“I know, I know,” he says. “I’m officially backing off.” He throws me a glance of hidden rage.
“I mean that literally,” says Phoebe. “You’re dead. You died. Whatever happened to you in the forest: it was permanent.”
Despite everything, I do feel a hair of compassion for him as he digests her words.
“I died?” he echoes.
“It’s a sad truth,” I say, “and not easily absorbed. But it’s why I’m able to disappear, how I evaded you.”
“You’re . . . ?”
“Yes, we’re all three of us dead,” says Miles. “Welcome to Ghost Town. Check it out.”
He walks over to the stall door and kicks it. His leg goes right through the wood. Next he leaps, his whole body moving effortlessly through the door.
“See?” says Miles to Alexander.
“Oh shite,” says Alexander. His face becomes gray and his eyes fill with tears. “I’m done?”
None of us answer.
“So, it’s important that you tell us where your body is,” says Miles. “You can move on to your heavenly reward, and we’ll figure out what happened to you.”
“And fix it,” says Phoebe. Alexander’s face responds with bright but flawed hope. “No, I mean, we’ll fix it so no one else gets hurts,” she says quickly. “We can’t fix what happened to you.”
“I don’t know,” says Alexander slowly. “I just don’t . . . can’t . . . I don’t . . .”
“Spit it out,” says Phoebe.
“You lot are bonkers,” he says. “Effing liars! Screw you and your stupid games.” He’s about to storm out, and Miles grabs him by the sleeve.
“You’re banished,” he says, “until you can tell us where your body is.”
“Banished? You’re over the top, you effin’ toffer.”
“I command it,” says Miles.
And just like that, Alexander is gone. I inhale and look at Miles with narrowed eyes.
“The last time you used that word command,” says Phoebe, “it worked like a charm. I think you should use it more often.”
“It does seem to have some power,” says Miles grimly.
I hadn’t heard about this before. When and where did he wield such a word? Perhaps at Versailles when he and Phoebe were battling Giraude? Sensations wash over me.
We didn’t always have these bodies, these identities. Miles used to be someone who made commands, it seems. And Phoebe is someone who betrayed me. Who was I? Someone who fought with swords, along with Miles. It’s all bewildering and strange, and I crave answers. We are all connected by our birth dates and the fact we have not moved on to the other realm despite admitting we are dead. We have some task to accomplish, and it seems to have something to do with a prophecy Steven read in a book about secret societies. That’s all I know . . . and it isn’t enough.
CHAPTER SIX
According to a charming anecdote of Xerxes the Great, he made soldiers whip the Hellespont River with three hundred strokes in retaliation for a bridge coming down in a storm. They also threw fetters into the strait, presumably trusting the water would enchain itself. The bridge cables had been made of flax and papyrus, so perhaps it was not the river’s fault.
—Crazy Kings & Manic Monarchs
Steven has promised Phoebe that he would help us with researching the prophecy and what our job here on this earth might entail. Each night he leaves out a book on the kitchen table, open to a page that might help us. Each morning it is our habit to look at what he left out for us.
Today’s offering is nonsense. Something about snow worship. “I guess this is the root of the fear about the abominable snowman,” says Phoebe.
“What is that?” I ask.
“So not even worth asking about. It’s like Steven is joking with us,” says Miles.
So we move on to do our own looking. The manor library is a glorious collection of books, three stories’ worth, accessed by slim walkways and moving staircases. I had adopted a small chamber for myself long ago, up under the rafters. I had fancied the comfort of the books, although they only turned their spines toward me. I liked being separate from the other maids, since we were all made morose by our guilt. Here in my tiny room, hardly big enough to hold a cot, I could nurse my pain to myself.
Phoebe, the only one of us who can touch the Arnaud furnishings, pulls a book off the shelf; its spine reads Greco-Roman Cults. It has gilt page edges and an odor that exudes from the time-pressed fibers. She turns pages carefully and stops on a page about an ancient cult that worshipped the moon.
“This may seem far-fetched,” she says, “but when I was newly Sangreçu and told Mom and Steven that Miles and I have the same birthday, Steven said he thought maybe moon phases have something to do with our situation.”
I lean over and study the two facing pages, smiling to myself at the woodcut engraving of a woman wearing a crescent moon on her head.
The chapter is broken up, and as I look at its heading, something stirs in me. I point to the heading Chapter IX.
“This looks like the writing on the stained glass window,” I say.
Phoebe gasps. “Oh my God,” she says. “It never occurred to me. Those are Roman numerals.”
“The window says thirty,” says Miles. We all look at each other. “Does that help?” he adds plaintively.
“Is there a cult that worshipped the number thirty? Like a trinity, but based on tens?” asks Phoebe.
I drop my head to my hands. It’s ridiculous. No one builds a church around numbers. We are grasping at straws.
“Well, it does mean something,” insists Phoebe. “I can’t believe those X’s are for the letter—there aren’t enough words that begin with X.”
“It’s an olden days X-ray cult,” jokes Miles.
“Weren’t there ancient Greeks whose names started with X? Like Xerxes?”
“Who?” ask Miles and Phoebe at the same time.
I smile. There is so much about the modern world I don’t know—but it seems my curriculum, truncated though it was, included a primer on the ancient world that isn’t offered to students nowadays.
“He was a Persian king,” I inform them. “From the period before Christ.”
“Do you think he could have followers to this day?” asks Phoebe.
“Possibly,” I say. “I don’t really recall much about him.”
“Were there other famous people whose name started with X? Maybe there were three of them, to explain the three X’s. Xerxes and two others,” says Miles.
“I have to admit, I can’t think of a single one.”
“So it’s repeated for emphasis,” says Phoebe. “Xerxes, Xerxes, Xerxes!” She walks away laughing, goes to look through the books. It’s a needle-in-a-haystack search, but maybe someday the right book’s spine will call to her.
After spending the morning wandering the stacks, we return to Phoebe’s family. Tabby’s taking her nap, we confirm as we check on her asleep in her crib. Sweetly enough, her mum slumbers in the chair in her room as well, a book slumped onto the floor. She must’ve fallen asleep reading to her.
The doorbell rings but neither she nor Tabby wakes up.
We go to see who it is. Steven opens the door only a crack.
“Hullo,” says a friendly but awkward male voice. Miles makes a harsh sound in his throat. “We’re Mr. and Mrs. Whittleby. I wonder . . . do you know of us?”
“I’m afraid not,” says Steven neutrally. He doesn’t open the door any wider.
“Well, this is all quite a bit strange. Our son is Miles. He’s no longer with us. He passed on, and I understand your daughter passed on as well.”
Steven doesn’t answer.
A woman’s voice breaks in. “It’s terrible to talk so abruptly of such a raw topic, I’m sure. I apologize. The thing is, our son . . . well, he . . . returned to us.”
Miles’s face is a study of anguish, and I can barely look at him. In turn, he can’t take his eyes off his parents. He’s blazing with t
he desire to be seen by them.
“He told us to come talk to you,” says the man.
“Why doesn’t he open the door and invite them in?” asks Phoebe.
“It is a painful topic,” says Steven.
“Did your daughter return to you?” the man presses.
“Too painful,” says Steven. “I’m sorry.”
He eases the door closed as the man says, “Well, now!” and the woman shrieks out a rushed “I’m so very sorry!”
Steven rests his forehead against the door and breaks into loud sobs.
“Why won’t he talk to them?” Phoebe wails. “Open the door, Steven!”
“My poor parents,” says Miles. He glares at Steven’s back and balls his hands into fists.
“Are you okay, Miles?” Phoebe asks.
“I’ll be back later.” He vanishes.
“I can’t believe this,” says Phoebe. “Why wouldn’t he let them in?”
Steven cries for so long that Phoebe’s frustration turns to sorrow for him. I comfort her as she cries, too. “Maybe he can talk to them later,” she says. “When he’s calmed down.”
“Of course,” I say soothingly. “They’ve made the first step, and it’s his turn to call on them when he’s ready.”
Finally, Steven wipes his eyes on his shirtsleeve and staggers to the living room. He turns on the telly.
It’s the middle of a news broadcast. I bite my lip as I see that Alexander’s disappearance is the top news. A large photo of him is shown behind the newsman’s desk as he describes all the efforts being taken to find him. It seems Alexander was last seen in his university city of Exeter, so search efforts are concentrated there. His mother and father, Grenshire residents, are briefly seen in footage as they move, distracted in their grief, from the police station into a waiting car.
“Gosh, they haven’t found him yet?”
Startled, I whip my head around.
It’s a new girl. She’s modern, dressed in calf-length boots and a belted dress. Her face is scratched like Alexander’s, but not to the same degree. It looks as if she didn’t struggle as hard, perhaps.
She looks at me with a bit of a frown—maybe I should think seriously about adopting the clothing of today, but I have no idea how to make that happen, and I don’t think Phoebe can just hand me over a sweater—and quickly glances over at Phoebe with a more relaxed face. “I would’ve thought they’d find him by now,” she said.
” What’s your name?” Phoebe asks.
“Oh, hey, I’m Dee,” she says. “Can you believe the manor has a telly inside it?”
Miles returns just then, and I watch to see if Dee reacts to his sudden appearance. She looks down at the ground. It’s as if she’s coaching her mind not to take in anything that contradicts the idea that she’s alive.
“They’re beside themselves,” Miles says. “Wish I’d never told them to come see your bleeding parents.” His face is flushed red with anger. He doesn’t seem to have noticed Dee.
“Did you know Alexander very well?” Phoebe asks Dee, ignoring Miles.
“No,” says Dee. “I guess he went to Emmons School like me, but I didn’t know him. Do you go to Emmons?”
“No,” says Phoebe, “but Miles here did.” She points to Miles, and I watch the girl’s face transform from open interest to horror.
“Miles Whittleby?” the girl says. She waves her arms around like she’s on an edge about to fall off backward.
“That’s me,” he says. “Or was.”
“You were in that accident,” she says.
“That’s right.”
“But they said you . . . died. But you didn’t die.”
“They were correct,” says Miles. “I did die.”
“But no,” she says. “It’s not possible.”
I look away as she rapidly reviews the information presented to her before her very eyes, as she comes to understand that if she can see him, she is like him.
“Do you know what happened to you?” I ask in a hushed voice when I’ve judged enough time has gone by.
She’s quietly crying by the time I look back. “I just wanted to see what was going on at the manor,” she says. “I heard my mum saying there was trouble here. They’d found something in the ground.”
“Swords,” says Phoebe.
“Yes, that’s right. And I thought I’d like to get a look.”
“And then?” asks Phoebe.
“It was all over so quickly,” she says, wiping away at her tears, with fresh ones taking their place.
“Were you scared?”
She doesn’t bother to answer but keeps quietly crying.
“We’re trying to solve things,” says Miles. “Anything you can tell us could help. Do you remember what happened?”
“One minute I was walking along that pretty path in the woods. And I was thinking how glad I was that such a nice path existed. And then . . .”
“What?”
“I’ve got to get out of here,” she says. “Do you know how I can call my mum? Can I borrow your phone? She won’t pick up when I call her.”
“I know it’s hard to think about what happened,” says Phoebe, “but you’ve got to talk about it. Tell us so we can help you.”
She gives Phoebe a long, long look. “I don’t know if there is anything that can be helped anymore.”
Phoebe nods. “It’s true,” she says frankly.
“Am I . . . like you?” Dee asks Miles.
“I’m afraid so,” he says.
“So does my mum know yet?”
“We don’t know,” he says. “You can . . . you can go look at her, you know. You just think of her and you can be there. But please don’t go until you tell us what happened to you.”
“Well . . .” she says. “I just want to go home.”
“Okay, just, maybe one thing. Can you tell us if it was one person who harmed you? Or several?”
“There was no one to stop it happening.” She crosses her arms and looks cold suddenly. She’s in shock.
“What did they look like?” I ask her. “Like me? Old-fashioned clothing?”
“I was so scared,” she says.
I can see Phoebe visibly give up. “Well, I think they got Alexander, too,” she says, pointing to the TV screen, where the story on his disappearance is being updated by a few words from a police officer.
“Why did I ever come?” the girl asks herself. “I should’ve stayed home.”
“It’s not your fault,” says Miles.
“Thank you,” she says. “But I deserve it. There are signs everywhere warning to stay out of the woods. I ignored them.”
“Everyone does,” says Miles. “You don’t need to beat yourself up over it. You were just out on a lark, seeing what you could see.”
“Yes, that’s right,” she says. “I wish I hadn’t gone alone, though. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t alone.”
“And how did they hurt you?” Phoebe asks again. We have to know. It feels terrible to be probing her in this way, but if it helps us figure things out, it’s worth it.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Can you at least tell us where it happened?”
Dee shakes her head.
“Can you take us there?”
“No,” says Dee, and she begins crying again. “I’ve got to go,” she says. And just like that, she does.
“Not good,” says Miles. “What’s going on?”
We all jolt as the doorbell rings again. Steven swears from his armchair, and in reaction Miles looks like he’s going to punch him.
“If he doesn’t let them in this time, I’m going to . . .” he threatens.
“Going to what?” asks Phoebe. “Waft through him?”
This time the doorbell has woken Phoebe’s mum and Tabby, and they join Steven at the door.
It’s not Miles’s parents.
It’s two police officers. There’s no question that Steven has to open the door now. They co
me into the foyer and their eyes immediately flit all around. They, like everyone else in Grenshire, are curious about the interior of the Arnaud Manor.
“Good afternoon,” says one of them. “Are you Steven Arnaud?”
“I am.”
“I’d like to sit down with you and ask you a few questions,” says the officer.
“What is this about?”
“We’ll discuss that once we’re situated. I’ll talk to you separately, ma’am,” he says to Phoebe’s mother.
She tightens her grip on Tabby, and I see the wild look in her eyes. She’s done with trouble and danger.
“Is this about those stupid swords?” she says. “It’s our land; it’s our right to dig. We’ve called in the proper archeological people to assess the find and we’ll comply with their directions.”
“It’s not about the swords,” says the officer dismissively. “I need a place to sit down with you where we can talk privately. Officer Huddleston will stay with you, ma’am, while we talk.”
“But . . .” says Phoebe’s mum.
“We’ll do as you say, officers,” says Steven.
“This is official police business,” says Officer Huddleston. “You’re obliged to comply.” Without asking for any further permission, he steps around Steven, his hand on his billy club as if someone’s going to jump out at him at any minute.
“Someone stay with Mom,” says Phoebe. “I want to hear what the other one asks Steven.”
Without even thinking about it, my feet carry me over to Phoebe, and therefore Miles is left behind with Phoebe’s mum, Tabby, and Officer Huddleston. The other officer, who introduces himself as Officer Stonecroft, keeps step with Steven as he ushers him into the den.
“Take a seat,” says Steven. There’s no other chair in the room other than the one at his desk, so he leans sideways against the wall and crosses his arms. Without a word, Officer Stonecroft swiftly walks back to the dining room and hoists one of the chairs as if it were a feather, bringing it back to the den and parking it in front of Steven.
“Sit,” he says.
Avenged Page 6
