Thirteen Days of Midnight (9 page)

It occurs to me that Holiday is about to notice me and Elza, and I try to arrange my face into a normal expression, rather than a slack mask of all-consuming horror.

“I haven’t seen him around before,” says Elza. “He’s one of yours, I assume.”

“Oh, man.”

Holiday has definitely seen me, and she’s heading our way. I never thought there would be a situation where I didn’t want to be looking at her perfect face, yet here it is. She’s followed by Alice — and the ghost.

“Luke!”

“Holiday, Alice. Do you know —”

“We’ve met,” says Elza.

“Elza,” says Holiday, “great to see you!”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” Elza replies, and exhales another wall of smoke.

I keep flicking my gaze from the ghost to Holiday and back again. She’s smiling expectantly.

“How are you?” I ask.

“Great,” Holiday says. “Another exciting day at school, right?”

“Big fun,” I say.

“Where were you yesterday?” she asks as I will her with all my heart to leave.

“Are those shoes, like, vintage?” Alice asks Elza.

“I suppose,” Elza replies.

“Oh, you know. I had some stuff to do,” I say. The ghost stands behind Holiday, opening and closing the shears. He radiates cold, like the open door of a freezer.

“They’re really, like, dorky, but in a cool way,” says Alice.

“Well, thanks,” says Elza. “Your fake tan looks good. Really thick.”

“You’re so mysterious, Luke! So listen: Are you coming to my party tomorrow? I told you about that, right? I mean, I know it’s like a whole week before Halloween, but this Friday was, like, the only time my parents would let me do it, with exams and stuff, oh, and yeah, I decided it’s going to be full costumes.” Holiday finally takes a breath. “You . . . should come too, Elza.”

“Sure thing,” I say. I feel queasy.

“Wouldn’t be seen anywhere else,” says Elza.

“How do you know Luke?” Holiday asks Elza.

“I don’t, really,” Elza says. “He was asking for a cigarette.”

“I didn’t think you smoked,” Holiday says to me with a frown.

“Er . . . not usually,” I say. “Only on special occasions.”

“What’s the occasion?” Holiday asks.

“It’s Thursday?”

Nobody says anything in response to this. Alice is giving me and Elza the kind of look you’d usually reserve for someone you saw eating a slug in the street.

“Well . . . we’re going to be late,” says Holiday with slightly forced casualness. She’s right: The flow of students around us has dwindled to a trickle of stragglers. “Let me give you my number? I’ll let you know about the party tomorrow?”

“I’d . . . like that. Yeah. Thanks,” I say.

So I exchange numbers with my dream girl, while Elza and Alice face each other down like panthers about to lunge, and the scarred ghost opens and closes his mouth, breathing wetly. I notice his tongue is missing. Holiday and Alice take their leave and stride away. The ghost stays with me and Elza, picking at its teeth with the shears.

“Who are you?” I ask it when they’re out of earshot.

It says nothing. Gulps. Looks at me with milky eyes.

“Where’s the Vassal?”

The ghost grins and then fades away, becoming thinner and fainter, until only the shears are left, like a rusting Cheshire smile.

“Gosh,” says Elza. “Are your ghosts always that charming?”

“I’ve never met that one before. I don’t know how you manage to make jokes —”

“I got used to it early on. I’ve always been this way; I never changed like you did. Listen, you need to get better at acting, fast. You spent the entire time looking like you’d just pissed yourself.”

“This is all a bit of a shock, you know?”

“Oh, I feel the same. You’ve got yourself some ugly spirits, Luke. That was not a sight I wanted to see at eight fifty-five on a Thursday morning.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she says. “I’m guessing your dad just died, right?”

“How do you . . . yeah. Don’t worry. We weren’t close.”

Elza flicks her cigarette butt into the gutter. The water carries it away from us. I watch as it rushes down the street and vanishes into a sewer grate.

“I think we’ve got a lot to talk about,” she says.

“I agree.”

“No time like the present,” Elza says. She looks up at the clouded sky. “It probably won’t rain in the next hour or so. Let’s skip homeroom and take a walk.”

To my surprise Elza leads me through the school gates, but instead of heading up the hill to the front yard, she turns right, staying close to the wall, pushes her way through a close copse of pine trees, and ducks under a half-collapsed wire fence. Neither of us says anything. This feels like a condensed version of everything that’s happened to me this week. I thought my life would be taking the obvious path, to a place I knew, and instead I’ve been pulled off into the dark undergrowth. I follow Elza into an overgrown garden of some sort that doesn’t look much different from the school grounds we just left: thigh-high grass, enormous dripping fir trees. Elza moves past the trees, and I follow her into an open space, a flat lawn studded with crumbling stone blocks. A stone angel looks down at us with a dismayed expression, its head half hooded by a froth of yellow lichen.

“I thought this would be appropriate,” Elza says. “Do you like it?”

“I’m hanging out with a goth in a graveyard.”

If Kirk and Mark get wind of this . . .

“It’s the far end of Saint Jude’s,” she says. “Most people don’t know about that route out of school. I’ve been coming down here at lunch for years. And I’m not a goth. I’m a free thinker.”

“If the combat boot fits . . .”

“I don’t have to help you,” she says mildly.

“How are you going to help me, exactly? I mean, what are you? Are you a necromancer, too, or something?”

“A necromancer? Not at all. I think there might be witch blood somewhere in my family, but that’s not unusual. I was born with second sight. That’s it, really. So when did you sign for the Manchett Host?”

She sits at the base of the angel statue and starts rolling another cigarette. Some pigeons take off from the tree above us, slapping their wings through the branches and vanishing into the sky. I haven’t been able to talk with Mum about what’s been happening, or with my mates, or Holiday . . . And the idea of speaking to a teacher about Dad and the ghosts is so ludicrous, it never even crossed my mind until now. And here I am, laying out my deepest secrets with a girl I’ve barely said three words to before today.

“Monday afternoon. His solicitor . . . he said I’d inherit everything. There’s money, too, he told me. That’s what I wanted. He didn’t mention the part about the Host. How do you know about that?”

“It should be apparent,” she says, lighting up, “that I’m not stupid. I’ve had my eye on you for a while, because really, how common a name is Manchett? So I heard your father had died and then when I saw you in the schoolyard, I felt this really strong spike of power coming from you. Plus, then the town ghosts started going to ground —”

“Town ghosts?”

“People die all the time, Luke. Try to keep up. There are ghosts everywhere. Dunbarrow’s an old town. It was here before the Romans came. We’ve got suicides, murder victims, plague victims, crib deaths, sweet old granny ghosts, headless horsemen . . . They’re all part of Dunbarrow. They’ll always be here. In general they’re harmless. Worst they do is knock on your windows at night. Poltergeist stuff. Make a chair float of its own accord.”

“All totally normal and harmless.”

“Well. It’s a matter of perspective. But bound ghosts, spirits like the ones that make up your Host, they’re different. Your dad never explained any of this?”

She’s looking at me the same way she looks at people when they mispronounce words in English class.

“I haven’t seen him for ten years. I haven’t even had a birthday card for the past three. So no, he never explained any of this.”

“OK. Sorry. But the Host, those spirits are bound to you. The bond gives you, their necromancer, power, but it also — this is very important — it also gives them power. It works both ways, and half a necromancer’s job is making sure his ghosts are under tight enough control that power is no use to them.”

“Being enslaved makes them stronger?”

“It’s not a concrete science. None of this is remotely a science. But yes, usually. For the Host, your life force, it’s a kind of anchor to Liveside. They can influence the living world to a greater degree than free spirits ever could.”

“Liveside?”

“Here.” Elza waves her hand, cigarette leaving a sketch of smoke. “This is Liveside. Sorry, I post a lot on Second Sight Support forums, so I know the terms. It’s good to talk to other people who know what you go through every day. Liveside and Deadside are forums jargon. I don’t know what real necromancers call it. Deadside is . . . not easy to describe from what I can gather. It’s formless mist, a labyrinth, a void, a chaos. It’s not surprising so many spirits choose to stay here.”

“OK. Spirits in a Host are more powerful than normal ghosts. They said that themselves.”

“They were right. But you shouldn’t trust anything they tell you. Dead people are like living people: They lie a lot, they’re selfish. And then in other important ways they’re nothing like us at all.”

I think of the Heretic, stumbling through my hallway as everlasting fire boiled out of his bones. I think of the Judge and the Vassal and whoever the hell that scarred, tongueless guy with the shears was. I shudder.

“Yeah. You could say that.”

“I don’t know how to put this, Luke, but you’re in a lot of trouble.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean
really.
A lot of trouble. You, me, the entire town. You’ve had these things for three days, and you’ve just been letting them do as they please, haven’t you? Don’t frown at me. You have.”

“All right, yeah,” I say, “but —”

“It’s not all right. It’s very dangerous. They’re not on your side. As soon as they realize you’re not in control, that there’s nothing to be afraid of, they’ll turn on you. You need to be a ruler. You’ve been the heir to the throne your whole life and not known it, and I know you never asked for this, but you have to rule them.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

Elza blows smoke out of both nostrils.

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know!” she says, making a face like the words taste sour. “I’m not an expert on Hosts. I know they’re dangerous. I know your dad had a full set of eight, which is extra powerful and bad. Second sight isn’t very common, and some of us are oddballs, but we’re not . . . I mean, your dad was deep into something not many people are into. Necromancy, Luke, I mean, raising spirits from the dead, binding them to your own soul. It’s the blackest of black magic, I’m talking deals with the Devil here.”

“Er —”

“Sorry to be so blunt. Do you know what demons are?”

“Oh, man . . . was that what the guy with the shears was?”

“They’re spirits that were never alive at all. They come from the deepest parts of Deadside. Unfortunately, I think the man with the shears was human once. Who knows what he did in life to look like that in spirit? But demons don’t even look
that
human, I’m told.”

“Dad owned demons?”

“There are rumors to that effect, yes. I’ve never wanted to see one. But if we’re unlucky, we’ll both get the chance.”

“So what do we do?” I ask.

“Well. I’ve heard that there’s a book. It’s old — supposedly the first copies were written in Babylon thousands of years ago. It tells you all about the dark arts, how to raise the dead —”

“Yeah, the Book of Eight. I’ve got it on my desk at home.”

There’s no small pleasure in telling Elza something she doesn’t know. She looks like she’s about to choke.

“You’ve got the Book of Eight and you didn’t mention it?”

“I can’t read it,” I say.

“Is it in another language, then, or —?”

“No, I mean I literally can’t open the book to read it. It’s clasped shut. I’ve tried a few times and there’s just no way. It’s locked.”

“All right,” Elza says. “Is there anything else you haven’t mentioned?”

“Dad left me a big bunch of his papers. I can’t read most of those either. They’re in code.”

“He didn’t make this easy on you, did he? All right, that’s a start. A much better start than I expected, actually. The actual Book of Eight . . .”

“So why are you even helping me? What do you get from this?”

“Well. I hate to heap disaster upon disaster, Luke, but this is just about the worst time of year you could’ve inherited these things. Hosts are always powerful, but bound spirits become exponentially more dangerous during certain days of the year. Of which Halloween is a major one. If they’re planning to break free of your control — and I’m certain they are — they’ll do it then. It’s Thursday today, and next Friday is Halloween. If they break free, there’s no telling what they might do to Dunbarrow. Some of the things I’ve read . . . These spirits can develop
appetites.
I want to do everything I can to stop them from getting loose.”

“Right. Great.”

The Vassal never mentioned that particular detail to me.

“What?”

“Luckily we’ve only got a half day of school tomorrow, so you’re going to bring everything — the Book, everything — up to my house as soon as possible. And then we’re going to work on this thing until we find a way of banishing your Host, bringing it to heel, whatever we find. We’ve got next week off for half-term so we’ve got time.”

“Why your house?”

“I’ve got hazel charms around my street, and around my house especially. Keeps the uninvited dead away. I mean, we can go to your place if you want them to hear every word we say.”

“Point taken.”

“In fact, forget about school today. Go and get your stuff right now and come to my house. Number 19, Towen Crescent. This is more important than school.”

“All right,” I say. “One thing, though.”

“What?”

“We should probably be careful about being seen in Dunbarrow together. You know, if the Host is dangerous. You could be in danger.”

“I already am. Your starved spirit saw us talking. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve.” Elza gestures at the small stone hanging from her necklace but doesn’t explain further.