Spirit Prophecy (The Gateway Trilogy Book 2) (37 page)

“I said he’s fine! Will you just trust me, please? I can handle this,” I said, a little more loudly than I meant to. I heard some movement around us, and I knew without opening my eyes that some people had paused in their own meditation to see what was going on in our circle.

“Well, handle it then or I will!” Finn said.

“Sorry about that, Lyle,” I thought, as politely as I could. “Could you please tell me where I’m supposed to meet her?”

“She wants you to meet her tomorrow night at eleven o’clock on one of the benches outside of the Tate Modern in London. She will be waiting for you there, and she urges you not to be late and to come alone. She also begs you not to tell anyone here that you are meeting her, because it would be very dangerous if they knew she was contacting you.”

I repeated the instructions over and over again inside my head. “Okay, I will. Can you please tell her that I will be there?”

“Oh, another errand, is it?” Lyle said, his voice rising. “I quite resent the implication that, just because I’m dead, my previous engagements don’t matter!”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… ”

“I won’t stand for it! Do you understand? I have no intention of spending my afterlife as someone’s errand boy! I delivered the message —not that she gave me much of a choice, and now I intend to —”

But I didn’t find out what Lyle McElroy intended. Before he could shout another word at me, his presence was swept with decisive force from our circle and expelled beyond my range of communication. Furious, I opened my eyes and rounded on Finn.

“Why did you do that?”

He opened his eyes as well, and turned to face me in surprise. “He was getting hostile. I did my job.”

“I told you I could handle it!” I cried.

“Well, it didn’t feel that way to me!”

“I don’t give a damn how it felt to you!” I said, getting to my feet and knocking one of the candles to the ground in the process. “What matters is how it felt to me, and I told you that I had it under control!”

“And I didn’t believe you!”

“You didn’t believe me? So, what, I’m a liar now? Suddenly it’s your job to decide whether or not I tell the truth?”

Finn got to his feet as well. “It’s my job to protect you!”

“No, it’s your job to trust me, and you suck at it!” I shouted.

Finn opened his mouth to retort, but Keira stepped in, her face florid with anger. “Will the two of you please stop this display at once!”

“Gladly!” I said, and without another word, I snatched up my bag and stormed from the courtyard.

I could hear Keira and Hannah calling after me, and I knew I’d probably be in trouble, but I didn’t care. I strode out of the courtyard and into the gardens, searching mentally as I did so for any sign of Lyle, but I could sense no trace of him. I was also way too angry to concentrate on spirit communication. I tried to forget my burning desire to beat the hell out of Finn and instead focused on this new information: Annabelle was in London and she wanted to see me.

It was at once exhilarating and terrifying news.

On the one hand, I was quite sure that Annabelle wouldn’t travel all the way to London and send a clearly reluctant ghost to find me if all she wanted was a casual catch-up. Her shop had nearly been burned to the ground and she had vanished without a trace only to turn up in the same country as me; obviously, she wasn’t enjoying a relaxing vacation. She had information about Pierce, I was sure of it. On the other hand, that information could bring to terrible realization all of my vague fears about what had happened to him. As though this thought had suddenly started to pursue me, I broke into a grudging run as the misty drizzle gave way to a heavy sun shower. I took refuge beneath the stone eves of the garden gazebo just as it began to rain in earnest.

I could not ignore the summons. Whatever it was that Annabelle had come all the way to London to tell me, I had to hear it. I also had to find a way to meet her without anyone at Fairhaven Hall finding out about it. And if I was going to sneak out and back into this place under cover of darkness and find my way around a strange city without getting caught, there was only one person I could trust to help me pull it off.

§

“Excellent!” Savvy said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Shh!” I hissed with a panicked glance around the corridor, through which a few scattered voices could be heard, though living or dead, I couldn’t tell. “So, I take it that’s a yes?”

“Of course it’s a yes! I’ve been trying to convince you to take a field trip for ages! What changed your mind?”

“I didn’t change my mind. I’m not interested in hitting one of your friends’ parties,” I said. “I got a…message from a friend who’s going to be in the city tomorrow.”

“Oi, oi, what friend is this, now? Is this a male friend?” Savvy waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “No,” I said. “You seeing me in the shower is the only action I’m likely to get for a while. So how do we do this?”

“Simple enough,” Savvy said. “Leave it all to me. What time do you need to meet this friend?”

“Eleven o’clock tomorrow night outside of the Tate Modern.”

“Right, then. We ought to leave by eight thirty at the latest. We could fuss with train schedules and the tube and all that, but since you have a specific time to meet, I think we ought to skip all that and just hire a car to drive us in. But I have to warn you, the cab will be pricey —probably ninety pounds, anyway. Can you swing that?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I don’t mind forking out some cash as long as we can do this without getting caught. I just need you to come with me, because I have no idea where I’m going. I’ve never been to London before. Well, I’ve driven through it, but that doesn’t really count.”

“Well, of course I’m coming with you! You think I’m gonna arrange this whole thing and not take advantage of a night away from this place? There are plenty of pubs in Southwark. I’ll swing you by the Tate and then find myself a pint.”

“If you can get me there and back without getting caught, I’ll buy you that pint,” I said.

“Don’t you worry, love, I’ve never had trouble finding some bloke to finance my night of drinking,” Savvy said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “How long do you think you’ll need in the city?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know why she wants to meet me. I think, to be safe, we should assume we’ll be there a couple of hours. I can just text you when we’re done and you and I can meet up to come back?”

“Sure you don’t want to stay in town awhile? If we’re going to be there anyway, we might as well make a night of it, hit some clubs —”

“Sav, I promise, if we get away with this, I will join you on your next field trip and we will hit as many clubs as you want. I will let you drag me on a debauchery tour of London, okay?”

“It’s a deal. Leave it to me,” Savvy said.

“Thanks,” I said, and turned to go, but she caught my arm, her expression thoughtful.

“Debauchery tours of London. That might just be a million dollar idea you’ve got there. I bet someone could make a fortune cashing in on that.”

“If anyone could do it, I’m sure you could,” I told her. “You’re the most debaucherous person I know. Now get planning.”

§

I didn’t want to tell Hannah what I was going to do, but I didn’t really see any way around it. It was a little too much to hope that she wouldn’t notice that I was gone all night. I considered telling just part of the truth; that I was going into London with Savvy, but that we were just going for fun — a girls’ night out. I nixed the idea as quickly as I thought of it. The only person less likely to participate in that kind of girl’s night was Hannah, and we both knew it. So Saturday afternoon, during a well-earned break from a mind-numbing mountain of history homework, I climbed up onto her bed.

“I have to tell you something, but I don’t want you to freak out.”

“Oh, God, what is it?” she asked at once, eyes widening.

“I said don’t freak out!”

“Well, then don’t start a conversation like that. If you imply there’s going to be something to freak out about, I’m going to freak out!” Hannah said.

“Good point. Okay, starting over. I’m just letting you know that I have to go out tonight.”

Her eyebrows contracted. “Oh. Where are you going?”

“To London.”

She stared at me expectantly. When I didn’t volunteer anything else, she said, “Aren’t you going to tell me why you’re going?”

I took a deep breath. “You know how I’m trying to find out what happened to Pierce?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, a mutual friend of ours is in London this weekend, and I want to meet up with her to see if she knows anything. It’s Annabelle, that medium I told you about, remember?”

“The one with the tarot cards?”

“Yeah.”

Hannah furrowed her brow. “How did you find out she was in London?”

“She sent me a…message,” I hedged.

“Well, if she got in touch with you, why didn’t you just ask her about Dr. Pierce? Why do you have to go all the way to London to ask her?”

I squirmed a little. “It wasn’t that kind of message. She sent a ghost to find me. That’s who I made contact with during meditation yesterday, the one Finn expelled from the circle.”

“She can send spirits to bring messages?” Hannah said in surprise.

“Apparently.”

“I didn’t realize there were people besides the Durupinen out there who could do that sort of thing,” she said, forgetting her worry for a moment and perking up with a very Tia-like curiosity.

“Me neither. But the ghost wasn’t very happy about being sent to find me, so I didn’t really have a chance to get many details, especially with Finn butting in and expelling him mid-conversation, even though I told him I had it under control.” I took a deep breath and forced my aggravation at Finn out of my mind. “Anyway, she wants to meet me tomorrow night, and I think it must be important if she’s sending afterlife messengers to track me down.”

Hannah bit her lip. “How are you going to get there?”

“I’ve enlisted our resident escape artist.”

“Savannah? You’re letting Savannah do this?” Hannah cried.

“She’s the only one who sneaks out of here regularly. She’s my only chance.”

“Jess, she’s always in trouble! She can’t be that good at sneaking out if she’s always getting caught and punished for it!”

“Actually, she’s really good at the sneaking out part. It’s the sneaking back in part that usually gets her in trouble, and that’s because she’s been partying too hard to do it right,” I said. “I’m not going to be doing any partying, so I’m sure I’ll get back in without a problem.”

“Why can’t you just get permission to go to London and talk to Annabelle?”

“She doesn’t want anyone to know she’s meeting me, and to be honest, neither do I. You know how the Council is about outsiders knowing too much. All I need is for Marion or someone to get wind of this and then Annabelle will be in trouble, too.”

Hannah opened her mouth to argue again but I held up a quelling hand.

“It doesn’t matter whether I get caught or not. This could be really important and I have to go. I wasn’t even going to tell you, but I didn’t want you to wake up, find me gone, and send out a search party.”

“I still don’t like it,” Hannah said.

“I don’t either,” I said, reaching out and squeezing her shoulder. “But you know how much Pierce means to me. If Annabelle knows something, I have to find out what it is.”

Hannah sighed. “You’re right. But you better keep Savvy on a tight leash or you’ll both get caught anyway.”

I smiled. “Good point. Consider her leashed.”

§

I was so distracted for the rest of the evening that I wrote what I was pretty sure was the worst history paper of my life; we’re talking middle school standardized test bad. But I didn’t care —two thirds of my brain was focused on the clock, watching the minutes crawl by until finally Savvy tapped briskly on our door at quarter past eight.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Yup. Let’s rock this, Catholic boarding school-style.”

She nodded over to Hannah, who was curled up in her pajamas in one of the armchairs by the fire. “Don’t worry about a thing, short-stack. I’ll have her back in one piece before you wake up.”

Hannah scowled. “I don’t think I’ll be sleeping much.”

“I’ll have my phone with me,” I told her, holding it up before stashing it in my back pocket. “You can text me every five minutes if you want to.”

“You’ll have something even better than that with you,” Hannah said, and closed her eyes. “Milo? Can you come here for a second?”

Before she had even opened her eyes, Milo was lounging in the chair next to hers.

“You rang, sweetness?”

“It is right creepy the way you do that,” Savvy said, shaking her head.

Hannah ignored her. “Milo, Jess needs your help.”

I could actually see the storm cloud form over Milo’s head. “It’s starting already, isn’t it? I knew this spirit guide gig was going to suck.”