Ink and Bone(97)

She is ready, said the voice that wasn’t a voice.

It grieved her that Finley might be asked to live the kind of life Eloise had lived. But it was beyond her control. Eloise was old enough to know that. Only the young think they have something to say about how their lives turn out. We don’t choose; we are chosen.

Before she left the house, she’d phoned Ray, just to say that she was sorry, that she loved him in the way that she could. He didn’t answer, which wasn’t like him, and his voicemail picked up instead. But, actually, she supposed it was a good thing. They fought the last time they’d spoken.

“You’re not coming,” he’d said. “Are you?”

“Not yet.”

He’d been quiet, his disappointment filling the line between him. Then, “You’re not coming at all, are you?”

She didn’t answer at first. She’d been promising for so long to come out to San Francisco, to spend a weekend at least just having fun. You know, dinner and a show, a cable car ride, a walk along the beach. Like normal people.

It sounded nice, but Eloise had given up trying to be like normal people long ago. The fact that he didn’t realize she couldn’t just switch off what she was troubled her. He was trying to move away from “the work,” as they called it. He didn’t seem to understand that she didn’t have that choice.

“Finley needs me right now,” she said weakly. “Maybe when she’s more settled.”

“It’s time to put yourself first, El,” he said. Didn’t he really mean that it was time she put him first? His voice was flat, distant on the line. “Finley’s a grown woman.”

Of course, there were other reasons she couldn’t come to San Francisco. She just didn’t want to get into it.

“If I could have loved anyone else again,” she said to his voicemail. “It would have been you.”

She stepped out of the car and into the weather. She’d worn her boots and warmest coat, and still the cold snaked up her sleeves and down her collar. She headed into the trees to a place she’d visited many times—in visions, to find Finley, to help a lost boy, and once to find a burning girl. She thought that the place had everything it needed. But she realized now that she’d been wrong.

In fact, now that she understood what was really needed, she felt like an old fool. She should have known long ago. It was obvious.

She’d heard the activity on her police scanner at home that the car belonging to the missing man had been found. She knew that he’d be found dead, but that because of the beacon in his car Eliza Fitzpatrick would be found alive. She’d return to her mother and go on to live a happy life. In fact, the horrors she’d endured would cause her to honor her gifts and know her own strengths in a way she never would have otherwise. Was it a fair trade? No. But nothing about this life had ever been fair.

You can make a trade, the voice said.

She also knew that Finley was in trouble, that she had a choice to make. The girl had been flirting with it for a while. Would she let the darkness take her? Or would she claw her way back to the light? -Eloise wasn’t worried. She knew Finley in a way she knew few others, even her own daughter Amanda. She knew Finley because she was so much like Eloise. Finley felt the tug of destruction, but she always came back from the edge. The girl knew that people loved her and needed her. That knowledge was the cord that pulled her back.

For Eloise, however, the scales had tipped. There were more that needed her on the other side now than here.

She crunched through the snow, The Whispers louder than the wind. Those million voices all around her, telling her their stories of sorrow and loss, of love and joy, of birth and death, and lives lived well or otherwise. It was the chorus of humanity in all its beauty and discord. Sometimes lovely, other times painful to hear. Eloise had been listening for so long. And she was very tired, tired to her bones, as if they didn’t have the strength to hold her anymore.

She pushed through the clearing. The roof of the old church was covered in snow, caps of white resting on the gravestones, heavy frosting on the branches of the trees. She heard the voice of a woman she used to know, singing.

Little flowers in the garden.

Yellow, orange, violet, blue.

Eloise could see the lights off in the distance, the klieg of red and white shining up into the sky like a display of aurora borealis. She’d seen the Northern Lights once, eerie green dancers in the sky, the stroke of a cosmic paintbrush on the night. There were so many beautiful and mysterious things about this world. It almost made up for all the rest of it. Almost.

“Abel Crawley, what have you done?”

He stood at the low wall of the graveyard, weeping. Eloise was not one who believed in evil, per se, though she’d witnessed many evil acts. As far as Eloise was concerned, there were only two ways of being in the world. You either walked through life acting out of love, or you acted out of fear. But Abel Crawley made her wonder. She’d known some black spots on the fabric of the universe, and he was certainly one. Like an ink stain on a wedding dress, they spread their blackness, and it worked its way into the delicate weave, damaging it, and leaving an indelible mark.

He’d been a terrible boy—a bully, an animal sadist, an arsonist. He got smart and learned to hide himself, and then he was more dangerous still. He liked young flesh, he liked fear, he liked misery and pain. And yet he moved among the people of The Hollows invisible, mowing lawns and trimming shrubs, and peering in windows for that special light, the shine of the Dreamers.