The Poe Estate (21 page)

Setting Kitty Free

I
screamed too, I'm not sure what. “Help!” or “Cole!” or “Kitty!” maybe—or something incoherent.

Whatever it was, someone heard it. Two figures streaked out from behind me and plunged over the cliff after Cole. They reached him just seconds before he crashed on the rocks.

I lay at the edge of the cliff, staring down and trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Andre and Griffin were holding Cole between them in midair, lowering him to the ground. Andre was riding a broomstick—he must have grabbed Jonathan's—and Griffin . . . Griffin, it seemed, had wings.

My sister was still screaming overhead, but someone was screaming back at her in a voice that somehow overshadowed hers. It was me. “Kitty, go! Just GO!”

For a moment I thought she would bring the cliff down under me too—would bring the house down, and all the trees, and the hills, and the graves, and the whole planet. I braced myself for the fall. But instead, like a sound that gets higher and higher without getting any softer, until it's too high to hear, Kitty disappeared.

I lay shaking, my cheek pressed into the grass.

“Sukie, it's okay. Cole's safe. You're okay.” Elizabeth kneeled beside me.

I curled on my side and sat up.

“We're all safe, for now,” said Dr. Rust. “But, listen, Sukie. You have to do something about your sister. She'll be back, and she's too dangerous.”

“But how? I can't control her! She never did anything like that before—she's getting worse and worse.”

“I know. You're growing, and she can't. Ghosts hate that.”

“And she was summoned with hell-smoke, back on Broken Isle, which can't have helped,” said Elizabeth.

The hell-smoke—that must be what gave Kitty that scream, and that awful strength. She'd been getting angrier for months before it, though. Stronger, and less human. “But what can I
do
?”

“You have a way to summon her, don't you?” asked Dr. Rust.

“Yes, she gave me her whistle. She promised to come whenever I blew it. She promised to protect me.”

“Call her, then, and release her from her promise.”

“You're the only one who can,” said Elizabeth.

“The sooner, the better,” said Dr. Rust. “Do it now. We'll wait for you by Windy's grave.”

• • •

I sat on a rock and stared at the horizon where Kitty had disappeared. I saw her in my mind's eye at the top of our hill, her red curls flying out as she spun around for an impatient moment to call, “Hurry up, Sukie!”

I remembered the watermelon smell of her favorite soap and how, when I came in from playing in the dirt, she would pull me to the bathroom and lather my hands under the cold tap. Then I would smell like Kitty for a little while.

I remembered sharing a bedroom with Kitty when we were really little. After Mom had kissed us good night and shut the door, I would beg her in whispers to read to me until at last Kitty would hiss, “All right, but just this once.” We would climb out of our twin beds to kneel by the window, and she would murmur the words of whatever picture book was my favorite that week, turning the pages by the light of the orange streetlight, while I stumbled along, part reading, part remembering.

I remembered wrenching myself out of nightmares to crawl into her bed. “Ice-cube feet,” she would mutter, but she would pull the blanket around me and fold me into her arms.

I remembered her freckles. I remembered the sunset on her hair, that red-orange color I had never seen since.

I remembered the emptiness after she died—the emptiness of the whole world and every individual thing in it.

I put the whistle to my lips and blew.

• • •

A film of the hell-smoke clung to the whistle. It tasted like death. Its sound was no longer my sister's urgent and familiar proxy, but a scream of pain.

Kitty answered the whistle, darkening the air. She had become a jagged shape with eyes the flame-red of her hair.

“Kitty,” I said, “I'm sorry. I love you. I love you so much! But you have to go now.”

She couldn't, she told me. I was letting myself get drawn into danger. She had to protect me. Evil people were threatening me. They were hurting me!

“They aren't hurting me. They aren't evil,” I told her. I didn't add,
But you are, now
. “They're my friends. You have to stop!”

She couldn't. She had promised to protect me.

“I release you from your promise.”

The edges of her shape jittered like dark lightning.

“I release you. I don't need you to protect me. I can take care of myself.” I was crying now, choking on the words. “I love you, Kitty, but I don't need you anymore.”

The sky went dark, and I couldn't breathe. I put the whistle on the rock beside me, picked up a jagged stone, and smashed it down.

Shards of bright blue plastic flew in all directions. The hard little ball from inside the whistle lay on the stone, shining like a drop of mercury. It grew brighter and brighter until it devoured my vision, and for a long moment, it was all I could see.

Then, quietly, it blinked out. The air cleared, and the day came back: fillips of wind, high clouds, bare trees, crows squabbling like siblings. I reached out to touch the little ball, but it wasn't there.

Neither was my sister, and I knew she never would be again.

My True Self

B
ack at the house, Cousin Hepzibah explained her plan. “The New-York Circulating Material Repository has offered to take this house on a long-term loan. I'm going to sell the land to that unpleasant real-estate man and use some of the money to build a new house—or rather, hire your father to build it. Your family can live there and take care of it for me, and I'll leave it to you in my will.”

“Will you live there with us?”

She shook her head. “No, I'm staying in the Thorne Mansion for as long as I live. Longer, probably, if our ancestors are any indication.”

“In the Poe Annex, you mean?”

“That's right. I like it there. It reminds me of my childhood.”

“But will you be okay there, all alone?” I couldn't imagine explaining about the Poe Annex to my parents. But without Mom, who would help Cousin Hepzibah get dressed and navigate the stairs?

“Don't worry, I won't be alone,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “Several of the retired repositorians live in the annex. I met a very nice man there, Stan Mauskopf—he was Elizabeth's high school teacher. He's close friends with Griffin. He's been living in one of the Henry James houses.”

“But who will help you with your bath and keeping the
house clean?”

“Elizabeth is lending me some elves from the Grimm Collection. They like old houses, and they love housework. It will be fun.”

That sounded all right. “I'll miss you so much! Will the Thorne Mansion stay in the Poe Annex forever?” It hurt to think of losing it along with her. The Thornes were my family, too—it was my ancestral home, just like hers. But I understood. The mansion was falling apart, and none of us could afford to keep it up.

“That's up to you,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “I'm lending it to the repository for the rest of my life. It's yours after that—you can decide what to do with it then. You'll come visit me there, won't you?”

“Of course! All the time. It will be a good excuse to use the family broom.”

“Good.” She squeezed my hand with her thin, cold hand and smiled her birch-tree smile.

“Thank you, Cousin Hepzibah! A new house—I can't even believe it! I don't know what we would do without you.”

“Or what
I
would do without
you
. It's a great relief to me to have found a true Thorne before I'm a ghost myself.”

“Do you think you will be? A ghost, I mean. The house feels a little empty without its ghosts.” My sister certainly was
gone. I hadn't felt anyone over my shoulder since I'd smashed the whistle. The emptiness was almost eerie.

Cousin Hepzibah smiled wryly. “Yes, I miss Windy and Phinny now that they're at peace. But they were never the only ghosts here. We'll just have to wait and see what happens. In any case, I promise you—” She stopped. “No, I think I won't make any post-animate promises after all.”

“Good plan,” I said. I had learned my lesson about ghosts making promises. “But, Cousin Hepzibah . . .”

“Yes, child?”

“Try to stick around for a while, okay?”

“I'll do my best.”

• • •

I avoided Cole all that week. For once, he took the hint and left me alone on the bus. Maybe I should have worried that I'd lost a friend. But I couldn't make myself think about it. I didn't want to think about the two of us at all.

But I also couldn't
stop
thinking about the two of us.

Had that kiss been real, or only an echo of Phineas's kisses for Hepzibah Toogood? What had Cole meant by it? Were we just being controlled by the dead hand of Laetitia Flint, who had invented our ancestors?

Cole was right about one thing: If Flint had ever finished her novel, she would have made a Thorne girl marry a Toogood boy. Rereading the unfinished book, I had no trouble figuring out which ones, either: bland, simpering, virtuous Hepzibah Thorne—the 1840s Hepzibah—and kind, earnest, stout-hearted Robert Toogood, the pair who meet on the cliff
walk, where the ghost of Japhet Thorne startles Hepzibah so that she almost tumbles to her death—except, luckily, Robert catches her.

That made me roll my eyes. Laetitia Flint couldn't get enough of ghosts startling people at the edges of cliffs.

But the manuscript stops short, before the couple has time to marry. And now here we were, me and Cole. Were we doomed to fulfill dead Laetitia's vision? Was that what Cole wanted? What about me—did
I
want that?

I sneaked a glance at Cole, who was sitting a few seats ahead of me on the bus, staring out the window with his back toward me. My sister was wrong about him—
had been
wrong about him, I corrected myself. Cole might be obnoxious, but underneath he was as kind and stout-hearted as any Flint hero. I liked him. And I'd liked that kiss.

But I hadn't thought of him that way, as someone you kiss. I hadn't really thought of
anyone
that way—anyone living, that is. If I had to pick, out of all the guys I knew, would I pick Cole? Over Andre, for example? Or all the guys I hadn't even met yet? Would I pick Cole over all of
them
? It was too soon to say.

• • •

When I got home—I'd started thinking of the Thorne Mansion as home, I noticed—Elizabeth Rew was in the parlor, drinking tea with Cousin Hepzibah.

“Come in, child,” said my cousin. “Elizabeth and I were just discussing the arrangements for moving the house.”

“Doc and I have been playing with ideas for more efficient ways to transport the annex buildings,” said Elizabeth. “I
thought maybe a jinni. Some of the jinn in
The Arabian Nights
can move palaces around by snapping their fingers. Like that palace in
Aladdin
.”

“Aren't jinn hard to handle?” asked Cousin Hepzibah.

“Yes, they can be a pain—they hate going back into their lamps. Maybe we can borrow a nut instead. There's a hazelnut that holds a palace, in one of the German collections. Or was it a walnut in the Paris repository? I'll have to look into that.”

“So Andre didn't come with you?” I asked.

“No, not this time. He has a chess meet.”

I thought about asking Andre's advice about Cole. A year ago I might have asked my sister's advice. To my surprise, her loss no longer felt like a bitter wound—mostly I just felt wistful and relieved. My choices now really were my own.

A little while later, Cousin Hepzibah asked, “What do you think, child?”

“About what? I'm sorry—I was daydreaming,” I said.

The old woman and the young one smiled at each other, as if I'd confirmed a joke between them. I blushed.

“Elizabeth,” I asked, “you know that mirror you showed Feathertop? The one that showed him his true self?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think . . . if I looked in it, would it show me
my
true self, too?”

“Try it and see.” She hunted in her purse, took out a small mirror, and handed it to me.

I walked over to the window, where the afternoon sky was pearly-pink from the early spring sunset. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and looked in the mirror.

The face I saw was different from how I imagined myself. The girl in the mirror looked older, more sure of herself. Both less weird and, paradoxically, less average. Not everyone might consider her attractive, I thought, with her long face and light eyebrows and lashes, but some people would. Most of all, she no longer looked doomed or damaged. That's what I'd always expected to see when I looked in the mirror, I realized, and what I'd always seen. I searched, but I couldn't find a trace of it now.

The future lay open in front of me, undecided, uncursed. Laetitia Flint may have meant to give my story a particular ending, but that didn't mean
I
had to.

I gave Elizabeth back her mirror. “Where is it from?” I asked.

“What, this? The El Dorado Pharmacy.”

“What story is that in?”

“Hm? Oh, I see what you're asking. None—it's not fictional. It's just a mirror I bought in a drugstore near home.”

How was that possible? “So that wasn't my true self I was looking at?”

“Of course it was, child,” said Cousin Hepzibah. “Who else's would it be?”