Spirit Prophecy (The Gateway Trilogy Book 2) (17 page)

“Very well, then,” Keira said. “Apprentices, please notice the runes that your Caomhnóir have drawn in the guardian circle. This rune will stop a spirit from entering beyond the guardian circle, so that you have the opportunity to concentrate and relax without unwanted spirit contact. Any questions?” She glanced cursorily around the courtyard. “Good. We begin. Apprentices, close your eyes and focus your attention, as fully as you are able, on the beating of your own heart.”

I was completely caught off-guard by the sudden commencement of the exercise, and found myself watching everyone else closing her eyes before I remembered to do it myself. The afternoon sun was low now, attempting stubbornly to penetrate my eyelids. I turned my head slightly to avoid the worst of it.

“Listen to your own heartbeat; that will tell you everything you need to know about your state of relaxation. Breathe slowly and deeply —see what this does to your heart rate.”

All around me, the Apprentices sucked on the air. I hastened to do the same, and then told myself to calm down before I got dizzy, passed out and caused a scene.

“Now I want each of you to begin with your toes and relax each individual part of your body all the way up to the top of your head. I do not expect that it will take all of you the same amount of time to do this, so continue at your own pace until you feel that your entire body is relaxed. Continue to breathe, and also to keep you senses alert to the possibility of spirit contact.”

What followed for the next twenty minutes was a long, drawn-out, fairly painful silence, punctuated by Keira’s soothing instructions. I did my best to relax my body, but all I could think about was how horribly uncomfortable I was. My buttocks were alternatingly tingling, numb, and throbbing with pain. Sweat was trickling down my back as though the individual droplets were racing each other to the ground. My hair was sticking to my neck, itching incessantly. How the hell was anyone supposed to relax like this?

I opened one eye and looked at Hannah. She was the picture of Zen tranquility; she could have been asleep she was so relaxed. I chanced a glance over at Savvy; she was actually asleep, head lolling to one side, candle completely extinguished beside her left knee. I could hear her snoring from across the courtyard, and Keira was already wending her way through the group to rouse her.

I closed my eyes again, but no sooner had I done so, they flew open again as Hannah started talking.

“Finn,” she said, her voice monotone, like that of a sleepwalker. “I’ve got a visitor. She’s quite calm, so I don’t think you need to expel her.”

Finn was staring down at her, frowning. He caught my eye and I shrugged. He snapped back to attention, but his eyes kept flitting to Hannah, and he looked troubled.

I looked around and saw no one, but that did not bother me. I knew that spirits could manifest in a variety of ways, and that I didn’t need to see her for her to be there. Hannah began a murmured conversation, of which I only caught a word here or there. She had a gentle, easy smile on her face. I scanned the courtyard. No one else seemed to be communicating with a spirit.

“Here’s another one, Finn” Hannah said softly. “Oh no, two actually. Yes, two.”

“Where?” Finn muttered.

“In here with me,” Hannah said.

“But, how did they…I didn’t feel them cross. They didn’t even stop,” Finn said.

“I sensed them out there, so I invited them,” Hannah said, almost dismissively.

“Yes, but I should still be able to sense their entry,” he said. He opened his eyes and crouched down, studying the boundary of his guardian circle, his fingers hovering over it, as though probing the air for something invisible.

I tried to ignore him and went back to the impossible task of relaxing my body. I had left off with my midsection, but everything below the waist was tense again, so I gave up and started over with my toes. The sun continued to beat down. My throat felt dry and parched.

Finn cleared his throat and I opened my eyes again. His hand was in the air, and Braxton was marching his way across the courtyard toward our circle. I watched as they put their heads together and carried on a whispered conversation. After a few moments, Braxton waved Keira over to join them.

A number of people were watching us now; apparently I wasn’t the only one who was having trouble relaxing.

“I do not remember giving the order to cease your relaxation exercises,” Keira said sharply over her shoulder, and several heads whipped away again. Others seemed too interested to care about the reprimand. They continued to gawk as Keira joined Finn and Braxton’s conversation. Keeping my eyes carefully closed and my expression neutral, I listened with all my might.

“Tell her what you told me,” Braxton was saying.

“They aren’t stopping. I’m trying to sense them at approach, but all of a sudden they’re in there, and I never even felt them coming. The borders of the circle and even the rune seem to have no effect. I can’t understand it. I’m sure I did it right,” Finn said.

“How is his precognition generally?” Keira asked.

“Excellent,” Braxton said. “He is one of our most sensitive Novitiates. Very strong connective ability and above-average aura reading skills. The rune and circle both look good, and I can sense the casting in the borders.”

“I see,” Keira said, and I could almost hear the frown in her voice. I opened my eyes enough to make out her shape as she walked around our circle, examining it closely for gaps or flaws. She found none. She let her hand hover in the air over the arrow-like rune, and also over the borders of the shared space between our circles. She shook her head bemusedly and returned to Braxton.

“Braxton, why don’t you take Finn’s place in the guardian circle and see what you can do? It may simply be nerves or a lack of experience.”

Finn slouched out of his circle, looking bad-tempered, and watched as Braxton took his place. I no longer bothered to pretend I wasn’t paying attention, and neither did anyone else. Some Apprentices were actually kneeling up to get a better view. Hannah, eyes still closed, still murmuring to companions unseen, had yet to notice that anything unusual was going on around her.

Braxton closed his eyes and stayed very still for several minutes. As I watched him, a shadow seemed to pass slowly over his face, so that his expression, when he opened his eyes again, was very troubled.

He leaned over to Keira and spoke directly into her ear, so that there was no chance of being overheard. When he pulled away, Keira’s expression was utterly unreadable. She bent down and touched Hannah lightly on the shoulder.

“Hannah, may I have a word with you?”

Hannah started and her eyes flew open, round as coins. As she did so, I felt a rush of energy blast past me and out of the circle. It left a ringing in my ears.

“Sorry?”

“I said, may I have a word with you?”

“Yes, of course. Sorry, I know we were supposed to be relaxing but I was just …” Her voice was snuffed out, smothered by the eager stares directed at her. She seemed to shrink, retracting into herself like a turtle into its shell. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no,” said Keira lightly. “I just wanted to speak with you for a moment. Privately.”

Hannah looked at me for help. I spoke up at once. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing that anyone here should be so very interested in,” Keira said, in a return to her brisk manner. “What are you all looking at? You’re supposed to be relaxing your bodies and minds! Snap to it, chop, chop! Braxton, please oversee the class for a few minutes until I get back.” She clapped sharply.

Everyone except for me returned to their tasks, or at least pretended to, but nobody’s postures looked very relaxed anymore. Bewildered, Hannah stood up and followed Keira out of the courtyard, pursued by a whistling breeze of whispered conversation. She looked back at me with barely contained panic.

“I’ll wait here for you,” I called after her.

The minutes stretched, but still they did not return. I sat in my circle, staring through the archway where they had exited, feeling the sun beating down on my hair and the skin on the back of my neck.

After a lengthy silence, Finn spoke, startling me. “Are we going to carry on without her?”

“What?”

He kept his eyes on his hands where he was turning the little leather bag of chalk over and over. “Shall we carry on? We ought to keep practicing.”

“You go ahead. I can’t concentrate right now,” I said.

“There’s no point, if you aren’t going to participate,” he said.

“Well, then I guess we’re done,” I said curtly.

“We shouldn’t waste this time,” he pressed on, still not meeting my eye. Was he one of those people who never looked anyone in the eye when they spoke, or was it just with me? I didn’t know him well enough to be able to tell. “This time is important for —”

“Well, I’m sorry, but relaxation is out of the question right now,” I said. “If you were so worried about staying on task, you should have left Hannah alone. What was that all about anyway?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She was doing something strange. It was like she was snatching them out of the air and pulling them in. The circle boundary wasn’t stopping them.”

“Keira said they could still decide to cross,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but there was no decision. There was no approach. One moment they weren’t anywhere around, and the next they were inside the circle with her,” Finn said. “That isn’t how it’s supposed to work. I had to alert someone.”

I pursed my lips but didn’t reply, because I knew I wouldn’t say anything fair. He was a student, just like we were, of course he should get his questions answered; I was sure that I’d have about a million questions I would need my teachers to answer before I walked out of this place. But did he have to do it like that, in front of the entire eagerly listening class? Did we have to be constantly reminded of our outsider status in every single setting around here? I mean, for heaven’s sake, couldn’t we at least fit in in this strangest little corner of things, in this place for people who didn’t fit in anywhere else?

The bells reverberated through the courtyard, signaling the end of class. Everyone rose sluggishly to their feet, yawning and stretching. Braxton shouted instructions to everyone on how to negate their communication circles, and for a few minutes the place was full of sounds of splashing water as little silver jugs were passed around and poured over the chalk lines, so that they dissolved and ran in cloudy rivulets between the stones and into the grass. Savvy had nodded off again, although how she remained asleep through that cacophony of bells I had no idea, and Phoebe was trying to prod her awake.

Peyton lingered, waiting, it seemed, to see what Finn would do. When he didn’t get up and follow the others out, and her many attempts to catch his eye went unnoticed, she flounced away with Olivia, looking sulky. Guess she’d have to wait for the latest chapter of Ballard sister gossip, just like the rest of them. The courtyard cleared in twos and threes, until only Mackie, Savvy, Finn and I remained behind. I glanced at Finn, who had pulled out a book that looked like a journal and was scribbling away in it, oblivious to my gaze.

“You don’t have to stay, you know,” I said.

“I know,” he said, without looking up. He had gnawed the end of his cheap ballpoint pen so much that it was pinched shut, covered in teeth marks.

“So why are you?”

He crossed out something on his page. “This is my Caomhnóir assignment. Whatever just happened affects my ability to do my job. I want to know what it is.” He scribbled something else out.

“What are you writing?” I asked.

He completely ignored me. I snorted with disgust and turned to Mackie, who was walking toward me and swinging her chalk bag in circles, Savannah yawning on her heels.

“How’d it go?” I asked. “Feeling relaxed?”

“Oh yes, ready for a nap,” she said. “More relaxed than you are, I bet. What was that all about?” And she cocked her head in the direction that Hannah and Keira had disappeared.

“I don’t really know. Something about ghosts showing up unexpectedly in our circle. You’d be better off asking him,” I said, and hitched a thumb at Finn.

Before Mackie could ask though, Hannah appeared in the archway and started walking calmly across the lawn. When she reached us, she was smiling gently.

“Everything okay?” I asked, though I was relieved to see the smile.

“Oh, yes,” Hannah said, and she knelt to pick up her books. “I have to go and see Finvarra.”

“Huh? Why do you need to do that?” I asked.

“Keira says that I may have a special ability after all. She wants to confirm it with Finvarra first, though.”

She sounded very happy. I, on the other hand, was becoming increasingly nervous. “What ability is she talking about?”

Hannah shrugged. “She didn’t explain it, really. She just asked me a few questions about how I got those ghosts into the circle, and then told me that we should tell Finvarra about it. That’s where I’m going now. I’ll meet you at dinner.” She turned to Finn, who had finally looked up from his writing. “Keira is speaking with Braxton now, but she’d like you to come with us up to Finvarra’s office.”

Finn nodded, snapped his book shut, and jumped to his feet. Without a word to anyone, he marched off.