Spirit Ascendancy

by E. E. Holmes

  “I don’t know, but don’t touch it,” Finn said. He threw a hand out to catch Savvy’s arm, but she shook him off. She had stopped moving, and instead began panting.

  “I can’t touch it,” she said, her voice straining with some kind of physical effort. “I can’t get any closer than this. You try it.”

  We all started moving toward the bed, even though the bed itself, if it could have spoken, would have been shouting, “No! Turn around! Don’t get any closer!” Sure enough, at about six or seven feet from the brass footboard, I found I couldn’t approach any nearer. It wasn’t that there was anything physical in the way, as far as I could see, but with each movement, my heart began to pound and my palms to sweat. I was overcome with crippling, debilitating fear. If I touched the bed, terrible things would happen.

  “It’s a casting,” Finn said. “Someone’s put a casting around the bed, to keep people away from it.”

  “It’s working, then,” Savvy said. “I’m terrified to get any closer to it, but don’t ask me why, mate, because I really couldn’t tell you.”

  “Listen,” Hannah hissed suddenly. She bent her face closer, her expression horrified. “I can hear voices. Do you hear them?”

  We all fell silent, trying to listen. I couldn’t hear any voices, but there was something there, the faintest hint of a murmuring on the air.

  “There are ghosts here!” Hannah whispered. “I can feel their energy, but it’s all sort of… blended together. It’s like they aren’t separate beings anymore.”

  “How can there be ghosts here? The place has been warded,” Finn said.

  “I’m trying to understand what they’re saying, but it’s all jumbled. All of their thoughts and feelings are all mashed together and they’re masked behind something,” Hannah said. She reached a hand out in front of her, and it trembled in the nothingness, fingertips probing tentatively at the air.

  “What’s she on about?” Savvy asked. “I’m not picking up on anything, and if there’s a ghost somewhere, they usually make it pretty damn clear to me in short order.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I can tell there’s an energy here, but I wouldn’t have said it was a ghost, let alone more than one. But Hannah’s hypersensitive. It’s a Caller thing.”

  “Hannah, can you make out anything specific? Is there a message? Can you ask them what’s happening?” Finn asked. He was prowling around the bed like a caged animal, nervously cracking his knuckles against the legs of his pants.

  Hannah shook her head sharply. “I can’t understand them. There’s something very wrong with them.”

  Finn ran a nervous hand through his hair. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s happening here. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  But something odd had caught my eye.

  “What’s that under the bed?” I asked, crouching low on my hands and knees.

  Savvy and Finn dropped to their knees as well. There was a very large and complicated drawing carved into the floorboards under the bed. It comprised numerous symbols, three concentric circles, and smears of something that looked horribly like…

  “Blood,” Finn whispered.

  “Well, that’s just creepy,” Savvy breathed. “Do the Durupinen ever use blood in castings?”

  “No,” Finn said, attempting to inch closer but pulling back, wincing. “There is not a single casting in the Book of Téigh Anonn that calls for blood, human or otherwise.”

  I fought back a sudden urge to vomit. “Do you really think that’s human blood?”

  “I have no idea,” Finn said. “But I’d really rather not find out. Come on, I’m getting you out of here.”

  “No!” I shouted. Finn shushed me, but I ignored him. “Something really horrible is happening here, and it has something to do with Annabelle. I’m not leaving until we figure out what happened to her!”

  Surprisingly, Finn didn’t argue, but leapt to his feet, brushing off his hands and starting to pace. “This is the Necromancers’ work. It has to be. They’ve found her already.”

  “But what does it mean?” I cried in panic. “Where is she? What have they done to her?”

  He didn’t answer, and I hadn’t expected him to. He knew no more than I did.

  “Maybe we can get in touch with Lucida? She might know what’s happening if we describe it,” Finn said.

  It was a mark of the seriousness of the situation that I didn’t argue with the suggestion to bring Lucida into it. “Hannah, I know you’re supposed to be careful about contacting her, but you need to send her one of those blind Summoner things she taught you to do.”

  “She’s here,” Hannah said.

  “Lucida’s here?” I asked, staring around.

  “No. Your friend, Annabelle. I think she’s here,” Hannah said.

  I peered around again. Finn and Savvy did the same, then both turned back to me, looking confused.

  “Hannah, what are you—”

  “There’s more than ghost energy here,” she said, her eyes closed, her hands trembling as she held them out in front of her.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I’m trying to find someone to Call,” Hannah said. “The spirit energy is presenting itself, but it’s all muddled together, so I’m having trouble latching onto just one of them. But there is also energy here that will not respond to Calling, and it feels like living energy.”

  I looked back at the bed. The empty, still bed. It was absolutely empty, I could see that. And yet… “How can you tell?”

  “Living energy has a different movement,” Hannah explained, opening her eyes. “It’s like all the spirits are shooting around, totally unrestricted, waiting to be plucked out of the air. I can sense souls that are still in bodies too, but they are trapped, so they don’t move the same way, and they’re muffled. It’s like they are bouncing around in little cages. I can feel that same thing right now. It’s hard to pick up on, because it’s hidden behind all of this confused spirit energy, but it’s there.”

  “So you’re saying that, even though we can’t see her, Annabelle is somehow here right now?” I asked. Even as I said it, it sounded too absurd to be true, even after all the shit we’d seen since discovering we were Durupinen.

  “She’s hidden,” Hannah said, opening her eyes again and looking me in the face, her expression terrified at her own realization. “They’ve hidden her right here in plain sight!”

  Savvy looked back at the bed, her expression dubious. “I know you’re all tuned in to this stuff, love, but I don’t know about this one.”

  “I’m sure of it!” Hannah said. “They’re using the other spirits to hide her! I don’t know how they’re doing it, but I’m telling you, she’s here!”

  I turned to Finn. “What do we do?”

  He looked from me, to Hannah, to the bed in absolute bewilderment. “I… I don’t know. I still don’t understand…”

  I turned back to Hannah. “What do we do, Hannah? There’s got to be something we can do.”

  She shook her head, looking desperately confused. “I can’t say for sure. I don’t really know what’s happening here. I only know what I’m sensing. But we need to find a way to get the rest of this spirit energy out of the way. We won’t be able to get to her unless we do.”

  The bed sat before us, steeped in the strange, pulsating energy. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t noticed it at first. Now that we’d discovered it, it was overpowering. I tore my eyes from the vacant mattress.

  “You’re sure you can’t Call them away from the bed and over to you?”

  Hannah shook her head. “I’ve been trying. I don’t know what’s been done to them, but they aren’t individual spirits anymore. They won’t respond to me.”

  “Finn, can you expel them?” I asked.

  He closed his eyes, like Hannah had done, and concentrated. We watched him in tense, expectant silence, until his eyes snapped open once more. He pulled out a casting bag. Within seconds he had drawn a rough p
rotection circle around the bed, including himself within its boundaries.

  “Stand back, all of you,” he said. “I’m going to try this, but I have no idea what’s going to happen.”

  We backed as far from the bed as the tiny flat would allow and stood, our backs jammed against the kitchenette, waiting.

  Finn closed his eyes and muttered the words of his casting. He raised his hands to his chest, preparing to complete the expulsion, but rather than thrusting forward, they began to shake. I could see the muscles flexing in his arms, the veins swelling, his face screwed up.

  “Finn, what’s happening?” I asked, my voice rising an octave in my terror.

  He merely shook his head, breathing heavily from his efforts, letting his arms drop to his sides while he caught his breath. Then he raised them again and, with what seemed to be a Herculean effort, let out a guttural, wrenching shout, at the same time pushing out with his hands, like he was shoving aside a monstrous barrier.

  Something inside the room expanded; an invisible explosion. The force of it knocked us right off of our feet as it collided with us. As it made contact, a cacophony of voices began battering me. I flung my hands up and clamped them over my ears, but it did no good; the voices were inside my head, resounding against the inside of my skull. The only other time I could remember hearing so many souls in agony was the dream I had the night my mother had died. Then, a moment later, they faded to nothingness, their absence leaving a ringing in my ears and a devastated sorrow tucked into the hollow of my ribcage.

  I pulled my hands away from my ears and blinked a film of tears out of my eyes. Beside me, Savvy cowered with her hands clutched over her head.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “What… the bloody… HELL was that?” Savvy gasped.

  “I don’t know, but I think it’s gone,” I said. More tears clouded my eyes. I swiped them away, trying to focus on Hannah, who had sunk to the ground beside me.

  “Hannah? Are you okay?” I asked her.

  But Hannah wasn’t listening to me. She was staring, horrorstruck, in the direction of the bed. I followed her gaze and cried out.

  There, curled into a huddled ball, her body smeared with drawings of runes, was Annabelle. She was completely naked, and the bedclothes, which had looked smoothed and undisturbed moments before, were crumpled beneath her, littered with scraps of bread and pungent with the stale stink of urine.

  “Oh my God.” I stumbled to my feet and ran to her, sinking to my knees beside the bed, sure, with my heart in my throat, that she was…

  Finn was there, still sucking wind like he’s just run a marathon, but his hands were on Annabelle, gently extracting her wrist from underneath her body, feeling for a pulse.

  “She’s alive.”

  Even as he said it, she moaned quietly, turning her head so that her face was visible beneath her wild tangle of hair. Her eyes were closed but her mouth was working feverishly, muttering words I couldn’t hear.

  “What the hell have they done to her? She’s been here the whole time?” I asked, unable to keep the tremor out of my voice.

  Finn shook his head. “I can’t say for sure; I’ve never seen anything like it. But there was a wall of spirit energy on all sides of the bed. They were using it to hide her in plain sight.”

  “Sav, can you find her a blanket or something I can cover her up with?” I asked, trying vainly to shield Annabelle with my hands. I could feel myself blushing for her. She was always so dignified, so put together.

  Savvy staggered to her feet and ran to the closet at once, throwing it open and rummaging through the top and pulling down a knitted afghan, which she tossed to me. Carefully, I tucked it around Annabelle. Her eyelids began to flutter rapidly.

  “We’ve got to get her out of here,” Finn said. “But first, move back Jess.”

  “Why, what are you—”

  “Just do it!” Finn said.

  I moved back from the bed as he grabbed on to the footboard with both hands. With an almighty tug, he pulled it away from the wall, out of the borders of the casting circles on the floor. The moment the bed broke through the boundaries of the casting, Annabelle shot straight up into a sitting position, gasping for breath as though she’d just emerged from icy water.

  “What… what are you…?” She stared around in panic. “Stay away from me! What do you want? Don’t touch me! Don’t you touch me!”

  “Annabelle, it’s okay, it’s me!” I said, starting forward. But Annabelle screamed at the sudden movement, lashing out with her hands as I made to sit beside her.

  “Annabelle, look at me! It’s Jessica! It’s Jessica!”

  I watched as the animal terror faded from Annabelle’s expression, as she took in my features, and I watched the light of recognition flare up in her eyes. Her hands, slapping at me a moment before, grasped desperately for my shirt, pulling me toward her as she broke into a torrent of crying. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling the blanket more securely around her shoulders, which looked much frailer than when I’d last seen her.

  “They found me. They found me, Jessica,” she sobbed brokenly. “The Necromancers. And David. Oh, Jessica, David is… he’s…”

  “I know,” I said, fighting back my own tears at the thought of Pierce. “I know all about it. It’s okay, just try to calm down. It will be okay. You’re safe now.”

  But that wasn’t true. I knew that we were suddenly all in terrible danger. I looked beyond Annabelle’s heaving shoulders to Finn, who had pulled his phone from his pocket and was snapping photo after photo of the casting marks on the floor where the bed had been.

  “I thought Lucida said no phones!” I said. “They can be traced, Finn!”

  “This is another burner,” Finn said, taking photos of the walls now. “Lucida gave one to each of us while you were delirious from the burns. No one can trace this, and even if they tried, I will dispose of it before they have a chance to track us down.”

  “Why are you even taking those pictures?” I asked. “What good will it do now, we’ve already gotten her out!”

  “I want to look up these runes, and try to find out what this casting is. We’ve just broken through a very powerful casting without understanding what its nature is. That is an extremely foolish thing to do, and we’re lucky there have been no consequences. Yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “I’m not ruling out the possibility that we may still have hell to pay for what we’ve done here,” Finn said.

  “And in the spirit of that possibility, can we please get the hell out of here?” Savvy asked. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, throwing anxious glances at the door.

  “Savvy’s right. They could know the moment we’ve broken the casting,” Hannah said. “They could be on their way right now!”

  “I’ve got what I need. Let’s get out of here,” Finn said.

  5

  The Blind Summoner

  I PRIED ANNABELLE’S HEAD gently from my shoulder, where it was still buried and shaking. “Annabelle? We’re going to get you out of here. Can you walk?”

  It took a moment for all of those words to sink in, but when they did, she sobbed even harder, shaking her head. “I don’t th-th-think so.”

  “That’s okay, don’t worry about it,” I said. “This is Finn. He’s the Caomhnóir for our Clan. He can carry you, if you’re comfortable with that.”

  Annabelle looked at Finn, who pasted on the most empathetic expression I’d ever witnessed on his features. Annabelle clutched the afghan more tightly around her body, but nodded.

  “You’ll have to go back out the way you came,” she mumbled. “They put another casting on the door. They could only leave it in pairs, and they had to say some kind of incantation before they crossed the threshold.”

  “That’s fine,” Finn said. He walked over to the bed and, respectfully keeping his eyes averted from her, scooped Annabelle up in his arms as though she weighed nothing at all.

  We followed as he sl
id easily through the window and ascended the fire escape, all without jostling Annabelle in the slightest. She clung to him, eyes clamped tightly shut, and I wondered if she was afraid of heights, or just still too traumatized to take in her surroundings. I heard him tell her to duck her head, and they disappeared smoothly into the flat above us.

  Savvy was the last through Lyle’s window, sliding it shut behind her, snapping the lock into place, and yanking the curtain closed for good measure.

  “I don’t think anyone was watching us,” she announced, waiting by the window, twitching the curtain aside just enough to continue peering into the alleyway.

  “Keep watch while we get her settled,” Finn said. “I’ll do a sweep.”

  Savvy nodded and turned back to her vigil, eyes darting here and there.

  “What’s going on?” Milo asked, materializing beside Hannah. “What are you… hot damn, what happened to her?” He was staring in unflattering horror at Annabelle.

  “This is Annabelle,” I said. “The Necromancers had her trapped downstairs in her flat.”

  “She looks wrecked! How long has she been down there?”

  Annabelle gave no indication that she had even heard him, which, I realized, was entirely possible; she was sensitive to spirits, but whether she could actually see and hear them the way that we could, I had no idea.

  “Annabelle? How long were you down there?”

  I couldn’t tell if she’d heard me either. She was staring blankly ahead; her teeth were chattering violently and there was something wrong with her eyes—her pupils were so widely dilated that her irises had been swallowed up by the wells of black.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Hannah, can you help me?”

  Twenty minutes later, Annabelle sat curled on Lyle’s orange plaid sofa, a blanket around her feet and trembling hands gripped tightly around a steaming mug of tea. I had managed to scrub most of the runes from her skin in a hot bath, and Hannah had found her a clean pair of cotton pajamas from the bags of clothes Savvy had purchased at a nearby charity shop. The hot water seemed to have steamed away her confusion and even some of the weakness. Though I’d nearly carried her into the tub, she had climbed out on her own, and needed only minor help getting changed, her fingers still shaking too badly to fasten the buttons on her own. She started answering questions more readily, and when we’d brought her back out into the sitting room, she’d nodded in acknowledgment of Milo’s pronouncement that she was looking better; it seemed that, while she could not actually see him, she could sense, and in some cases hear, his contributions to the conversation. He certainly elicited the first hint of a smile from her by insisting that her hair was “runway chic” even right out of the shower.