A Midwinter Fantasy - Leanna Renee Hieber [8]
Percy shrugged. “Alexi’s not nearly the handful that Lord Withersby is. I find myself resigned to no fate but happiness.” She smirked at Elijah, a sparkle in her eerie eyes. Alexi grinned triumphantly and snuggled his wife close.
It was still uncanny, Michael thought, to see Alexi smile. Twenty years he’d known the man and all Alexi had done was scowl. The transformation truly was remarkable. But some things would never change, particularly such endless verbal fencing.
“Alexi,” Elijah whined, “how ever will I have the upper hand now that you have this sweet young thing to take your part?”
Alexi shrugged. “Your fiancée will have to put on a better act of being your champion.”
Josephine lifted her hands in mock chagrin. Elijah grabbed her fingers and kissed them.
Further discourse was ended as the room suddenly lit with a strange and shifting light, as if the air were a curtain blown in a breeze. A spirit burst through the wall—a young boy—and the temperature plummeted. Alexi jumped up and lifted his palms. The Guard all stood and reached for one another, ready for action. Percy rose from respect, having been brought late into their circle. She was not quick on the defensive, having been rarely ambushed by ghosts of the villainous variety, and she stared at this boy in recognition.
Alexi opened his mouth to say a benediction in a foreign tongue never meant for mortal ears, bequeathed only to The Guard. He anticipated the bursts of an angelic choir, braced himself for a charged and ancient wind that would whip up around them, magnifying their powers against the restless dead . . . But he could say nothing. He could hear nothing. There was no familiar blue fire crackling from his hand, no celestial music hanging glorious the air. He was a demigod no more. None of them retained such honours. They had earned this retirement, but clearly none of them had grown accustomed to it.
The spirit bobbed before them, a ghostly urchin, unperturbed. Michael recognized him, too: he haunted the ceiling of the foyer of Athens Academy, circling the chandelier, always watching the headmistress with interest.
Alexi’s upraised arm slowly sank, defeated. Michael watched his former leader and felt for him; the general was back from the war with nothing to command, with over half his life spent in service. No, it was not an easy shift. For any of them.
Percy instinctively took her husband’s hand. “It’s all right, Alexi. Billy means no harm, he comes bearing tidings,” she murmured. Her beloved sank into a chair, crestfallen, and Percy gave him one last empathetic glance before turning her attention to the spirit. “Yes? What have you come to tell me, Billy?”
The boy only had eyes for Percy, with an occasional glance at Michael. The one-sided conversation continued as the boy rapidly gesticulated. Percy nodded, clearly still translator to the dead, their medium, the only member of The Guard who had ever been able to hear spirits speak and the only one still apparently in possession of any of her powers. Translating had been part of her duty as The Guard’s prophesied seventh member, if only one of her many gifts.
A second spirit bobbed through the wall, a once-lovely girl now cast in a ghostly greyscale, her clothing dated decades prior, her spectral curls weightless in a phantom breeze. Percy’s eerie eyes widened. “Oh, Constance!” she cried, rushing joyfully forward. The ghost moved to embrace her with a cold gust of air. Percy closed her eyes and waited out the chill, as if this were a perfectly normal greeting—and for a girl who was born seeing spirits and calling them friends, it likely was.
“How I’ve missed you, Constance,” she said. “Are you well and at peace?”
The female spirit spoke as animatedly as the boy, but she seemed to be offering reassurances. She turned to the urchin and they both nodded—glancing again, Michael noted uncomfortably, at him.
“I think it’s a lovely idea!” Percy exclaimed.
“What is?” the ex-Guard chorused.
Percy turned to