Spirit Ascendancy

by E. E. Holmes

  Through all of the clean-up process, Annabelle made no sound, save for one or two repressed sobs; I hadn’t pushed her, asking not a question as we cleaned her up. But now, as she sipped slowly on the tea, I eased into the interrogation. I was all for letting her recover, but there were some questions that needed to be answered right away, for all of our sakes.

  “Annabelle, how did you wind up in that state? Can you remember? I hate to make you talk about it, but we need to know,” I said, offering her a plate of scones.

  She made to reach for one, but then withdrew her hand, looking nauseated. “I don’t think I’m quite ready for food yet,” she said.

  I put the plate on the coffee table and waited.

  “Nothing happened for weeks,” she said in a ghost of a voice. “I started to think I’d been crazy to come here, that no one had been looking for me after all. I don’t know if it just took them that long to find me, or if they were waiting for me to let my guard down before they made their move, but either way, about a week ago, they came.”

  “The Necromancers?”

  “They never said the word, but yes, I believe that is who they must be. I have no idea how they got in, or how they knew where I was, but the moment I walked in the door, they overpowered me. They were both huge, and their heads were shaved and covered in deep blue tattoos. They’d already prepared the casting you found me under. Actually, that was the first thing I’d noticed when I walked in the door; they must have just finished, because the bed was at a strange angle to the wall. I remember thinking, ‘Huh, why would my bed have moved?’ and before I knew what was happening, they had leapt from the shadows, stripped off my clothes, bound me to the bed, and covered me in the runes. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

  She seemed on the verge of crumbling into tears. I squeezed her shoulder gently. “It’s okay. You’re safe now; they can’t hurt you anymore.” This was a blatant lie; nothing, as far as I knew, prevented them from bursting in on us at that very moment, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. “Go on. What happened next?”

  “At first they used ropes, but then they did some sort of incantation, and there was a huge influx of spirit energy. It was like… a storm of spirits. I don’t know how else to describe it. They were being sucked into the flat on all sides, drawn into a kind of vortex that was centered around my bed. And then…”

  She shuddered as she groped fruitlessly for the right words. Beside me, Milo drifted closer to listen, his face transfixed into an expression of horror, unable to look away.

  “One of the Necromancers lit a black candle and the spirits started screaming, louder and louder, pulled into this spinning globe of energy. And when they hit it, they were twisted and pulled, tugged and torn, until they sort of… morphed into a single entity.”

  “What fresh hell is this?” Savvy muttered.

  Annabelle sounded close to tears again. “It was awful. It was like they built the cage out of the pieces of spirits they’d ripped apart. I’d never have believed spirits could be manipulated or destroyed like that, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, looking at Hannah and Finn. “Is this what the Necromancers are known for? I thought they just wanted to bring spirits back from the other side, to reverse death.”

  “Me too,” Hannah said. “But then I guess we have to ask ourselves, once they bring the spirits back, what do they want to do with them?”

  “Nothing savory, by the looks of it,” Savvy said.

  “The Necromancers have always had a reputation for dark and reprehensible magic,” Finn said. “Based on what we’ve seen so far, I’d say that reputation is well-earned.” He stood up. “Forgive me. I don’t mean to interrupt, but I should walk the perimeter and make sure none of them have returned.” And without waiting for any kind of response, he strode across the room and out the door, closing it quietly behind him.

  I turned back to Annabelle. “Go on. What happened next?”

  “It was like living inside some sort of bubble. Everything was hazy and distorted, because the spirit energy created a barrier between me and the rest of the world. I couldn’t see clearly, couldn’t think clearly. They exerted an actual physical and mental force on me; I was too drained to rise from the bed. And the men who’d trapped me there never spoke to me, no matter what I asked them or how many times I screamed.”

  “Could they even hear you? We couldn’t until Finn broke the circle,” I said.

  “Oh, they could hear me,” Annabelle spat bitterly. “I could tell. But other than throwing a few scraps of food and the occasional cup of water at me, they never even acknowledged my existence. I think they’d been trained not to. Once in a while they’d take a call on a cell phone, and sometimes they left for a few hours at a time, but they always came back, and I was never able to make even the feeblest attempt at an escape. They kept talking about ‘him,’ and what ‘he’ would want them to do. I realized that the two of them were really just henchmen, and that the real person to blame for my captivity was somewhere else entirely. I had no idea who ‘he’ was, though, until the fourth day, when ‘he’ decided to pay us a visit at last.”

  I had a feeling I knew exactly who “he” was, but I let her go on. It seemed easier for her to keep going now that she had started, like sucking poison from a wound. The telling of the story was releasing her from its grip, weakening its ability to terrorize her.

  “You only met Neil Caddigan once or twice,” Annabelle said. “I’d only met him perhaps a half dozen times, until two days ago, when he walked calmly through my door and sat in a chair beside that bed. At first, I didn’t know what to think. I thought maybe he’d been captured too, and that the other men were going to torture him in front of me, or something. That was my first instinct; I pitied him. Poor Neil, another luckless bastard caught up in this mess. And then he looked down at me, trussed up like an animal, and smiled.”

  For just a moment, a tiny spark of her usual fire flared in her face, and I was intensely relieved to see it still there, though minuscule, and fighting for its life. I knew in that moment that they hadn’t broken her, not really, and that however fragile she looked right now, Annabelle would be okay.

  She went on, “I knew. Something clicked, and he didn’t even have to speak, although of course he did.”

  “What did he say?” I asked, when she didn’t continue right away.

  She swallowed something back before she could answer. “He said, ‘David sends his regards.’”

  I could have exploded. If Neil Caddigan had been in front of me right then, I would have killed him without hesitation, so all-consuming was my rage. I looked into Annabelle’s face and we knew a moment of perfect synchronicity. She’d cheerfully have shared in the violence.

  “A small part of me still thinks I should have known, somehow. I couldn’t have told you exactly what it was about him, but I never liked him, from the very first moment he shook my hand. I always found something about him to be unsettling, and I just couldn’t put my finger on it.”

  “I felt the same way,” I said, thinking back to my own first meeting with Neil, how there’d been an eagerness in his expression that was bordering on greed when he looked at me. “It was the eyes. There was something really disturbing about his eyes.”

  “Yes,” Annabelle agreed. “That pale, silvery color. You know, it’s not just him. I don’t know what causes it, but the other two had eyes just like his.”

  “Huh,” I said, frowning. “I wonder what that’s about. Anyway, go on. What happened next?”

  “He never explained why he was there, or who he was working for. He just started asking me questions, first about my own abilities and then about yours. Whenever I asked him a question in return, he just smiled and wagged a finger at me, like I was a naughty child who’d spoken out of turn, and said, ‘Now, now, now, Annabelle, I’m asking the questions here.’ He didn’t spend much time asking about me. It was really you he wanted to know about.”r />
  Stewing in my own guilt, I imagined an accusatory edge to her voice. She wouldn’t even look at me now, eyes fixed on the glassy surface of the tea cooling in her mug.

  “The questions were casual at first, even friendly. When I refused to answer, he obligingly moved on to another. But as he edged closer and closer to the heart of what he wanted from me, he dropped the guise of civility. He pulled out an old book and started adding to the castings around my bed whenever I didn’t cooperate. With each unsatisfactory answer, he drew another symbol in the room or onto me, adding some new dimension to the horror.”

  “Like what?” Savvy asked, breathless. She’d abandoned her vigil at the window, captive to Annabelle’s story.

  “At first, it wasn’t unbearable; the spirit voices grew louder by degrees, their energy began to press upon me physically, like a bout of claustrophobia, but I could bear it. I’ve had enough experience with spirit contact to be able to tolerate much more than the average person off the street. He realized this rather quickly, and seemed to decide that more drastic measures would be needed to make me talk. When I said I didn’t know where you were,” she shook back her sleeve and ran a shaking finger over her forearm, tracing a shape upon her skin like a crescent moon, “he put a symbol here, and suddenly the spirits could touch me.”

  “Oh god,” Hannah whispered.

  “It was like tiny frigid shocks, over and over and over again,” Annabelle said. “They were in agony themselves, disorientated, and they were desperate for help, so when they realized they could make contact with me, they wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t move away from them. It was torture. I held out as long as I could, but if it had gone on much longer, I would have broken. I would have told him everything I knew about you.”

  “Of course you would have,” I said, as gently as I could. “That’s how torture works, Annabelle. I would never have expected you to hold out like some kind of war hero when they were hurting you like that. But why did he stop?”

  “One of his henchmen handed him a cell phone. I’ve got no idea who was on the other end, but a few moments later he left the flat without another glance at me, and the other two followed.”

  “How long ago was that?” I asked.

  Three days, I think,” Annabelle said.

  “Figures,” Milo said. “Just before we started staking the place out. Well, at least we can safely say they haven’t been hanging around since then. I think we would have noticed a hulking pair of tattooed guys traipsing in and out. And obviously Jess would have recognized Neil, too.”

  “And you didn’t hear anything that might have explained where he was going?” I asked.

  “I could barely hear anything over sounds of the spirit cage,” she said. “Of the entire conversation, I only managed to catch one word.”

  “Which was?”

  “Fairhaven.” She took a deep breath, which shuddered and caught in her lungs, almost like they had forgotten how to expand. “I didn’t need to hear any more than that. I don’t know who was on the other end of that phone, but whoever it was, they probably saved my life. They gave him the information he wanted, and he didn’t have use for me anymore.”

  Milo, Savannah, Hannah, and I all looked at each other.

  “I tried everything I knew about spirit communication to find one who could go and warn you, but it was useless. Those that surrounded me were mere fragments by then, incapable of real communication, and the Necromancers had warded the flat against outside ghosts. I knew you were at Fairhaven, and that Neil must be on his way, but I also knew that he was unlikely to be able to reach you there. That place is supposed to be like a fortress, and I knew the other Durupinen would protect you,” Annabelle said. “But is that why you’re here? Did the Necromancers attack? Did you have to escape?”

  “Yeah, about that,” I said, sighing deeply. “Do you want me to warm up that tea for you? This is kind of a long story.”

  A few minutes later, when Annabelle’s cup was steaming again, I told her the entire story, from the discovery of Hannah’s Calling abilities, to the Silent Child, to the revelation of the prophecy and our subsequent escape. Annabelle’s eyes grew wider and wider as she listened, and by the time I’d finished, she might have been staring at a fictitious creature of nightmares instead of my own flushed face.

  “Well,” she said, when she found her voice at last, “I said it before and I’ll say it again. I knew you were trouble from the moment you walked into my tent.”

  “Yup,” I said. “Beware a college girl with a fishbowl; a sure harbinger of the apocalypse.”

  “So now you have the Durupinen and the Necromancers searching for you?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, congratulations,” she said, raising one eyebrow in her first recognizable attempt at sarcasm. “You’ve brought me to the only apartment in the city of London that’s more dangerous than the one I’ve just escaped.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I said.

  “And that Tracker you mentioned, Lucida? She’s the one who’s helping you to stay hidden?”

  “Yes, and now that you mention her,” I said, climbing to my feet and massaging the feeling back into my right leg, which had gone numb curled up under me, “we really do need to try to get a message to her. She needs to know the Necromancers have been here.”

  A sharp sound made us all jump. Finn suddenly appeared on the fire escape and climbed back in through the window. Annabelle actually leapt from the sofa at the sight of him, pressing a hand to her heart as she fought to calm her breath again. Savvy caught her arm as she swayed and helped her back onto the cushions.

  “Where the hell have you been?” I asked him.

  “I used the Book of Téigh Anonn to seal the flat back up. If they try to get back in, we’ll know,” he said, his expression grimly satisfied.

  “Go on, Annabelle,” I told her.

  “Where did you find that?” Annabelle asked suddenly, her voice rather sharp.

  Finn looked up. “Where did I find what?”

  “That book. Did they leave it in my flat?”

  Finn scowled. “No. This is my book. I brought it down with me to seal up your flat against their return. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s just… I recognize it.”

  “What do you mean? Did they use one to perform their castings?” I asked.

  Annabelle pointed to Finn. “Yes! They had one of those books.”

  Finn and I looked at each other, his face reflecting my own alarm.

  “When you say, one of those books,” Finn said, “what do you mean? Just another old one?”

  Annabelle shook her head, her curls whipping her face. “No, I mean a book identical to that one. I recognize the design on the cover.”

  “But that’s a Durupinen book,” I said. “It has every casting that we learn how to do. Your family probably had one just like it, at one point. It’s not something that the Necromancers should be able to get their hands on. Is it?” I directed this last question toward Finn.

  “No,” he said, staring down at his own book, scowling. “I don’t know how they would have gotten a copy. Of course it’s possible that they’ve had it for centuries.”

  “Possible, sure,” I said. “But probable?”

  “No,” said Finn. “No, not probable.”

  Neither of us elaborated, but I could tell from his expression that we were thinking the same thing. The Necromancers could only have gotten a copy of the Book of Téigh Anonn from one of the Durupinen, so that meant one of three things. They could have had it for centuries, a relic of the power struggle they had lost many hundreds of years ago, and it had only just come to the surface. This seemed, as Finn said, highly unlikely, as the Book of Téigh Anonn was hardly a grocery store paperback romance; there were very few copies of it in the world, and each one was carefully guarded by the Clan to which it belonged. There was no way the Durupinen would allow a copy of it to just go missing, without doing everythin
g in their power to recover it.

  The second possibility was that it had been stolen or taken by force very recently, since the Necromancers had resurfaced. It might be easy to penetrate Fairhaven’s defenses, now that we had half-burned it to the ground. And of course, there were hundreds of Gateways all over the world— what if one of them had been attacked? If that was the case, the Council may not yet have realized a book had gone missing, and that was dangerous in itself. The last possibility was the most disturbing of all: what if a member of the Durupinen had actually just… given it to them?

  I couldn’t imagine who would do such a thing. All of the Durupinen I’d ever met, even the ones, like Marion, that I wished I hadn’t, were all obsessed with the Durupinen, and treated their status akin to a religious obsession. Even Lucida, who clearly didn’t follow some of the rules, took her role very seriously, even if she only loved it for the glamour and power it gave her. I couldn’t imagine any one of them jeopardizing it. No, if one of them was working with the Necromancers, it was someone on the outskirts of the Durupinen structure, one who felt she owed absolutely nothing to this system, a system that perhaps had even ruined her life.

  In other words, someone with whom I’d have a hell of a lot in common.

  “But this doesn’t make any sense,” Finn said, breaking into my thoughts. “Even if you’re right, Annabelle—”