Twelve Signa
TWELVE
S IGNA
Aris paced the hall outside the library doors the next afternoon, working on building permanent lines between his pinched brows. “Are you certain this will work?” he asked for what was perhaps the fourth time. Signa had lost count.
“My answer isn’t going to change, Aris. You can never be certain with spirits.”
He was just as thrilled as he’d been the last several times she’d answered him, which was to say that Aris continued his pacing. Signa brushed her hands down her arms, trying to quell the goose bumps that rose along her skin, a product of his buzzing anxiety.
“Would you please stand still?” Signa snapped when she could take no more of his antics. “It may not be perfect, but at least it’s a plan.”
His expression turned incredulous. “Surely you don’t consider this a plan . It’s a half-baked idea at best.”
He wasn’t wrong , though Signa cared little for the verbiage. “Do you have any better ideas?”
Aris ceased his pacing long enough to sigh deeply. His foot, however, kept tapping away at the floor. “What happens if this doesn’t work? Will we all get possessed?”
Signa drew her bottom lip between her teeth. “It’s unlikely. Possessions are exhausting for spirits, and they tend to be reserved for rare cases—”
“I hope this isn’t your way of trying to reassure me.”
“It’s not as simple as me touching someone’s skin and watching them die, Aris. I don’t just take a needle and thread and let my powers do all of the work for me. This requires nuance and luck. We need to cater to the spirits’ emotions. Their behaviors. To find their triggers and help assuage them.”
Aris leaned against the door, oblivious to the noisy spirits who awaited them on the other side. He folded his arms against his chest, watching Signa. “What even are you, anyway?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What are you? I’m Fate, my skulking brother is Death, Blythe is Life… but no matter how much I look at your tapestry, I can never seem to figure it out. And so I ask again—what are you?”
Signa went still. This wasn’t a new conversation, yet her skin grew clammy, and she was immediately on the defensive. This very topic had fueled dozens of conversations with Blythe and Sylas alike, and still there was no decisive answer.
“Not everything that exists can be so definitively labeled,” she said, echoing something Sylas had once told her. “I don’t know what I’m called , exactly, but I know what I can do. I act as a waypoint for unsettled souls. I’m… a bridge of sorts.”
“A bridge?” he echoed, staring at her as if she’d grown another head.
“Yes, a bridge. I’m here so that these souls have someone who can understand them.
Who can communicate between the worlds of the living and the nonliving and help both spirits and the mourning alike.
” She stood taller as she said it, as if daring him to rebuke the title she’d given herself.
But Aris only shrugged and dropped his arms.
“Very well. Then go be a bridge, yes? Bridge these spirits all the way to the afterlife and out of my home forever.”
Signa ignored his dramatics, stepping around her brother-in-law and into the library.
Though the spirits had taken to roaming Wisteria Gardens, this room remained their hub.
Knowing what she did now, she wondered whether the space had once acted as the theater’s backstage, or perhaps the stage itself.
“This place used to be a theater,” she told Aris, keeping quiet so as not to remind the spirits of their peril and all that had led them to their purgatory. “They were performers in the ballet. Their outfits make so much sense now.”
“Their outfits?” Aris echoed.
Signa grimaced. “They look like they’ve been magicked straight out of Blythe’s old fairy tales. Be thankful that you can’t see them.”
“Signa, love, I am thankful for that every night.” Aris slumped into his usual seat on the chaise, tossing one leg over the other. “Though I am a great patron of the arts myself. I love performers—peculiar sorts, but always entertaining.”
“That’s precisely why we’re here, Aris! It’s the piece of the puzzle that we’ve been missing. These spirits are performers , and what do performers do?”
“… Perform?”
“Precisely!”
Aris snorted, looking far more comfortable in his seat than someone in a room full of spirits had the right to. “Perform for who? The walls? They have no audience.”
“Right again! How is someone meant to perform when they have no one to share their talents with?” Signa crossed the room to fetch a chair that she dragged back to her previous position, situated amid the spirits.
In front of her was the older woman who Signa now recognized to be the ballet mistress, continuing to clap and bark orders at the others.
“Excuse me?” Signa made a motion as if to tap her shoulder, though of course she could not make contact. “I’m here to see the performance.”
The woman’s clapping stilled, a strange look contorting her face. When she finally turned to acknowledge Signa, her voice was softer. More professional. “Take your seat, we will begin momentarily.”
“But it was meant to start an hour ago.” Signa didn’t know exactly where she was going with this, nor did she know how much to push to keep the spirit moving along without getting sucked back into her loop.
The woman’s eyes grew wide. “ An hour? ” she echoed, following that with a slew of words in a language that Signa couldn’t understand. “ Unacceptable! Where is Jules?”
Signa had to suck in a gasp when Odette appeared from the floorboards with no warning and whined, “ I cannot find him anywhere! ”
This news did not please the mistress, but she clapped her hands again. “Very well, then you will sit out. The show must go on.” Before Odette could argue, the woman surged forward, black skirts sweeping the floor as she gathered up the rest of the spirits. “Places, everyone! To your places!”
The spirits scurried forward while Signa motioned for Aris to take a seat beside her.
Signa sat on the edge of her chair, hands clasped together as she prayed this would work.
The spirits, to her surprise, had all snapped to attention, standing as straight as toy soldiers.
They stood in two lines, one on either side of the room, the women positioning themselves on the very tips of their toes in preparation for their entrance.
For an uncomfortably long moment they remained that way with beaming smiles plastered onto their faces.
All except for Odette, who paced the length of the shelves behind them, hands fretting and bloodied tears in her eyes.
Eventually, though, every smile slipped and the dancers glanced over at their mistress.
“What is it?” Signa asked the woman, earning a groan from Aris that she ignored. “What’s the matter?”
The woman whipped to face her, her expression so scalding that Signa felt as if she were being reprimanded. “Where is the music?”
“The music?” Signa repeated, sinking back in her chair. “Is… there supposed to be music?”
“Are you daft? This is the ballet, child. We cannot be expected to perform without music.”
“What’s happening?” Aris asked, doing that annoying squinting thing with his eyes again. “What are they saying?”
“They say they need music,” she told him, keeping her voice low but never letting her eyes leave the woman’s.
“Of course they do, they’re dancers.” Aris scoffed as though it were obvious, and Signa threw her arms up and fell back into her chair.
“Forgive my complete and utter idiocy. What a fool I am for not knowing precisely what the spirits would need!”
Aris shrugged. “Not everyone understands artistic integrity.”
She rolled her eyes. “Can’t you magic them some music?”
“Ah yes, let me pluck the perfect tune out of thin air.” He folded his arms. “I can get them instruments , yes. Even musicians to play them if necessary, though I imagine they will only perform to a certain score.”
Loath as she was to admit it, he was right.
“Have you any musicians?” she asked the mistress, making her very best effort not to glower.
“Of course we have—” She cut off with a frown, searching for them. “ I’m sure they’re skulking around here somewhere.”
“Splendid. Aris, come with me.” Signa pushed from her seat without waiting to see if he followed, halfway out of the room before she remembered to look back at the stern-faced woman.
“We’re going to find your musicians,” Signa promised her. “Please, hold your places. I’m sure this won’t take long.”
Aris followed close on Signa’s heels as she hurried down the stairs, making her way into the drawing room. She didn’t know how long the spirits would remain even-tempered, and she dared not upset them any further.
It’d been a long while since Signa had played any instrument. Music had never been her forte. Still, she had at least a rudimentary knowledge of the piano, which is why she marched directly to one. As she placed her fingers over the keys, Aris’s brows lowered.
“Don’t tell me that you intend to be their pianist?” he asked.
Signa straightened her shoulders. “If you’re not going to be helpful, then you can at least be quiet. Have a seat and leave me to my ideas.”
Aris waved a dismissive hand in the air before attempting to do as requested. Given his nature, however, it was physically impossible for him to oblige. Instead, he turned the chair directly toward her and kicked one leg over the other.
“Go on, then,” he said. “Let’s have a show.”