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

I was speechless. I’d felt like I knew Pierce pretty well, but for all I’d confided in him, I knew almost nothing about his personal life. Finally I choked out, “I’m so sorry.”

Pierce drained his own mug. “No one was going to tell me ghosts weren’t real after that. But naturally, being me, I made it my mission to study the most mysterious, most elusive subject in all of ghost-lore: the Durupinen.” He winked at me and grinned. “You realize that sharing a cup of coffee with you is like going for a swim with the Loch Ness monster.”

I snorted. “You sure know how to flatter a girl.”

“Well, there’s something I’ve heard exactly three times in my life, and only two of them were sarcastic,” he replied.

We sat in silence for a few moments.

“If I could tell you everything, I would,” I said.

“Can you at least tell me if you’ll be okay now? What happened to you in the library, that’s not going to happen to you anymore, is it?” There was a fatherly concern etched into his face.

“No, I’ll be okay now. They’ll help me.”

“Good. That’s good.”

We chatted a bit longer while I sipped my coffee. Pierce showed me the syllabus he was working on for the fall semester. Due to the popularity of the parapsychology course, the college had added another level. Pierce lit up like a campfire as he described the course content. His arms flailed wildly as he gesticulated, knocking files to the floor in coffee-ringed avalanches. As I watched him, some terrible knot inside me loosened; Pierce was going to be just fine, too.

Half an hour later, I stood to leave.

“You sure you can’t initiate me and tell me all your mystical secrets?” Pierce asked. “I promise I won’t tell anyone except the entire scientific community, and maybe a few geeks who read academic publications.”

I just smiled. “I’ll see you, Pierce.”

“Don’t be a stranger, eh? Keep in touch.”

“You got it. I’ll send you lots of letters with blacked out names and details,” I said. I couldn’t find anywhere to put my mug down that looked safe, so I handed it to him instead. “Say thank you to the guys for me, okay? And Annabelle, too.”

“Are you going somewhere, Jessica?”

I spun to see Neil Caddigan hovering in the doorway. As was his general style, I had neither seen nor heard him approach, and therefore jumped in surprise at the sight of him.

“Neil, hey. Sorry, I didn’t know you were there.”

“It is I who ought to apologize. Am I intruding? I can come back, David. I just wanted a quick word,” Neil said with a polite little bow. His gaze never left my face; I’d never seen eyes so blanched of color.

“No, I was just leaving,” I said, suddenly glad he’d appeared to shape this odd moment of goodbye for us. “Goodbye, Pierce. Thanks for everything.”

“See you around, Ballard. Take care of yourself.”

He thrust out a hand and I shook it. Then I turned and brushed past Neil. I could feel his eyes burrowing into me all the way down the hallway. For one strange moment I wanted to turn around and run back to Pierce’s office. There was something incredibly important I hadn’t said to him. But since I couldn’t put into words what that something was, I just kept walking.

§

“Jess? How are you feeling?”

My Aunt Karen’s gentle voice burst my thoughts like a soap bubble. I opened my eyes to see her back in her seat, belt buckled and magazine in her lap. I hadn’t even heard her sit down.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “How much longer until we land?”

“About another four hours.”

I whimpered pitifully. Four hours.

“Here, they have this map on the TV, you can track where the plane is and —”

“Nope, no maps, no pictures of planes above water, please,” I muttered. “I really don’t need any more reminders about what we’re doing. I just need to be distracted. Or unconscious. Is there a blunt object nearby that you could just hit me over the head with?”

Karen smiled sympathetically. “How about a sleeping pill?”

I actually picked my head up off of the headrest. “Do you have one?”

“Yes, I thought I might need them for the time change. But I think you need one now.” She pulled her purse out from under the seat and extracted a pill box and a bottled water.

“Take one of those, you’ll be out cold in fifteen minutes,” she advised.

“Oh my God, I love you,” I sighed, as I popped the top of the pill box. I felt Karen stiffen a little beside me as I realized what I’d said.

Things had been strained between Karen and me ever since I’d discovered the truth about my abilities. I’d been torturing myself for months, first with trying to understand the circumstances of my mother’s death, and then with questioning my own sanity. Karen had known all that time what had happened to my mother and, to a certain extent, what was happening to me. But she hadn’t told me the truth, not until she was forced to by the arrival of two of the Durupinen to my room in the middle of the night. Her excuse was that she was trying to protect me, and also our family’s ancient secret. A part of me knew that she had done what she thought was right, but a much bigger and angrier part of me kept telling that first part to shut the hell up. The Durupinen had torn apart my family and destroyed my mother. Now they were commandeering my entire life, and everyone expected me to be happy about it, like this was all some big honor, like I’d won the freak lottery. Well, I wasn’t about to start waving any Durupinen flags just yet; they still owed me too much. In fact, the only reason I was on this plane (
don’t think about it!
) was for Hannah. She’d dealt with the Visitations all alone for far too long. I wasn’t about to deny her the chance to learn how to control it, and becoming an Apprentice to the Durupinen at Fairhaven Hall was the only way.

As I started trying to imagine what Fairhaven might look like, the sedative hit my bloodstream with a dizzying rush, and my thoughts slipped and slid out of my control and into a highly colored dream in which I was flapping around the campus of St. Matt’s with a giant pair of feathery wings I’d just sprouted. I landed in a tree to watch the haute couture fashion show that Milo was coordinating on the quad. Every model that strutted down the runway appeared to be a ghost with gruesome injuries. When I pointed this out to Milo, he just rolled his eyes and said, “Get with it, Jess, it’s dead chic. You are
so
bourgeois.”

I resurfaced groggily to the sounds of seatbelts snapping and overhead compartments popping open. The plane itself was wonderfully, blessedly stationary.

“Jess? We’re here. How are you feeling?” Karen nudged me.

I shook my head, a bit woozy, but too relieved to care. “I’m good. Remind me the next time I have to do this that I only fly unconscious.”

Karen laughed. “Will do.”

A businessman who’d been flirting shamelessly with Karen in Logan airport dislodged our bags for us, and we shuffled off the plane into Heathrow. As we made our way through customs, I realized I hadn’t been able to feel my way past my crippling aviophobia to even appreciate what it might be like to be here. I glanced over at Hannah, who was wheeling her carry-on bag and looking anxious.

“Nervous?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

“Afraid they’ll make you declare Milo?”

She laughed, a fluttery sound. “No, I think he’ll sneak into the country okay. There was no reason for him to have to wait in this line. He’s checking out the airport shops until we get through.”

We inched closer to the crumple-faced man at the customs check-in booth. “I guess I’m just…nervous about what will happen when we get there,” Hannah said.

I snorted. “Which part?”

“Well, all of it, really.”

“I think they’re the ones who should be nervous, letting us go for so long without the truth. I, for one, expect full apologies, with groveling,” I said, with more bravado than I felt. Hannah’s smile was a little too understanding, but at least she was smiling again. I considered it a little victory as I finally reached the front of the queue.

The grey-haired man signaled to me with a little wave of his hand. I shuffled forward and handed him my packet of paperwork. “Good morning, Miss, and welcome to the United Kingdom. I trust you had a pleasant flight?”

Hah!
“Yes, thank you.”

He flipped through my documents carefully. “Well, that all seems to be in order.” He stamped a few things and handed the papers back to me. “And what is your reason for visiting the United Kingdom?”

For one insane moment, I wanted to grab this mild-mannered man by the lapels of his jacket and scream, “You’ve got to help me! I’ve been kidnapped by an ancient ghost cult! I WANT MY LIFE BACK!” Instead I smiled blandly and parroted the party-line, “I’m attending University here at Fairhaven Hall.”

“Very good, very good,” the man replied with a smile. “You may proceed through. A pleasant day to you, Miss.”

“You too,” I said, and stepped aside to wait for Hannah and Karen.

We stopped at an airport café for coffee, which I started to gulp down immediately despite the fact that it was scalding my throat. Between the nerves, the time change, and the horse-tranquilizer-strength sleeping pill, I had never needed caffeine more. An airport security guard offered, quite cheerfully, to find us a luggage cart. He then proceeded to load all of our baggage from the carousel, and wheel it out to the cab stand, whistling as he did so. Milo lounged atop the pile of suitcases like Cleopatra. The only thing lacking was an entourage of half-naked men feeding him grapes and fanning him with giant palm fronds. I couldn’t help but be struck by how friendly and polite everyone was. I don’t think a single airport employee had so much as cracked a smile at us during our two hours at Logan airport, unless you counted the snide smirk from the woman at the security checkpoint when I’d lost my balance trying to remove my shoes.

The cabstand was crowded with vehicles. They looked nothing like the taxis back home, and reminded me of antique cars with their slightly bulbous shape. I started toward the first available cab, but Karen held up a hand. “We don’t need one of those,” she told me. “Our cars are here.”

“Our cars?” I repeated in surprise.

Karen nodded and pointed to two sleek black Bentleys pulling up to the curb. With almost military precision, two drivers in dark suits and chauffeur caps emerged, walked quickly around their vehicles, and popped open their trunks. Then they stood straight-backed and wordless beside the open doors. Karen, who was obviously expecting this secret service-style treatment, slid into the backseat of the first car. She poked her head back out when we hesitated. “Come on, girls. You can ride with me. The second car is for the bags.”

Hannah and I exchanged a nervous look and then followed Karen. The chauffeur didn’t so much as glance at us, and I was reminded forcibly of the unflappable Buckingham Palace guards, the ones who were famous for their ability to hold stock-still and ignore the obnoxious tourists such as myself snapping photos and trying fruitlessly to make them react to our antics. It took great effort not to wave my hand in front of the man’s face as I passed him and ducked into the posh leather interior of the car, which was by far the nicest one I’d ever been in. It was cool and dark behind the heavily-tinted windows.

“So, did you order these cars, or does Fairhaven Hall have its own army of chauffeurs?” I asked, watching as the silent man slid into what looked like the passenger seat up front, but which was, of course, the driver’s seat.

Karen laughed. “Don’t let them hear you call them chauffeurs. They’re Caomhnóir.”

“Come again?” I said.

“Caomhnóir. They’re the guardians and protectors of the Durupinen,” Karen said.

“Who are they, though?” Hannah asked. “How do they know about us? I thought only women were a part of the Durupinen.”

“It is true that only the women are part of the actual Gateways, but over the centuries we’ve learned that we need protection if we are going to keep our world a secret. The Caomhnóir are men descended from the same clan families, who have latent abilities to sense spirits as well. They are trained to watch over us, just as we are trained to watch over our Gateways.”

“And are they all this strong and silent?” Milo asked, trying to sneak another peek through the divider at the man now pulling the car out onto the street.

Hannah repeated his question for Karen, who laughed appreciatively.

“For the most part, yes, actually. Interaction between the Durupinen and the Caomhnóir is very…limited.”

“Why?” Hannah asked, frowning.

“Oh, that’s a long political discussion,” Karen said with an airy wave of her hand. “I’ll let your teachers bore you with that in class. For now, let’s just say that you shouldn’t feel offended if they aren’t very friendly to you; they’re like that with all of us.”

“At least they make nice eye candy,” Milo said.

Hannah laughed and repeated the joke to Karen.

“Milo is quite the comedian. I look forward to meeting him for myself shortly,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Karen smiled broadly. “I was talking with a few of my Council friends yesterday. It seems that, though the Binding was broken when your mother died, it still needs to be formally removed. Once that happens, it is almost definite that I will be able to see spirits again.” It could not have been more obvious that she was thrilled about this.