"Do you have any proof?" Ivana was holding my gaze, unwilling to yield. "Other than that which you senselessly erased?"
The question washed over me like a bucket of ice water washing off the dregs of a nasty fever, sweeping away the malice that had suddenly consumed and blinded me. The overwhelming desire to cause Carmen harm had robbed me of reason.
"No," I realised, and the tense knot in my stomach loosened. "No proof, just conviction."
"Do you realise," Ivana said, slowly, "the weight of your accusations? Especially without any proof, we could knock on their door and they could deny the whole affair, and then we'd be back to stage one with nothing gained except an intensified enmity. That's the last thing this community needs during such dire times."
"What do you want from me?" I murmured. The room around us seemed to dissolve, so that I felt as though it was just myself and Ivana staring each other out in a vacuum.
"I want the truth."
"I've told you everything. I don't know what else to tell you-"
"Don't you go thinking that I'm not already aware of you, girl," Ivana growled. "It was you in the park that night, hiding amongst the shadows. You listened in on a very private conversation that weren't meant for your ears, didn't you? Tell me, who were you hiding with?"
I couldn't escape her gaze. Her irises were a dark, unshifting green, like layer upon layer of emeralds, crushed to dust. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"I think you do," said Ivana, and then she clapped her hands together. Just like that, the void that had swallowed the rest of the room recoiled. I felt my whole weight jolt back into me, as though I were being set back on my feet after weightlessly floating. "But, there you go, you've made your choice and now you'll reap the consequences. We'll go visit with the Vespins, and when they deny your accusations, know that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it without solid proof. You will have to face them with the assuredness that you set this train in motion."
Ivana lingered a moment, her eyes flitting over the wreckage that was assembled around our feet, and then stalked out of the room. I was left alone, and in the silence that followed I frantically tried to still my beating heart.
When I finally calmed down, I went to join the others downstairs. Ivana seemed to have returned to her usual pompous self, barking out orders to the two police officers while Vivian sobbed on the phone to my father, pleading with him to come home from work early. They took our statements and then they left, but not before Ivana could depart without a final jeer.
"I hope to see you again soon, Miss Sweetman," she said to me, raising a sinewy hand in farewell. "I have a feeling that this isn't the last time we'll meet, especially if you and Jet are quickly becoming friends. I'll tell him you said hello."
I opened my mouth and said something in return, but what came out was unintelligible. Ivana Burr raised an eyebrow and then left. I stared down into the bowl of my hands, hoping that somehow the answers to all the untended questions in my mind could be found there. I found nothing.
When I looked up, Vivian was staring directly at me. Her cheeks were streaked raw, and her hands were clasped around a blotchy handkerchief. "Your father will be home soon," she said to me, and then, "you can sleep in the spare room for a little while, until we get this whole thing sorted out. We will get this sorted out, you know."
My mind was blank; I only nodded. Vivian came to stand before me, placing her hands on each of my shoulders. "Do you really think it was Edith's daughter that did this?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe."
Vivian gave me a reproachful glare. "I don't like this, Saffy. It might make things a lot worse than they already are."
"I just said what I thought," I said, my temper flaring. I took a deep breath before continuing. "I didn't say that it was definitely her, I just said that it was the only person that I could imagine would have any reason to do it."
"Edith isn't going to like this," Vivian sighed, running a hand through her frazzled her. "She's not going to like this one little bit."
"Good. Tell everyone that her daughter is a vandal and a thug."
"Saffy!" my mother gasped. "This is exactly what I was talking about-"
"Alright, alright," I said, and then I turned my eyes on her, as wide and sincere as I could make them. "I'm sorry. I'm just a bit shook up, that's all."
Vivian's face softened. She rubbed my arm and offered up a meek smile. "I know, Sweetie. I am, too. Listen, I'll go pop the kettle on. We need to sit down and not think about things until your father gets home. How does that sound?"
"Perfect," I said, and I watched as she made her way into the kitchen. When she was gone, I threw myself onto the sofa and planted my face into the cushions. Darkness. Release. They were synonymous.
"Bravo," a voice said, and I shot upright. Mona was sitting in the armchair opposite me, her face shimmering with pride. "That was quite the show, Saffy. I could hardly have done better myself. At this rate, I'm going to be out of a haunting gig."
*
The spare bedroom was small and cramped, but it was made even cosier by Mona's refusal to leave me alone once I closed the door behind me that night. It was ironic, really, because she didn't actually take up any room at all. She sat at the bottom of the bed and I lay along it, with my feet slicing quite comfortably through her abdomen.
She didn't seem to mind. She was too busy quizzing me about the events of the afternoon to even notice.
"I can't be everywhere at once, you know," she said. "This was one thing that I had no idea about. Come on, fill me in."
I told her the story, this time not bothering to retain any details. When I mentioned the message on the mirror, her expression darkened. I figured that telling her about it could either be beneficial or inconsequential, so I had nothing to lose.
"Well, you're right in your assumption that it wasn't a human being who did this," Mona said, her voice grave.
I felt myself stiffen. "What do you mean?"
"A spirit did this," Mona confirmed. "A spirit who wanted to warn you about something."
"About Rigatona?"
Mona's eyes flashed. "Yes."
"What's that?"
"Not what," Mona corrected me in a whisper. "Who."
I leaned forward, as though we were at a campfire telling ghost stories. "Who is it, Mona? Who's Rigatona?"
"She's an old, old spirit, older than any other spirits can recall, and a formidable one at that. It's unusual for a spirit to linger even for as long as I have, but Rigatona, she's been around for centuries. Some say a thousand years, even."
"Who was she?" I asked.
Mona seemed to take a deep breath, although for what purpose I was unsure. She was entirely composed of empty air, of nothingness. "She was an alchemist, or so they say. It's something that all spirits tell each other, a story to pass the time. I didn't even think she was real. She lived in a cottage deep in the mountains of Northern Wales, isolating herself from humankind in order to concentrate on her studies. She committed her life to searching for an elixir, a stopper for death, and let's just say that her methods weren't the most orthodox."
"I don't understand."
"Her search was in the name of obtaining immortality, of living forever. She wanted to overcome death, to become its Queen and make it her jester. She tried everything, from ingesting nuggets of gold and cinnabar in order to cleanse the body of mortal imperfections to brewing her own Ambrosia, the draught of the gods. She bathed in the blood of virgins from the surrounding villages that she herself slaughtered-"
"Oh my god," I broke in.
"-and she frequently dined on human hearts and brains, the two organs she thought were most likely to house the soul. The heart, after all, is responsible for keeping the human body alive, while the brain is the centre of all thought and knowledge, the hub of human legacy. As you can imagine all of her efforts were in vain, but by the time Rigatona realised that she was wasting her life dabbling in hollow rituals, she was wilting away. After years of anarchic practise, her health began to take a turn for the worse. The elders of the surrounding villages gathered, and voted to capture and destroy this creature who had claimed so many of their women and children, who had massacred their livestock and robbed their gold.
"A mob was dispensed, wielding all the weapons and soul-cleansing fire that their blacksmiths could provide, and set off in search of the one that they liked to call 'the black sorceress'. In a last desperate scramble to evade death, Rigatona turned her attention to the demons and live-shadows that rule in the hellish voids between this world and the next. She summoned the devil, and pleaded with him to grant her eternity in exchange for her loyal servitude. The devil, however, had something else in mind - as often cunning devils do.
"Rigatona was caught by the villagers. She was manacled to the mountainside and left for the wolves to feed upon and, in death, the devil granted her wish. She has wandered the earth ever since, serving a sentence that's almost comic in its irony. Even in death, however, she bears an impossible power, and a greed for life that separates her from all other spirits."
Mona fell silent, her last words hanging in the air like tail-fire. I could feel my blood halting icily in my veins. A woman, chained to the side of a mountain, her blood exploding into my mouth as my fangs dug into her skin-
"Saffy, what's wrong?"
I couldn't answer. Rigatona. She was the woman in the dream, in my dream. I'd felt her blood soak into my mouth, savoured its metallic flavour as it-
I cleared my throat. I had to compose myself. I couldn't let Mona see that I was fractured, that I was falling apart like a sandcastle that had been built too close to the oncoming tide.
"But why? Why is there a spirit warning me about her, and who is this spirit?"
Mona shrugged. The vivacity in her eyes had darkened, like dying embers that had been thrust into shadow. "Because she's a dangerous phantom, and obviously I'm not the only spirit around who knows that you're a Seer. If I'd known that Rigatona was near, I would have warned you about her myself."
"Why?" I whispered. "Why warn me?"
"Because," Mona said, ominously, "a Seer is susceptible to the tricks and pantomimes of the dead. Once Rigatona finds out that there is a Seer here, she will come to you, and she will deceive you. She will feed you lies, and she will draw you in, and she will use you as a pawn in her own twisted mission to re-obtain what once was so precious to her.
"You need to be careful, Saffy Sweetman. You need to be very, very careful."
***********
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