Page 136 of Cast in Atonement

“You’ll be the one who’s exhausted.” For the first time, Bellusdeo’s worry shifted: she pointed it directly at Kaylin.

“I’m younger than she is, and my job is a lot more physical. I’d rather it be me than her. Wouldn’t you?”

Bellusdeo’s protective hostility began to crack. She glanced at Helen. Helen’s face was a mask; she waited until the Dragon offered a very grudging nod, and then turned to Kaylin. “They are not entirely in Mrs. Erickson’s room; we can approach them from the other side. I don’t guarantee this won’t wake Imelda.” She turned to Bellusdeo. “Perhaps you would like to join the others in the parlor? I will bring Imelda when she wakes.”

Bellusdeo clearly didn’t want to join the Hawks. “I’ll go with Kaylin.”

Helen shook her head. “If the ghosts are restless or panicked, they may attempt to possess you, as they possessed Lord Sanabalis. It is too great a risk.”

The reminder caused Bellusdeo to back down—barely. She turned and walked out the open doors, heading through the halls that had once had a door with a dragon silhouette on it while dragging her feet. Kaylin would have done the same.

“Yes,” Helen said. “There are many similarities between the two of you.” To Kaylin’s surprise, she held out a hand. Kaylin stared at that hand. “It might be a bit uncomfortable for you otherwise; I believe I can stabilize things somewhat for you.”

“We’re not going through a portal, are we?” Kaylin asked, her tone perilously close to outright whining.

“I’m sorry, dear.”

Kaylin grimaced and took Helen’s hand. “You don’t have portals anywhere else in the house—not even at the front door.”

“No. I don’t judge them necessary, and the discomfort to you is not worth the minor improvement in my security. But this is a different matter, and every possible security, no matter how imperfect, is necessary, in my considered opinion.”

Hope squawked. Kaylin’s shoulders slumped, but she took Helen’s hand. There was no obvious portal; she thought Helen would create a door she could open. This didn’t happen. The moment Kaylin took Helen’s hand, the rest of the world fell away. The familiar sitting room elements vanished between one eyeblink and the next.

23

For the first time when she entered a portal, Kaylin listened. Hope sat on her shoulder squawking, his voice soft and blessedly familiar. It wasn’t Hope that she struggled to hear. It was the sound of distant voices, voices that had not entered the portal with her, but nonetheless existed in the space.

It was how she’d heard the Ancient. No one else had heard the sound, as if of a tumultuous crowd, but it had pierced her ears, as if it were a weapon; she had stumbled and would have fallen had she not had Severn and Teela with her.

Sometimes she entered portal space without difficulty; most times, it was a nauseating struggle. The last portal had been the first time she could pinpoint a source of that nausea, that pain. She wondered, uneasy now, if something similar had always existed; if she had, while traversing portal space, heard the cries of something in the outlands that didn’t quite translate into words.

It was a disturbing thought.

Hope squawked again, and this time she paid attention. “Helen—this space...”

“Yes, dear. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all portal, isn’t it?”

“It is, indeed, all portal. There is no fixed location that terminates it; think of it as a circular loop. I can unbend the circle when necessary, but the ghosts rest more easily here than they do in any other space in the house; I have tried many. They respond to some well, but that response diminishes with time—as if some environments evoke fragments of memory, but not strongly enough to form an anchor.”

Kaylin looked at her arm. She couldn’t see the marks beneath the sleeve, which meant they weren’t glowing. Whatever she was meant to do here, the marks weren’t aware of. She’d always used the glow as an indicator.

Helen’s hand felt almost like a normal hand; it was cooler and a little bit harder, as if skin had been laid over warm stone. But it meant Kaylin could tighten her grip if necessary. On portal paths, it was always necessary. Almost always. When she held Nightshade’s arm, she didn’t feel the disorienting dizziness or nausea at all.

Portals were inherently part of the outlands, part of the cloudy, murky, indistinct matter that became, in the hands of beings like Helen, physical rooms, physical objects. Food. Clothing. Anything at all that wasn’t alive.

But maybe she’d heard the voice of the dead Ancient because he was so close to the portal she’d entered. She didn’t normally hear voices. But what if there were other dead Ancients littered across the outlands?

No, that couldn’t be possible. Evanton was aware of the disturbance caused by this Ancient; the garden’s elements were aware of it. Surely if there were another case like this one, the Keeper would be just as aware of it? If the garden’s entrance was located in Elantra, the responsibility covered the entire world, however big that was.

She shook herself and regretted it. “Hope?”

Squawk. The familiar sounded bored. He was standing on her shoulder, instead of supine; he expected that there could be trouble, but so far hadn’t found it. Kaylin, listening, finally heard something that sounded like a voice, or voices—soft, muted, and blurred, which implied a distant crowd, not an individual.

“Are we almost there?”

“We are,” Helen replied. “You can hear them?”

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