Deception (22 page)

He took a shaky breath.
I don’t want to say his name. He is strong and growing stronger. He hears things and punishes those who—

Neos?

He nodded quickly, eyes wide in his pale face.
He raises wraiths, I don’t know how—he’s
… Edmund shook his head.
I can’t explain. Twisting things.

Who is he? How can I find him?

He’s one of you,
Edmund said.
Or he
was.
I don’t know any more than that.
He knelt beside my chair.
Do you really want to find him? He’s killed before. Killed the living and the dead.

Just tell me how, Edmund.

Then you’ll dispel me?

No.
I was never doing that again.

He stood abruptly, his face clouded.
I don’t know how to find him. You should worry more about him finding you. Someone’s been compelling spirits all morning, seeking information about him. He’s on the hunt right now.

But who would be—

Oh God. Martha.

My chair scraped across the floor as I stood. “I’m going to be sick,” I said, and raced from the room.

24

I stumbled through the front doors of the museum. “Martha?”

No answer. I ran to the kitchen, but she wasn’t in her usual spot in the breakfast nook. I called her name again, checking the porch, then her bedroom.

“Martha! Martha!” I galloped down the stairs. “Celeste, where is she? Anatole? Nicholas, come tell me what
—
”

I stopped, spotting the three of them at the end of the hall. Standing in a line, like when we’d first met, staring into the front parlor. They appeared duller somehow, grayer and dingier.

My throat clenched and I rushed past them to the open door. It was a large, ornate room with uncomfortable formal furnishings, so we hardly ever came in here. A clock ticked loudly on the mantel. The afternoon sunlight, dappled by falling leaves outside, shone across the far wall.

The wide-planked wooden floor was painted white, and in the middle Martha lay on her back, legs and arms spread in an
X
. I screamed when I saw her.

Her skin was pale and cool. I shook her and called her name
—
even though I knew. She was dead. Martha was dead. I couldn’t catch my breath, I couldn’t stop crying.

“Martha, no,” I said, sobbing. “No, no
—
please.”

Anatole? Celeste? What happened?

But when I turned to the doorway, they were gone.

I knelt next to Martha’s body, afraid to touch the blood seeping from her chest and forehead. Her features were etched with fear and blood dripped into her eyes. I took a shuddering breath and forced myself to examine her.

The wound in her head trailed down one temple, across her chin, down her neck to her chest in a snakelike pattern. Her white blouse, so properly buttoned when I left her this morning, had been torn open to reveal her chest. The starched linen was soaked in crimson blood from the designs cut into her skin.

She looked so undignified that I moved to pull her shirt closed, then realized I shouldn’t touch anything before the police got here. I didn’t know what to do. I needed to call someone, but couldn’t move.

On the floor beside her, I found the pattern burned into the wood. Same as the amulet I wore around my neck.

I sat beside her corpse until shadows filled the room. Finally, I took her cold, limp hand between both of mine, to say good-bye, and realized that her fist was slightly closed. Inside her fingers, I discovered a gold ring, like a simple wedding band, with a little tag on it:
Emma
.

I removed the tag and held the ring to the fading light of the afternoon sun
—
then started crying again. This was the keepsake she’d found while organizing. Her surprise. Martha had died alone, frightened, and in pain
—
with a gift for me clenched in her hand.

“Oh, Martha,” I said. So sweet and good and giving.

Until someone brutally cut her life short. And I knew who.

The anger built inside of me and I summoned:
Neos
.

The house creaked with the wind. An ache crept into my chest, my skin itched and my stomach clenched. I felt a shifting of air behind me, but when I turned, there was nothing.

Emma Vaile.
The voice came, slick and slithery, into my mind.
Do not call what you cannot control.

I’m not going to control you, I’m going to dispel you.

Spectral laughter echoed.
You are going to writhe under my knife.

Show yourself, then.

A patch of unnatural shadow slunk across the floor, and I shoved at it with my mind. The laughter grew louder.

I am not to be pushed around like any old ghost,
he said.

What are you? A wraith?

I am the wraiths’ master. I am Neos.

He appeared, with crow eyes and spidery fingers. There was a dagger in his left hand, the blade still wet with Martha’s blood.

Have you seen my little white dog?

I stepped back. The ghost from the abandoned storefront. All those years ago. The ghost my mother saved me from. But where was my mother? Who would save me now?

My poor lost Snowball, all alone. Will you help me find her?

“For Martha,” I whispered, and summoned my powers and lashed at him.

His form frayed and his edges feathered into dust. I struck harder
—
again and again
—
until he crumbled like a sandcastle.

Then swirled and re-formed, the same as before. Unhurt.

He laughed in triumph.
All these years in the fog, growing stronger. But never strong enough—not until
you
started coming into your power.

No
, I said, and lashed at him again.

Don’t you see? I’ve tasted your blood. As your power grows, so does mine. And when I find that talisman, I will straddle the border between life and death.

Then he unwove himself into strips of darkness. Snakes of smoky blackness wrapped around me like a cocoon, winding tighter and darker.

I struggled to find the spark inside me and I blasted him with everything I had. He bound me tighter and his darkness swallowed my light. I felt myself fading and all I could think was,
Martha, I’ve failed you.

As my consciousness ebbed away, I felt the ring that she’d set aside for me still clasped in my fist
—
her final gift.

I slipped it on my finger. And a rush of foreign memories and emotions sang in my mind. The ring throbbed with power and tightened on my finger. All at once, I disappeared.

I became a ghost.

Weightless and untouched, I fell through Neos’s smoky snakes and stepped into the light of the front parlor. My body had become transparent and my mind flashed with foreign memories as I straightened.

Neos’s surprise and anger boiled toward me, and I fled.

Like a ghost, I escaped through the walls. It would’ve been so cool
—
if I hadn’t been so freaked out.

He screeched and followed close behind with his dagger. I twisted through the walls and ceilings, slid through the brick of the chimney, and spun with quicksilver weightlessness into the basement. Then I went up through the stone foundation to the rose garden.

Before Neos reached the garden, the Rake appeared. He engaged Neos as he was halfway out of the cellar door and fought him fiercely, his blade flashing against Neos’s knife. But he was only a ghost, not a walking nightmare. He pierced Neos in the shoulder then fell back, desperately defending himself against Neos’s snakes of shadow.

I reached out with my mind
—
if I couldn’t dispel Neos, I’d compel him away. But his thoughts revolted me. They were disjointed and tortured, livid with madness. Wearing the ring seemed to make it worse; I couldn’t compel him while overcome by his sick thoughts.

I removed the ring and Neos turned to me as the Rake vanished. I tried to force him away
—
I compelled with all my will
—
but his form, made of shadows and inky blackness, simply faltered, then refocused.

Behind me, there was a crush of gravel. Bennett, arriving in his old Land Rover. He sped from the driveway across the lawn toward us.

He leaped from the driver’s seat and launched a spear of light at Neos. Martha had said everyone’s power was different, but I couldn’t believe I could actually see Bennett’s. He advanced toward Neos, his face a mask of concentration.

Watching him use his power was like watching the Rake with a sword: intense and masterful. But he was also unable to defeat Neos. At first they seemed evenly matched, but slowly Neos overwhelmed him.

I circled behind Neos, and loosed a blast of my own into his back. He screeched, and I poured everything into a ribbon of light, my own power no longer invisible, but an endless stream from my fingers into the blackness. Neos clawed at my light and Bennett leaped closer and thrust one hand inside Neos’s chest.

His fist glowed with my power, and my ribbon of light swayed like a python. Slowly, slowly, Neos started to waver, then to fade.

Until he was gone.

We stood there a moment, stunned and breathless. Until I ran to Bennett and he hugged me fiercely.

“Thank God, Emma. Thank God you’re all right.”

He kissed the top of my head and held me. I’d lost Martha and fought some nightmare monster from the Beyond … but finally, wrapped in Bennett’s arms, I felt safe.

Bennett. It was Bennett who had saved me.

He kissed my temple, his lips moving closer to my mouth. “Emma,” he whispered. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long
—
”

I couldn’t let him finish. “Martha’s inside,” I interrupted. “She’s dead.”

When the police finally left, I wandered into the kitchen and collapsed into the breakfast nook. A notebook sat open beside the teapot. Martha had just begun another list. The tears started again.

Anatole appeared and quietly took the notebook away, then coddled me with cookies and tea while Celeste wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.

What is he?
I asked.

We do not know. An abomination. We just
—
Celeste blew a puff of air
—
fled into ze Beyond when we felt ze wickedness.

I wish we’d been braver,
Anatole said.

Oui
.
For your sake,
Celeste agreed.
And for Martha.

I glanced at their distraught faces. She might have been bossy, but they’d loved Martha in their way.

There’s nothing you could’ve done,
I told them.

But what about me? I’d given her Neos’s name. This was all my fault.

. . .

Hours later, Bennett found me sitting at the piano in the ballroom. I’d left the lights off, preferring the darkening gloom and the few candles flickering in a silver candelabra on top of the piano.

I missed everyone so much. My parents, to tell me everything would be okay. Max, who made me crazy but was always my brother. I loved my new friends, but still ached for the intimacy I’d shared with Abby. I just couldn’t pinpoint where I’d gone wrong. If only I could go back, make a better choice. Somehow stop Martha’s death. At least keep my family from disappearing.

“We’re going to get frost tonight,” Bennett said, sitting down next to me at the piano.

“I’ve never seen real snow. Martha told me it’s magical the first time.”

Bennett smiled sadly, then played the opening phrases of Beethoven’s
Moonlight Sonata
. My dad was totally into classical music and made me listen with him on Sunday mornings. I suddenly yearned to see him, to lie on the couch in his office and have him explain yet again why Mozart was so very brilliant.

“I didn’t know you played,” I said when he finished.

“Not very well. My sister
—
” He shook his head. “She played better than that when she was eight years old.”