Ink and Bone(42)

Over in front of a row of windows that looked out onto a pool surrounded by a beautiful garden of trees and flowers was a long glass table. Agatha used it as a desk, and there were two large silver computers sitting there, as well as a laptop. Finley knew Agatha monitored the world news obsessively, always in tune with what was going on—she was a wellspring of facts and knowledge. Education only makes us better at what we do. The more we know, the more we can understand. The more we can understand, the more we can help them and each other.

“Tell me,” Agatha said. They sat on the couch facing each other, Finley kicked off her boots and pulled her feet up beneath her to sit cross-legged.

Finley told her about squeak-clink, the little bird, the boy with the train, the reappearance of Abigail. She recounted her visit with Jones and what happened at the lake house. When she was done, they sat a moment, looking into the fire.

“You’re shaken by your experiences,” Agatha said finally.

“I thought you said there was time,” said Finley. “That I could set boundaries and choose how I use my gifts.”

Agatha nodded slowly, her face serene. She was ageless—might be sixty years old, though Finley and Eloise surmised she was in her nineties. She wore her white hair long, adorned herself with bangles and big necklaces and wide rings studded with gems. Finley thought of her as a big woman, always draped in tunics in long skirts, but lately she seemed thinner, more frail. Today, Agatha wore a pendant with a sky-blue gem, and Finley found she couldn’t take her eyes from its glittering depth, its layers of color.

“I told you that you could learn to set boundaries and choose how to use your gifts,” said Agatha. “I didn’t say it would be easy.”

“I’ve never had a vision like the one I had today,” said Finley. “Where I’ve been taken out of myself.”

“Like your grandmother,” said Agatha. “That’s hard. What I do is not exactly like what you and your grandmother do; you’re far more tapped in to frequencies than I am.”

Finley had suspected that she would be more like Agatha than Eloise. That she would connect the living with the dead, that she might use that in work as a psychologist or therapist to counsel the living. She had imagined herself possibly as a grief therapist, when she imagined herself as anything at all. Which was rarely. She hadn’t really projected herself into the future.

The truth was she didn’t know what she wanted at all, except that she wanted to be the exact opposite of her parents, especially her mother. And she really didn’t want to be like Eloise, either, though she loved her grandmother, maybe more than anyone on earth other than her brother Alfie. But anyone could see that Eloise had let her abilities drain her. Finley wasn’t prepared to live like that.

“What is this place?” Finley asked. She grabbed a cushion and hugged it to her middle. The trees outside were wild in the strong wind.

“The Hollows?” said Agatha. She looked around the room, offered a shrug. “I don’t know. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it was an energy vortex.”

“What does that mean?”

“There are certain places on earth that are spiritual centers, where the energy has particular characteristics,” said Agatha. “Like Red Rocks in Arizona is supposed to be a place of healing energy. I have lived here all my life, and my ancestors before me, and I still don’t quite know what The Hollows is and what it wants. I know I am less powerful when I’m not close to it. I don’t have all the answers.”

Agatha was the most powerful person Finley had ever met. She just likes to downplay it, Eloise had told her. It might be a way she has of protecting herself. Though Agatha claimed not to have dreams and visions at all, she always seemed to know everything that was going on before you said a word.

“I tried to put it aside and go to class,” said Finley. “Instead, I wound up at Jones Cooper’s place, and the next thing I knew we were heading to the lake house. And then I was there—seeing every-thing. I felt hijacked. I couldn’t have avoided it.”

Agatha reached out and Finley took her hand.

“I wasn’t with her,” said Finley.

“Who were you with?” asked Agatha.

“I don’t know,” said Finley. “A boy, I think. Someone with the abductor.”

This had happened to Eloise, as well. She had inhabited rapists, pedophiles, kidnappers, murderers. Her grandmother didn’t like to talk about those experiences, except to say that you could learn to turn away, to “draw back.”

“You have to honor that,” said Agatha. “And try not to judge. You were where you were supposed to be. And maybe the girl can’t help you.”

“Maybe she’s already gone,” said Finley. The thought had come to her on the ride over, and it made her sick, physically nauseous. When she thought about herself doing “the work,” she only ever imagined herself helping people, saving people, finding the lost.

“Not everybody can be saved or is even meant to be saved,” Agatha said, giving Finley’s hand a squeeze. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“What do you think?” asked Agatha. “No. What do you feel?”

“I don’t know,” said Finley. “I truly don’t.”