Chương 39: Chapter 38 - Circe

Darius was not happy when he heard what Norris had to say. As I told him about our conversation, the count's normal determined expression took on an element of frustrated resignation that only made it look more flinty. When I finished the story, he cursed.

"That good, huh?" I said.

"We'll have to call in an expert." He pushed himself out of the desk chair.

"An expert in what?"

"Emerra, I am so far out of my depth, I don't even know the word for the expert I need." We started making calls. Brisbane, of the Albion Torr, couldn't think of anyone who might be able to help us. Big Jacky didn't answer his phone. I called Iset. She tracked Jacky down, put his phone in his hand, and stood there, watching him, while Darius tried calling him again. That time he answered. He gave Darius a name and told him to call Brisbane to get her phone number. Brisbane, when he heard the name, went, "Oh, god.

Her." With that kind of introduction, you'd better believe I was out in front of the school five minutes before she was due to arrive. Darius and Conrad were waiting with me.

"So she's a witch?" I said.

"Among other things," Darius said. Being a witch was kind of a big thing. What could possibly be important enough to hold its own against that title?

"Is she their torrman?" I asked.

"I don't think she has the temperament to serve."

"Is that what Brisbane said?"

"No. I think I remember her." Our conversation was interrupted by the distant sound of a revving car engine getting closer, fast. A pristine, old-fashioned, navy-blue convertible sped up the drive. I could hear the brakes hit at the last minute while the woman behind the wheel whipped it to the side, pulling away from us. When she took the key from the ignition, the car was parked at an angle, in the middle of the lot, blocking two other cars from leaving.

She pulled the brightly patterned kerchief from her head and shook out her mass of white and gray hair. It rolled away from her head in thick waves, settling just above her collar. The kerchief went into the glove box, and out came a large tobacco pipe. It had a sleek, curved, black stem and an elegant, off-white bowl. Once it was clamped between her teeth, she extracted herself from the car. It was impossible to gauge how old she was.

Her face had enough wrinkles, I would have put her well into her seventies or eighties, but she moved with a deliberate, graceful force that made her appear much younger. A man's long, black coat flapped around her as she moved, hiding most of her emerald green blouse and coal gray dress pants. On her feet were a set of Chuck Taylors. They looked exactly like mine. I smiled when I saw them. She smiled back. Then she turned to Darius. The count stepped forward.

"Madam Circe?" She took the pipe out of her mouth long enough to motion to him with the stem.

"It's you. I remember you. You gave me the worst déjà vu headache of my life. Here we are, fifty years later, and it's finally settled." She tapped the stem of her pipe on her lips.

"So that's why you look the same. Hmmmm." She bit down on the pipe with a quick snap, then raised her finger to the bowl. I saw a glow of reflected orange light on her long nail, then smoke began to rise.

"Madam Circe—" Darius said.

"It's Circe, Mr. Vasil, or I'll curse you." She winked at him.

"And you know I can." Darius corrected himself, "Circe, this is a school. I'm not sure that smoking is allowed."

"I'm sure it isn't."

"But you don't intend to stop?"

"Don't worry, Mr. Vasil, they won't kick me out before my work is done."

"You know that?" She smiled at him. Her teeth were almost perfectly white.

"Mr. Wuller—" Darius started.

"Wayne Wuller, the head man. A bit of pomp. He wants to join us." She shook her head.

"He won't." Her eyes moved from Darius to Conrad. I could see her gaze rise and fall as she looked over the wolfman.

"Why not?" Darius asked. She removed the pipe to shrug.

"How should I know?" The pipe clicked back between her teeth. Darius's chest heaved in a silent sigh. Circe ignored him. Her eyes came to rest on me. She walked forward, until we were only two feet apart. We were almost the same height. She stared into my eyes and smiled.

"There they are." Her voice was soft, almost awed.

"Aren't they beautiful." Nothing should have changed—no movement was called for—but between one moment and the next, she went from looking at my eyes, to looking in them at me.

"Hello, Emerra."

"Do…do you know me?"

"Not yet, but I think you have excellent taste in shoes." She turned back to Darius.

"Shall we go inside now, or would you like some more time to deliberate?"

"I don't suppose it will change the outcome," the count said wryly.

"It never does." Darius motioned to the front door. Circe marched inside. She was still looking around the entryway when Miller came jogging up to our group.

"Mr. Vasil! Mister…" His voice trailed off when he saw the witch. She blew out a large cloud of smoke.

"Good afternoon." Miller's head jerked in a nervous nod.

"Good afternoon…Circe." He seemed to agonize for a second over whether or not to say anything else, but then he turned to Darius.

"Mr. Wuller sends his apology. He got an urgent call from the parents of one of our students. The boy was hurt quite badly while in our care, and Mr. Wuller—""He won't be coming to join us," Darius said.

"Oh, imagine that," Circe cooed.

"Please assure Mr. Wuller that I understand," Darius said, "and that I'll be happy to tell him everything that happens. Unless you'd rather come with us?" Miller glanced at the witch.

"I'm afraid I was on my way out," he said.

"I have errands to do, but I'll give the headmaster your message before I leave."

"Thank you." I sidled up to Circe and whispered, "Do you know him? The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"I have a reputation." She had leaned close to confide this to me. Her breath stunk of tobacco. I nodded to her pipe.

"You know that stuff will kill you, right?"

"On the contrary, I know for a fact it won't." After Miller had left, Darius turned to us.

"You know the basics of our situation, M—Circe. What would you like to do?" One of her thin shoulders lifted in a shrug.

"You have a problem with your building. Let's see the building." She marched down the hall. We followed.

"Emerra," she called, "beside me, if you don't mind." When I glanced at Darius, he nodded. I hurried to catch up to the witch.

"Thank you," she said.

"My hearing isn't what it once was."

"But I didn't say anything," I protested.

"Yes, that's a bit odd, but I dare say you'll get over it. Do you want to start with the banal things? Guess how old I am."

"Sixty?"

"I see you already know the power of flattery. I'm one hundred and twenty." I gazed at her profile as we walked. Her eyes seemed to light on everything we passed.

"You're not," I said.

"Witches live longer than mundanes."

"But you're not a hundred and twenty."

"How do you know?" I didn't have an answer. It felt instinctive, like knowing how much something would weigh before picking it up, but the fact I didn't know how I knew bothered me.

"Perhaps you can see it?" she offered.

"How?" Her eyes left the hall and strayed to me.

"So you don't know that yet." She went back to inspecting the building.

"I'm only ninety-three, but I've made it a policy to lie about my age since I was fourteen. It's always served me well."

"And a witch can be any age she wants?"

"A woman should be any age she wants. This way." She turned ninety degrees and marched into one of the open meeting rooms where parents could visit with their children or the teachers. She stood among all the furniture and slowly spun, inspecting everything.

"How fascinating." She marched out and continued down the hall.

"Mr. Vasil," she called, "is there any room in particular you want me to look at?"

"Not in particular."

"What about you"—she snapped her fingers, as if trying to recall a name—"the furry guardian? No. The fluffy guardian." In my surprise, I stumbled. Exactly how many people, aside from me, thought of him as a fluffy guardian?

"You mean Mr. Bauer?" Darius asked. She stopped.

"Well, I didn't mean you." Her eyes moved over to Conrad.

"Have you smelled anything?"

"No, ma'am." She hummed and turned to me.

"Then it's down to you and me, Emerra. I can't stay here for long. Take me to the places I need to see."

"But I…" My voice trailed off. She exhaled a billow of smoke and smiled, her lips peeling away from the stem of her pipe.

"There you go," she said.

"Yes. Those places." I took her to every place I had ever felt cold or uneasy, every dark corner that had seemed to whisper to me. Wuller had boards nailed across the door to the condemned basement, but Circe stood by it for a full minute, motionless, her hand resting on the exposed door frame. I took her to the hall outside the boys' dormitory. She stood there, puffing, ignoring the few students who stared at her as they passed. Our tour finished in the hall around the corner from our rooms.

"What happened here?" she asked.

"I don't know."

"I meant, to you."

"I fainted."

"The details, Emerra." I explained about the humming, the crying, the noises that had bombarded me, and then the shadows. She folded her arms halfway through my explanation. When I finished, she was tapping her pipe against her lips.

"There was something different about that night, wasn't there?" she said.

"Something different about you."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because this hall is no worse than most of them. If it isn't the hall, then it must have been you." Conrad was standing right behind me. My cheeks flushed. I don't know why I felt self-conscious. He already knew I was a ferret smuggler.

"I'd had something to drink," I admitted. Circe nodded.

"Yes, that would do it."

"What happened?"

"You were probably overwhelmed." She took a step closer and leaned in.

"For some people, alcohol is a relief. But that's only some people. People like you and me—we must take refuge in sobriety."

"And tobacco?" I suggested.

"Tobacco?" She waved her pipe between us.

"Don't you know this stuff would kill you?" Circe turned and marched toward the end of the hall. Once again, we all set off after her. My legs were tired from trying to keep up with her—her power walk could match Darius's—so I was immensely relieved when she stopped at our door and motioned for Darius to unlock it. I was so relieved, I didn't think to ask how she knew it was our door.

Once Darius opened it, she blew inside, marched over to the couch, and sat down right in the center of it, throwing open her coat so it settled around her.

"Open the window if you must, Vasil," she said.

"We'll be here for a few minutes." Darius went to do exactly that. Circe motioned for me to take the armchair. Darius brought over the chair from the desk. Conrad stayed standing. The witch pulled a bag from her coat pocket. From that she extracted a cloth, some pipe cleaners, an air-tight jar of tobacco, and some tool I couldn't name.

"One of those disposable cups, please." Her eyes moved to the small stack beside the electric kettle. Conrad brought her one. She knocked out whatever black mess is left at the bottom of a pipe when you're done smoking it and started cleaning the pipe while she talked.

"If you want to test me, vampire, now is the time to do it."

"I don't need to test you, Circe. You come highly recommended."

"Then tell me about the building." He told her. By the time he was done, she had cleaned, reloaded, and relit her pipe.

"An insane asylum," she muttered.

"Yes, that fits. This was, at one point, a very unhappy place. It's been healing, but for all the time it'll take for the echoes to die…" She shrugged.

"You might as well burn it to the ground."

"Norris said the place has been going derelict," I said.

"Norris. A pale man, long hands?" I nodded. A mean half smile appeared on her face.

"You don't like him, do you? He's right though. It has been going derelict."

"But—""What? You think you can't heal while falling apart? Time, silence, and loneliness are often what it takes."

"These echoes," Darius said, "are you talking about ghosts?"

"No ghosts." She motioned to me with her pipe.

"She could have told you that. No ghosts, but not normal echoes either." She looked at me.

"Tell me, Emerra, do you believe that a mundane can leave an imprint on a building, staining it with their experiences?" I ran my tongue over the inside of my lips as I tried to think how to answer. Not that I had much choice. I was in a room with Darius Vasil, Conrad Bauer, and yet another person I was pretty sure I couldn't lie to.

"No," I said.

"Why?" she demanded.

"Because of the hospice." Both her eyebrows rose. She watched me, waiting for an explanation.

"I've been in sad places and places with a lot of pain," I said.

"It's not the buildings. They're only buildings. The people carry all of it."

"Then how do you explain this school?"

"I can't."

"You should give yourself more credit. You're wiser than you think." A shy smile snuck onto my face. I shook my head.

"I'm not." She hummed, thoughtfully. Then her head turned, and she was talking to all of us again.

"A mundane can't leave an echo like this. They leave echoes only in our minds. But a person with power! That's another matter."

"Are you talking about a magician?" Darius asked.

"A witch. A sorcerer." Circe shrugged.

"But are you likely to find them in an insane asylum?" I thought about what Wuller had told me.

"A psychic," I said.

"Ah!" The witch slow winked at me.

"More likely. Much more likely. There was probably at least one true psychic—possibly two—but asylums were also collecting points for the psychically inclined."

"What's the difference?" Conrad asked. Circe eyed him for a few seconds before saying, in a mumble, "It's hard to look at you, friend." Her eyes dropped to a spot on the carpet. When she spoke, her voice returned to its clipped, loud tones.

"The term 'psychic' is reserved for someone who can manifest one or more of the psychic powers. The 'psychically inclined' are people who tend that way but have no powers themselves. Think of it as a sliding scale." She used her hands to set the boundaries and bounced her left hand as she said, "On one side of the scale, you have the dead 'uns—people who are so dull they can't influence or be influenced." She bounced her right hand.

"On the other side of the scale, you have the wretches who can feel and use it all. Between them is everyone else." She scooted her left hand closer to her right.

"If you collect enough people in this range and put them through enough trauma, they would have the influence necessary to shape these kinds of echoes."

"What do these echoes do?" Darius asked. Circe dropped her hands.

"What any echo does. They reverberate until they fade."

"Nothing else?"

"No. For the sensitive, this would be a very uncomfortable place to stay, but for the vast majority of people—including magicians—they wouldn't even notice." Darius leaned back in his chair and rubbed his jaw. Circe smoked in silence. A few seconds later, the count moved his hand and looked up.

"Circe, we have a problem."

"Tell me."

"Approximately one hundred boys in this school have manifested some kind of psychic power at least once." Her grin was so wide, she couldn't keep the pipe in place.

"Oh, dear."

"The powers have been growing stronger and manifesting more frequently."

"That is bad." She returned the pipe to her mouth.

"Could this be caused by the echoes in the building?"

"Not a chance. You'll have to look somewhere else for your answers." Conrad said, "You're sure?" The witch's eyes moved to the carpet by his boots.

"I lied. There's a chance, but it's a one in a billion chance."

"Go on," Darius said.

"Magic gathers. It can be twisted, shaped, and used. In some ways, it's simple. We don't understand its nature perfectly, but it's a power, and we know how to use it. We don't understand psychics at all. Who's to say that the echoes they leave behind aren't something like a power? Or an amplifier? But if it is, you would need a psychic to use psychic power, in the same way you need a magician to harness magic."

"We have a hundred psychics," Darius reminded her.

"You don't believe that any more than I do. Were any of them psychics before they got here? Will any of them be able to use their powers after they leave?"

"At least one of them was a psychic before he came here," I said.

"Oh? There's a psychic at the school? A real psychic?"

"Yeah." She pulled the pipe away from her mouth.

"Take me there. I want to meet him." I stood up. Darius and Conrad moved to follow. Without looking around, Circe announced in a commanding voice, "Not you two." Darius and Conrad stopped. She smiled at me.

"We won't need the exception or the half-baked this time. It'll be you and me, Emerra."

"Circe—" Darius started.

"She'll be fine."

"You know this?" The witch looked at him.

"Of course."