Chapter 20 #2
She chuckled into my hair as she stroked it. “No kidding. Don’t grow up, kiddo. They make it sound cool, but it’s a trap.”
We both laughed a little, but it was tinged with just a touch of sadness.
She knew as well as I did that my whole existence somehow felt like a trap, like a rabbit born into a snare.
I may still escape the trap in the end, but the knowledge that I was living in one was like a weight pressing down on me every waking minute of the day.
I was supposed to be worrying about boys and driver’s licenses and prom dresses, not battling for my life against an ancient evil. I never thought I’d long for typical teenage drama, but at this point, I’d have gladly embraced it.
I pulled away from my mom, and I caught a glimpse through the window of Persi’s workshop. “Should someone go tell her? About Ostara?” I asked.
My mom followed my gaze, but didn’t answer.
“I think she’d want to know, don’t you?” I pressed.
“I suppose,” my mom replied.
“Mom, we can’t just leave her out there all winter,” I said, a little impatiently. “You’re worried about me looking skinny? Is Persi eating? Or sleeping? I feel like we’re seeing less of her by the day, and it can’t be good for her to shut up in there by herself all the time!”
My mom’s face flushed guiltily. “We’ve tried, Wren. We’ve tried to talk to her. She won’t open the door. She probably just needs some sp—”
“She does not need space! There’s a difference between space and self-imposed solitary confinement, Mom.”
My mom held up her hands in surrender. “You’re right. I’ll… I’ll go out there and talk to her. See if I can get her to come inside for a meal.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And whatever you do, don’t mention Leila.”
“Leila Nightjar?” my mom asked, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. “Why?”
“I overheard some drama between the two of them this morning,” I said. “Just trust me.”
My mom sighed. “Just what we need, more drama. Thanks for the heads up.”
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, so I gave my mom a hasty hug and headed up the stairs to my room. When I pulled out my phone, I had three texts from Jess.
Wren, this is your last warning.
I will literally get on a plane if you don’t answer me.
Am I booking a ticket or what? Your call.
I was about to text that I was fine, but that was a lie. I wasn’t fine. I needed to unload on someone, and here was Jess, volunteering. I hit the call button, and she picked up after half a ring.
“Wren! Thank God! I was literally pulling out a duffel bag.”
Even just hearing Jess’ voice softened the sharp prodding edges of my anxiety.
“Hey, Jess. Sorry about the radio silence. I’m okay, just… overwhelmed, I guess. It’s not… I mean, I’m not like, avoiding you or anything.”
“No, don’t apologize. I ignore my phone for days at a time. We’re cool. I was just worried.”
“Okay, good,” I said. “The reason I’m calling now is… well… I was wondering what you know about demons.”
A solid five seconds of ringing silence met these words.
“Jess? Are you still there?”
“Yeah.” The word was terse. “Sorry, I’m just… processing.”
“Understandable.”
I heard an echo of my own shaky, deep breath from the other end of the line. I sat down on the edge of my bed, waiting. Finally, she spoke.
“Like… actual demons? Like, The Exorcist? Possession by the devil? Dante’s Inferno type shit?”
“Well… yeah. I guess.”
“This is why Durupinen don’t fuck with witchcraft,” she murmured, the words barely audible. Then she cleared her throat. “Sorry. So, the short answer to your question is nothing. Demons don’t figure into Durupinen lore or our training in any way that I’ve ever encountered.”
“You mean Durupinen don’t believe in them?”
“I’m not sure it’s that we don’t believe in them, necessarily.
There are Durupinen of all different religions and cultures in every corner of the world.
I think it’s more that demons aren’t something we encounter in the carrying out of our duties.
I’m pretty sure they would have prepared us for something like that. ”
I felt my heart sink. I’d hoped the Durupinen might have some insight.
“I’m almost afraid to ask this, but… why exactly are you asking me about demons?” Jess asked.
I sighed. “I’ve been looking into the history of the Darkness—you know, trying to understand better the exact nature of what I’m up against.”
“And you found out the Darkness is a demon?” Jess gasped.
“No… at least, I don’t think so. But a demon is involved, somehow.”
As briefly as I could, I explained what I had seen in my visions so far, about Ambrose and Abaddon, and the details of their bargains.
“So the Darkness is this Ambrose Wright?” Jess asked.
“I think so. But I don’t know how. How could a human—just a normal human—become whatever the hell the Darkness is?”
“Well, I don’t know a lot about the Darkness, or about demons, but souls? Well, those I know quite a bit about,” Jess said grimly. “And that’s what Ambrose was bargaining with… his soul.”
My heart sped up. It seemed to flutter rather than beat as Jess’ words washed over me.
“When I’m talking about souls,” she went on, “what I’m really talking about are spirits.
A spirit is simply a soul without a body.
A ghost is simply an unhoused soul, wandering without the vessel that’s meant to contain it.
In other words, the only difference between a ghost and a soul is the housing situation. ”
“I never really thought about it like that,” I admitted.
The concept of a soul felt entirely abstract—whereas the idea of ghosts had become very concrete for me.
Between Asteria, Sarah Claire, and Bernadette, I no longer held on to any delusions that ghosts were the stuff of nightmares and campfire stories.
Somehow, when the conversation turned to demons and souls, I felt like we were venturing back into the world of superstition and religious delusion.
Now I realized that wasn’t the case at all, and it steadied me.
“The soul is meant to remain whole,” Jess went on, oblivious to my musings, “because the soul is on a specific journey, and it needs to be whole to complete that journey. A broken or divided soul would be like a traveler with no shoes, no supplies, no means of transport, lost and confused.”
“Have you actually encountered broken or partial souls?” I asked, horrified and yet fascinated.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Jess replied, and the heaviness in her voice made my heart skip a beat. “The calling of the Durupinen is to shepherd souls through the Gateways between the worlds of the living and the dead, and to protect them as we do. But over time, our sisterhood became… greedy. Selfish.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that they realized there were certain… benefits to Crossing souls. There was a way to siphon off some of their energy—their life force. Taking in this energy made the Durupinen youthful and beautiful. It slowed the process of aging. It could even be used to heal someone or keep them alive.”
“So the Durupinen were… stealing life?” I asked, horror hollowing out my voice.
“Yes,” Jess said bluntly. “Not all of them, but many. It had been going on, unchecked, for centuries. It was like an open secret—a rule everyone was supposed to follow, but that no one stopped you from breaking. Unsurprisingly, it was the most rampant among the powerful because they saw themselves as above the laws that they enforced.”
I swallowed hard. “Does that mean Celeste was—”
“No,” Jess said quickly. “Celeste never participated in that. She was one of the few in the Council's highest ranks who refused on principle. But she couldn’t prevent the others from doing it. In fact, the High Priestess she took over for had been artificially prolonging her life for years. She died within months after she stopped.”
“What happened to the spirits whose life force got stolen?” I asked.
“The concern,” Jess said, “was that the spirits would get stuck in the Aether. That’s what we call the liminal space on the other side of the Gateway, a place where spirits will sometimes linger before completing their Crossing.
If a spirit loses enough of their life force, they can get lost and confused in the Aether, and never complete their journey. ”
“But that’s awful!” I cried. “That’s like… like purgatory or something, isn’t it?”
“You’re right, it is awful,” Jess said. “It goes against everything we’re supposed to stand for, hurting a spirit instead of protecting it.
When Celeste came to power, she cracked down fiercely on Leeching—that’s what the practice is called.
Any Durupinen who participates in it now and is caught faces a lifetime in one of our prisons—and trust me when I say that’s a punishment bad enough to deter almost anyone. ”
I could feel my imagination ready to spiral away, formulating a hundred questions about the inner workings of Durupinen prisons, but I reined it in. I had other, more pressing and relevant questions to get to.
“So the broken souls… can they be fixed?” I asked.
Jess sighed heavily into the phone, and I knew the answer before she told it to me.
“Not by any means I know of,” she said. “And a spirit who has lost too much of their life force turns into something called a Wraith. It’s like an empty vessel, a being void of the essence of humanity. In that form, it can be controlled completely.”
“Controlled by who? Who would do something like that?” I asked.
“By someone with the magical skills and malevolent will to use them,” Jess said. “In the Durupinen world, that usually means the Necromancers, a brotherhood hellbent on gaining control of the Gateways and using any means to do it, including creating an army of Wraiths.”
Unbidden, a horde of empty eyed ghosts being controlled like puppets by evil puppet masters flooded my mind, trampling my concentration and horrifying me into a prolonged silence. I was silent so long that Jess must have correctly guessed that she’d scared me.