Girl of Nightmares

Gideon looks at the photo. He doesn’t try to take it. He doesn’t try to do anything. I expected something different. Outrage, or at least backpedaling. Instead he takes a deep breath and slips his glasses off to rub the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

“Who are they?” I ask when I’m sick of his silence.

“They,” he says ruefully, “are members of the Order of the Biodag Dubh.”

“The creators of the athame,” I say.

Gideon puts his glasses back on and walks wearily to sit behind his desk. “Yes,” he says. “The creators of the athame.”

It’s what I thought. But I still can’t believe it. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. “All these years?”

“Your father forbade it. He broke with the Order before you were born. When he grew a conscience. When he started to decide which ghosts would be killed and which to spare.” Fire briefly blooms in Gideon’s voice. Then it’s gone again, and he just looks beaten. “The Order of the Biodag Dubh believe that the athame is pure of purpose. It is not an instrument to be wielded according to someone else’s will. In their eyes, you and your father have corrupted it.”

My father corrupted it? That’s f**king ridiculous. The athame and its purpose have driven me my whole life. It cost my father his. The damned thing can serve my purposes for once. I’m owed. We’re owed.

“I can see into your head, Theseus. Not as well as your psychic friend upstairs perhaps, but I can see. My words aren’t swaying you. None of it is getting through. The Order created the athame to send the dead. Now you want to use it to pull a dead girl back. Even if there was a way, they’d rather destroy the knife than see it happen.”

“I have to do this. I can’t let her suffer there, without trying.” I swallow hard and grit my teeth. “I love her.”

“She’s dead.”

“That doesn’t mean to me what it does to other people.”

A blankness washes over his face that bothers me. He looks like someone facing down a firing squad.

“When you were here last, you were so small,” he says. “The only thing regularly on your mind was whether or not your mother would allow you two servings of apple cake.” His eyes drift to the rolling ladder in the corner. He’s picturing me there, laughing while he pushed it along the shelves.

“Gideon. I’m not a kid anymore. Treat me like you would have treated my father.” But that’s the wrong thing to say, and he squints like I struck him across the face.

“I can’t do this now,” he says, to himself as much as to me. His hand waves dismissively, and the way his shoulders hunch as he lowers into his armchair, part of me wants to let him rest. But Anna’s scream is forever in my ears.

“I don’t have time for this,” I say, but he closes his eyes. “She’s waiting for me.”

“She’s in Hell, Theseus. Time has no meaning for her, long or short. The pain and fear are constant, and any minutes or hours that you spare her, you will find, will prove irrelevant.”

“Gideon—”

“Let me rest,” he says. “What I have to say is of little consequence. Don’t you understand? I didn’t send you that photograph. The Order did. They want you here.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The door slides shut softly behind me. I’m surprised, because I want to slam it, rattle it around on its track. But Gideon is still in the study, thinking quietly, or maybe even napping, and his voice in my head says that throwing such a fit just won’t do.

“How’d that go?” Thomas asks, poking his head out of the kitchen.

“He’s napping,” I reply. “So what does that tell you?”

Walking into the kitchen, I find Thomas and Jestine seated together at the table, sharing a pomegranate.

“He’s old, Cas,” she says. “He was old the last time you were here. Napping is nothing out of the ordinary.” She spoons up a load of the purple fruit and chews carefully past the seeds.

To my right, Thomas crunches through his pomegranate and spits seeds into a mug.

“We didn’t cross an ocean to cool our heels and ride the Eye,” he snaps. At first I think he says it for my benefit, but no. He looks irritated and surly; the shower-wetness of his hair gives him the air of an almost-drowned cat.

“Hey,” I say. “Don’t bite Jestine’s head off. It’s not her fault.” Thomas curls his lip, and Jestine smiles.