Spirit Ascendancy (4 page)

A SOMBER, HEAD-HANGING SILENCE greeted me in Lyle’s tiny, cramped kitchen the next morning. Ah, yes, my morning dose of crippling guilt.

“Hey, guys,” I said, without meeting anyone’s eye. Not that anyone was looking at me anyway, but averting their gazes in case I started yelling again.

A dull murmur of acknowledgement followed my greeting. Wow, had I really been that unreasonable, or were they just ashamed of themselves? It could have been both, I suppose, but I didn’t want to have that conversation. Not anymore.

I’d barely had the chance to register where Hannah was sitting, knees up under her chin, a plate of buttered toast untouched in front of her, when Milo came flitting forward. He blocked my way as I stepped toward Hannah, his expression a storm cloud.

“Back for another pound of flesh?” Milo spat.

“Calm down, Milo. I just want to apologize,” I said.

He did not back down, but instead glared at me as though sure I was carrying a concealed weapon. “What’s the matter? Heard she finally stopped crying?”

“Hannah, will you please call off your attack ghost? I’ll behave, I promise.”

“Milo, it’s okay. Let her through,” Hannah said.

I stepped around Milo, who did not move this time to stop me, but instead hissed in my ear, “One harsh word and I’ll go poltergeist on your ass.” Trying to ignore the threat, I dropped into the chair beside Hannah.

I’d barely opened my mouth when she spoke. “You don’t have to apologize, Jess. You are absolutely right, it was a terrible thing to do. We should have just taken our chances at the hospital or—”

“No,
you
were right,” I said, doing my utmost to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “All you were trying to do was save my life, and I attacked you for it. It was a shitty way to behave, and I’m sorry. I wasn’t mad at you, not really. I was just mad that leeching was our only choice. But it really was the only choice, and I know it wasn’t easy for you to make it. So thank you. Thank you for saving my life.”

She flashed me a watery but genuine smile. I leaned across the table and hugged her. I felt her freeze at first, like a startled animal, but then she wound an arm around my neck and buried her face in my hair.

“Well, isn’t that just the sweetest thing you ever saw?” Savvy said, punching me lightly on the arm as we broke apart. “Now that you’re talking to us, how about some breakfast? You hungry? I can knock you up something.”

“That would be great, thanks.” I hadn’t thought about it at all, but the moment she suggested food, I realized that I was absolutely ravenous. I hadn’t eaten in days.

“You might want to rethink that,” Milo said, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

“And why’s that?” I asked.

“Yeah, why’s that?” Savvy asked, looking affronted.

“Because you shopped like a frat boy!” Milo cried.

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? I mean, this!” Milo said, and he caused the nearest cabinet door to burst open. “Look at this!”

I walked over to get a closer look. Milo had a point; the shelves were crammed with sugary cereals, Pop-Tarts, pre-packaged Danishes and croissants, and something called “digestive biscuits,” which appeared to be a healthy sounding name for chocolate dipped cookies.

“Wow, it’s a portal to a junk food paradise!” I said, grinning.

“You should have seen her in the store,” Milo said, rolling his eyes. “It was like letting a six year old do the shopping.”

“I was hungry and stressed out! You shouldn’t have set me loose in a shop like that!”

“Yes, but now everyone has to eat your feelings!” Milo cried.

“Why do you even care?” I asked, plucking a Danish off the shelf and shutting the door again. “You don’t even eat.”

“Someone around here has to be an adult,” Milo said. “I’m your spirit guide. So sue me if I’m trying to guide you toward food with some form of nutritional content.”

“Oh, give it a rest, will you?” Savvy said. “There’s some fruit in there somewhere.”

“Strawberry Pop-Tarts are not fruit!” Milo yelled, stamping a foot that made no contact with the floor and therefore no sound.

“Okay, okay, Milo, chill out!” I said through a mouthful of pastry. “We’ll go out later and buy some grass-fed tofu burgers or something!”

I sat down beside Finn, who had not so much as looked at me since I’d entered the kitchen. He was bent so low over one of his shabby black notebooks that his hair was trailing along the page. He was scribbling with impressive speed, with what looked like a bacon sandwich clamped between his teeth.

“Did you get down that whole conversation, or would you like me to repeat any of it?” I asked him.

Finn looked up, scowling, and pulled the roll from his mouth to say, “I’m not writing down your—”

“I know that! My god, have you never even been introduced to the concept of a joke?”

He frowned at me for another moment, and then shoved the rest of the sandwich in his mouth and bent again to write. “No.”

“How sad for you,” I said. I glanced at the cabinet again. “Wow, that is seriously impressive junk food, though. The only other person I’ve ever met who ate that much garbage was Karen, and at least she had the excuse that she was working all the time. Her fridge was… hey, wait a minute!” My change in tone made everyone stare. “Karen! Someone needs to get in touch with Karen to warn her about—”

“We’ve already done it,” Finn said, talking over me.

“You… really?”

“Yes. It was right after you fell asleep, the first day we got here. Hannah called her using one of the disposable cell phones and warned her about what’s happened.”

“Did she freak out?” I asked. I envisioned Karen, glued to the phone with one hand and booking an international flight on her laptop with the other. “You know she’ll be out here in a heartbeat if she knows how much trouble we’re really in.”

“Actually, I think I managed to convince her that we’ll be in more trouble if she comes,” Hannah said. “She knows how the Durupinen work; they aren’t above using her as bait, if necessary, to lure us back to Fairhaven, and of course the Necromancers will be looking for every connection we left behind in an effort to find us. She’s not safe anymore.”

“So what’s she doing?”

“Going into hiding as soon as possible. She also said it would be a good idea for your friend Tia to do the same, so she’s going to arrange it.”

“This is awful. This is just a nightmare. It’s ruining everyone’s lives! What about Karen’s job? And what will Tia have to do, drop out of St. Matt’s? Leave the country? And it’s all my fault,” I cried, dropping my head into my hands.

“It will be okay, Jess,” Hannah said, laying a soothing hand on my arm. “The most important thing is for them to be safe. This will all blow over soon. Karen is a brilliant lawyer, she’ll have no trouble finding another great job, and St. Matt’s will still be there when it’s safe for Tia to go back to classes. It’s just temporary, and we’ll all feel better knowing that they’re out of harm’s way, won’t we?”

“I know, I know, but… it just sucks,” I said.

“Yeah, it does,” she said.

Despite everything that had happened between us, I felt a sudden upsurge of affection for Karen, for not only thinking of Tia, but offering to help her. I picked my head up. “Does Karen think she can pull it off? What does she know about putting people into hiding?”

Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know but she sounded pretty confident. She said she had contacts she could use from working federal cases. I told her to call Lucida, but she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to use anyone connected to the Durupinen, just in case.”

I snorted. “Yeah, and she also hates Lucida. I’m sure she’d want to avoid using her help, regardless.”

I looked around the table and registered for the first time that Lucida was missing. “So where’s she slunk off to, anyway?” I asked the room at large, but it was again Hannah who answered.

“She had to go back to Fairhaven.”

“So you’re telling me that there actually is a Fairhaven to go back to?” I asked. I’d been sure that it would have burned to the ground or, like in the dreams I kept having, just continued to burn endlessly without ever consuming itself, like some kind of magic torch.

 “Yes,” Hannah said. “The Caomhnóir were able to contain the fire to the east wing. The Grand Council Room was destroyed, and the East Tower, but most of the castle is still standing.”

“So what happened when Lucida went back? Did they buy her story?”

 “Yes, thank goodness. She concocted some wild alibi about what she’d been doing that night, and they had no problem swallowing it,” Hannah said.

“Where did she tell them she’d been?”

“Paris,” Savvy said, grinning. “Said she’d hopped the Eurostar and taken the Chunnel with some friends to spend the night partying in some underground Parisian speakeasies.”

“Won’t it be easy enough for them to check that story out? What if they find out she was lying?’ I asked.

Finn shook his head. “They won’t. She called in favors and set up a false trail. She knows what she’s doing.”

“She’s got real flair, that one,” Savvy said with a chuckle. “From what she said, it sounds like she’s well acquainted with the Paris nightlife, even if it was just a cover story this time. I’m making her take me along when she goes back. It sounds fierce.”

“Samesies,” Milo piped up.

I ignored this. Clubbing was just about as far down my list of priorities as lighting myself on fire. “Did she say when she’s coming back?”

“No, and we have to be very careful about contacting each other now, since she is the one who is heading up the search to Track us.”

“You’re kidding,” I said, forgetting to chew the Danish in my mouth, and nearly having to choke it down.

“Nope. Marion put her in charge the minute she got back. It’s not that surprising, though. Like she said, she’s the best Tracker they have,” Hannah said, shrugging.

“So Marion’s okay, obviously, but what about everyone else? Didn’t she tell you if anyone got hurt or…?” I trailed off as my heart seemed to lodge itself into my throat, choking off the end of a question I was half-scared to know the answer to.

“I forgot you didn’t know! You were out of it for so long,” Hannah said, shaking her head. “Everyone’s okay. Or at least,” she amended, “no one is dead.”

Her face suddenly took on an expression of guilt that must surely have been mirroring my own, and she didn’t go on. Without even looking up from his notebook, Finn picked up the thread. “Everyone made it out. Some people are injured, of course.”

“Olivia?”

“She’s fine. So is Peyton.”

“So do we know who’s—”

“Fiona is in the hospital wing with some bad burns, along with quite a few others. Lucida didn’t go into too much detail; she was a bit distracted by the fact that you were teetering on the verge of death. But we know Seamus is in really rough shape, and so is Bertie.”

Savvy shook her head sadly. “Stupid prat. Never would have thought he had it in him, but he ran back into the castle when he saw I was unaccounted for. Two of the other Caomhnóir had to go in after him to pull him out, and he didn’t go quietly. Sort of makes me feel bad for treating him the way I did. Mind you,” she added, scowling around defensively, “he is generally useless, I stick by that. I don’t know what he thinks he could have done if he’d found me in need of help. I must outweigh him by about three stone. But still, it’s nice to know he would have given it a try, eh?”

“That’s his job,” Finn said, bluntly, as though it were understood that Caomhnóir would run headlong into burning buildings to pluck us from the jaws of death. I tried to picture him doing the same thing for me, and realized with a pang of guilt that I didn’t doubt for a moment that he would, no matter how much he loathed me personally.

“Maybe, but it’s not a job he’s cut out for,” Savvy said. “Still, he’ll be alright. They all will, as soon as they open up the Gateway and do a bit of…”

She broke off, a flush creeping into her cheeks and staining them crimson. She didn’t need to finish the sentence. We all knew how the Durupinen would deal with the injuries left by our escape, especially now that Marion was in charge, and it wasn’t a subject any of us wanted to discuss.

“Well, I’m just glad everyone’s going to be alright,” I said, steering the conversation away from dangerous waters. “Has Marion put out a bounty on our heads? The Durupinen’s most wanted, a million pounds, dead or alive?”

Milo coughed. Savvy and Hannah exchanged a dark look.

“Oh, my God, I was kidding!” I cried. “Please don’t tell me we’ve got a bounty on us!”

“She’s offering a reward to whoever brings us in,” Hannah said. “Not all of us, actually. Just me.”

“Why just you?” I asked.

“Don’t be jealous,” Hannah said with the slightest of smiles.

Now it was my turn to have no sense of humor. I glared at her and she went on quickly. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s the prophecy. I’m the dangerous one, as far as she’s concerned.”

“But what’s the point of adding a bounty when the Caomhnóir and the Trackers are looking for us anyway? It’s their job. They don’t need some reward to motivate them to find us.”

“The bounty isn’t for the Caomhnóir or the Trackers,” Finn said, slapping the cover closed on his notebook and looking up at last. “You’re right; they will be hunting for us, reward or not. The bounty has been added to tempt us, not them.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Milo said.

“Sure it does. They know that we’re all together. If we all have a bounty on our heads, we’re all equally in danger, and so we stick together. But if the bounty is only on Hannah, there’s a better chance one of us will be tempted to betray the others and turn her in.”

“None of us would ever do that!” Milo said.

“People have done worse for less,” Finn said. “Marion is counting on it.”

No one had any response to that. I crammed the rest of the pastry into my mouth and stood up, suddenly filled with a panicky sort of energy, a need to do something, anything, besides waiting around for the Necromancers or the Caomhnóir to come busting down our door.

“Did Lucida give us any kind of instructions? Where we should go? What we should do?” I asked.