The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Seven

Repent

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

Once outside, Isabel takes a full breath for the first time in hours. Reder Angrove’s ghost remains, for the moment, inside the chapel, and the grip of his fear and grief releases. The air is cold, and it scrapes against her throat. Autumn has arrived in Mondirra.

“Did they ritually remove your brain as part of your training, Sentinel?” Geray demands in her ear, voice shaking with suppressed rage. “Take it out and put it back in the wrong way, perhaps?”

Isabel places her hat on her head and pulls the brim down over her eyes. She can still see Geray, trudging half a step behind her with his feet two inches above the ground. “Whatever you have to say, I don’t want to hear it,” she says through her teeth.

“I had an easy solution,” Geray shrieks. “I practically served it to you on a platter!”

“Enough.” Isabel presses herself against the small kitchen’s exterior wall and cranes her neck to see out to the front of the building. Her uniform will hide her in the dark, but only if she’s careful.

Geray floats out in front of her. “Whatever happens in there is on your hands, then.”

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Six

Never

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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.”

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Five

Holy Ground

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“There is another ghost in this house.”

Isabel wakes with a start and sees nothing. It’s grown dark, which means she’s slept much longer than she planned, and she’s not entirely sure what day it is now. The translucent form of Arden Geray hovers beside her narrow bed, the sockets of his eyes as dark as the night outside.

For however many blissful, oblivious hours she was asleep, she had forgotten about him. She groans and pushes herself up. “What are you talking about?”

“A spirit,” he says, enunciating carefully as though he is speaking to a child. “It’s just arrived and it’s none too pleased. What are you going to do about it, Sentinel?”

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Four

Prodigal Son

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Berend takes a sudden, involuntary breath. Pain digs into his ribs. He kicks at the bedclothes, the ache moving down his legs, and tries to sit up.

The nurse’s hands on his shoulders are firm and heavy. “Be still,” she says. “It’s all right.”

It is most assuredly not all right. At best, there’s a member of the illustrious and unscrupulous Belisia family here to threaten his life, limbs, and everyone he cares about—a dwindling number, these days, and one he can count on one hand, but still. At worst, someone is here to kill him.

“My effects,” he says. Talking moves the pain up underneath his lungs. “Where are my things?” His pistol almost certainly isn’t loaded, and there’s no chance he could lift his saber in this state, but his mysterious visitor doesn’t know that.

“They’re locked away on the lower floor,” the nurse says, pushing him into the bed. “What’s wrong?” Her hand moves to his wrist, gentle but strong as a vise.

A shadow darkens the entrance to Berend’s curtained room. He looks up, his pulse pounding in his ears and under the nurse’s fingers. At least she’s here. There will be a witness.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Three

Questions

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Everything hurts.

It’s a sure sign that Berend is alive. He’s never heard of Ondir’s realm being a painful one, though he’d have to ask the Sentinel to be certain. A high, shaky note rings in both ears. Beyond it, muffled voices and footsteps move in and out of his awareness. There is light, also, pressing against the lid of his good eye.

What a beautiful day it will be, he thinks, but when he opens his eye, pain shoots through his skull. The ringing in his ears reaches an agonizing crescendo. He closes both the eye and the empty socket, squeezing them shut, and the pain subsides to a dull throb.

All he can remember is Arden Geray—serial murderer, mad sorcerer, and destroyer of souls—and how Berend shot him in the chest and cut him down. After that, something had slammed into Berend’s body, and he must have lost consciousness. The brightness tells him that it must be broad daylight now, so he’s been out for several hours, at least.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Two

Disbelief

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Isabel shivers. The water turns cold around her, and a lattice of frost spreads out across the side of the metal tub from Geray’s ghostly hands. She draws her knees up to her chest.

“I didn’t do anything,” she says, and she’s almost sure she’s telling the truth. “You were doing unregulated, experimental black magic in an unstable space, and now you’re surprised something went wrong?”

He sneers. His teeth shine white against the black hole of his mouth. “Fix it.”

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The Book of the New Moon Door, Part Two: Chapter One

Arden Geray

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Half an hour later, the constables pull Isabel out of the ruins of Arden Geray’s house. They take Berend and the professor away—to a hospital, she hopes, but her ears still ring and she can’t make out what they’re saying. Beside her, the earth churns and settles as the dead writhe in mindless rage. She can do nothing to quiet them.

The constables don’t notice the subterranean movement in the dark. They place Isabel in an uncovered carriage to take her back to the chapel on the blue field. Geray’s ghost follows.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Gate

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“Wait,” Berend says as they reach the bottom of the stairs. The house is still dark, but it’s an ordinary darkness, and the streetlights are visible from the front windows. An intermittent dark stain leads from the front door toward the back of the house.

Isabel takes an instinctive step back. Is it blood? It was too dark, before, even with her candle, and she hadn’t noticed it. There are no other signs of violence that she can see, though the holy symbol of Alcos on the mantel remains corroded and black.

“We should keep moving,” she says. She doesn’t want to give Geray a chance to begin another ritual. She had sent the ghosts away, but a powerful enough draw could bring them back, and others besides.

Gods. For the briefest moment, she had held their tethers, felt them straining against her will. It was nothing like the gentle touch of the bell and her own ritual circles. The ghosts were in terrible, agonizing pain, crying out with a sound that Isabel could feel rather than hear. She had released them as soon as she had the awareness—she should have taken the time to guide them across the veil properly, but she could barely think. Still, the sensation of it lingered.

If that is what necromancy feels like, she cannot think of a reason why anyone would willingly perform it.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Twenty-Eight

Brace

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Just like Berend suspected, Isabel’s sword proves far more effective against the ghosts. It’s light and springy in his hand, lacking the weight and authority of his own two-handed saber, but when it cuts through the misty forms, the spirits recoil and visibly dim. Their figures remain intact; they’re not like Mikhail, broken and screaming.

Out of reach of the blade, the ghosts rally their energy, brightening and pressing forward again. Something—Geray, the house, or some mystical nonsense Berend won’t even try to understand—is giving them strength. Unfortunately for him, he is made of flesh, and can’t do the same. He’s not as young as he once was, and it’s so very cold in this hallway. The candle hisses and gutters, but for now, it stays lit.

A hand of fog rakes at him with talons like a hawk’s. He brings the sword up, but it’s no use—the ghostly arm passes right through it, and its fingers reach his chest. He feels as though he has swallowed ice, the cold moving down the inside of his body. There is no pain, no sensation of being cut, but the ghost tears through his clothing and skin, leaving bloody marks from his shoulder down to his belly. The wounds ooze, and frost collects at their edges.

They aren’t deep. Eventually, Berend guesses, the spirits will draw enough blood to kill him, or he’ll freeze to death in the aura that surrounds them, but for the moment, he is still able to fight. He’ll keep them off of Isabel until she finishes whatever she’s doing.

It is that moment when she slumps over, hat askew, her body curled around the chalk circle inscribed on the wooden floor.

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