“Callan,” I said. “This is what Molly was dealing with. This world, this craziness.”
He looked around, as if he was trying to find me.
His expression creased.
He was an asshole, stubborn, absolutely brutal in how he dealt with others. It was like the younger siblings had learned from what the older ones had gone through, and had gotten more clever. The older ones, they were simpler. Kathryn was a bulldog, tenacious. She attacked and she didn’t let up. Callan… he wasn’t equipped with status. He didn’t fight so much as he blindsided. He was half again my age, and he hit people where it hurt, picking and choosing when and where he did it.
He’d cost Paige the recommendations she needed to get the hell away from here and get to a good school in the U.S., going straight to her teachers. He and his friends had probably been responsible for the vandalism of Kathryn’s restaurant, after we’d all heard Aunt Jessica talking about how they were expecting someone prominent to pay a visit and review it.
Callan had, I was pretty damn sure, been the one to knock over my bike in a fit of pique on the day Grandmother had passed verdict on the heirs.
But, at the end of the day, he’d cared about his immediate family. Even though I’d been too young at the time to remember, I suspected he’d had high hopes about being the heir, but he’d given up when grandmother had laid down the law about it being a female heir. Gave up on a lot of levels, maybe. He’d never gone on to great things. Alternated between working jobs in Toronto and working jobs here.
He’d backed Molly all the way.
“You couldn’t help her, but you can help us,” I said.
Eva was doing her best to fight with a revenant behind her and the flesh-stitching Bogeyman in front of her.
I couldn’t wait for Callan to act. I couldn’t give more convincing.
I moved forward, and I lunged for the revenant this time.
He moved his leg as I cut, and I only got the calf.
It was all Eva needed. She saw him falter, and backed away, using him as an obstacle to fight the Bogeywoman with.
That was all the help I could give.
Alexis was being lowered into the pool of water.
“Cold,” she said.
I hadn’t even realized. The window was gone, exploded, and cold air was flowing into the room. With all the water…
I hope this helps. I reached into my chest and retrieved a spirit.
Reaching through the water, I pushed out, and I pushed the spirit into her.
She gasped like I’d thrown cold water on her.
In an instant, she was paler, her eyes black from corner to corner. The edges of the shadows on her face and body darker and rougher.
I was weaker, and it was energy I probably couldn’t afford to give.
My hand brushed her shoulder before I was cast aside by the lack of footing.
“You feel like this all the time, Blake?” she asked. Her voice was almost haunting, as if everything I’d heard for a long time had been muffled by the mirror, but her voice was as clear as a bell, resounding here.
“Feel like what?”
“Empty. Cold. Broken. Distant. Like… the worst night of waking up on the streets, when nothing’s right and you’re shivering and hurt and dirty and hungry, and you know it’s going to be a long time before you can do anything about any of it, and you get this feeling in the pit of your stomach.”
I lowered my head. My feet were almost in line with hers. I looked down at her, and she looked down at me, keeping only a partial eye on the ongoing brawl.
“I do. But it’s my natural state,” I said. I thought of what Peter had mentioned. “Something-”
“Incomplete,” she said.
I could hear the resonation of her voice, so clear. So closely linked to me, thanks to the spirits I’d given. Alexis was using a marker to draw on the arm of the couch.
Incomplete.
That word felt important.
“Sorry to spend some of what you just gave me, but- Television!”
Eva’s reaction times were freakish. Alexis hadn’t finished speaking the word before Eva kicked the revenant. He crashed into the shattered television set. Something sparked, and fire erupted.
He staggered, head and shoulder aflame, burning more with every passing moment, then went to the window, throwing himself through.
“Go,” Eva said. “No grudges.”
She wasn’t talking to him.
The faceless woman went after her companion.
“Upstairs!” Alexis said.
Retreating.
With the faceless woman gone, all the Others who’d been clustered outside came in.
The front door detonated. A small blast, not even reaching down the length of the hallway. No fire, which was probably a part of the runes on the thing.
It did damage the blockade at the basement door.
A dozen bogeymen, goblins, and other assorted monsters were in the house.
We had to give ground. Ground floor lost.
Not even forty minutes had passed.
Fourteen hours until the crack of dawn, give or take.
12.02