“Perfect.” She said walking in and immediately heading toward double doors that were off the big entry room. It was like she’d been there before and we were following her around her home than her following is around my home.
It didn’t matter that I’d barely been in the house. It was mine.
She handed the box to Felix and then opened the double doors. On the other side was a dining room and it seemed she knew it was there. I wanted to protest. This was my house, and she seemed to know it better than me even though both of us had entered it that day. She didn’t seem to notice my reaction but Chrysie had.
I felt…primordial. Like my cave had been invaded. I didn’t know this Jessie Pavlina. Why had I let her in? She gestured at Felix who gave her back the box.
“I am thinking,” she began, “that you probably don’t know what you did.”
“Um,” I said. I looked at the other two. Felix shook his head, but Chrysie. Chrysie had a glimmer of understanding.
“Others are doing that now,” Chrysie said without explaining. “It was taken care of like years ago.”
“No,” Jessie said, shaking her head. “Not really. You see the Hallow Thinning is attached to a talisman which has been locked in the house. There is no called keeper and for a long time the talisman has always attached itself to the main Hallow bloodline, usually the heir of the Hallow House or the owner. The talisman could attach to anyone, but hasn’t in generations even before your Mother locked it away. The people doing it now are…they’re like…exiguous replacements.”
“I don't know what any of that means,” I said, feeling frustrated. I was the smart one. I was out-knowledged. This chick had more of Hermione and Velma than me, and it was making me want to slap Jessie right to the curb.
Of course, thoughts like that showed that I had a little more of the bad guy in me than I wanted to admit.
“Sorry,” Jessie said and smiled genuinely. This made me want to slap her more. Especially as she struggled to explain, “They’re…um…poor substitutes. You see. When there is a thinning, it tends to be kept by just one keeper. That keeper might have helpers, but the keeper has a sort of sense with the thinning. All witches can draw power from other things, nature, objects of power, the elements. But only a keeper can sense activity on a thinning. That attuning to the thinning gives the keeper extra abilities that qualify them as the keeper. No one can handle the exigencies of a thinning better than the one attuned to it. Therefore, that individual is the keeper. You can’t take a team of random people and say they’re the keeper even though that’s what the Hallow Council has done. The thinning team is, essentially, failing at keeping the thinning. A true keeper senses a disturbance in the thinning and can use magic to track it and resolve the issue before it becomes huge.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Each word was a precise declaration and demand for Jessie to explain.
Apparently for the idiots in the room. Like me. I glanced over. Even Felix seemed to understand. Hecate that made me feel like an even bigger idiot.
“When your mother denied her birthright, she couldn’t take away that she was well-attuned to the thinning. When she left, she locked the house down and with it the talisman of the thinning.”
“I don’t know what in the hells that is.”
“Think Excalibur and Arthur. Whoever can use the talisman is the keeper of the thinning.”
“So…whatever it is that the house saw in me is what qualifies me to be keeper?”
“No…it qualifies you to the be the Hallow Heir. One of the Hallows is usually the keeper, but…”
It was gibberish. She was speaking gibberish. Hecate’s eyes, this girl made me want to punch her so hard.
“Dr. Hallow said that the Hallow family never intended their heir to be bound to be keeper or vice versa. It has been that way for so long that it seems they are connected. They aren’t.”
I rubbed my finger on my forehead.
“It doesn’t?” Felix asked. “I thought…”
“The last keepers were Rue’s grandmother, her aunt, and then it supposedly could have been your mother. But she left. She bound the house. And the talisman of the thinning was in Hallow House. So…”
“So no one has been the keeper since my mother left because they couldn’t carry the sign of the office?”
Jessie nodded, looking pleased with me. I did not even slap her once.
“And what does a keeper do?”
My eye twitched. It did. It twitched so hard. Viciously hard. It twitched like a rabid dog’s eyeball.
It was Felix who answered. “Think Sheriff. They put the bad ghosts away and keep the bad necromancers from preying on the dead.”
If I didn’t keep the thinning would the House deny me? The thought of it made me want to scream. I don’t know what this place had done to me in such a short time, but I was willing, maybe, to “Keep the Thinning” or whatever that meant.
If it meant keeping the house as my own. I wanted to scream. I wanted to shower. I wanted to lay my own wards. I want to take a deep breath and then another without fear. But I did not want to be lectured by another young witch about responsibilities and a supernatural calling that I did not understand. Especially because being lectured made me feel like I was any incompetent bumbling idiot from a small boring town.
“What do you know about necromancy?” Jessie asked.
Oh, sweet Hecate, she was discovering my base level of knowledge so she’d know where to begin her lecture. My eye went on full on spasm. Gods. Hells.
“Very little,” I ground out. “Assume nothing.”
Felix cleared his throat and sat down, very carefully, across the table from me. He did not meet my eyes. I suspect my inner-Autumn was coming out. But I would only admit to my inner-Branka. Feisty little sister with a large dose of bad girl but not full-on evil.
Like our mother. Kind of. I was very mad at her. My opinions were colored by those feelings.
“Necromancy is a form of witchcraft,” Jessie said in a bubbly, teacher tone.
My eye spasmed again. Non-practitioners knew that.
“It is practiced by those who can reach into the ether itself to pull power for spells.”
I hadn’t known that. My eye twitched again.
“It is only those witches who can access the ether who can work death magic.”
I pressed my lips together, sat down at the mother-effing head of the table like the bumbling idiot heir of Hallow House that I was.
“Some witches—their abilities are attuned particularly to a specific portion of the ether. They tend to be powerful necromancers, but they don’t have to be. Technically, ether can be used for any spell, but only necromancers can enact necromancy spells.”
I swallowed to prevent myself from letting loose the stream of curses forming in my mind and heart.
“The Hallows Family,” Jessie, despite not being a Hallow, knew more about them than I did. Me, the laughable mockery of an heir. Sweet Hecate, I hated my mother. “Are very attuned to the ether in this part of the world. The thinning that exists here can be like batteries for them. Each Hallow, of course, is affected to a different extent. But because of this—the thinning here is always kept by a Hallow. Often that Hallow is the Heir. As Hallow Heir, you, are the natural Keeper of the St. Angelus Thinning, according to tradition.”
I took a deep breath and made myself ask, “What is a thinning?”
It is possible that my voice was hoarse because of my night in the woods. There had been a lot of stress and very little sleep lately. It didn’t mean that I was unable to speak normally out of sheer fury. It didn’t mean that at all.
“It is a thinner layer of the veil between our world and the afterlife. It is where ghosts who have moved on can slip back. Often for nefarious purposes.”
My eye twitched again. I cleared my throat carefully and then asked, still hoarse, “And what is a keeper?”
She wasn’t stupid. Obviously. She might have been th
e totally unaware type of nerd who excelled at knowledge and failed at inter-personal skills, but even she had realized I was upset.
She replied carefully and softly, “They’re the guardian of the living against the dead. They deal with those who slip through because of their mastery of the ether. They’re like knights in ether armor protecting the living from the dead.”
I took a deep breath. “And you’re saying that in asking the house to accept me, I somehow stepped into that role?”
She nodded but it wasn’t a yes so much as a kind of.
“Keeper of the St. Angelus Thinning?”
She nodded. Again—a semi-agreement. I guessed it was because usually the Hallow Heir was the keeper. She was assuming since everyone else had been one that I must be too. I wouldn’t be the keeper until the Talisman of the St. Angelus Thinning accepted me. Like, gods and monsters, saints and sinners, and whatever else. Like…King Arthur. I’d have to find the sword or whatever the talisman was and draw it from the stone.
“Is this something you can quit?”
I expected it was. After all, my mother had. Hadn’t she? I clung to that shred of hope. But Jessie snapped it away from me.
“Your mother never had to request the house to accept her. She was living here as a child. It had accepted her when she’d been brought home from the hospital. She was the obvious heir for the keeper of the thinning, but she had been too young when her parents died to fulfill the role herself. The thinning had been kept by her Uncle—since she was too young to do it—it was assumed. He died right before she left the house and her inheritance. No one had a chance to attempt the talisman since she left.”
I pressed my lips together. And then said, “So can I quit?”
Jessie shook her head. “Well…it is theorized that the house could reject you if you do not keep the thinning. It’s magic. But it’s also possible that the keeper usually being the Hallow Heir is a coincidence.”
Gods. Sweet Hecate, gods, and cursed fates. This house felt like my home. I didn’t want to leave. I hadn’t realized that I’d never felt fully at home at my mother’s until now. But now that I was here—the island house was mother’s, and this was home.
And yet…what chance did I have of avoiding the fate I felt pressing in on me? I didn’t need to find Excalibur and draw it from the stone to know it would come from me. That talisman, whatever it was, was mine. The question was…was I going to draw my figurative sword from the stone?
* * *
Chapter 13
I think it should be noted that I did not run away. Or say the mean and nasty things that would have been said by my mother. I walked out of the dining room or whatever that was. I put on my stately, woman-of-the-house style and strode out…after I took Chrysie’s phone from her pocket.
“Hey,” Bran answered after I dialed in her number.
“Hey,” I replied reflexively.
There was quiet on both sides.
“What are you doing?” I had zero doubt it was anything good. Branka was home with our softie Dad and not our mother.
“Nothing,” she lied. If she didn’t tell me, our mother couldn’t suck it out of me.
She sounded upset. Really upset. I wondered if hers could be worse than mine. I realized that I couldn’t care. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to care. I did. A lot. But I could not. I was at my limit. I was on the edge of breaking. There would be no more girling up if I asked.
So I didn’t. And because she is my sister and my best friend, she didn’t tell me what was wrong. Instead, I did. I told her everything.
“Our mother no longer qualifies as a super-villain,” Bran said. She sounded a bit breathless, and I wondered again what was happening. Before I reminded myself, again, that I couldn’t afford to know.
I nodded at her comment. I didn’t need to speak for her to know I agreed.
“So you’re the Princess Knight of the Dead.”
“That is not what I said.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s what you said. In fact, I think it was Princess Knight of the Dead and Undead.”
“I will throat punch you into your next life,” I said. Saying it was like a balm to my soul. A perfect, wonderful balm to my soul.
“It sounds to me like you have the undead to throat punch. You don’t have time for little ol’ me.”
“Ew.” Instantly I had the worst imagine of my hand covered in rotting human entrails. Even though entrails are not in the throat. Maybe the undead would have choked on the entrails and still be working them down. Oh Hecate, the things my sister did to my mind.
“You’ll get their gore all over you.”
“The undead are not a real thing,” I said, knowing she’d had caught glimpses of my thoughts. We were not telepathic. We were witches who knew each other backward and forwards and could feel auras—even over the phone. For someone else, it wouldn’t have meant much. For us though—we got glimpses.
“I’m pretty sure Dawn of the Dead and the Walking Dead say that they are.”
“We’re talking about real life.” Just the sound of my sister’s voice made me feel better.
“You’re a witch. Your roomie is a vampire. You have someone trying to kill you to keep you from taking on your rightful role as the Princess Knight of the Dead and Undead.”
“Shut up so hard,” I demanded. “Shut up so very hard.”
Branka didn’t even notice how mad I was. I mean, of course, she noticed. But she didn’t bother to even respond to my anger. She ignored it like you might ignore a toddler throwing a tantrum. She ignored me and my pain and my crazy as if it were nothing. I was going to send her used toilet paper for Christmas. Toilet paper used by Felix. Gods and monsters.
“I’ll tell you want I know,” Bran said, probably reading my mind. “I know that you’re a whiner. Find the killer, throat punch them to death, make sure their spirit is trapped in the dead place, and then have a burger. With bacon, cheese and more cheese, and avocado. No ketchup. I mean…geez, why do I even have to spell it out for you?”
My eye twitched. It had been primed by know-it-all Jessie but man, I could slap Bran so hard right now.
“Listen,” I started.
“Listen,” Bran counted immediately. “If you die, I will use that ether stuff to yank you, by the hair, out of your next life to torment you until the day I die too.”
I smiled against the rush of emotions. I had so many. So very many emotions. Love, fury, a determination for vengeance and a real desire to both hug and throat punch her. I was going to invent a simultaneous hug-throat punch for her.
I finally said, “It isn’t even surprising that she set me up like this.”
I didn’t have to explain. Neither of us would ever be surprised by the crap our mother pulled on us. She’d truth serumed us as toddlers. I was 7 when I realized that other kids didn’t confess everything they’d done wrong to their parents over dinner. Speaking of monsters…oh the delightful memories of my childhood.
“What isn’t surprising,” Bran interjected into my musings, “is that she had the calling to be a supernatural protector, and she tossed it to the curb.”
I blinked, but Bran was so right. This keeper gig was the type of thing that devoted to the human race types did. That was not my mother.
“What do you think I should do?”
“Do you want to be like Dad or like Mother?”
“Dad,” I said without even needing to think.
“Then I guess you go be Princess Knight of the Dead and Undead because Dad would never, ever for any reason whatsoever not fulfill an obligation that he felt was his. And he would feel this was yours.”
Each word was a sucker punch to my entire being. No, not my entire being. To that essence of me that adored my daddy and wanted to be like him. Gods. Sweet Hecate, mother of magic and mist. I might have fallen to my knees. If I were willing to admit to it. I didn’t admit it though. I pushed myself back to my feet and started to pace.
“Hecate’s eyes,�
�� I said. “I can’t take that on. I can’t be like, oh I’m the Princess Knight now. They have other people doing it. They don’t need me.”
“Other people who don’t have the super-special, super-secret access to the super-weird ether? Or the sword or whatever?”
“I don’t know,” I said. My voice and my heart were weary.
“Look, Rue,” Bran said. For once she wasn’t being meanly honest. “Take a shower, curl up on the bed for the Hallow Princess and sleep without worrying about dying. Eat. Find your murderer. You can decide about being the Princess Knight of the Dead and Undead when someone isn’t trying to kill you. But honestly…Chrysie was on the main family line right? You are. And you had that black flame experience in the night time which is clearly a near death experience. Probably that other Hallow kid was a possible heir or they sure looked like someone who was.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that everyone but you until a few minutes ago knew that these murders had everything to do with that keeper role and they didn’t tell you. You can’t trust any of them. Find out for yourself. Protect yourself. Girl up, Princess.”
I swallowed and closed my eyes. Hecate’s eyes, she was right. Damn it.
But then she squeezed in, “Knight of the Dead and Undead,” before I hung up on her.
She wasn’t wrong though. I did need a shower. That was easy enough. I found my way through the house, following one of the staircases up and then, because I was a witch and this was a witch house, I closed my eyes and delved out until I felt something that felt right. When I opened the door and found a young picture of my mother and someone who looked an awful lot like Chrysie, I slammed the door closed and told the house not to open the door again until I provided the okay.
I felt a shift in the magic around me, and I was pretty sure that it locked off the room. But I didn’t wait and see. I ran down the stairs, up the next stair case, and spun in a circle and pointed. I was pointing to the door at the end of the hall. I walked past several doorways, leaving them closed and opened a room that was untouched. A personality-less, unowned and unmarked guest type room. Perfect. No feel of other witches. No sense that I was intruding. Nothing that screamed this had once been my mother’s room. And I liked it.
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