“That would have been me burning from the inside out,” I said.
“And I crawled away. I wasn’t thinking of my kids. I certainly wasn’t thinking of you.” She took another drink and glanced at me. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“All I could think of was getting out of there.”
“Perfectly reasonable. No sane person would want to stay.”
She gestured with the bottle at Charlie. “But he walked in. He had someone he wanted to protect enough to risk his life.”
I looked at Charlie, then down at Sherrie’s expensive but ugly hand-sewn rug, embarrassed.
“Are you her husband?” she asked Charlie.
“No. I’m her brother-in-law.”
Sherrie gave him a suspicious side-eye, but clearly didn’t have the energy to spend a lot of time thinking about whether we were having an illicit affair. “Well, you faced that for her. And I couldn’t do it for my kids.”
Even though they’re GR8. I felt hysterical laughter bubbling to the surface, but I managed to swallow it down.
“You can’t control your reactions when you’re panicked,” Charlie offered. “And you certainly can’t judge yourself by them. You’re there for your children every single day. Isn’t that more important?”
Sherrie, of course, didn’t notice the hidden dig at me in there. She just thought he was being nice. She smiled at him. “Do you want a drink?”
“Thank you, no,” Charlie said.
She looked at me and held up the bottle.
Not after you’ve had your mouth on that, gross. “No thanks, Sherrie. But I will take a check. My work here is done.”
And so it was. Jeffrey Litauer was gone. It took a while to sink in. Two days in bed, to be precise, recovering with bad cable movies and good cupcakes. Warren was told I had a bad cold, and kept bringing me glasses of milk and pictures he’d drawn to cheer me up. It’s a cliché to say so, but I was glad to be alive. I wasn’t thinking about Tom or anybody else. I was just grateful to be at home with my boys and a living, beating heart. On the third day, my voice was merely raspy, no longer frightening, and I could breathe without pain. My limbs felt their normal weight. I was ready to celebrate.
We took Warren out for dinner and ice cream. After he went to bed, we decided to forgo our usual bourbon-and-switchel in favor of a good Cabernet.
“So,” Charlie said. “You did it.”
“Not quite. Jeffrey was bad, and I’m glad to have that part of it behind me. But I still haven’t done anything for Tom.” I watched his jaw set. “I owe him, Charlie.”
Charlie sighed. “I have to tell you something.”
“I know,” I said. “I have to leave. I’ll start looking for a place.” So that was it then. I’d made my choice, and said it out loud. I’d hoped I could keep avoiding it, that somehow Charlie and I would keep circling around the argument without ever coming to a resolution. It wasn’t an empty hope; Charlie never seemed to know what he wanted. One minute he was kicking me out, the next he was kicking down doors to save me. Probably because he didn’t want to face this any more than I did.
But Charlie shook his head. “It’s not about our living situation. At least not directly. I’ve been keeping something from you.”
I refilled both our glasses. “You think it’s serious with Norbert.”
His surprised expression was fleeting. “Well, I meant every word I said, about your job not being fair to Warren. But if I’m honest, and I mean with myself as much as you, I probably wouldn’t have given you an ultimatum if...”
“If you didn’t know what I’d choose, and suspect it was going to come to me leaving anyway.”
Charlie shrugged helplessly.
“You know what the saddest thing about that is?”
“That it’s kind of manipulative and cruel?”
“No.” My eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t help it. “That you knew I wouldn’t pick Warren.”
Charlie got up from his armchair and leaned over the couch to hug me. “It doesn’t mean you don’t love him, Lyd. We all know how much you love him. But he’s not yours.” He sat beside me.
“What difference does that make? Biologically, he’s not yours either. But you’d never choose anything over him. I’m a terrible mother.”
“You’re as good a mother as an aunt can be.” Charlie tried to laugh as he took the box of tissues from the end table and set it on my lap, but it was a pathetic, choked kind of sound. “Biology is irrelevant. I’m his father. You’re not his mother. And in the back of our minds, that’s always been there. We knew one day this arrangement would have to end.” He took a tissue himself. “Maybe it’s just time.”
By now I was crying too hard to talk. Charlie squeezed my shoulder and hugged me again. “Take your time looking for a place, and I’ll take my time finding the right after-school care. We don’t have to rush it. Warren will need time to adjust.”
“We’ve always told Warren this would happen,” I said. “He’ll be fine.”
“But will you?” Charlie put his head in his hands. “Where will you go? Will you have to get a job on top of the banishing? How will the Bakestravaganza happen without you?”
I laughed, but his eyes were sad when he looked back at me. “This is your whole world. And I’m kicking you out of it.”
“It’s not my world at all. I’m just visiting.”
Charlie finished off his wine. “No need to rush,” he said again. “Let’s just take our time and figure it out.”
“Unless Norbert proposes next week. Or you propose to him.” I frowned. “How does that work? How do you know who does it?”
Charlie shrugged. “When someone does it. But I’m nowhere near that yet, Lyd. Nat...”
“Nat wanted you to be happy more than he wanted any other thing.”
“Bullshit,” Charlie said with a surprising amount of force. “I loved him, and I will cherish his memory always, but I try not to sugarcoat it. The thing Nat wanted most was to do his job. Which is why he’s dead and Warren only has one parent.” He gave me a sad smile. “Not unlike you, huh? Must be a family trait.”
“Not hardly. My father might risk his life for something, in the right circumstances, but my mother and Samuel are both way too selfish.” I sighed. “Maybe it’s a canteen thing. We don’t know who else in the world can do this. If there even is anyone else.”
“So it’s kind of like being an actuary,” Charlie suggested. “There’s a lot of demand, and only a few people crazy enough to want to do it.”
“It’s not about demand, it’s about responsibility. It’s like how army guys risk their lives even when they have kids.”
“You’re doing this to defend your country and promote world stability?”
“No,” I agreed. “But it is a sense of duty. It’s bigger than we are.” I squeezed his shoulder, much like he’d done to me minutes before. “No matter what we might want. Believe me. Nat loved you and Warren. He would have chosen you if he felt like there was any choice at all.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“I don’t deny that. But it doesn’t always feel that way.”
“That’s a cop-out,” Charlie said. “It’s an excuse to make the choice you want.”
I shrugged. “Or the choice you don’t want. Sometimes you just want to do the right thing, even when it sucks.”
“How noble of you.”
I sensed things were about to get heated. He was upset, he’d already had three glasses of wine, and in typical Charlie fashion, he was being torn in several directions: anger, guilt, indignation, kindness. I tried to think of a joke to make, a way to lighten things up or better yet, change the subject.
But I was saved by the proverbial bell. The phone rang. I looked at the clock on the mantle. “Who is calling us at ten-o-clock?” I got up and went into the kitchen to check the caller ID, but I wasn’t in any hurry, and I missed the call itself.
I grabbed a box of cookies on my way ba
ck to the living room. “That was Brian again.”
“Have you still not talked to him?”
I shook my head. “I’ve been meaning to, but as you might have noticed, things have been a little hectic here.” I pulled out one sleeve of cookies and handed it to Charlie, then sat down with my own and tore it open with my teeth. “He sure seems determined this year though. I’ll call him tomorrow.”
Which I did. And afterward, I was torn between wishing I called him sooner, and wishing I never called him at all.
“I’m so sorry I haven’t returned your messages,” I told him. “I’ve had a few crises to deal with.”
“You’re not the only one,” Brian said. “I’m afraid it wasn’t just a courtesy call in Nat’s memory this time, Lydia. It’s started again.”
“What’s started again?”
“Yesterday was the third time this week. And it was worse than ever.”
“What was worse than ever? Slow down, okay?”
Brian’s voice was choked with tears. “She killed my horse yesterday, and two of the dogs.”
“Brian. Who?”
“Helen. And Roderick.”
What. The. Fuck.
FIFTEEN
* * *
My skin crawled with dread. But surely he was mistaken. “That’s impossible. Helen is gone. She’s in the netherworld. I saw her there.”
If that last part confused Brian, he didn’t show it. “It’s her, Lydia. I saw her yesterday. I was sure it was her even before that, which is why I was calling you. But there’s no doubt now. It’s her. And her boy... I’m pretty sure it’s him, but he’s different now. He’s got claws, and these awful teeth.”
My heart sank into my stomach. That was Roderick, all right. I had to get off the phone. I had to figure this out. I couldn’t breathe. And I didn’t want Brian to hear me panic. “Sit tight,” I told him. “I’m coming up there. I’ll call you back. I’ll see you soon.” And without giving him a chance to answer any of those things, I ended the call. Then I swore for a while. Then I tried to get my shit together, failed, swore some more, and poured myself a drink despite it being before noon.
Had they come through with me, somehow? Or had I just taught them how?
I felt dizzy as I remembered how conveniently they’d backed off while we were doing Cyrus’s errand, then while we were learning the reverse ritual. We thought our wards were just working really well, but was that all there was to it? Now I thought not. Now I thought maybe they’d put just enough pressure on me to make me desperate to learn how to leave. Somewhere along the line, their purpose had shifted from killing me to using me. Or maybe that had been their purpose all along. They spend a lot of time in the swamp, Tom had told me. Trying to get to you, he said. I had other things on my mind at the time, and I didn’t give that much thought.
And then at the end, Roderick, chasing me as I escaped, then disappearing for a while, only to attack me again when I was almost done with the ritual. He must have hung back, watching, waiting until he got what he wanted. Clever little monster.
Very little: he was only three when he died. Surely he couldn’t have understood what he saw. But maybe he could have gotten it well enough to report back to Helen. Mimicry is what toddlers do, right? Whatever, this was hardly a toddler anymore, and that wasn’t what mattered now. They must have gotten the ritual from me one way or another.
I looked at the switchel ring, resting on its customary shelf. If I’d inadvertently taught them the ritual, they could have come through at any time, when we were out, while we were asleep. They’d been in my house. With Warren. It was beyond thinking about.
And who else had they taught? The switchel ring would have to be watched now, day and night. I’d have to keep it with me at all times. Not that I’d be much good if someone else came through. How would I stop them? Stop them from what?
I couldn’t help but think of Tom. Did he know? The last time I’d seen him, he’d been fighting Helen off for my sake. Now Helen was here. Had she hurt him?
I didn’t realize I was crying until Charlie and Warren came in from their usual Saturday hike, and Warren asked me what was wrong. I told him I had a headache.
Charlie gave me a sharp look. “Lyddie needs dark when she has a migraine, Warren,” he said. “Why don’t you go close all the blinds in her room for her?”
He didn’t say anything when Warren left, just waited for me to. He was going to love this. Another job thrust on me, and of course I would take it. It wasn’t even a job really. I wasn’t about to try to charge anyone for it. It was my fault, my mess, and I had to clean it up. He was right when he said I could never say no. Certainly not to this.
I sighed and looked up at him, wiping my eyes again. “I unleashed something awful on the world,” I said. “And I have to put it back in its bottle.”
The conversation didn’t go quite as badly as I thought it would. I guess Charlie didn’t think I was any more likely to die on this mission than I had been with Jeffrey. (Although in my mind, maybe because of my history with them, Helen and Roderick were arguably worse.) Either that, or he was resigned to my death.
“But how would they have gotten back to New England if they came through here?” he asked after I explained what had happened. “Are you sure this has anything to do with you at all?”
“Positive,” I said. “Coming through the switchel ring here, they wouldn’t have been able to stay long. They’d have been pulled back home without having to do anything special to get there.”
“So I take it you’re going.”
I nodded. “But I need to call Katie before I go. It’s time to sort this mess out for good, including with Tom.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Make her give me something of his, no matter how busy she thinks she is with cupcakes and dividing Grandma Maisie’s money between her kids’ college funds.”
“And what will you do with this thing of Tom’s when you get it?”
“Bring it back to him.”
“Personally?”
“Personally,” I agreed. Going back into the canteen was about as foolhardy as I could get. And not just because my whole reason for leaving last time was that it was too dangerous to stay. Going back might mean losing my remnant. I got lucky the first time, that Tom happened to find it before the swamp ate it. There was no reason to assume I’d be lucky a second. If I went in, I might not be able to get back home again. But I was running out of options.
There was no precedent that I knew of for banishing yourself. Still... why not? Why shouldn’t I be able to banish all three of us at once? I’d banished more than one apparition at a time before. Thanks to Jeffrey I knew it was possible to banish a live person. And the fact that my incantation reversed had gotten me out of the netherworld pointed toward it being able to get me in, too. One ritual, one incantation, three remnants.
Apart from having no real idea of whether it would work, I saw no holes in this plan. “I’m going to put Helen and Roderick back in the canteen,” I said. “And I’m going to go with them.”
I called Katie and came clean about why I needed something of Tom’s so badly. I told her I didn’t send him to the afterlife, after all, that I’d actually trapped him someplace, and I wanted to make it right. I didn’t go into a lot of detail. Believing in ghosts when you’ve got a haunted house to deal with is one thing. Believing in someone finding a whole world full of trapped souls inside a drinking vessel is another.
“Oh, well, if it’s to bring him peace, sure, come by tonight, I have some boxes of Grandma Maisie’s things here, maybe we can find something.” She said it in a resigned way, like she was doing it more because it would be a jerk move not to, than out of any actual concern for Tom. I used to like Katie, but this whole experience had made me rethink it.
I had a stroke of genius on the drive to her house, if I may say so myself. I needed a remnant of Tom’s to get him out, but that wasn’t all I needed. I thought of Gemma, who had no desir
e to leave the netherworld. It wouldn’t be safe for her or anyone else there if Helen and Roderick and Jeffrey were around. I was responsible for putting them there. It was time to finish the job right, and get rid of them for good.
And that meant weapons. Cyrus already had a knife, but I knew all too well how helpful Cyrus wasn’t. I couldn’t bring a whole stockpile of weapons of my own; I wouldn’t just be able to throw things willy-nilly into the canteen, I was sure of that much. But I intended to try to bring something of Tom’s with me anyway. If I succeeded, it might as well be something useful.
When I got to Katie’s I said, “I think I can make this easier. Do you know where you might specifically have anything of Tom’s from the war? I know his service meant a lot to him, I think that would be a great place to start.”
She gave me an odd look, no doubt due to my claim of knowing what anything meant to Tom, but she nodded. “Actually I did come across some stuff when I was cleaning everything out of storage.”
I left half an hour later with a nice, long, lethal-looking trench knife. I’d be sure to sharpen it before I went.
So that was it, then. I was going. I had as much of Charlie’s blessing as I was going to get. I had a remnant for Tom. And I had a plan, such as it was.
Warren wanted me to promise I’d be back in time for Halloween. That was only a week away, but I promised anyway. This would either work or it wouldn’t; it wasn’t a matter of putting in time. If I broke my promise, I supposed it would be because I was dead, or trapped in the netherworld forever, and he’d have a lot more than my failure to take him trick-or-treating to be mad about.
I wore my locket around my neck and Tom’s trench knife in a sheath clipped to my belt, like a knight going on Crusade. I remembered the first time I’d gone through the canteen: my phone had fallen out of my pocket, and the match in my hand was lost, too. But my clothes came through intact; my belt was on. I hoped that if the knife was part of my belt this time, it would make the trip with me.
But carrying a big-ass knife ruled out flying, since I refused to take it off my person. It was a talisman of sorts, and I needed all the luck I could get. So I drove from North Carolina to the Berkshires, fifteen hours of long, mostly boring road in which to consider my predicament. A smart woman would have used that time to strategize, meditate, steel herself for what was to come. I was not that woman.
Ghost in the Canteen (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 1) Page 20
