Chapter Three: Unhealthy Souls
by L. Inman
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
—T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
“Fool, fool, back to
the beginning is the rule,” Elisabeth murmured, as the train picked up speed
out of
“But even there your right hand
holds me fast,” she said to herself. She
had written to Rupert to say she was coming to see him. And Willow.
At his house.
It was a mistake, she knew, even
before she had made it irrevocable. And
it was irrevocable—how could it be anything but too late to stop this
ill-advised love affair? She had, she
thought, been resolute. Flint-faced,
even. Go away, she had told him. I lied to
the Council, and it was my last lie. I
can’t say I don’t—have feelings for you. She had shied away at the last minute from
saying: I’m in love with you. So
overwrought, and what if she hadn’t second-guessed enough? There was always more second-guessing you
could do.
Go away, she had said. I can’t lie
any more. I’m a liability to you. Go away.
He went away.
But then he came back.
Bruised, drained, his bones and his
control in fissures, he showed up on her doorstep, some days after Elisabeth
had felt the dark tremor in the world.
And she had thought at first he had come to her, as he had before, for
help.
But then, after fifteen seconds’
worth of his coming inside amid Elisabeth’s mindless small-talk, he had grasped
for her, gathered her in his arms and kissed her: a new sort of kiss, not
merely desperate, not merely passionate, but a perfect and weightless
plunge: a kiss in which he was never,
never again holding back. And suddenly,
neither was she.
Had that been the moment at which it
was too late? Or had that moment come
before, below the surface of her notice?
Only one thing was certain: the
moment was behind her.
The train picked up speed, and
Elisabeth resettled herself in the seat to watch the green landscape slip by.
“Back to the beginning,” she whispered, and controlled a shudder.
*
“One thing is,” Elisabeth said as she lifted a heavy tome from the rickety shelving unit she had improvised, “once we get the house in proper shape, we’ll have a place for all these, with real shelves.”
“If we get the house in proper shape,”
Rupert said gloomily. “And if you like,
I can bring up some of my shelving units from
“Not so little,” Elisabeth said, realigning the remaining books on the groaning shelf. “And not so if. We’ll get the house de-haunted, or I’ll know the reason why.”
He watched her for a moment as she wrangled the heavy books, which began to fall as soon as she let go of them, before getting up to help. “Don’t underestimate the simple things,” he said. “Simple things are usually what defeat us.” His hands held the end of the stack while she shifted the other end. “I’ll be sure and get some of my heavy bookends, too.”
“That would be a help.” Elisabeth sat down and picked up her legal pad, flapping with many pages turned to the back. “So, the Marcianus Compendium. What else do we need, Cyrano?”
“Cyrano?” Rupert sniffed. “I’m not the one planning death-or-glory charges.”
“But you are the one expecting to die from an urchin’s ambush in the street.”
“I don’t expect anything,” Rupert said. “Except perhaps to be surprised.” He let his fingers rove over the spines of the books Elisabeth had collected, but abruptly stopped at one and yanked it out, threatening the rickety shelving unit with utter rocking collapse. “A Short Listing of Tripedal Ritualists? I’ve been looking for one of these for thirty years! Where did you get it?” he demanded.
She looked up from her notes with a far-too-innocent blank facial shrug. “From a bookstore? I’d have to look in the invoice file.”
He stared her down, with mixed results: she dropped her eyes, but it was with a smile that she picked up her pen. “You haven’t read it?” he inquired, suspiciously.
“I haven’t had time,” she said. “But I did wonder what that one was about. From the title, it appears to be a ‘short’ listing of tripedal ritualists. What’s a tripedal ritualist, anyway? Is it a performer of rituals who has a big—”
“No,” Rupert said witheringly, and Elisabeth grinned.
“So,” she said, poising her pen, “what else, cap’n?”
“I think I liked ‘Cyrano’ better,” he murmured. Then, at her raised-eyebrow look: “I need Thaumogenesis and Its Variants. Did you get that one?”
She frowned. “I…think so. The title’s familiar, but maybe it’s because it’s one I didn’t manage to get. The books are alphabetical by title….” She leaned over to look at the bottom shelf where the Ts were. “Nnnnoooo….oh, wait, yes, here it is.” She tugged the volume out of its spot, and the whole shelf rocked forward toward destruction. With a sharp cry Rupert threw himself against the unit, flinging his arms out just in time to stop books toppling to the floor. The shelving trembled dangerously, but did not collapse, and Rupert relaxed, panting, against the books.
Elisabeth looked up at him, primming her lips in a thoughtful hum. “Don’t guess that was the smartest thing I ever did,” she said lightly.
“No,” he said, “it wasn’t.” His tone must have been sharper than he planned, because she glanced down again, looking stung.
“You did it too,” she muttered under her breath, and Rupert sighed.
For a few silent minutes they went about their business, Rupert browsing her shelves and Elisabeth making notes on her pad. Presently he looked down at her, hoping to draw her glance and put an end to the discomfort in the air; but she kept her head bent and her attention on her notes. He noticed that the tag of her shirt was sticking up over her collar, and reached to tuck it in. She jumped and stifled a small cry.
“Sorry,” he said instantly, “it was just—your tag was sticking out—”
She reached for the back of her neck and smoothed her collar convulsively. “No, sorry, I thought—it was a bug or something.” She bent her head to her work again.
Rupert thought this was not quite sufficient explanation for the abstracted motion of her hand still rubbing protectively at her neck, or her change in color. He had tried to ignore it, but he couldn’t help noticing that occasionally she became distressingly jumpy about being touched, and at the oddest times. Troubled, he sighed again and returned his attention to the books.
Without further ado they chose books and marked them off; then Elisabeth got together their ratty collection of satchels and began packing them with their selection. “We have enough shoulders for these, you think?” Rupert remarked mildly as she flapped one shut over its bulging contents.
“Guess we’ll find out,” Elisabeth said. She heaved the satchel onto the couch with a grunt.
He glanced out the window at the unremarkable grey weather. “Good thing it’s not so bloody hot,” he murmured.
She spared a glance in the direction he was looking before flapping shut another satchel without comment.
“I should have gone out there today.” He couldn’t seem to stop himself muttering inanely. “Make sure nothing caught fire. We never did turn those lights off....”
Elisabeth straightened abruptly and put her fists on her hips. “Rupert,” she said, “for heaven’s sake stop fretting. We are working it, okay? It’s just a damn ghost. You’re making me more nervous than it did.”
There was a silence while he glared back at her, at first in resentment, and subsequently in intent consideration. “You’re really not worried about it.”
She bent again to her packing with a noisy sigh. “Only thing that’d really bother me is if the First were involved, and your Wiccan accountant says the First wouldn’t have bothered to respect my Eucharistic circle.”
They never mentioned the First if they could help it. Rupert flinched, and knew she saw it, though she was not looking at him. It occurred to him that Elisabeth might have her own reasons for being blunt: he had learned it was a favored tactic of hers when she was feeling off-balance, or when her strength had gone brittle.
“I do care about your well-being, you know,” he said.
This stopped her. She put down the book she had lifted and looked up at him. She opened her mouth, but it took a second for her reply to come. “I know,” she said, finally.
He forced himself to say the rest of it, lame as it sounded. “More...than I care about the house.”
A hint of wry, wistful humor touched the corners of her lips. “I know,” she said, softer. “It’s nice to hear, though.”
Rupert found himself relaxing a very little.
“Grab a couple satchels,” Elisabeth said. “Let’s go work the problem.”
*
Meanwhile, at his flat, Brian Whitaker was also
packing. There was a crate of books from
his own collection waiting jammed on his dining table amid stacks of papers, an
uneven pile of printouts and photocopies he’d brought back from
As he prepared to hoist the satchel to his shoulder and gather up the other materials, he glanced about his flat, as if looking for some answer he had missed.
He hadn’t signed on for this, exactly. He wasn’t the tales-of-true-horror type, and it would have been so nice simply to sink back into an uneasy skepticism. But it would have meant losing a friend, and ultimately risking his own life. And he had to admit that the discovery of a whole parallel history, woven in with the world he inhabited term in and term out, was the tiniest bit intriguing. The boyish part of him who wanted to build Lego models of French medieval castles also wanted to draw diagrams of the esoterica Elisabeth and Rupert had brought him into contact with: to see how it worked, to watch how the dominoes had fallen. The ramshackle bookshelves he used to divide his flat into three rooms were stuffed with the books that had failed him in this particular quest, and he felt a little lost.
“They say truth is the daughter of time,” he murmured, hoisting up the heavy crate. “Well, hello, Father Time, may I take your daughter out tonight?”
Grunting, he staggered his way out the door and hooked it shut with his foot after him.
*
Later, over an ancient and heavy table discarded by one of the common rooms and now spread with piles of maps and photocopies and books, he steepled his fingers together with only a minimum of self-consciousness and said mockingly, “Let’s play ‘What Do We Know?’.”
“Only if I get to be George Frankly,” Elisabeth said, hitting keys on the laptop she had perched among the much older research accoutrements with a jovial air.
Brian and Rupert merely stared at her. Elisabeth ducked her head and muttered something about “damn Brits” and “Children’s Television Workshop.” She recovered enough after a moment to say, “First, we know the house is haunted.”
“Do we know what kind of haunting it is?” Brian asked warily.
“Well,
certainly malicious,” Rupert said, flipping through some of the printouts Brian
had made while in
“The house doesn’t like being meddled with,” Elisabeth said, her eyes on her computer screen. Rupert and Brian exchanged glances.
“So—” Brian drew a deep breath— “we know that whatever’s…er, possessing the house…would it be fair to say that it doesn’t want anything to be changed?”
“A fairly common aim of malicious haunts,” Rupert said. “Perhaps a change occurred to the house in its history that might give us a clue. Did you—?”
“Oh yes,” Brian said grimly. “It’s all there. And if we’re looking for a suspicious death, we’re going to have to narrow it down.” He unearthed an example and dropped it in front of Rupert, who smoothed out the paper to read: a photocopy from a 1911 Oxford Chronicle with a bold headline: “Retired Tutor Found Dead in Hanging Suicide.” He squinted at the small, blurred copy of the newsprint. “It says the news came as a shock to everyone, who knew Mr Mellingwhite as a cheerful old man who had plans to fully renovate his new home, shown in photo, known as Pyke’s Lea. He had already converted the scullery-cum-mudroom at the back to a conservatory (ah! that explains the odd placement of the windows), and was planning to restore the indecipherable frescoes on the ceiling of the study. It says that he had never appeared despondent, though the last few times he’d been seen in public he had a ‘hunted’ expression. H’m.”
“And he’s not the only one.” Brian began lifting stacks of photocopies again. “A whole family got it when they tore down the original stable to build a modern garage in 1938. The creosote was hardly dry when the father hanged himself, kicked over a paraffin lamp, and set the building on fire, trapping the wife and two sons, who were in there too for some reason. Gruesome. ‘Course, the next people who took over the house, according to a retrospective article the next year, had been anxious to rebuild the garage but held off indefinitely when the Blitz came along.” He looked quite cheerful, rooting through the inches of paper on the table. “And then there was this bloke in 1876….” He broke off to unearth a large map, which was covering up another stack of photocopies.
“…1876?” Rupert prompted, looking up at Brian, who was now frowning thoughtfully at the map through his reading glasses, which were perched on his long nose. “What did he die of?”
“Oh, he didn’t die,” Brian said, looking up. “He just went mad. They had him committed, like Conan Doyle’s old man, because he started blibbering about fairies and whatnot. He was an entomologist,” he added, pensively.
“Did he do anything to the house?”
“Cleared out the attic,” Brian said, grinning. “At least, that’s what the housekeeper said his last big project was, in the article.”
Elisabeth, tapping away at her keyboard, snorted. “I’m cleaning up the table of owners here,” she said. “Looks like the house’s provenance goes back to…1659, according to this.”
“That’d be about right,” Rupert said; “it matches the date on the cornerstone.”
“Bonnie Prince Charlie,” Brian muttered, whistling between his teeth. “I think I’ve got a map of the area that age. Hang on.”
They all had to help him shift papers and books to get at the map, which was large and unwieldy and sprawled over the whole table (Elisabeth shut the lid of her laptop). Brian murmured, “Legend…legend…ah. 1650. Damn. Decade too early.”
“But there is something there,” Rupert said, pointing at the wood and meadow where his house now stood.
“And it’s called ‘Pyke’s Lea,’” Elisabeth said, leaning close to get a look.
Rupert squinted at the markings. “Looks like the name once referred to the meadow. Must have stuck to the house after it was built. But what is that?”
He traced a mark on the map that lay at the head of the meadow, close to the lane. “Old. Bart.” He frowned. “That can’t be right.”
“But that’s
what it says,” Elisabeth said, putting her head close to his to read the minuscule
writing. “
“Bartholomae,” Brian said suddenly. “There was something I saw about a scandal—the name was Bartholomae….” He dived for a stack of books and began flipping through them feverishly.
“Then who was Pyke?”
Rupert shrugged. “Probably some owner or factor of the land, before it was redivided. D’you think we should entertain the possibility that the haunting goes deeper than the house itself?”
“If that’s the case,” Elisabeth said, “why is the ghost so all-fired determined to stop anybody playing Martha Stewart? You’d think it would have wanted the house destroyed altogether….” She broke off and frowned pensively at the map.
“Elisabeth…?”
“Ha! Found it!” Brian brandished a moldy-looking cloth-bound book of some indeterminate brownish color, with no title on the spine. “There’s a whole chapter here—this is a book on local family history—on the Bartholomae family. Hmm…suspected in the Gunpowder Plot—”
“Catholics?” Rupert asked.
“Ah…hang
on…yeah. Catholics. Model citizens, except for
that whole pesky recusant business.
Built a house near
Rupert lifted his head and directed an arid, searching look at Brian. “Built a house…perhaps this—” he indicated the map— “is the ruin, then.”
Brian continued without lifting his eyes from the book, while Elisabeth and Rupert pawed about for a later map. “Yes, here,” Elisabeth said finally. “The house is on the same site, looks like, though the scales are different. And it’s been named for the meadow.”
“I thought it looked oddly Tudor,” Rupert murmured. “I wonder….”
“You think they rebuilt—” Elisabeth broke off as Brian continued.
“So, blah blah misfit religionists—blah blah Charles I—nothing very exciting until 1649—then things get exciting in a hurry. Mr Bartholomae is suspected of harboring Royalist spies—house raided—big to-do—accusations all round—personal vendettas—some suspicious books—”
“Books?” Elisabeth raised her head. “Rupert…d’you think they were Watchers? Were there Catholic Watchers?”
“I don’t recall the name Bartholomae in the records I’ve seen, but it doesn’t mean they weren’t. And as to your other question, Watchers were all sorts of religions, but mostly whatever was convenient at the time.”
“I wouldn’t call being a recusant Catholic very convenient at this time,” Brian said wryly. “This whole family was put to death—well, not the women and children, they were carted off somewhere, probably murdered by law later, or slow death by arranged marriage—well, it was a pretty slow death for all of them anyway, because they found the priesthole.”
“The priesthole?”
“Yep. There was a priesthole in the house—doesn’t say where—but it was occupied, by a couple of Jesuits.”
Rupert whistled.
“The method these particular Roundheads chose to deal with these Jesuits was to seal them up in the priesthole and starve them to death. Then when the priests were dead, they took them out and strung ‘em all up in the stable, along with the men of the family and their servants. Eleven people in all, looks like.”
Elisabeth made a noise of apprehension, and deep disgust. Rupert hummed thoughtfully. Brian flipped a page, unruffled, and resettled his reading glasses on his nose.
“Gives their names: John Bartholomae, James Bartholomae, Charles Bartholomae (popular name till the Roundheads took over), Jesse Talmadge, Gavin Starlock, Robert Sallee, Charles Bowen—oh, that’s a sad story. Hardly more than a kid, he was. Poor chump, he got sent from up north with a desperate message that the Bartholomaes needed to fly at once. Not Catholic, not related to the family, no evidence he was a spy, but he showed up at the door while they were holding the Bartholomaes hostage and got taken too.” Brian lifted another page to turn, and did not notice that Elisabeth, and then Rupert, had gone quite still.
“Oh, and get this,” he continued, amused, “his old man came down from the West Riding to get his son’s body back, when he heard about it. They almost didn’t give it to him, but he raised all sorts of hell—there was almost a riot on the premises—apparently they didn’t call this bloke ‘Robin the Bold’ for nothing—oh, for a more enlightened time, when names meant something!” Brian chuckled. “He gave a big fuck-you speech to the whole lot of them, Roundheads and Catholics—they’ve got it reported in here—listen to this, Mercutio’s got nothing on Robert Bowen—”
At last Brian looked up, to gather them in with his grin: but Rupert was staring at him wide-eyed, as if with a look he could silence Brian altogether. And Elisabeth’s expression was a stunned blank, her face paper-white.
Presently Elisabeth recovered enough to swallow and draw a breath. “Excuse me,” she said quietly, “I think I’m going to get some water and a breath of air.” Neatly she pushed back her chair and, almost without noise, disappeared from the room. The door clicked softly shut behind her.
“What?” Brian said to Rupert. “What have I said?”
Rupert drew a long breath and let it out in a sigh. “Robert ‘Robin the Bold’ Bowen has been established as the name of one of Elisabeth’s paternal ancestors,” he said simply, pulling off his glasses and dropping them onto the map.
“But that’s impossible,” Brian said. “She’s not from this dimension. That’s what she said. Isn’t it—?”
“She’s not,” Rupert said carefully, “from this dimension originally. But we don’t know how this dimension accommodated her, whether there was—a—a discrepancy in history, or what have you. But it seems that some, at least, of her ancestors did exist here.” He sighed. “Oh, dear.”
“Damn,” Brian said. “God, did I put my foot in it. I’d better go find her—”
He was rising from his chair as he spoke, but Rupert said, “No,” in the sort of quiet tone that people rarely disobey. Reluctantly Brian sank back into his seat. “Let her come back on her own,” Rupert said softly.
They sat in an awkward silence for the space of a minute; then Rupert ventured, clearing his throat, “Does the account mention what happened to the original house?”
“They burned it,” Elisabeth said from the doorway. “With the books. Especially the books.”
Her eyes met Brian’s across the table, and he nodded.
She came to sit down at the table once more. Rupert said: “Dare I suppose we have found our trigger event?”
Brian said, in a subdued voice, “It’s hard to imagine a situation more fraught with suffering.”
“Considering that a number of men were killed on that occasion, we may be dealing with more than one ghostly personality,” Rupert said. He put on his glasses, reached for one of his books, and began to leaf through its worn pages. There was a small silence while he paused to read, one hand suspended in the act of turning a page.
Elisabeth said: “Brian, give me that book you were reading from.”
Brian hesitated. “Which—? Oh, that one. Hang on—” He had put it down on an unoccupied chair, out of sight, as if making it disappear might erase his gaffe and Elisabeth’s shock. He now reluctantly brought it out of his impromptu hiding place and passed it across the table to her. Rupert’s eyes lifted briefly from his book to watch the transaction, but he said nothing, and did not appear to be watching Elisabeth as she found the section on the Bartholomaes and began to read, her face impassive.
Brian tore his eyes from her intent figure and asked Rupert, “So what d’you reckon? You think old man Bartholomae decided to inhabit the house after it was rebuilt?”
Without lifting his eyes from the book, Rupert said, “There seems to be something missing from the picture. The whole scene seems to me to be excessively violent. I wonder if the ‘personal vendetta’ you spoke of had more to do with the outcome than Civil War politics and anti-Catholic hysteria.”
“According
to this,” Elisabeth said, “it did. The
enemy of the Bartholomaes was a family called Falworth. They duked it out in
“But somebody could have been left behind to carry on the old resentments—giving anybody a hard time that meddled with the house, reenacting hangings….”
Rupert frowned. “That doesn’t quite fit, though—the trigger, if what you say is true, ought to be something to do with the people rather than the house. After all, the importance the house has to the story is that it concealed political refugees, not that it was—”
“Yes, and anybody messing with the house would release its secrets,” Brian said.
“But what has that to do with the Falworths?” Rupert pressed. “They had already discovered the house’s secrets. There wasn’t any need to conceal or protect—the damage had been done.”
“But if meddling with the house touches a sore spot, surely the ghost—or ghosts—would react, no matter what the intentions of the meddlers—”
“Of course. But that would be the case if, for example, the Jesuits in question were the ones haunting the house.”
“Do Jesuits haunt?” Brian said dryly. There was a fine nervous edge in his expression. He did not like the look Rupert was giving him: it wasn’t patronizing, exactly, but it was the sort of look he’d received from dons in his day and now dealt out to his own students without compunction. Brian straightened his spine. “I admit I’m not as experienced as you in these matters,” he said, “but—”
Rupert neither contradicted nor accepted his gambit; he merely ignored it and said: “All I’m saying is that the evidence is not presumptive—we simply cannot tell which of the victims—or indeed, the victimizers—is haunting the place without—”
“I think it’s Charles,” Elisabeth said, her eyes in the book.
“Which—I or II?” Brian said jocularly, though he knew what she meant; and his heart sank. She merely looked up at him, and he knew he wasn’t hiding very well the pity and dismay that he felt for her.
“What’s your reasoning?” Rupert said, turning his gaze calmly to her face.
“The disturbances in the house are reenactments,” she said, looking over at him. “Brian’s right about that. And he’s right about the sore spots. But it makes much more sense if you look at it as if whatever’s guarding the house is an outsider. No zealot like a convert, and all that.”
“Are you saying that you think Charles Bowen became a—”
“I’m not saying he converted to Catholicism, no,” Elisabeth said. “Bowens don’t do mass conformity unless they can make it look like it was their own idea.” A faint, dry smile stole over her face. Rupert gave a little snort, presumably at her pun.
“Then—what?” Brian grasped for understanding. “He fell in love with one of the Bartholomae women?”
Elisabeth snorted. “I’d hate to find out that my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was that lame. No, what I meant was: he was forced to die there. If he’d had no real ties to the Bartholomaes or their cause before, his spirit would likely react one of two ways—total repugnance for everyone involved, like his father, or insistence on getting what he’d already had to pay for.”
“Which is…?”
“A part in the play,” Rupert said.
Elisabeth nodded.
It seemed to Brian that his entire effort to spare Elisabeth the pain of facing an evil from her ancestors had whipped right through his hands like a runaway anchor, and he couldn’t tell which he felt more—resentment at Elisabeth and Rupert for their partnership and superior grasp of the situation, or shame at himself for attempting once again to white-knight her. With an effort he mastered himself and said, in a guarded voice: “That does make sense. Do you think it’s Charles alone?”
“I couldn’t say for sure,” she said, “but I think probably so.”
“Its strong reaction to your presence in particular is suggestive,” Rupert said.
She nodded. “I was just thinking that. So—what kind of spell are we talking here?”
Rupert let out a deep sigh and laid his open book on the table. “There are five basic exorcisms—expelling, consuming, sublimating, solidifying, and conversion.”
“Sounds like a chemistry experiment,” Brian snorted.
“Rather like,” Rupert replied calmly. “But much more volatile. If we’re right, and Charles’s resentments are driving the curse, then I’d say our best choices would be conversion—”
“—and consuming,” Elisabeth said. “I’d go for the latter, myself, though the former has its charms.”
“I think
you’re right.” Rupert turned a page,
then another. “I’ve got two spells in
mind for that route. Why don’t I consult
with
“Do we have to do it at night?” Elisabeth took the words right out of Brian’s mouth.
“To be most effective? I think so, yes.” Rupert’s voice was bland, but Brian suspected that he was suppressing an urge to protect Elisabeth, only with more subtlety than Brian had done. Brian let out an exasperated sigh.
Rupert stretched and looked at his watch, yawning. “Good heavens,” he said, “it’s hardly late at all. Why didn’t I think of cultivating friendships with professional historians before? I could have saved myself loads of research time.”
Brian gave this the rich snort it deserved, and Elisabeth hid a smirk as she closed down her computer.
“Tomorrow, then,” he said, watching them sort through the hodgepodge of materials on the desk and remove their own books and papers.
Elisabeth gave a weary nod. “Yes. Best get a good night’s sleep and eat our Wheaties in the morning.”
Rupert said, repacking his satchel: “I do wish the so-called ‘Breakfast of Champions’ was something other than cold cereal.”
“Or blood.”
Rupert flashed a little smile into his satchel. “Which reminds me, we need to get some Weetabix.”
“And hair product,” Elisabeth said, gravely.
He laughed.
Brian said: “You are both freaks, you know that?”
Elisabeth flashed him one of her rare bright smiles. “Goodnight.”
*
On the way home, Elisabeth amused Rupert greatly with a rendition of one of Spike’s mocking speeches about Angel: “‘…No, no! Helping those in need’s my job. And working up a load of sexual tension and prancing away like a magnificent poof is truly thanks enough.’” Rupert felt, for the first time in a long while, able to laugh. “I sure hope Spike and Angel are enjoying one another,” Elisabeth said, giving words to Rupert’s own thought. He smirked: how long had it been since he’d mocked either one of them? How long had it been since he’d stepped back for any sort of perspective?
He glanced over at his partner as he made the turn onto their street. Her chin was jutting thoughtfully, in a reassuring look of pensive stubbornness, but there was a haunted look to the lines of her eyes as she stared out the window that worried him.
The implications of the night’s revelations, of course, were worrying in and of themselves.
Neither of them much felt like putting away the books they’d hauled to and fro, so they dumped them in satchels and piles on the couch and went straight to bed. Rupert attempted to stay awake long enough to be sure that Elisabeth was going to sleep without nightmares, but her stillness, and the quiet of the flat, lulled him into a sleep of heavy exhaustion, and with a little sigh he gave in to it and let go of consciousness.
But something, a little noise perhaps, or a movement like a piano key-hammer on the string of his instincts, woke him while it was still dark. He reached across the bed without opening his eyes, to reassure himself with Elisabeth’s soft body, even to wake her and make her ready with him for whatever had alerted him…but she was gone.
Rupert opened his eyes. There was a light on in the den, he could tell by the shadows in the corridor. There was no sound in the flat.
Quietly, he got out of bed and pulled on his robe, then padded softly into the den to investigate.
Elisabeth was sitting, spine straight, at her computer, unblinking, perfectly still. He approached her carefully; she had made no sign that she had seen him, and he didn’t want to startle her. But when he’d reached her shoulder, she swallowed and cleared her throat to speak in a dry rasp.
“They’re all dead,” she said.
Rupert looked at the computer screen. She had ventured online, it seemed, to find her pedigree—or the pedigree that would have been hers, had she been born here. Instead of a long chain of births and deaths, however, the screen showed a short branch ending in Charles Bowen’s name.
“Well, of course they’re all dead,”
Elisabeth amended, an unconvincing weak whimsy in her
voice. “Death rate of
human beings, still holding steady at 100 percent. And it’s not even that they’re dead, really,
it’s just that they were never born.
Charles’s son Robert was supposed to sail for
Rupert put a hand out to rest on her shoulder gently.
“Funny thing is,” she went on, her voice growing more constricted, “that book was wrong about one thing. Charles wasn’t an adolescent when he was killed. He was young, certainly, but not ‘little more than a child.’ He was….” She paused to swallow hard, and Rupert tightened his hand on her shoulder. “He was the same age I was when I blundered into this dimension. Almost to the day.”
He wanted to tell her that this probably wasn’t a significant fact, but he couldn’t, because it probably was. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
There was a bleak, devastated look haunting her profile now. “How many people had to die so I could be here?”
He cleared his throat again, but could not speak. Instead he moved his hand from her shoulder to find her hand, and gently drew her round to face him. Looking her in the eye, he shut the lid of her laptop down and drew her to her feet. “Come,” he said; she obeyed limply as he moved them both to the couch, where he dumped pile after satchel after pile of books on the floor so that they could stretch out. She lay huddled in his arms, her head tucked under his chin, and he stroked her loose hair, feeling her faint trembling, her taut breathing.
“Wasn’t a mystery we wanted to solve, was it?” he murmured after a while.
She shook her head. “But,” she said, in a last-ditch attempt at whimsy, “at least we know there’s not another version of me out there to worry about.”
“I suppose,” he said; but then, silently, she began to cry. He gathered her as close as he could and laid his cheek against her hair.
“I wish there weren’t any versions of me, at all,” she choked out.
“Don’t say that,” he said.
“I hate them,” she whispered, weeping. “I hate them. Why can’t they leave me alone? I left. Instead I come here and here they are and they’ve been killing people. Oh, how I hate them….”
He rocked her sideways, and shut his eyes. He wanted to tell her that ghosts weren’t souls; he wanted to tell her that the killings would all likely have happened anyway. But he knew it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.
She wept wordlessly as minutes slipped past; then she uttered against his chest: “I can never get away from them. I can never get away, because they’re me. Oh, why didn’t I just die in that spell…?”
He couldn’t stop the violent reaction: unable to breathe, he bundled her up and away from him, and sat up to extricate his legs and pause, hard-faced, sitting on the edge of the couch. She gathered herself totteringly into a sitting position next to him, startled and disheveled, the tears forgotten on her face.
“Rupert…what….”
He held out for a brief second more before bolting up, breathing fast, to seek the refuge of the kitchen.
He didn’t know if she’d follow him—didn’t know if he wanted her to. He got his answer when she appeared in the entry, and he shifted away from her, into the corner of the counter, glaring balefully at her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him, trembling. She was pale, and her mouth was drawn in that way it got when she was ill. “Rupert?”
“Don’t,” he said, holding his voice down to a taut murmur, “ever say that in my hearing again.” He stilled his own shaking with an effort.
“Say what?” she said. “What did I say?”
He stared at her helplessly for a moment, then said, “Do you really think that? Do you really think you’re better off dead?” If he didn’t get hold of himself, emotion was going to overwhelm him. He tore his gaze away from her and focused on the cabinet, breathing deeply.
“I….” She stopped. There was a long, terrible silence, and Rupert felt himself back in the morass of dread and anguish he thought he’d fought his way out of.
“No,” she said finally, in a very soft voice. “I don’t—think that.” Another pause, then she said, “I’m sorry, Rupert.”
He could breathe again, could feel his own extremities; and now the anger set in. He pressed his lips shut tight and drilled a hole in the cabinet with his gaze.
“That wasn’t,” she faltered, and then regained her voice, “exactly what I meant, you know.”
“I know what you meant,” Rupert said, still not looking at her. “And that’s not good enough.”
“Then what is?” she demanded.
He was silent, and she repeated insistently: “What can I do?”
He turned to look her straight in the eye. “Kick its ass.”
Waiting to see what she’d do, Rupert folded his arms and relaxed against the counter. For a moment, she looked frightened, but then she folded her arms in a mirror action and glared at him pugnaciously. “How?” she said, flatly.
In her ratty T-shirt and frayed flannel pajama pants, she looked very much as she had when he’d first known her, in Sunnydale. He almost expected to see a rising bruise on her cheekbone. These things had a way of coming full circle.
“So you can’t run away from it this time,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s time to turn and fight?”
Her lips primmed. “I think,” she said, “that an inordinate amount of emphasis has been placed on this alleged tendency of mine to run away. As a matter of fact—” her voice began to rise— “I am much more likely to stay in a bad situation beyond all reason than take off willy-nilly like some—some coward, some quitter.”
Her shot went home: he went numb again, and fought to keep the evidence off his face. She’s not going to leave me over the house….But that’s what you’re afraid of…some overwhelming reason for her to….
He had not been successful at hiding his fright: she read his face, and she stared and went white. “And this,” she said, uncrossing her arms in sudden fury, “is nothing like that. It’s just a ghost!”
“Then what the hell were you snivelling about back there?” Rupert demanded.
They stared each other down for a moment. Then she said: “It’s my family, Rupert. That’s how it is with me and them. I can’t—” her voice caught for a moment, but she regained it— “I can’t help feeling terrorized. But that’s all it is.”
“You’re saying it doesn’t mean anything?” he said, coolly.
“No. I’m saying it doesn’t mean—” She gave an explosive sigh and looked away, gesturing uselessly. “It doesn’t mean I’m all washed up. It doesn’t mean I’m desperate.”
Well, maybe I am, he thought. But he said nothing.
“I did say I was sorry.” She returned his baleful stare, her eyes filling again. “Maybe you missed it back there.”
He dropped his eyes to his bare feet. “No,” he said quietly, “I didn’t miss it.”
They were silent for a long time. The refrigerator compressor clicked on and began to hum.
“So what’s this,” she said finally, “about me kicking ghostly ass? Does this mean you’re putting me at the forefront?”
Without lifting his gaze from his feet, Rupert nodded. “Yes…yes, I rather think so.”
“Okay,” she said, and the tightness in his chest came loose at the calm in her tone. “How’s that gonna work?”
“Well,” he said, “I won’t know
details till I talk to
“Let sinners be consumed out of the earth,” Elisabeth murmured, “and the wicked be no more.”
“Something like that,” he said, with a wry look, which Elisabeth returned.
*
Without discussion, Elisabeth shut down her laptop and went back to bed; Rupert, meanwhile, unearthed the books he was going to need from the various piles on the floor and made himself a pot of coffee. He had hit his battle-research stride, and knew there was no point going back to bed. He did, however, pause to go in and check on Elisabeth before hunkering down with his books—her books—his books….Her eyelids were drooping heavily, but she murmured, “See you in the morning.”
“Right,” he said, tucking the edge of the covers over her shoulder and smoothing her hair. She shut her eyes and sighed down into sleep.
As he
settled himself into his chair with his coffee mug and notepad, he glanced at
the clock. Really, there wasn’t a better
time than the present to call
“Hey, Giles!” She sounded especially cheerful. Well, it was all right for some.
“Hey,” he said, putting as much irony into the word as he could.
She gave him an audible smirk. “So, how’s the exorcism research coming?”
“Oh, we found out who’s haunting the place,” Rupert said.
“Yeah? Who?”
“Elisabeth’s great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, who was killed there at the same age Elisabeth was when she came here.”
There was a pause. “Oh. That’s…not of the good.”
“Not particularly, no.” He went on to fill her in.
“…so, tomorrow night we’re going to perform the exorcism, with Elisabeth leading the charge. I thought we’d use the Consuming Flame from Ars Bellandi Spiritus….”
“That’s a good one. Want me to see if I can find it?”
“Oh, I don’t need to find it; it’s right here.”
“Ah—so Elisabeth got that one for her collection, did she?”
“Oh, now don’t you start,” Rupert muttered.
“Oh, I
think there’s a couple years’ worth of mileage left on that one,”
“I’m not likely to have another midlife crisis,” Rupert said, bitterly, “as mid-life is rapidly passing me by. Besides, I think that’s all rot anyway.”
“Knock that
off,”
“We’ve all got one foot in the grave,” Rupert muttered. “And speaking of feet, did you know she’s found a Short Listing of Tripedal Ritualists?”
“Really? Wow. I’d like to have a look at that one sometime.”
“I’m sure you would,” he replied, with a sardonic smile.
“You better watch it. Or one day I’ll show up on your doorstep without warning. There are advantages to having mastered the fine art of teleportation, you know.”
“You’d really waste that much energy to come and give me a talking-to?”
“Damn
straight,”
“Yes,” Rupert said, “that’s probably wise.”
They
exchanged details of spells and times, and Rupert led the conversation toward a
gentle close. But then
“So how’s Elisabeth holding up?”
“I think,” he answered guardedly, “she’s all right. It’s a bit of a shock, of course.”
“What a way for her to be integrated in this dimension.”
“Indeed,” Rupert said, letting out a great sigh.
“And how are you? I mean, really.”
“Oh, you
know,” Rupert said, quirking his head sideways in a
gesture
“Do you want me to come out there? I can come out there.” Her tone was quite serious, but before Rupert could respond, she added, “I can come out everywhere,” and he had to laugh.
“But
seriously,”
“We’ll be fine,” Rupert said, in what he hoped was a reassuring voice.
“Well,
darn,”
“I thought
you didn’t go in for the tripedal thing anymore,” Rupert said dryly, privately
shocked at himself for making a joke like this to
“I still like to read about it! Plus, Xander reads lesbian porn. Probably,” she added, lowering her voice significantly, “you do too.”
“I don’t need porn,” Rupert said recklessly. “I can just—remember my wild youth.”
“And if I find out I’ve been quoted on that in one of your bloody chat rooms, I won’t be responsible. I’ve got enough to deal with without—”
He didn’t
bother finishing the sentence, as
*
Elisabeth woke from disjointed dreams about nothing in particular to the sound of her cell-phone ringing. Reluctantly she surfaced from the bedclothes to feel for the phone where she had left it on her nightstand. “Hello?” she muttered, dragging her eyes open to the aging morning light.
It was Dr. Biggs, asking if she wanted to come in and discuss a problematic aspect of her thesis plan. It took Elisabeth a second, but she managed to remember that she had in fact written a thesis plan and that there was in fact a problem with it. “Right,” she said, “I’ll be right there.”
She got up and spent a few half-conscious minutes in front of the mirror before deciding that she could get away with not showering if she bound her hair in a low ponytail and wore her flat cap.
After a short time spent struggling into her black skirt and a random brown sweater that happened to be clean, Elisabeth bustled out into the den with her boots in one hand and a large sheaf of papers in the other arm.
Rupert was at the dining table, hunched painfully over several open books spread around him; but he had several pages of meticulous notes to show for his pains, and his expression had settled into a familiar groove of calm weary professionalism. Elisabeth breathed a secret sigh of relief and bent to dump out one of the satchels that had been usurped by last night’s research session.
He looked up as she was stuffing her school books and papers inside it. “Going out?” he asked.
“Yeah, Biggs wants a meeting about my thesis plan. I’m hoping it won’t take too long, but you never know. I’ll call you if I don’t get back by the afternoon. How’s the spell plan coming?” She pulled her boot laces taut with a sharp jerk.
“It’s finished,” he said. “When you get back, I’ll go over it with you. In the meantime…,” he yawned and stretched both arms forward, “I’m going to have a nap.”
She gave him a strained smile. “You do that.”
*
Elisabeth found herself coming more awake as she negotiated
the brisk walk across
But her meeting with Biggs proved slightly frustrating.
“My dear girl, you can’t simultaneously argue that fairytale represents a significance in chaotic minutiae while at the same time celebrating the fact that those same minutiae are totally free of meaning.” He spread his long hands in a characteristic querulous gesture.
“I don’t see why not,” Elisabeth said. “It’s the way life works, isn’t it? We narrate a meaning into our lives whether the details actually have meaning or not; but fairytale unzips the facts from their usual significance and rezips it to something else, so you can get freedom and significance in the same act.”
“Yes,” Dr. Biggs said, “but you didn’t say that.”
“Well,” Elisabeth sighed, “I didn’t know how to say it last week.”
“Yes, well,” he replied with a smile, “go home and work on it, and give me a clearer outline of the argument once you’ve worked it out.”
“Don’t worry,” Elisabeth said, cryptically. “After tonight, I’ll know everything I need to know about zipped and rezipped significance.” She packed up her papers and got up to go, but he stopped her at the door with a word.
“And mind,” he said as she turned, “you take proper care of yourself, you know. It’ll all be the same in a hundred years—”
“Or four hundred—”
“Or a thousand—”
“And I’ll look both ways before crossing the street and everything.” Elisabeth smiled.
“And flossing. Flossing is important, too.” Dr. Biggs grinned back and reached for his diary. “Now get on with you.”
Elisabeth went, heaving a sigh—whether of frustration or relief she could not tell.
*
Back at home, she found that Rupert had been true to his word and was fast asleep in bed. The debris from his research session had been neatened, and the notes for the spell recopied and given pride of place on the top of the stack of books and photocopies. On the very top of the stack lay his folded glasses. She paused for a long moment, reaching out a finger to move his glasses a little, and attempting to think. But the landscape of her thought had changed so completely that she hardly knew how to begin to get her bearings—as if she had never looked behind her, only to be spun blindfold and pointed in the direction she’d come. The fight for the house was now as much hers as his, and probably, in a way the broader fight against the First had not touched, would determine the nature of her existence in this dimension from this point on. Rupert was right to worry that she was unprepared to face both backward and forward at once. Of course, what had really made her angry was the implication that she was liable to leave. She frowned thoughtfully in the direction of the bedroom. Was it offensive because he had implicitly insulted her, or himself? She couldn’t tell.
And as for the ancient and most noble house of Bowen, Elisabeth had a hand gesture all prepared. Why she hadn’t thought of seeking out ghosts and exorcising them before (metaphorically or otherwise), she couldn’t imagine. “I can’t figure out if it’s easier or harder,” she murmured to the cat, who had appeared stretching luxuriantly, “to fight against people you sorta love. It’s infuriating.”
And satisfying. She hoped.
What she wanted more than anything was to crash into bed with Rupert, but she suspected that wasn’t going to help her sluggish blood any. So instead she went and stripped down to take a shower. The steaming water was cleansing, so that by the time she had got out and was brushing her teeth, she was able to look her reflection in the face with relative equanimity. She put up her wet hair, bundled herself into her ratty blue robe, and went to survey the kitchen cabinets for teatime.
After some cogitation she unearthed a recipe for quickbread muffins. She mixed up the batter, feeling quite industrious, and put them to bake. It was best to keep moving. She cleaned up the kitchen; moved Rupert’s things from the dining table so they could have tea; washed out the kettle and refilled it. Then she looked up at the clock.
With a deep sigh she left the kitchen and went to look in on Rupert.
He was still asleep, but she could see that he had stirred, and was probably ready to wake. She sat down gently on the bed and reached across to smooth back his mussed hair. He gave a little groan, but did not open his eyes.
“It’s almost teatime,” she told him. “Don’t die of shock, but I’ve made some muffins.”
“Mm?” He smiled, eyes still shut. “Muffins?”
“Yeah, with chocolate chips, no less. They’re baking right now—should be ready in about ten minutes.”
“Mmm,” he said. He turned over onto his back and opened his eyes.
She regarded him silently for a moment, then said: “Are you still mad at me?”
He shut his eyes again and shook his head against the pillow. “You still mad at me?”
She drew a relieved breath. “No,” she said.
A faint smile came over his face. “That’s all right, then.”
“Yeah,” she said, smoothing his T-shirt over his chest, “I for one’d hate for us to go to our doom with an unresolved fight on our hands.”
“Our doom?” he murmured, starting to grin with his eyes shut. His hand moved gently to capture hers where it lay on his chest.
“Well, you know,” she said, smiling as he opened his eyes to meet hers, “il me faut des géants, and all that.”
“Now who’s Cyrano?” he smiled.
“Cyrano nothing,” Elisabeth said. “Cyrano never had to fight his own relatives.”
There was a small silence while their gazes met. His fingers stroked hers; then he moved his touch to the inside of her wrist, within the sleeve of her robe.
“I see what you’re doing,” Elisabeth said, with a smirk of mock disapproval.
He smiled up into her face. “Do you now? You do realize that there are a number of pre-doom activities that are de rigueur at this point?”
She snorted to avoid a laugh and turned her head away.
“You’re blushing.”
“I am not.”
“I was referring to teatime, of course,” he teased her.
She let out a cry of half-laughing outrage and leapt to pummel him. He struggled back, and they ended with her straddling his waist, her robe coming undone, their arms locked as she held down his shoulders. He grinned up at her winsomely, his breathing as quick as hers.
“Don’t want to start something we can’t finish, now,” she panted.
“Why can’t we finish?”
“The muffins, remember?” She bent further over to look him closely in the face, grinning as widely as he. “Scorched muffin is not what I’d call a romantic scent.”
His hands swept down to close upon her backside, hard. “I’m not feeling particularly romantic,” he said softly, and his tone alone was enough to melt her upon him.
*
It was a good thing that neither of them were in a particularly romantic mood, because the interlude that followed was a brief, awkward tussle, broken at one point when Elisabeth almost fell out of the bed getting her arm out of her sleeve, and at another when Rupert flailed for the nightstand drawer; and punctuated with their breathless snickers as they brought their conflict to a full close.
Also fortunate was their timing: when Rupert got up from the bed, purloined her robe from the floor, and padded into the kitchen, he found that the muffins were slightly more brown than either of them preferred, but not at all burned.
“Dammit, Rupert,” Elisabeth called from the bedroom. “You took my robe.” Her voice was coming nearer, and he turned, grinning, to see that she had stolen his robe in turn and had come into the kitchen trailing it like some medieval garment. The cat leapt at the belt-end as she tied it.
“Your hair’s all mussed now,” he said.
“Thanks to you. Oh, good, they’re not burnt.”
*
“So how do you dress for an exorcism, anyway?” Elisabeth asked later, as she watched Rupert bustling about half-dressed, muttering as he picked up books and occult objects and put them down again. She herself was ensconced on the couch in a deceptive attitude of comfort, still wearing Rupert’s robe; she was trying to memorize a Latin spell Rupert had written out for her, but it was difficult with him pacing all around emitting odd snatches of instructions that half-seemed directed at her.
He paused to finish pulling an old green jumper over his head before answering. “In layers,” he said finally, as his head emerged, his hair sticking up in all directions. He worked his arms through the sleeves, and at last looked up to find that she was smiling at him affectionately. Her smile faded a little as she said: “I love you, you know.”
“Probably be a good idea to keep your hair out of the way, too.” Their eyes met briefly as he bent to stuff two books and a notebook into his battered leather satchel, his expression soft.
She kicked her feet up and off the couch, abandoning the spell to find some clothes. “Layers, you say.”
Elisabeth came back into the room dressing, as he’d been doing; she had put on some jeans and was now fastening her bra at the back, a shirt and a sweater slung over her shoulder. She plopped back down on the couch, next to the abandoned spell, and began to work her arms into the sleeves of her shirt. “So what am I saying in this spell?” she asked him. “My Latin’s not quite good enough to get all this.”
Rupert had paused with only one sock on, to peruse one of the books he’d been using. “In the first line,” he said without looking up, “you are telling your father to rest, and assuming his obedience.”
“My father?” Perhaps she hadn’t heard right, pushing her head through the neck-hole of her shirt.
“Yes,” Rupert said, turning a page and glancing up at her briefly. “For the purposes of exorcism spells, all male ancestors are intelligible as ‘father’.”
“No kidding,” Elisabeth muttered.
“In the second line, you are telling him, roughly, ‘Draw together your works and lie down with them.’”
“Okay, second imperative. Got it.” Elisabeth put down the sweater altogether and took up the paper in both hands, mouthing the Latin words silently.
“Then—” Rupert paused to think, his eyes cast up to the ceiling. “ ‘You could not make right what was wrong; you could not straighten what was crooked.’”
“Okay….”
“Then you tell him that here and now his works will end and yours begin. And that he will sleep and you will wake.”
“Lots of imperatives there. You think he’ll do what I say?”
“The circle will compel him,” Rupert said. “And we’ll be there to anchor it. If all goes as planned.”
“Ay, there’s the rub.” Elisabeth pulled her sweater over her head.
*
They went over to Brian’s flat as the sun began its tired sink below the horizon. The first thing he said when he opened the door was: “What an excellent day for an exorcism.”
Rupert snorted. Elisabeth gave him an abstracted grin.
“Well, fine,” Brian said, shutting the door behind them. “Spoil my big moment. So how does one dress for an exorcism, anyway? Should I wear a tie? Joking!” he added, as Elisabeth shot him a horrified look. She recovered and said, “Layers.”
“Right,” Brian said. “Got a clean jumper all ready.”
After some time during which Rupert laid out the procedure for Brian (and Elisabeth used the bathroom twice, citing nerves), they gathered their ammunition and provisions to leave; after some discussion it was agreed that they should take both Rupert’s and Brian’s cars for convenience and safety.
As Elisabeth stood shivering in the dusk, watching Rupert pack the boot of his car, she found Brian studying her with narrowed eyes.
“You’ve been having sex,” he said, quietly.
She turned to him a quizzical glare.
“That’s not fair,” Brian said. “I didn’t get any pre-exorcism sex.”
Elisabeth shrugged, gave him a sidelong half-grin. “You snooze, you lose, Brian. What can I say?”
Brian stuck his tongue out at her, just as Rupert thumped down the trunk lid and called, “Ready?”
*
Brian had been nervously anticipating his introduction to Pyke’s Lea. There had to be something quite special about it, to exert such a powerful attraction on Rupert, and subconsciously he expected the something special to be rather like Elisabeth herself: a sweet charismatic intensity overlaid with a faint surface dowdiness.
He was not disappointed. As the two cars pulled up in the drive, he saw that some of the lights were still on, faintly limning the weeds of the front garden. But the windows were neatly spaced and the dark outlines of walls and gable roof sketched a relaxed sturdiness against the night. In fact, Brian reflected as he set the hand-brake, it was almost enough to draw him out of his usual bachelor state of mind—the state in which he rarely contemplated changing his own lifestyle for something more permanent, as if his work as a don was just something to keep him going for a few years rather than his life’s ambition. What would it be like, to work toward owning an actual house, and arranging it just as one liked?
“Build thee more stately mansions, oh my soul,” he murmured, and popped open the door.
Of course, it was hard to forget that the house was actually haunted: it seemed to be waiting for them, and the light that ought to have cheered them was malignant. Rupert handed Brian a satchel full of clinking bottles, glancing at his watch. “Right,” he said, “we’re on schedule. Brian, mind the liquids in there don’t spill. Elisabeth, you have the spell and the candle, right?”
Elisabeth nodded several times, quickly. Her back was to them and toward the house, but nevertheless Brian could see her trembling visibly, and heard the soft crackle of her hand clutching paper and candle together. Rupert urged her toward the front walk; her shoes crunched, shuffling, on the gravel, then she straightened and strode forward.
She nearly made it to the porch before she faltered and swerved toward the empty flowerbed to double over and heave into the weeds with a small choking sound. At once Rupert shifted his burdens to one hand and reached out the other to support her by the shoulder. He said nothing, and made no move to help her or touch her besides that; Brian caught a glimpse of the side of his face, and saw a grim calm there. Brian felt a little shiver in his own insides: a kaleidoscope of thoughts seemed to click one by one across his mind—She needs help, she shouldn’t have to do this, not so soon after—This is war; I’m in a war again; God I hate this—What, are you going to Austin Grey me now?—And now in the desolate night—no, don’t quote Stevie Smith for heaven’s sake, she doesn’t like it—hell, I don’t like it—
Elisabeth, shaking badly, stopped heaving and drew up the back of her sleeve to wipe her mouth. With Rupert’s supporting hand on her shoulder, she straightened and drew an audible, ragged breath. “Ready?” he said quietly.
She breathed once, and then again, and croaked out, “Yes.”
“Right then.” Rupert took his hand away from her and pulled a lighter out of his jacket pocket. He flicked it open and set fire to the bundled torch he had brought. When the prepared torch had gathered a strong flame, he nodded to Elisabeth, who mounted the porch (Brian noticed she was no longer shaking) and crossed to the ancient door.
It opened noiselessly without a fight, swinging away into the dimness of the foyer.
In the torchlight Elisabeth looked back, eyebrow raised, at Rupert, who gave a confirming nod. “This,” she said quietly, “is what you call a battle royale.” And she stepped inside.
Brian followed Rupert’s broad back through the door after her. As soon as he was over the threshold and clear, the door swung quietly shut. Politely.
The hairs on the nape of Brian’s neck tingled and rose. “Bloody hell,” he muttered.
Rupert turned. “Follow Elisabeth,” he murmured. “I’ll take the rear position.”
It didn’t even occur to Brian to be offended at Rupert for suggesting he couldn’t hold the rear guard. Without a word he continued down the hall behind Elisabeth, who had not stopped even when the door shut behind them. Though they had not discussed it, she made straight for a door at the back of the hall—a broad, tall door with a carved architrave—and went inside. Brian followed her.
Inside, he found a study that would have been as beautiful as it was large, were it not for the neglect and disuse that marked every inch of it from ratty carpet to discolored ceiling. A small, misshapen, blackened circle had been drawn in something that looked horribly like blood near the center, but Brian had been prepared to see something like it after hearing the story of Elisabeth’s makeshift spell. Elisabeth went to it and scuffed at the dry, crackling breadcrumbs with her sneaker.
The light in the room shifted, as if the lit chandelier in the center of the ceiling had swung and spun, but when Brian looked up he found it perfectly still. Disoriented, he glanced about to reestablish his notion of the earth’s center, but he couldn’t quite find it. A shadow, escaped from its substance, flitted across the mirror over the carved mantlepiece. Brian shut his eyes to stop the dizziness. “Bloody hell,” he muttered again.
“All right?” Rupert murmured, and Brian opened his eyes to the other man’s gaze. His inquiry was clearly not a taunt; battle royale, Elisabeth had said.
“Yes,” he said firmly, and solidified his stance.
“You’ve got the bottles,” Rupert said.
“Oh! right,” Brian said, and took the satchel off his shoulder to open it. A small breeze where none should be ruffled his hair. He handed round the bottles that had been assigned to each: fine breadcrumbs for himself, wine for Rupert, and holy water for Elisabeth. Then he took out the two crosses, passed one to Rupert (who took it with one finger of the hand holding his bottle), and kicked the satchel off to the side.
The little breeze rose, touching Brian’s face, then fell again. Elisabeth took two steps back from them both, so that they now stood at equal points of a triangle. “The candle?” Rupert mentioned; she nodded, searched out a spot on the carpet with her eyes, and moved forward to set down the candle on that spot. It was a sturdy beeswax candle, but to be safe Elisabeth had fitted a base to it. It stood now, looking small and lonely on the floor as she stepped back to her place.
“Ready?” Rupert was tucking the cross into the waistband of his jeans to free his hands to hold the torch and the bottle.
Brian nodded. Elisabeth made no response, but she was clearly ready as well; her chin was high and calm, her eyes inwardly focused.
They unstoppered their bottles and held them out toward the center, around the candle. Elisabeth and Rupert turned to step forward clockwise—in his disorientation Brian had almost forgotten which way clockwise was, but he too turned without outwardly swerving.
Without warning the lights went out, plunging them into near-complete darkness; a sharp blast of wind tore at the flame of Rupert’s torch and very nearly put it out. “Now!” he cried— “five steps, quickly!”
It was very difficult to gauge how fast he was pouring his breadcrumbs in the dark, but Brian moved forward the five steps, listening acutely for the sound of them hitting the carpet. He stopped; in the whipping torchlight he saw a snatch of Elisabeth’s pale face—a bit of her hair had come loose and whipped wraithlike across her cheek. The wind rose to a shriek. “Five steps!” Rupert called— “now!”
They moved another five steps, pouring, and stopped. “Five more!” And they moved again.
But something went horribly wrong. As he hit the fifth step, Brian felt his feet give way, as if the floor had crumbled beneath him. He couldn’t stop himself going down, and in the flickering light of the torch he saw Rupert and Elisabeth looking over at him in horror—Elisabeth’s spell was clutched and racketing, crackling, in her hand—
He went down and rolled over and over, as if thrown by a vicious force. He lost first the bottle, then the cross—he groped frantically for the latter, as Rupert had specifically told him he wasn’t to lose it—but then a horrible, sickening thing mastered him from the inside and he felt himself straighten in a convulsive jerk—
He struggled, now blind and more frightened than he had ever been in his life, but he had been taken out of the pilot’s seat of his own body. His body stood and faced the others, and he opened his mouth to let out a voice that was not his own: it was reedy and male and sweet with venom, and uncannily familiar:
“You’re not welcome here,” it said.
The slack, horrified look dropped off Elisabeth’s face and was replaced by a steely strong-jawed hardness. “You don’t say,” she said.
“You don’t belong here!” raged the voice coming from Brian’s throat.
“Duh!” Elisabeth said, wrapping scorn like spit into one syllable and flinging it at him.
Brian was wrenched off his feet again. He flew backward through brief air, then hit the ground with a force that rattled all his bones—then rolled over and over and over until he hit the wall. And then he was alone within himself, and fully heard the wind shrieking once more.
Against the buffets of air, he dragged himself step by step to his feet and returned, aching in every fiber, to his place in the circle. “That,” he said hoarsely, “was not in the brochure.”
“Is that the best you can do?” Elisabeth screeched to the ceiling. “That was pathetic!”
“Speak for yourself!” Brian said, his voice catching sharply.
“I think she is,” Rupert murmured. His words were almost lost in the cacophony of winds.
Scraps of torchlight tore across Elisabeth’s face as she turned on the spot, shouting. “Bowens are supposed to be good at verbal torture! What’s the matter with you—you couldn’t have a better target! ‘I don’t belong here’—talk about stating the obvious! You’ve got another Bowen to cut into and you haven’t got the fucking cojones to—” She broke off with a cry and turned, and Brian saw that four blunt scratches had torn their way across her cheek. She gave a screaming little laugh. “That’s right! That’s right! Show me! I’m here, you’re not. Show me how you really feel!”
“Elisabeth!”
Brian tore his gaze to Rupert at the same moment Elisabeth did, in time to see him toss the torch across the circle to her. She reached out, as if it had been choreographed, and caught it with seamless accuracy. She bent the flame toward the floor, and Brian saw that they had succeeded in completing the circle after all. The torch-flame burned placidly in the ring of crumbs and wine and shining wet: she touched the wick of the candle with it, and the new little flame grew and stood tall and steady and pristine, ready for its work.
As Elisabeth withdrew the torch from the circle, a new shriek of wind gathered in a broad, suffocating power, and tore the flame away from the head of the torch. The flame did not return, but as it passed Brian saw seared onto his retinas the image of Elisabeth, hair straggling and whipping across her struck face, her eyes afire with a prophetic passion; and Rupert across from her, gripping his cross, his face carved with the ancient fury of a mage. Brian became aware that he himself was fighting with every fiber in his body to stand upright, against the chaos of warped gravity and sound.
In the center the candle burned silent and still.
Elisabeth began to speak, not minding the tear in her voice, as the wind whipped at her loosening hair.
“Patri dixi, Requiesce: et quiescevit,” she read, gripping the ragged paper with both hands. Brian doubted she could actually see the words in the faint candlelight, but she continued, pausing only to swallow and resume in her torn voice.
“Coge, inquam, omnia opera manuum tuarum/Et iace cum his….”
Et iace cum his, the wind seemed to whisper back, as if trying to find a way to respeak the words and undo them.
“Id quod—erat vitiosum, non potuisti emendare.” Elisabeth was shaking. A faint moan came to their ears, buried in the wind.
“Id quod erat curvum, non potuisti—corrigere.” She gulped and went on, the paper trembling as much from her grip as from the wind.
“Te continebo: depraesentarium opera tua finientur—” her voice broke— “finientur—Atque mea extendentur.”
The voice in the wind rose to palpable anguish now.
“Depraesentarium requiesces, atque expergiscar.”
Brian fought to keep his feet against the weight of horror and grief pressing the room like a flood.
“Finientur—” cried Elisabeth— “finientur—fini—”
A whirl of light and power suddenly charged the circle they had made, and was sucked up within it, into the candle flame. The sudden silence made Brian deaf, and he almost fell over from the sheer ease of standing upright. Gasping, he bent and grasped his knees, sweating and trembling.
“Well,” Rupert said lightly—Brian looked up without rising from his exhausted crouch to see that he stood with catlike nonchalance, the cross now lax in his hand— “that seems to have done the trick. We’d best stick around till the candle is burned out. Nobody step in the circle, remember.” He bent to gather the empty bottles and the spent torch. For a moment Brian wanted to rush him and smack his competent face for him—and then he dissolved in a hysterical fit of laughter.
He was still laughing when he rose breathless to stand upright. He wiped his eyes and looked over at Elisabeth.
She had not moved from her place at the circle. The loosed tendrils of her hair now fell lank around her face, and though the cuts on her cheek had disappeared, they had now been replaced by streaming tears. She was staring at the candle flame, burning brightly in the newly-benign darkness. As he watched, she wiped her face, drew a long breath, and said, her voice now a blasted wisp: “Well.”
“All right then?” Brian said, almost as hoarsely.
“Yeah,” she said. She looked up at him, and gave a sudden half-smile. “You?”
“Other than that whole possession thing—yeah,” he said.
Rupert was rooting in the satchel Brian had carried. “I believe,” he said, “there are snacks in here.”
“Now you’re talking,” Brian said.
*
They sat, three abreast against the wall in the darkness, and watched the candle burn. Rupert had packed sandwiches and libations of a non-ritual sort: a beer apiece for himself and Brian, and a cider for Elisabeth. “Now this,” Brian said, biting into his sandwich with alacrity, “is what I call a wake.” Elisabeth chuckled.
Rupert let
out a small sigh and leaned his head briefly against the wall behind him. All things considered, the plan had come off
rather well. It had taken almost no time
to call
One by one they finished their sandwiches and piled the wrappers off to the side. For a long time there was no sound except when one of them took a swig of his or her drink; and then the crickets joined in, for the first time, soft and jubilant.
Elisabeth’s hand brushed his in the darkness, and he took it gently. In the silence he took in the gentleness she was giving him with her touch, and returned her his thanks.
Still later, he shifted to ease his hipbones on the hard floor, and glanced over. Elisabeth had fallen asleep between them, her head resting on Brian’s shoulder. Brian glanced down awkwardly, then looked at Rupert and mouthed, “Is she asleep?” Rupert nodded, a faint smile on his lips, and Brian relaxed and reached to pet Elisabeth’s arm gently.
“Guess this is all in the day’s work to you, then,” Brian said at length, softly. Outside, through the French doors, they could see that the position of the stars had changed from where they were when the task had begun, and the quality of the night had deepened and brightened.
“You never get used to it,” Rupert said, “if you have a personal stake in the matter. Which one usually does.”
Brian answered with a soft grunt.
“Welcome to the merry band,” Rupert said, his voice both dry and soft.
“We few, we happy few—” Brian quoted dreamily.
“—we band of buggered,” Rupert finished, with a secret smile.
“Precisely,” Brian said.
There was a small pause, then Brian said: “You reckon we’ll be back to normal in the morning?”
“I expect so, yes,” Rupert said evenly.
“Good.”
“Right.”
The candle burned, down and down.
*
Sometime close to sunrise Elisabeth squirmed awake and lifted her head from Brian’s shoulder. “Ohh…,” she said. “I’ve been asleep. Candle’s almost out.”
The candle was indeed almost out. The flame was flickering and guttering, and Rupert and Brian were both watching it glassy-eyed. Elisabeth sat up straight and began to stretch; following her, the others began to move as well, and as they all three got achingly to their feet, the first gold suffusion of sunrise tinged the eastern horizon outside, and the candle flickered—flickered—flickered—and expired noiselessly. A faint grey column of smoke twisted upward, curled on itself, and vanished.
The house was quiet.
Rupert was the first to speak. “Shall we go home?”
“We are home,” Elisabeth said. “But I do want to get to some place with a fully functional toilet.”
“Too right,” Brian said fervently.
“You can pee in the bushes,” Elisabeth said, as they gathered their things and moved toward the front door.
“In my bushes? I think not,” Rupert said, offering them the faintest of sardonic smiles over his shoulder as he pulled open the door and lumbered out onto the porch.
Elisabeth followed him and paused on the topmost step, surveying her dominions. “Well!” she said. “Thank God this was a success.”
“Yes—” Brian put in, “—except for that possession part.”
“We didn’t
even have to summon
“I expect she’s disappointed,” Rupert said, on his way to the car. “She really wanted to have a look at that Short Listing of Tripedal Ritualists.”
Elisabeth laughed. “I thought she didn’t go in for that anymore.”
Brian pulled the door to and followed Elisabeth out into the early dawn light. “Tripedal ritualists?” he inquired. “Is that a book about ritualists with big—”
“No,” Rupert said. But behind his back, Elisabeth nodded at Brian, wrinkling her nose mischievously. Brian snickered.
*
The ride home was as silent as the wake had been, except that now Rupert kept yawning. Once he cracked a yawn so huge that he twitched the steering wheel too hard; the car swerved briefly, and Elisabeth gave a small laugh.
“Need some coffee,” Rupert muttered.
They pulled into a parking space down a way from the flat, and Rupert set the hand-brake with a whole-body motion of weariness. Elisabeth cast her gaze up the street: the sun had risen fully now, and the air was a riot of gold.
Standing on the stoop of her flat building were two figures; she squinted at them as she opened the car door and got out (she had left her glasses at home for fear of breakage during the spell).
“Looks like someone’s come to call,” Rupert said.
Elisabeth stared thoughtfully at them. One was skinny, and clutched a trenchcoat close round his body with awkward arms. The other man, stocky and broad-shouldered, was a pirate: as he turned in her direction, she caught sight of the dark eyepatch slung across his face.
Recognition dazzled her like the morning light.
“Xander,” she breathed.
*