I felt the blood rising to my head. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to wipe that wretched half grin off his face. Suddenly the room was spinning. I felt a hand on my shoulder, but whose I could not say. The edges of my vision darkened and I leaned against the shelf, my fingers stumbling over the broken half-brick. I blinked.
Wind whipped through the torn curtains in front of me and I found myself kneeling on the floor. There was glass everywhere. Where had it come from? I felt nauseous.
“Abigail?” Jenny’s voice sounded muffled and distant.
Hands shook my shoulders and I looked up into Jackaby’s cloud gray eyes. “Rook. Rook!”
I whipped around. Cordelia Hoole was still crouched behind the desk. Finstern lay on the bench, but Pavel was gone.
Panic shot through me. “What happened?” I managed to say.
Jackaby’s expression was furious. “Hold still,” he said, staring into my eyes intensely. At length he stood and helped me into the chair. “She is herself again,” he said. “What do you remember, Miss Rook?”
I tried to make sense of what was happening. “I don’t know! I just—he was talking about Jenny and I was furious, and then I felt dizzy and . . .” I took a deep breath. “Where is Pavel? What happened?”
Jackaby and Jenny looked at each other. Their expressions were not reassuring. Jackaby stepped over to the window. Glass crunched under his shoes as he looked through the broken frame into the garden. “He’s gone,” he said.
“What was that?” Jenny asked, looking at me nervously.
“She shows signs of a phrenic mutuality. The aftereffects of possession.”
I glanced at Jenny. “There are aftereffects?”
“Of course there are aftereffects!” Jackaby pulled the curtain shut again over the shattered hole and crunched back across the room. “Two spirits are not meant to occupy the same mind. If you and I were to wear the same pair of trousers at once, what do you think would happen?”
I swallowed. “They would stretch out all wrong?”
“That’s an optimistic outcome. How do you feel?”
“A little weak about the seams, now that you mention it.” I took a deep breath. “Jenny, we need to tell him.”
Jenny nodded. “Tell me what?” Jackaby looked back and forth between us. “You wouldn’t. You didn’t. Of course you did. What were you thinking?!”
“Oh, Abigail! I’m so sorry! I had no idea,” said Jenny.
“We only tried it once,” I said. “Well, a couple of times, but not for very long. She was making such marvelous progress, sir!”
“Have you felt any other dizzy spells? Blackouts?”
“No, I—” I caught myself. “Well, yes, actually. Right before Finstern turned on his machine, and maybe once earlier, in the office.”
“This is all my fault.” Jenny looked mortified.
“And how did you feel, right before it came over you?”
“I was angry,” I said. “He was laughing, and it just made me furious.”
Jackaby considered. “You may be experiencing Jenny’s emotions alongside your own. If she entered your mind, then she may have left a part of herself behind. Argh! How could you be so foolish? Both of you! Spiritual possession is inexpressibly risky and unpredictable. This is absolutely unacceptable!”
“It won’t happen again,” I said. “But I still don’t fully understand it. I had a dizzy spell—but that doesn’t explain how Pavel broke free.”
Jenny answered gently. “Pavel didn’t, sweetheart.”
I shook my head. “What? Me? I pushed him out?”
“I don’t think push fully expresses it. You were”—Jackaby paused to choose his words carefully—“forceful.”
I wracked my brain to recall my own actions, but all I came up with was a headache. I stood slowly and crossed to the window. The morning light stung my eyes as I brushed aside the drapes. The sun was beating down and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Glass and scraps of wood from the window frame littered the front lawn. A rough patch of grass had been singed in the middle of the debris, and in the dead center lay a broken red brick.
“Is he dead?” I asked. It felt like the brick was in the pit of my stomach.
“If he isn’t dead, he is in exceedingly poor shape,” Jackaby replied. “He’s not the one we need to worry about right now.”
“I’ll worry just a little bit, if you don’t mind,” I said. “I don’t make a habit of making enemies out of creatures inclined to murder me horribly in my sleep.”
“Pavel mentioned a council,” said Jackaby. “His benefactors. Now, there are countless factions within the otherworldly courts, but the Unseelie have never been well organized. Dangerous, yes, but historically unruly and wild as lightning. The collective races have never coexisted, which may be the only reason the human race has survived this long. Now they’re organizing. And what’s worse, they’re good at it.”
I didn’t know what to say. A splinter of glass freed itself from the ruined frame and tinkled to the ground. The tiny clink resonated in the silence of the room.
“I don’t know who this council is,” Jackaby said, “but they’re organized, they’re effective, and they’re powerful enough to make a self-serving monster like Pavel risk death before disloyalty. If you’re going to worry, Miss Rook, worry about them. They are architects of chaos, and now they have the creative genius of some of the most powerful scientific minds of our age engineering their evil. Whatever they’re building, it isn’t good.”
“The future,” Jenny breathed.
Jackaby turned to the broken window. “Not if we can help it.”
Chapter Twenty
“They’re going to kill me.” Cordelia Hoole’s voice broke the tense silence. Her eyes were glassy.
“They’re going to try,” confirmed Jackaby without emotion. “But if you—”
“They killed you,” the widow said. She was staring at Jenny.
Jenny nodded. “Yes, they did. A long time ago. And we’re going to find out who did it, and we’re going to stop her from ever doing it again.”
Mrs. Hoole just stared blankly. “They’re going to kill me.”
“That isn’t going to happen, Mrs. Hoole,” I said. “We’re here to protect you.”
“Yes,” Jackaby confirmed. “You’re safe here. Well, not right here, obviously.” Glass crunched beneath his feet. “The cellar is the most secure chamber on the property, and given the circumstances, probably the best place to put you up for the evening. Or down for the morning, I suppose.”
“We have a cellar?” I said.
Jenny nodded. “It’s just a little root cellar. There’s a trapdoor in the back garden.”