Ghostly Echoes (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Finstern's face twisted in a tortured mess of emotions. Confusion, anger, and something like hope rolled and crashed into one another as his twin sister walked toward him. His uneven eyes were wild and wary, while the woman's were bright and keen, but they were the same shape exactly, and the same vivid green. His unkempt hair was thin and ruddy orange while hers hung in graceful strawberry blonde waves, but otherwise the two were nearly identical. The curve of their noses, the cut of their jaws—there was no question that they were related.

“Morwen,” he whispered.

“Not recently,” she said. “Still, it's sweet that you remember. I've missed you.” Her accent was American, without a trace of the Welsh tones that distinguished her brother's speech.

“How long have you been watching me?” Finstern demanded.

“Long enough to step in before you got yourself killed.” She nodded toward Jenny—who was still locked in my frozen body. “It's a hex, by the way. It won't hold forever, but it will last long enough for our purposes. Our scouts in the Annwyn got word you had crossed over. You didn't use the Rend, either—you managed to open a veil-gate. Father will be very impressed. Where did you find it?”

“Don't tell her anything!” Jackaby yelled. “She's a nixie! They're tricksters, Finstern! Liars by nature!”

Morwen turned on her heel. “You're being very rude, Detective! Can't you see we're in the middle of a family reunion?” She put a hand to her chest and clasped the gray marble. “Alloch, would you please teach Mr. Jackaby not to interrupt me when I'm speaking?”

The ground shook as the slate gray giant closed the distance between itself and Jackaby in two wide steps. The hulking thing was twenty feet tall with hands that could palm a packhorse. Jackaby leapt aside, but the oreborn moved with remarkable speed for a landmass. It caught him in one huge granite fist and lifted him ten feet up in the air. Jackaby struggled, his feet kicking in vain.

“The stones!” he croaked as the oreborn's fingers pressed into his chest. “The stones around her neck, Finstern—that's how she's controlling the elementals. They're bound by the bracers on their wrists. Break the—” Alloch tightened his hold.

“That's better,” said Morwen. “Where were we?”

“You were about to explain why I should help you,” said Finstern.

“We're kin, Owen.” Morwen gave him a smile that seemed to be trying just a little too hard. “It's time you joined the family business.”

“You left me to rot. You expect me to believe you suddenly want me back?”

“Who do you think sent you the invitation?” The smile was beatific, but it never quite melted the frost of her cold eyes. “It was my idea to bring you in. I want you to join us, Owen. Father wants you, too. He's been watching.”

Owen's eye twitched. He swallowed and took a deep breath. “Father?”

“We want the same thing, brother. In fact, I'm looking forward to seeing you finish what you've started.” She nodded toward Finstern's device. “It's about time you got a little magic of your own, isn't it? You've already proven yourself with science. Father was willing to bring you in on the merits of your work alone—now imagine what he would think of you with powers, as well. What a welcome you will receive as his rightful heir. Owen Finstern, the one true Seer and key to the coming kingdom.”

“Rosemary's Green,” said Finstern. “The gate we entered is on a mound in the northeast corner. One of their friends is keeping it open. I think he's some kind of half-breed. I heard the detective call him Seelie when he thought I wasn't listening.”

An uneven smirk pulled Morwen's lips taut. She clasped the second stone on her necklace. “Autoch, dispose of the little nuisance at Rosemary's Green for us, please.” The second hulking elemental stalked off into the forest, back the way we had come.

“No!” Jackaby managed to wheeze.

“What's that? You'd suddenly like to cooperate?” Morwen called up to him.

Alloch loosened his grasp ever so slightly and Jackaby gasped. “Leave Charlie out of this,” he rasped. “He's done nothing to you.”

“That's not how it works, Detective. You had your chance to play along. Now your friends are going to die. You can watch, if you like—before we kill you, too.”

“I'll do it,” Jackaby groaned. “I'll cross over willingly. It's the only way to do the thing cleanly. Just ask your brother. If he tries to force the sight out of me, he'll pull me out right along with it. He's seen what two souls can do to a body.”

Finstern nodded, scowling. “It's true. It is unpleasant.”

“I'll let him have the sight,” said Jackaby. “Just call off your elementals and let Rook and Jenny go.” The machine was still humming beneath him. “Please. They've been through enough.”

Morwen scowled for a moment, and then a wicked grin spread across her face. “Rook
and
Jenny?”

“The girl,” Finstern explained. “Her soul went underground, but they travel with a ghost. The dead woman has taken control of the girl's body.”

“Jenny Cavanaugh?” The woman's skin glistened like rippling water, and she changed. Her blonde locks relaxed and darkened to a soft brunette, and her face transformed. She looked exactly as Jenny had in life. “Not sweet, innocent Jenny Cavanaugh?” she mocked, her voice becoming a perfect match for Jenny's.

She tapped my body's frozen forehead with a fingernail. “Are you really in there? This is rich. I heard rumors, but I had no idea . . . You can't get free of my little hex, can you? Oh, this is delicious. I've killed a lot of people in a lot of ways, but I've never had the pleasure of killing the same person twice. Did you get my little anniversary present? I carved it myself.”

Jenny's eyes all but screamed from within my frozen sockets.

Morwen reached up to take my knife from my frozen hand, but the moment she touched the silver she cried out and pulled away. Her palm was blistered. It looked as if she had grabbed hold of a glowing coal.

Morwen swore under her breath. “Awfully ostentatious, aren't we? Who carries around a silver knife? Fine. That's fine. If we're going to do this again, let's do it right, anyway.”

With a ripple like a breeze over a still lake, her hair darkened further to a deep black and her dress became a crisp skirt and white blouse. A new face emerged, one I had seen before over the top of a clipboard. She was Mayor Poplin's secretary. She had been there ten years ago, hiding in plain sight. She reached to her belt and drew the long dagger from its sheath. The metal was as black as midnight and curved slightly, like an Arabian scimitar. She was hardly one to complain about ostentatious weapons.

“There we go. Remember this one? Just like old times, isn't it?” she taunted. “Better, even. Last time I killed you I was in such a rush. I'll be sure to savor it this time.”

She drew the black blade down Jenny's cheek—down my cheek. Her brother's threats had only been for effect, but Morwen did not hold back. The edge pierced my skin and cut a line of deep crimson from the corner of my eye down toward my jaw. Jenny's eyes screamed from within my frozen sockets. My head swam. I couldn't watch. I felt sick and trapped and helpless.

Abruptly, the ebony blade shot backward. It landed in the dirt behind Morwen, glowing red hot at the tip as though just plucked from a forge fire. She clutched her already injured hand and snarled with indignant rage. “What?”

I didn't understand it myself. Blood ran down my body's unmoving face, but what force had stopped her blade was beyond me.

On the other side of the clearing, Jackaby grunted. He wrenched an arm free and, with a flick of his wrist, flung a little red stone—the last of the Cherufe's tears—toward his captor's rocky arm. It hit the inside of Alloch's elbow, and at once the giant's granite flesh boiled. Alloch bellowed. The stony arm glowed red from the curve of his shoulder to the steel brace around his wrist. Great gobs of charred molten rock were sloughing off and dropping to the earth.

“Do it now!” Morwen commanded her brother. “Turn it on!” Her secretary façade slipped away, and she was herself once more, strawberry blonde with furious panic playing across her eyes. She retrieved the black blade with her uninjured hand.

Finstern had scrambled to the machine. “I can't!” he said. “His soul needs to leave his body first!”

“Alloch!” Morwen clasped the gray bead on her necklace with her free hand. “Throw him over the line! Now! Ouch!” The little stone bead was glowing like a hot coal.

The enormous elemental moaned—a sound like the echoing rumble of a rock slide—but he obliged, his arm swinging toward the gate. At the same moment, Finstern activated the machine.

I felt a pressure at my back, and then I was suddenly across the threshold.

Time held still.

An unseen force pulled me toward my body. I drifted past Jackaby, who was still pinned in the monster's grip, unable to stop himself from plunging toward the threshold as I left it. I drifted past Finstern, lit by the unearthly glow emanating from his device, and past Morwen, her expression furious and frantic.

I spun as I drifted into my own sorely abused body, a new perspective snapping abruptly into place before me. The world burst back to life in the same instant. The bead in Morwen's hand exploded, fracturing in a burst of gray shards right in front of me. She cried out in alarm and nearly dropped her wicked black blade. At the same moment, Alloch's forearm broke free from the rest of his body, carrying Jackaby with it to land with an earthshaking thud just shy of the shadow's edge. Finstern's machine pulsed with a blinding white-blue beam of light for several seconds, and then it sparked and went dark again. Finstern doubled over on the ground. I was looking through my own eyes again, watching the madness around me, but I could not move.

I felt a flood of fear and fury bubbling out of control inside my skull. I could barely hear myself think. I focused. “Jenny,” I thought. “I'm here. You're not alone.”

The storm of emotions softened. “I'm afraid,” she thought. “I'm so sorry. I tried. I can't move.”

“Let's try again,” I thought. “Together.”

Alloch clutched the stump of his arm, which stuck out at a gruesome angle from his broad torso, charred and broken. He shook his head and roared, loud and deep. The sound echoed through the forest, and then the colossus stalked away, shaking the ground with each step.

Owen Finstern staggered and fell sideways as he attempted to pick himself up off the ground.

“Brother?” asked Morwen, sheathing the blade at her hip. “Did it work?”

Owen stood. “Yes.” he said. “No!” He twitched and clutched at his temples. The inventor's legs betrayed him and he toppled to the ground again.

“The sight, brother—do you have the sight?” Morwen demanded.

“No! No—he's in my head! It hurts! Help me!” Forces within Finstern were working at cross purposes. With each frantic step he seemed to be pulling himself against his own will closer and closer to the underworld.

With tremendous effort I felt my fingers flex. My hand clenched into a fist. I could sense the magic of the hex beginning to splinter.

“Keep pushing.” The thought echoed in my head, though I don't know if it was mine or Jenny's. “Keep pushing.” I poured every ounce of will I had into the effort, and from somewhere inside me I felt Jenny's energy building, resonating like an orchestral crescendo. And then we were suddenly pushing against nothing.

The hex broke. We were free. I felt Jenny's presence leave me and I fell to my knees, once more alone in my own head. The world spun and I fought against the dizziness. My eyes tried to focus on a glittering shape that lay on the ground before me. When it had slowed to a gradual spin, I reached out and picked up the silver knife.

“Impossible!” Morwen wrapped the fingers of her good hand around the remaining bead on her necklace. “Autoch. Get back here. Now!” From within her grasp, the second bead cracked audibly.

I have had to piece together the events that had been taking place beyond my sight on the edge of Rosemary's Green that day. What follows is my best interpretation of Charlie's account of his experience, with his modesty and brevity removed.

Charlie had maintained his position as promised, safeguarding our veil-gate atop the grassy mound. The first creature to approach him was a jackrabbit with a little pair of antlers affixed atop its head. Charlie shooed the timid creature back into the forest with little difficulty, but there were more to come. A silvery owl as tall as a man coasted down out of the leaves to investigate the portal with suspicious eyes before flapping away. Three stocky fairies with wings like moths chose that moment to make a break for it, but Charlie batted them away. Next came a sort of scaly chicken, which startled easily and hurried off, and then a tawny stag with antlers of polished gold. Charlie had stomped, snarled, and swatted back a dozen strange species by the time the forest shook and a flurry of leaves spun to the ground.

The oreborn, Autoch, was twenty feet tall if he was an inch, his skin made of living, dusty brown rock. The boulders that made up his knee joints ground together with a rough, grating scrape as he stalked toward Charlie.

Charlie took a deep breath. “We don't have to do this,” he said evenly.

“GRRAAAAAUGH!” countered Autoch with all the eloquence of an avalanche.

“Or perhaps we do.” Charlie slipped his suspenders down from his shoulders and kicked off his shoes as the oreborn pounded closer. The window into the Annwyn filled with megalithic muscles and the forest shuddered with each heavy footfall, but by the time the behemoth was upon him, Charlie had changed. He met the rock monster in his canine form, muscles rippling beneath a coat of chocolate brown and black.