by Lily Velez
Another spirit had taken to terrorizing the main square. Though it never showed its true form, vending tables and produce carts would unexpectedly overturn during the busiest market hours, fruit and vegetables bowling along the bumpy cobblestone paths. More than one shopper had reported feeling a chill down their spine or a cool breath against their neck.
There were other stories as well. Many claimed a shrieking spirit would zip past homes sometime after midnight, making window shutters clap against buildings in a deafening riot. Food seemed to be spoiling quicker, children were reporting more nightmares than usual, and lightning was taking more direct aim at boats and buildings—three times already, the power had completely gone out in town and had stayed down for unnaturally long periods of time.
“It’s harmless behavior for the time being,” Father Nolan had said to me recently. “But I fear the spirits will soon grow more brazen, and when they do, these attacks of theirs can fast become dangerous for the townspeople.”
A part of me didn’t want to care. The townspeople swore on their ancestors’ graves that Elizabeth had to be orchestrating all this from the world beyond, and I was more than happy to let them continue believing that. I found myself even wishing it were true, seeing it as the town getting its just deserts.
Unfortunately, Jack’s misplaced faith in me continued to nag at the remaining shreds of whatever conscience I still managed to possess. I knew if he were here, he’d be doing everything in his power to protect Rosalyn Bay from every imaginable manifestation of evil. I hated that he thought it was our responsibility to defend the Sightless. More than that, I hated that I felt like I was letting him down if I didn’t do the same.
Which was why Lucas and I were even here at all tonight. We’d done our best to capture as many spirits as possible in the odd hours of the night when Rosalyn Bay was fast asleep. Then, with sigils, we’d send those spirits back to the Otherworld.
The problem was it didn’t seem to matter how many we caught. The next day, a dozen more spirits would pop up to replace those long gone. Collecting a handful of the damned here and there wasn’t going to cut it. What we needed was a mass culling.
“And half the fruit’s already got mold on it,” Lucas was saying, still hung up on the lack of variety in the townspeople’s offerings.
It was ironic. The townspeople left these gifts to please Elizabeth in hopes of keeping her at bay, but they sure as hell didn’t bother to offer us, her direct descendants, any sort of pleasantries whenever we were in town.
Speaking of pleasantries…
“Have you spoken to Rory today?” I asked as I decapitated another stuffed animal. In my defense, this one had suspicious stitching along the neck that didn’t quite blend in with the rest of its fur. Sure enough, it took only seconds of going through stuffing before I located a tiny vial of clear liquid. Carmelite water, most likely. It was made from the juice of angelica roots, which was believed to lessen the power of a witch’s magic.
“No,” Lucas said, “but if you happen to, here’s a novel concept. Maybe try being a bit more convivial?”
I always knew when Lucas had an upcoming vocabulary quiz because he’d nonchalantly insert these sophisticated words into every-day conversation, as if we weren’t supposed to notice.
I let out a low whistle. “Was that a four-syllable word that left your mouth just then? Careful, or people might start to think you actually have a brain up there.”
“You know what you need? Besides an entire personality transplant?”
“I’m dying to find out,” I replied flatly.
“You need a life. That way, you can stop meddling in all of ours. Why don’t you try chatting up one of the girls at school?”
When St. Andrew’s had announced its decision to grant admission to local scholarship students, male and female alike, Lucas had practically broken out the celebratory wine. He’d wasted no time in introducing himself to every last girl unlucky enough to endure him, and now, every day without fail, I’d spot him in the hallways flirting with a gaggle of adoring fans as he showed off those ridiculous card tricks of his.
“I think I'll pass,” I said.
Lucas smacked his forehead in an overly theatrical way. “That’s right. I nearly forgot. You only date witches. Or rather, you only date one witch in particular. Too bad she wishes you'd drop dead half the time.”
It never ceased to amaze me how so many people assumed Lucas and I were twins. The mere notion was ridiculous. Yes, we were the only brothers in the family who shared the same hair color, but the two of us couldn’t have been more different. More importantly, had I shared the womb with Lucas, I would've been sure to strangle him with my umbilical cord before he'd had a chance to be born.
I leaned over and plucked a grapefruit from a bowl. It was covered in soft, damp spots, which made it perfect for my purposes. I tossed it once in the air, caught it, and then quickly twisted around to hurl it at Lucas.
He’d anticipated the attack. He was already holding up a doll to shield himself. The grapefruit struck the doll head-on, splattering against her porcelain face, red juice spilling down her ringlets of hair.
“You heartless animal,” Lucas said. “You’ve ruined her poor dress.”
“It’s an improvement honestly,” I said. “The thing already looks like it’s possessed.”
For a while, we sifted through the offerings to uncover any Trojan horses, destroy them, and then throw everything else into the rental dumpster situated beside the cottage courtesy of my new friend, the mayor.
“I haven’t even seen Rory since this morning,” Lucas said, circling back to our previous conversation. “He was oversleeping, but I was afraid that if I woke him up, he’d roast me alive.”
“Did you know it’d gotten that bad?”
“He’ll learn to control it. Give him a break. You threatened to take away the one friend he’s managed to make at St. Andrew’s. What did you expect?”
I rolled my eyes. “Misaki’s Sight—”
“Yes, he’s Sightless. But honestly, Connor, so what? The way I see it, if Rory wants him to know, then we should respect that. If Misaki turns out to be someone we can’t trust, then we’ll deal with that when the time comes. But as long as he’s not giving us any reason to doubt him, what harm could there possibly be in it?”
I still didn’t like it. That said, with Rory’s magic out of control the way it was, I had no choice but to concede. Even the slightest provocation during your witching year could be disastrous. Our priority now had to be in helping Rory rein in his powers. After that, we could figure out this Misaki nonsense. Better yet, I’d let Jack deal with it. He was better at being ‘convivial.’
By the time we finished cleaning up Elizabeth’s patio, it was just about midnight.
“The witching hour,” Lucas announced, rubbing his hands together excitedly.
At least one of us was thrilled about what was to come.
“Let’s get on with it already,” I said, descending the rickety patio steps. I grabbed the neck of my waiting acoustic guitar on the way down and slung its worn strap over my shoulder.
We made our way around the cottage and into the woods out back. I grimaced at the graveyard of small animals we passed, noticing the grooves in the dirt near their feet, as if they’d spent their last moments digging for something. Or struggling.
Seeing their lifeless bodies, I couldn’t help but think about our mother. I’d lost count at this point of the number of times I’d tried to wake her in the past few days. Poring over The Book of Fates and other grimoires had both mentally taxed me and transformed me into an insomniac. Even now, I felt as if I were sleepwalking, my mind somewhere else as my body went through scripted motions.
Whenever I wasn’t deep in spellcraft, Irish words flew across my mind like microfilm in a reader. I’d mentally circle back to spells I’d already attempted and consider how a slight change here or a considerable alteration there might improve the spell’s efficacy. I’
d revisit everything I’d learned about herbs and crystals and sigils and wrack my mind for what I could possibly be doing wrong.
All the while, our mother continued to age, her hair thinning, her skin paling.
If we didn’t find a way to wake her up soon…
I shoved the thought away.
I couldn’t think about that now. As much as I wanted to, as much as I needed to, I couldn’t. I knew it would only make me furious over things I had no control over. Plus, at present, I already had a sizable mountain of stressors piling up in my mind.
Like the matter of The Vanquished. We hadn’t contended with any of Balor’s thirteen prisoners since Five Maidens Beach, but I knew Alistair was still releasing them out into the world one by one, and our time on that front was running out fast. There was no way to know if Jack and Scarlet were any closer to retrieving The Eternal Flame. There was no way to know if they were even still alive.
I pushed that thought away too.
Once Lucas and I were deep enough into the forest, I turned my attention to the guitar. I tuned the first, second, and sixth strings down a whole step to create the sound most suitable for Celtic music and spent some moments running through a few chords. It probably looked like I was reacquainting myself with the instrument. In a way, I guessed I was. Up until yesterday, it had been gathering dust at Crowmarsh for the longest time.
It seemed like a relic from another life. My father had given it to me for my ninth birthday, the guitar handmade by a highly sought-after luthier among witch-kind. The combination of Engelmann Spruce and East Indian Rosewood, plus other woods that only grew Elsewhere, made for a rich liquid sound that was warm in the ears and that made a person’s soul vibrate like a plucked string.
Tonight, though, my ears weren’t the main audience.
Supernatural creatures possessed all manner of peculiarities. Set a drink out at an empty table in a rural pub, and you might attract the clurichaun, a spiteful little fiend with an affinity for alcohol. Leave a few stalks of your harvest out in the field on the first of November, and a type of shapeshifting goblin called a púca would come to collect it.
As for spirits, if there was one thing they couldn’t resist, it was music. No one really knew why. Some said the verses themselves cast a hypnotic spell, reminding the spirits of their mortal lives and leaving them in a state of nostalgic transfixation until the song finished. Some said it was simply a remnant of druidic magic, considering our ancestors had once used harps regularly to manipulate the emotions of their listeners, spelling them without their even knowing.
Regardless of the mechanics behind the matter, the point still stood that music—of all things, music—was the sharpest weapon we could wield right now against the damned.
Lucas pulled a tin whistle out of his pocket and tested a few of its notes, his fingers moving deftly over the woodwind instrument’s holes.
It had been so long since we’d played music together. Years, in fact. Once upon a time, we’d spend hours covering everything from folk ballads to fast-paced drinking songs. After our father died, things changed. Or maybe it was that I changed. Or maybe we all had changed in our own unspoken way.
Tapping the flute against his open palm, Lucas nodded to me. He was ready.
I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled it.
Then I started to play.
It was a melancholy song, a song of longing and regret and loss. It told the story of a merchant man who takes to the seas year-round in search of fortune. In his absence, his children grow up and become adults. They marry and have children of their own. They know of their father only through the stories their mother occasionally shares, but sharing them grows more painful for her as the years pass, and eventually, his name is never spoken again in the home.
Meanwhile, halfway across the world, the merchant man nearly loses his life in a shipwreck. Stranded at sea for some time, he assesses how he’s spent his years and is ashamed by his absence in his children’s lives and in his wife’s. A passing boat saves the remaining members of his crew, and he makes the decision to give up chasing fortune and return home at once.
Except that none of his loved ones can see him when he finally arrives. He tries to grab for them but is unable to do so. He calls out their names again and again, but no one can hear his voice.
Eventually, the truth settles in. He died in the shipwreck. He’s only a spirit.
The opportunity has passed for him to beg his wife’s forgiveness and tell her how much he’s always loved her. He no longer has the chance to hug and kiss his sons and tell them how proud he is of the men they’ve become. All too late, he discovered what was most important in life, and with no one left to keep his memory alive, he becomes no more than a wisp in the wind.
As I sang the despairing lyrics, Lucas accompanied me on the tin whistle, his sharp notes ringing out to complement the haunting melody leaping off my guitar strings. I could feel the music’s magic pulsating in my chest, humming in my bones. The merchant man’s heartbreak could’ve very well been my own, his pain my pain.
I didn’t think it was all entirely magic, though. Yesterday, I’d sat at my mother’s bedside, playing music for her for the entire evening, vainly hoping I could wake her with spelled lyrics, that hearing a familiar lullaby might rouse her spirit and motivate it to break through this dark enchantment. As with everything else, it hadn’t worked, and once I left her room, I could’ve smashed the damn guitar into a wall at yet another failure.
Back in the forest, I continued to play. I didn’t see the first spirit so much as I felt them, an energetic presence materializing to my right. I raised my voice, the music becoming more emphatic and woeful. Lucas pulled notes out of the tin whistle just as fervently, his eyes closed while the music took him to whatever memories it evoked.
What was one spirit soon became three and then six and then more than a dozen, each one flickering into form within the clearing. They made up a loose circle around us, staring with glassy, distant gazes as the music put them in a trancelike state. Soon, their numbers doubled, and before another minute passed, it doubled again. A proper ‘standing room only’ crowd.
I nudged Lucas’s ankle with my foot to snap him out of his reverie. Then, slowly, I started forward, never letting my fingers miss a beat as they progressed from chord to chord. Though the song reached its end, I quickly looped back to the beginning to start all over again.
After a few steps, Lucas glanced back, still playing the flute, and gave me another nod. The spirits were following us. It was working.
We must’ve looked an odd sight, hiking through the forest under a waxing moon while a host of spirits trudged after us, hypnotized by our music.
It wasn’t long before we made it back to Elizabeth’s cottage, and within seconds, we were inside its four walls. I took position at the center of the main room, Lucas attached to my side, and the spirits marched in with glazed eyes, threading around us until we were in the middle of several bands of the dead.
Now came the tricky part.
I continued playing while Lucas abandoned the flute and quickly began to chant in Irish. Snapping his fingers, he lighted scores of candles we’d previously set about the room.
The music only halfway afloat, some of the spirits began to stir from their hypnosis. I strummed harder and sang louder, hoping to reel them back in.
For some, it worked. For others, it didn’t.
The glaze over their eyes faded. They blinked, they twitched.
I wanted to tell Lucas to hurry the bloody hell up, but I couldn’t risk dropping the melody. The spirits who’d slipped out of their stupor growled and started pushing their way toward us. One lunged for me, and I had no choice but to stop playing and throw out a hand to block him with magic.
When the music came to an abrupt stop, the remaining mesmerized spirits stirred, recollecting themselves, realizing what had happened. And they weren’t happy about it. They charged for us.
“Filleadh!” Lucas
shouted, directing both hands toward the ceiling. Return.
The spirits all looked up as one, and when they saw the sigil we’d painted there beforehand, they shrieked. It was all they had time to do. The sigil, activated by Lucas’s command, glowed blue before bursting into a blinding light. I shielded my eyes with my forearm.
When I dared look again, every last spirit was gone. I let go of a breath trapped in my lungs.
For tonight, our work here was done.
At least I thought as much until I heard soft crying from a back room.
Lucas and I followed the sound at once, taken aback by what we stumbled upon.
“It’s an Echo,” I said.
A woman in a rundown smock and frayed bonnet knelt before a little girl who wore her hair in two plaits. The woman was smoothing away tears that striped the girl’s pouty cheeks. They both were painfully thin, so thin their collar bones jutted out, their complexions pallid.
“There, there, little dove,” the woman cooed. “There’s no reason to be upset.”
Elizabeth and Abigail, I realized, a trap door giving way in my stomach. Echoes were pulses of energy from witches who’d come before us. Their purpose was to show truth or provide guidance. What could our ancestors be trying to impart to us now? I strained to understand.
“What about Jonah?” Abigail asked, hugging a raggedy, soft-bodied doll to her chest. Her voice was so small and fragile.
We’re here today because of her, I thought. I wanted to take her away from this place. I wanted to protect her from the persecution that was soon to fall upon her mother’s head. There was no way she could’ve known what her life would soon become. It was a deep cut seeing her as this innocent, unsuspecting child, knowing she’d be dead within twenty years.
Jonah? Lucas mouthed to me.
I shook my head, not having the answer.
“He’s already fast asleep. Now you must be strong. Do you remember your hiding place?”
Abigail’s head bobbed up and down, as she hugged her doll closer to herself.
