by E. E. Holmes
“And there’s no way to know how many Shards are still out there?” Keira asked.
“No,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said with a resigned sigh. She had clearly answered the same question a dozen times already.
“And there’s no way to lure them here?” another voice called in desperate tones.
“No,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said again.
“So, what the hell are we supposed to do?” a third voice cried.
“We wait,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said, and there was a steely note in her voice now. “We do not panic. We do not lose focus. We wait.”
“Council members, let us return to the Grand Council Room. We must reorganize and elect an interim Council chairwoman and discuss our next steps moving forward,” Keira called over the murmuring. “Mrs. Mistlemoore is right, we must not lose sight of our goal. We shall overcome this challenge as we have overcome so many others.”
The crowd followed Keira down the hallway, leaving Fiona, Riley, and Róisín behind.
“Oughtn’t you to go with them, Fiona?” Mrs. Mistlemoore asked upon seeing Fiona still standing there. “Selecting an interim chairwoman is an important vote.”
“They’ll do just fine without me,” Fiona told her. “I need to speak with you, and I don’t want the Council involved.” She turned and jerked her head, signaling Finn and me to join her.
Mrs. Mistlemoore looked wary at the very sight of me. “I’m not interested in being dragged into your political intrigues, Fiona, so don’t ask me.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Fiona snapped. “Just hear me out. Jessica here drew these psychic drawings a couple of days ago. We believe it’s the Shattered spirit.”
Mrs. Mistlemoore held a hand out for the sketches. “What makes you so sure?”
“Just look at the eyes,” Fiona said. “They speak for themselves.”
Mrs. Mistlemoore’s own eyes grew wide as she examined the ones on the page. “My God,” she whispered. “My God, you’re right!”
“You can tell?” I asked excitedly.
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Mistlemoore, and she shuddered as she looked away. “I’ve been staring into those very eyes over and over again for days now. I don’t think I will ever forget them. Who is she?”
“We don’t know yet,” Fiona said. “But if you can let us in the ward, we might just be able to find out?”
“Let you in?” Mrs. Mistlemoore frowned. “To do what, exactly?”
“That spirit, whoever she is, connected with Jessica before. I think she might be quite eager to do it again, even if she is in pieces.”
Mrs. Mistlemoore looked unconvinced. “The Shards are very disorientated. Their level of self-awareness is patchy at best.”
“Patchy may be just enough to get what we need,” Fiona said with a wry grin. “If Jessica can connect, even a partial message could complete the puzzle. Isn’t it worth a try?”
“And why are you coming to me with this?” Mrs. Mistlemoore asked, a single eyebrow arched as though she already knew the answer.
I jumped in. “You already know the Council thinks my sister Hannah has something to do with this. I want to prove that that isn’t the case, but I don’t think the Council is inclined to give me that chance. We thought you might let us in without telling them.”
Mrs. Mistlemoore looked up at the ceiling as though praying for patience. “I do not have the time or the desire for intrigues and subterfuge.”
“Nor do we, but we’re running out of options here,” Fiona said through gritted teeth. “We want to discover what we can without red tape or interference. If we thought the Council would make this easy, we’d have gone through them, but you heard them back in the Council Room. They’re terrified of Clan Sassanaigh. Any attempts by Jessica to reveal the identity of this spirit will be met with suspicion and obstruction. It needs to be like this.”
“And if you discover the identity of the spirit? What then? You can’t keep that information from the Council,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said, crossing her arms.
“We don’t want to keep it from the Council!” I cried. “Like Fiona said, we would have gone to them with those drawings, but we thought they might just stand in the way! If I get any information from those Shards, you can give it to the Council. You can tell every member of the Airechtas, if you want to. I just want the chance to help.”
Mrs. Mistlemoore considered me for a long moment. “You must understand that I can’t predict what will happen in there, Jessica. No one has tried to connect with the Shards in this manner. There is no way to know how or if they will respond.”
I felt Finn shift anxiously beside me, but I ignored him. “I understand that.”
“Let me be clear. They may attack. They may abandon their Hosts and converge upon you. They may not even acknowledge your presence. There is simply no way to know. This is uncharted territory. Not even the Scribes, with all their research, could predict how the spirit might respond.”
“Jessica,” Finn said, and there was dire warning in his voice.
I turned to him and found that his careful façade was cracking. His face was fighting for composure.
“Finn, I understand that you are bound to protect me, but we can’t let fear make our decisions for us, or we are no better than the Council,” I said quietly.
He pressed his mouth into a thin line, sealing in whatever else he wanted to say. And for the first time ever, I was grateful for the front of indifference we had to maintain at Fairhaven, because I knew he had the words to dissuade me, but he could not use any of them without giving us away. Assuming, I thought with a pang of guilt, that he still felt the same way after what had happened between us that afternoon.
Mrs. Mistlemoore’s expression seemed to soften at my show of bravery. Fiona saw this and pounced on it. “Come on now, Máire,” she said, and her voice was much less combative, much gentler than I’d heard it yet as she called Mrs. Mistlemoore by her given name. “You know better than anyone how the Council’s interference does more harm than good. How many times have they prevented you from doing your job? How many times have they second guessed your healing capabilities, and how many of our sisters were the worse off for it? Don’t let the Hosts in there suffer a moment longer than they have to.”
“Very well,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said, dropping her arms and with them, her resistance. “I won’t pretend the situation isn’t desperate. But I am going to oversee your attempts, and I will summon the Council at my discretion, is that clear?”
“Yes, of course,” Fiona said at once.
“And, if asked, I will say you told me that this was all being done on the Council’s orders,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said sharply. “And you will corroborate that story. I will help you, but I will not shoulder any blame for it.”
“Agreed,” Fiona said. “And let’s be honest, the Council will be more than ready to believe that I lied to you. They’re itching to slap me with some kind of a sanction, so they’ll be grateful for the excuse.”
“Fiona, I don’t want you to get in trouble over this,” I told her, but she snorted loudly.
“Trouble? Me? Jessica, I thought you knew me better than that, but you seem to have mistaken me for someone who gives a damn.”
I grinned. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Too right you won’t,” Fiona said. “Let’s go then.”
42
The Girl in Pieces
THE HOSPITAL WARD WAS UTTERLY STILL. In a long row along both walls, the Hosts lay on their backs, hands folded on their chests, staring unblinkingly up at the dark ceiling above them. There were ten in all now, more than I’d even realized. In the bed closest to the door, Savvy was barely recognizable as the boisterous friend I had grown so fond of; her usually ruddy cheeks were wan and chalky, her thick red hair limp and damp around an expressionless face.
“I’ll wait by the door,” Finn said in a stiff voice. “I will alert you if any Council members approach from the hallway.”
“Thank you,” I said
, looking away from him. I was scared enough. I didn’t need his disapproval to make this even harder.
“Right, then. Jessica, over here in the circle,” Fiona said, pointing to the large chalk drawing in the very center of the room. “I know circles aren’t meant to keep out Shards, but there’s no harm in taking advantage of any modicum of safety this might provide you.”
“Okay,” I said weakly, and took my place at the heart of the circle. I felt the hum of energy as I entered within its boundaries. The familiar sensation calmed my pounding heart just a bit.
Fiona followed me into the circle and knelt down beside me, placing the rolled-up sketches on the ground beside me. “I think we should treat this like a Summoning,” she said. “Have you got your Casting bag?”
“Yes,” I said, pulling it from the pocket of my jeans. “Never leave home without it, right?”
“Cast a Summoning, and invite the Shards in. I know Castings aren’t meant to work on Shards, but if this spirit really was a Durupinen, then she will recognize a Summoning, and the familiarity of the invitation might put her at ease,” Fiona instructed. She reached into her own pocket and lay several items on the ground within reach of my hand: a gold dip pen with a pot of ink, a charcoal pencil, a paintbrush, and a tiny pot of oil paint. “These will give the spirit some options, if she’s particular about her method of communication. Many of them are.”
“You just happened to have a Victorian-era dip pen sitting in the cup on your desk?” I asked incredulously, picking it up to examine it.
“Yes, of course,” Fiona said, scowling at me.
“Right,” I said, putting it back down again. “Sorry. Please, continue.”
“Just talk to her, whoever she is. Try to get her to connect again. She may respond, or she may not. We won’t know until you try,” Fiona said.
“Okay. Well, we’re wasting precious time here, so let’s do it,” I said, with as much confidence as I could muster.
“I can call in my staff to help if the Hosts need to be subdued,” Mrs. Mistlemoore assured me.
“Good to know,” I said. I took a long, deep breath but the air seemed to meet a barrier in my lungs. “Let’s just do this before I lose my nerve.”
Finn made a strangled sort of sound, like he had started to speak and then cut himself off. I swallowed hard, pretending I hadn’t heard it.
Fiona backed out of the circle and squatted down just on the outside of the border, like an animal tensed to spring. She nodded at me. “I’ll feed you instructions. Give a go, now.”
I spoke the words of the Summoning as I retraced the circle with my own chalk. My voice echoed softly in the cavernous room, but faded quickly. As I finished, I held my breath, waiting for a sign of life or response from the Hosts around me. Nothing happened.
“Talk to her,” Fiona whispered. “Remind her what she looks like, who she is.”
I nodded and cleared my throat. I unrolled the sketches in front of me and smoothed them so that they lay flat against the floor. “I’m speaking to the spirit who is residing here in these Hosts,” I said tremulously. “I know that I have connected to you before.”
Still no one moved. Nothing stirred. I felt no pulses, no thrums of energy. All was still.
“I don’t know your name,” I said, imagining that the girl in the sketch was sitting across from me, that we were merely friends having a chat over coffee. “But I know what you look like. When we connected, I drew you. Do you remember? Do you remember who you are?” I picked up one of the sketches and held it up, turning on the spot with it like a teacher making sure each of her students could see the illustration in a picture book.
As I displayed the sketch to the very last of the beds, there was a sudden rustling sound. The figure in the bed sat up with alarming swiftness, staring intently at the sketch I held out before her.
It was Catriona.
“Breathe, Jessica,” Fiona whispered to me, and I drew in a ragged gasp of air I didn’t realize I was holding. “Keep talking.”
“I know this is you,” I said, holding the picture out further, closer to Catriona. “Do you recognize yourself?”
Very slowly, Catriona raised a shaking hand to her own face and caressed it, tilting her head to one side, her expression bewildered. All around the room nine other figures sat bolt upright in perfect unison. As I looked around me in terror, each made the very same motion, running her hand gently over her face and cocking her head to the side. Every set of eyes, fixed on the sketch in my hands, was identical—deep, dark, nearly swallowed by the black of the irises.
“Christ on a bike,” Fiona muttered. Over by the door, I could hear Finn quietly cursing under his breath.
It took several attempts to find my voice again as I fought my own panic. She’s just a girl, I told myself. A girl like me. She’s just lost—in pieces. She needs help. “That’s it,” I said, trying to sound warm and encouraging. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
Ten heads nodded slowly at me.
“Good. That’s very good,” I said, attempting a friendly smile. “I want to help you. I want to help discover who you are, so that we can put you back together again. You’ve been… broken. Broken apart. But I can help you. Do you want me to help you? Isn’t that why you reached out to me in the first place?”
Again, ten heads nodded at me. Ten hands dropped from ten cheeks into ten laps.
“Do you want me to draw for you again? If there is something you want to say, something you want to show me, use me again,” I said, and I pointed to the supplies Fiona had placed in the circle.
As one, all ten Hosts bent over their laps and began to mime the act of writing, just as I had seen them doing the day before.
“The pen,” Fiona hissed. “Use the pen.”
But I was already unscrewing the lid from the ink pot and flipping the sketch over to reveal an expanse of blank surface on which I could write. Then I took the pen in my hand, dipped it carefully in the ink, and set it to the paper.
I closed my eyes, feeling out into the mental space around me, trying to find a presence to latch onto. What I found instead was disturbing. The points of light that would have guided me when dealing with whole spirits were absent. What I found instead were flickering sparks that sputtered and died before I could connect with them. They darted around, dull and fluttering. They did not pull upon my senses, as a whole spirit would, but instead they left me feeling disoriented and confused, like a traveler trying to follow ten different sets of directions at once. The pen did not move. I felt no intervening consciousness, no drive to create taking control of me.
“She’s not connecting, Fiona,” I murmured. “I’m not sure if she just can’t or won’t. I’m not getting anything at all.”
“That’s not surprising,” Fiona answered. “There’s a good chance this will all be for naught, Jessica, but we’ve got to keep trying. Start asking her some questions.”
I returned my concentration to the energy in the room, reaching my mental feelers out as far as they would stretch, looking for something to latch on to.
“Can you help me write your name?” I asked. “Or maybe a place that you remember?”
The sparks wandered aimlessly, helplessly, exerting no pull upon me.
I tried again. “You wrote before that ‘The Caller betrayed’ you. Can you tell me what that means?”
I was so intent on the sensation in my hand—on trying to encourage the artistic connection—that Fiona’s tense whisper startled me.
“Jessica, don’t move. She’s right beside you.”
“What?!”
My eyes refused to open; they were glued shut with abject terror. Suddenly, I heard a slight shifting—a gentle rubbing sound of fabric against fabric—from just beside me. Then a ragged, labored breath caressed my ear. Every hair on my arms stood up as I battled my instinct to jump up and out of that circle as fast as I could. My own breathing sped up.
I heard a quick scuffling step, and then Fiona hissed, “No, Finn!
Stay in position!”
Slowly, I forced my eyes open. Catriona crouched next to me like a skittish animal, her face inches from my own, staring at me with those haunted, borrowed eyes. I tore my gaze from her and looked around the circle. Every Host was crouched in an identical position all along the edges of the circle, their breaths coming in perfect unison.
She’s just a girl, I repeated to myself. She’s just a girl in pieces and she needs my help.
I forced myself to look back into those eyes. “Do you know your name?” I asked softly.
Catriona just stared. I couldn’t even tell if she recognized that I was speaking words.
“Can you tell me who the Caller is? How did she betray you?” I asked, trying again.
Catriona leaned in incredibly close and whispered, with terrifying intimacy. “Promises. Shattered. Agony.”
All around me, the Hosts echoed her words, and each whisper of a voice throbbed with pain. If Mackie had been here, she would surely never have been able to bear it. Even my heart ached with it, and I was not an Empath.
“Ask her something else, Jessica,” said Fiona, a warning in her voice. “If she gets too upset, too worked up, you won’t get anything useful out of her. Go back to the sketch. That’s what got her to listen in the first place. Bring it back to the sketch.”
I wasn’t at all eager to give up on that line of questioning, but Fiona was right; we didn’t want to push our luck. I reached down slowly to pick the sketch up off the ground and held it up so that Catriona could look at it.
“You were beautiful,” I said softly.
The borrowed eyes filled with tears that spilled over and ran down Catriona’s cheeks. She reached a tremulous hand out and touched the picture gently with one finger. All around us, all the Hosts mimicked her movement.
“Look here, at your neck,” I told her, pointing to the place. “This necklace, here. This isn’t a real necklace. It’s words, see? These are words you wanted me to know. It says, “little book.” Do you know what that means?”
