The Missing: The Curious Cases of Will Winchester and the Black Cross

by Jerico Lenk

  “This one, especially.” Dorland was breathless, suppressing his enthusiasm. “Presently, we’ve much study underway regarding the Electro-Static currents of spectral forms. I know a handful of men who have been wanting to compare currents attached to natural and unnatural deaths, such as suicide, or murder … ”

  A little more loudly than intended, I stood and left the room, the stool skidding behind me.

  The hall was perfectly dark and quiet, swallowing me up where I stood hugging myself at the far end of it. I hadn’t any right to mourn, did I? I helped. I liked this. That was just as villainous and unforgivable, was it not? Now Jude was condemned to eternity as a specimen, and I only cared because I felt some sort of ownership over the poor little things.

  “Clean that circle up well and proper now, Officer,” Clement muttered, back in the morning room.

  “Well, of course.”

  “I shall, if you’d like,” O’Brien offered.

  “Dorland, your next team may well appreciate your asking permission before taking any action.”

  “Apologies.”

  Shuffling. Footsteps. Clement came out into the hall with me.

  “Don’t you want to see it?” he asked, voice low.

  I looked to him, aghast. “No, Clement!”

  “But how will you learn?”

  That was a valid question. Swallowing on a tight throat, I said, “I’ll … look later.”

  He made his way over slowly to stand by me. My heart pounded. Were we to quarrel again, so soon? Casting aside my stubbornness, I said thickly, “Aren’t we to be freeing the spirits, Clement? We trapped him. He knows what he is, where he is. He just wants to be noticed. How can you be satisfied by this?”

  “Is it not better than purging?” Clement shrugged.

  I threw him a fierce look. How could he be so merciless?

  Rather just get it over with.

  I couldn’t say why it troubled me so deeply. I didn’t know what to think. I wanted to trust him. The Black Cross understood me, but … it terrified me to wonder if Clement did not. What was I to do then?

  “I just don’t know that bottling’s any less deplorable,” I conceded in a small voice, casting my eyes off elsewhere. “That’s all.”

  The world was quiet and still again, and terribly empty. Empty because Jude was in the flask, and O’Brien wrapped it in a cloth and put it in the knapsack, and I tried not to think about what it was like to have the whole dark to yourself only to be suddenly contained in a little bottle.

  ***

  “A murder!” Dorland heaved a dramatic sigh, all of us cramped in a larger hansom cab on the short ride back to Portland Place. “So much paperwork to be done now! And imagine what the poor Father will say when we alert him to the murder of a child in the school. It’s no surprise the spirit was attached to the place. Somehow, they hid the crime, judging by the obituary. You don’t suppose the monster’s still running free, do you? You’re positive you didn’t descry anything else, boy? The man’s identity? The aftermath?”

  “Dorland, just shut up already,” Clement snapped.

  “O’Brien,” I murmured, drawing shapes on the cab window through the fog from the morning mist and chill. “I’ve a question, if you’d be so patient as to accommodate it … ”

  “Hmm?” O’Brien sat right beside me, which made it easy to keep the conversation quiet. It wasn’t one I wished to share.

  The question snagged in my throat at first. I swallowed hard, finger sliding down the glass of the little window. “What was it that Dorland drew to catch Jude?”

  O’Brien hesitated, as though he recognised my defeated spirit. “A summoning circle. Properly assembled, with a name or some other piece of remains, it summons the ghost, and creates a channel into the bottle.”

  Summoning. Under the rug, in my mother’s room. The arcane symbols, the unreadable alphabet like some ancient, undiscovered hieroglyph—undeniably occult. What Dorland had drawn so hauntingly resembled it.

  O’Brien accidentally elbowed me a few times as he dug the bottle out of his knapsack. He turned it with a gentle hand for me to examine, as if a proud souvenir. But he smiled sadly. “The bottle’s iron-necked, with corresponding Solomonic keys for binding.”

  Slowly, with a deadened sort of fascination, I took the glass into my fingers. It was heavier than I’d expected. Stewing within was a leftover soul. And it would be there forever. Until unsealed again, I presumed. It still resembled a storm cloud, but that was it. It didn’t seem quite as alive anymore as I’d feared.

  I hoped maybe Jude would know I held him, anyway, that he could feel my apology through my fingertips on the flacon. For finding him, and letting him be bottled. For not really understanding what he was. For still, despite my guilt, being so full of insatiable curiosity. If he was even sentient anymore, whatever sentient meant to the Missing.

  From the corner of my eye, I caught Clement staring at me—hard. Clement, as if he knew I was torn up inside, angry at him once again, and troubled because he could do nothing about it for me.

  ***

  The ghost girl in my room was going to come and go, I discovered. One floorboard creaked; I heard the brush of a bare foot against another. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as the little wraith paced about like someone who couldn’t sleep.

  My report on the St. Mary-le-Strand school inspection could wait until tomorrow. I simply couldn’t think about it right now. Instead I stood at the mirror in only my nightshirt and under-pants, toes curling on the cold floor.

  I pulled my shirt tight at the small of my back and turned side to side before the dim glass. I was an adult in essentially every way, though a small one. Willow.

  I wasn’t with my father anymore. I was trying very hard to think of that as a certainty and not a temporary adventure. I pulled my smaller set of bandages from my trunk of things to wrap my lower abdomen, as Zelda had taught me to do during those four hellish days a month my anatomy betrayed me, said it was supposed to help ease the pain. And it occurred to me as I let my nightshirt fall loosely along my sides again that, on my own, I wasn’t required to abide by the original rules. I could be who I was, wear what I pleased, when I so chose.

  Imagine. A soft, lovely gown, maybe deep cobalt in colour, with sleeves that came to a point at the knuckles. I loved that style. Nothing too flashy or dazzling. Longer hair, tied casually half-back at the crown of the head. Just feminine enough; I didn’t need all those curls and pins. I could almost see myself in the image. My face, my eyes, my hands … though perhaps I only invoked what I knew of my mother.

  At any rate, I simply couldn’t waltz around like that before Commissioner Westwood, the man who’d so generously and swiftly taken me into his order, now could I? I’d still be Will Winchester, but he wouldn’t understand that. Which was the worse lie, my foregoing an application or my gender ambiguity?

  A lady’s dress seemed inevitably enraging and uncomfortable, anyway. Unless it was one of the lounging gowns like Daphne or Agatha wore, all casual and unrestrictive, the kind with short sleeves and a loose, flouncing skirt, flash of long black stockings. Something that didn’t trap me; something that felt free and inconsequential.

  Once or twice, my father had mentioned explaining away his son once I was age of majority. But even then, I would hate to be only his daughter forever.

  I tossed and turned once under the blankets. I longed to write to Zelda, to let her know I was doing all right … ask her why she hadn’t come to call yet after bringing my things. I tried to imagine her fingers running through my hair. It had always helped me drift off to sleep when I couldn’t on my own. But the chills down the back of my neck were empty of comfort. Sleeping alone in a strange place was far from easy sometimes, even though my eyes burned for it. I felt small and cold and estranged. Except for my room’s ghost, of course.

  I thought about asking the little wraith’s name, but I didn’t. Sometimes talking to the dead was like feeding a stray. They’d never
leave you alone again if you engaged them—like Charlie and Colette. And I wasn’t sure I could bear that right now.

  “Let’s go out!” Cain cried from the doorway of the downstairs lounge, a rather smallish sitting room mostly used by Cross men and women for solitude. Even I had taken to retreating there to the window seat with tea and a book, as was mostly my habit in the interim between assignments. I’d already gotten through People from Other Worlds and Tales of the Dead, and now I was a good way into the first volume of Phantasms of the Living.

  Puzzled, I lowered my hand from my mouth where I’d been idly dragging my thumb along the ridge of my teeth. “I’m sorry?”

  Cain nodded as if I’d agreed. “I’ll be waiting outside.”

  Bundled up against the bite of a drizzly October day, we went to Kew Gardens. All different shades of gold and green burst under the overcast sky as we strolled along through the populous park, into the great glass and white wrought-iron Temperate House.

  Bright and verdant leaves reached for the pitched roof. The air was balmy indoors even as, outside, a light rain began against the glass ceiling. We wandered between towering palms and other sumptuous tropical plants. Cain trailed his fingers along their shining, waxy petals, feistily chatty today, going on about anything and everything from that gambling trial with the Prince of Wales to how poorly his cousin’s window garden was fairing.

  “How long has it been now?” he asked suddenly. “Since you ran away.”

  I wasn’t immune to a bit of embarrassment to have it put that way—ran away. Not to mention he apparently still thought about my paranoia. But my tragedy wasn’t his responsibility.

  “Well over a fortnight,” I replied sheepishly. Actually, it was closing in on a month since I’d left home.

  Cain studied me from the corner of his eye. “Are you still afraid sleeping in your own room?”

  I tilted my head back, watching the rain through the glass as we walked. “I’ve made out all right,” I said. “I consulted the secretary the other day, to see if anyone’s come calling for me … No one has.”

  Cain issued a dainty little sigh. “Then perhaps,” he started slowly, as if reluctant to speak it aloud, “perhaps no one will.”

  I reached out to finger some of the bright pink and yellow petals we passed. It was true. And in honour of being true, I had not been sleeping with too much difficulty. Perhaps in part due to simple exhaustion from our work. But also, perhaps because I felt as if I were in a different world here, and it was easier than I thought to forget all about the Belgravia townhouse and everything there.

  “No one will,” Cain repeated, flatly.

  I almost ran into him; he’d stopped in the path, just standing and staring at me.

  “The other evening,” he said, “at dinner with my uncle, my cousin Alois brought up one of his infrequent haunts. I don’t know that you’ve heard of it, but … Julien’s-off-the-Strand?”

  My heart fell through my stomach, swift and sudden. I cleared my throat. “I have.”

  Cain shrugged, regarding me through his lashes as he smiled with a dry perk of the mouth. “I didn’t really care to listen. That type of establishment isn’t exactly on my list of nightly romps. But Alois was all out of shape because his favourite lady friend had moved on from the place.”

  “Good for her,” I said as evenly as I could.

  “Well, the rumour’s actually that she ran off with Mr. Julien’s son. Alois said the boy isn’t even eighteen yet, and acted the server at the place, so Mr. Julien must be doubly devastated.”

  “Yes, how inauspicious,” I agreed, cursing myself for how bitterly the words sounded, “that his business suffer such unexpected change. And his son, too? The man must be heartbroken.”

  His brows raised and his mouth in a thin, patient line, Cain waited for me to finish before he said, “Will, the son’s you.”

  You. The word knocked the wind out of me; I didn’t realise how I’d been anxiously toying with an exotic flower until I accidentally pinched a petal in my hand with the jolt of surprise. A coldness spread through me, yet there was no sadness or sting of betrayal attached. I just felt rather numb, and … sadly at ease.

  That was the working story, then, was it? Julien Cavanaugh Winchester II’s son Will Winchester had run off with one of his girls. He’d explained me away, just like that. I was gone just like my mother.

  Daphne.

  She had to be the girl. He must have requested she seek employment elsewhere. Perhaps he’d just kicked her out. It couldn’t be too bad, unless he’d let Miss Valérie handle it. My wish for freedom had wrought so much trouble. I was a disgrace. I was selfish, wasn’t I?

  My mouth popped open, but I hadn’t a thing to say. I blushed, furiously, suddenly deeply self-conscious to be found out as the little prince of a pleasure house—a fine, high class one, but a pleasure house nonetheless.

  “You must think differently of me now,” was all I could manage.

  Cain laughed, curtly. “Please. If everyone is to be judged based on proximity to ‘unpalatable’ businesses, well, no one in London would have any friends, now would they?” He shrugged, moving on again slowly without turning away. His two-coloured eyes did not waver from mine.

  “So you may sleep peacefully,” he declared, reminding me to what end the story was worth. “But if you’re ever fearful again … ” He flashed me a perfect little smile, so good at looking innocent when he was an irreverent little imp. “You know where to find me.”

  The joke was difficult to miss, even for someone who hadn’t grown up surrounded by flirtations and solicitations. I choked on a laugh, eyes wide, and smacked at his arm kindly much like Zelda often had to me when I was being mischievous. A gentleman and his lady quietly admiring a plant across the path looked over sharply at the noise we made. Cain hurried off around the corner, grinning. I followed with an apologetic wave their way.

  Cain was right, though. I could sleep peacefully now.

  It bruised me, somewhere deep but far away, to know my father wasn’t looking for me even when I was in the most obvious of places.

  But I was honestly, truly free of Julien’s-off-the-Strand. I’d never stop hoping Zelda or one of my father’s girls would drop by to leave a message or check up on me. I’d walked out of the house and seemingly out of their lives completely, and while that was a sore truth, I had to understand it was necessary and right. That world was in the past, my absence was taken care of, and my father was not looking for me.

  Perhaps that might have made someone else feel absolutely uncared for.

  But somehow, I had never felt more cared for than I did at the Cross, with others whom I’d hardly known a month—yet who seemed to know me more than my father ever had.

  ***

  Open Spectral File, No. MCDXCVIX. Newly reported disturbances, Singular Apparition with repeated appearances, Residents troubled …

  “No Assistant?” I asked, passing the case file back to Quinn as we crossed Oxendon Street for one of the many establishments crammed together in the row of tall, narrow old buildings. Advertisements plastered the neighbouring merchant windows; our destination was more quaint and unassuming, gold and silver letters arcing like a rainbow across front windows, lit colourfully from behind by lamps circled in pink and scarlet paper: MISS OPHIE’S PARLOUR.

  “Danforth’s a dunce,” Clement called over his shoulder as he dodged a shuddering street cart, his collar popped and his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

  “Well, he at least recognised you are the only inspector fit for such a location,” Quinn grumbled, and it took Clement’s crooked grin and waggling brows for me to realise Quinn had made a joke.

  Miss Ophie’s Parlour was, much like Julien’s-off-the-Strand, a mistress house masquerading as a tea shop. It was already empty for the night; Miss Ophie had left a key wedged in the windowsill and, inside, a note for us detailing the recent ghostly events in the place. The note was pinned to the lacy blue gown in which one of her ladie
s had been found three months ago, filled with morphine on the back stoop.

  “It’s not much,” Clement said on a sigh, crosschecking Miss Ophie’s missive with the small case file. “Pre-work didn’t find anything relevant to the complaints, either.”

  O’Brien wasn’t there for my questions so I leaned to Cain instead, whispering in the stuffy quiet, “Pre-work?”

  “Research,” Cain husked, holding his temple in one hand and frowning around the front room. “Preliminary findings. Does the architecture have limestone or oak, were there any remarkable deaths throughout the years, anything that might be related to the reported activity or call for a certain instrument, so as to adjust our strategies accordingly.” He cleared his throat and crossed his arms, hunching low into his coat and muffler. “How else do you think the case file is built?”

  I gave a simple hum in reply, brows raised. Someone was rather cross tonight.

  “Quinn,” Clement said brightly, sweeping the blue dress up off the table and holding it to his shoulder to swing about limply as if modeling it before a mirror. “I’ve got plans later tonight, so I say skip invalidation, what do you say?”

  “As police escort and former constabulary, I recommend against it,” Quinn muttered with contradictory indifference.

  “Brilliant!” Clement draped the gown over one arm like a coat and went back to Miss Ophie’s note. “We shall skip it, then.”

  He read from the letter as the rest of us wandered about, closing the thick red velvet drapes and dousing the few lights left for our arrival.

  “A young Miss Maude was employed here, expired by excess of opium tincture.”

  I removed the paper from the lamps in the front windows to lower the lights. Cain had stopped at a hanging mirror, almost gaudy in its chipping giltwood curves and baroque corners. He stared intently into his reflection, his face pale and sullen, his eyes … resentful, almost.