“It’s quite all right, Sonia, but… whatever are we doing here?”
She stands for a moment, her hand on her chest as she attempts to catch her breath. “I asked around, carefully, mind you, and found someone who might have some answers to…” She eyes Edmund cautiously. “Well, to the things we’ve been discussing.”
Edmund does not look amused.
I nod. “All right.”
Sonia takes my hand, leading me to the dark doorway ahead. “I’ve thought and thought about the prophecy, but it makes no more sense to me now than it did when you first showed me the book. I thought we could do with some help.
It was not easy to find such a person. But if anyone will assist us in finding answers, it will be Madame Berrier.”
The name itself is mysterious, but I follow Sonia to a nondescript door. She raises her hand and knocks, and the door is opened a moment later by a svelte, fashionable woman.
“Good afternoon. Please do come in.” The woman is obviously French but with the hint of a more exotic accent that I cannot quite place. She ushers us into a cramped foyer. Her eyes focus on something over my shoulder, and it is only when I follow her gaze that I realize Edmund has not stayed at the carriage. She looks at him appraisingly, her eyes flickering with interest over his strong face.
I turn to him. “Edmund, would you mind waiting here while we speak in private?”
He considers this thoughtfully, rubbing the coarse stubble along his jaw.
“We shall be right here in this very apartment.”
His nod is small, but he folds his large frame onto a small bench set against one wall.
“Follow me.” Madame Berrier leads us down a narrow hallway with doors on either side.
“Thank you, Madame, for seeing us on such short notice. I know how very busy you are.” Sonia’s voice echoes through the shadows of the dimly lit hallway. She turns to me as we walk. “Madame Berrier is one of the most sought-after spiritualists in New York. Some of her customers come from hundreds of miles to get a reading.”
I smile as if I have always had a friend who is a spiritualist, as if I am accustomed to meeting in the back lanes of town those with dark and questionable powers.
Madame Berrier’s voice is muted as she speaks ahead of us. “You are most welcome. You have powerful gifts of your own, my dear. It is only right that we should help one another, yes? Besides, it is not often I have the opportunity to speak of the Prophecy of the Sisters.”
“The Prophecy of the Sisters?” I mouth the words back to Sonia as Madame Berrier ushers us through an elegant apartment that belies its decrepit-looking exterior.
Sonia shrugs, following the older woman into a well-appointed parlor.
“Please sit down.” Madame Berrier waves us toward a red velvet settee as she sits in a carved chair opposite. Between us is a small wooden table that glows with the warmth of a well-polished apple. It is set with a silver pot, delicate porcelain cups and saucers, and a small plate of cookies. “Would you like some coffee? Or do you take tea in the tradition of the British?”
“Coffee, please.” My voice emerges firmer than I expect under the circumstances.
She nods, reaching for the pot on the table with a smile something like approval. “And for you?” she asks Sonia.
“Oh no. Nothing for me, thank you. It sometimes interferes with my sittings.”
Madame Berrier nods, placing the pot back on the silver tray. “Yes, the coffee and tea did the same for me when I was younger and more sensitive to external stimuli. I would wager these things will bother you less and less as you grow more sure in your powers, dear.”
Sonia nods, and I see her struggling against the words she wants to say.
Madame Berrier saves her the trouble. “Sonia tells me that you find yourself in an… unusual situation, Miss Milthorpe.”
I don’t answer right away, feeling unsure confessing to a stranger the things I have worked so mightily to keep secret. But in the end, I nod, for what purpose is there in trying to find answers if I’ll not speak to those who might give them?
“May I see your hand?” She holds her own across the table with such authority that hesitating does not seem an option.
I proffer my hand over the coffee and sugar.
Pulling up the sleeve of my gown, she eyes the mark coolly before releasing my hand. “Hmmm… Quite interesting. Quite interesting indeed. I have seen it before, of course. In the tales of the prophecy, and on the chosen few who play a part. But never one quite like this. It is most unusual.” She nods. “But of course, it is to be expected.”
Her last words take me by surprise. “Why… Why is it to be expected?”
She places her cup back into the saucer with a clink. “Because the prophecy dictates it, my dear! The prophecy promises it!”
I shake my head, feeling dimmer than ever. “I’m most sorry, Madame. I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
She tilts her head, as if trying to gauge my ignorance as crafty deception or the more simple variety of stupidity. At last she leans in, speaking in a low and urgent voice. “The Souls are helpless without Samael. They have been amassing an army for centuries, but the prophecy dictates that they can do nothing to bring about the Doom of Gods without the leadership of Samael, the Beast. And there is only one who can summon him. Only one who will carry the singular mark of that authority.” She pauses, meeting my eyes with both reverence and perhaps the smallest slice of fear. “Clearly that one is you. You, my dear, are the Angel. The Angel of Chaos.”
Through the haze of shock, the realization is a primordial chant, a drumbeat that begins as a flutter in my bones before spreading its wings through my body. I cannot speak around it, around the dawning apprehension. It has been difficult enough to accept my role as Gate. What can this new assignation mean for my place in the prophecy?
“But… I thought Lia was the Guardian? She is, is she not?” Sonia’s voice comes as if through a tunnel, and I remember that there has not been time to tell her of my discovery that I am the Gate.
Surprise shades Madame Berrier’s eyes. “Mais, non! There is no other with this mark, not one such as this! It names your friend as the Gate, and not just any Gate, but the Angel, the one Gate with the power to summon Samael. The one Gate with the choice to bring him forth or destroy him forever.”
“But… Lia?” Sonia turns to me, pleading for a truth that I wish I did not have to give her. “Is this true?”
I inspect my hands in my lap as if they somehow hold the answer to Sonia’s question. But only I hold the answer she must hear, and I raise my eyes to hers, nodding.
“Yes.” It is a whisper. “I haven’t had the time to tell you. I just found out last night, and I didn’t know I was the Angel until this very moment.”
Madame Berrier is aghast, and when she turns her eyes to me I see that they are so black as to be nearly without color. “You did not realize your place? Your mother does not teach you the ways of the prophecy, of your place in it? Did she not once hold a role of her own?”
Sonia murmurs next to me as if thinking aloud, her voice soft and without emotion. “Her mother passed, Madame, when she was but a child. And her father, too, more recently.”
The older woman’s eyes widen, her gaze not without pity. “Ah, that would explain it, then, for it is left to the older and wiser sisters of the prophecy to ensure their daughters’ education in its ways. And your father passed recently as well?” Her voice is a low purr, the question asked more to herself than to me. “Well. There you are, then. You have lost your protection. You have lost the veil.”
The words in the book come back to me, twisting softly through my memory like smoke. Guarded only by the gossamer veil of protection.
“The veil?” My voice cracks with the words.
She finally loses her patience, throwing her hands into the air as if in surrender. “Do you face the prophecy with no knowledge at all? How are you to do battle if you do not know your enemy? If you do no
t know the weapons at your disposal?” She sighs deeply. “It is foretold that the Angel will be given a protector. An earthly protector, but a protector nonetheless. Otherwise, the Angel would be helpless, and Samael would find his way through her before she was old enough to harness her power. Before she was old enough to make a choice. And everyone has a choice, my dear, as was dictated at the beginning of time. It is through the protection of the veil that the Gate may grow old enough to make her choice. As long as that protector is alive, the Beast cannot come for you. When did your father pass, dear girl?”
“A-About two weeks ago.”
“And were the circumstances of his death… unusual?”
“Yes.” It is a whisper.
She dabs at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “I am most sorry. The prophecy is a burden for the most educated and prepared in the Sisterhood. For one so adrift as you… for one with your role… well, it must be quite overwhelming. I shall fill in as much as possible. Let us begin with your father. With his death.”
My throat closes at the mention of my father. “What does that have to do with the prophecy?”
“Everything,” she says simply. “The Souls have been waiting for centuries to return to our world. You are their Angel, the one with the power to make it so or banish them forever. Make no mistake, they will stop at nothing to get to you.”
I want to laugh at the absurdity of the implication. But then I think of Father’s face in death. The open eyes. The unfamiliar grimace on a face that was too horrified to be his. I think of these things and am filled with an all-consuming sadness that grows to something more like anger and a disbelief that is not altogether disbelieving.
When I look up at Madame Berrier, my words are no longer a question, but a truth. “He was killed by the Souls. He was killed because of me.”
She shakes her head sadly. “You needn’t feel responsible for your father’s death, Miss Milthorpe. No protector acts as the veil unwillingly. To accept such a role, he must have loved you very much, dear. He, too, made choices.” Madame Berrier’s voice is as soothing as a mother’s. “It is a wonder they did not take him sooner. To resist them for so long… well, he must have been a very strong man and quite determined to protect you.”
I shake my head, trying to get my mind around the truth of my father’s death. “But he didn’t travel the Plane. He never spoke of it to me, and he would have, if he had known.”
Madame Berrier considers this for a moment, nodding curtly. “Perhaps. But the Souls are crafty, child, and Samael immeasurably more so. It is possible that the Souls enticed him just that once with something of great significance. Something he dearly loved.”
With those words, the Dark Room flashes in my mind.
And now I know. I know how they enticed him to travel.
“My mother.”
15
When she speaks, her voice holds no surprise, the questions not really questions at all.
“Would he not have succumbed to the call of seeing her face, to the possibility of hearing her voice? Especially if he were worried about his daughter, about her role in the prophecy of which few men have heard and even fewer believe?”
I see the door of the Dark Room the day of my father’s death, cold air leaking from the abandoned chambers in the thin light of morning.
The Dark Room. My mother’s room.
I remember my effortless travels, how easily I slipped into them, unaware that they were something more than simple dreams.
“He didn’t know.” I murmur. “He didn’t know he was traveling. He didn’t know that he would be vulnerable to the spirits in the Otherworlds.”
She nods. “It is easy enough to answer the call of the spirits under guise of a pleasant dream, and the Souls had every reason to detain your Father’s soul, to set him adrift in the Otherworlds.”
The tide of anguish that rises on my next thought threatens to push me under. “Are you… are you saying his soul is in the Void?”
She lifts her chin, studying the ceiling as if the words she needs can be found on the plaster overhead. “Miss Sorrensen mentioned receiving a message from your father at one of her sittings.”
The memory of that first mystifying altercation with Sonia makes me shift uncomfortably in the settee. “Yes. That is, I think so,” I tell her. “I didn’t hear it, actually. It was passed to me by Sonia.”
Madame Berrier smiles her encouragement. “Miss Sorrensen has a formidable gift. If she says the message was from him, it likely was. And if it was, it means that he somehow managed to escape the Void.” She shrugs. “It is possible. There are those in the Otherworlds with power enough to aid one in escaping the Void, though they would put themselves in danger to do so. Your mother perhaps?”
Something Aunt Virginia said drifts like smoke into my mind. “My aunt said my mother was a… a Spellcaster?”
Madame Berrier nods. “Ah. Then she may well have intervened on his behalf. There are very few true Spellcasters. A Spellcaster would almost certainly be powerful enough to stage an intervention. His soul would still be stranded in the Otherworlds, but he would be free to wander there or cross if he chose.”
As painful as it is to imagine my father’s soul adrift in the Otherworlds, I am grateful for any intervention that allowed him to escape the Void, especially if it reunited him with my mother.
It is Sonia, looking at Madame Berrier with a small measure of hope, who asks the question I should have been asking all along. “You said there is a choice, Madame, that Lia has a choice.”
“But of course. Miss Milthorpe has choices to make just as the rest of us do, though they are undoubtedly quite a bit more complicated and dangerous. She may choose to open the Gate to the Beast or she may choose to close it forever, as is her right as the Angel.” She leans closer, her smile hidden behind a trace of irony. “I, for one, sincerely hope she chooses the latter.”
I shake my head. It is difficult to imagine that anyone would choose to allow entry to the Beast. “Well, there is no question at all! I choose to close it, of course! But I know nothing of the prophecy save what we have read.”
Sonia clears her throat. “It is for this reason we have come, Madame. We have heard there is a way to end the prophecy. A way to close the Gate forever. There is a reference to keys, you see. We think they may be the way to an end, but we aren’t sure where to find them or even where to begin looking.”
Madame Berrier considers Sonia’s words. “Well, there is rumor of a way for the Angel to close the Gate forever, but I’ve never been privy to the prophecy itself. Very few have ever laid eyes on the ancient text, and those that have are most assuredly connected to it in some way.”
Sonia raises her eyebrows. “Well, we have, Madame. And in it is the mention of keys, together with something else, something that rings familiar but which I cannot place. Something called Samhain.”
Madame Berrier purses her lips. I can see the wheels turning in her mind, and when she speaks it is not with an answer but a question. “In what context is Samhain mentioned in relation to the keys?”
Sonia licks her lips, trying to remember. “Something about the first breath… the —”
“ ‘Formed in the first breath of Samhain.’ ” I meet Madame Berrier’s gaze. “That is what it says. ‘Four marks, Four keys, Circle of Fire, Formed in the first breath of Samhain.’ ”
She taps her fingers on the table, considering her words. “Let us take a stroll, hmm? I believe I know where to find some of the answer you seek.”
The streets are crowded, bustling with people. Horses clop past, the carriages they pull rattling on the dusty road. Edmund, ever vigilant, follows us without a word.
We walk for some time, and I wonder at Madame Berrier’s strange authority that we follow her so willingly, without a single question about our destination. She is so sure-footed, so purposeful in her stride that it seems almost insulting to inquire, and so we follow along, trotting to keep up with her swift pace.
It is only after we have passed the tailor, the milliner, the sweet shop, and a number of taverns that Madame Berrier turns a corner, leading us down a quieter back lane. Narrow houses stand on either side of the street like somber watchmen. They are not as grand as the homes on Main Street but simple and well-kept, much like Madame Berrier herself. We approach a house that looks like all the others, but I see from a plaque on its front that it is the town library.
“The word you mentioned rings familiar, my dear,” Madame Berrier says, looking over at Sonia. “But with so many translations and pronunciations, it is best to be sure, especially with something so important, is it not?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, but continues her steady march up the front steps, opening the door with a flourish.
Stepping into the cavernous main hall, I find the library is more than quiet, it is deserted. Indeed, I don’t see a single person as we make our way across the scuffed marble floor. Its emptiness is more than the lack of living, breathing beings. It is the unread pages of the many books that reside on the shelves throughout the room. I should not have thought one could tell when books have gone unread, but after the company of Birchwood’s well-loved library it is as if I can hear these books whispering, their pages grasping and reaching for an audience.
Madame Berrier stops at a large desk in the center of the main room, casting a meaningful glance at Edmund before turning to me, eyebrows raised in question.
I breathe deeply. “Edmund, would you mind looking around or waiting here, or… something?”
I feel badly asking him to occupy himself yet again, but it is clear from Madame Berrier’s demeanor that she means our visit to the library to be a private one. Edmund does not seem to mind. He nods, wandering to one of the many tall shelves and disappearing around its corner.
We scan the library for any sign of life. There are smaller rooms visible on both sides of the main hall and a narrow staircase that winds to the floor above.