Sorcerers, Spirits, and Ships

by Katherine Gilbert

  Miss Janeway looked at him soothingly. “We were getting closer, but knowing that you need to be very cautious is one thing. Worrying about a demon that’s after your soul is quite another.”

  Giving Annabella an apologetic look, she sighed.

  “It’s all too easy to get so distracted by fear that you miss the last opportunity to save yourself.”

  It wasn’t enough, though. Armand was shaking with rage, until Annabella put both hands over his, smiling at him tenderly. For some reason, she wasn’t panicking, but he felt sure he could handle enough of that for them both.

  “It’s the same demon Beatrix tried to give my soul to, isn’t it?”

  Seeming sad, Miss Janeway nodded.

  Armand was amazed at Annabella’s calm questions.

  “So is this where it went once we banished it?”

  “I suspect so, yes,” the older lady went on. “It’s probably why you ended up here, although I’m not certain whether the murders started because of it or on their own.”

  She glanced over to William.

  The dapper man gave what would have been a sigh, had he still been breathing.

  “I’m pretty sure the first one was just an accident. Some of the dead like to teach lessons, and that particular one just happened to be given to someone with a weak heart. Still, it was enough to get the demon’s attention. Then when that silly girl wanted to make a deal, she was easy prey to make it stronger.”

  “I’m guessing she didn’t get her deal,” Annabella put in.

  “She did, yes, but not in the way she thought. As she didn’t know what she was doing, she wasn’t at all careful about how she phrased the bargain, so it was something like, ‘this young man will be with me for the rest of my life.’” He looked grave. “Since the rest of her life ended up being about two days, it wasn’t hard for the demon to quickly collect.”

  Armand felt Annabella shudder and didn’t blame her. He couldn’t imagine anything he would make a bargain with a demon for, either. No matter how precious it was, the very nature of the bargain meant you had lost it from the start.

  William went on. “By the time of the third death, I’m afraid the demon had made a few bargains with some of the dead, and they were only too happy to help it out.”

  “And the one last night was the demon itself?” Annabella wondered, still far calmer than Armand.

  “No,” the revenant looked away worriedly. “I’m afraid he’s brought some . . . thing with him. Something terrible.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what it is.”

  The vengeance wraith, Annabella whispered in Armand’s mind, though everyone else who knew about them was clearly thinking it, too.

  “So, not to break in here,” Teena wondered. “But how do I come into this?”

  Armand looked at Annabella, who’d been the one with the premonition—or whatever it should be called.

  Focusing on Teena, Annabella sighed. “I guess because I’m the one it’s after, I sometimes get these . . . I don’t know what to call them. Flashes, maybe? . . . of what the spirits are thinking. When we were lost down in that abandoned hallway, I felt certain they were going to go after you.”

  She shrugged.

  “Sorry. If it’s any encouragement, I know how you feel.”

  Teena smiled understandingly, as Annabella looked back to William.

  “I guess the real question is how much you know or are part of it.”

  Is it my suspicion setting you off? Armand asked her.

  Kitty’s, she corrected. I feel like he’s telling the truth, but I don’t have the senses of a cat.

  Miss Janeway also gave him a look he couldn’t ignore.

  “It’s hard to explain,” the dapper ghost told them. “A lot of the dead are trapped here for different reasons. Anger, fear, confusion, a lot of things keep them from moving on.”

  His sadness was evident.

  “Unfortunately, I know exactly why I’m here. I’m paying penance,” he filled in before they could ask. “It’s the price I pay for taking my own life.”

  Chapter 16

  Annabella

  This wasn’t news, but it made Annabella mournful, nonetheless.

  “How do you know that?” she wondered.

  True, he was different from the others—he seemed quite solid, for one thing—but it was hard to define.

  “I know.”

  Clearly ashamed, he looked away.

  “My business had failed. I would be a disgrace to my family. I also knew that my fiancée shouldn’t have to be tied to me, but she’d probably stay and be brought down along with me. Still, if I were dead, maybe they could all pretend it was an accident on a stormy sea and move on.”

  “It didn’t work out that way, did it?” Miss Janeway’s eyes were quite certain.

  William shook his head. “As soon as I hit the water and knew I would die, the whole future I’d given up became clear to me. Yes, it would have been difficult, but the family who loved me would have stayed by my side, while the ones who didn’t and my fiancée moved on.”

  Clearly not wanting them to misunderstand, he looked back up.

  “She wasn’t a bad girl, but we were both pretty much controlled by what those around us thought. Still, being destitute would have freed me of that. Eventually, I’d have met a pretty girl.”

  His gaze on Teena was longing.

  “And we would both have had the happiness we’d hoped for.”

  So, he and Teena were supposed to be together in their previous lives? Annabella wondered.

  It did make more sense of why the man said he was looking after her, although she still didn’t understand Kitty’s objection to him.

  She saw Armand squint slightly. They still ARE supposed to be, I think.

  Clearly concentrating on his newly-acquired, soulmate-finding skill, he examined the girl and the ghost.

  But I suppose it’s a less-traditional arrangement now.

  As this was kind of putting it mildly, Annabella said nothing. Still, she was rather happy to see him starting to use the insight he would be calling on as the new duke.

  “Instead,” William went on sadly, “I was dead and wasn’t there to protect her when her uncle murdered her.”

  Gazing over the rest of them, he explained.

  “Her parents were gone, and the will only gave the uncle access to their money if she were unmarried or dead. As she had just gotten engaged . . .” He winced. “. . . he took the latter option.”

  “Yikes,” Teena said. “But yeah, that makes sense of what I’ve seen in my dreams.”

  She smiled at him, and Annabella thought she saw the start of a beautiful—if truly odd—relationship.

  “Anyway,” William went back to his narrative. “When I died, there was this bar in front of the light, and I knew I had to stay on the ship and try to help. I just didn’t know who or what I was helping or waiting for.”

  He seemed to think about it.

  “Although bringing down a demon seems a likely answer.”

  All of this made sense of the tales of the friendly, dapper gentleman ghost—although, if he were supposed to stay for this, he’d been forced to wait around for several decades. It didn’t really explain Kitty’s objections, though, so Annabella tried to remember not to trust him completely.

  As that seemed the most they would learn, they left the tale there, Miss Janeway turning back to Annabella. “You mentioned a hallway you were lost in. Where was it?”

  “Near the swimming pool, first.” She thought about it. “And then probably just a floor or so below this one, sort of parallel underneath.”

  Miss Janeway looked worried. “So there was no one in it?”

  Annabella and Armand both shook their heads, Armand picking up the narrative. “No, but it was more than that. It was completely abandoned. None of those rooms had been touched since the ship closed down. It was like they had never renovated them.”

  The look Miss Janeway and Hubert gave each other made Ann
abella shudder, but it was the older woman who spoke.

  “There are no disused hallways there. In fact, that should be the deck I’m staying on.”

  Her head rose, her gaze worried, and Annabella didn’t blame her. As she’d been to Miss Janeway’s cabin before, she should have known this, but she did keep getting turned around.

  Listening, Annabella waited to see what conclusions the older woman had drawn.

  “I think the demon may have moved you into another possible timeline, one where the ship was abandoned and left to rot.”

  This possibility made both she and Armand shudder. Teena, though she’d only just met her, put her hand on her arm, as Miss Janeway glanced over to Hubert, who picked up his cue.

  “Brutus and I went back to one of the lounges we saw on the ghost tour. The one which used to be a men’s lounge or smoking room, where people still smell cigar smoke sometimes, although smoking hasn’t been allowed on board for decades.”

  Remembering the tales, Annabella nodded. “You smelled the smoke?”

  “Worse. It was full of men from another time. I think they saw us, but, because we weren’t properly dressed to their standards, they wouldn’t acknowledge us.”

  Hubert looked as worried as she felt.

  “When I looked out the windows, I saw that everyone on deck was in clothes from another time.” A shrug followed. “Even if the historical society is really into cosplay, which doesn’t seem to be the case, I can’t imagine they’d let them all start smoking again.”

  Annabella shuddered. “And you?” she prompted Miss Janeway.

  “I went to check the propeller area.”

  She looked both concerned and angry.

  “Whatever’s there, it isn’t human anymore.”

  As little as she liked it, Annabella summed up where they were.

  “So, my family demon is after me again. Whatever his plans are, they could include murder, a vengeance wraith, and stranding us back in time—or, worse, in a timeline which never even happened.”

  Looking them all over, she wondered.

  “Am I leaving any horrible possibilities out?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Miss Janeway answered. “Whatever they’re plotting, they’re very far along.”

  Her gaze grew grim.

  “And I don’t think they’re likely to give us several weeks to figure it out.”

  But she was wrong. It was far worse than that.

  Glancing toward a window, Annabella sighed. “I’m afraid you left something out. We’ve run out of time.”

  Night had fallen again.

  Chapter 17

  Armand

  To say Armand was worried would have been a bit of an understatement. So far, he had covered Annabella—and even Kitty, just to be safe—in as many anti-possession spells as he could think of and had given her as much instruction on how to survive as he could. But none of it was doing him any good.

  High on a combination of anti-sleep spells and outright terror, he wasn’t certain which way to turn. Of course, when the magic of the full-wakefulness spell finally wore off and its payment was due, the exhaustion would slam into him and probably take him out for several days. But hopefully they would have survived this by then.

  Sighing, he watched Annabella getting ready to lie down. There was part of him which feared that he might be suffering from the arrogance of a successful akukar, believing that every assignment would see the end of the demon in question. He didn’t want to think about the fact that, if that were true, the demon who was trying to claim his beloved again wouldn’t be here.

  As it came closer to the time for Annabella to try to sleep, he felt no better. She was fully clothed, understandably, as he was not the only one in their cabin, and they had no way of knowing what would happen from here.

  Kitty, Teena, and William were still with them, while Miss Janeway, Hubert, and Brutus had gone off to try to find and protect the other possible victims.

  Teena was looking at him worriedly.

  “I’ve seen the lady Mr. Bevan is going to find. I’m not certain she’s the type to believe in anything she can’t see.”

  While Armand smiled at Teena’s formality in only using Hubert’s last name, she was probably much too right, if the reports Hubert had told them about the sister of the engine room ghost were accurate. But they all had a feeling that the ship’s ghosts and the vengeance wraith, along with the demon who was running them, would primarily target those connected to the vessel.

  “That may be true, but Hubert can be more persuasive than you’d think. It’s the curse of being a solicitor.”

  Trying to smile at her—and not just ignore everyone else before grabbing Annabella and taking her a thousand miles away—he went on before Teena could interject.

  “Plus, she still comes to this ship regularly, the place where her brother died. That’s suggestive. There are undoubtedly easier bars for her to get drunk in.”

  Looking thoughtful, Teena didn’t answer.

  Annabella filled in. “Some people believe in more things than they’ll tell you about. Hopefully, Miss Janeway will be successful in tempting the historical society and Miriam to remain under her protection, too.”

  It was hard to know who to look after first. There were a lot of people who might stand out and little way to know what the demon was planning.

  It was this latter fact which worried him, as Annabella was about to try to find out.

  Terribly, from what they’d learned, it was reasonable that the demon wanted her the most. Already, it or the ghosts or something had made its attempts to infiltrate her mind. Asleep was certainly when she was most vulnerable, so it would hopefully be the biggest temptation.

  Although this wasn’t encouraging, it was likely that, if they delayed, the demon would just find another time to grab her, one when they were entirely unprepared—and would also continue to murder random innocents in the meanwhile. Therefore, as awful as it was, it made sense that she should make its job easy and thus see whether they could find some way to undo all its plans.

  It did make sense. He didn’t have to like it.

  Giving him a smile which made his heart glow, Annabella nodded him over to her, and the rest of their companions were kind enough to give them a minute alone—although Kitty did stand nearby and watch, an ex-cat till the end.

  “Hopefully, I’ll be safe,” she said, thoroughly discouragingly. “I’ve set the spell which will allow me to talk to you while I’m asleep, and I’ve left a small spell you can activate which will bring me back from the dream world if you need me.”

  Now, it just needs to work.

  He smiled at her. I heard that, my love.

  Her look was tender, even if her voice was quiet. “I love you, Armand.” She took his hand. “I’m not going to let anything separate us.”

  He knew but still feared. Maybe it was just the fact that they had only been together for a few months. While it felt like he’d known her for all of time, in reality, he’d barely gotten past the “what’s your favorite food?” stage.

  Despite himself, it made him worry that one day she’d wake up and realize that he wasn’t good enough for her. It was even possible that it was him who was keeping her from converting into her true strength.

  Heart aching, he stared at her perfection. He wouldn’t be surprised if she realized all of this. Then she would leave him to become the most beautiful sorcerer in the world.

  While he could feel how much she loved him, he still worried. Even as she pulled him down to where she sat on the bed and kissed him, he feared that he was just a phase she needed, a way to understand the magical world which had been kept from her all her life. Perhaps there was no way to keep her at all.

  Somehow, despite their completed partnering ceremony, the later they got into the evening, the worse these terrors became. However, it definitely wasn’t the time to discuss any of them.

  When he let her go, he sighed, going back to his chair.

&nb
sp; “I’ll be right here, my love.”

  Whatever she decided about whether she wished to keep him, he would never willingly let her be harmed.

  The four of them sat by and watched, as Annabella bespelled herself into sleep. He didn’t blame her for that. Observation wasn’t the easiest way into the land of dreams.

  For a while, the room was eerily quiet, and it was only the magical monitor they’d created together which let him know that she was not in particular danger yet. Its clair-lumes glowed above her in a heart shape, in tune to the beats of her own—green if all was well, yellow or red if danger came.

  Suddenly, though, he wished he’d brought along her little, transmogrified frog. Its croaking alone made it eminently clear when something bad was coming.

  Finally, she said, “I’m in this cabin, waking up. No one’s here. That song is playing again. Can you hear it?”

  She started humming, which sounded very creepy, but the clair-lumes above her still showed a green, beating heart.

  Her voice sounded drowsy and far away. “I’m in the hallway now, following the music. It feels just like it did the other night.”

  Armand realized he was sitting with both fists clenched tightly on the chair, physically holding himself in place, and Kitty put her hand on his shoulder comfortingly. Closing his eyes, knowing she would alert him if the monitor changed, he imagined the scene Annabella described.

  “The music seems louder this time. It echoes.”

  Disturbingly, her voice almost sounded doubled then, and he cracked one eye open to see that the heart still beat, steady and green.

  “The couple we saw earlier, the one where he killed her, they’re dancing again. The song they’re hearing is still obviously to some other beat.”

  Somehow, it was almost as though Armand could hear it, too. Imagining, he continued to listen.

  “The red-haired woman the vengeance wraith killed is over by the desk again.”

  She was weeping this time, though, half-collapsed onto the floor.

  “The children from the pool are standing near the door to the deck, as I go down the stairs. They’re grinning.”