Ghostly Echoes (22 page)

“That's impossible.”

“It's really not. She showed us her true face less than an hour ago, and even if you can't see her as I see her, there can be no question as to her species. Miss Rook had the foresight to equip herself with a silver knife for our outing. Silver is notoriously effective against fairies of the Unseelie Court. The slightest touch burned her hand badly. We saw it happen.”

“Burned?” Mary lifted both hands and turned them around so that everyone could see. Her skin was flawless. “How perfectly ridiculous. My hands are just fine. Now if you don't mind—”

“Of course they're fine; you've had them in the water. Like mermaids and selkies and water spirits of all sorts, nixies need only return to their element to become rejuvenated. Miss Rook also caught you a cut on your leg with the silver blade before you fled, though. It's just a nick, but I see you have not had time to attend to that. Had we gotten here two minutes later, you would've had time to soak the injury away.”

“This is absurd,” said Spade. “You're talking nonsense! Now stop looking at my wife's legs this . . .” he faltered, “. . . this instant.” Mary could not lower the towel to cover any more of her legs without sacrificing modesty, and an angry red cut was just visible beneath the edge of the cloth.

“I have no idea what that man is talking about,” said Mary. She sounded so earnest and innocent—something deep inside of me almost wanted to believe her, but I had landed that cut myself. “Oh, Philip, what's going on?”

“How did you hurt your leg, Mary?”

“It's nothing, darling. I had an accident with the washbasin earlier. It just slipped and cracked while I was—and you were . . .” She trailed off.

“Oh, to hell with it.” Mary Spade stood up straight and let go of the towel. It rippled, and before it could fall to the floor it became the same sleeveless blue-green dress the nixie had worn in the Annwyn, right down to the black blade hanging from her belt. Her eyes lost their perfect symmetry, her brown curls softened to a shimmering strawberry blonde, and her face became Morwen's again. “Let's just get this over with already.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

The maid dropped the pitcher. It shattered on the floorboards behind us and Mayor Spade staggered back a step. “What have you done with my Mary?” he managed.

“You ignorant little gnat.” Morwen rolled her eyes. “At least Poplin was sharp enough to just demand a bribe. There is no Mary. There's only ever been me.”

She lifted her knee and plunged her injured leg into the steamy bath. The water climbed her dress, holding itself together like beads of dew on a leaf, collecting and rising upward until it swirled in a coil around her waist. It was mesmerizing, like watching a liquid boa constrictor.

She pulled the leg out again and spun gracefully. Before I knew what was happening, a tunnel of steaming water whipped through the air and slapped into my chest with all the force of a beam of lumber. My feet slid out from under me and I flew back. My head cracked against the hallway wall so hard it made my eyes hurt.

I blinked my vision back in place in time to see Charlie lunge toward the door. Morwen spun in another elegant twirl and the snake of water hammered into him. He was pelted sideways into Bertram, and the two of them toppled to the floor. Jackaby reached for something in his coat, but Morwen did not give him the chance. He was lifted completely off his feet by another blast of living water, tumbling sidelong down the hallway in the opposite direction.

The maid had long since fled, and the rest of us were still picking ourselves up off the ground—all but Spade, who straightened and held his chin up. The mayor looked alone, his eyes full of hurt and pain. “I trusted you,” he said quietly. “I loved you.”

“That was the idea,” said Morwen flatly. “Don't give me that insufferable look. We've just reached the ‘death do us part' moment in our relationship, honey pie.”

The temperature dropped abruptly. The steaming water that had soaked my shirtwaist suddenly felt like ice. Morwen spun again, channeling the water back up her body, and whipped her arm out toward Spade. He flinched, bracing himself for the blow, but it never came.

“What . . . ?” Morwen's voice shot up an octave and she shuddered. The water, which was coiled around her from shin to shoulder, had frozen solid.

“Neat trick, I'll give you that,” she said. “Is that you, Jenny?” Morwen flexed and shook until the ice cracked and broke apart, tumbling around her in heavy chunks. She slid one hand to her hip and pulled the long black blade from her belt as she scanned the room from side to side. “That's adorable. I took your meaningless life and now you're going to pay me back with what? The chills?”

The air shimmered on the other side of the bathtub and Jenny appeared. “I couldn't see it before,” Jenny said. “But I see it now. You're afraid.”

“Afraid of you?” Morwen laughed. “You were pathetic when you were an idiot girl. Now you're just the shadow of an idiot girl. You're nothing. I can see why your boyfriend was so eager to give you the slip. You really think he didn't know it was me? He knew.”

“Don't listen to her,” Jackaby grunted, and pushed himself to his feet.

“It's all right, Jackaby,” Jenny said evenly. “I can handle her.”

“You think so?” Morwen scoffed. “Because I think you're a damn ghost. You think I'm afraid of being haunted? Haunt me. I'm going to gut every last one of your friends in front of you while you haunt me. I'm going to start with the girl.” She jabbed her black blade at me to punctuate the threat. “And then I'm going to work my way up to lover boy over there, and you're going to haunt me through the whole bloody slaughter, because that's all you can do.”

“Leave her alone!” Jackaby pulled a slender chain from his coat. It was a dull iron-gray and no thicker than the chain for a pocket watch. He wound it around his hand several times until it formed a band of links across his knuckles when he clenched his fist.

“No,” said Jenny. “It's my turn.” She did not flicker. She did not slip into an echo. Her voice was steady and calm.

Morwen laughed. “That's hilarious. What're you going to do to me? Make the curtains wiggle?”

“I can manage a little more than that.”

The whole house shuddered.

Morwen sneered. “If you think a little tremor is going to scare me, then you haven't met my fa—”

Morwen's sentence was cut short as the bathtub flipped suddenly upward and launched itself with a deafening crash through the bathroom wall and into the adjacent room, taking the unready nixie along with it.

I stared at Jenny. She drifted through the wreckage as calm as anything, not a hair out of place. “My brick. My house. My whole wide world.” She slid through the demolished wall. “My turn.”

We hastened to follow, clambering over broken plaster and cracked beams. The bathtub had carved its path into Mayor Spade's study. It now lay with its brass feet pointed at the ceiling, splintered enamel shards littering the deep red carpet. Morwen's groans echoed from within.

“I've always been strongest when I was being strong for other people,” Jenny said casually. “And that's not a bad thing. I would have made a marvelous wife.” She gave the slightest wave of her hand. It was no more effort than she had devoted to swatting at a handkerchief when we had first begun practicing together, but now the bathtub flew off of Morwen like a piece of dollhouse furniture, smashing into Spade's desk with a clamorous clatter of enamel pieces and splintered wood. “But somebody reminded me today that it's okay to be strong for myself.”

From the mantle above the desk, the portrait of Mrs. Spade smiled placidly down upon the chaos. The perfect, elegant face behind the frame could not have looked more unlike the manic, furious madwoman lying crumpled in the middle of the carpet. Her uneven eyes glared up at Jenny, her hair was splayed out like Medusa's vipers, and her lips curled in a spiteful snarl.

Morwen pushed herself to her knees, swayed, and nearly toppled back down again. She held fast to her wicked weapon with one hand and pushed a mess of red-blonde hair out of her face with the other.

Jenny drifted slowly toward her.

“I remember every detail of it, you insignificant cow,” Morwen panted, affecting a crooked grin that failed to convey the same confidence it had before. “You screamed. You cried and blubbered like a baby before you died.”

“It won't work,” said Jenny. “You can't rile me anymore.”

“No? You should have seen your handsome Howard Carson after our vamp got through with him,” Morwen went on. For all her venom, she looked as though she might pass out at any moment. The trip through the wall had left several gashes along her arms, and her eyes appeared to be having difficulty focusing. “You could barely recognize his butchered corpse in the end,” she hissed. “We pitched what was left into the fire like greasy table scraps.”

Jenny did not rise to the bait. She only drifted slowly to a stop, looming over Morwen. Morwen gripped her dark dagger so tightly her knuckles whitened. She lashed out wildly at the specter, but the blade met nothing more substantial than moonlight. The effort cost the nixie her balance, and she collapsed again onto the carpet.

“It's frustrating, isn't it?” said Jenny calmly. “Not being able to make contact.” She reached down and easily plucked the blade out of Morwen's grasp. She shifted the weapon from one hand to the other, regarding the dark metal curiously. The solidity of the thing sat at odds with her translucent fingers.

Morwen pushed herself up with great difficulty, swaying to an unsteady slouch on one knee. The fight had left the nixie, but not her fury. Her dress was torn and she had plaster ground into her hair. Her voice was hollow. “Just get it over with.”

“It is over,” said Jenny. She dropped the blade onto the carpet behind her with a soft thump.

Morwen narrowed her eyes. “Don't waste your pity on me, ghost,” she spat.

“I won't,” said Jenny. “Nor any fear nor fury. I'm done with you, Morwen. My friends, however . . . are not. Mr. Jackaby?”

Jackaby stepped forward. He unwound the chain from his hand as he moved around toward Morwen.

“Done with me?” Morwen spat. “You only exist because of me, ghost! You're nothing but a ripple in my wake, you worthless trash. I made you!”

“You didn't make me,” Jenny said gently. “I made myself, and I will continue to make myself forever after. What you did to me? That made you. It made you a murderer and it made you a monster. They buried the girl you killed, Morwen. I'm the spirit you couldn't kill. You have no power over me.”

Jackaby was approaching with the chain held taut. Morwen snarled and tried to swipe it out of his grasp. Jackaby managed to keep hold of one end as the other spun and coiled around Morwen's wrist. “This binding is made of Tibetan sky-iron,” he said as she tried to pull away. “Very pure. Very sacred. This may sting a little.”

“What?” Morwen cried. “It burns! Get it off!”

The more she struggled and fought, the tighter the chain wound. The links slipped together with a series of quiet clicks, forming a seamless band.

Morwen gritted her teeth and snarled. Her gaze drilled into my employer, and her fingers were tensed like talons. She was shaking with anger. “Why won't my hands work?” she demanded.

“Because of the work you would put them to,” Jackaby replied. “You're bound by my will until I give you leave to go.”

He inspected the pouch at her side and found a single remaining hex-acorn within it. She growled as he relieved her of the trinket, but she could do nothing to stop him as he tucked it away into one of the myriad pockets of his coat. Behind him a piece of plaster the size of a dinner plate slipped from the demolished wall and landed atop the debris with a crash.

Mayor Spade stood watching from the ruined bathroom, looking rather like the bathtub had flattened him instead of his wife. He opened his mouth and closed it. He stared at Morwen. The damage done to his home was slight compared to the ruins that had just been made of the poor man's life.

“Mr. Spade,” I said. “I'm so sorry you had to find out this way.”

The mayor only hung his head. “I have been a terrible fool.”

“Yes,” Jackaby said gently. “Yes, you have. Well then, I think we're finished here. Sorry about the mess, Mayor. Let me know if you need a good contractor for that wall, I'm happy to call in a favor or two. Don't trouble yourself, Bertram. We'll see ourselves out.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

The mayor's estate was not the only property to have suffered that day; Jackaby's house at 926 Augur Lane looked as though it had barely survived a war. The damage around us felt raw and personal as we stepped back inside. I tried not to think about the fact that the worst of it was still nothing compared to the carnage that would ensue if the earth and Annwyn became one.

Toby skittered into the foyer and wound several circles around Charlie's legs. Even Douglas flapped up onto the bookshelf and bobbed happily from one foot to the other. We had a lot of work ahead of us, but ransacked or not, it was a relief to be home.

“What are you going to do with her?” I asked. Jackaby still had Morwen bound with his chain of sky-iron. She had said nothing since we had left the mayor's estate.

“We're going to ask her a few questions,” said Jackaby. “We'll start with finding out where she stowed her brother's machine and then move on to the rest of her family. It may take time. This chain prevents her from actively fighting against me, but it can't compel her to cooperate any more than that. For now, we will simply keep her out of trouble.” Morwen narrowed her eyes but said nothing. “The cellar is still the most secure chamber on the property. It was originally meant to keep undesirables out, of course, but it should serve just as well to keep this one in until we're ready to deal with her.”

“It was
originally
meant to store jam,” said Jenny, “but in light of our current state of affairs, I suppose it's a good thing you renovated.”

“Mr. Barker, would you be so kind as to see our guest secured soundly in the cellar?” Jackaby commended his prisoner into Charlie's care, and Charlie led her off through the house and toward the back of the building. Before they turned the corner, Morwen shot one last acid glare at Jenny. Jenny did not return the woman's venom, but simply watched them with a blank expression until they had stepped out of sight.

“How do you feel?” Jackaby said.

“Good.” Jenny considered the question earnestly. “I feel good. I thought I would hate her. I thought I would want to hurt her, but I don't. Not really. It feels strangely liberating.”

“Excellent,” Jackaby said. “That's excellent.”

“And then there's Howard,” she continued. “After all these years of wondering—it's strange to just know. I hadn't realized how much I needed to, and now I know. Howard is dead.”

“He died a hero.”

“Of course he did.” Jenny smiled. “I only wish you could have known him. The two of you are more than a little alike.”

“You're handling all of this well.” Jackaby said. “I must admit I wasn't certain you would be here to have this conversation. I was afraid . . .”

“Afraid?”

“Of losing . . . Afraid that you . . .” He took a deep breath and tried again. “There were some very big questions keeping you tethered to the land of the living, Miss Cavanaugh. I was afraid that finding answers—finding closure—might cut your ties to this world.”

“I should have moved on to the other side by now.” Jenny nodded. “I wasn't certain about that, either. I might have crossed over straightaway if I had found those answers years ago. I guess I wasn't satisfied with just being that girl who died. She's a part of me, but I do believe I'm more than an echo now. Maybe I'm not supposed to be more, but I am. I have new thoughts and feelings.” She bit her lip and looked away from Jackaby. “They're maddening sometimes—but they're mine, and not hers. They're emotions the woman I used to be never knew, and that means I must be somebody right now. Whatever else I am, I'm my own somebody—and I'm not done figuring out who that is just yet.”

I have seen Jackaby look through people and over people. I have seen him regard people like science experiments and like puzzle pieces. While Jenny spoke, he looked into her eyes like I have never seen him look at anyone before. It was unexpectedly tender.

“Perhaps I should excuse myself,” I said.

“No, Miss Rook.” Jackaby turned away, pulling the little red pouch out of his coat and setting it on the desk. Inside was the strange stone that Pavel had given me. “We need to talk.”

“I'm afraid that may have to wait,” said Charlie from the doorway. We turned.

“Was there a problem?” Jackaby stiffened. “Morwen?”

“Is secured in your cellar. She was very compliant. We could use chains like that one on the police department. The thing is, the cellar was already occupied. Do you know this woman?”

He stepped aside, and the widow Cordelia Hoole came forward. In her arms was a little girl in a yellow dress. “Mrs. Hoole,” I managed. “We weren't expecting—Is that Mrs. Wick's child?”

“No,” said Jackaby. He stepped up and tickled the chubby little toddler on her chin. “She's not.”

“You're right,” Mrs. Hoole confirmed. “I know that you don't like secrets, Mr. Jackaby. Forgive me. This is Hope. She is my secret.”

“Why ever should a child be secret?” asked Jackaby. “Children make terrible secrets. They are much too conspicuous. Loud, stinking, prone to fits.”

“Sir,” I said. “Mrs. Hoole and the professor were only wed for a year.”

“Yes? So?” said Jackaby.

“That girl is at least two years old. She isn't Professor Hoole's daughter, is she?” I asked. “That was your big secret.”

Mrs. Hoole shook her head. “I wasn't born into Lawrence's world,” she said. “I've lived through things—things I never want my child to see.” She took a deep breath. “It was for the best she never knew her real father. I wanted a better life for her than the one I had known. I looked to marry someone with money, someone on the way up. After Hope was born I began hanging about the college, looking to court a naive, wealthy student. Someone with prospects.

“A bit by mistake, I caught the eye of a kind but rather lonely professor instead. I kept my old life hidden from Lawrence, kept Hope hidden. Mrs. Wick looked after her while we courted. After he proposed—I'm so embarrassed—I was just in too deep. I was never disloyal. The fact is, I had accidentally fallen in love right back. I loved Lawrence, but I loved Hope too much to risk his leaving me should I ever tell him the truth. As soon as we were married, I begged Lawrence to hire a live-in housemaid. I told him I knew a woman who had been good to my family, and that she had a little girl to look after. Mrs. Wick came to live with us, and with her came my little Hope.

“That's why I didn't bring her with me when I came to meet you. I didn't know if I could trust you. But then you stopped that terrible man from killing me and you gave me shelter from the creatures. I heard them up above me after you had gone. It was a terrible noise. They came to the cellar door, crashing and thudding—but they couldn't get in. Your protection may be the only reason I'm alive, Detective. I left to bring Hope back, to keep her under that same protection, if you'll permit it.”

Jackaby looked dour. “I cannot.”

“Please, Detective. My little Hope didn't choose to be who she was. She didn't choose to have a woman like me for a mother. She didn't ask for any of it. I'm not perfect, Mr. Jackaby, but I would give everything for my daughter.”

Jackaby nodded. “Thank you for your honesty, Mrs. Hoole,” he said. “I like honest. Alas, I'm afraid I cannot keep my promise to you or to your daughter. The situation had changed. We have made targets of ourselves and by extension this house. Your own assassin has taken your place in the cellar. My home is no longer safe.”

Mrs. Hoole sank. “Where will I go?”

Jackaby pursed his lips and closed his tired eyes. After several long seconds he opened them again. “I want you to memorize an address. Memorize it—never write it down—and reveal your destination to no one.” He leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Got it? There are good people who live there. They will help you.”

“Sh-Should I tell them Mr. Jackaby sent me?” Mrs. Hoole asked.

“No. Tell them—” Jackaby took a deep breath. “Tell them their son sent you. Tell them that he misses them.” A tingle rippled up my spine as I realized what he was saying. “Most of all, tell them to get ready. I left a box with them a very long time ago. A cigar box tied with twine. Tell them to use it. All of it. They will need everything they can muster.”

My employer—a man who never spoke of his past, who hung no portraits over his mantle, who did not even share his name—had parents. He had a mother and a father who were real people and lived in a real house somewhere in the real world. I found the notion almost mystifying. What could they possibly be like?

Jackaby attended to Mrs. Hoole, outfitting her with a satchel full of charms and wards, a roll of spending money, and some fresh fruit and a few slightly stale biscuits. He offered to fetch some pickles and jam from the cellar, but the widow declined politely. She thanked the detective profusely before departing with little Hope on her hip.

“Wouldn't it be safer to travel with them?” I asked when the door closed. “Just to be sure they reach their destination?”

“They would be no safer in our company,” said Jackaby. “They are better off alone.”

“That isn't really why you didn't offer, though, is it?” Jenny's voice preceded her appearance. She came into view beside Jackaby. “When was the last time you saw them?”

Jackaby stared out the broken front window, watching the widow walk away. “I have not seen my family in roughly two decades, Miss Cavanaugh. We do not correspond. The sight does not discriminate when it takes a host, and it does not make accommodations for family. I found my own way after it took me.”

“But you were so young then,” I said.

“I was ten years old.”

“They didn't believe you, did they?” Jenny said. “You were just a boy who had lost his friend. You were confused and afraid, and your parents didn't believe you. So you ran away?”

Tears welled in Jackaby's gray eyes. “No, Miss Cavanaugh,” he said. “They did believe me. They believed every word. They never doubted me for a moment, my parents, even when I was sure I was mad myself. My parents are not perfect, but they were prepared to give up everything for me. And they would have had to, if I had stayed. So I left.”

He watched Mrs. Hoole turn the corner with her daughter and vanish into the lamp-lit streets of New Fiddleham.

“I don't like secrets, but I understand why she kept hers,” he said. “My parents are my secret. I didn't hide my name for my own protection—I hid it for theirs. They are about to need more protection than my absence has afforded them. Some locks cannot be unbroken, and what we've unleashed is going to be big.”

“Where do we start?” I asked.

“Poplin,” said Jenny. “Howard told me to look for Mayor Poplin.”

“That's a good lead, but Poplin has been ten years on the run. I'm interested in something a bit closer to home before we go chasing the past again.” He pulled the little red pouch from his coat pocket. Within it rested the stone Pavel had slipped me. “The Dire Council is planning something massive, something melding magic and machinery, and they are employing the sharpest scientific minds they can lay their hands on, and for all we know they could be ready to unleash it tomorrow. We need more than ever to know who's behind it.”

“And you think that stone is the key?”

“I think it's a channel,” he said. “I think it's the reason for your blackouts, your unexplained behavior, even your attack on Pavel . . .”

“You said all that was the aftereffect of a possession,” I said. “That I was feeling Jenny's emotions and acting on them.”

“I said that before I saw Jenny and you together. Layering one's consciousness is like layering colors, but instead of blending blue and yellow to make green, you blend two auras to create a third. With Miss Cavanaugh in your mind, you were brighter. The two of you melded easily, and I could see both of your energies, distinct yet intertwined. You make a lovely and indomitable pair. What I saw the day you knocked Pavel out the window was something else entirely. You were overshadowed and something else entirely was there. I have never seen a possession firsthand. I didn't realize what I was seeing then. Now that we know all the details, the truth seems painfully obvious. The Dire Council has been in your head, Miss Rook.”

I didn't want to believe it. I felt sick and angry. More than angry, I was furious. Coming into our home had been violation enough, but the thought that some evil wretch had been creeping around inside my head was too much. It made my skin crawl.

“They were the ones who opened my safe, I'd wager,” Jackaby continued. “Mortal locks are paltry things to a mage of even middling caliber, and they were the ones who attacked Pavel, not you. He must have said too much, or else his benefactors were afraid he might. It explains why Finstern's device overloaded, as well. His machine wasn't pulling energy out of you, it was pulling it through you. Without even knowing it, Finstern stuck his tap clean through the barrel and started emptying the reservoir on the other side of it. Whoever's on the other side is powerful, too. Beyond powerful.” He gritted his teeth. “We need to know who's over there.”

“How?”

“The stone appears to function in the same way possession does. It opens a window. When Miss Cavanaugh possessed you, you said you saw her memories. What did you see when you were under the Dire Council's control?”

“I—I don't . . . nothing. I just felt woozy and everything went dark.”

“There has to be something! You can look both ways through a window. Think, Miss Rook!”

“Let her be,” Jenny said, floating down beside me. “It's a lot to take in.”

Jackaby shook his head. “The council has been ahead of us every step of the way. This may be our only chance to close the gap.” He loosened the cords on the little purse. “I'm going to look through myself. You two watch me closely. If I so much as lift a finger, you knock the stone out of my hands.”