7
I found Natalie in her room upstairs, changing after her run.
“I need a favor,” I said.
“You won’t fit in my jeans,” she said, pulling on a pale blue wool sweater. “And your feet are way too big for my shoes.”
“Okay,” I said. “First, I would so fit in your jeans. And second—”
“Your butt’s bigger,” she said, zipping her pants with attitude.
Maybe a little bigger, but she didn’t need to rub it in. “What is up with you?” I said.
“What? I didn’t say it was too big.”
“Natalie. What’s wrong?”
She refused to tell me—for about ten seconds. Then she said, “I like it here. I like my room, I like that Nicholas lays fires and Celeste does the laundry, and that Anatole tries to woo me with his fatty foods. I like Echo Point and Thatcher, even if everyone hates you at the moment. I guess I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is the closest I’ve been to home in a long time.”
“Well, you’re staying. The Knell said you could be on my team.”
“I know, but Bennett’s gone. They’re not going to let us live here without him. Two minors living alone in a museum?”
“We’re not alone. There are—”
“Ghosts.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
I didn’t want to think about Bennett being gone and whether that meant Natalie and I could no longer stay in the house. I liked it here, too, and didn’t want to leave. And I really didn’t want to agonize over how a guy who says he loves you isn’t supposed to desert you. I was trying to put Bennett out of my mind.
So I said, “Want to go mess around with some ghasts?”
Natalie perked up. “Can we?”
“You’re not scared?”
“Why would I be scared? I’ve got you around to dispel them. This’ll be fun.”
I wasn’t sure how other ghostkeepers traveled to fight a couple of ancient ghasts, but Natalie and I walked, and by the time we got there it was dusk.
“In the playground?” Natalie asked. “Are you sure there are ghasts here? How come nobody’s felt them before?”
I nodded. “That’s what, um, Edmund told me.”
I didn’t know how to explain the Rake to Natalie. Yeah, she’d understand that he was a ghost, but she’d want to summon him all the time, which he’d hate. Plus, I kind of liked having him to myself.
The playground was in the corner of a town park, and we crossed the street and followed a gravel path past the oak trees where people tossed tennis balls for their dogs during the day.
I shivered in my peacoat. “I don’t like the weather here.”
“You Californians are wusses.” She eyed the slides and swings.
“I never noticed how creepy playgrounds look after dark.” I looked around. “Maybe we should come back.”
“No way, man. It only makes it more fun.” Natalie was the girl who goes naked in the Jacuzzi and takes the dare instead fibbing about the truth. Ghasts at dusk were not going to intimidate her. “Here goes,” she said.
Natalie closed her eyes, and I felt their spirits before she even finished, like needles on my skin. I’d never dealt with ghasts before. They weren’t as dangerous as wraiths, but I still felt their twistedness.
“Wait,” I blurted. “I’m not ready.”
“Too late,” Natalie said, opening her eyes. “They’re here.”
They rose from the ground beside the drinking fountain, as if awakened from a deep slumber. Their heads swayed as they scanned and sniffed for the reason they’d been summoned. They didn’t look like wraiths, with tattered skin and hollow eyes, but like regular ghosts, in bad costumes, except gray, like they’d stepped out of an old black-and-white film.
“They look harmless,” I said, but the Rake had mentioned a trap.
“Looks are deceiving,” Natalie said.
There were two of them, both male, both dressed like the Rake, only less tailored and elegant. They swiveled toward Natalie and me, bared their teeth, and flew at us.
“Okay,” Natalie said. “Your turn.”
“What?”
“I can only summon them, Emma. You have to dispel them.”
I panicked. “I don’t know how!”
“What are you talking about? You’re Emma frickin’ Vaile—you know everything!”
“Run!” I yelled. “Natalie, run!”
Too late—the burly ghast knocked her to the ground.
“Emma!” she screamed. “Do something!”
But I couldn’t think; I couldn’t remember how to gather my power. I just stood there with an odd humming in my mind.
Natalie screamed and turned her head as the ghast drooled over her. The drool fell into the sandbox and sizzled.
Sizzling drool that would burn straight through Natalie’s flesh. That cleared my mind.
I reached out to the ghast. Stop! She is nothing to you. She is no threat. Leave her!
He hesitated, and Natalie rolled away. I started to compel him further, when the lankier ghast hit me like a wrecking ball, smashing me into the side of the seesaw. As I struggled to catch my breath, the lanky ghast screeched so piercingly that I was surprised my ears didn’t bleed.
The ghast bent me backward over the metal seesaw, which bounced up and down. I couldn’t touch the ground as he pressed his hands into my throat, trying to burn me. The sudden shock of pain woke my power, and I centered his spectral gray head between my palms and loosed a blast of energy that scrambled whatever was left of his brain. He lurched away from me, hardly able to stay on his feet.
“Emma!” Natalie called out. “A little help!”
I turned and saw her struggling beneath the burly ghast. With a flicker of thought, I compelled him to leave Natalie alone and join the other ghast, now whimpering inside a spiderweb climbing structure made of rope. He jerkily walked away, like an animated scarecrow, and stepped into the web.
I pulled Natalie to her feet. “Are you all right?” My back was to the ghasts, but my mind was still engaged, feeling their energy, compelling them to stay where they were.
Natalie examined the holes in her parka where the ghast’s drool had made contact. “Fantastic. What happened to you?”
“I don’t know. Nerves? I froze, I guess.”
“Well, as long as you snapped out of it.” She glanced toward the ghasts and taunted them. “Not so tough now, are you?”
“Natalie. I think there’s more.” Another presence tugged at the edge of my mind.
“Oh God!” Natalie said, her voice sharp with fear. “Look!”
The ground beneath the tire swing bulged, and a mound of dirt erupted from the wood chips. A billow of black smoke emerged and twined into a ghast, twice as big as the other two, with oversized hands and feet, long gray hair, and a beard. His mouth opened unnaturally wide, like a snake with unhinged jaws, as he wafted toward us.
“Looks like we sprang the trap,” Natalie said.
The humming returned to my mind, and with a jolt of fear I realized that this was too much for me. “I can’t control that thing and compel the others at the same time.”
“So, run again?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I squeaked.
But the black ghast slammed his massive feet to the ground, shaking the earth as he closed in on us. We stumbled, and his huge hand grabbed Natalie around the waist and started crushing her.
She stared at me, eyes bulging in terror.
I found myself hesitating again. I knew she needed help, but I felt heavy and sluggish. I reached inside for a spark of dispelling energy, to sear the black ghast—but instead, I found myself only compelling him to drop Natalie.
He loosened his grip, tossed her aside, and turned his attention to me.
“Emma!” Natalie said, sprawled on the ground. “Stop screwing around and dispel him!”
The ghast roared, and his scalding breath whipped across the playground. I spun away as his spectral fingers plucked at my coat. I held my hands in front of me and fed dispelling energy into them, until in an instant it was crackling between my palms, and I shot the ghast in the side.
He howled and thumped to the ground and started to fade.
That’s when the other two ghasts tackled me. I’d stopped compelling them to stay inside the spiderweb.
I yelled at them, No! Get away from me! but my panic weakened my compelling. With one on top of me and the other pressing my head into the frozen ground, I watched helplessly as the black ghast stalked toward Natalie. He grabbed her around the waist and flung her into the sandbox.
“No!” I screamed. I dug deep inside for my power, but all I found was that weird humming sound.
Then I heard a voice. “Mind if I cut in?”
I turned and saw two guys stroll onto the playground. The one who spoke was probably my age, dark haired and athletic, wearing a black parka and jeans, and the other was skinny and slightly older, wearing wide-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses and a long camel coat.
The ghasts suffocating me swiveled toward them, their eye sockets burning with predatory intensity. I’d never seen either of these men before in my life, but I was sure of one thing: they were ghostkeepers. And the ghasts felt it, too.
The ghasts’ shrieks of fear shook away all my hesitation. I blasted them off me with a burst of force. They hit the ground, scrambled onto all fours like dogs ready to pounce, and rushed at the two newcomers.
The younger guy stepped forward, his arms spread, an eager grin on his face. The ghasts loped closer and closer, then sprang. The young guy used the ghasts’ weight and speed against them—he compelled them into the air, over his head, then slammed them onto their backs on top of the slide. Cool trick. As they half skidded down the cold slide, moaning in pain, the older guy shot quick bursts of dispelling energy into them, and they started shimmering into nonexistence.
Martha had taught me basic concepts of ghostkeeping, but no two ghostkeepers were the same. I’d had to figure out myself what worked for me—and it looked nothing like what the ghostkeeper in the glasses had done. Or the other one, for that matter. I’d never realized you could hurl ghosts through the air.
All of that happened in a fraction of a second, while I turned toward the huge black ghast. I drilled through the sluggishness I’d been feeling, to tap my power. He stomped toward me, his face an unearthly mask of fury.
The light inside me grew brighter and hotter until, with the black ghast’s unhinged mouth three feet from me, I unleashed a beam of pure white directly into his face. He writhed and shrieked and uncoiled into smoke, which shrank and withered until nothing remained but a smudge of black tar on the wood chips.
The younger guy said, “If this is what you two do at playgrounds, I’d hate to see you in a cemetery.”
“Ow,” Natalie said, struggling in the sandbox.
“Are you okay?” I asked, jogging over to her.
She took my hand and stood, showing me the ghast-acid holes in her sleeves. “Yeah, but this jacket will never be the same.” She looked at the two men. “Who are you guys?”
“We’re your new team,” the one in glasses said, with some kind of accent, maybe English or Irish.
“Looks like we got here just in time,” the younger one said. Then he blew on his fingertips and shoved his hands in his pockets, as if he were blowing smoke off the barrels of guns and holstering them.
I knew if I caught Natalie’s eye, we’d both burst out giggling. So I just said, “Yeah. Thanks. I’m Emma. The moth-eaten one is Natalie.”
“I’m Simon,” the older guy said, as he collected the black tar into what looked like a ziplock. “That’s Lukas. We’ll save the complete introductions until later. Let’s get back to the museum.”
“One sec,” I said. I knelt beside the mound of freshly erupted earth under the tire swing and started digging through the loose dirt.
“If you’re looking for the sandbox,” Lukas said, “you’re like thirty feet off.”
“You’re desecrating a grave,” Simon said. “We don’t do that, even if they were ghasts.”
“No?” I groped in the oddly warm earth up to my elbow, and suppressed a shiver. I found nothing. Damn. This is where the ghast had come from; shouldn’t the dagger be here?
Simon kept scolding me, but I ignored him, too busy concentrating to explain what I was doing. I closed my eyes, opening myself to all the spirits resting fitfully in their graves. This didn’t feel like the cemetery where Coby was buried; it felt fragile and dangerous, like ice that was cracking underfoot. I probed the darkness, feeling the restless ache of uneasy ghosts, searching for some sign of the earlier Emma. I’d lived her memories often enough that I’d know when she’d touched something.
I sent tendrils of energy through the playground, and felt an answering warmth. The resonance of Emma’s soul.
My eyes flashed open. “It’s there.”
“What is?” Lukas asked.
“You were right about the sandbox,” I told him. Good thing, too, because I hadn’t brought a shovel.
I found a plastic bucket in the sand and used it to dig. After I’d made a mound of sand, I tossed the bucket aside and reached down with my hand. I groped in the damp earth until my fingers touched something hard and smooth. Felt like … bone. Ick. I suppressed a shiver and kept digging.
Finally I found it, the cold touch of metal. I got a grip and yanked, and pulled the dagger from the earth. It was a long double-edged knife with a hand-forged steel blade and unembellished hilt, except for some intricacy carved into the silver pommel.
“What is that?” Simon demanded.
“Jeez,” Lukas said. “The kids play rough around here.”
“I’ll explain later,” I said, tucking it into my coat. “Let’s go home.”
We shed our coats in the foyer of the museum. Celeste materialized when we came in, and Lukas compelled her to hang our stuff in the hall closet—which bugged me. It’s not like she wouldn’t have done it anyway, and it was presumptuous of him to come in and start ordering the ghosts around.
I frowned, but didn’t say anything. If he was on the team the Knell had organized, I should try to get along with him. My goal was to catch Neos, and if a team would help with that, I’d let personality conflicts slide.
We went into the dining room, where Anatole had set out chicken sandwiches with the crusts cut off and tea in a silver urn. I laid the dagger on the long mahogany table, crossed to the massive fireplace, and downed a cup of chamomile, feeling the heat of the liquid glide through my body.
I helped myself to a second cup and a sandwich and went to stare at the dagger beside Simon.
“Why did you take this?” he asked. His glasses were slightly steamed from the heat of his tea, and he appeared older than he had at first. Probably in his late twenties. He had small gray eyes and wispy pale-colored hair, not quite blond or brown.
“Where are you from?” I asked, ignoring his question.
“Cambridge. Well, at least recently. I was born in Coventry.”
“So, England?”
“Yes, England.” To my surprise, he smiled. “I forget there’s a Cambridge here.”
“And you?” I asked, turning to Lukas, where he was making Natalie giggle by the fire. He was undeniably hot, with a swimmer’s build, dark hair, and slightly Asian eyes.
“Boston, born and bred.” He crossed his arms. “So you’re the famous Emma Vaile.”
“She’s more notorious,” Natalie said. “Even though she completely dropped the ball tonight.”
“Um,” I said, hanging my head. “Sorry?”
“What do you mean, she dropped the ball?” Lukas said. “She took down that big ugly pretty well.”
“After like ten minutes. She could hardly handle those two weenie ghasts.”
“Natalie,” Simon said. “Many ghostkeepers cannot handle a single ghast.”
“I know; I’m one of them! Why do you think I hang with Emma?” She shot me a quick grin. “You guys have barely seen her in action. That should’ve been a cakewalk. She’s not like any other ghostkeeper. She messed up tonight, that’s all. Ask her.”
I nodded. “She’s right. I just—couldn’t concentrate.”
“We all have off days,” Simon said. “Now, back to this knife. How did you know it was there? Why did you want it?”
“What is this?” Lukas asked. “The English Inquisition?”
“No.” Simon frowned. “It’s a guardian questioning his ward about a lethal weapon.”
“Wait, are you in charge of us?” Natalie asked.
Simon set down his tea. “Sadly, yes.”
“You’re only like ten years older than we are,” Lukas said.
Simon sighed. “It’s not as though I wanted this job. When William phoned, I didn’t precisely jump at the chance to be the guardian of three wayward teenagers.”
I turned to Natalie. “Did he just call us wayward?”
She eyed Lukas. “He clearly meant Lukas.”
Lukas shot her a cocky smile that looked like the definition of wayward.
“Nevertheless,” Simon continued, “I am in charge of you, and this team.” But he must’ve decided he wouldn’t get anything further from me, because he simply said, “It’s late, and you all have school tomorrow. Time for bed.”
“You should show Lukas one of the empty rooms,” I told Natalie.
“That’s all right,” he said. “I already compelled the maid to get our rooms ready.”
“Well, make sure you lock your door,” Natalie said, “before you face the wrath of Emma.”
He frowned. “What did I do?”
“Compelled the house ghosts instead of politely …” Her voice faded as they stepped into the hall.
I slunk after them, but Simon stopped me. “Emma, a word.”
I sighed. So close to making my escape.
“Tell me more about the dagger,” Simon said. We both stared at it, lying innocently on the dining room table. “How did you know it was there?”
I glanced into my empty teacup to avoid Simon’s gaze. “Edmund, a ghost at school, told me.” I sensed he’d see through the lie, but just because he was my guardian didn’t mean I had to give up all my secrets.
“And who did it belong to?”
“It was Emma’s. She was the one who lived—”
He nodded. “The Knell briefed me.”
“Well, there was a group of men who hated her. They used this to bait a trap.”
“The one you sprang tonight.” He lifted the dagger and turned it over in his hands. “Do you know what this is?”
“Um. A knife? Is that a trick question?”
“Do you know how to use it?”
I felt my right hand clench. “Try me.”
He almost smiled. “I rather think I won’t. But this isn’t merely a dagger.” He pushed it across the table to me. “I’m almost certain that Emma imbued this with her power.”
“But I didn’t notice anything when I picked it up.”
“Try it again.”
I took the dagger by the hilt. It was well balanced, with a razor-sharp edge despite being buried for hundreds of years. Didn’t feel like anything special. I shook my head at Simon, but he told me to give it more time. So I closed my eyes and probed further, accustoming myself to the weight of it in my hand and the fine dents in the silver pommel. I ran my thumb over the guard, and that’s when I experienced that familiar spinning, like being on a merry-go-round, with that great whooshing sound.
When I opened my eyes, I stood in a cornfield, under a night sky filled with an impossible number of stars. My heart raced and my breath came fast. It was one of Emma’s memories, but I experienced it as though it were happening to me right now.
Her heavy skirts whirled around my ankles, her white linen blouse stuck to my back with sweat. Not a great sensation, but it paled in comparison to her terror that I was experiencing. In my right hand I gripped the hilt of her dagger.
Behind me, a big bearded man stalked through the rows of corn. I saw his face in the starlight and recognized the features, even though I’d only ever seen him distorted by death and the Beyond. He was the black ghast. Only still alive.
He disappeared into the swaying corn and taunted me in a low, malicious whisper. I spun, feeling Emma’s terror and her iron determination. Hunching low, I slipped toward the distant light of a farmhouse.
The man’s voice grew fainter as I ran faster. Then he burst from a row in front of me, a cudgel in his hand. As the other Emma, I didn’t hesitate. Instead of turning and running, as he clearly expected, I lunged at him. The dagger caught him in the stomach. I pulled my arm back and stabbed him in the chest, blind with fear and fury and loathing.
Inside her body, feeling what she felt, I wanted her to stop. But I couldn’t control the memory. Couldn’t stop my arm from slashing, not until I heard footsteps behind me. Another man. I fled, leaving the knife behind me, caught in the big man’s chest.
The rows of corn whipped past in a blur—spinning, spinning until with a whoosh, the dining room reappeared around me.
And I found myself sobbing in Simon’s arms on the floor.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re here, you’re safe.”
“She stabbed that man. That ghast. She stabbed him over and over. And I felt like it was me, that I did it.” Tears streamed down my cheeks. “He wasn’t a ghost—he was alive, and she killed him. I think—I think she lost control. What if I—”
“I’ll help you with that,” Simon said. “With control.”
“I can’t use the dagger.” I shivered. “Every time I touch it, I’ll remember.”
“You’ll learn to control that, too. To decide how much you want to remember, and when. I don’t know half as much as Yoshiro, but I know enough to help. Why do you think William called me?” He nodded toward the door. “It wasn’t to keep those two in line; it was to help you.”
I stared at the dagger that I’d dropped onto the floor. I was drawn to it, in a way that frightened me. And I didn’t know if it was the lingering memories of Emma’s, or my own desires.
Simon helped me to my feet. “You should get some sleep.” He waited until I was at the door before saying, “Oh, and Emma?”
“Yes?”
“The ghost Edmund didn’t tell you about that dagger. I’d prefer if you didn’t lie to me.”
I nodded briefly, went upstairs, and locked myself in my room. I stared at my homework but thought about the memory of killing the man in the cornfields.
I wasn’t just seeing and talking to ghosts anymore. The wraiths at the Knell, the ghasts at the playground. It was all life and death. When had things changed? I used to argue with Bennett about dispelling ghosts, yet I was the one doing most of the killing these days. I pictured the Emma in the tapestry at the Knell. She hadn’t looked afraid. She looked as though she liked slaying ghosts. And now I knew my Emma had turned into someone who could kill a man, not just a ghost. I worried that it was going to take that kind of fierce darkness to finish Neos, and that it wasn’t a place I wanted to be.