“How are we supposed to do that?” Carolyn asked. “We don’t know where they meet—if they meet. They could be anywhere across the city.”
Jennie thought back to her only true encounter with a member of the paranormal court since arriving in New York City. A Revolutionary major with a powdered face and a white wig perched atop his head.
“I might have a contact,” she told them. “Although he might be a tricky one to track down.”
Carolyn gave a determined nod. “Whatever you need to find him, the Spectral Plane are happy to help. We can gather the specters to keep watch and…”
Carolyn paused, face full of confusion. “Hold on… Didn’t you say you two were meeting Lupe somewhere earlier last night?”
Jennie and Baxter stared at each other, eyes wide.
“Oh…” Baxter breathed as a determined fist banged on the door to the apartment.
Jennie dashed across the room, turned the deadbolt, and opened the door.
Lupe stood in the doorway, forehead beaded with sweat, hair damp and clinging to his head. “Thanks…for waiting…for me,” he ground out between breaths.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Empire State Building, New York City
There was something peaceful about watching the entire city.
Worthington could see everything from up here on the roof, roads and streets laid out like Lego bricks, and the rivers encircling the city like a moat. The clouds filtered on by, and the sun rose on the horizon.
The night had gone completely to plan.
There had been some perks to working directly with Jennie. After accompanying her on her trip across the Atlantic and spending his first few days with her in the city, he had learned from her. Figured out the ways her mind worked so he could harness it to his advantage.
Now the girl was in his hands, figuratively speaking. He had his men guarding her in the topmost inner room of the Empire State Building. There were specters watching her like hawks, awaiting the moment she awoke.
“What’s so special about her?” Rico had asked after he’d come back and reported the night’s events to Worthington. “She’s just a kid. A sleeping kid.”
The truth was, Worthington had no idea what was so special about the child. He had been alerted to the Spectral Plane’s efforts to free her from her tomb by one of his men who had seen the clip while looking over the shoulder of a mortal on the subway.
He wanted to find out what had made them so desperate to find her. Why would they risk public exposure just to get their hands on a little girl?
“We’ll soon find out,” Worthington told Rico. “And when we do, the queen will be most pleased with our efforts.”
Rico beamed.
Worthington returned his smile.
He had not told the queen the truth yet. Although he kept in contact with Her Majesty and reported that things were taking slightly longer than planned, he had been, well, less than honest with her.
For one thing, he had seen what had happened to specters who had failed in the past. Worthington had been on a trajectory for over forty years to make his way into Her Majesty’s good books. His goal was to sit as one of her most loyal by her side, and he was not going to screw that up now.
There had been a time when his current position seemed impossible. A time when he was a fresh-faced specter who was nothing more than a messenger boy for the court. A specter who spent his days running around the country and delivering official orders and letters on behalf of Queen Victoria, squashed by several layers of bureaucracy.
He had pushed on nonetheless, knowing that as he had served in life, he wished to serve in death. In life, there was little more in the way of service for a Beefeater than to provide tours for eager visitors to Buckingham Palace or go higher in the ranks of the Beefeater order.
In death, the rules were looser. In death, his status as a Beefeater wasn’t a permanent affair, and as time wore on, he had worked his way farther and farther into the queen’s inner circle, until he was finally within sight of her.
Those days had been filled with angst, ensuring he delivered on everything requested of him and managed those beneath him, too. Making certain the queen saw his efforts, and that he could outperform everyone around him in order to sit by her side and be her faithful pet.
And then, with the goal in sight, Queen Victoria had summoned Worthington to her chambers.
“Worthington Conrad,” she’d announced in a voice that sounded both authoritative and tired at once. Her words echoed around the room, the enunciation of each syllable as crystal clear as glass. “I have summoned you today for a task of supreme importance. The matter is both urgent and desperate and will need your careful nature to ensure that a situation is repaired and healed for centuries to come.”
Worthington bowed low, his hat threatening to topple off his head. He could feel the cold stares of the queen’s latest lapdogs, Yasmine Turnwell and Porter Sykes. Two specters who flanked her chair and ensured her security when dealing with members of the court. “Anything, your Majesty. Whatever you ask, I deliver.”
“A foreign faction is attempting to revolt against the crown. A rabble of bandits who have declared themselves as separate from the court.” The queen met Worthington’s gaze with an icy stare. “It is with great urgency with which one asks that you proceed to this city and fix the problem.”
“Of course.” Baxter’s heart swelled with excitement. “Where am I to be sent?”
Derby? Nottingham? Manchester? Which city dares to stand against the crown and attempt to overthrow Her Majesty?
“New York City.”
Worthington was speechless. So close to the crown, and now he was being sent three thousand miles away?
“Do not look so disappointed,” the queen smiled. An effort that appeared both pained and twisted. “You have an opportunity here to prove your loyalty. To emerge a hero and return home victorious.”
The excitement returned to Worthington’s face. “Anything for Your Majesty and the paranormal court,” he swore.
Queen Victoria gave a small nod and motioned a hand toward the door. “You will be given instructions and further information shortly. We are finalizing all of the arrangements in the next few days.”
Worthington bowed again, so low his nose nearly scraped the floor. He turned and made his way to the door, but stopped when the queen spoke once more.
“Oh, and Worthington?”
“Yes, Your Majesty?” he inquired.
“You shall not be going alone,” she informed him.
Little did he know at that moment what an enormous obstacle he would have to overcome before his glorious return. Little did he know until a few days later that the queen had also asked Rogue to attend the trip. Little did he know he’d have to babysit the most unpredictable, the most unorthodox, and the only mortal to ever have worked within the court.
Jennie was the only thing standing in his way of a true hero’s return to England.
Worthington rubbed his eyes as the warning from Yasmine and Porter came back to mind. In the hour before meeting with Jennie and starting their voyage over to America, they’d pulled him aside and said four words that haunted him in the same way specters were known to haunt humans.
“Don’t fuck it up.”
Worthington scowled and turned to go back into the building. Several dozen specters filled the room, each keeping an eye on the girl and awaiting their next instructions. All of them were afraid of Worthington and his connection with the queen and the court they’d sworn fealty to, afraid to step out of line in case Worthington reported them all as traitors.
This wasn’t even the full volume of his potential allies. He had specters out in the streets, searching for the central location where those loyal to the crown met. If the Spectral Plane had their HQ, then the crown had to have one, too.
Worthington frowned as he tried not to think about how he should have the information already. Has the queen’s grasp on America slipped
so much that she can’t even keep track of those who are loyal and willing to fight for her?
He shook away the thought. Doubt was not allowed to plague his mind right now. He had a job to do, and his job was simple.
Destroy the Spectral Plane and anyone else who stood in the way of his return to the court.
Even if it meant taking out that interfering, meddling mortal with unnatural abilities who had turned traitor.
New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Lower Manhattan
The lights flickered on the ceiling of the morgue as Jennie and Baxter melted through the door and entered the room.
There was a chill in the air. The room was kept cold to preserve the bodies in the long drawers on the far wall of the room.
Durst was only just back on duty after the little blip with his nerves. He stared at the lights with fear on his face. “Keaton, it’s happening again.”
Keaton appeared in the doorway, holding a sandwich in one hand. He rubbed his tired eyes with the other. “It’s just a surge in the power,” he told Durst. “Are you going to do this every time something weird happens in the room? You know, we’re surrounded by dead people? What’s the worst that could happen?”
“That’s exactly it.” Durst’s voice wobbled. He didn’t know how Keaton held a calm demeanor. The strange occurrences in the morgue had left him wound as tight as a rat in a corner. “They’re dead people. You’ve seen the movies. Who’s to say there aren’t zombies, ghosts, vampires, all the things that bite and cause them to rise. We’re surrounded by the dead, but we never see the souls leave. What if they hang around?”
Keaton sighed. “For someone who’s scared of ghosts, you’ve certainly picked the right profession.” He took a bite of his sandwich and turned to go back into the office. “I’m not having this discussion with you again. If you need me, I’ll be in finishing my break. In peace.”
Durst returned to his mound of paperwork. He had had trouble explaining to Keaton why it had taken so long to restore all of the paperwork in the correct order last week. When a flurry of—wind? Impossible wind—had torn the papers from his desk and whipped them into the air, he had spent hours restoring them all to their correct places and ensuring everything was in order.
It had to have been a…
A what? A ghost? Durst chuckled quietly, although his eyes darted around the room. Don’t be absurd.
“I’ve never understood people who work in a morgue,” Baxter commented as the door to the morgue opened and two nurses pushing a gurney arrived. “People who want to be around the dead. I don’t trust them.”
He gave Jennie an accusing look.
“Hey, watch what you say,” Jennie retorted. “I’m around the dead twenty-four/seven.”
Baxter grinned. “Exactly.”
Jennie laughed, then turned her attention to the skinny man who was signing a series of papers the nurses handed him. A few moments later, they were gone, leaving Durst to sort out the processing of the cadaver.
Jenny watched with an eager eye. They had waited patiently for someone to show up, for someone to bite the bullet and cross into the land beyond the living.
It was all a matter of statistics. Jennie knew from research she wasn’t proud to have undertaken that the average mortality rate of residents in New York City was fifty thousand people a year.
Which, when divided against the total number of days in a year, was a hundred and thirty-six people who died every day in New York City from natural causes like old age and illness, not to mention the homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths.
This meant their chances of encountering someone had been fairly likely. But they were extra pleased to have found their luck so soon after arriving.
Durst wheeled the patient over to the drawers and called for Keaton.
Baxter was taken aback by the size of the man as he appeared from the office.
Nearly a perfect physical match for Baxter himself, when it came to lifting the cadaver and placing him in the drawer, it was clear Durst wasn’t needed. His main part in the cadaver’s storage was an on-the-ground aircraft marshal.
When the cadaver was stored, Jennie and Baxter found places to hide. They knew it wouldn’t be long before—
The lights flickered. A specter appeared through the door.
Jennie half-expected it to be the recruiter from the Spectral Plane, a man who had died wearing a hospital gown and would now have to live out the rest of his death with his ass on display. A man they hadn’t seen since their initial encounter.
The specter wandered toward the drawer, a tired look on his face. Jennie’s heart raced as she stared at the pale-faced man with the ornate jacket and extravagant wig. A man who had visited her apartment a little over a week ago.
Charles held a spectral hand on the handle to the drawer. He pulled it open, revealing a spectral projection of the drawer in the place where the physical drawer should have opened if he had been living.
The cold dead face of the man lay in a state of quiet relaxation.
Charles was about to speak to the man when he heard the cocking of a gun. He turned and gasped when he saw Jennie appear from behind Durst’s desk.
Baxter melted through the wall beside him.
“Good morning,” Jennie greeted him brightly. “Lovely to see you again, Charles.”
Charles gave a small nod then looked uncertainly at the gun. “Rogue.” He stared at Baxter. “Your name, my friend?”
“Baxter,” the big specter replied. “Or, you can consider me Worthington 2.0.”
Jennie scoffed. “Really? You want to be compared to him?”
Baxter shrugged. “Whatever gets the job done.”
Charles shrank back so slowly against the drawers that it wasn’t until half of one leg had disappeared that Jennie realized what he was doing and latched onto him.
Charles’ eyes widened as he felt the pull, aware he was caught and couldn’t run away.
He struggled against her power. “So, it’s true. I’ve heard of your power from afar, yet never truly believed a human could be capable of the things you can do.”
“Aw, thanks.” Jennie fanned her face with a hand, acting like a teenager had just been told she was beautiful and wasn’t sure how to handle it. “It’s nothing, really. Just a few little powers I was born with.”
“Was it really true you once corralled the Richardson Gang?” Charles asked.
Jennie nodded, a satisfied smirk on her face. The Richardson Gang had been a notorious bunch. A gang who had been at large in the 1950s and were famous for their sadistic brand of torture on unsuspecting victims across London.
After they had passed into the afterlife, the gang had picked up their old habits and reunited under the banner of the “Undead Torture Gang.” They’d gone on to re-terrorize many of their former victims, as well as engaging poltergeists in their activity to further upset the living.
Jennie had been called in by the queen to investigate the disturbances in the London Dungeons, which the gang had since rekindled from a tourist attraction, into their very own house of horror. Although the living didn’t see the various deadly instruments move, many of them did hear the faint cries of their victims as they were tortured over and over and over again.
That had been an informative one to put an end to, Jennie thought, remembering how the whole gang had surrounded her, and she’d had to find fun new ways to use her powers to put an end to their tyranny.
She wasn’t sure where the gang was now. She had been told they had been exorcised in accordance with traitors to the crown under a ceremony performed by Victoria. Yet, knowing the lies Victoria had spun in the paranormal court, there was a part of Jennie that doubted the truth of it all.
“It’s true,” Jennie confirmed. “Which should be a wake-up call to yourself that, if you lie to us, your punishment will be severe.”
“P-p-punishment?” Charles stuttered. “I’m sorry, but one member of the paranormal court can’t punish another. You’ve swo
rn an oath.”
Jennie slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry, dollface. The only oath taken here is the one I took when Worthington showed his true colors and I learned about the queen’s betrayal of her morals and values.”
Charles’ face melted into shock, although Jennie couldn’t help but notice his expression seemed strained and a little forced. Over the years, she had learned to pick up on signs to indicate when people weren’t being sincere, and now her bullshit meter was reading high.
“Oh, my! Worthington? Really? What happened?”
Before Jennie had a chance to answer, the man on the bed awoke. His legs kicked out as he propped himself up on his arms and looked around. “Wh-where am I? What happened?”
Charles stared at Jennie a moment longer, asking with his eyes for approval to address the man.
Jennie gave a slight nod.
Charles breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m incredibly sorry, dear man, but it seems as though your time is up. Your body has crossed into the path of…deadness.”
Baxter laughed. “Deadness?”
Charles glared at him. “I’m a little rattled, okay? Let me do this, please?”
Baxter raised his hands defensively and caught Jennie’s eyes, eliciting another hushed wave of sniggers.
Charles went through the script of explaining to the man what had happened and what came next. Whether the man opted to be sent straight into the void, or whether he would like to hang around.
When he got to the options of which faction to align himself with, things got a little tense. Jennie interjected when he began to explain the necessity of swearing to the paranormal court. “Ignore everything about that shit-stain of a cult,” Jennie protested. “You have several options to choose from. There’s freedom in New York. One, you join the Spectral Plane. Think of them as your friendly home-grown community. Or, two, go it solo. There’s nothing wrong with being neutral. Isn’t that right, Baxter?”
Baxter beamed. “Absolutely. I’ve been neutral for the best part of a century, and I’ve been happier than a pig in shit.”
Rogue, Renegade And Rebel (In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service Book 1) Page 29