A Midwinter Fantasy - Leanna Renee Hieber [12]
He did not believe that heaven would cater precisely to his whims, so he prayed that whatever Percy and the spirits intended would indeed help. He could no longer open locked doors, and one heart had always remained shut to him, even when he could. Thus, though it went against years of instinct, Michael would accept a bit of ghostly intervention.
Chapter Two
Headmistress Rebecca Thompson sat curled upon her bed, hugging her long and slight frame and stroking Marlowe, Jane’s familiar, a white cat as sullen as she. She peered into the beast’s green eyes, hoping to see the luminous quality that once resided there, a sign of an otherworldly power. But that luminosity had vanished when the cat’s mistress breathed her last, when the possessing spirits of The Guard vacated them all in a rush of wind leaving only a searing emptiness. The resultant vacuum felt wrong, and Rebecca regretted that she’d ever taken the Grand Work for granted.
She’d had a familiar as well: Frederic, a raven. He was nowhere to be seen, and Rebecca ached for him. She’d no idea how comforting it was simply to have that black bird outside on a windowsill, something that was hers, an ever-present companion. Poe had been ungrateful in his prose. Now that her bird had quit her chamber, Rebecca Thompson had never felt so alone.
Lit dimly in gaslight, a dark London night past her drawn window, she was caught between utter terror, incapacitating grief and a slight frisson of possibility. She had supped upon bland soup, tried to read, considered rearranging Athens Academy curriculum for the new year, reorganized her small pantry, changed the direction of her Persian rugs and nearly paced holes in them before at last curling up with Marlowe, her trembling hands gliding haphazardly over his fur, staring at her apartments, bewildered.
When the board of Athens Academy sent her a letter asking her to apprentice as headmistress at the tender age of sixteen, an act she assumed came from Prophecy rather than from her proficiency, she didn’t dare say no. Their sacred space and the heart of the Grand Work centred around Athens and so it was fate that placed her in this building. But she’d wanted, as the rest of them had, her own space not so tied to the Grand Work. She wanted to retire separately, to a place neutral. But alas, she had been and perhaps would always be defined by the academy in her waking and sleeping hours.
Craning her head toward the window, she watched snow-flakes begin to fall. As much as she may have wished to be elsewhere, she hadn’t gained the courage to leave the apartment for days. Her thoughts were murky as she contemplated her broken state. She should have been the one to die, not Jane. For all her mistakes, Rebecca mused with sullen surety, it should have been she.
As early as she could remember, she had striven to be a woman both accomplished and reliable, gifted and strong. Once, she had been all those things. For years she had performed her duty to The Guard with aplomb, had been their Intuition. Then she’d nearly caused Prophecy to fail. She was a Judas. She was weak. She should never have been spared. Even saving the lives of her students and helping to prevent warring spirits from tearing up London brick by brick could not diminish her guilt.
She had no idea where her friends were on this cool winter night. Usually she could sense them, but since the forces previously driving their destinies were gone, the group was disconnected. She spared a moment of pity for the world at large, people who’d never known what it was like to be tethered in some