The Umbral Wake Read online

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh…” Gil looked at the paper. “What does it say?”

  “I haven’t read it yet.”

  Gil waited patiently for her to open it, taking the slip of paper from the envelope.

  *

  Skyla,

  If you are reading this then that means I am not crazy. Of course, if you are reading this and I am not crazy, I find our accidental reunion somewhat unsettling.

  This is not an invitation to friendship, nor is it an attempt at an excuse. We’ve had our differences, and I think we both agree to leave it at that. You are a strange one, Skyla and I’m not sure there will ever be a place where I am comfortable extending a hand to you.

  However, I want you to know that I regret the things I did to you in the past, for whatever reason I did them. Perhaps I felt I was helping Vicky at the time. Perhaps I felt that you somehow deserved it for all the times you used very private information against me. That was humiliating.

  I’ve grown since that time, found friendship in places I hadn’t bothered to look before, kept some old friends around. I’m engaged now too, to a very prestigious young man. I’m an adult now, seventeen. I have a future lying ahead of me and I don’t see the need to let the past drag me down any more than it has.

  I’m sorry for the way Victoria and I treated you. As children we felt you deserved it. As an adult, I question those motives.

  Now that we have both grown a few years I feel that it is time we laid the matter to rest. I will be returning to the Montegut house eventually to see if this note is still there. A large part of me hopes it is, and that what I saw was not you, but some ghost of my own making.

  Either way, the simple act of writing this letter has given me some much-needed closure as I hope it has you.

  -Dona

  *

  “Who’s Vicky?”

  “She’s another girl. She hated me more than Dona.”

  “Why?”

  “I hit her.”

  “That’s all?’

  “Two teeth,” said Skyla.

  There was an audible sucking sound as Gil inhaled. “Ouch. Did she deserve it?”

  “I thought she did at the time. I thought she did when she tried to pull out my teeth later.”

  “What?”

  “Pliers.”

  Gil gave her a sideways glance. “Kids are assholes.”

  “We’re kids.”

  “Still assholes.”

  A smile cracked across Gil’s face and they laughed for a moment. The tension lifted, Gil continued the questioning.

  “And now she wants to be a friend?” Gil asked.

  “Dona, maybe… But Vicky, I don’t know. She hated me pretty bad.”

  “You read the letter. She’s older.”

  “And getting married.”

  “That’s not unheard of.”

  “No. Especially in Bollingbrook.” Skyla looked at the letter. “Should I write her back?”

  Gil gave her a look. “You really don’t understand the first thing about friendship do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gil nearly threw her arms in the air with exasperation. “Of course you should write her back. Jesus, Skyla, of all the enemies you’ve made, don’t you think it’s time to start making some allies?”

  Skyla looked at the note again, took a breath. “You’re right. What do I say?”

  Gil rolled her eyes. “Say whatever you want. They’re your friends.”

  Skyla looked at the broken camera in the trash. It didn’t even resemble a box anymore, just a jumbled collection of kindling—that lens sticking out. She reached in and pried the lens from the camera, looking at it.

  “You say it’s the curio shop?” she asked.

  “Yeah, Felton’s Curio & Repair. It’s the one with the tin soldier out in front.”

  Skyla clutched the lens to her chest. “Let me get you new parts for the camera I broke,” she said. “Let me go there and buy whatever you need. Let me make it up to you, Gil. Please.”

  Gil thought for a moment, glancing at the lens, then at Skyla. “Well you do sort of owe me.” She shook her head. “But I know the clerk there. You know I used the coin. I know what it does. I’ll just go there in the morning.”

  “Don’t use the coin, Gil. It’s nothing but trouble. It caused me more trouble than it’s worth, trust me.”

  Gil nodded. “You write that note. Sleep. Deliver it back and I’ll go see what Felton’s has in store for me.”

  Placing the lens delicately onto the table, Skyla nodded. In the silence, the two girls smiled at one another for the first time in months as the images on the glass plates began to slowly fade to clear.

  *

  Dona,

  I am not a ghost, though I can see how it might have seemed that way. I apologize for frightening you. It’s sadly the one thing I do well, and a habit I could never seem to break even in Bollingbrook.

  I cannot explain how you saw me, nor can I really tell you where I am living. The truth would be hard enough to explain, and harder yet to understand. Know however, that I accept your apology, and should the two of us meet again, I will do my best not to embarrass you, as I hope you will do your best to be civil to me.

  That being said, I should warn you about the Montegut house. While it is not exactly haunted, it is dangerous in its own way. I can’t stress enough how important it is that you stay away from it, especially Melissa’s old room. Assume that it is structurally unsound, a fire hazard, rat infested, whatever it takes to make you stay away after you read this note.

  If you feel the need to contact me further, simply leave a note outside your window and place something shiny with it—a bit of tin, a watch component. I will instruct our house raven to deliver it. You should in no way ever have to go near the Montegut house ever again. I hope I am making that as clear as possible. It’s not an order, but a warning from a friend.

  It is nice to know that should I return to Bollingbrook, I have one less enemy to worry about.

  Take care of yourself, Dona. I hope you find what makes you happy.

  -Skyla

  Chapter 18

  Bollingbrook

  VICTORIA KNEW MORE than anyone that there was a grain of truth to every lie. Even if Dona had been imagining things (and Victoria had no reason to believe otherwise) then it followed that she must have seen something. It might not have been the little witch. It might have been some homeless orphan who looked like her, or a shadow passing across the ceiling, a stray cat. Either way it was worth investigating. If it was Skyla, the reward was well worth it.

  She watched Dona leave the Montegut house with her cloak around her head. Victoria waited in the shadows for the footsteps to recede, for any late night drivers to pass before moving up into the backyard and through the overgrown brush there, and slipping in through the same French doors with the broken window. There were letters, old bills, envelopes that would never get sent, bank statements, accounting ledgers, yellowing photographs of Melissa and her family, but nothing useful. Two hours later, she collapsed on the downstairs couch in a poof of dust, pouting and discouraged.

  She weighed the possibilities and decided that someone had to have taken the note. It was possible Dona had gotten cold feet, or never left a correspondence at all. But when Dona said she would do something she almost always did it. The whole thing was a delightful mystery.

  Victoria bit her lip as she sat on the couch, a small leather-bound pack in her lap. She fondled the rawhide drawstring, slipping it in and out of a knot.

  They might be in the crawlspace. The police uprooted an entire colony of grimy vagrants from the old warehouse a month ago. They had been living behind a firewall in a hidden section for God knows how long. I should come back during the day—

  Footsteps.

  Victoria looked up. The noise was subtle, just the creak of a floorboard, the sound of something not wanting to be heard. Couldn’t be a raccoon, no scuttle of claws. She li
stened longer, holding her breath.

  Another creak. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Nothing.

  Silence again.

  There was a distinctive hollow feeling to the house, the sense that whoever had been upstairs was not only gone, but nowhere even close. She remembered when she had watched her grandma die. One minute someone was there. The next minute, nothing. This was the same feeling.

  Her feet propelled her up the stairs, two at a time until she reached the doorway. Empty.

  Save for a note. Victoria blinked. She had double and triple checked this room not fifteen minutes ago. Unless they had been watching her from somewhere. Victoria walked to the closet, opening it, finding it filled with dust-covered relics, antiques, toys, dresses—but otherwise unoccupied. A path had been cleared through the middle, ending at the wall. She pressed her hand against it.

  Where are you?

  She let it go for now. There were more pressing issues. She turned to the mysterious letter, neatly folded on the bed, picked it up, opened it, and read. A smile spread across her face.

  Like most opportunities in Victoria’s life, this one had pretty much dropped into her lap. It was bad enough that Skyla, wanted by the Church for years, might actually have some secret passageway into Bollingbrook. It was quite another that she would try and make contact with Dona.

  That thought alone made Victoria’s face feel hot, made the world sway a little. It was one of the few times in her life where Victoria felt that she might be losing control of things. And it started with communication, first letters then talking.

  She could see them in her mind now, Dona and Skyla, chatting casually. A laugh would break out and they would cackle outrageously. They would refer to her as “Vicky” knowing how she hated it. In her clouded anger Victoria could only catch glimpses of this phantom conversation, but she was certain her name had come up once or twice. That’s what girls did. They gossiped.

  Not that she had provided much to gossip over. Victoria had never been one for airing her dirty laundry, not the way other girls did. There was simply too much to be lost, ammunition that could sneak up on a girl with ambitions such as hers.

  The mocking continued in her mind, however: Skyla and Dona, writing little notes to one another, the kind of notes that friends share, the kind of notes girls giggle over. She fanned her face with the bundle in her hand for a moment until the world returned to focus.

  Her fingers picked at the leather strap on that tiny package as she stared at the letter, reading, rereading, re-rereading. She may have stared at it for over an hour, not even seeing words anymore, her fingers pulling and picking at that leather strap.

  Oh, they were so civil these two! Just look at them! “I accept your apology!” Oh look at me! Forgiving the bully that almost tore my hair out! Aren’t I just above all this pettiness?

  Victoria wasn’t sure she believed any of it. There was nothing to trust about Skyla. She’d just as soon lash out and punch you in the mouth over some good-natured ribbing. Calm one minute, violent the next. The words on paper were nice, but words written can always be nice. When you have a hundred chances to make it right, you can say whatever you want.

  But was Dona really naïve enough to believe it? Victoria hoped not. Maybe she would be able to read between the lines. The house was dangerous. Stay away!

  She looked up, her eyes studying the walls. Of course she would want people away. She was living here somewhere. Victoria knew better.

  Shortly after her internship at the cathedral began, Victoria had shared a candid moment with the archbishop as he slouched in his chair, his miter resting on a wooden dressing dummy. He rubbed his forehead. The smell of cedar and dust reminded her of that moment now.

  “Bring me a glass of wine, please,” he had said, not looking at her.

  She rushed out, bringing it to him, handing it to his blind open hand. He took it. Sipped. He then looked at her with red eyes and red lips.

  “I had to kill a friend last week,” he said.

  Victoria said nothing. It was rare enough for a girl to be chosen to help The Church, unheard of even. She kept her mouth clamped shut, listening intently as the archbishop began to speak. The room felt enormous and she felt so very small.

  “There was an explosion. A laboratory in Rhinewall. I was visiting to oversee a demonstration—arcane technology, that sort of thing.” He took a sip. “It probably felt like an earthquake up here in Bollingbrook.”

  She nodded. Everyone had felt it.

  He took another drink, a slow, contemplative gesture. “The demonstration went poorly. One of your classmates was involved, the Skyla-witch girl. She left us with very little choice in the matter and we had to make some very hard decisions, Victoria.” He looked at her then. “You’ll find if you ever end up in a powerful position—say a reverend mother perhaps.” He winked. “You might find that you too will have to make hard decisions as well.”

  “What happened?” she asked, unable to contain her silence anymore.

  “I had to choose my duty to God over my duty to a friend,” he said. “I had to sacrifice what God asked for, even if it hurt me to my core. Now Rhinewall is lost, I’m afraid. They will never see the light even if it arrives atop a fleet of airships.”

  He took another long drink, emptying the glass. He held it out for her and she took it.

  “Thank you,” he said, a wan smile crossing his lips. “I hope you are never in that position, Victoria, but know that one day if you are, it is only because you earned a place of great responsibility. It means that you have to do what is right, even if that hurts you.”

  She nodded then, as she nodded now. With thin pretty fingers, Victoria pulled the cinch loose and opened her stationary pack, pulling the pen, paper and envelope from within, writing her own version of Skyla’s letter.

  I am doing this for you, Dona, she thought, hoping that she would never have to make a choice that difficult.

  She grimaced in concentration, her tongue running over the false tooth in her mouth as she wrote. As she left the Montegut house, Victoria began to hum to herself, thinking of what sort of dress she should wear while shopping with Dona tomorrow.

  Chapter 19

  Rhinewall

  “WAKE HIM UP!” Hetch yelled.

  Rough hands shook Scribble by his shoulders, his head flopping against the pillow, drawing him out of his dream. It was the same nightmare he’d experienced every night since he was an infant: darkness, screaming, strange words, and water everywhere, and him paralyzed, his arms tied against his body as he sank.

  He could still see the boat sinking as a hand slapped him across the face, and Scribble scrambled back against the wall. Eyes wide and terrified, he stared, not recognizing the grimy faces studying him, some of them annoyed, others deeply concerned. As familiarity returned, he let out his breath and unclenched his fist where his nails had left depressions in his palms. His other hand ached, still swollen under layers of dirty yellow bandages.

  “I don’t wanna sleep in the same room with the Chimp anymore,” said one of the boys. “He keeps waking me up with his tossing.”

  “Better than being woken up by the tossing you do,” said another boy with a snicker.

  “If I woke you up with my tossing you’d know it. And that ain’t what I mean. He makes noises, creepy noises.”

  Hetch leaned in to study him. The dim light made his scarred and scratched face seem like a burlap doll.

  “You’re putting me in a difficult position,” he said. “You keep waking up your bunkmates you ain’t gonna have a home no more. You understand?”

  Scribble nodded.

  “Now I don’t wanna be the kind of leader that just turns away members, especially those with working hands that can carry things. You get it?”

  Scribble looked around the room at all the eyes staring back at him, making him feel small and naked. He nodded anyway.

  “Now, Emil here is going on a haul, and he says that you work with him from now on, right?”
>
  Scribble glanced at Emil, nodded.

  “And we lost a couple boys already. Kidnappings goin’ on. So don’t trust anyone who looks like a dult. You got it?”

  “But Hetch, you almost a dult,” one of the newer boys said.

  The movement was almost magical. One moment Hetch was in Scribble’s face, the next, flying across the room, grabbing the boy by the throat and slamming his head against a pipe. The boy cried out in pain as Hetch pressed against him. “I ain’t no dult! You got that?” He slapped the boy’s forehead and there was another dull sound from the pipe. “Not a dult! Maybe you’re the dult!”

  The boy tried to nod, but his eyes were already rolling in his head. He began to slide down the pole as Hetch walked back to Scribble as if nothing had happened. The boys around him backed away.

  “This is a big haul,” he added. “We need lots of hands. You bring back something, you get it? I ain’t running an orphanage here. You gotta pay your rent like the rest of ‘em.”

  Emil peered at him from the other side of the room, his face unreadable, his arms crossed. He was already wearing a satchel, the patchwork straps tugging at taut muscles on his chest.

  Scribble rolled out of bed, following Emil out to the main entrance of the hideout. Two other boys were waiting for them, both wearing oilcloth backpacks. One of them was Gary, he realized with some relief. Gary smiled, but didn’t say anything. The other boy was Jimbo, a particularly nondescript boy who made most of his hauls by posing as the friend of other children and then following them into homes. Word had it that Jimbo had entered over a hundred houses, walking in, stealing and walking out, leaving the parents to think he was their child’s playmate.

  A satchel hit Scribble in the chest.

  “We’re going to the Bowl today,” Emil said. “And don’t fall behind. We ain’t here to babysit.”

  Scribble slipped the huge backpack over his shoulders, tightening the straps all the way. Gary gave him a secret smile and a thumbs-up. They traveled under the night sky for several blocks before Emil turned abruptly, and pulled a thick board away from a hole in the wall of a tall building. The ghosts of letters could still be read further up the wall.