Possession (19 page)

"But he'll
kill George!"

Jacob's grip
tightened. "And if you try to stop him, he'll kill you. Just wait."

"You can
stop him. Knock the gun away."

"Too risky.
It might go off. And I want to hear what he wants from Mortlock."

"Turn
around," the villain said.

Mortlock turned.
His glare was vicious, his lip curled into a snarl. There was nothing of George
in those cold eyes, only Mortlock. "What do you want now?" he snapped
at the hooded figure.

"I've been
looking for you everywhere." The gloved fingers flexed around the gun
handle. "You didn't do as I asked."

"I
did."

"Not for
long enough."

Mortlock
humphed
.
"You want me to do it again?"

"Yes. I'll
give you whatever you want."

Jacob swore
softly. I folded my hand over his at my waist and linked our fingers.

"Whatever I
want?" Mortlock stood near the entrance to the alley, very still. Not a
single hair moved. Beyond him, people went about their business, oblivious to
the horrible scene playing out in the shadows. "What if I want to kill
someone?"

The hooded
figure shrugged, nodded. "I won't stand in your way. Just do what I say
and I'll let your host body live." Another shrug. "If you don't, then
I kill it and you have to return."

Mortlock's
spirit wasn't like Jacob's. He couldn't go wherever he wanted unless he
occupied a live body. In his ghost form, he could choose to haunt the immediate
area where he died or go back to the Waiting Area. Mortlock knew it. Unless he
agreed to the whisperer's plans, George would be shot and Mortlock would simply
be returned. Neither I nor the whisperer was close enough for Mortlock to
transfer to us.

"You do this
thing for me properly," the whisperer said, "and then you can do what
you want."

Slowly, slowly,
a slippery smile spread across Mortlock's face. "Looks like you and me got
a deal."

"Come with
me." The whisperer's partially covered face turned to us, a shadow within
a shadow. "But first...I have to remove the witness." He turned the
gun on me.

I screamed.
Jacob shoved me aside as a bullet whistled past my ear.

"Emily!"
he cried, crouching over me. "Oh God, Emily!"

"I'm fine.
Go! Stop him!" But the villain was already gone, Mortlock too.

Jacob let go of
me and pressed the small knife into my palm. "Go out there where you can
be seen. Don't talk to anyone. I'll be back." He blinked off.

I wandered back
to the main street, looked left and right. A woman sat in a doorway, a rag that
might have once been a shawl draped around her shoulders. She wore no hat and
no gloves and the toes poked out of her boots. I was about to ask her which way
the two men had gone, but she removed a gin bottle from under her skirts, put
it to her lips and drank until it was empty. When the contents were drained,
she closed her eyes and her head lolled forward. She snored loudly.

Across the road,
outside the broker's shop, the ghost who'd lost her child waved at me. I joined
her and quietly asked if she'd seen anyone come out of Bright Lane before me.

"Only that 'andsome
ghost. Fine one, 'e is. For a toff."

"No one
else before him?"

She shrugged. "Been
inside wiv me old man." She chuckled. "Rattled a few pans, moved
stuff 'round. Makes 'im mad, it does. And scared."

I edged away. She
followed me and chatted about the life she'd had before she died. I stopped
listening after she told me her parents had died when she was twelve and she'd
turned to thieving and whoring to support herself and her younger sister. It
wasn't that I didn't care; I could do nothing about it. The poor woman was
dead. In many ways, she was better off than when she was alive.

Minutes ticked
by and Jacob hadn't returned. The shopkeepers gave me odd looks as I walked
back and forth in front of their windows. Most of the shops were empty. There
was little money to spare in Shoreditch, even to purchase basic necessities. The
shopkeepers were as poor and miserable as their customers, but at least their
trade was honest. Perhaps.

"So she
don't know no better, see. I gotta take care of 'er. She's me baby
sister."

I blinked at the
ghost. She had the sort of face that naturally sagged—long cheeks and
bloodhound eyes—but it seemed to be dragged further down by the telling of her
tale. She wiped her eyes even though she wasn't crying—ghosts couldn't—and
promptly sank to the ground with a hopeless, dry sob.

I glanced back
to her husband's shop. He stood in the doorway, smoking a pipe and watching me
with undisguised interest. There was a meanness to his flat lips and yellow eyes,
but otherwise he would have been handsome. He smiled, revealing two sharp teeth
clamped around the pipe stem.

"You
lost?" he called out without removing the pipe.

I signaled for
the ghost to join me and I strode up to him. "No. I have business to
conduct here. I'm a spirit medium."

"A
what?"

"I see
ghosts."

He grinned
again. His pointed teeth were positively horrifying. "And I can pull
tulips out of me arse."

My fingers felt
for the tiny button to release the knife blade. I pressed it and held the blade
up for him to see.

He laughed around
the pipe. "That don't scare me, girlie."

"I tried
cuttin' 'im once," the ghost said. "He just got a bigger knife and
cut me instead."

He spread his
arms out wide. "Come on, girlie, have a go."

I handed my
weapon to the ghost.

The shopkeeper's
mouth flopped open and his pipe fell out. It broke into two pieces on the
pavement. "Wh..wha...what...?" He backed into the shop which suited
me. That way no one else could see the floating knife. The ghost and I followed
him inside. The small shop smelled damp with an underlying reek of tobacco. Old
pans and kitchen utensils, most of them broken, lay scattered across a central
table. Rags, clothes, and old boots spilled out of trunks and pieces of scrap
iron hung from the ceiling like long leaves from a tree.

"What's
your name?" I asked the ghost.

"Moll."

I smiled at the shopkeeper.
He stared wide-eyed back at me. "Moll tells me you treated her badly when
she was alive."

"Moll?"
he echoed. "B...but...it
was
her movin' my stuff? I thought it was
the wind..." He ended the sentence with a loud gulp.

I nodded at Moll
and she held up the knife. He stepped back and tripped over a large copper pot.
He landed in it, his legs dangling over the side.

"She's here
and she's very angry that you're taking advantage of her sister."

"I'm not! I
swear, I'm not!" He struggled to get out of the pot.

Moll thrust the
knife under his nose. His face drained of color and he went cross-eyed trying
to see the blade.

She laughed. "This
is fun."

I glanced at the
door. I needed to get outside and wait for Jacob. He wouldn't leave me alone for
long in Shoreditch. "Don't go anywhere near Moll's sister again. If you
don't do as I say, Moll will return and she won't hesitate to use that knife on
you. Or do something much worse."

I let the
unspecified threat hang in the air, allowing his imagination to fill in the
particulars. It seemed to work. He nodded quickly.

"Don't go
back on your word," I told the shaking shopkeeper. "She'll
know."

He nodded again.
Moll stepped away, then, just as her husband hauled himself out of the pot, she
lunged. He covered his face, lost his balance and fell back into the pot.

Moll bent over
double, laughing. "I could do this all day."

I signaled her
to follow me outside and she did, still chuckling. "Is that enough for you
to return to crossover?" I asked her.

She shrugged one
shoulder. "S'pose. Been wanting to leave for a time now, but just
couldn't. Not wiv 'im doin' me sister." She peered back into the shop. The
shopkeeper had retreated behind the counter at the back, but he kept his yellow
gaze on me. "Good riddance." She handed the knife back to me and
disappeared.

I expelled a breath.
How long would it be before the shopkeeper decided Moll was either gone or a
figment of his imagination?

How long before
he came after me?

I didn't fold
the blade away but kept it ready and moved down the line of shops. When I reached
the end, Jacob appeared.

"Are you
all right?" he asked, looking me over. "Anything happen?"

"No."

"Then let's
go."

"Did you
find them?" I asked as we crossed the road.

He shook his
head. "They just disappeared. I looked everywhere. Streets, houses, shops.
Nowhere. They just vanished." He kicked the gutter. It would have broken
the toes of a mortal person but not him. "I can't believe they got away."

They couldn't
have vanished. It wasn't possible. So where had they gone? Perhaps if Jacob had
more time to look, he might have found them. He'd probably thought he needed to
return for me, to keep me safe.

"I'm sorry,
Em," he said. It sounded so sad, so...final. Like he was apologizing for
more than losing Mortlock and the cloaked figure.

I linked my hand
through his and squeezed. "We'll find them."

We had to, and
before they did something awful to Jacob's family. I suspected that Mortlock
had been separated from the person who'd summoned him ever since his initial
possession, and this was the first time they'd actually met. Anything could
happen.

"So what do
we do now?" I asked.

"Now I take
you home."

There was
nothing else for it but to comply. I couldn't think what to do to be useful. Jacob
needed to search for Mortlock and he wouldn't do that until I was home safe.

Our hands remained
linked until we caught the omnibus heading back toward Chelsea. A rough, fast
ride later, we were dropped off around the corner from Druids Way. We walked in
comfortable silence and I was happy to have it that way. Lately our
conversations ended in harsh words or awkwardness. Saying nothing was better
than arguing.

Then I
remembered something I hadn't told him. Something that wouldn't cause an
argument. "Celia and I found my grandfather."

I told Jacob
about François Moreau and his daughter, my Aunt Cara, and how I'd chased her
but lost her. Losing people was turning into a regular occurrence for me.

"Moreau
didn't tell you where to find her?" he asked.

"No. He's
mad. It was impossible to get straight answers out of him."

We turned into
Druids Way and his fingers touched mine, but only for a very brief moment until
he pulled away and stopped. "It's her," I said.

I saw her at the
same time. Cara. She sat on the steps leading up to our door. Her unbound hair
whipped about her face, obscuring or revealing it on the wind's whim. She
spotted us too.

"I'll make
sure she doesn't leave," Jacob said.

I caught his
shirt sleeve. "Don't frighten her. I think she's waiting for us, but if we
scare her, she might leave."

We walked
quickly. I could feel the tension in Jacob as if he was prepared to spring
after her if she ran away. But she didn't. She waited, clasping the frayed edges
of her coat together at her chest with both hands. It was too small for her,
the sleeves ending halfway between elbow and wrist, the hem not quite reaching
her knee.

I greeted her
with a tentative smile. "My name's Emily Chambers." I held out my
hand.

She stood very
still. Her hair was the only thing about her person that moved. Then she took
my hand. Her gloveless fingers were freezing.

"I'm Cara
Moreau," she said in a small voice.

Jacob introduced
himself, but they didn't shake hands. She nodded and blinked up at him, her
brown eyes huge in her oval face. Her fingers curled into her coat once more,
pulling it tight.

"Come inside,"
I said. "The fire will be warm."

I could see her
warring with herself. She wanted the warmth and wanted to talk to us, but she
didn't trust us enough to enter into the lion's den, so to speak.

"Our maid
makes excellent seed cake," I said. "And chocolate."

Her eyes lit up
at the mention of chocolate. She nodded and followed me inside. Jacob came in
last of all. I called for Lucy and she emerged from the kitchen at the back of
the house, wiping her hands on her apron. She smiled a greeting and her gaze
flicked to me then back to Cara then back to me again. She must have suspected
we were related but said nothing. Not even her smile faltered.

"Lucy, is
there any of your seed cake left?"

"Sorry,
miss, it's all gone. But I just finished baking gingerbread. Shall I bring some
in to the drawing room?"