Never
Isabel turns to the door. Darkness has fallen over the chapel, and a black abyss stretches between her and where the constable, presumably, is trying to get in. The church is haunted. Maybe the incongruousness of a ghost on holy ground will delay the authorities’ realization of the fact, but the signs are obvious.
The knock of a heavy fist sounds again. Geray gets up and floats through the black, his form disappearing like a breath on a cold day. A howl of agony shakes the chapel.
There’s no way they can’t hear this. Isabel shelters her candle, the only light remaining in the church, with both hands. Her fingers ache with cold.
Geray reappears, accompanied by a chorus of distant screams, both animal and human. “They’re going to knock down your door if you don’t answer,” he says. “They have a battering ram and everything.”
Isabel turns to Risoven. “Can you delay them getting in?”
“I will try.” He reaches inside his habit for the silver arch on a chain, the symbol of Ondir, and touches it to his forehead before wrapping his blanket around his shoulders and getting to his feet.
He leaves the light with Isabel. It only takes a few paces for the darkness to swallow him up. He bumps into a disturbed pew on his way, and his startled gasp and the sound of the heavy bench scraping against the floor reassure Isabel that he’s still there.
She picks up the bell. Watcher on the wall, let him be safe, she prays, though she knows it’s no good. Ondir isn’t listening. The only thing that will save Risoven is her ritual, and it isn’t guaranteed.
The bell rings with a clear, piercing note, sharp as a knife and cold as the surrounding air. A shiver runs down Isabel’s back. The eyes of the spirit have turned toward her.
“In the name of Isra, mother of creation, and of Alcos, king and father, and of Ondir, lord of the gates, I call the name of Reder Angrove. Hark to me and speak!”
Icy wind howls through the chapel. It carries the sound of cracking twigs and sobbing children, quiet and exhausted. Thin, gray light breaks through the unnatural darkness, and the form of a tall, gangling man appears beside the altar.
His head is bent almost to his left shoulder, his neck broken by the noose. He shimmers and wavers with every panicked facsimile of breath, and his eyes dart from side to side, wide with fear. The ritual is supposed to calm him, to bring him back to himself, but the wind still howls between the chapel’s walls and the cold does not relent.
“Good evening, constable,” Risoven says. His voice is flat and distant.
The officer’s reply is lost in the ghostly din.
“If I don’t hunt the children don’t eat and and they’re so thin and if they don’t eat and if I don’t hunt—” the ghost says, a mad, breathless litany that echoes and repeats itself. “I can get rabbits but too many rabbits make you sick and I’m not allowed to hunt deer but too many rabbits make you sick and the children don’t eat—”
“Reder Angrove,” Isabel says. “Can you hear me?”
“They’re so thin and they don’t eat and I love them like my own I never had and Gauwert’s out of work and I’m not allowed to hunt deer.”
Geray walks into view, giving the other ghost an appraising look. “Fascinating. Are they usually this chatty?”
Isabel, as usual, ignores him. “You’ve been hanged, Reder. Do you remember? You’re in the chapel on the blue field, outside of Mondirra.”
His mouth opens and shuts like a fish out of water, and the sound of his voice fills the room. “I love them like my own I never had children never had a wife never never never—”
“Can you hear me?” Isabel asks again.
“If I don’t hunt the children don’t eat not allowed to hunt deer never never never.”
“I don’t think he can,” Geray says, stalking back over to Isabel. “Seems you’re losing your touch, Sentinel.”
She knows it’s much worse than that. Geray wouldn’t be here otherwise. “Be quiet,” she says through her teeth. “I’m trying to focus.”
“And it’s going so well,” Geray says. “Don’t let me stop you.” The black slash of a smile across his ghostly face is infuriating.
Reder Angrove jerks and twitches, as though he’s reliving his death at the end of a noose. The soft, weak cries of hungry children cross the chapel like a creeping fog. Isabel puts her hand around the candle flame and tries to think.
“No, sir,” Risoven says from behind her. “Usually, folk wait until morning to bring in a body. I haven’t seen anyone since sundown.”
“We apprehended his brother on the road.” The constable’s voice is loud, his syllables clipped short with frustration. Something is wrong—in addition to everything that has already gone awry tonight—it’s not a crime to take a body to the blue field. Does this have something to do with the Resurrection Act? It’s far too soon for the university to be claiming bodies.
Geray smirks. “Better think fast, Sentinel.”
Reder’s chanting of never never never is inside Isabel’s body, driving out her thoughts and bending her pulse and breath to its rhythm. “Can you see the gate?” she asks, loud enough to hear her own voice. It occurs to her that the constables outside might be able to hear her, too.
“Too many rabbits make you sick never if I don’t hunt they’re so thin never never if the king’s men heard them crying but they won’t never never never—”
“Stand aside, priest,” the constable orders. There are several of them, and their hard-soled boots tap against the steps in front of the door.
Geray crosses his arms over the hole in his chest. “They’re going to arrest him, and you as well, and I’d rather not be stuck in prison with you.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Isabel asks.
“It’s a pity you don’t have the Warder device,” he muses. “It’s quite effective, if limited in its uses.”
The sound of Mikhail’s scream tears through Isabel’s memory. “Absolutely not. Even if it wasn’t buried under your house.” She takes a breath, feeling icy air pierce her chest. All her prayers are forgotten. Ondir isn’t listening anyway.
Geray gives a languid shrug, the ends of his fingers trailing silver mist. “Suit yourself.”
At the door, Risoven cries out in alarm. A crash follows.
“They’re breaking in,” Geray says, as though it isn’t obvious.
The constables enter the chapel with the beat of booted footsteps and a murmur of surprise. Reder’s darkness and cold haven’t lifted, despite his manifestation. An animal scream shoots through the gloom—a rabbit, maybe. Hunger gnaws at Isabel’s belly; she doesn’t know if it’s her own or Reder’s.
“Is anyone there?” one of the constables shouts. “Come out where we can see you.”
Geray dips out of sight and reappears again. “One’s got a pistol. I’d advise not moving until you can get rid of all this,” he says, gesturing vaguely to the room.
“Reder Angrove,” Isabel says, “you must be gone from this place.”
“Gauwert’s out of work and if you eat too many rabbits you get sick and the children are sick and they don’t eat and they’re so thin and the king’s men don’t hear them crying.”
Without the power of the divine to support her, Isabel’s words mean nothing. Reder isn’t listening to anything but his own pain. He’s dissipating with every twitch of his limbs, and soon he’ll fade back into the misery he’s inflicted on the chapel.
“It appears that, as usual, I have to do everything myself,” Geray says with an exaggerated sigh. He floats into Isabel’s field of vision. “Sentinel, I need you to listen carefully and do exactly as I tell you.”
“What?” is all Isabel has in response.
“Are all of you this stupid? I’m going to get this spirit under control, but you’ll have to do the heavy lifting. Do you understand?”
“Who’s in there?” the voice of a second constable comes in through the blackness. “Show yourself, or I will fire.” He pulls back the hammer of his pistol, and it’s louder than anything else in the room.
Isabel picks up the candle, the bell, and the blanket keeping her warm. Her bare feet are quiet against the stone as she passes Reder’s convulsing form and makes her way to the kitchen, out of the potential line of fire.
Risoven is still out there. He could be hurt. Maybe if she goes around to the front door—
Reder follows her, dragged by an invisible noose and fading into a gray fog as he goes. Geray stalks behind him. “What are you going to do, Sentinel? Run? Turn yourself in? Listen to me.”
Isabel closes the kitchen door behind her and drags a spindly wooden chair to prop under the latch. Her coat and boots are here. Risoven must have brushed the worst of the dirt from them, because they are black once more instead of a filthy brown.
“I can get control of the ghost,” Geray says.
She turns to him with a frown. “You mean necromancy.” Nausea churns her stomach, a mix of hunger and the memory of the network of magic in Geray’s house.
“It will quiet him down, and then you can go out there and speak to the police and tell them there’s just been a misunderstanding. If you like, you can release him when they leave and go back to shouting at him.”
Her answer is instinctive and emphatic. “No.” She may not, in the strictest sense of the term, be a Sentinel anymore—that’s a question to address later, when there isn’t a ghost babbling in her ears and threatening to bring the church down around her—but she will not stoop to the very magics she was trained to seek out and destroy.
“Don’t be a fool, Sentinel,” Geray growls. “They’re moving through the sanctum now. At any moment, they’ll either come in here and shoot you, or they’ll take down your pathetic barricade and the walking corpse will tear them limb from limb. Do you want that on your fragile conscience? Do you want the old brother thrown in jail? It won’t be good for his health.”
It would only take a moment. A little blood, a circle, and Reder would be on her leash, silent and cooperative. The dark and the cold would lift. His rage-driven body would fall as still as the moment of its death. The constables could even take it with them, if that was what they wanted, and it wouldn’t give anyone any trouble, even as the researchers at the university cut it apart—that is, unless it came in contact with a different angry spirit. Isabel would be safe, and Risoven as well, and she would have all the time she needed to figure out what had happened in the nether world and fix it.
As if he can read her thoughts, Geray says, “It’ll have to be your blood. That should make you feel better. Take from your forearm, not your palm.”
Isabel sets the candle down. The bell goes in her skirt pocket, freeing her hands.
“We don’t have all evening, Sentinel,” Geray warns.
A gust of wintry wind blows the candle out. With it goes Reder’s manifestation. He howls in wordless agony down the corridors of the church, and the constables make an alarmed noise. The pots and pans clatter and clang painfully around Isabel’s ears.
Her hands find her coat and boots in the darkness, as well as her hat on the chair under the coat, and she puts them on. She slips out the kitchen door, latches it behind her, and goes out into the night.
Behind her, Reder howls with the cries of his starving family and the animals he hunted to save them, in addition to his own. Geray adds to them with a wordless, frustrated complaint as the tether between them drags him after her.
Thanks for reading! You were the best reader today. Well done.
Space Whales Press 
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