A Midwinter Fantasy - Leanna Renee Hieber [29]
Was it so easy to just say yes and make a home together, as the ghost intimated? Perhaps it was. She eyed the boy. “You’re wise for a child.”
“Staring down eternity will make one so,” he replied, but he bobbed his head and she could tell he was greatly pleased.
Despite herself, Rebecca chuckled. “I imagine so.”
“So,” the young ghost continued, “while you may think you’ve a thousand things keepin’ you from happiness, a thousand flaws and mistakes, here’s a man who thinks himself a coward. He wonders if he has enough to give you. He’s nervous every time he’s alone with you. All for love.” The ghost’s eyes grew a bit cold, and his face ominous. “You both live in fear, and I tell you the whole of the spirit world fears you cannot overcome it. You’ve given much of your life to these blessed bricks. Do you want to give your eternity to hauntin’ them? There are two paths here. Now from the darkness, choose.”
And then Billy gave her a small but decisive push and everything went black.
“Percy, come closer!”
Constance appeared at her side, and Percy started. She had maintained her perch overlooking the foyer, rosary in hand, sitting on a bench on the second floor of Athens, remaining inconspicuous but on guard. Constance and Billy had been told to call upon her if something needed attention. Nothing had raised an alarm until now.
“The Liminal presses in, right into the heart of us, she’s in the Whisper-world now,” the ghost warned. “The shadows will be close and they’ll not want to let the headmistress go. She’s a perfect candidate for a state like mine, forever haunting these bricks.”
Percy moved to the edge of the landing. She’d been mesmerized by visions below, all done in a misty, giant picture frame, the hazy clouds of shifting images filling the foyer and then vanishing as the memories moved elsewhere. She’d never seen anything like it; hundreds of images superimposed upon one another, shifting in and over and across in curling tendrils of smoke and mist, like ink bleeding into water to form ever-changing shapes, all of them individually poignant. These were private matters played out in mist, and so Percy did not strain to make out the particulars; all she heard were murmurs, and all she saw were greyscale silhouettes.
But, then, Percy wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for. The precise nature of angels, demons, ghosts, guardians and the worlds between wasn’t something any of them would ever master. But Percy chose to believe in angels. While she’d never seen them, during the course of the Grand Work she was sure she’d heard them. She hoped they heard her now and could sing at her side.
Constance grimaced. “The Liminal can change many ways. Let’s make sure it twists the way we hope. I’ve seen two possible futures, one I like a great deal better than the other! Come to the threshold edge. Fate cuts along a razor-thin line.”
Chapter Eight
All was darkness. The chill went to the bone, and Rebecca shuddered. She might appear as stoic and fearless as their leader Alexi, but she knew her frailty all too well.
“Mortal hearts make many mistakes,” she murmured, ruminating on her various failures. The longer she stood in the dark, the more the chill of death itself began to seep in. She wondered if she’d been abandoned in some corner of the dark netherworld.
“And what is this, then?” she asked, feeling nothing on her skin but cold, seeing nothing in her gaze but blackness. There was no echo of her voice; it sounded flat, enclosed, like a coffin.
She stretched out her hands in a panic, wondering if she was indeed entombed. But she was free to move. She was standing upright.
There was nothing at her back. Nothing before her. But considering the extent of the darkness she dared not take a step. “This must be the ‘yet to come’ part, Master Dickens? Did you have any idea what you were toying with, sir? I maintain your tale was overwrought,” Rebecca murmured. “Tell me, is this where I see my headstone and repent my every sin, where I pray for a second chance? I do regret. Repent. But