The Keeper's Curse (5 page)

Emmy
glared at Alex. “You told her? How did you even find
out?”

“
I went to visit Mom in jail yesterday and she explained
everything. Emmy, I know you’re disoriented right now and all, but
what you did was pretty cool.”

She
groaned. “Yeah, amazing. Dad will be fixing the house up for a
month.” This was not what she meant to say at all. “So, um, where
do they come from?”

“
They’re everywhere, they’re just invisible unless we call on
them,” Jade said. “I mean, there are more of them in the real world
only because there’s more space, but there’s more than enough of
them here too. They’re all around us.”

“
The ‘real world’,” she echoed. “So we’re not in the ‘real
world’ then?”

“
It’s just a phrase, Em,” Alex said. “You know that glass ball
in my bedroom back home? Well, it was a portal, and you’re inside
the ball now, in the orb.” He took a bite of his apple. “Mom had
the portal made to go into Methelwood when I was born by some
pretty talented elementals. She knew we’d end up here
eventually.”

“
Methelwood isn’t the only orb, either,” Jade added. “There’s
over fifty of them. Alex said they’re the size of ‘provinces’,
whatever that means.”

They
talked about all this so casually, the kind of talk you heard on
city transit when sitting next to the homeless drunk. But she had
seen it now, these strange people communing with the bizarre
clouds. They didn’t seem to be harmful unless the person’s intent
was to harm, but it was still creepy. And they were telling her she
could control them as well.

“
You know what,” she said, standing up. “I’m tired, I think
I’m going back to bed.”

They all
looked disappointed, but said their goodbyes nonetheless. She heard
them whispering as she went back upstairs.

“
Nice, Jade, you never know when to quit, do you?” Alex
said.

“
Oh right, and talking about Mrs. Rathers in jail and how an
orb works didn’t freak her out at all? Maybe we should go get
her.”

“
No, let her be,” Vera said. “Let her go at her own pace. Do
you remember when Alex arrived here? He didn’t leave his room for
two weeks.”

Alex
coughed loudly. “Hey, I was twelve!”

Emmy shut
the door, spending the rest of the day in her room, hating her
mother, worrying about her father, and missing her own
house.

The next
morning she heard an unusual amount of bustle below which meant the
coffeehouse was busier than usual. Vera and Jade probably wouldn’t
have time to come up today, and Alex told her after he brought her
breakfast he needed to go shopping for their school supplies. After
a lot of reassuring him that she would be fine by herself, he left,
leaving her alone with her thoughts.

Her mind
at first went to Jesse and her dad, and what they might be doing
right then. Emmy and Jesse met up almost every day, and he would
surely be worried by now. Was he asking her dad where she went? Her
heart went out to her father who had always been a terrible liar,
trying to imagine him explaining away the disappearance of Emmy and
Annalise.

She
thought of her mother, probably in a cell, wondering why her
daughter hadn’t come to visit her yet. Emmy didn’t feel guilty
about her anger towards her in the least. Annalise had lied to her,
and forced her brother and father to lie as well, over something
that was apparently inevitable. She was always going to end up
here.

She
thought of Monday, which was a weekend away, going to school, on
her own, learning how to conjure those spirits like she had been
doing it for years, and learning subjects she had probably never
heard of. Everyone had been too nervous to bring it up, but she had
gotten to the point where she needed to know what she was facing.
This was her life now.

Emmy sat
up in her bed, raising her arm to study the glass ring around her
wrist. When she had summoned the palewraiths her mother had put it
on, and it stopped them instantly. Was it possible that if she took
it off she would be able to summon them again?

Her
breath grew shaky but she forced herself to suck it down. The
clouds wouldn’t hurt her. They seemed to be completely neutral,
doing anything they were commanded to do. Except it was difficult
to tell what exactly brought them on or how people controlled them.
It wasn’t an oral command that brought them forth. She had set them
off accidentally because she had been scared of the thief, but now
that she was calm, she would have to summon them like they did.
Without the fear.

Finding the clasp, she unhooked the bracelet with a
clink
.

She got
out of bed, planting her feet firmly on the ground and held out her
hand like she had seen her mother and Sol do. Nothing.

Swallowing like she had a stone in her throat, she focused
all her attention of them, on what she thought it would be like to
summon them. Again, nothing. Letting out a shout of displeasure,
she kicked the dresser, which wasn’t the smartest thing do to in
bare feet. The pain made her eyes sting.

“
Tabarnac
!” she swore, jumping on one
foot and holding the injured one.

She heard
an explosion behind her and flipped around. A palewraith had just
knocked over a lamp on the nightstand. The side of Emmy’s mouth
curled up.

Interesting. They went off if she was in pain as well as
fear. Was there an emotional connection that summoned
them?

She
closed her eyes and thought of her mother. Immediately her blood
began to boil, and when she opened her eyes, there it was, floating
three feet off the ground. In its way, it was quite beautiful; the
gold, clear light inside the dark fog made it appear like the sun
shining through behind thick clouds on a stormy day. Her curiosity
inched her forward, wondering what it would feel like to touch it
but by the time she reached it, it faded again.

For the
rest of the afternoon she practiced, but rarely did she accomplish
much more than summoning a palewraith. She was never able to get it
to do anything, and not once was she able to get close enough to
touch one.

She
didn’t even hear the footsteps on the stairs, and when Jade swung
the door open, she only realized she was there when she
squeaked.

“
What are you doing?” Jade asked.

Emmy
lowered her hand. “Oh, um, I thought I’d practice a little
bit.”

“
How long have you been doing that?”

“
A couple of hours?”

Jade
shook her head. “You don’t want to play with them too long, just to
let you know. They get annoyed when you do.”

This was
a new development. “They can think?”

Jade
tilted her head to the side. “I wouldn’t go that far, but they can
feel. They’re pure consciousness. Probably more aware than we
are.”

Emmy
stared where the palewraith had been floating all afternoon. “They
don’t seem to have a brain.”

“
Well of course not! They’re dead. I should have clarified
before, but palewraiths are crafter souls. That’s what happens to
us when we die.”

And just like that, the thought of the palewraiths made her
queasy again. Those black, glowing clouds were once people, and she
had been playing with them. “They’re ...
dead souls
? And we use them? That’s
disgusting.”

Jade
seemed unfazed. “Not really. I mean, it’s always been this way.
You’re born, you live, and you become a palewraith. You serve the
next generation of crafters. It’s better than rotting in the
ground, isn’t it? That’s what I heard happens to
humans.”

Emmy
nodded. “To our bodies, yeah,” she said. “But we don’t know what
happens to our souls.” Emmy turned away from her. “So ... only
people like us can do this? Normal people can’t?”

“
I don’t think so,” Jade replied, sitting on the edge of the
bed and bouncing steadily. “The palewraiths are the source of all
magic in our world. They can do almost anything, but they limit us
to physical powers. Like moving things around.” She began pulling
individual hairs out of the blanket. “They’re really powerful, and
we can’t control them properly in the real world. We could hurt
humans, that’s why we stay away from them.”

She
thought that was reasonable enough, considering how out of control
she was in her living room. Here, she had to exert herself to get
them to work. She thought of thousands like herself roaming a city,
scared, confused, angry – she could see why life was set up this
way.

Before
she mused too much, Alex came into her room, glowing at the sight
of them talking together.

“
I see you’re feeling better,” he said with a smile so wide it
had to be painful.

“
She was using the palewraiths,” Jade said. “And doing quite
well until I walked in.”

“
I was just testing it out.”

“
Still, that’s excellent you’ve been trying,” Alex said. “I
know they’re creepy at first, but don’t worry about it, okay?” He
peeked over his shoulder down the hallway. “Hey, do you want to
come downstairs for dinner?”

Taking
advantage of her transient bravery she decided she
would.

At
dinner, Emmy wasn’t sure if Alex and the Woodworkers talked so much
for her sake or if they really were that friendly, but she was
finding her taut muscles beginning to unwind. Despite the way they
looked and the way they lived, they appeared to be like any normal
family.

The dad,
Sol, was a lot like his son in the way he barely spoke, but unlike
Gabe, it seemed to be more because he was in a sour mood. Vera
always made up for this with her lively chatter, and there was
hardly any topic Jade couldn’t talk about.

Being the
observer, Emmy didn’t say anything. Instead she took in her
surroundings, noticing strange things about the kitchen, like how
they didn’t have a phone or a digital clock, or anything
electrical. When she looked out the window, instead of a driveway,
there was a stable with several horses inside. With the exception
of the certain things, like hygiene and the plumbing, she felt like
she had been thrust into the seventeenth century. When she excused
herself, Alex offered to walk her back to the attic.

“
They keep staring at me,” Emmy whispered.

“
They’re worried about you,” Alex said. “And you’re just as
strange-looking to them as they are to you. You and I are probably
the closest they’ve ever gotten into coming in contact with
humans.”

Emmy
frowned at her brother. “Why do you guys say that?” she asked. “You
say ‘humans’ as if we aren’t.”

Alex took
a long time to answer this, probably to get out of earshot of the
Woodworkers. They climbed back up the ladder and into the attic,
making Emmy feel a lot safer in her little haven.

“
Don’t ever say this in front of anyone,” Alex said, plopping
down on a box beside her bed. “But crafters are really weird when
it comes to humans.”

“
You said it again –”

“
Relax, okay? We may be freaks of nature but we
are
human. It’s just ...
crafters have been kept away from people for so long now – hundreds
of years – they’ve completely forgotten what people are like. They
think humans better than we are, because they don’t ... well, have
to be kept away in little glass balls away from
civilization.”

Emmy bit
her lip, a little disturbed by this, but still glad she knew. She
suddenly realized there was a whole world around her she knew
nothing about.

“
Can you teach me?” Emmy asked. “Before school starts, can you
just teach me the things that every kid would know? Crafter 101
stuff?”

“
I think that’s a great idea. I’ll be in your room at ten o’
clock tomorrow.”

***

The
weekend was a busy one, getting ready for school. When Jade went
out to shop for new clothes, she asked for Emmy’s measurements and
returned with a mountain of silk, bodices, blazers, and fur,
dropping the massive bundle all on the kitchen table. The only
thing in the pile that Emmy could ever see herself wearing was a
black, skin-tight tracksuit.

“
That isn’t to wear for regular classes,” Jade announced as
Emmy went to pick it up. “It’s for peacekeeping class.”

“
The only mandatory class every student needs to take,” Alex
said. “It’s an hour and a half, every afternoon, last class of the
day. It’s also the most fun. Basically we’re taken out into the
woods and we fight each other. Sometimes it’s every man for
himself, sometimes in teams, and once in a while we actually get to
track down a criminal.”

“
The idea is to duplicate different war scenes,” Jade
said.

Emmy held
up her new tracksuit and raised an eyebrow. “You guys condone
violence?”

“
Not condone. Encourage,” was Alex’s blunt answer with a grin.
“Lesson number one: Methelwood came out of the Ministrial, which is
the orb that connects all the other orbs.”