The Arrival | The House of Voices #3

Two - Being Lost

Being Lost

 

October:

I woke up stifling a scream of terror. I didn’t know where I was. What worried me most about this is that I’m getting used to the feeling – the feeling of not knowing where I am. Being lost, even if it’s just for a few minutes after I wake up, is something I was growing used to. Today was the fourth day in a row that it had happened, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

I blinked up at the ceiling, taking a few minutes to fully separate myself from the dream I’d been having and figure out where I was. It was all the green that finally clued me in. I was in one of the guest rooms at The Black Tarot. The green room, as Ace and Spade liked to call it.

Sighing, I rubbed my eyes and sat up. For a moment, the room spun around me before eventually settling back down. I blinked. It was the third time that this had happened… As I crawled out of bed, I wondered if I should talk to Ace about it; about the feeling of being lost when I woke up, and the spinning sensation that followed it.

Making the bed, I shook that thought out of my mind immediately. I trusted Ace, but the only person I wanted to talk about my problems with was locked up in an asylum in the city, and I had no way to get to him.

With a choked sob, I sank to the bed, feeling as if all the life had been drained out of me just by thinking about him. For three days now, I’d been useless; so consumed by guilt and regret that it took every effort me not to sit around the house all day and cry. It got worse the more I thought about how Parish must be suffering and then when I tried not to think about him, I just felt guiltier. It was my fault he had gotten captured in the first place. I should be thinking about him, should be trying to find a way to get him out.

“Are you alright, dear?”

I jumped to my feet and whirled around. I didn’t find anything, of course. Parish’s mom’s voice had only spoke in my head, not on any worldly plane of existence.

Mrs. Feltman – Claudia, she’d insisted I call her – had been visiting me a lot more since the night of Parish’s capture; when I was working with Ace and Spade to figure out ways to break him out of St. Elizabeth’s, I was sitting in the garden, letting Claudia teach me how to control my abilities. I’d been successful, for the most part. I was able to easily filter which spirits entered my mind and I’d learned how to close my mind off completely, so that no one could occupy it except for me. But I still couldn’t control how much of a spirit’s energy I channeled into this world when I allowed myself to accept them; and, because I still needed to concentrate on keeping the mental walls up, I sometimes let down my guard by accident, and it allowed the voices to slip in.

“It takes time,” Claudia had told me reassuringly. “I had years to master this. You’re only just learning.”

It’d tried to let her words comfort me. They didn’t do much.

“I’m fine,” I answered quietly, keeping my voice low even though I knew Ace was in the basement working out and wouldn’t hear me.

Cautiously, I tested my mental walls. They hadn’t slipped much, so Claudia hadn’t heard any of my thoughts. Looking around I asked, “Do you want to come through?”

“Oh no,” Her gentle voice answered. The way she carried her concern in her words reminded me so much of Parish that it hurt. I had to bite my tongue to push away the guilt. I’d find him. I’d get him out.

“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I am, thank you.” I sat up. “I’m going to take a shower now. Can we practice a little more after breakfast?”

“Whenever you want, October. I’m always free,” she whispered. And then she was gone.

 I shook my head firmly and forced myself to stand up and walk into the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later I was walking out of the room, dressed in jeans and a baby pink t-shirt, tying my hair in a loose ponytail as I trotted downstairs.

I peered into the kitchen, unsurprised when I didn’t find Ace there. Her workouts had been lasting a little longer these past few days. When I mentioned this to him yesterday, Spade told me not to worry, that she was just taking her frustrations out on the punching bag. From what I could tell, Spade knew Ace pretty well, so I decided to trust him and not worry about her.

Despite his insistence that she was fine, however, I noticed that he very conveniently showed up just before lunch time, always either brining lunch with him, or cooking it himself. He did the same for dinner. I didn’t want to read too much into it, but it seemed to me like he was doing everything he could to keep her away from the knives.

And the kitchen was always stocked with chocolate, flour and eggs. In three days, we had more brownies, cake and cookies than we could eat.

Not wanting to wait for Ace, I started on breakfast. By the time she emerged from the basement, a wiping the sweat off her brow with a towel, I was already piling slices of French toast onto a plate and dusting them with cinnamon sugar that Ace made herself.

“Good morning,” she called, tossing the towel over her shoulder. “That smells good.”

“Thanks. Will Spade be back in time for breakfast?”

“Dunno,” she said, leaning against the door frame, crossing her arms over her chest. “He might just show up before lunch.”

“Okay.” I turned placed the plate of French toast on the kitchen table and looked up at her.

Even when she was drenched with sweat and in exercise gear, Ace was probably the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life. Of Romani descent, she had radiant skin the color of mocha, just like that Ricky Martin song, and long, thick hair that was black as night. She was tall, toned and curvaceous, with a melodic, slightly raspy voice that probably made a lot of men weak in the knees.

But it was her eyes that really made her stand out. Wide and expressive, they were the color of a spring leaf. Impossibly bright, impossibly green. They regarded me carefully as I set the table.

“Are you alright?” She asked, cocking her head to the side.

“Fine. Why?”

“Your, um, aura. It’s acting funny.”

Internally, I sighed. The trouble with hanging out with Spellcasters was that it was very hard to lie to them. They could read auras. I’d learned the hard way that, unless you were a Spellcaster, too, and had learned to control your aura, you couldn’t make it lie with you.

When I didn’t answer, Ace gave me a sympathetic look. “You’ll see him again, October. We’ll get him out of there,” she said, bending slightly to look me in the eye. “Spade and I will do everything we can to help. You know we will.”

I did know it. She and Spade had spent the last three days helping me gather as much information about St. Elizabeth’s as we would. When they weren’t dealing with clients or running the shop or running off to perform various errands for their boss, they’d devoted all their spare time to helping me find a way to free Parish. And for that I was eternally grateful.

“I know,” I told her with a small nod. “Thank you.”

She smiled.

“Now you go shower before the food gets cold. The shop has to open in less than an hour.”

Eyes widening, she looked at the clock on the wall by the fridge. “Oh, shit!”

I heard soft thuds of sneaker on wood as she raced up the stairs and, smiling to myself, sat down at the kitchen table. As I waited for Ace to come back downstairs, I heard the soft pitter patter of claws on the hardwood floor just before a little black ball of fur launched itself off the floor and into my lap.

“Good morning Tubman,” I scratched Ace’s little one-eyed cat behind the ear. “You hungry.”

Gazing up at me with intelligent yellow eyes, Tubman meowed.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said, feeding her a small piece of French toast.