“No.”
He sighed and then laughed, wiping his face. “I’m not certain why I keep sighing. I’m fairly certain I’m not breathing.”
“It’s very common. Sighing, I mean.” He was a collection of memories, including the physical ones.
“Well … well, I’ve fantasized about inviting you here, although in my dreams it was rather tidier.”
The room was small, and likely had once been a servant’s quarters. A narrow bed sat in the far corner next to a tall bookshelf. The shelves were crowded with books and stacks of paper tied into bundles. The desk was similarly buried beneath papers.
“I have, in fact, been plagued with curiosity about your life as a bachelor.”
The door to the room’s wardrobe hung open. His uniforms hung neatly pressed, but the bottom of the wardrobe was covered in unwashed clothing, and a sock lay upon the ground.
“Perhaps it would be better not to satisfy that curiosity.”
Ginger picked up the sock and stuck her finger through the hole in the toe. “Please tell me that this is not the usual state of your socks.”
“Well … sometimes they’ve been soaked in invisible ink.”
“Invisible ink?”
He nodded and stood over the desk looking at it. “It’s a death sentence to be caught with a bottle of invisible ink, because then you’re clearly a spy. So we soak our socks in it and then extract it in water at the other end.”
“That seems remarkably clever. And I thought our cipher was good.”
“Book ciphers are one of the better ones. Unbreakable without the book. There’s a whole set of ways to pass information. Ciphers like ours, advertisements in the newspapers…”
“Holes in socks?”
“Heh. Not quite. Though…” He cocked his head to the side and stared into the distance. “I wonder if that would work.”
“I can darn them for you…” Not that it mattered what his socks were like now.
Ben cleared his throat. “I don’t think that would make a difference in how the ink works. It all comes out in the wash.”
“Have you ever really washed anything?”
“Merrow does. If not for him, the room would be in even worse shape.” Ben crouched next to the bookshelf, his head tilted to the side to read the titles.
“Anything coming back?” Though his notebook had been with him in the field, there was the possibility that familiar surroundings would help.
“Nothing useful. My mind has offered me a few lines of poetry, which is not at all helpful. Down the blue night the unending columns press.” He put his hand on a book, and it passed through. Ben cursed under his breath. He crouched there, with his head bent and his aura bright with fury. But then he turned and smiled at her. “Could I ask you to pull this out for me?”
“Of course.” She knelt and pulled out a small volume of Rupert Brooke’s poems. She opened the book and thumbed through the pages. “Is this important?”
“No … But it is bothering me that I can remember part of the poem and not the whole thing. I won a badge with it at speech day back at Uppingham School.”
“I see how handily you slipped in that boast on your oratory.” Shivering, Ginger turned back to the table of contents. Brooke had not written the poems until he was at war, which was a good ten years after Ben had attended Uppingham. His memory was already starting to blend events. “Which poem?”
“‘Clouds.’”
She flipped back to poem and held the book open for Ben to see it. He went amber with satisfaction. “‘Down the blue night the unending columns press / In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow, / Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow / Up to the white moon’s hidden loveliness.’ Thank you. It was going to bother me that I couldn’t remember that, and I don’t need more unfinished business to keep me here.”
“Finding out who—who killed you is quite enough.”
Ben shook his head. “It’s more than that. Whoever killed me probably did so because I was close to figuring out who was targeting the Spirit Corps. I need to stop him.”
Ginger walked over to the desk and picked up a piece of paper. It was a bill for groceries. “If we work through the question, perhaps we can rebuild your line of thought. You were at the same camp that had the explosion. Might you have stumbled upon the saboteur instead?”
He steepled his fingers together and tapped them on his lips. “Perhaps … either way, we know it was an officer with light hair.”
Ginger closed her eyes, trying to think of the man. “I can’t recall seeing his uniform clearly enough to tell rank.”
“No. But I felt braid on his cuffs when I was trying to pull his hands free.”
“Shall we presume that he survived the explosion?” She sorted through the papers on the desk, looking for anything useful.
Ben nodded. “I think we have to. Which means we need to look at the roster to see who survived and is a fit for the description.”
“Will hair colour be listed?”
“On their enlistment cards…” Orange frustration obscured him for a moment. “But I do not know how you will convince command to let you look at them or the roster.”
“I could ask Brigadier-General Davies … if you are certain that it’s not him.”
“I’m not.” He gripped his head and grimaced. “It seems as though it gets fuzzier all the time.”
“You said you wrote it down.” Ginger pulled open a drawer. “Where would your notebook be?”
“It would be with … with my body. I keep feeling like I can go back. To my body, I mean. Like this is temporary.”
A flicker of hope caught Ginger. “Is there a chance that you aren’t … might you have simply lost consciousness and come unmoored?”
“No.”
“But it might explain the feeling that this is temporary.”
Ben greyed with sorrow. “No, darling. Do not … I am—I am quite certain.”
She nodded and bent her head. Her eyes burned as her vision blurred. She picked up a packet of envelopes, without seeing it clearly. When she blinked her eyes clear, the handwriting on the envelopes was her own. “You saved my letters?”
“All of them.” With a rakish grin, he cocked his head. “Am I to understand by your surprise, Miss Stuyvesant, that you did not save mine?”
“Don’t be absurd. Of course I did.” Ginger wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. The sense he had described of being sucked toward the nexus at Potter’s Field … it was designed to catch their soldiers on the verge of death, so it was, in theory, possible that his body had recovered from the strangulation. She flipped through the letters. “The last few are missing.”
“Nothing sinister. I carried them to the front with me. They’ll be … they’ll be in my breast pocket.”
“It sounds as though we should go to the front.”
“No!” His image stuttered, flashing between standing by her and huddling in a crouch. Black fear swirled around him. “It’s not safe.”
“But since your notebook is there—”
“No. You can’t. No. No. No.” He shook his head, which was almost lost in the darkness surrounding him. “You can’t go. You can’t. No. No. Nonononoo—”
“I would be careful.”
“Don’t. No. No, don’t.” Without a body to anchor him, dread distorted Ben’s form. He sank into a crouch under the weight of fear. Great black sheets of it spread out from him, waving like seaweed at the bottom of the sea.
“Sh … sh…” The tendrils of fear stretched out and brushed against her. So cold. Ginger’s heart raced. She swallowed, trying to catch her breath. “Ben—Ben, look. I am going to read you some poetry.”
He stared at her without comprehension. The temperature in the room dropped until Ginger could see her own breath.
“I am—I am going to read. What shall I read?” Shaking, she fumbled as she picked up the book of Brooke’s poetry. “Shall I read the poem you memorized?”
“
Yes.” The fear receded a little, but Ben still crouched as if sheltering from a bomb. “Yes. That would be good.”
She sank onto the bed and pulled his rough wool blanket around her. “Here. Listen.”
DOWN the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon’s hidden loveliness.
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.
They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train,
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,
And men, coming and going on the earth.
She finished that poem and moved on to the next, and the next. As she read, Ben gradually calmed down, until he came to sit on the bed beside her. Outside, the sun had set. Ginger became aware again of her ever-present fatigue. She yawned until her jaw popped.
Ben looked over. “You’re tired.”
“Yes.”
“You should sleep.” He plucked at the quilt, frowning when his fingers passed through it.
Even if she were to go to the front, which seemed a necessity, she would not go tonight. She tried to joke, hoping it would distract him further. “Shall I sleep here? In your bed? My heavens, Capt. Harford, that is rather forward of you.”
He gave a shy smile. “Sleep here? Please?”
Despite her fatigue, Ginger rather doubted she would actually sleep. But with luck, a night in familiar surroundings would help him stabilise, and then tomorrow—tomorrow she could try to make him see reason. But for now, she would try to sleep.
* * *
Ginger is pretending to sip a glass of champagne, just touching the liquid to her lips. Ben sits down and leans against her, a warmth against her shoulder.
He bends his head and murmurs in her ear. “I’m trying to decide if Miss Porter needs a rescue from FitzWilliam. Pretend I’m trying to wheedle a kiss?” His breath is warm and smells of the champagne, mown grass, and honey.
“Am I to take it that I shan’t get one?” She raises her glass again and turns her head demurely.
He chuckles, low and throaty. “At the first opportunity.”
She shifts so that her thigh touches his and the silk of her dress shushes against the black wool of his trousers. It has been so long since she has seen him in evening wear that she had almost forgotten how elegant white tie is. Which does not make sense, of course, as he wears white tie to dine every evening, just as all the gentlemen in their set do.
There is something she is supposed to remember … a nagging sense that she is supposed to talk to Ben about something. But if she talks to him now, she will disturb whatever it is that he is listening to.
She concentrates, trying to hear the conversation over the chatter and bright laughter of their peers. There is something else.
“Ginger?”
“Hmm?” She turns her head and meets Ben’s gaze.
“Can you hear me?” His eyes are bright and fixed upon her.
“Of course I can.” She lifts her hand, but the champagne flute is gone. “You are sitting right in front of me.”
“Yes … but are you aware?” He puts his hand in hers, and a gentle current of electricity coursed up her arm to her chest.
Ginger inhaled suddenly, breathing in the understanding. “Are we lucid dreaming?”
“Thank God. Yes.” Ben lifted her hand and pressed his lips against her fingers. They were warm and soft, with the slight tickle of his mustache. “I am so very sorry about earlier.”
“Earlier?” He meant something while she was awake. He had been frightened or frightening. She could not quite recall. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I think I might be more fully present than you.” He turned her hand over and kissed the inside of her wrist. “Certainly, I feel more … more myself right now.”
Ginger bit her lower lip and caught her breath. “That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
They were outside, sitting under a flowering apple tree. Bees buzzed around them, mixed with the scent of mint tea. The sun dappled them and crystallised in an amber aura around Ben. Ginger sank into it, letting her own aura expand outward to brush against his with the shush of silk on wool.
Here inside him, she found radiant trust and vivid green-gold confidence—there was the haze of fear, but inside, the reasons were clear. He was afraid for her—not because he thought she was weak or foolish, but because he was all too aware of the dangers her abilities would place her in.
Evergreen and cinnamon memories brought the security of sitting by the fire and watching snow fall. She nestled deeper, trying to drive out the cold of the snow. Ben opened more deeply, flowing around her with the crackle of embers. Her soul trembled, breathless with longing.
“Oh, God!” Ben suddenly fractured into panic and pushed her away. “You have to wake up.”
“Why?” Nothing appealing awaited in the waking world. She could touch him here, but, awake she would have only a rough wool blanket and a cold room to face. “Stay with me.”
“Wake up.” He shoved her, then jerked back. “Damnation. Ginger, you have to wake up. Please, dear God, wake up!”
Ben flurried away, soul sparkling out of sight. She pushed deeper into the dream, trying to find him. The thought of returning to her own body was enough to make her weep. There was no reason to go back.
A thump tugged at her attention.
Ginger paused, floating in a half-dream. A sudden pain in her shoulder intruded itself in her consciousness. Trying to shrug it off, she spun away, but she was not so deeply asleep as before.
Something slapped against her ribs. Then her upper arm. Her legs. A sudden jolting flurry of hard corners slammed against her. Something wood crashed.
Ginger tumbled against the floor, awake. Books lay scattered around her, and the bookshelf rested at an awkward angle against the wall. It had knocked the bed over when it fell.
Her body was cold. She gasped, breath wheezing into her empty lungs.
She had stopped breathing. Coughing, she sucked in another breath, and her lungs ached with the cold air. She must have been too far out of her body. Shaking, Ginger rolled onto her side.
“Ben?” Her throat ached with even that single syllable. Ginger coughed again and pushed up to sit, braced on her arms. “Ben?”
Taking in a deep breath, Ginger let her soul slip a little free of her body so she could see him more clearly. The spirit realm hissed around her as veils of energy flowed past one another. In the corner, under the bookshelf, a shadowy spot of cold wavered. He must have projected into the mortal realm to knock the shelf over and exhausted himself.
“Ben?”
The door flew open, bouncing against the wall. Merrow stood in the doorway.
Chapter Nine
Merrow was dressed except for his jacket. His sleep-mussed hair meant he had probably arrived in the night and slept in his clothes, in the manner of soldiers at the front. A plaster covered a large abrasion on his forehead. His jaw fell open as he stared at the mess.
Ginger cleared her throat. “The bookcase fell over.”
He flinched physically and in his aura, which folded in on itself. “Why—why are you here?”
“I was sleeping.” Ginger pushed to her feet, struggling not to trip on her skirt. She had to brace herself on the wall to fend off dizziness.
“Did you—did you do this?” He stared in horror at the room, which gave every appearance of her having had a tantrum.
“No—” Ben had said not to tell anyone he was still around as a ghost.
Merrow’s aura spiked with alarm. “Someone
… someone trashed the captain’s apartment?” He wiped his hand over his mouth, eyes darting about. “I need to ask you to leave.”
“Perhaps I can help tidy.”
“It’s not—not appropriate for you to be alone in the captain’s room.” He tugged at his collar. “At night.”
“There can hardly be anything inappropriate about it, since my fiancé is dead.” She had meant it as a joke, but it drove home the reality again. Ginger pressed her fingers against the rough plaster wall and bent her head. Breathing was as difficult as it had been when she had first woken. “My apologies. That was a coarse joke to make.”
“We did that—that sort of thing all the time. Jokes about death, I mean. At the front.” The young man’s aura was thick with fear and grief.
“Why are you here, instead of at the front?”
He stepped into the room, collecting packets from the floor and stacking them on the desk “I’m here to—to pack Capt. Harford’s belongings and return them to his parents.”
The cold spot that was Ben rose from the floor. She could almost see him in the shape of his aura again. He drifted toward Merrow, going a silvery blue-green with curiosity.
Ginger rubbed an incipient ache above her right eye. “You’ve come from the front. Did you bring his things, by any chance?”
“No. There—there was an explosion…” He picked up the packet of Ginger’s letters, flipping through the envelopes.
The idea of him, or anyone other than Ben, reading those intimate words soured Ginger’s insides. “Those are mine.”
He stopped and looked at the letters again. “They’re addressed to the captain.”
“Yes, but I wrote them.” Ginger held out her hand. “I would like them back, please.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Stuyvesant. The captain’s orders were very clear.” He turned the packet over in his hands, frowning at the disorder in the room. “If anything happened … I’m to—to collect all of his papers and send them to his parents.”
“Please.” Ginger took another step closer.
The papers on the desk rattled in a breeze.
“I wouldn’t feel right making—making that decision for them, ma’am.” He tucked the packet under his arm. “I’m very sorry.”
Ghost Talkers Page 8