Betrayal (3 page)

It iz cleaned and in ze front hall
, Celeste said.

I couldn't hug her without suffering from ghostly frostbite, so I blew a kiss and followed Bennett to the front door.

Watching him carry my suitcase to the car, I couldn't help but remember that the last time we'd gone on a trip together, I'd ended up three thousand miles from home, seeing ghosts, and battling wraiths. I hoped this journey wasn't quite so life changing.

It was a thirty-minute trip to the train station in Boston. Enough time for me to simply enjoy riding around in a car with my boyfriend. I could get used to this.

Ten minutes out of Echo Point, we passed a little shack with a giant, hand-painted ice cream cone bolted to its side. “They make the best ice cream,” Bennett said.

The window was shuttered, and it looked as though they hadn't served ice cream for months. “If it's so good, how come they went out of business?”

“They're just closed for the season. Come Memorial Day, I promise I'll take you there.”

I tried not to get too excited at the idea of a future together. “Nothing ‘closes for the season' in San Francisco. There's only foggy and less foggy. People eat ice cream in both conditions.”

“The weather is awesome here in the summer.” Bennett glanced at me. “Do you like to sail?”

“Um …” I'd actually never been on any boat other than a ferry, but picturing me and Bennett out on a little sailboat in Echo Point harbor was about as romantic as I could dream. “Yeah. I like it a lot.”

He smiled. “Good. Because we have a boat. And you and I are on it all summer.”

We passed a stretch of ocean on the left. I gazed out at it, longing for summer. Crystal blue water and warm air caressing my skin. Or maybe by then it would be Bennett caressing me. “Will we ever have to come back to shore?”

“Not if we don't want to.” He gazed at me hungrily and I tried not to blush.

His look gave me goose bumps and I crossed my arms to keep from shivering. It all seemed so impossible, but a girl could dream. “Sounds like heaven.”

We left the Land Rover in long-term parking at the station and caught the bullet train to New York. We sat in plush first-class seats, courtesy of Bennett's family money, and a waiter brought snacks and drinks. They didn't have chai, so I settled for an English Breakfast tea with milk in a cute little plastic teacup, and watched the scenery as we glided down the track.

It was painful, sitting so close to Bennett. He was wearing a navy linen button-down that made his eyes seem almost too blue. I found it hard to focus on what he was saying when I looked straight into them. The problem was, I really wanted to brush his dark bangs out of his eyes, and kiss his perfect lips, and run my hands over his chest, and … I gulped my tea.

I couldn't do any of that, because if Bennett and I stayed together, kept touching and kissing and doing everything else we wanted to do, we'd risk our ghostkeeper powers. So I fiddled with my empty teacup and stared out the window, afraid that if I talked to him we'd have more conversations like the one in the car, and I'd end up climbing into his lap. They didn't cover this kind of agony in advice columns.

His phone rang and he said, “Hey, look at this.”

I turned from the window to his iPhone, expecting to recognize someone's name in the caller ID. Instead, there was a picture of the sole of a shoe. Bennett swiped his thumb over the heel, which slid open to reveal a mouthpiece.

“Bennett Stern,” he answered in a spylike voice. “We're on the train now. We'll arrive at six o'clock.”

He flipped the heel closed and turned to me, grinning.

“You were talking on your shoe phone,” I said. “To headquarters! Where'd you get that?”

“Off a dead KAOS agent in East Germany.”

I couldn't help myself: I hugged him, then buried my face in his neck. I breathed in the scent of him, savoring every second. Then pressed my lips to his skin and he gasped.

“I'm sorry,” I said, pulling away.

“I'm not.”

He leaned closer and kissed me. The train trembled and my heart beat faster. My eyes closed and I lost myself in the sweetness of it. We kept our hands to ourselves, like if only our lips touched, then maybe everything would be okay. A false hope, but it made it the sexiest kiss ever, feeling nothing except his lips on mine.

When I regained my sanity, I turned my head to end the kiss, but that just gave him access to my ear. He nibbled. I melted. Eons later, when I rediscovered my bones, I stood shakily.

“I, um, I'm gonna …” I fumbled for my bag. “I think I should sit somewhere else.”

With his hands gripping the chair rails, he nodded.

I stumbled over him and found an empty seat, four rows back, next to the window. I leaned my head against the glass and watched the world outside blurring into grayness. The hours passed, and I wondered how much longer we could go on like this. This wasn't some unrequited crush where you didn't know how the boy felt, where if you threw yourself at him, he might recoil. I knew exactly how Bennett felt, and he knew exactly how I felt. We wanted each other, plain and simple.

Okay, maybe not so simple. But I couldn't allow myself to think that there wasn't some solution, and I spent the rest of the train ride trying to figure it out.

As we pulled into Penn Station, Bennett slid into the seat beside me. “Tell me it's worth it,” he said. “Tell me this is going to be over soon, and we can be together.”

He'd never asked me for reassurance before, not like that. I wanted to comfort him, tell him that everything would definitely be okay. But I owed him the truth.

“It's not just your sister, Bennett,” I said. “It's not just finding Neos and killing him.”

“What is it, then?” he asked.

As the train squealed to a halt, I looked into his eyes. “It's you. The you I fell in love with is a ghostkeeper. That's the only you there is. How can I ask you to give that up?”

“I want to,” he said. “For you.”

But I just shook my head, and we gathered our bags as the other passengers started to exit. I followed Bennett through the station and onto the street. The air was cold and a grim sky peeked between the looming buildings.

Moments later we were in a taxi, heading downtown.

The avenues of Midtown started to narrow, and the taxi turned into a cramped neighborhood of brick buildings and little quaint shop fronts filled with antiques and cool clothing. I tried not to look like a tourist while gawking at everything. Even jaded urbanites gawked sometimes, right?

Bennett told the cabdriver to stop at the corner, and we grabbed our bags and stood on the sidewalk in the powdery snow. My senses flared at the sights and sounds, and I almost staggered under the impact of all the spirits lingering along the streets.

Two male ghosts in navy uniforms passed a flapper from the twenties, who winked gaily at a young ghost who looked like he'd died in some kind of disco accident. The ghosts roamed in packs of two and three, greeting each other and commenting on the snow, and generally acting as though they weren't dead.

“Pretty intense, huh?” Bennett said.

“Wait—is that
Elvis
?”

“What would Elvis be doing here?” he scoffed. “That's just a chubby guy with muttonchops and a white jumpsuit.”

He led me down the cobblestoned street, past narrow brownstones with ornate wrought-iron fences and with ancient trees growing between the sidewalks.

“So, is this whole block ghostkeepers?” I said.

“Yeah, mostly people involved with the Knell.”

As dusk crept over the rooftops, I watched a ghost boy who looked like Nicholas climb a streetlamp, light a long match, and fiddle with the glass. The lamp lit instantly—but from electricity, not his flame.

“I don't get it,” I said. “They're not like the ghosts in Echo Point.” Or even the ones I remembered from my childhood, before my parents had my ability suppressed. “It's like they don't know they're dead.”

“Maybe it's the street,” he said. “Or the Knell, or how many ghostkeepers live here. No one's really sure why, but they almost forget they're ghosts.”

We passed a small private park where a few old spirits played chess at tables under the streetlamps. A younger one moved a rook. He was eccentrically dressed and somehow familiar.

I stopped and stared. “Is that …?”

“The actor?” A movie star who'd recently died of an overdose. “Yeah.”

“Have you asked if it was suicide or an accident?”

He looked at me. “No.”

“Oh, right.” Communicating was my thing, not his.

The block dead-ended at a white stone behemoth of a house, with columns and turrets and arches, and things that might've been flying buttresses, for all I knew. It looked like an institution, but there was no sign; instead, ornate iron gates and heavy trees stood guard.

“What did it used to be?” I asked, expecting Bennett to say it belonged to the first governor of New York or a Rockefeller or, I don't know, the pope.

“It's always been the Knell.”

We headed toward the gate; then Bennett stopped and gave me a strange look, one I couldn't decipher.

“What?” I asked.

“I should've prepared you.” He tilted his head. “I didn't tell you before, because I didn't know how, but there's something inside. You're not going to like it.”

“Well, that's nice and cryptic.” I took a steadying breath. “It doesn't matter. As long as they help us find Neos and my family.”

Then the iron gates swung open and the house received us.

3

A ghost servant stood beside the door, dressed in what I thought was called livery. Bennett and I handed him our coats and I thanked him, but he didn't respond.

“Could he not hear me?” I asked Bennett after the servant drifted away. I was used to ghosts being pleased when I communicated with them.

“He probably could. I told you, they're different here.”

“You mean rude.”

“I mean different.”

“Well, it's pretty
different
that nobody's here to meet us. Don't we have an appointment?”

“They know we're here. They'll send for us when Yoshiro's ready.”

So we wandered the halls, waiting for a human to greet us—I mean a
living
human.

One thing you could say about ghostkeepers: they liked their artifacts. The inside of the Knell could've passed for a museum. Not like Bennett's house, which resembled a period-piece movie set; this was more like the Met. Ornate furnishings dotted the immaculate marble floor and left plenty of room for bronze sculptures, oil paintings, and antiquities on pedestals. The lighting was low, protecting the art and Oriental rugs, and creating a fittingly spooky ambience.

I ran a finger along the etching of an ivory box. My skin began to tingle and I quickly pulled my hand away. I sometimes sensed the memories of antiques like these, impressions of the people who once owned them. In the case of my namesake, the first Emma, I actually relived her experience, and I was afraid something like that might happen here.

And sure enough, I sensed something calling to me from one of the rooms. Not a ghost, but an object tugging at my attention.

“Um, Emma?” Bennett said. “Where are you going?”

“I don't know.”

I followed my instincts, winding down wood-paneled hallways until I stood in a dark room, almost empty except for a tapestry on one wall and a blue velvet Victorian settee in the middle of the room, inviting you to sit and admire the intricate weaving.

“This is it, isn't it?” I said, mesmerized by the tapestry. “The thing you should've told me about.”

“Uh-huh.” Bennett grew still, watching me, gauging my reaction.

The tapestry reminded me of the famous Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. We'd had a print of one of them in our hallway when I was a child. The colors and patterns were the same. The rich golds and burgundies, dark blue and forest green, the moons, trees, flowers, even the bunnies. A light-haired woman stood in the middle of this one, dressed in a red medieval gown, a sword held protectively across her body.

But instead of interacting with the animals, she was circled by ghosts in different guises: in human form, wraiths, and what I guessed were ghasts, though I'd never seen one. One of the ghosts was even a serpent, delicately woven into the fabric.

“Is that Emma?” I asked. Because she looked exactly like her—like me.

“Yeah, just not the Emma from Echo Point. This tapestry is centuries older than her, probably medieval European.”

My Emma lived in the late 1700s, which meant that this tapestry was almost five hundred years old. “But—”

“She's a mirror image of you,” a woman's voice said behind us.

I turned too quickly and caught a glimpse of the woman before the world started tilting. I stumbled, and Bennett took my arm and helped me to the settee. He crouched in front of me, holding my hands in his, his eyes concerned.

“Take a deep breath,” the woman told me. “You've had a shock.”

“I've got it,” Bennett snapped at her. “I'm sorry, Emma. I should've told you. But we don't really know what it is or what it means. And I didn't want you to … to take it too seriously.”

I touched his shoulder briefly. “It's okay. I'm not sure knowing it was here would've prepared me, anyway. It's not every day you discover you're the reincarnation of Emma the Ghostslayer.”

“It's striking, isn't it?” the woman said to Bennett. “Yoshiro says that Emma is the only ghostkeeper who can stop Neos—which is odd, given she's so new to her powers. But when you see her resemblance to the lady in the tapestry, all that power, distilled through the ages, leaping from bloodline to bloodline.” She turned to me. “Until finally settling in you. I begin to think Yoshiro's right.”

“Who are you?” I asked, eying the woman. She looked about my parents' age, tall and dark haired with hazel eyes. And vaguely familiar. “Do I know you?”

She smiled in surprise. “Actually, yes—though we haven't met since you were a little girl. Or maybe it's simply innate recognition.”

“Because we're both ghostkeepers?”

“No,” she said, “because we're family.”

“I don't have family,” I told her. “Only my parents and brother. My grandparents died before I was born, my mom's an only child, and my dad's not in touch with—”

“His sister,” she finished.

“Wait,” I said. “You're my dad's sister?”

Bennett glared at her. “You never told me this.”

She nodded. “I'm your aunt.”

“Rachel?” I asked, astonished. She looked a little like my father around the eyes and in the way she smiled.

Her face glowed with pleasure, and she stepped forward like she wanted to hug me. I would've let her, except Bennett was glowering—and I was trying to remember why she and my father weren't in touch anymore.

Instead of the hug, she sat beside me and squeezed my arm. “I'm so pleased to finally meet you—again.” She laughed. “The last time I saw you, you were still in diapers.”

Great. Just how I wanted Bennett picturing me: in princess-themed Pampers. At least he hadn't kept this from me. The tapestry paled in comparison. Rachel seemed okay and all, but did I really need an unexpected aunt cluttering up my life? I had enough going on with dead friends, ghostly vendettas, and an untouchable boyfriend.

“Do my parents know you're in the Knell?” I asked. “Where are they? Does my brother, Max, know about you?”

“Wait, wait—one question at a time,” she said.

“I've got one,” Bennett said, his face hard. “Do the others know you're her aunt? I don't like this, Rachel—springing this on Emma without any warning. She's been through enough surprises already.”

“This is a family matter.”

“It's a Knell matter,” he said. “Let's bring this to Yoshiro and William and Gabriel, then we'll
all
hear you answer Emma's questions.”

“They know. I wanted a moment to speak with her privately,” she said.

“Emma doesn't need—”

I cut him off. “I'm good, Bennett. I want to talk to her. She's family and the only one who hasn't run out on me. Well, if you don't count when I was a baby.” Plus, for all I knew she was the key to Max's and my parents' disappearance. “You go ahead; tell them we'll be there soon.”

“You sure?”

I gave him a look. I liked how protective he was, but I needed to do this on my own, and I sensed Rachel wouldn't talk with him around.

He smiled wryly, reading my expression. “Okay,” he said. “Back in five minutes.”

After he left, I turned to Rachel and waited for her to begin, conscious of a vague feeling of disquiet. Maybe due to the tapestry or the proximity of so many ghostkeepers. Or maybe I was just picking up on Rachel's anxiety.

She licked her lips and looked from the tapestry back to me. “Your father didn't take your mother's powers, Emma. Neos did. They—
we
were all working for the Knell, the four of us as a team. Nobody dispelled ghasts better than we did.” Her eyes flashed at the memory. “Then your mother and Neos fell in love, and she started losing her powers. When she became a liability, the Knell wanted her out. Neos immersed himself in the old lore, searching for a way to help her regain her abilities, but nothing worked. He even dabbled in Asarum.”

“What's that, some kind of satanic rite?”

“It's an herb that boosts ghostkeeping powers. Extremely addictive—and dangerous.” She shook her head. “Neos grew more and more distraught and guilty and he started to change. He became … twisted. Obsessed with the old lore, with the powers. Finally, your mother left him and started an affair with my brother.”

Ick. I held up a hand. “I don't need the details.”

“No.” She frowned. “It's not something I like to think about, either.”

I waited, but she just sat there staring into space. Finally, I said, “And then?”

She jerked slightly. “Oh! Well, your father thought that the Knell mistreated Jana—your mother. Tossing her aside when she wasn't useful anymore.”

“And you?” I asked.

“I thought … I thought Jana had been unfair to Neos. He loved her so much, he'd lost his mind trying to save her.” She licked her lips again. “I tried to get Nathan, your father, to break it off with her.”

My parents were the madly-in-love types, as close as any couple I'd ever seen. It had always been obvious to me and Max that their relationship came first, that we were just a by-product. “He'd never do that,” I said.

“No,” Rachel agreed. “He accused me of only having the Knell's interests at heart, of not caring about him or Jana.”

We sat in silence a moment. “You two haven't spoken since I was a baby?” I asked.

“I tried to apologize but … in the end, he was right. After we fought, I lost myself in the Knell.” She smiled tentatively. “Which is why I'm so happy you're here. You're like a second chance. I never meant to hurt your parents,” she said, leaning forward intently. “I loved them. I hope you believe that.”

“Sure,” I said. Like me and Max. We fought sometimes, but we always loved each other. Even if he did totally bail on me when I needed him most. “Did the lady in the tapestry have a brother who looked like Max? I mean, is that normal, for a ghostkeeper to look so much like her ancestors?”

“She's my ancestor, too.” Rachel's gaze grew hard. “I don't look like her. But then—”

She stopped as Bennett came back.

“Yoshiro's ready for us,” he said.

I smiled at him, and not only from affection but also from relief. I wasn't sure how I felt about Rachel. I had to admit, I could use an aunt, since my parents were AWOL. But there was something disconcerting about her, like she wasn't quite comfortable in her own skin. Maybe she was just worried that I'd hate her like my father had.

“Are we ready for
him
?” I asked, standing.

“He's quite formidable,” Rachel said. “But don't let him intimidate you.”

“As long as he can help me, I don't care.”

“If he can't help,” Bennett said, “nobody can.”

“Yoshiro's the heart of the Knell.” Rachel put her hand on my arm, ushering me toward the door. “Well, maybe not the heart—more the brain.”

“You're getting a rare audience, meeting him in person,” Bennett said. “I've only seen him once. Usually he stays in his archives.”

But I wasn't listening; I was staring at Rachel's hand. My skin felt tingly under her palm, almost like I was touching a ghost, and I jerked away.

“I'm sorry.” She smiled apologetically as we headed into the hallway. “I don't know why that happens. I'm a communicator, but sometimes my power gives off static shocks. Or spectral shocks, I suppose.”

I glanced at Bennett for reassurance, but he seemed preoccupied, like he was marshaling his strength to meet Yoshiro. I wished we could hold hands.

I nodded vaguely at Rachel, caught between my pleasure at reuniting with a long-lost relative and my sense that she wasn't quite … normal. Maybe she seemed a little off because she
was
family. I'd need to get used to the idea.

So I decided to like her. Finally, a family member who was still willing to talk to me. That had to be a good thing, right?

As we headed upstairs, Rachel confided about how daunting she found Yoshiro, until we stopped outside a set of elaborately carved wooden double doors. A couple of male ghost servants stood on either side of the door, as though guarding the room. “I don't mean to frighten you,” she said. “You'll be fine.”