A Midwinter Fantasy (7 page)

She ran to her room and opened a jewelry box, plucking out a beautiful pearl rosary that had been a gift from the convent where she was raised. Before their recent battle, Michael had blessed these beads with the additional power of his gift. They were resonant with peace and love, and when Percy squeezed them in her hand, her heart was fortified, her own gift at the ready.

“Come now, Vicar, Headmistress . . . Let there be light.”

Michael was alone in the foyer of Athens Academy. He whirled. “Rebecca?”

“She’ll be all right. You’re on separate journeys. Parallel, but separate. Billy, the boy from the chandelier, has asked me to help.”

Michael looked down to behold the small voice’s owner. The ghost of a little girl reached up and tried to take his hand, but her own passed through. She stared for a moment, then up at him. “Hello, Father.”

Michael blinked, processing this new development. “I can
hear
you.”

“For now,” she said.

“This is what was foretold to me?” he clarified.

She nodded.

Michael recognized the girl. He’d just seen her at Charlie’s bedside, at the orphanage, whispering and murmuring about him. Little Mary, he recalled. She’d been in the orphanage all her life, quite ill for most of it. He’d always regretted that he wasn’t there when she died. He’d been out saving another little girl from malevolent spectral possession. Would that doctors had such skills to cast out influenza.

Little Mary, in her drab orphanage dress, smiled. “It’s all right, Father, you always blame yourself. It isn’t
your
fault when we die. I knew you were with me, in
spirit.”
She grinned at her little joke.

Michael reached out to touch her cheek but met only cold mist. The girl was right: he did always feel responsible, wishing there was some part of the Grand Work that extended to healing sick children. He’d assuaged his need by offering Jane the key to the orphanage, and every now and then she’d worked a few healing wonders inconspicuous enough to avoid arousing suspicion. It also kept the children believing in angels, which he felt was an invaluable service to the church. He believed in angels, though he couldn’t recall ever meeting one. He didn’t figure Percy counted, being flesh and blood and all.

“Come,” the little girl said. “We must have you take a look at things.”

There was a crushing darkness as all light was expunged from the chapel. There was a fierce wind and strange noises, whispering, so much
whispering
. But then everything went silent, slowly brightened, and Rebecca again found herself in the dim afternoon haze of the chapel.

But Michael was gone.

“Michael?” she gasped, whirling to find herself alone with a ghost. A young woman floated before her, in slightly dated fashion and ringlet curls about her lovely, hollowed face.

“Hello, Headmistress,” the haunt said with an eager expression.

Rebecca blinked. They weren’t supposed to hear spirits! Only Percy had been able to do that. Was she going mad?

The ghost anticipated her. “You’ve spent your life in service to this world and the next. Your entire group has earned a good rest, though I daresay none of you are prepared to enjoy it. Now it’s
our
turn. Your powers have retired. Now we have power over you.”

Rebecca’s blood ran cold. “Where’s Michael?”

“Safe.”

“But where have you taken him?” Rebecca insisted. “If you—”

The ghost held up a hand. “Only the good of our kind have power over you at present, so do not fear. But you’ve separate journeys this night, ere you again stand side by side. And, be careful of the bent of your heart, for shadows are close at hand.”

Rebecca shuddered, unsure what the woman meant.

The spirit smiled. “Your safety shall be monitored.”

It was a small comfort. Rebecca pursed her lips. “I know you, don’t I?”

“Indeed. Constance Peterson, haunt of the science library, at your service, Headmistress.” The ghost bobbed a curtsey.

“And . . . why is it that you’re going to help me?”

“Because I was called upon to help you. Because I understand.”

“Who called upon you?”

“A friend. And . . .” Constance pointed upward with a sheepish smile.

Rebecca was silent. Perhaps her secret Christmas prayer was being answered? Perhaps this was divine intervention after all. Though, she’d never thought it would come like
this
. This was much too dramatic, the stuff of Gothic fiction, suitable for Alexi and Percy. Not her.

“We’re all worthy of an opportunity like this, Headmistress.” The ghost’s eyes sparkled knowingly. “Even if few of us are so fortunate. You’ve never lived a normal life, Headmistress. You should not expect one.”

Rebecca stared at her, ever trying to see sense in the fantastical. “You. How did you . . . ‘see the light’? Did you see
errors in your mortal ways and thusly have evolved? For a spirit, I trust you are well and fully at peaceable understanding to be able to lead me now?”

The ghost nodded. “I am indeed at peace, enlightened, free to do what I will, after help from Miss Persephone Parker. She found what I’d been looking for, just as she’s now found her own heart’s desire and taken his name. We’re all looking for something, you know.”

Rebecca nodded, her jaw clenching involuntarily. She felt an icy cold weight press down upon her.

The ghost scowled. “I can feel that, Headmistress; melancholy’s dread march. You must stop. You must not hear the girl’s name and cringe.”

Rebecca looked away so that Constance would not see her shame. “It is a curse,” she admitted. “My heart is cursed, and I want to remove it.”

“That, Headmistress,” said the ghost, “is our task. To cure the accursed. Come. We’ve much to do and I dare not tax you. While you’ve a most stalwart mind for a mortal, too much talk with spirits threatens sanity.”

The young woman held up a hand, closed her eyes and murmured, invoking power. “Liminal; the journey, I pray.”

In response, the air rippled like thin fabric and their surroundings melted away. In an instant they were back in time, in the science library of the academy, when it was fresh and new and all the chandeliers still sparkled like diamonds, before dust settled permanently into their crystalline grooves.

“Before you point out that it is indulgent of me to show you my past,” Constance spoke up, “let me remind you that we recognize problems in others before we recognize them in ourselves. I humbly offer myself as an example.”

The ghost pointed to a table, to herself. She had been quite beautiful while alive, full of health and vigour if the countenance she wore appeared hard, unrelenting, annoyed. She sat poring over a stack of books adjusted quite pointedly to block her from the view of a young man who sat unobtrusively studying different work at an angle opposite. The young man’s face was gentle and kind. He slid a book between them.

The ghost gestured Rebecca closer. The memory did not come without pain for her, Rebecca saw, and she felt humbled Constance should torture herself for the sake of helping her.

The living Constance was staring at the biological reference book that had been shifted toward her; not at the scientific content, but at the scribblings in the margin.

Constant is my care for you, sweet girl, my Constancy
.

All I ask is that you, for one blissful moment, put aside your obsession long enough to look into my eyes
.

—P
.

The young Constance scowled and slid the book back across the table, moving it around the fortress of tomes she’d stacked to buffer herself against his simple request. She was careful that their fingertips did not connect as he received the book. Rebecca noted this with a bit of pride; even under her own rule, students were not allowed to touch members of the opposite sex.

And yet, if the girl had taken this boy’s hand, she couldn’t have said she would mind. She’d likely not punish them; this seemed innocent enough. In fact, she found herself wishing Constance would brush his hand, for it would clearly mean so much to him.

Undeterred by her rejection, the young man turned pages and found a new illustration, one that spoke to him, and he began to write. Rebecca opened her mouth to admonish him for defacing school property when she read what he’d scripted so carefully next to a diagram of the human heart:

Can science explain everything, my Constancy, when my heart beats only for you?

Constance returned the book, writing on the opposite margin a shaky reply:

Dear P., though you share my library table, I cannot commit any part of my heart, for I fear I do not have one to divide. The course of my blood flows toward science alone
.—C.

She looked up at the boy and peered over their books, her voice a whisper: “Science is a man’s profession, Mr. Clarke. I am a woman, and I must make a choice, whether to live as my sex, or to deny it and take the man’s profession I crave. The demands of our age unfairly divide us. I’m sorry I cannot choose you.”

Mr. Clarke appeared crestfallen.

Constance turned to Rebecca, tears in her phantom eyes, her greyscale face taut with sorrow. Rebecca recalled all the young women to whom she’d boasted of choosing to run an institution rather than a household, justifying her life choice. But it had been a damned lonely choice, especially when secretly pining for a chance to run the Rychman estate.

“I realized my mistake too late,” the ghost said. “My greatest folly was to deny a lovely soul who asked nothing more
than to remain by my side. Of all the places I could have been a scientist
and
a woman, it was here at Athens; these blessed bricks never asked me to choose. I never gave him,
us
, a chance, despite having no true objection. I pushed him away for three years before the fever took me.” The spirit’s eyes narrowed, and her voice was cool. “You’ve pushed someone else away for twenty. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Rebecca replied.

“Is there any more beautiful a calling in life than love?”

“I have
loved,”
Rebecca hissed. “Desperately.”

The ghost nodded. “So did I. I loved science—something that couldn’t love me back. There’s safety in that solitude. Do you understand?”

Rebecca could only nod.

“Safety, but no solace. I haunted this Earth until Miss Percy found that book, revealing the one critical experience I denied. There come many callings on Earth, and heaven allows us them all. You’d do well to realize the same, and to do it before you’re dead.”

“But that’s just it!” Rebecca began, her eyes wide. “I . . . I don’t think I merit being alive right now. I think the heavens made a mistake.”

Constance’s eyes glittered threateningly. The deceased had an uncanny ability to make one shiver, it was certain. “Ah. Indeed,” the ghost replied. “And this is not the only time you’ve wished yourself dead.” These were condemning words and they chartered their next course. Rebecca didn’t know what the Liminal was, this force Constance wielded, but it responded.

Rebecca had no time to protest. The environment whirled, spun and shifted, and suddenly she stood in a darkened foyer of Athens Academy. There was the distant sound of an argument.

Rebecca turned, wringing her hands. “Oh, not this. Please, not this. It is my penance, I am sure, for my failures, but please . . .”

Constance gazed upon her with pity. “We’ve not much time, and I’m not the only visitation. There’s something you didn’t see, then, that you must see now. And through your pain you may yet make it right.” The ghost sighed. “And I beg you, do so while you yet
live
. Come.”

Rebecca gulped, trying to prepare herself. She knew exactly what she was about to see, and her body felt colder than if a horde of spirits was accosting her.

Constance led her toward her office, where the door was shut. The ghost gestured her forward. Rebecca fumbled at the door but passed through as if she too were a spirit. These were chimerical things, past memories; thinner than paper; visions, illusions . . . yet potent and all too real.

Rebecca’s throat constricted. A younger Professor Alexi Rychman paced in her office, his dark robes billowing about him as he moved, his face set in characteristic consternation. She herself sat stoic, though she remembered her pain.

She looked at herself, in this moment fifteen years or so younger, and noticed the lines of worry already beginning to form, the thin mouth so prim and composed, those blue-grey eyes that stared at the imperious man before her, secretly drinking in his striking, stifling presence.

“Damn it, Rebecca,” Alexi hissed. “I am no closer to telling you when Prophecy might come than I was years ago when the Goddess heralded our destiny and pronounced us The Guard. How
should
I know how long it will take?”

“It isn’t about when Prophecy might come, Alexi, but how you’re thinking of it. Tonight at the exorcism, when we stumbled at the force of that devilish blow, when you buckled in strain, I heard you mutter, ‘My bride shall make it well.’ ”

Alexi stopped pacing and turned. “And?”

“Alexi—Prophecy won’t be your bride. She’ll come as a companion to all of us, not some predestined lover of yours.”

Young Alexi’s features went slack. “What do you mean?”

“The prophesied seventh member was never specified as
yours.”

“Yes, she was,” he replied.

“Tell me the precise words the Goddess said that make you think so.”

“Why,
everything
she said.” But Alexi thought back, clearly trying to latch onto a specific phrase.

“Nothing more than insinuations.” Rebecca closed her eyes, using her gift of texts, the library of her mind, and plucking free an exact transcript of the Goddess’s words: “ ‘I hope you will know her when she comes, Alexi, my love. And I hope she will know you, too. Await her, but beware. She will not come with answers but be lost, confused. I have put protections in place, but she will be threatened and seeking refuge. There shall be tricks, betrayals and many second guesses. Caution, beloved. Mortal hearts make mistakes. Choose your seventh carefully, for if you choose the false prophet, the end of your world shall follow.’ ” Rebecca stared hard at Alexi. “What in that promises you a lover?”