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“What’s he doing?” Bree asks Björn, but the Viking shakes his head, his long, beaded beard slapping against his jaw. The red circle on the boy’s chest spreads further, and both of us are lost in visceral memories of battle.
The girl sobs as the priest holds the boy. “Please, Father. I know you can perform miracles. Please…”
Bree must see on my face that I’m stricken. She and Ambrose wrap their arms around me, but her eyes don’t leave the priest as he passes his hands over the boy and mutters his useless prayers to his sadomasochistic god.
“I can see them,” she whispers. “The cords. He’s…holding the boy’s cord. He’s trying to bring him back…”
Above our heads, the dark clouds roll over. Thunder cracks in the distance. The air grows thin, full of malice. I make the sign against evil. Jupiter is displeased. The dead are supposed to stay dead.
The boy opens his eyes and coughs.
The priest removes his hand from the boy’s chest. I can see that beneath the blood, the wound has closed over. The priest drops a small metal object from his hand onto the grass. The bullet.
The boy has healed. He clings to Father Maxwell and coughs and hacks and splutters. A cold chill slithers down my spine.
This feels wrong. The air is stretched too thin, as if the church steeple has torn a hole in the heavens.
The girl sags in Björn’s arms. “Thank you, Father.”
Father Maxwell stands, dusting dirt and leaves from his black clothing. “You must be careful, Kiera. You know you shouldn’t be hanging around those people.”
“I know.” She wraps her arms around the boy and glares at all of us in turn. I recognise that fire in her eyes – it burns inside me whenever I think about someone taking Bree away from me. “But they’re the only family we have. Brayden and I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Björn will go around and see your father again, see if that calms things down. If we want to keep Brayden safe, we need a new plan.” Father Maxwell places a hand on his shoulder. “Take Brayden and wait for me in my office. I will see what I can do.”
Björn walks the two of them in the direction of the church. He nods at me over his shoulder. I nod back. I am proud of my new friend Björn and the work he does here. Bree has been worried that I would not fit in her modern world, but Björn has shown me that there is always work for men like us. I must continue to protect Bree, the way he protects Father Maxwell and his parishioners like Brayden.
Bree steps up to Father Maxwell, an unreadable look in her eyes. “What happened here?”
“Brayden was caught in the middle of his older brother’s turf war, another unfortunate victim of the rising gang violence in London. There are a lot of gangs in this area, and these kids…they get caught in the crossfire. I do what I can. I make sure they know that there is always a sanctuary for them here at All Souls, but…” he crosses himself fervently. “Often, when they come to me, it is too late.”
“But not too late for Brayden. How did you resurrect him without his unfinished business?”
“The same way you resurrected Pax after he bled out from the Ripper’s blade. Unfinished business is required for ghosts who are separated from their earthly body. But Brayden still had his body. I can tie together the severed pieces of his cord and restore him.”
“How many people have you resurrected, Father?” Bree asks.
At her question, the air trembles.
“I have lost count.”
“Are there…consequences to this?”
“There are always consequences.” The priest closes his eyes. “But how can I refuse a soul that is crying for help? How could I let Brayden die?”
Above our heads, the thunder cracks again.
Whatever power Bree and Father Maxwell wield, the gods are not amused.
27
Ambrose
It’s a week after our trip to London. Bree’s spirits have improved after our conversation with Father Maxwell. After he found Brayden a new shirt to wear from the church’s charity bins and took some details from Kiera so he could help her get a job and a place to live, he taught Bree how to create wards using Saint Ekaterina’s spells. He anointed several of the crosses he took from Order Knights with scented oils and spoke words of magic over them. Bree and I spent the week hammering these warding crosses into the dirt in all the corners of Grimwood Manor and Nevermore Bookshop. That should keep Bree – and all of us – safe from the Ripper when he returns, as long as we’re inside either of those two buildings.
All of this should be terrifying, but Bree is handling it better than I expected. She’s singing in the shower, helping her dad paint the guest bedrooms and her mum haul furniture into the outbuilding, and even letting Edward recite some of his poetry for her.
She has answers. She knows what she is.
