Girl of Nightmares (26 page)

“Carmel,” Thomas starts. He stops when she fixes her eyes on him, and I know he’s reading her mind. “Don’t waste the food, at least,” he mumbles finally, and smiles.

“You three go ahead,” says Gideon, taking me by the arm. “We’ll catch up shortly.”

They nod and head for the door. When they turn into the hall, I hear Carmel mutter about how much she hates this place, and that she hopes Anna can somehow get it to implode like she did with the Victorian. It makes me smile. Then Gideon clears his throat.

“What is it?” I ask.

“It’s the things that Colin didn’t tell you. Things that you might not have considered.” He shrugs. “Maybe just the useless hunches of an old man.”

“Dad always trusted your hunches,” I say. “You always seemed to help him out.”

“Right until I couldn’t,” he says. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that he still carries that around, even though what happened wasn’t his fault. He’ll feel the same way about me if I don’t make it back. Maybe Thomas and Carmel will too, and it won’t be their fault either.

“It’s about Anna,” he says suddenly. “Something that I’ve been pondering.”

“What is it?” I ask, and he doesn’t reply. “Come on, Gideon. You’re the one who kept me back.”

He takes a deep breath and rubs his fingers along his forehead. He’s trying to decide how, or where, to start. He’s going to tell me again that I shouldn’t be doing this, that she’s where she should be, and I’m going to tell him again that I am doing it, and he should butt out.

“I don’t think that Anna is in the right place,” he says. “Or at least, not exactly.”

“What do you mean, exactly? Do you think she belongs on the other side, in Hell, or not?”

Gideon shakes his head, a frustrated gesture. “The only thing anyone knows about the other side is that they know nothing. Listen. Anna opened a door to the other side and dragged the Obeahman down. To where? You said it seemed like they were trapped there, together.

“What if you were right? What if they’re trapped there, like a cork in a bottle neck?”

“What if they are,” I whisper, even though I know.

“Then you might need to consider what you would choose,” Gideon replies. “If there is a way to separate them, will you pull her back, or send her on?”

Send her on. To what? To some other dark place? Maybe someplace worse? There aren’t any solid answers. Nobody knows. It’s like the punch line from a bad spook story. What happened to the guy with the hook for a hand?
Nobody knows.

“Do you think she deserves to be where she is?” I ask. “And I’m asking you. Not a book, or a philosophy, or the Order.”

“I don’t know what decides these things,” he says. “If there’s judgment from a higher power, or just the guilt trapped inside the spirit. We don’t get to decide.”

Jesus, Gideon. That’s not what I asked. I’m about ready to tell him I expected a better answer when he says, “But from what you’ve told me, this girl has had her share of torment. If I were cast as her judge, I couldn’t condemn her to more.”

“Thank you, Gideon,” I say, and he bites his tongue on the rest. None of us know what’s going to happen tonight. There’s a weird sensation of unreality, laced with denial, like it’s never going to happen, it’s so far away, when the time remaining is measurable in hours. How can it be that in that small space of time, I could see her again? I could touch her. I could pull her out of the dark.

Or send her into the light.

Shut up. Don’t complicate things.

We walk side by side to the kitchen. Carmel has stayed true to her word and has broken at least one dish. I nod at her, and she blushes. She knows it’s petty, and that it doesn’t make an ounce of difference to the Order if she breaks twelve entire place settings. But these people make her feel powerless.

When we eat it’s surprising just how much we manage to put away. Gideon whips up some hollandaise and assembles some wicked eggs Benedict with a heaping side of sausage. Jestine broils six of the biggest, reddest grapefruits I’ve ever seen, with honey and sugar.

“We should keep as many eyes trained on the Order as we can,” says Thomas between bites. “I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them. Carmel and I can keep tabs while we help prepare the ritual.”

“Make sure to put in a call to your grandfather as well,” says Gideon, and Thomas looks up, surprised.

“Do you know my grandfather?”

“Only by reputation,” Gideon replies.

“He already knows,” says Thomas, looking down. “He’ll have the entire voodoo network on standby. They’ll be watching our backs from their side of the world.”

The entire voodoo network. I chew my food quietly. It would have been nice to have Morfran in my corner. It would have been like having a hurricane up my sleeve.

*   *   *

In observation of Carmel’s rebellion, we left the kitchen a complete disaster. After we got ourselves cleaned up, Gideon took Thomas and Carmel to meet with the Order members. Jestine and I decided to walk the grounds, to nose around and maybe just to kill time.

“They’ll be coming for one or the other of us before long,” I say as we walk the edge of the tree line, listening to the trickling whisper of a stream not far off.

“For what?” Jestine asks.

“Well, to instruct us on the ritual,” I reply, and she shakes her head.

“Don’t expect too much, Cas. You’re just the instrument, remember?” She snags a twig off a low-hanging branch and pokes me in the chest with it.

“So they’re just going to shove us through blind and hope we’re good at winging it?” I shrug. “That’s either stupid, or really flattering.”

Jestine smiles and stops walking. “Are you scared?”

“Of you?” I ask, and she grins. There’s early adrenaline coursing through both of us, springy tension in our muscles, tiny, silver fish darting through my capillaries. When she swings her twig at my head, I see it coming a mile away and trip her up with my toe. Her response is a crisp elbow at my head and a laugh, but her moves are serious. She’s practiced and fluid; well trained. She’s got counters I haven’t seen before, and when she catches me in the gut I wince, even though she’s pulling her punches. But I still knock her backward and block more than she lands. The athame is still in my pocket. This isn’t half of what I can do. Without it, though, we’re almost an even match. When we stop our pulses are up and the adrenaline twitch is gone. Good. It’s annoying when it doesn’t have anywhere to go, like waking up from a nightmare.

“You don’t have much of a problem hitting girls,” she says.

“You don’t have much of a problem hitting boys,” I reply. “But this isn’t real. Tonight will be. If you leave me on the other side, I’m as good as dead.”

She nods. “The Order of the Biodag Dubh was entrusted with a duty. You corrupt it by bringing back a dead murderess.”

“She’s not a murderess anymore. She never really was. It was a curse.” What’s so hard to understand about that? But what did I expect? You can’t rinse the cult off a person in only a couple of days. “What do you know about this anyway? And I mean really know. What have you seen? Anything? Or do you just swallow what you’re told?”

She glares at me resentfully, like I’m being unfair. But she’s probably going to try to kill me, and kill me
righteously
, so eff you very much.

“I know plenty.” She smiles. “You might take me for a mindless drone, but I learn. I listen. I investigate. Far more than you do. Do you even know how the athame functions?”

“I stab. Things go away.”

She laughs and mutters something under her breath. I think I catch the phrase “blunt instrument.” Emphasis on the “blunt.”

“The athame and the other side are linked,” she says. “It comes from there. That is how it functions.”

“You mean it comes from Hell,” I say. In my pocket, the athame shifts, like its ears were pricked at the subject.

“Hell. Abbadon. Acheron. Hades. The other side. Those are just names that people call the place where dead things go.” Jestine shakes her head. Her shoulders slump with sudden exhaustion. “We don’t have much time,” she says. “And you’re still looking at me like I’m going to steal your lunch money. I don’t want you dead, Cas. I’d never want that. I just don’t understand why you want the things that you do.”

Maybe it’s the minor scuffle we just had, but her fatigue is contagious. I wish she wasn’t mixed up in this. Despite everything, I like her. But you know what they say about wishing in one hand. She moves closer, and her fingers trace the line of my jaw. I take them away, but gently.

“Tell me about her, at least,” she says.

“What do you want to know?” I ask, and look off into the trees.

“Anything,” she shrugs. “What’s made her so special? What made you so special to her, that she’d send herself into oblivion for you?”

“I don’t know,” I say. Why did I say that? I do know. I knew it the moment I heard Anna’s name, and the first time she spoke. I knew when I walked out of her house with my insides still on the inside. It was admiration, and understanding. I’d never known anything like it, and neither had she.

“Well, tell me what she looked like then,” Jestine says. “If we’re going to bleed to death looking for her, I’d like to know who we’re looking for.”

I reach into my pocket for my wallet and fish out the newspaper photo of Anna when she was alive. I hand it to Jestine.

“She’s pretty,” she comments after a few moments. Pretty. That’s what everyone says. My mom said it, and so did Carmel. But when they said it, it sounded like a lament, like it was a shame that such beauty was lost. When Jestine said it, it sounded derisive, like it was the only nice thing she could think of to say. Or maybe I’m just being defensive. Whatever it is, I hold my hand out for the picture and put it back in my wallet.

“It doesn’t do her justice,” I say. “She’s fierce. Stronger than any of us.”

Jestine shrugs, a “whatever” move. My hackles rise another few inches. But it doesn’t matter. In a few hours, she’ll see Anna for herself. She’ll see her dressed in blood, her hair floating like it’s suspended in water, eyes black and shining. And when she does, she won’t be able to catch her breath.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FIVE

Jestine was wrong. The Order did show up to take one of us. They took her, just before sunset. Two women walked up without a word. They weren’t much older than us, both with stark black hair left loose and hanging. Jestine introduced them as Hardy and Wright. I guess junior members go by their last names. Either that or their parents are jerks.

Gideon came for me not much later. He found me wandering under the lampposts along the paved footpath. Good thing, too. The adrenaline had set in again, and I was this close to doing wind sprints. He led me back to the compound and through the buildings to his room, where rows of white candles had burnt down to nubs, and three of the dummy athames rested on red velvet.

“So,” I say as he closes the door. “What can you tell me about this ritual?”

“I can tell you that it begins soon,” he replies. Vague. It’s like I’m talking to Morfran.

“Where are Carmel and Thomas?”

“They’ll be along,” he says. A smile breaks the solemnity of his face. “That girl,” he chuckles. “She’s a firecracker. I’ve never heard such a tongue. Normally I’d say she was insolent, but under the circumstances—it was rather lovely to see Colin’s face turn that shade of red.” He cocks an eyebrow at me. “Why didn’t you pursue her?”

Carmel, antagonizing Burke all day long. I wish I could’ve seen it.

“Thomas beat me to it,” I reply, and grin.

Our smiles fade slowly, and I stare at the shrinking candles. The flames float on the wicks, so small. It’s strange to think that they can reduce the wax pillar to nothing. Gideon goes to his closet and slides the door wide. At first it looks like he’s reaching for a bundle of red curtains, but when he lays them out on the bed, I see that they’re actually ceremonial robes, just like the one he was wearing in Thomas’s stolen photo.

“Ah,” I say. “I was wondering when the robes and censers were going to show up.”

Gideon straightens both robes, pulling at the hoods and sleeves. I’m wearing an army-green t-shirt and jeans. It feels fine to me. The robes look like they weigh twenty pounds separately.

“Is wearing one of those going to help me with the spell?” I ask. “I mean, come on, you know most of the ceremony is just ceremony.”

“The ceremony is just ceremony,” he repeats, sort of like my mom does. “No, it won’t really help you. It’s only tradition.”

“Then forget it,” I say, eyeballing the plain rope that ties around the waist. “Tradition can shove it. And besides, Anna would laugh her ass off.”

His shoulders slump and I brace for impact. He’s going to yell now, about how I never take things seriously, about how I never show respect. When he turns I step back, and he grabs me by the shoulder.

“Theseus, if you walk out that door right now, they’ll let you go.”

I look at him. His eyes are shining, almost shaking behind his wire glasses. They’ll let me go, he said. Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn’t. Burke would probably come after me with a candlestick if I tried, and the whole thing would turn into a life-size game of Clue. I tug free gently.

“Tell Mom,” I say, and then stop. My mind is blank. Her face floats in it for a second, and disappears. “I don’t know. Tell her something good.”

“Knock, knock,” Thomas says, and pokes his head in. When the rest of him follows and Carmel after that, I can’t suppress a smile. They’re both wearing long, red robes, the hoods down in the back and the sleeves hanging over their hands.

“You guys look like Christmas monks,” I say. The toes of Thomas’s Converses poke out at the bottom. “You know you don’t have to wear those.”

“We didn’t want to, but Colin had a bird.” Carmel rolls her eyes. “They’re really heavy. And sort of itchy.”

Behind us, Gideon takes his robe off of the hanger and puts it on. He tightens the waist and straightens the hood on his back. Then he takes one of the dummy knives from the velvet and tucks it into the rope at his hip.

“You’ll each need one,” he says to Thomas and Carmel. “They’ve already been sharpened.”