Poltergeist at Ravenscroft Manor – Part Four

It was always a terrible sight when a Knight of the Order returned from their mission unsuccessful; worse if they’d been recalled for poor performance. There was nothing, however, that was more embarrassing than a knight who was part of a team and returned to the Hall of the Order alone – whatever the circumstances.

Orion was, in Threeves’ opinion, one of the lesser Fae. He’d been born of Arion, King of Lumenvale, and should have carried himself like the high-born he was – although no one in the Arcadia district would have guessed that simply by looking at him. On the best of days he was an inconvenience. On the worst of them, like today, he was a disgrace.

Orion’s feet dragged as he approached the black throne, led by Malcolm, who stood straighter, but only because he wouldn’t be in the line of fire. When they arrived, Malcolm swiftly disappeared, and Orion sank to floor. His knees would not hold him anymore.

Threeves didn’t pity him in the least.  

As was custom, Orion waited for Threeves to speak first. Although high-born, Threeves outranked him due to his position in the Order, and to speak first would be an affront (a fact Jasper regularly ignored).

Threeves let the silence settle. He watched Orion fidget, waiting to see what the male would do.

Finally, he said, “I sent for all three of you, did I not?”

“The other two wouldn’t come, sir,” Orion said. “I argued with them, by they were adamant that they should stay.”

“Hm.” Threeves said nothing more. Orion had begun to tremble as a chill filled the room.

“Jasper insisted.” Orion eyes were trained on the floor. “Zephyra stayed with him. They said that if they leave, the Ravenscroft girl will be killed.”

“And you didn’t remind him of the code?”

“I did, sir, but you know how Jasper can be. He…”

When Orion didn’t finish, Threeves said, “did he scare you, Orion?”

Orion winced. Threeves already knew the answer. It made Orion a completely expendable asset, and in some ways, one of their biggest liabilities.

“There is something to be said for wisdom,” Threeves continued. “One must know to leave fights one cannot win. But cowardice – “

“It was not cowardice, sir,” Orion interrupted. He almost, almost looked up, that small flare of temper revealing at least a little resemblance to the noble family who shared his name.

“Then it was stupidity.” Threeves stamped a boot down and Orion jumped. “We cannot afford mistakes, Orion. You, most of all. Unlike the others, you’ll receive nothing when your father dies. You must make a name for yourself here, and neither cowardice nor stupidity will give you one that will serve you.”

Orion, the youngest of ten males, would receive pittance from his father’s allowance, if anything. Orion had come to the Order begging for a place, knowing that he would be left destitute once his father died if he didn’t have someone to give him work. Rather than the workhouse – only the poor and nameless were welcome there – he’d wanted to be a knight.

Threeves still remembered the words he’d said, ten years ago.

I want to make a difference. I want to matter.

Perhaps the only thing Threeves and Jasper had in common was the dislike for this sniveling, idiotic fool.

“Your return here is not entirely unfortunate, however,” Threeves continued.

Orion’s shoulders twitched at the slightest suggestion that he was not completely doomed.

“Tell me everything, Orion. Everything that happened. The tiniest detail. Nothing must be left out. Do you understand?”

Orion nodded.

“Good. Start at the beginning.”

Orion stayed where he was, knees fixed to the ice on the floor, and began to speak.

---

From the diary of Elysande Eltheron:

He is chasing me. It has been seven days since I saw him last, but I can feel him in every shadow. There are eyes in every window. I cannot rest, cannot sleep – he wants my secret silenced forever.

I’m so tired. I can’t remember the last time I slept; I can’t remember the last time I ate something beyond the dust in the air as I gasp for breath. He will not stop.

My only hope is that they succeed. In case they fail, I have written all I know here. If he finds me with this, he will certainly kill me.

Do not ask where I have gone. He is made of shadow and death – only that which is pure may stop him. I have no strength to channel this light. I will keep running and give them as much time as I can.

Jasper’s breath came short as he read the pleading message Elysande had left on the final page of the diary. Whoever she was – whatever she was – he had the strangest feeling that she had been pursued by the same creature tearing through the house.

The Shadow Man.

Or, as Aurora called him, Umbraxis.

That wasn’t the part that gave him pause, however. He flipped back through the pages, and what had once been a journal full of the longings of a lovesick teenager had become something else. The words had rearranged themselves, changing into something else entirely.

He’d never heard of such a thing happening, even in the Fae lands.

It wasn’t that important, at least not now – he would have to investigate it later. The final word, however, starlight, was the best lead they’d had.

The word had been written in a different hand. Someone else had scribbled it in, but it made sense in Jasper’s reasoning. Among the Fae, starlight was considered the purest form of light in all the realms (although in Lumenvale, they acknowledged that the sun and the stars were one in the same. It was a controversial subject among the magic-wielders of the Fae, and being of the most frivolous nature, it was something from which Jasper kept his distance). Someone else, then, had been trying to discover Umbraxis' weakness.

Someone that had likely failed.

“Delightful,” Jasper murmured in a flat tone, flipping the pages back and forth. He needed to focus on the monster, but his curiosity drew him back to the strange language-shifting book. “One problem, though. It’s raining. And it’s been raining for days.”

A fact that supported the theory of starlight, if only because there were no stars on cloudy nights, and Umbraxis had been active for the duration of this entire storm. Jasper then remembered another night in Northern California; how, steeped in the blanket of darkness, a pure white light had broken through and chased it away.

Not Orion – at the time, he’d assumed it was Orion, but now, Jasper realized that it couldn’t have been. He’d been helping Zephyra, and the color of his abilities was of a warmer, sunnier yellow.

Jasper’s gaze landed on Aurora. She was watching him, waiting for him to come to the obvious answer.

Even though a conversation like this one may have had better results in private, Jasper fixed her with a frown and said, “I think it’s time you tell us the rest of your secrets.”

Aurora didn’t look away. She lifted her chin the slightest degree and said, “the truth is expensive, Jasper.”

“What are you talking about?” Zephyra chimed in from her seat on the sofa. She sounded peeved – likely annoyed that Jasper had yet to explain anything that was happening in his head.

“Starlight,” Jasper said, “is allegedly what we need to stop this Shadow Man.”

“Umbraxis,” Aurora supplied. She didn’t blink, and it was making his skin crawl.

“Umbraxis,” Jasper repeated. “Something made it leave when we were in California, and it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Orion. The only other person who was there – “

He stopped himself, noting Isabella and Hawthorne listening, but Zephyra understood. In the corner of his eye, his companion stiffened, turning her own glare on the interloper in the room.

“And you can read this,” Jasper said, lifting the diary to eye-level. “I want to know why.”

“If the weather’s right,” Aurora said, ignoring the diary, “I can…do as you’re implying. I can’t create it or summon it, but if there are stars, I can…encourage them to join us. For a short time.”

“I’m sensing a plan,” Zephyra said.

“Indeed.” Jasper turned to Isabella. “We’ll need your help, though. How strong do you feel?”

Isabella’s eyebrows furrowed. “Me? What can I possibly do? I’m not an exorcist, or a…whatever it is the rest of you are. I’m simply ordinary. Ordinary me.”

Jasper sank down into the chair by the hearth. It was still damp from the last time he’d sat in it. His body ached as he moved, his arm reminding him of the fracture that was slowly healing. “Not ordinary,” he said. “You told me yourself – you can hear them as they run through the walls. The monsters. If we’re going to get this thing out of your house, I’ll need you to help us find him.”

“I don’t understand,” Isabella breathed. She gathered up fistfuls of her dress in her pale hands, looking from face to face and waiting for an explanation.

What Jasper did next broke every rule in the code and would, if Barty found out about it, certainly land him in trouble. He figured, however, that since he’d already disobeyed a direct order from his superior, he was already in deep, and breaking a few more rules wouldn’t move the needle. He took the diary and held it up in his hand so she could clearly see its binding.

“This represents the different realms.”

“Jasper –" Zephyra hissed, sniffing out his disregard for the code, but Jasper shot her a look that silenced her protests.

“The different realms?” Isabella repeated, although her tone told him that she wasn’t doubting him, so much as processing what he said.

“This is your world, where we are now.” He tapped one side of the diary with a dirty, blood-stained finger. “This is mine.”

He tapped the other side of the diary. Isabella’s expression turned pensive, but not disbelieving.

“When you hear the men in the walls –" he opened the diary and laid it flat in his lap – “they’re here.”

“In between,” Isabella said simply.

“Exactly.”

In his periphery, Zephyra was fuming, her fists balled into a white-knuckled rage. Aurora, just beyond Isabella, watched with a cat-like smirk. Hawthorne continued to stand by the door, faking disinterest, but Jasper knew the entire room was listening with rapt attention.

“Somehow, Umbraxis is finding his way out of this in-between and into your world,” Jasper said. “You can hear him when he’s close. If you can hear him, you can tell us where he is, and we can get a hold of him and…”

What? Kill him? He didn’t know if that was possible.

“He won’t bother you again,” Aurora said, when Jasper failed to finish his sentence. “We’ll make sure of it, but only if we have your help.”

Isabella looked around the room, searching each face. She was an intelligent girl, and an uncommonly brave one, Jasper thought – and she had every right to say no. Her father and her brother had been killed within a week of each other, and if it had been him, he might have told them to shove off. In fact, he may have fled the house already and given it up to the ghosts. Still, there was an ounce of that Ravenscroft pride still in her, and he saw the change in her demeanor as she made her decision.

“I’ll do it,” she said. “We’ll find it and kill it. For my brother. And my father.”

“Mistress –" Hawthorne began, but at that moment, Jasper rose.

“Hawthorne,” he said, “you’re not exempt from this task. If there’s anything – anything at all – that you know which might make this easier, it’s your obligation to this family to tell us. Now.”

Hawthorne resisted, shoulders squaring, setting his jaw. As a caretaker of the family estate, he would have been trained his entirely life to keep the secrets of the family. Those secrets, however, were getting the family killed, and at that moment were endangering Isabella.

Hawthorne must have been thinking this, because he looked at Isabella, sighed deeply, and turned back to Jasper.

“You should come with me, then,” he said. His voice was stony, and a little unsure.

“Stay here with Isabella,” Jasper said to Zephyra.

“Jasper –" Already annoyed, Zephyra let out a grunt of irritation.

“I’ll stay with her,” Aurora offered. “You two go. We’ll be alright.”

It was decided, although Jasper didn’t know how much Hawthorne would talk if there were others around. He was a man guided by propriety, and even in times of crisis those habits would not surrender easily. Still, the aged butler took them out of the study, guiding Jasper and Zephyra to a part of the house they hadn’t yet seen.

Hawthorn walked ten or so paces ahead, and as he did, Zephyra caught up to Jasper.

“I don’t like this,” she murmured.

“I can tell,” Jasper answered. “You could have gone with Orion. I wouldn’t have held it against you.”

“Barty will hold it against you,” she reminded him. “But it’s not that. It’s this Aurora person – I don’t trust her. You shouldn’t either. She’s keeping secrets and I don’t know what her motives are.”

“Has it occurred to you that I’m trying to investigate that as well?” Jasper replied.

Zephyra chewed into her lip, her lavender hair gleaming in the dim lamplight.

“Were you seriously thinking I’d been taken in?”

Jasper would have stopped her to continue this interrogation, if he didn’t feel that Hawthorne would have left them behind. Zephyra’s lack of answer, however, was answer enough.

“Zephyra, we’ve been at this – how long?”

“Ten years,” she answered dully.

“Ten years,” he confirmed. “When’s the last time you remember me being taken in?”

She couldn’t say – and the reason was that it had never happened. Never. Not once. Jasper had made mistakes, of course; he’d used more force than was necessary, he’d dusted human beings while they’d attacked his companions on the stage; he’d perhaps frightened a few witnesses to death in attempts at interrogating them to reveal the truth. But never – not a single instance in his career – had a female anything (Fae or human) taken advantage of his senses.

“It may help to trust me,” Jasper reminded her, as Hawthorne led them through a set of double doors on the far side of the house.

Zephyra didn’t answer – although the way she fell back a little told him she was still equally annoyed.

The room Hawthorne had led them to was a long gallery, filled with dozens of expertly made portraits.

“Every Ravenscroft heir for the last four hundred years has had a portrait done,” Hawthorne said, as he came to a halt near the center of the room. “They’re all here. Every single one.”

Jasper stopped to admire the work. Although the styles had changed generation to generation, there were striking similarities from one man to the next. Each Ravenscroft heir had the same dark hair, blue eyes, and proud, striking features – faces cut from stone. They wore varying outfits from their periods, but they all wore black and red, the colors of the family crest.

The same colors Jasper wore now.

“You’d fit up there,” Zephyra remarked, nodding to the scene.

Jasper couldn’t help but agree – if he was human, of course, and not completely out of his time.

“Where’s James?” he asked Hawthorne, who waited expectantly.

“He…isn’t here,” Hawthorne replied.

That wasn’t entirely a surprise. As Jasper passed each face, cold eyes peering down at him through decades of dust and faded paint, he searched for – what, exactly? Why had Hawthorne brought him here, only to tell him there was a portrait missing?

“It is a great secret,” Hawthorne said, watching Jasper inspect each once. “It was passed down through the millennia to each master of the house. My father knew it, and his father before him, and so on.”

Jasper stopped before a gilded frame, inside which was the portrait of Jeremiah Ravenscroft. The date read 1743.

“James’ father,” Hawthorne explained. Jasper took in the handsome face, the sorrowful eyes.

“The secret,” Jasper prompted, when Hawthorne hesitated again.

Hawthorne cleared his throat. “Some say that James wasn’t injured when he returned from the Colonies.”

Jasper turned to look at him. “Oh?”

“Some say he was brought home, by his father, for a different reason.”

Across the gallery, Zephyra was also inspecting the portraits. Hers must have been even older than the ones Jasper had seen.

“The family used to be in possession of a great wealth,” Hawthorne continued. “A wealth, some said, that rivaled kings. For this reason, there has been a generational fear of…illegitimacy.”

Suddenly, Jasper understood. Through the fog of sleeplessness and pain, he realized what Hawthorne was trying to say and finished for him.

“So the rumors are that James was brought home and locked away as punishment for fathering an illegitimate child.”

Hawthorne nodded, the blood draining from his face. “Something like that. They say he went mad because of it – the story is that Jeremiah Ravenscroft may have even given his son the mythic injury to keep him locked in the tower. They were always terrified that this illegitimate offspring would come and try to claim the fortune, and have been extremely protective of the land and its fortune ever since.”

Even in death, Jasper realized, remembering the way the ghosts had been unable to leave the night before. Every door and window had been locked, and even the halls had changed, as though the house itself was trying to keep everyone inside. Trapped.

Just like James.

“And was such a child ever found?” Jasper asked.

“No,” Hawthorne said. “Although…many great atrocities have happened in this house, Master Jasper. More than one skeleton lies in the moors.”

Jasper met Zephyra’s gaze. There was no denying the sorrow in the man’s voice, the weight of such a secret. It was not an uncommon one, certainly; many families worried over such illegitimacy to the pain of death. The hauntings in the manor, however, were evidence that such a fear had rallied something even greater – a ghost, apparently; maybe even a curse.

“I think what haunts this place is James,” Hawthorne whispered.

Jasper looked back at him, but Hawthorne was now staring at the portrait of Jeremiah.

“I think he’s angry about the punishment. And…the child.”

“Thank you, Hawthorne,” Jasper said. The strength that it took to reveal this secret was not lost on him, nor were the tears welling in Hawthorne’s eyes. “I still have to kill it.”

“I understand, sir.” Hawthorne straightened, composing himself. “We must protect the living, first. The dead had their chance.”

“Indeed they did,” Jasper agreed. Across the room, Zephyra wiped her eyes.

---

Jasper had a reasonable notion that the witching hour had something to do with the appearance of the monster. In fables and legends of old, it was said that the witching hour was a time when the veils between worlds were thinnest, and though Jasper hardly believed superstitious nonsense, he was wise enough to know that even the wildest tales usually came from somewhere.

The rest of that day the party spent resting, lounging in the study and listening to the rain as it continuously battered the house. Although Jasper had assured Isabella that it was safe to go to her bedroom to sleep, and although Aurora had even offered to go with her to watch over her while she rested, Isabella refused to go. Not even Hawthorne would leave, instead insisting on being near to his mistress at all times. After what had happened to Lord Ravenscroft, it was hard to blame anyone for this behavior. Jasper was weary himself, and the whiskey in his flask left him sleepy. Buoyed somewhere between exhaustion and pain, he also stayed in the study.

If he needed to sleep on missions – which happened rarely, although the last few had proven the exception to the rule - Jasper usually slept in the mustang. It was the only place in all the realms that truly felt safe. As he sat in the study watching the storm sweep across the moors, he hoped that it was still well, and that a tree hadn’t fallen on it during the gale. It was runed and enchanted, but not invincible. Orion’s Charger had proven that point.

With the storm and his healing but deeply bruised shoulder, however, making the trek out to the mustang was a stupid idea, and he wasn’t quite desperate enough to try it.

Yet.

While the others slept, he flipped back through the pages of the diary. Perhaps he’d been hallucinating the night before, because nothing in the diary was the same. Elysande had written her name on every page to make it abundantly clear who was telling the story, but it wasn’t the story he’d read last night.

Father wants me to go. I don’t want to go. I will be doomed to eternal loneliness – a fate worse than death.

The rantings and ravings of a woman, not a child; someone in exile, perhaps? Someone –

There it was. The man who fell in love with the moon. Jasper could have kicked himself for not realizing it sooner (although, to be fair, Hawthorne hadn’t told him the other half of the story until that morning). If James had truly been punished for having an illegitimate child, perhaps the mother had been punished as well. Exiled. Maybe even killed.

He is chasing me. It has been seven days since I saw him last, but I can feel him in every shadow. There are eyes in every window. I cannot rest, cannot sleep – he wants my secret silenced forever.

Could Elysande have been James’ secret lover? If so, why would her diary be stuffed in a hallow brick in the southern tower – through a rift to the lands-in-between?

Jasper sat back in his chair and looked out the window. His head was spinning, his thoughts foggy and slow. There was something strange about this story. Something that bothered him, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.

Aurora knew. That became abundantly clear as he sat there, sludging through muddled thoughts. She could read the runes. She did something to this diary, decoded it somehow. And what she’d said earlier – the truth is expensive, Jasper.

Regardless of what Bartholomew Threeves thought, Jasper decided then that this investigation would have to continue past the banishment of the ghost. He’d deal with the Shadow Man or James or Umbraxis or whatever he was called, and then he’d get to the bottom of Aurora’s strange presence in this house. If she ran from him, he’d follow her. If she attacked him, he’d fight back. But something wasn’t right, and Jasper, Master of Shadows, he reminded himself (even if those shadows refused to listen at the moment), was going to figure out what it was.

---

Fifteen minutes to three a.m., Jasper and Isabella gathered in the foyer.

Jasper had hoped the storm might abate in the interval, but it had not changed since that morning. Zephyra had never tried to move a storm before. Tonight, however, she’d vowed to try, and Jasper dearly hoped she could do it.

Isabella had mapped out the route to take, and they’d walked it a dozen times while waiting for this moment. Aurora and Zephyra were already on the roof, waiting for Jasper to arrive. Hawthorne stood on the stairs, surveying the scene with disapproval in his tired eyes. What could he have said, anyway? Isabella had made up her mind, and the rest of her family was dead. This was the only chance they had.

“Mister Jasper,” Isabella said, while they waited, “have you ever done a thing like this before?”

“Not this exactly, no,” Jasper said, his eyes traveling up and down the walls. He called to the shadows and they came to him, albeit reluctantly. “But I’ve been hunting down creatures like this for a decade. I’ve rarely failed.”

“How did you get started in this…business?”

It was an honest question, meant solely to pass the time, but it grated over Jasper’s nerves.

“I wanted to help,” he answered. “With my particular abilities, this was the only occupation that suited me.”

“And what does your family think of it? I hope they’re proud of you.”

Isabella was wringing her hands and rocking on the balls of her feet. At his silence, she blushed and said, “oh dear. I didn’t mean to say anything improper. I just meant – “

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m sure they would be.”

Dull. Empty. Pointless. He hated small talk and he hated these questions. The room was electric with anxiety and it made him irritable. Apparently, it made Isabella talkative.

“Catherine says I prattle on too much,” Isabella said. “I suppose she’s right.”

Ah. “About Catherine,” he said. “How do you know each other, exactly?”

“She’s a family friend. We grew up together. I don’t remember meeting – some friends are like that, though. You know them so long, you may as well have been born together.”

Jasper took this in, adding it to the ever-growing list of things about Aurora that didn’t make sense.

“Do you trust her?” he asked.

“Do I – of course I trust her. Why? Don’t you?”

Jasper didn’t answer. The grandfather clock chimed, and almost instantly his blood cooled.

One. Two. Three.

“This is it,” he whispered, more to himself than the others. “Isabella, stay close to me. When I get its attention, I want you to return to the study with Hawthorne. If anything happens, leave the manor as fast as you can. Understand?”

She nodded solemnly.

“Right.” He kept searching the walls, steeling himself for the chase that was to come. He took the diary out of his jacket and held it out.

In a loud voice that was painfully loud in the empty halls, he called out, “I’ve got something you’re looking for! Don’t you want it back? Don’t you want the diary?”

Isabella put her hand to the wall and closed her eyes. Jasper waited. The monster hadn’t shown himself right away the night before, and he didn’t expect it to now – but the faster they dealt with this, the better he would feel.

“I can hear them,” Isabella whispered. “So many. So sad. They’re…trapped. Scared. They want to go home and they can’t.”

She began walking down the hall, away from the front door, her hand dragging along the wall. Jasper trailed behind her and Hawthorne followed at a distance.

“I’ve never heard it like this before,” she continued. “I’ve never heard them…”

They rounded a corner and stopped. Before them, the hallway disappeared into nothing but darkness. At the very end, almost too dim to see, a pair of red eyes peered out.

Fear rippled over Jasper and then steel. He blinked and the eyes were gone.

“Is he here, Isabella?” he asked, his voice barely audible.

Her eyes were still closed. She shook her head. “No one is here. The ghosts have gone.”

Just like before. And like before –

Jasper pulled the diary close only a heartbeat before Umbraxis burst out of the darkness, his screams renting the silence in two. He didn’t check to see that Isabella and Hawthorne were alright; he turned on his heel and ran as fast as he could.

This time, though, he knew where he was going.

This time the halls were the same as they’d been in the day, and though the path was dark he’d memorized it while he’d prepared for this very night.

Give it to me.

The voice was loud in his ear – stern, like a parent scolding a naughty child.

“You’ll have to take it,” Jasper wheezed back, as he ran. He turned into a stairwell and took the steps three at a time, launching himself up into the rafters of the house. Down through the servants’ quarters next, and then one more staircase. Then the roof.

Overhead, the rain was thunderously loud. He only hoped that Zephyra could do as she said and truly move the clouds aside. According to Aurora, they only needed a little bit of light – but it was a monumental task, even for someone as powerful as her.

Umrbaxis let out another sound of irritation and his shadows leapt forward. Jasper felt their icy fingers wrap around his ankles and tug, and though he stumbled, he recovered and threw himself forward. The penetrating fear of Umbraxis’ eternal darkness was enough to push him onward, towards the final staircase.

It was thin and made of rotting wood, and the stairs groaned as he pounded up them. The door to the roof stood open. Zephyra and Aurora peered in. At his approach, they ducked out of the way. In the next moment, Jasper had cleared the threshold and now stood on the roof.

It was a steeply gabled surface. The gargoyles he’d seen upon arrival hung dangerously over the edge, dripping with the torrential rain. In moments, Jasper and the diary were soaked. He put distance between himself and the doorway and waited, heaving as he tried to catch his breath.

On the other side, Zephyra stood, her hands to the sky.

Moments later, the darkness began to spread through the doorway, creeping over the roof like a sickly fog. Umbraxis' figure rose slowly, eyes fixed on Jasper with a malice unmatched by any creature he’d ever faced.

“Come and get it, you rat bastard,” Jasper shouted. He shoved the diary in his coat and kept his eyes locked on Umbraxis, lest he give away the other two working behind him.

You have no right to take that.

“Then come take it back,” he goaded. “You have no right to kill these people. I’ve already told you – time to go.”

You don’t understand a thing.

“Then explain it. I’ll wait.”

Zephyra’s face was pale as she struggled against the storm. Jasper didn’t have a backup plan, and realized in that moment that if they didn’t succeed, Umbraxis would likely kill them and the other two in the house. He set his jaw as Umbraxis crept forward.

You don’t remember me.

“California was a week ago. My memory’s not that bad.” Even so, Jasper reached for his shadows. Nothing answered him.

You think you can use my own power against me?

That gave Jasper pause. What was he –

Zephyra let out a gasp. Her foot slipped on the steep roof, and the sound alerted Umbraxis to the others behind him. With a scream of pure, unbridled rage, he turned and surged for them.

“Hey! Over here!” Jasper waved the diary about, but Umbraxis didn’t notice as he went for Zephyra. “Umbraxis!”

Nothing. Jasper tried to pull him back, tugging on the shadows, but nothing happened.

“James!"

What happened next Jasper would only remember in fragments, as it was no longer Zephyra’s body tumbling off the roof, but his. Umbraxis wheeled around at the name, and for a moment Jasper could have sworn he was staring into the face of something distinctly human. Pain registered there, and regret, and loss. Then the moment passed, and the evil, ugly thing that had been there returned and threw itself with full force at Jasper.

Jasper had never felt anything like it in his life. He grabbed at the tiles on the roof and slipped while a devastating cold swept over his body, his limbs like water, his blood like ice. While he fought for purchase a scream filled his ears; it may have been his own, it may have been any other voice in the world. He caught on something – something sharp snapped between his ribs and stabbed into what was likely a lung – and when he looked up, it was into the face of one of the stone gargoyles.

And then light.

So bright that closing his eyes made no difference, the light filled…everything.

For a moment, there was no wind, no rain, no shadows, no darkness. Just this overwhelming, beautiful, completely pure light.

When the light faded, Umbraxis was gone.

Jasper was also still hanging for his life over the edge of the roof, held in place by the talon of a gargoyle shredding into his lung.

Again – Jasper didn’t know what would kill him, but this day was not the one he had planned to find out.

He made a fish-like movement as he tried to pull himself back onto the roof, but his efforts were rewarded with a loud crunching sound as the gargoyle began to pitch forward. Jasper swore loudly as it continued to lean, and before he could call out for help it began to fall.

With him still attached.

This is it, he thought dryly, because there was nothing else he could do in that moment, but wait for the rising ground to meet him, and the heavy stone gargoyle to finish compressing his bones into fine dust.

At least it wasn’t a siren.

What he hadn’t planned on, however, was a massive winged-creature hurtling at him out of the sky.

With scaled talons outstretched, the massive bird seized him by the shoulders, wrenching him free of the gargoyle only moments before it shattered on the main staircase below. Through a bewildered haze, Jasper remembered the thing that had pushed him down the stairs and punctured his left arm and realized, with a bleary shock, that these must have been one in the same.

He craned his neck to get a better look. Through the dark and the driving rain, he made out what he thought to be an owl.

An uncommonly large one, if it could carry him safely to the ground. Unlike the first time, when he’d been thrown onto the carpet at the base of the southern tower, the owl deposited him safely on the soggy turf and released him. It left nothing but a few stress marks on his jacket and disappeared into the dark sky. Jasper’s knees buckled, the shock of the punctured lung flooding over him. He struggled to breathe while his body worked to repair the hole the stone gargoyle had left behind.

Relief washed over him along with the frigid rain. He was alive. As far as he could tell, so were the others. And the monster was gone.

“Wounded,” Aurora corrected, when she and the others had made it down to the lawn. Jasper hadn’t moved in the interval, even though he was soaked through and very chilled. He would live – one of the perks of being Fae was the incredibly low mortality rate – but that didn’t mean his injuries didn’t hurt like hell.

“It won’t come back though,” she said. “Not for a while anyway. That should give us enough time.”

Time for what? was the question everyone wanted to ask, but Jasper knew what she meant. She would continue hunting it, and after the brief with Barty, Jasper figured he probably would as well.

Hawthorne joined them with a large umbrella and said, “I’ve made tea in the study, if you’d like some, Master Jasper.”

Sopping wet, bleeding, and exhausted, tea sounded like the most wonderful thing in the world.

---

So it was sorted: the monster banished, and as Isabella traced her fingers over the walls, she informed everyone that the ghosts had stopped screaming. It appeared that in addition to forcing Umbraxis off the premises, they’d unlocked the doors to the house and some of the ghosts had left. They weren’t happy – that was too much to ask for any of the creature doomed to such an afterlife – but they were no longer terrified. Sitting in the study, a few of them peeked around shelves to stare at Jasper.

It had taken him by surprise at first. Going so long without seeing a proper ghost, he’d grown accustomed to it, so he startled rather violently when he saw the first pale face peering through the bookcases. It was a girl, twenty or so in years, her head bashed in with what looked to be a mallet. She gave him a small, appreciative smile and flickered back into the dark.

Later that morning, when Jasper and Zephyra prepared to leave, he saw more of them, watching from the upper balconies and at the end of the hallways. Isabella had been right – they didn’t seem malevolent at all. Faintly confused, perhaps; saddened most definitely. But they weren’t there to hurt Isabella. If anything, they might have been there to protect her.

In the grand foyer, Isabella said farewell to her guests, Hawthorne hovering a few feet behind her. Jasper fished the broken pocket watch out of his coat and held it out to her.

“You should keep this,” he said. “I don’t have any need of it anymore.”

She took it with a teary smile. “Thank you, Mister Jasper. I can tell my brother’s spirit is at rest. Hopefully, my father’s will be soon.”

Jasper hoped that was true. He hadn’t seen either of them in the halls, so it could be assumed that it was.

“He says that you’re wrong, by the way.”

Jasper, who’d turned to follow Aurora and Zephyra out the door, wheeled back around to stare at Isabella. She had a faintly pensive look, eyes cast to the side, as though she was listening to someone speak.

“Wrong?” Jasper frowned. “About what?”

“The Shadow Man didn’t want Jonathan’s help. That’s not why he killed him.”

Jasper heard the scuffling feet behind him and knew that Aurora and Zephyra had also stopped to listen. “Why, then?”

“He wanted your help,” Isabella continued. “And you said no.”

“I…” Jasper wracked his brains for any memory of speaking with the Shadow Man. He hadn’t told him anything, except when he’d taunted him for the diary. “Who’s telling you this?”

Isabella met his gaze. “He says his name is Jasper Nightingale, Master of Shadows.”

---

It was a fluke, Jasper reasoned. A joke. One of the ghosts having one last laugh before he left.

If that was the case, however, why couldn’t he hear it? Or see it?

When they made it back to the cars, Zephyra slid into hers, the engine roaring to life. She didn’t leave, though – and instead watched as Aurora grabbed a hold of Jasper’s collar and dragged him to the side of the car farthest away from the Superbird.

Before he could protest, Aurora took something out of her dress and dangled it in front of him.

“You wanted to know how I get through the realms,” she said in an undertone, careful to keep Zephyra from seeing the object. “This is how.”

It was an amulet of sorts, scribbled all over with the same runes in the diary. She proffered it to him, and Jasper took it.

“Why are you giving it to me?” he asked, completely perplexed.

“In case you change your mind.”

“Change my mind? About what?”

“About going back to the Order.”

Jasper’s attention snapped back to her, now slowly backing away. “There was never any question of me going back. And you realize that by giving me this, you’re implicating yourself in a serious crime.”

He should arrest her – that was the obvious solution. Bind her in shadows and throw her in the back of the car. It’s what Zephyra would have done. It’s likely what she was expecting him to do, right now.

Aurora was now out of arm’s reach. “There are three of those,” she said, as though she hadn’t heard him. “I have one. You have another. The third one…doesn’t matter.”

“Come with me,” Jasper said. “I’ll even let you sit in the passenger’s seat. We’ll talk to the Order and get this sorted.”

She shook her head. “I hope you’ll understand,” she whispered. “If you need to find me, use the amulet. And use your brain, Jasper. You’ll come to the right answer.”

Before he could speak, she took one more step backwards and disappeared into the air.

Through a rift.

Zephyra laid on her horn and Jasper jumped, awakening the pain that had settled in his bones. Over his shoulder, Zephyra was glaring at him through her windshield.

Jasper pocketed the amulet before she caught a glimpse and slid into the mustang, which roared to life. Zephyra waited for him to drive before tailing behind. As the rain drummed on the roof and the radio began to play Beethoven, the weight of the amulet felt like a burning hole in his pocket.

Use your brain, Jasper.

He followed the road back to where their own rift waited, a swirling hole in the fabric of space and time. He pressed the pedal to the floor and aimed for it.

The two cars, one black, one purple, disappeared into the rainy morning. A solitary figure watched from the house, black hair sticking to his head, blue eyes tired and lined with deep exhaustion. He opened his mouth as though to scream – but no one, not Jasper, not even Isabella, heard him.

At least not yet.

Click Here to Continue to Episode Three

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