The World of The Gateway Boxset

by E. E. Holmes

  The door to the Tracker office was cracked, but I knocked anyway.

  “Enter, if you must,” came Catriona’s bored voice.

  I pushed the door open to reveal Catriona sitting behind a desk, head bent over a comically large book; it was the kind of tome that you expected see in the hands of venerable wizards or evil sorcerers in fantasy movies. As I crossed the room to the chair in front of the desk, she turned one of the thick, yellowed pages. I caught a glimpse of an illustration of what seemed to be a Geatgrima, surrounded by dozens of runes. Then she dropped her head into her hands and began massaging her temples.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “My head is aching fit to burst, and no wonder, trying to read through this bloody monstrosity,” Catriona said. With a groan, she flopped forward, thumping her forehead against the book three times.

  “Don’t!” I cried instinctively.

  “Why not?” came Catriona’s muffled voice from under a curtain of glossy golden curls. “I can’t possibly make it any worse, so I may as well knock myself unconscious.”

  “I… do you want me to come back later?” I asked, half-standing up.

  “No, don’t bother,” Catriona replied, lifting her head so that her nose was an inch from the page beneath her. She had bags under her eyes and looked exhausted. “Ugh, I am too attractive to be stuck behind this monstrous thing doing bloody research.” She slammed the book shut with a disgusted grunt; the pages expelled a musty cloud of dust into the air. “If the Council doesn’t hire another Scribe soon, I’m going on strike.”

  “Do we have Scribes here?” I asked, surprised. I’d never met one at Fairhaven, though I had befriended one in the Traveler camp during my time there. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Flavia and her general brilliance, I probably wouldn’t have made it out of the Necromancer attack alive.

  “Of course we do. They work in the library,” Catriona said, swiping at the dust motes so that they wouldn’t settle in her lustrous blonde hair. “You probably assumed they were librarians. But our most senior Scribe recently retired, and they’ve yet to find a suitable replacement. No one wants to be a Scribe anymore, and frankly I can see why. What a mind-numbing slog.” She pushed the book aside and settled back in her chair. “Well, enough of that. On to something else tedious. I’ve got a fair amount of paperwork to go through with you.”

  “Really?” I asked. “That sounds… boring.”

  Catriona smirked. “Oh, it is, I assure you. Lest you thought Tracker work was all danger and glamour, let me set you straight.” She reached into her bottom drawer to extricate a large, overstuffed folder full of papers, and slammed it onto the table in front of us.

  “What exactly do I need to fill all of this out for?” I asked. “I gave a statement to you right after we left Sanctity House. What’s left to do?”

  “Everything you said, along with everything your sister, Caomhnóir, and Spirit Guide said, has been compiled into a testimony file that will be turned over as evidence to the Traveler Clan. They’ll use it in the Walker’s trial.”

  “Irina,” I said, more sharply than I intended. I had to make a conscious effort to keep my voice as casual as I could as I went on, “Her name is Irina. So, have they set a date for the trial yet?”

  Catriona shrugged unconcernedly. “Not that I’m aware of, no. Although when they do, you’ll likely get called to testify, so I daresay you’ll know before I will.”

  My heart leapt into my throat, where it nearly choked off my next words. “Testify? In front of the Traveler Council?”

  “Yes, of course,” Catriona said, as though this were a long-standing arrangement instead of entirely new information. “Do forgive me, but I assumed you had the most basic of understandings of how trials work. They will undoubtedly want to question you about what you witnessed. You will all need to testify, I expect.”

  I nodded, but my brain was whirring. When last I’d seen Irina, trapped and despairing in the basement of Sanctity House, I’d had no idea how I would make good on the promise I’d made to her. Now, it seemed the Travelers themselves might present me with an opportunity.

  “Do you know where she is now? I asked.

  Catriona looked up at me squinting, one hand pressed to her forehead. “Who?”

  “Irina,” I said, looking at Catriona with some concern now. “Are you sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. Leave off me,” Catriona snapped. “Irina was taken to the Traveler camp and returned to her body. She’s not been transferred to a príosún. The High Priestess Ileana informed us that they have adequate means to keep her locked up until her trial can commence.”

  “Yeah, they certainly do,” I muttered bitterly.

  “Look, I know you were worried about that Walker, but believe me, you’re wasting your time,” Catriona said. “The best thing you can do for her is to finish this bloody paperwork, so they can proceed with the trial. First off, we’ve got to go through your statement that you gave when we debriefed at Lafayette Boarding House,” She pulled a thick packet off the top of the pile and slid it across the desk to me. “It’s been transcribed from the audio recording I made of your interview, so I need you to read through and make sure that everything looks accurate. Sign the bottom of each page as you finish it.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Be thorough, now. By signing, you’re swearing that everything in your statement is true,” Catriona said sharply.

  “Mm-hmm,” I said, keeping my eyes on the pages in front of me. I didn’t want my face to give away the twinges of nervousness I felt at her words, knowing what I’d intentionally left out of my statement.

  For a few moments, there was no sound in the room except for the gentle crackling of the fireplace in the corner, and the occasional rustle of a paper as Catriona occupied herself with some work. It felt strange, reading my own words on a page, full of “ums” and “wells” and other things I never realized I said so often. It was like having an out of body experience, so I felt startled, and even a little disoriented, when Catriona suddenly spoke a few minutes later.

  “Where am I?”

  I looked up sharply. “What did you say?”

  She looked up from her papers, brow furrowed. “Sorry?”

  “What did you just say?” I repeated.

  She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “What are you talking about?”

  We stared at each other for a moment. Had I imagined it? “Didn’t you just say something to me?”

  “No, but I will ask you this: how are we meant to get through all of this if you can’t focus on one simple task?” Catriona snapped.

  “I… okay. Never mind,” I said, too confused even to retort. I looked back down at my paper, trying to find where I’d left off. I groped around on the desktop for the pen and had just set it to the bottom of the first page to sign when it happened again.

  “What is this place?”

  There was no mistaking it this time. Catriona had definitely spoken. That was unmistakably her voice. I looked up at her again and saw her just as before, poring over the book in front of her, seemingly oblivious to what I had just heard.

  “Catriona?” I said tentatively.

  She did not answer. Was this supposed to be some kind of a joke? I leaned in, taking a closer look at Catriona’s face. At first glance, her eyes had seemed focused on the page in front of her, but now that I was looking more closely, I could see that her eyes had glazed over and slid out of focus.

  “Catriona?” I said, louder this time. “Can you hear me?”

  No response. No acknowledgement of my presence. A creeping feeling began to steal across my skin, plucking at the hairs and raising gooseflesh. Only one thing could cause that feeling, and yet, how was it possible? This office, like many of the rooms in this castle, was Warded.

  “Finn?” I called out. My voice cut through the silence, higher and sharper than I’d intended, and the door flew open so fast it was as though he had already
had his hand on the knob, anticipating trouble.

  He barely managed to cling on to his detached demeanor. “Jess? Catriona? Everything alright in here?”

  “No, there’s something wrong with Catriona!” I said, not taking my eyes off of her.

  “What do you mean, wrong?” Finn asked, taking a cautious step forward.

  “She was complaining of a bad headache when I came in, and then we were just sitting here, going through these papers and she started… talking.”

  Finn frowned at me. “Talking? And that’s strange?”

  I shook my head impatiently. “She was just sort of blurting things out, but she didn’t seem to know she was doing it!”

  “What sorts of things?” Finn asked.

  “I think the first time she said, ‘Where am I?’ and the second time it sounded like, ‘What is this place?’ She didn’t even hear herself do it!”

  Finn’s expression turned wary. He threw a cursory glance toward the doorway to confirm what we both already knew: the room was properly Warded. Then he took several cautious steps toward Catriona, who continued to stare blankly down at the book in front of her as though she were in a trance.

  “Catriona?” Finn asked, his voice light and friendly. “Catriona, can you hear me?”

  A shudder ran through Catriona’s face, making her mane of hair tremble, but otherwise giving no indication that she had heard him.

  “Catriona, can you answer me? Can you tell me if you are alright?” Finn said as he slowly rounded the corner of the desk. He kept his hands up and visible in front of him, to show he was not a threat to her.

  Several long seconds of silence, and then, “Where am I?”

  Catriona’s voice was completely devoid of its signature lazy drawling tone. Her words were quick, light, and higher pitched than any I’d ever heard her utter. They also sounded scared.

  Finn glanced quickly at me, then back at Catriona.

  “You’re in your office at Fairhaven Hall, Catriona,” I said.

  Catriona raised her head and looked directly at me, and it felt as though all the air had left my lungs. Her eyes, usually a bright blue, had been swallowed into wells of darkness. In that moment, there was one thing of which I was absolutely certain: the face may have been Catriona’s, but the person staring out of those eyes was a complete stranger.

  Catriona—or whoever she was—cocked her head to the side. “Who is Catriona?”

  31

  Possessed

  FINN AND I LOOKED at each other again. I saw my own fear and confusion reflected in his eyes. He had no more idea what was happening than I did. I took a breath and tried not to panic. We were Durupinen. We spent our lives surrounded by the dead. It wasn’t so strange to think that one might be using Catriona to communicate. After all, they used me all the time; they just tended to use my artistic skill rather than my voice and my body. It didn’t necessarily mean that anything was wrong.

  “You’re Catriona,” I said to her, trying to sound as reasonable and matter-of-fact as I possibly could. “That’s your name.”

  Catriona shook her head so hard that her hair whipped around her like a tornado. “No, I do not know that name.”

  “Oh no. No, this isn’t right,” Catriona whispered, as sudden animal panic distorting her features. “No, this isn’t right.”

  “What isn’t right? I asked her.

  “Closed! Closed! Locked up tight! She promised! She promised me!”

  “Who promised you?” I asked. I kept it all conversational, like two friends chatting over a cup of tea.

  Catriona’s face, already porcelain, drained to a milky pallor. Her eyes widened. Then, with no warning at all, her arms began to flail. Her entire torso started shaking. She knocked the lamp and papers from her desk as the tremors became convulsions, and slid out of her seat onto the floor.

  “She’s having a seizure!” I cried, jumping up from my chair and darting to the other side of the desk. Finn ran over to join me, and we both knelt beside her, watching helplessly as she writhed.

  “What should we do?” Finn asked, knocking the chair away from Catriona before she could concuss herself on one of the legs.

  “I don’t know!” I cried. “Fiona had a seizure kind of like this once, but it was a psychic drawing. This seems more like a Habitation, doesn’t it?”

  “There’s a spirit in there, certainly,” Finn said. “But I don’t dare try to expel it, not without knowing more about how it got in there in the first place.”

  A loud, popping sound made both of us jump. A log on the fire had broken as it burned, and tumbled in two smoldering pieces onto the bed of ashes in the grate.

  At the sound of it, Catriona opened her mouth and let forth a scream unlike anything I had ever heard. It seemed to contain several voices at once, each in terrible agony. Her back arched right off the floor, as though she were being lifted to her feet by an invisible hook attached to her sternum. Impossibly, she rose to her feet. Finn and I scrambled back from her in alarm as she continued to scream, but she was not looking at us. Her eyes were fixed, with breathtaking terror, on the fireplace at the far side of the room.

  For a long, breathless moment, we both just sat there, immobile, watching her. Then she launched herself toward the fire.

  “No!” Finn and I both shouted together, scrambling after her, but she didn’t fling herself onto the flames. Instead she wrenched an enormous tapestry off of the wall and began using it to beat and smother the fire into submission. Choking smoke and ash filled the room as we dashed toward her. Finn reached her first. He threw his arms around her waist and heaved her away from the hearth. I tugged the heavy tapestry out of the embers and stomped on it where I could see the dry old fibers had begun to smolder. Catriona continued to kick and scream, flailing with unnatural strength to return to the fire, to dash it out at all costs.

  “Jess, go for help!” Finn grunted as he struggled to keep a hold on Catriona.

  “Finn, I can’t leave you here! What if she—”

  “Jess, go! Now! I can’t hold her like this for much longer. We need help!” he growled. “Just listen to me for once and go!”

  I was too scared to deliver my usual withering retort. I turned on my heel and fled the room. I tore down the hallway, skidding around the first corner and then nearly crying with relief at the sight of Seamus and two other Caomhnóir striding up the hallway. They froze when they saw my panic-stricken face, and without my even having to say a word, started running toward me.

  “What is it, what’s wrong?” Seamus called. One hand had flown to the Casting bag tied at his belt.

  “It’s Catriona,” I said, turning and jogging with them back toward the Tracker office. “We were in a meeting together. One minute she’s talking about paperwork, and the next she’s possessed!”

  “Possessed?” Seamus repeated, sharply. “What do you mean? Clarify yourself.”

  How much clearer did I need to be? “I mean that there is a spirit inside of her, and it took over her body!” I panted. “At least, I think that’s what happened. Then she tried to attack the fireplace. Finn is in there with her right now. He’s restraining her, but he needs help!”

  We were heading straight for the doorway to the office. The Caomhnóir pulled ahead of me with their powerful strides. Braxton reached the office first, and had just put a foot over the threshold when it happened.

  Catriona let loose a gut-wrenching scream, and an explosion of spirit energy burst from the room. All three Caomhnóir were blasted off their feet and slammed into the walls. I dove around the corner that led to the stairwell, tumbling down four stone steps before I could catch myself. I felt the blast of energy blow past the top of the staircase, and heard the stained-glass windows on both sides of the hallway above me explode. The rainbow shards hit the wall over my head and showered down on top of me like little daggered raindrops.

  Catriona’s scream went on, but no longer from the direction of the office. It was a part of the energy that had
erupted outward, and I could hear it traveling through the halls above me, echoing off the stones, so that more and more screams seemed to join the first. Then all the screams died away, leaving a hollow silence in their wake.

  For a long moment, nothing happened. I stayed frozen where I was, huddled on the stairs with my hands thrown over my head, braced for another explosion, but nothing happened. Gingerly, I pulled my arms away from my head, examining them as I did so. They were peppered with tiny cuts and gashes, a few of which were bleeding. I shook the bits of glass out of my hair and carefully clambered to my feet. As the shock wore off, my legs began to shake under me.

  I peeked cautiously around the wall into the corridor above. All three Caomhnóir lay in heaps on the floor. Seamus and the young Caomhnóir were stirring, trying to pull themselves into seated positions. Braxton, who had taken the brunt of the blast through the open doorway, lay motionless against the wall at the base of one of the shattered windows.

  I stumbled toward the office, terrified of what I might find on the other side of the door.

  “Finn?” I called, my voice high and cracked with fear.

  “Jess?”

  I let out a cry of relief at the sound of his voice as I entered the room. Finn was still clutching on to Catriona, who now lay as limp and senseless as a ragdoll in his arms. The room had been utterly destroyed by the force of the blast. The massive desk had been flipped upside down, papers strewn everywhere. The chairs were little more than splintered piles of wood, and the windows here, too, had been blown out.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him in a shaking voice, mastering the impulse to throw myself at him. “And Catriona… oh, God, is she…” I swallowed the word, unable to utter it.

  “She’s alive. Her pulse is racing, but she’s breathing alright,” Finn assured me. I noticed he had his fingers already pressed against Catriona’s wrist.

  “What happened in here?” I asked. “What caused the explosion?”

  Finn lowered Catriona carefully to the floor, gently placing her head to rest against his leg. “She did it. Or the spirit did it, I suppose. I was struggling with her to keep her away from the fireplace, and then she just… lost it. She went still for a moment, and I thought she was giving up. And then suddenly she… well…” he gestured weakly around the room to indicate the destruction. “As soon as the explosion happened, it was like whatever was inside her was gone, and she went limp.”