by Rabia Gale
“That’s the one.” Trey’s grin was malicious. “Take this message to a man named Morgan who works there. You’ll have no trouble getting someone to point him out.”
“What then?” The boy’s expression was suspicious.
“Then you do as Morgan says. Congratulations, Jem. You are now a civil servant, the God-Father help us all.”
“You didn’ say that at first!” squawked the boy.
“Changing your mind?” Trey arched his eyebrows.
“’Course not. You said warm bed and full belly, right?” Jem snatched the message and stuffed it down his ragged shirt. “I’ll be there.” He glowered at Trey. “’Sides you got yer hands full ’ere, dontcha?” He ran off before Trey could say anything else.
Trey eyed the urchin’s departing figure, wondering if he would regret this. Morgan would give him an earful, no doubt, for saddling him with the boy. But people who saw apparitions were rare to begin with. It wasn’t every day you ran into a seer.
Boy disposed of, he turned to face his bigger problem.
Miss Trent favored him with a long-suffering look. “I was going to say,” she remarked, “that Lady Holmstead’s new orphan house might be a good place for Jem.”
“Not for such a streetwise brat,” Trey countered. “Believe me, Morgan will do Jem a sight more good than all of Lady Holmstead’s matrons.”
“And here I thought you agreed that her orphan house was a most noble endeavor. You listened to me prose on about it for fully a quarter of an hour at her supper!”
“Did I? I was probably thinking of something else.” Trey resumed walking Crescent Circle-wards and Miss Trent fell in beside him. She didn’t appear to notice—or mind if she had—that he hadn’t offered her his arm.
“I hope you have also not forgotten your promise to donate a hundred pounds to the charity.”
Trey frowned. “I have a vague recollection of vowing such a thing to stop the prosing.”
Her dimples peeped again. “Yes, I do have a knack for acquiring large sums of money from our donors,” she said complacently.
“What a conniving chit you are,” Trey remarked without heat. “Was this your revenge for my lack of enthusiasm in dancing with you?”
“I would never.” The twinkle in her eyes belied her statement.
Miss Trent kept up a bright stream of chatter, mostly centered around her delight at the spring festivities in Lumen, which culminated in the grand assembly at Merrimack’s tomorrow night, followed by a procession to the Keep the morning after.
Trey listened in silence, partly because he didn’t want to be seen talking to empty air and partly out of bemusement. Most of the apparitions he encountered were decidedly insane. They certainly didn’t hold conversations about social events while he tried not to notice their long lashes or slender hands.
Miss Trent didn’t attract the notice of any other seers, though he couldn’t say the same for stray elementals. An undine rose from a muddy puddle to stare at the ghost out of silvered eyes. A flock of sylphs, mere diaphanous glimmers, darted above their heads before flying off to torment a sleeping tabby cat.
“And I have always wanted to see the Mirror of Elsinore up close,” Miss Trent finished. The Mirror, the centerpiece of the Procession, was a national treasure guarded zealously by the government and removed from its hiding place only once a year.
“You can’t,” said Trey crushingly. “They call it the Viewing, but no one’s allowed into the solar save for the Guardians. Revitalizing a priceless magical object that protects our borders is not a public spectacle.”
“Another time then,” said Miss Trent, uncrushed.
They were in Bottleham, a quiet genteel neighborhood of terraced houses in red brick rather than the white-washed stucco and grey stone of more modern architecture. A milkman’s cart and horse rattled by, two maids beat rugs on a stair railing, and an elderly gentleman took the air, followed by his gnome servant. Trey received some curious looks; no one else appeared to notice Miss Trent.
“It’s the house just up ahead, with the yellow door. Uncle Henry grumbles about the color, but I think it’s sunny and cheerful.” Miss Trent paused, her attention on the hackney pulled up to the house in question.
A tall, thin man, black bag in hand, sprang up the steps and was admitted inside.
“That’s Dr. Barkley, my aunt’s physician.” Miss Trent’s brows drew together.
A pair of girls, arms around each other, emerged from the house. Both looked pale and shaken, their heads bowed, not paying attention to anything else.
Which was good because Trey, with an inward sigh, recognized one of the two. Charlotte Blake—known to all her family as Charlie—was the younger sister of a college friend. The large, rambunctious Blake family had somewhat adopted him during those years; he’d spent many of his holidays in their rather ramshackle, but always lively, household.
And now he felt beholden to help the friend of a girl he fondly considered a younger sister.
“And those are my friends! Why, what has happened?” cried Miss Trent. She started forward, her feet rising a few inches from the ground.
“Miss Trent!” Trey added a compulsion to his command; Miss Trent turned to him, her feet settling back onto the ground.
“Is someone ill, my lord?” she whispered. In the stronger light, she looked more insubstantial than ever. “Or… or… is it…?”
Trey wished again he could hand this off to Hilda, who’d mothered everyone and had always known the right thing to say. But it was Trevelyan Shield who stood here now. He ran his hand through his already tousled hair. And it was still only Thursday.
Best get it over with.
“Miss Trent, raise your hand and look at it.”
“What?” She stared at him as she lifted her arm. “What’s wrong with—?”
Miss Trent glanced at her hand and froze. Her eyes grew wide. Her mouth rounded.
“You’ll have to forgive me, Miss Trent. I’m not at all good at breaking things gently.” Trey made a complicated gesture as she started to scream.
Miss Trent’s form glowed blue, collapsed into itself, and winked out.
Trey stared at the Elliots’ sunshine-yellow door.
It was, he knew, going to be another long day.
Chapter Two
Arabella Trent was trapped in a pentagram five paces across from side to side.
She knew this because she had traversed its shape multiple times, testing the pentagram’s strength. After being thrown back by the wards every single instance, she had to concede defeat.
Besides, the buzz of angry magic hurt.
Even though I’m a ghost, I can still feel pain.
The thought was like an open pit in a stomach she didn’t have.
If she was a ghost, it meant that she—
—was dead.
“How can I be dead?” she demanded out loud to the empty chamber. “I don’t even remember how I got this way. There must be some mistake.”
No response.
A knot tightened in Arabella’s middle. Dead or not, she couldn’t bear being trapped. She had to get free.
Think.
She couldn’t get through the wards. Could she perhaps get under or over them? But the stone floor below her feet refused to allow her incorporeal body passage. And she couldn’t hover more than a few inches off the ground without being pressed back down as if by a giant’s hands.
Perhaps she could shift the anchors of the pentagram and nullify the spell that way? Arabella examined the floor, but the lines had been scored into the stone and inlaid with gold. The pentagram was made to be permanent.
Whatever happened to using plain old chalk? Not that it would’ve helped her much. She couldn’t affect the material world. Scuffing chalk lines was outside her scope.
Arabella paced her prison, hoping the exercise would either expose some weakness in the wards or dislodge a brilliant plan of escape from her stumped brain.
Neither occurred, but the activity di
d calm her down. Her fast, shallow breaths subsided—she wouldn’t think about the fact that she was not actually respiring—and rationality asserted itself.
This isn’t like those other times. It isn’t pitch dark and close. I’m not restrained and I can still see.
Arabella circled her current domain a few more times, then gave up her attempts to secure her freedom. The sight of the ground gleaming through her translucent feet made her feel ill.
She flopped onto the floor and drew her knees up to her chest. With a kind of distant surprise, she noted her clothing had changed. Instead of the shrine cloak and white robes, she wore her new high-necked walking dress of sea green with four inches of silver embroidery at the hem.
Arabella could take no pleasure from her pretty clothing. She was dead and stuck in some necromancer’s workroom.
And to think that only yesterday her biggest concern had been that her generous aunt and uncle had paid far too much for the ball gown she was to wear at Friday’s assembly!
Arabella stared out at the rest of the chamber she could not access. Judging from the thick, leaded windows set at the top of the walls, it was partially underground. The sunlight that flowed in was surprisingly warm and golden. She suspected that some sorcery was involved; a cellar workroom should not be so well-illuminated.
The rest of the space did not match Arabella’s preconceptions, either. The benches were piled with books and mathematical instruments instead of skulls, black candles, and jars of frogs’ toes and newts’ eyes. On the other side of the pentagram was a cleared space, with a practice dummy standing against one wall. Weapons lay in brackets affixed to the stone walls around it: swords of all sizes, a spear, a pike. The shelving underneath held padded armor.
Apparently Lord St. Ash was more into swordplay than potion making.
Arabella scowled as she thought of the young nobleman. He had known from the start, of course. It wasn’t good manners or any interest in her well-being that had caused him to help her.
No, it was his job.
He worked in the Phantasm Bureau of the Foreign Office. Arabella was aware that one of the Bureau’s duties was banishing spirits who overstayed their welcome in the mortal world.
Spirits like her.
He could’ve sent her straight to the Shadow Lands. Arabella shivered at the thought. The Shadow Lands lurked between this world and the afterlife, a place spoken of in whispers, where lost souls and demons and who knew what else wandered.
The pentagram was preferable. Perhaps her captor had a heart after all. A small one.
Arabella tried to recall all she had ever heard of Viscount St. Ash. Surprisingly for a peer’s son, it wasn’t much. The other young ladies never brought up his name when discussing prospective husbands. Aunt Cecilia had glossed over him when doing the same. Her cousin Harry had dropped more detail in passing conversation, but Arabella hadn’t paid much attention. She had never expected to have much to do with an earl’s heir, besides the occasional pre-season dance when Lumen was thin of company. She belonged to less exalted circles.
Arabella wrinkled her nose as she turned over what little she knew of the Shields. They were a powerful magical family headed by the Earl of Whitecross. The Shields were traditionally ferromentalists, magical sword masters, but the man who had imprisoned her in this pentagram had gone in a different direction altogether.
She had heard it whispered that he walked the Shadow Lands and fought against its denizens.
What was it they called him?
The Shade Hunter.
And she’d had the bad luck to encounter him, of all people, this morning. Arabella thought of how delighted and grateful she’d been, and winced. Worst of all, she’d chattered away, never suspecting he was hatching schemes to trap her in a pentagram for his sinister purposes.
Gloomy thoughts such as these occupied Arabella as the hours whiled away. The light changed, shifting across the floor, until it was gone. Twilight filled the chamber, soft and heavy and grey.
Arabella tried to hold on to her outrage, but by that time she was resigned to her captivity. And heartily bored.
So it was with relief that she heard sounds from upstairs—the slam of a door, the scuff of feet. He was back!
Arabella waited, but no one appeared at the cellar door. Instead, noises continued to emanate from upstairs. Several thuds vibrated through the ceiling. Was he dropping books or boots?
Annoyance rekindled inside Arabella. By the saints, she may be a ghost, but she was still a gentlewoman! How dare the unmannerly boor keep her waiting!
Arabella leapt to her feet and shouted, “Help! I’m down here! Help!”
Since she had no throat to feel parched, Arabella thought with malicious glee that she could keep yelling all night. If he doesn’t come soon, I promise that I will haunt him.
The door at the top of the stairs crashed open, then slammed shut. The cellar steps creaked as Lord St. Ash ran down them. Rune lights bloomed yellow in the glass-sided lanterns set into the wall ahead of him.
Arabella put her hands on her hips as His Lordship’s stockinged feet came into view. The rest of him followed, until a tall, lean man with tousled blond hair and wary grey eyes stood before her. His cravat was loosened and the plain brown vest he wore over a white linen shirt was unbuttoned.
Incongruously, he held a sandwich in his left hand.
“You,” she informed him frostily, “forgot about me.”
“And you,” said St. Ash, “have a very penetrating preternatural scream.” He grimaced. He had, Arabella realized, a very expressive face. It was quite different from the stony demeanor he’d put on at the supper dance.
“I apologize for that,” said Arabella with dignity, “but you left me no choice.” She gestured at the pentagram.
St. Ash’s eyes narrowed as he surveyed her. Arabella had the impression that he was making up his mind about something. She began to feel nervous. If he decided to thrust her into the Shadow Lands after all, there was nothing she could do about it.
Apparently she passed the test, for St. Ash said lightly, “You were quite safe down here, Miss Trent, if a trifle bored.”
“I should like an explanation, Lord St. Ash—” began Arabella.
“Trey,” he interrupted.
Arabella frowned at him.
He waved the sandwich at her. “I’m not used to all this ‘Lord this’ and ‘Milord that.’ It puts me off my food.”
Arabella remembered that he was actually the younger son. Hadn’t Cousin Harry mentioned his older brother had died last year?
Still, she couldn’t call him by his name. What would Aunt Cecilia say? She ignored his improper request to ask a more pressing question. “Why did you stick me in this pentagram?” she demanded. “I’m not going to harm anyone. Not even Priscilla Price, who called me a rustic mushroom last month.”
“Did she indeed?” He looked amused. “But, you know, she’s only like that towards those she perceives are a threat to her matrimonial ambitions.”
Miss Price was one of Lumen society’s acknowledged beauties. Arabella’s eyes widened. “Was that a compliment?”
“Well, you are rather pretty,” he owned. “But I’ve been told, by Miss Price herself, that I am no judge of these things.”
“I was pretty,” said Arabella gloomily. “And now I’m this.” She gestured at her aethereal form.
“Don’t be so cast down. There’s hope yet. As it turns out, you’re not completely dead.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Just that your comatose body is safely ensconced in your bedchamber right now.”
Arabella’s head spun. Lord St.—Trey was a blur in her vision. “What?”
“Are you going to faint? It’ll be the first time I’ve seen an apparition fall unconscious. I should take notes.” The dratted man put his sandwich on his worktable and shuffled papers.
“Of course I’m not! Please stop teasing and tell me properly.” Despite herself, her word
s ended on a tremble.
The laughter vanished from his face. “Poor girl.” His voice was gentle. “What a trying day you’ve had. Why don’t you sit down?”
A grey mist appeared inside the pentagram and solidified into the shape of a chair. Arabella touched the back of it, expecting her fingers to go through it.
They didn’t. The chair felt smooth and cool, like marble.
“What is this?”
“Aether.”
Arabella snatched her hand away. “Did you summon this from—?”
“The Shadow Lands? Yes.” Remarkable. He spoke the name as if it were the most commonplace thing in the world. “Do sit down, Miss Trent. The chair won’t bite.”
Arabella did so, gingerly. The magical chair wasn’t as hard as she’d expected, giving away slightly under her. “Arabella. If I am to call you Trey, you should call me Arabella.”
“Certainly.” Trey sat down on a bench and lifted his sandwich. “Do you mind? It’s late and I haven’t had supper yet.”
At her nod, he took a bite. Arabella felt a familiar empty feeling around her middle. “I’m hungry? How is that possible?”
“It hasn’t been long since you separated from your body. Your mind still remembers how you’re supposed to feel if you haven’t eaten all day.” Trey devoured the remainder of his sandwich while Arabella tried hard not to stare longingly and drool. Could a ghost salivate?
“About my body, though?” she queried.
“You’re still alive, though barely. Apparently, you slipped out of the house last evening without anyone knowing, dressed in your plainest clothes and a hooded cloak, like a girl on her way to an elopement.” He raised his eyebrows. “Were you eloping?”
“Of course not,” said Arabella crossly.
“Your aunt will be relieved. About dusk, you were hit by a hackney, according to a servant girl who witnessed the incident. You had run into the street after a stray kitten. You really are that kind of person, aren’t you?” Amusement was writ plain on his face.
“Better than being a heartless monster,” she flashed back. Goodness, he made her seem like a complete ninny. And he was the rudest man she had ever met.
