The Changeling (7 page)

Rhonda glared and started to get up.

“I know you’ll need to look up the definitions of some of those words, but you can find a dictionary later. Until the meeting’s adjourned, sit your boney arse on that chair or I’ll sit you down meself.”

Sara and Rhonda exchanged looks. It was a stare off until Sara upped the ante. I felt Sara compel fear. Never blinking, never breaking eye contact, she spun a steak knife around her fingers so fast it blurred. Rhonda swallowed, and sat down.

“Well, now that
that’s
settled,” Candace said, clearly amused, “let’s get back to the theme, shall we?”

As Rachel and Becky began talking, I whispered to Sara, “Bourgeois harpy? Truculent strumpet? And the knife show, a little out of character I think.”

“Not at all,”
she said in my head. “
At your Earth trial, I told you fear was sometimes necessary to keep humans out of harm’s way.”
Sara smiled, never moving her eyes off Rhonda.

At four o’clock Candace adjourned the meeting and we were preparing to leave when Rachel brought up the ghost tour. “Have y’all ever done it?” she asked.

Ronnie had, but the rest of us were ghost tour virgins. Rachel begged all of us to take the tour with her. I was reluctant at first, but felt spurred on when I noticed how annoyed the suggestion made both Sara and Rhonda. I felt ornery and it was too good to pass up.

“I’ve always wanted to do it.” I could barely contain my laughter.

Sara shot me an annoyed look but reluctantly agreed. Better yet, Rhonda feigned excitement over the idea. Clearly, she wasn’t about to let Sara or me score any additional points with the group. She did keep a wary eye on Sara, though.

There was a line for the tour so we sat near an antique pipe organ in four high-back red velvet chairs. Rachel and Candace wandered off and began investigating. The lobby was very Victorian looking, with burgundy walls, dark wood, a green diamond-patterned carpet, and an enormous stone fireplace. There were glass double doors in arched glass openings on each end. The entrance to the Crystal Dining Room was to one side, as was an antique, wood check-in desk that sat under a large clock. Across the lobby was the hotel gift-store and down the hall, a large wooden staircase. Square, polished wood columns with beveled edges supported a plastered and beamed coffered ceiling finished with painted crown molding.

I sat back in the chair and closed my eyes as I waited for our tour to begin. I felt amused, lost, curious and ornery at the same time. Pondering the feelings for a moment, I felt them change. Longing replaced amusement, and I realized the feelings weren’t my own. There was something here, a presence I thought, like at the cottage, only stronger and more confusing. I couldn’t sense or see anything, just like at the cottage, and I wondered whether it was all in my mind or something else altogether. The only Fae in the building was Sara. In fact, she was the only one I could sense anywhere. I was slightly unnerved, though I didn’t feel threatened at all.

While I sat there, unable to close my eyes, I tried to determine what it was. There were several people filtering through the lobby. The feeling of amusement came back, and a few seconds later Candace and Rachel returned.

Our tour began upstairs on the second floor. The guide, a pleasant-looking man in his mid-thirties, named Jim, told us about room 218 and said it was the most haunted place in the hotel. Rachel stared wildly at the door while the man recounted several encounters with “Michael,” the redheaded Irish stonemason who fell to his death when the hotel was under construction—allegedly the space room 218 came to occupy. Rachel and Candace both had perma-grins. Jim took us further down the hall and told us about the gurney nurse, dressed in white, who was often seen pushing a gurney down the corridor, squeaking and rattling, only to disappear at the other end.

Then he told us about the mysterious Man in Black, and a dozen other stories, before he explained the hotel’s checkered past. Opened as a luxury hotel in 1886, the Crescent thrived for 16 years, but when the healing waters of Eureka no longer provided cures—I thought of Sherman and laughed—the hotel closed its doors and was reopened as a girl’s school. Afterwards it was a cancer hospital run by a nefarious man named Dr. Baker, who eventually served a prison term for swindling patients out of millions of dollars. Jim’s story began to lull. No ghosts had appeared, and even Rachel was beginning to lose interest until Jim told us that the morgue and autopsy tables were still in the building.

The guide was good, but I wondered how much more convincing Aunt May would have been. By the time he led us to the basement, I had grown accustomed to the feelings that floated in and out of my perception. In the basement, past the public area, Jim led us through some of the dark, narrow corridors. He told us the staff at the front desk used to receive telephone calls that originated from an antique switchboard located in the basement. The calls came when nobody was in that part of the hotel. As he told us the story of calls that continued until the switchboard was replaced, I felt the sensation of playfulness return.

The sensation was so powerful I shuddered. The presence was with us and it almost felt cold. I looked around at Ronnie, Candace and everyone else on the tour, and they seemed oblivious—all except Sara. She was looking around the room as well. I wondered whether she could feel it, too. When a pen fell off of a desk, everyone in the room jumped. After a few gasps, all of them began laughing and talking to Michael. For a moment though, really not more than a split second, I had sensed something. I’d felt the pen move.
What moved it?
During that briefest of moments, it felt almost tangible. When I looked back at Sara, she was staring at the same place, her face emotionless.

After a few minutes, when nothing else happened, the tour continued. I lagged behind a little.

“Sara, did you sense that, too?”

She smiled at me like she did when she wanted to avoid something. I leaned close to her and whispered.

“Sara, really, I can tell when you don’t want to answer me.”

“Maggie, let’s talk later.”

The tour ended without any more commotion, but I continued to sense the presence, or rather, several of them until we left.

It was late, and I needed to meet Doug and head to swimming practice. I didn’t get a chance to grill Sara, but that changed when I got home. After dinner, I said goodnight and returned to my room with the excuse of doing some homework. Billy and Sara were both waiting for me when I pushed the heavy wood door shut and secured the antique lock.

“Sara,” I asked immediately, “what was that in the basement of the Crescent?”

She and Billy exchanged looks.

“Echo,” she said to him.

He nodded and turned to me. “Understand that your training was supposed to continue for another year. There is a lot we simply haven’t had time to explain yet.”

“I know that. What’s an echo?”

“I would prefer to discuss this with you when we have more time, but I know
someone
would simply tell you anyway,” Sara said, looking at Billy with a scornful expression. “We don’t know what an echo is…”

“Sara, not this again?” he interrupted.

“Billy, if you will. She’ll get your position on it as well—she needs to hear both sides.”

He rolled his gray eyes and took a seat at my desk, stretching his legs out and crossing his ankles. With his muscular arms also crossed, he looked relaxed but annoyed. Sara sat on my bed in her familiar pillow-hugging position and patted the mattress beside her. I sat next to her and understood immediately that they were about to reveal another Fae secret…at least I hoped.

“Simply put, the predominant belief is that an echo is a manifestation of Naeshura that sometimes has emotional qualities and, on rare occasions, influences physical matter. At other times it takes form, more or less,” she said as Billy nodded in agreement.

“Many of our kind have experienced it when we’re in physical form, but it is rare.” he said.

“Really, Billy?” she scolded. “And to think you’re supposed to be the upfront one.” She turned to me. “It’s true that many Fae have experienced
echoes
in nearly every physical form, but the first experiences, and the most frequent, occurred with Fae in human form.”

“Oh, Sara, must we do this again—you know exactly where this will lead,” he protested.

“Yes, I think you were the one who said full disclosure is best, isn’t that right? So, some Fae, like Billy—the majority, if I’m being candid—believe that the echo is no more than a…a side effect of us taking physical form. You see, when we appear as humans, we don’t simply take the shape but we assume the anatomy, creating every part, including the brain. The human brain is easily fooled by the senses into perceiving things that aren’t there. You’ve heard the expression,
imagination running wild
, right? Well, the majority believes that the echo is nothing more than a manifestation of the physical brain combined with our natural abilities to control the elements—the Fae imagination running wild, if you will.”

He glanced at Sara before continuing. “Some of us see it differently, or at least consider another possibility—the possibility that we aren’t creating the manifestations. We entertain the possibility that they’re real.”

“You mean ghosts?” I said, stunned.

“Not ghosts, in the mystical sense, no, but manifestations of human Naeshura—your consciousness after physical existence has ended,” Sara said.

“There you go…” Billy huffed again, shaking his head. “You’re as bad as Danny.”

I turned to Billy. “Wait, you don’t believe our consciousness continues after our physical lives end?”

“I believe your Naeshura never ends. I believe your energy continues…”

Sara interrupted. “Our kind has debated the subject often, especially in the context of what happens to
our
consciousness when our existence ends. That debate is more pointed when it comes to mankind. The Unseelie don’t believe there is anything more to human life than there is to a plant. They believe when humans die, their energy is simply transformed and their consciousness disappears. The bigotry of the Unseelie against humankind is built on that foundation.”

“There is no evidence to the contrary—for either Fae or Human,” Billy said.

“As you well know, Billy, we don’t have all the answers—for Fae
or
humans,” Sara snapped.

“None of us has ever encountered a human consciousness
after
,” he shot back.

When I heard Billy’s words, I understood what Chalen had really meant when at the Water trial, he said we had an eighty-year shelf life. He devalued people because he thought there was nothing more to us than our physical existence, that the essence of what we were disappeared after our bodies failed. I’d been raised to believe otherwise. I knew, though, how often people fought over that question—how often people fought wars over religious beliefs. I’d heard the debates over and over, and didn’t want to go any further with this one. Like all fights on these matters, no one could win.

I didn’t care what Billy thought, but I understood the deeper problem. The edict suddenly made more sense—why allow a bond if one’s consciousness simply ceased after a few years? Most humans have an easier time with the death of a loved one because most believe the soul continues on. That’s what torments the Fae. To most of them, we might be creative and interesting, but no more important than a bubble in the bath water. How could I have missed it?

“Maggie, I don’t intend to make you question your beliefs,” he said.

“I love you, Billy, but you don’t have that much influence.”

He smiled and laughed. “I can’t say that I’m surprised you feel that way.”

Briefly, I wondered what Gavin believed, at least until I really thought about it. I knew the answer. He must have believed as Billy did, because he’d never mentioned this to me when he told me about Caorann—she was tortured by the prospect of being
truly
separated from her human lover. Her pain was evident on Gavin’s face that morning.

All of that aside, I wondered about the presence that frequently visited me in the cottage. It felt connected, and aware of what was going on. The first time I sensed it with Sara in Aunt May’s old room, I recalled feeling at peace despite grieving her death. It returned, agitated and angry, when the developers met with Dad in the library the first time—it was almost like a warning that something was wrong. In fact, it seemed to know what I was up to when I showed Dad my letters of intent, and it was there to soothe me when Gavin disappeared. There was a definite pattern. Then, just two weeks ago, it was there to remind me to be patient when I was so close to giving up. It was no echo at all. I knew in my gut that it was Aunt May.

Sara’s bell-like voice brought me back to the present. “Maggie, you’re far away. Would you like us to leave you alone?”

“No, I never want either of you to leave me alone.” They smiled when I said it. “Besides, I have a lot of questions to ask both of you, and now seems to be the perfect opportunity.”

Billy frowned. “It’s ten o’clock.”

“Tomorrow is Saturday—no school.”

He grinned. “Fine, what questions do you have?”

“Full disclosure?” I pressed.

“Yes, full disclosure.”

“Great, then we can begin with a question you’ve both avoided answering since we met: how are Fae—what did you call it—rud a aireachtáil bheith? How are Fae born?”