett drained my power. What was Bennett planning? I hope not.
I woke early, feeling antsy, and tossed and turned for a while. As I lay there thinking about ashes and dreams and Bennett, I heard the faint hint of music. Sounded like a Bach cello piece, one of my dad’s favorites. I got out of bed and followed the music down the hall, half hoping that my dad was surprising me with a visit.
The sound came from the open door of Mrs. Stern’s office, and I stepped in, still wearing my flannel pj’s. Mrs. Stern sat behind her desk, typing on her laptop. She was beautiful and imperious, wearing all black, her dark hair slicked back into its sleek ponytail. The thought of her checking her Facebook feed almost made me smile.
