Читать книгу The Spectral City - Leanna Renee Hieber - Страница 10

Chapter Three

This thought of the finality of death, a concept a ghost was always at odds with, was enough to frighten Zofia’s spectral form into disappearing, snuffing her from the cab, leaving only a misty, luminous wisp, then nothing. The carriage came around the north side of the park and halted.

“Well then . . .” Eve muttered.

“How many more times round, ladies?” the driver asked, calling down to them in a wary tone.

“Let’s go home,” Gran said, opening the door and calling up. “We’ll alight at the corner of the park and Waverly, if you please, sir, thank you.”

“As you wish,” he replied as they jostled forward again.

She turned to Eve. “You know there’s only so much you can get out of them at once. This will take time. Maggie has all the time in the world; surely this is but a pause on her eternal journey,” she continued, though Eve could tell she was trying to rally herself as much as anything. It was Maggie’s interest in dark things, in the paranormal, that had led to her death, a fact Gran would never fully accept or forgive herself for not intercepting.

Upon arriving, Evelyn finally relieved the driver of his rounds and went in to check on the rest of her family while Eve approached the adjacent townhouse she shared. While Evelyn and her grandfather Gareth had their own home further uptown, along the part of Fifth Avenue that constituted old New York money, they spent a great deal of time here; these two addresses were far more the center of their world since Eve had taken up residence with her team.

The privilege of a fairly comfortable life that Eve was wise enough not to take for granted only came by fortuitous marriage at a ghostly cost.

The families entwined out of deep love, respect, and the particular, inimitable bonds created by spiritual battle at the precipice of life and death. Evelyn was a natural stepmother to Natalie, and Gareth was an understanding husband. Regardless of class, neither Eve’s father, a British Lord, nor Gran, who had inherited more money than any of them, ever made the family feel that they were anything lesser. While Evelyn Northe-Stewart was not Eve’s grandmother by blood, she most certainly was by soul and spirit.

Gran and Grandpa weren’t going back uptown tonight, Eve was certain. They had their own floor, below her parents, in ‘Fort Denbury’ as Eve was fond of calling the attached townhouses her father had procured on Waverly Place, west of the park, before she was born; fine brick and brownstone buildings with the sort of exquisite detail one would expect of an era that called itself gilded.

Eve walked up the grand stoop, let herself in the glass-paneled door covered in wrought-iron tracery, and with a turn of an ornate key, the gas lamps that glowed in round orb sconces all about the property flamed to life. Gliding past the open pocket doors of the first-floor parlor, she turned a few more gas lamps bright, banishing the night’s shadows but keeping shutters closed from prying eyes. There in her parlor, filled neither with finery nor useless knick-knacks but a wide circular table and many places to sit, she would conduct the necessary séance to continue the search for Maggie.

At sixteen years old, the ghosts had been at their zenith, pressing upon Eve all the time, in constant agitation. It had nearly torn the whole family apart, not to mention wrecked a good number of fine furnishings and objects. It wasn’t because the ghosts plaguing Eve were poltergeists, but often ghosts would startle any number of family members, and teacups in the hand, fine bone china, and any nearby objects easily unsettled were none the safer for a cavalcade of spiritual interruption.

It was Grandmother Evelyn who’d suggested that since the Denburys had bought the adjoining townhouse as an investment on Jonathon’s instinct, the instinct had actually been preservation of family rather than a real-estate venture. Eve moved into the empty home next door, and the ghosts followed. Within the month, both buildings were more peaceful for the separation and Eve grew accustomed to living alone while never being left alone.

Ghosts loved Eve. There was something about her soul, her energy, her presence, that drew them to her. While she could always talk to Gran about it, thankfully being a Sensitive and a part-time medium herself, even Gran was baffled by how many spirits kept Eve company. It was Gran’s questions about the spirits that had set the course of her life and made something meaningful out of what could have felt like a curse.

“What on earth do they all want to talk about?” Gran asked once, just after her sixteenth birthday, when a horde of spirits had swooped in and blown out the candles on her cake.

Eve shrugged. “Gossip! I told them to go find some high-society medium instead.”

“Well, your father is a titled Lord—”

“I mean a high-society girl who cares. I couldn’t care less about the petty goings on of others. What point is there? Heaven forbid I haunt the earth to gossip. They go on and on. About particulars. Details. Clothing, comings and goings. Shouldn’t they be trying to sort out their greatest mortal failure and make peace? If I were a detective, I’d write down all these details, as someone might find them useful at some point.”

Gran just stared at her, thunderstruck. “Maybe you should.”

Eve had blinked at her. “What?”

“Become a . . . sort of detective.” Gran’s compelling gaze twinkled—a sure sign she was in possession of a particularly good idea. “If the restless dead won’t leave you alone, then why not give the busybodies something to do?”

At this, Eve had snorted. But the idea stuck.

Within the next years she was asking relevant people in the Spiritualist movement important questions, questions that, thanks to Ambassador Bishop, even caught the ear of the newly elected Governor Roosevelt, and her precinct was born. With stipulations, of course, as her operatives were ‘just young women’ and her department a collection of spirits. For some people in the world, Eve had learned with frustration, there were always qualifiers. Sometimes one could rise above them, but her and her ‘girls’ would have to work twice as hard for the same amount of respect.

The Precinct mediums and ghosts, every living or dead soul who had sought her out, enjoyed their work. They did seem to know they were a part of something important, working for a greater good. The spirits that bound themselves to the Precinct, serving the city from beyond the veil, clearly shared in a passion for justice that helped ease any injustices during their often too-short lives. Living and dead, Eve’s girls were full of purpose and dogged determination. They knew they were unique and whatever progress they made would break barriers, leaving room for who might come next. Eve hoped future generations of young women would have it a bit easier and would be taken more seriously in roles of leadership.

Now Eve lived in-house with her three mediums. They had been working together on various cases and clues for nearly a year now, though the Precinct itself was only officially a few months old. The ghosts who had chosen to support the mediums called Eve’s side of “Fort Denbury” their best haunt. The whole lot of them were generally unflappable souls. But in the past year of work, Eve had never seen a ghost as upset as Zofia was while reporting on Margaret’s disappearance. It went beyond a ghost’s inherent interior melancholy. Zofia was despondent. Sad ghosts carried a melancholy with them like a weight in the air. This was like a millstone.

Just as Eve was about to send out a psychic siren, a call for her mediums to come back home for a meeting, cutting what had been their night off short, there was a knock at the door. Eve knew who it was immediately. Gran didn’t like the doorbell, stating that it was ‘far too jarring’ and why couldn’t she have a door knocker like the rest of civilized society for the past centuries?

Letting her Grandmother in, still in the same fine gown from the evening’s festivities, Eve left her in the parlor and went to stoke coals under the back stove to brew a pot of tea.

When Eve returned, Gran asked, “I assume you’ll call back your operatives?”

Eve nodded. “Because of the event tonight, I had told them to go out and have a nice dinner somewhere. I couldn’t have predicted we’d have a crisis on our hands.”

Zofia burst through the parlor wall, her phantom hands wringing the edges of her pinafore apron. “I want Maggie back now.”

“Indeed, Zofia, indeed. We’ll do everything we can,” Eve assured the ghost.

“I’d like to go freshen up before I sit down to a séance,” Gran said. “Did you get the plumbing fixed in the upstairs water closet?”

“I did, thankfully.”

“Good.” Gran turned and held onto the rail tightly as she climbed the stairs to Eve’s floor, moving with deliberate steps. Gran was getting older, and it took a maturing Eve to see that, noticing the barely perceptible change in pace, every movement taking a hair’s breadth more time as the years went on.

A sense of guilt washed over Eve in a cool inundation. She should be letting this woman rest.

Turning at the landing, Gran looked down at her. “Well? While you’re waiting for your girls, we could be brainstorming. While I wash my face and put some peppermint oils behind my ears to perk myself up, come and talk to me.”

Gran was so very wise but didn’t know the first thing about the fine art of rest. Eve had learned every habit from this indomitable woman, who immediately picked up on her granddaughter’s hesitation. “What is it, my dear? You have a look about you.”

“I worry I’m taxing you too much,” Eve replied sheepishly as she ascended after her to the second floor. Gran entered Eve’s boudoir and sat down at her rosewood vanity inlaid with pearl and floral marquetry, the fanciest item of furniture she’d allowed Gran to procure for her. Eve followed behind, sitting on a nearby settee whose burgundy brocade matched the vanity stool. “Mother and Father are one thing, but you . . . You’ve earned rest and then some. I think the spirits sense that too, perhaps wanting to spare you—”

Gran swiveled the chair to stare Eve down, a dainty bottle of scented oil that she herself had gifted Eve clutched in her hand. She withdrew the delicate blown glass stopper to dab a drop of lavender mint oil onto her finger. “I’ve nearly died many times,” Gran began, rubbing a finger behind one ear, then the next, breathing in deeply and squaring her shoulders. “I’ve been haunted by the dead as long as you, them coming to me in childhood and never leaving me alone. If I were to truly stop, the silence would be maddening. I wouldn’t be able to think, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

Gran continued with the routine of the oil, pressing a dab of it on pressure points about her face, continuing in an ardent tone. “I’ve made mistakes in life. I’ve been selfish, short-sighted. If the spirits stop murmuring I’m left only with guilt.” She stared at herself in the mirror, and Eve sensed Gran feeling her age even if she didn’t look it.

“We all make mistakes,” Eve said to Gran’s reflection, seeing herself in part profile in the mirror. “You can’t keep taking on Maggie’s as your own. It won’t help her peace or yours.”

“As a clairvoyant who should know better, I’ve never been able to content myself with that adage of everyone making mistakes. Why have the gift if it won’t keep us from making them?”

“The rhetorical question of the ages.”

“Your turn. If I’ve taught you anything it’s how to take care of yourself with simple, restorative comforts,” Gran said, handing her the bottle that had been procured for these precise holistic purposes, when the night was young and full of trying work ahead. Eve placed a dab of oil on her finger, touched each temple and pressed hard upon them, trying to open the channel of her third eye, internally blinking between those two temple points, as wide as she could.

Just then, the doorbell buzzed, a loud, jarring noise letting them know to expect an entrance. Evelyn jumped and grumbled at the raucous interruption, hating the noise.

“I know you hate the bell, Gran, but my colleagues and I have made it a sensible practice to ring it even if we have keys, so that if someone was mid-trance, they wouldn’t be surprised by a quiet entrance.”

“That’s sensible and all, I just hate how jarring it is. I’ll be down in a moment.”

As Eve descended the stair, Cora opened the door with her key and waved at Eve as she hung her coat in the wardrobe. Cora’s hazel-brown skin was dotted with moisture, her black, tightly spiraled curls up in a lace bonnet. She adjusted the eyelet cuffs of her high-necked blouse and unclasped the pin at her collar sculpted in the shape of an eagle, keeping it pressed in her hand as she gave herself more air, as if the evening had strained her breath.

“Heavens, they won’t leave me be,” Cora stated. Gesturing behind her, she added. “You feel them? Have they all come out on parade tonight?”

The icy wake that had been trailing behind the young medium two years Eve’s junior caught up and two ghosts burst across the threshold, bobbing frenetically. Winnie and Cyril, who must have been the ones to collect Cora. The two greyscale spirits were transparent and floating, both holding slight clues as to how they died in their appearance. Winnie, a little girl in a choir robe with dark circles under her silver eyes, having died of consumption; Cyril, a young, broad-shouldered man in shirtsleeves and suspenders, a piano player who had been lost to the same fate, years later. The two spirits of different hue and opacity were drawn to wherever music was most prevalent, tied to this, the city of their birth. They were infrequent haunts of Eve’s association, but it was clear they cared deeply for the precinct’s well-being.

“Margaret’s gone,” the spirits and Cora all stated at once. The effect was quite an ethereal echo of sorrow.

“She knows, I told her,” replied Zofia from down the hall, a glowing form at the base of the stairs who wafted to the group, refreshing the chill. Cora and Eve shuddered in tandem.

“Hello, Cora, my dear,” Evelyn called from the upper landing. “I’ll be down with you in a moment.”

“Oh, hello, Gran,” Cora replied. Evelyn was everyone’s relative. Eve had never met another woman people admired or took on as their own so much. Leading Cora into the parlor, Eve bid her take a seat on the settee.

“I can hear crying. Not just from our usual haunts, but everywhere,” Cora stated, shaking her head. At the mention of their names, the ghosts entered the parlor from the hall. Cora continued. “I hear the air crying. At least, that’s what it sounds like. Do you hear it like that?”

“I can’t say I heard crying. What I did hear was a warning. A warning not to ‘let anything in’. Wish I knew what that meant,” Eve said rising as her kettle whistled from the back stove. Preparing the pot and wheeling a tea service in, she set a warm cup before the shivering Cora, who took it gratefully. Eve prepared herself for another late night.

When the dead couldn’t sleep, the living who could hear them wouldn’t either.

Either Eve would hold a séance or the séance would hold them. If she wasn’t mistaken, a life hung in the balance in a way they’d never experienced and had never thought to protect against. What would cause an incorporeal being to vanish? How did one kill the already dead?