by Jerico Lenk
He smiled at me through the candlelight, a somewhat spellbinding and sinister sort of thing with his chin inclined and the shadows shifting across his painted face. Swinging the borrowed key on one finger, his eyes moved about the room, searching for the words in the dark.
“Clairvoyance, ‘one who sees clearly,’” he said finally. “There is a veil between us and the dead, our realm and theirs. And for whatever reason, we see through it. Reach through the rips in it, while others merely witness ghosts when they manage to slip through on their own. Does that make sense to you?”
“Yes.”
Cain shrugged. “Somehow, it seems … we become clearer for them to see, as well. We do not know why that is. Can all men see clearly at first, but tend to lose the ability? Do they not realise it? Or is there something else about us? The Mesmerists say people like you or I are born with an inexplicable magnetism. Perhaps they’re right and perhaps that’s the answer. Perhaps we’re beacons of light in the darkness of the après-monde to whom ghosts are drawn, intelligent or not, because we possess about us some … connective mesmeric force.”
Mysteries in your blood, Bartlett had said.
Cain laughed lightly. It was at odds with the grim look to his fairy tale face. “To answer your question—they find us at random, in a sense, but because they see us more clearly. So I suppose we’re just lucky, hmm?”
I stared at my feet, winded by the explanation. Finally. That was why the Missing came to me. Why they’d always come to me. But I hadn’t asked for it. It was unsettling. I was constantly surrounded by onlookers, then, even when it didn’t seem so? And even in that way, my peculiar intimacy with the dead was something of which to be proud?
Beacons of light.
Cain stared at me from the Virgin of Nuremburg with a light in his eyes as if he wished to tell me something. As if …
As if we both hid something, and both looked for something. But we couldn’t and wouldn’t tell each other.
He sighed, pushing away from the wall and wandering back out of the room. I held the taper as he locked the door again, examining the plaque hung opposite the evidence room that read ASPHODEL MEADOWS, with an arrow pointing to the tunnel’s next turn.
“Well … that room didn’t have at all what I hoped for,” Cain grumbled. “I think Bartlett misunderstood which key I wanted.”
“Why would a file be locked?” I asked.
“Because it’s dangerous, or as of yet incomplete, or too beyond the grasp of ordinary researchers and can only be viewed or changed by higher officers.” Cain issued a limp shrug and a touchy sigh. “Or they don’t wish the public to know about it, I suppose.”
***
Upstairs again, outside a lounge where the talking boards and planchettes were out, and guests gathered around them, Cain snatched up glasses of wine for the both of us.
“Kingsley!” d’Pelletier cried, waving Cain over to where he stood near the courtyard doors, smoking a cigar with Officer Dorland.
Cain heaved a sigh, lashes fluttering around an exasperated eye roll as he navigated the busy hall towards d’Pelletier. He was about as excited as I’d be to put himself in Dorland’s company, apparently. And it wasn’t very excited at all. But I followed, of course, hiding a yawn behind one hand, as I was not about to let a friend waltz alone into a bottomless pit of conversation with less than desirable partners. No offence to d’Pelletier.
“Were you acquainted with Officer Hyacinth?” d’Pelletier asked, baby face dimpled in a sincere frown.
“I’ve spoken with him on occasion,” Cain replied with a bored little flick of the brow. I tried not to acknowledge the way Dorland’s glance moved to-and-fro between us in keen evaluation of our costumes.
“Well, he died this past Tuesday.” D’Pelletier sighed dramatically. “Apoplexy. He’d always had a weak heart. We’d tease that, one day, one of the Cross ghosts might startle him and spook him accidentally to death. What irony he should go while in bed with his wife!”
I choked on a mouthful of wine and Cain’s short, shameless laugh drew others’ eyes for an awkward moment or two.
“Shame, isn’t it?” Dorland gave a little wag of the head. “Shame, that Hyacinth should go like that.”
“Had he died in another less outrageous manner, would it not still have been a shame?” I said, and immediately decided I shouldn’t have.
Holding his smouldering cigar off to one side, Dorland blinked rapidly as he tipped his head just so, smile frozen on his mouth and eyes roving me over in a most critical way. Cain and d’Pelletier turned similar wide-eyed and pointed stares my way. Wasn’t I every bit of how Cain had described me—socially awkward, and completely naïve.
Dorland’s short eyelashes were so pale, they shimmered gold in the bright light, making him look even more shrewd and calculating than he already did with that plastered-on smile of feigned patience and politesse. I’d thought him annoying on investigation, but now he made me even more impatient. Or perhaps it had just been a long, long night for me, and it was time to go to my room.
Dorland shook his head with a mildly patronising chuckle. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. I merely speculate … as to whether he’s likely to return in spectral form to this world? Given how he passed.”
Something tightened up through my back, hot and tense. “Like Jude?” I countered, quietly.
“Jude?” Dorland smiled, puzzled.
“From St. Mary-le-Strand Girls’ School,” I said, struggling to keep my frown from twisting into a sneer as some cold resentment rose like a tide in my chest. I wasn’t sure that I succeeded. “Case number MCDXCVII. Judas Hombrey was murdered and you bottled the spirit for further study—”
“Apologies, Officer!” D’Pelletier again glanced at me in embarrassment. “What the boy meant was nothing inflammatory.”
Dorland’s eyes veered off to meet d’Pelletier’s, to whom he offered a smile over our heads as if Cain and I couldn’t possibly know what he thought. But we were both already well aware that not everyone believed us more than children despite our obvious young adulthood.
“It’s quite all right, Inspector,” Dorland said. “We’re all conscious of youth’s charm, or the lack thereof. And there lies the risk run when the Cross takes on younger men.”
“The Cross only acquires the most spectacular of youths, I’ll remind you,” Cain chimed in quickly, with a pedigreed smile despite the owl-like glint in his eyes. Dark, and penetrative. “It’s a rare but necessary exception made for—well, the exceptional talents.”
Dorland squinted at him briefly. “Ah … beyond that creative costume, I must be speaking with a Kingsley then, mustn’t I?”
He knew exactly with whom he spoke; Cain’s eye did not exactly promote anonymity. I urged Cain off before he could really get into it with Officer Dorland, but I tripped on the folded edge of the hall rug and just stumbled into him instead. Cain lost his footing and tripped forwards in turn, spilling his wine down the front of Dorland’s suit.
“Oh, blast!”
“Pardon—”
“Mon dieu! Kingsley!” d’Pelletier sputtered through the commotion, looking around in sheer dismay as most of the hall’s crowd turned our way in surprise.
Dorland went bright red with rage, eyes bulging as chilled wine seeped down his collar. His mouth flew open with a shiver of his turtle chin but before he could say a word, Cain and I abandoned him in the center of attention and dashed out the door, laughing wildly and apologising in the same breath.
“Well, I am just mortified,” Cain insisted with great drama, hooking an arm in mine and marching us through the outside crowd. “How could I be such a disgrace. I’m so deeply shaken by my lack of composure, I simply cannot recall if I let go of my drink on accident or on purpose … ”
Open-mouthed, my eyes swerved to him. He just snorted, grinning wickedly with his tongue between his teeth. He had, hadn’t he, the cheeky little maverick? He’d thrown his drink on Dorland.
�
�Well,” I said after a long sigh, infected by his smile, “I cannot say the man didn’t deserve it.”
“Shall we go up to Hermes Hall and read about vampires and revenants?”
“Vampires?” I echoed.
Cain laughed merrily. “Cast aside that doubt, Will. You hunt ghosts, do you not? What makes you think the Undead are any less fabulously real? The vampire czar lives in London, after all. Right under your nose and you never even knew it”
Monsters of the night plucked from the pages of a penny dreadful, right under my nose. It was just as Westwood had said in September, I supposed—believing is seeing. And I had so much yet to see.
“Reconnaissance,” the case coordinator said, an older gentleman with wiry, powder-white hair, and papery skin that drooped gently at his jowls as he handed Clement and me the assignment summary. “Just clip your reports to the top page. The designated Officer will take care of the rest.”
“Reconnaissance?” I asked, trudging after Clement out of the fieldwork offices and through the halls of the main building. Closed Spectral File, the summary said. Location of Waterloo Bridge, Reported recurrent sightings of apparitions, To be reconnoitered by Lead Inspector Clement and Scouting Inspector Winchester.
“We head to Waterloo and patrol for further spectral activity, following the last case.” Clement uttered a little peevish sound from the back of his throat. “I hate reconnaissance. We can’t demand a spirit show itself. If it doesn’t want to, it won’t.”
“Then why perform it?”
“Protocol. To quiet the superiors up.”
The silence between us on the ride over that night was suffocating. It was obvious to anyone that at present we were not each other’s first choice of company, but at least at the girls’ school he’d struck up a bit of conversation. Tonight, he just sulked, leaning against the window.
“Why did they send me with you?” I tried anyway as the cab came to a jolting stop just off the Strand. “Why not send a regular inspector, or … ”
Flipping up his coat collar, Clement hopped out and cocked a brow, looking at me without lifting his head. “Because,” he said bluntly, “they’re testing you.”
Right—I was still on probation, was I not? The idea of returning to Waterloo already made me feel heavy; now I hadn’t a clue whether Clement hoped I passed this apparent test, or that I failed, or if he didn’t even care.
An omnibus rattled past us at the junction, rocking below the driver and packed riders, plastered with posters advertising ship makers and merchants. Through the chill river fog, the place teemed with people. And not for the expected reasons.
“Blast,” Clement husked, hands tucked in his pockets. Together we hurried across the street, but the hurry was short-lived. Constabulary in rounded helmets and belted uniforms kept a moving crowd of curious Londoners under control at the edge of the Victoria Embankment—how lucky they had so recently relocated the police service headquarters to a new building just up the street. The men paced along a perimeter of kerb signs that crawled with bold, black letters: POLICE – DO NOT ENTER!
“Pardon,” Clement said, offering the stooped old man beside us a warm smile. “What’s all the fuss?”
“They’ve found a lass,” the old man replied, voice scratchy and deeply Irish. He raised his bushy brows and pursed his wrinkled mouth, and was on his way again with an unexcited shrug.
I looked to Clement sharply, brow knotting. They’d discovered a girl. Had she jumped?
Clement dragged a hand down the side of his face and let it just drift to a stop with his knuckles to his lips. He fixed his gaze on the scene down on the pier, where a light flashed once—and again—as a policeman photographed with a field camera and the rest waited respectfully for him to be through so they might cover the body. The body …
It was clear enough from where we stood. A young woman on the ground, soaking wet and limp. Her hair stuck to her pallid face in pretty coils. How poetic, that something could still look pretty when it was dead.
Beyond the grisly scene, lights reflected off the dark river; ship masts bobbed against the distant, jagged silhouette of Tower Bridge. Yard inspectors in their long coats whispered to each other just a stone’s throw from the body. The boxy camera flashed. The woman’s pale blue gown and black-collared jacket looked set to crush her, waterlogged as they were. I didn’t know what to feel. Another poor soul, fished from the stinking water. And everyone around us whispered of it as if it were simply a change in the weather. Images jumped through the back of my mind—a drawing room, Daphne, everyone staring as Athena and I dashed out of the house. Daphne a vision in white on the ledge of the bridge flirting with disaster and me screaming, screaming, screaming her name …
“He killed me!”
I twisted around, looking behind me.
The tragedy’s sightseers were thinning out, full of gossip already. Electric lights flickered over a shop across the street and pedestrians clustered about a coffee stand, cursing at another omnibus that clattered by through the fog and sprayed them with muck as it narrowly avoided swiping up against a passing coach.
But I looked right at her.
Dripping raven hair, plastered in loops and wavy strands to her face, which was bone white and swanlike. Her lips matched the blue and purple of her sopping gown. And there was a hole just off center in her forehead—a bullet hole, muddy blood washed away but flesh still singed black from the gunpowder.
It was the lady who lay on the Embankment below.
My eyes shot back to the pier as though it were possible for her corpse to have moved, or even reanimated at all. It was thoughtless reaction; any man would have known better. The woman was lying down there yet, of course, and it was her vivid Missing self behind me, standing still and serene and shot dead in the bustling night.
I gripped the ends of my sleeves. “Clement,” I urged, aiming to remain inconspicuous. “Look behind us.”
Clement frowned, surveying the small crowd over his shoulder. “What?” he grunted, casting me a surly look of doubt.
I gestured, turning again. How could he miss her?
She was gone.
Damn it. Mouth hanging open but no words prepared, I met Clement’s eyes. He heaved a sigh. An inspector trudged up to the line of policemen stationed about the posted signs and Clement waved for him suddenly.
“Inspector Bridges!” he called, elbowing his way over. “It’s Clement, from the Cross!”
I remained where he’d left me, hugging my coat closed tight and burying my nose into my muffler. On the pier, the police photographer began to pack up his boxy camera and the other men carefully hoisted the drowned corpse to a waiting field gurney, flapping a sheet down across her. The apparition of the woman behind me had chilled me to the core. It was different during inspections; I was prepared for the Missing then. But this was more like what my life had been before. Random appearances, ghostly distractions. So corporeal to me, so vibrant …
“He killed me!”
I bristled, eyes widening. The whisper hissed out just over my shoulder now, that eerie, warbling pitch of a dead voice flung desperately at the veil between us. Creeping like ice along my neck. The stench of the Thames thickened about my head. She was right behind me now, wasn’t she?
“I ran and ran but no matter how fast, he caught up, leering at me under that hat like a fox at a rabbit—”
Everything around me kept swirling on, but I was rooted in place as if alone in nothingness.
Beacons of light …
I panicked. Perhaps my inspector’s composure was not quite as developed yet as I’d believed. Get away, get away from the unfamiliar spirit before anyone noticed my distracted distress, before the ghost realised just how in tune I was to her presence, before she, possibly, did something really quite menacing.
“ … barging in on such a macabre event as if a starving dog for scraps,” the short, neatly dressed inspector chastised Clement as I dodged over. The roundness of his face seemed far
too jolly for his scowl.
“I’m not,” Clement insisted. “I merely inquire upon the details of the event so as to … ”
“Westwood may inquire himself once the Yard has a case to discuss. I’ve told him this before.” The inspector kept stepping away only to back up again every time Clement spoke, clearly not interested in the help of the Black Cross.
“Inspector,” Clement said, surprisingly all civility and no truculence, “this is extraordinarily pertinent, as we’ve an extensive file regarding those who have jumped here, and we’re out tonight reconnoitering the bridge.”
“Reconnoitering for what?”
Clement wilted, but his eyes were wild yet, resolute. “We’re from the spectral department, Inspector Bridges.”
“My God!” Bridges cried. “Yes, of course! How remiss I’ve been not to consider the girl’s ghost! Inspector … I’m sorry, what was it?”
“Inspector Clement.”
“Inspector Clementine—”
I raised my brows. Clement’s lip curled.
“The corpse is hardly stiff! What is there to reconnoiter? You Spiritualists, so exorbitantly infatuated with death and darkness! The disrepute!” Red-faced, Bridges held Clement’s eyes and leaned close to reclaim professionalism. “Here’s a detail for you. The girl’s not a jumper.”
“Yes,” I said. “She was killed.”
Bridges hadn’t noticed me until then, but he promptly sent me a violated, discomfited look. I cleared my throat, looking elsewhere. I shouldn’t have spoken. Clement glanced my way, but not in impatience, as I’d expected. Almost … in pride. Then he raised his brows and waved his hands at the inspector, leaning forth with a tight smile as if to say, You see?
Smoothing his coat closed and turning half away, Bridges scrutinised us with marked uneasiness. “This seems to be a murder, very recent,” he said. “I highly doubt a specter’s to blame, but if we suspect any inhuman elements as we search for the depraved bastard who viciously slew this poor woman by apparent gunshot to the head, yes, of course, we’ll alert our little ‘Scotland Yard of the occult’ post-haste.”