Ghostlight (The Reflected City Book 1)

by Rabia Gale

  It dripped hunger and promised pain. Arabella shivered and pressed her lips together.

  “I hear you,” the voice continued. “I hear the pulse of your fear, like the racing heartbeat of a bird. A pretty little bird with bright eyes, whose neck I can snap with one hand.”

  It laughed now, the noise like that of a stone lid dragging across a sarcophagus.

  Arabella said, keeping her voice even, “Are you the ghoul that killed Mr. Gibbs?”

  “Pshaw.” It made a wet, disgusted sound. “Such a small, shriveled, sooty soul that was. I am hungry for a better meal.”

  Its yearning came at her in waves even through the barrier, raking across her being like claws of poison. Arabella felt nauseated, but she told herself that since she had no stomach, it didn’t matter.

  The ghoul was ready to talk and Arabella was happy to let it. In spite of the way its voice scraped down her soul, this was her chance to get intelligence out of it.

  “That couldn’t have been very pleasant,” she said sympathetically. “Why him and not someone more”—she searched for the right word—“tender?”

  It hissed, its displeasure acid in Arabella’s incorporeal body. She winced. “I do what Master tells me to.”

  “Oh, I see. Makes sense. We wouldn’t want anyone else to find out about the miasma at the Viewing.”

  It laughed again. This time Arabella was forcefully reminded of bones rattling. “Miasma’s only the start of the plan, little butterfly. Master—” It broke off, choking, as if one of the bones had stuck in its throat.

  Arabella rather hoped it had.

  But that wasn’t it. Someone else was in the space—Arabella refused to name it a room without further confirmation—a presence whose words and voice disappeared from her memory within moments.

  The presence said, You talk too much.

  A strangled sound answered him. Arabella almost heard the ghoul’s words die, stillborn, before they could be said.

  The other turned its attention to Arabella. Already, its voice had faded from her memory.

  It had to be the one from the pawnshop. Master, the ghoul had called him.

  You’ve been a naughty girl, Miss Trent, poking your nose in business not your own.

  “It’s more accurate to say I was dragged into this business,” said Arabella with spirit. “What do you mean by trapping me here?”

  I was curious and wished the pleasure of your company.

  “You could’ve called upon me, instead of resorting to such tactics, if that were truly your intention.” Arabella tried to focus on the other’s words, to hold them in her memory, but it was like cupping water. Sooner or later, the water trickled through her fingers and she was left with an odd, one-sided conversation, blanks where the Master’s words ought to be. “But I suppose detaining a lady’s spirit is of a little concern to those smuggling miasma into the mortal plane.”

  Ah, so you pulled that out from your memory, did you? I was right to consider you a threat.

  Arabella, straining to hold on to the other’s voice, caught a wet chewing sound, a whiff of something both sweet and sour.

  “Whatever you’re planning won’t work, you know. The Phantasm Bureau will apprehend you. There’s no doubt about it.” Her words were brave, but her heart doubted. What had Trey said about the Great Incursion? It had decimated the Bureau’s ranks.

  Let them try. The presence scoffed at the idea. What can they do without Trey Shield?

  Warning bells rang in her mind. “What do you mean?” The question came out short and sharp.

  Had she revealed too much? Arabella bit her ghostly lip, the sensation like walking into a fog.

  He’s coming for you.

  “Perhaps,” she said cautiously. No need to let the ghoul’s master uncover her hope.

  I’m depending on it.

  The Master laughed, a sinister sound that sent fear thrilling through her. And then the presence left, taking the ghoul with it.

  She forgot its last words moments after it left. But the sense of them lingered, like a nightmare, along with that tang in the air she couldn’t place.

  It was expecting Trey. Planned for it, in fact.

  This was a trap, and she was the bait.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was hard to hang in the dark, feeling helpless. Arabella’s entire body was tight with the need to do something.

  She didn’t want to lead Trevelyan Shield into a trap. And she rather doubted the Master would let her go afterwards. She shuddered, remembering the ghoul’s hunger.

  I’d prefer to take my chances in the Shadow Lands than with that creature!

  She started at the thought.

  The Shadow Lands. All evening, the realm had been near to her, peeking over her shoulder, breathing down her neck, drawing her closer. If she could go into the Shadow Lands, she had a chance of finding Trey and warning him before he was captured.

  Arabella turned her thoughts towards the place, remembering its haunting music, smoke-thick walls, and frozen souls. It was nearby, but just out of her reach.

  The wards were in the way.

  She’d have to do something about them first. But what? It was pitch-dark; she couldn’t make out the construction of the pentagram.

  It was silly. Here she was—a spirit who didn’t need food or water or sleep, who could slide through walls and doors as easily as if slipping through water.

  And she needed light?

  What if I made my own light?

  There were spirits who glowed. Why couldn’t she?

  Arabella held her hands in front of her face—or where she thought her face was.

  Shine, she told them and let the memories flow.

  Silver moonlight flooding through a window… a cat’s eyes reflecting amber in the night… greyish wisps fluttering over dark moors… fungi glowing a sickly-green under a tree where a suicide had hung… blue luminescence on the dark seas coming in with the tide…

  … the blank eyes of a corpse kindling to unholy life… the snap and crackle of a demonic fire…

  Arabella’s throat tightened; something beat against her non-existent ribcage. She forced herself to move on from the images, to gas lamps burning yellow on Lumen’s streets, to runes gleaming silver, to dancing under a star-washed sky with a man’s hand clasping hers and his arm around her waist.

  Heat that had nothing to do with light or flame rushed through Arabella.

  She gasped.

  In front of her were her own hands, fingers small and delicate, softly glowing. Arabella glanced down and saw that her entire form was illuminated, hints of shining color shifting throughout it.

  I did it, she thought, triumphant, but tired. She was drained and felt more insubstantial than ever, as if burning away her essence sliver by sliver.

  Even as she watched, she grew even more tissue-thin.

  Hurry! What’s the use of this, if you’re just going to burn up without doing anything?

  Arabella looked at the wards and grimaced.

  They weren’t made of runes, the way Trey’s were. These were twisted spikes of life energy, unhappy and cruel, growing in thorns and rusty tangles of wire.

  No wonder they had attacked her so viciously.

  But this was magic she was familiar with.

  Through the wards, Arabella faintly made out a cavernous space, emptiness stretching away into darkness. A warehouse, she guessed. She stretched out her senses, hoping to catch a whiff of mud and water. Nothing.

  But underneath her…

  Arabella floated midway up a cylinder. The pentagram was on the floor beneath her, a construct of bone and hair and rope from a hangman’s noose. Caught in the knotted middle of it gleamed something round and small and blue.

  Her sapphire ring.

  So that’s how they found me and brought me here!

  Arabella reached down for it, pushing through air that was surprisingly dense. It resisted, pushing back. Arabella lost her balance, spun, brushed close to the
wards.

  They hissed and spat, cat-like.

  Arabella kept her arms tight by her side. For several moments, she didn’t move at all, though she felt the light consuming her substance.

  Could a soul really go up in a flare like this? She wished she’d paid better attention in church. Her theological education was woefully meager.

  Right. One more try at this, I think. Arabella lifted her right hand and concentrated her substance into it. It solidified, but her clothes had frayed to wisps and the ends of her hair to mist.

  Arabella dove.

  She swam like a fish in water, arms to her side, kicking with her legs. Her initial rush got her close to the tangle, reaching out with her more solid hand, before the spell began to push her away.

  She gritted her teeth, eyes fixed on that ring.

  Please, God-Father and Risen Lord! I need that! She stretched, her arm extending impossibly long. She felt ghostly bones detach and ghostly muscles elongate. Her shoulder softened, her elbow disappeared.

  And still her fingers, glowing strongly, reached.

  Reached through the pentagram’s tangle. Brushed past spines and bristles and thorns that scratched and pierced but could not stop. Grasped the ring, cold and hard and shiny.

  Yes! I’m glad I practiced being a pokey. Arabella reeled in her substance, like a fisherman with a line.

  The ring lifted out of the spell.

  And the spell went insane.

  The curved bones and sharp spines shuddered. Rope and hair whipped. The walls of the cylinder sizzled.

  The air around Arabella boiled and buffeted, burned and stung. She would’ve screamed, if it hadn’t felt like her mouth was scalded, her eyes scorched away.

  All she could feel was the ring in her fingers and the Shadow Lands, cool at her back.

  She didn’t even pause to think. As the spell collapsed around her in screeching fury, Arabella turned and plunged into the Shadow Lands.

  Arabella landed with a thump, the impact reverberating all through her substance. The solidity was so unexpected, she gasped.

  It was as if she had bones again. And flesh and—Arabella unclenched her hand.

  Her mother’s ring was small and solid on her palm. Still shaking from her ordeal, Arabella slid it onto her finger. It settled in place, the star in the heart of the sapphire winking. It was a friendly glimmer, and for a moment her mother’s scent of kitchen herbs and stillroom potions surrounded Arabella, giving her courage.

  Thank you, Mama.

  Arabella didn’t wonder long about how she’d brought the material ring into the Shadow Lands, nor how it was able to fit onto her spirit hand. Trey, she was sure, had a prosy book somewhere with several possible explanations. In the meantime, she’d accept this as a gift from the God-Father, and vow to never let herself be so foolishly parted from her mother’s memento again.

  Arabella scrambled to her feet, looked around, and stared.

  She had expected an entirely different place from this, a place thick with gloom or fog, seething with demons and the unquiet dead. She had braced herself to run—or fight.

  Instead, Arabella found herself by the side of a quiet lake. The light was pale gold, thin and without warmth, emanating from a sky the color of old honey. She could make out no sun. The ground underfoot was covered in dry brown grass, frosted over. It crunched under her feet, and cold seeped through the soles of her kid slippers.

  She was back in her spotted morning dress, a rather incongruous choice for her current location.

  Stunted trees with bone-white limbs, like skeletons of themselves, dotted the landscape. Strings of beads, ropes of shells, slips of paper, and more hung from the leafless branches. They tinkled and clicked, sighed and murmured, in a small breath of wind. Arabella caught words in the stirring air and decided not to walk among the trees. She didn’t want to be caught and tangled in the thoughts of others like she had at Merrimack’s.

  She thought it would be rather worse here.

  Instead, Arabella turned towards the lake. It glimmered grey and silver, with odd, heaving ropes of color here and there.

  A man stood on the bank, dressed in baggy trousers, shapeless coat, and rumpled cap. He was fishing, his back towards her.

  The entire scene went suddenly very still. Arabella stood poised, unsure whether to flee.

  A distant cry, mournful and moving, broke the silence. Arabella glanced up at the sky as a bird arrowed across it, dark against the dulled bronze.

  It might be a duck, except it was angled instead of curved, as if made out of knife-cuts.

  The fisherman paid neither her nor the bird any heed. Beyond him, in the distance, was an edifice, the color of burnt caramel. It was sticky-looking, as if it had been molded rather than built.

  Something tugged her in that direction. She didn’t know if she would find her body or Trey there, but either possibility was preferable to staying here. She had no idea how time flowed in the Shadow Lands, how much of the night in Vaeland had already past.

  Her exorcism was set for Saturday morning. She had to be back in her body before them.

  Arabella hurried towards the structure, her footprints dark in the grass. She hesitated as she passed the fisherman, then shook her head. Why borrow trouble in these strange realms? Her experiences with the dead hadn’t been pleasant so far.

  She made to go on, lifting a foot.

  The man said, without turning, “Did you leave behind a true love, miss?”

  A thrill ran through Arabella. For a wild moment, Trey Shield’s face flashed through her mind. Ruthlessly she quashed the thought. She was no romantic ninny to fall in love with her rescuer.

  “No,” she said firmly, both to herself and the fisherman.

  “Pity,” he answered. Muscles bunched under his jacket as he jerked his line out of the water. Something narrow and silver thrashed at the end of it.

  Intrigued, Arabella drifted closer, wondering what manner of fish existed in the Shadow Lands.

  The fisherman reached out and held the line several inches above the writhing creature. The fish had silver scales tinged with rainbow colors, but what drew Arabella’s attention was the membranous frill at its tail and fins and around its neck.

  That, and its eyes, round specks of startling blue, as if it bore chips of turquoise in its head.

  “What sort of fish is it?” she whispered to the fisherman. In profile he looked quite normal, a sturdy man with weathered skin and ruddy cheeks and the shadow of a beard on his cheeks and chin. His hair curled black under the felt cap and his dark eyebrows were thick and straight.

  “Lover’s Last Words,” said the man. Gently, he detached a silver hook from the gasping fish’s mouth and tenderly, he held the creature in one hand. The fish wriggled weakly as the man lowered his lips to kiss it.

  And then he tilted his head up, opened his mouth, dropped the fish in, and swallowed it whole.

  Arabella skipped back in alarm. She could see his neck ripple, oddly loose, as the fish slithered down it. The front of his yellowed shirt billowed, then settled.

  The fisherman licked his lips with a tongue much too long and pink, like a cat’s. He grimaced. “She told her lover she loved him, but her affections were tempered with resentment. Resentment that she was dying while he still lived, resentment because she knew that he was young and would someday find another to love. It leaves a bitter aftertaste.

  “It always does.”

  Once again he cast his line, the silver hook, unbaited, flying through the air.

  “Are you sure,” he said again, craning to look at Arabella, “you have no lover?”

  “Very much so,” said Arabella, her mind thoroughly made up by the fisherman’s strange actions.

  His dark eyes were curiously blank, the irises swallowed up by the pupils. His mouth was twisted with regret. Words unspoken and words unheard seemed to linger around him. Arabella felt them, a scrape of bitterness, like vinegar splashed across her soul.

  “So
meday,” said the fisherman with ageless patience, “someday, I’ll taste words that are sweet and joyous, like honey.” And with that he turned his face away and took notice of her no more.

  Arabella tip-toed away from the lake and the odd man, rustling through dried grasses. Frost-limned bracken snapped underfoot. Withered flowers of silver and lavender, still clinging to the heather, crumbled as she brushed past them.

  Pools of water, like shards of a broken mirror, gleamed here and there in the grass. Arabella stayed away from them, afraid of what she might see.

  A path appeared in front of her, packed hard and brown, skimmed with a milky layer of ice. Arabella stepped on it gingerly, but it felt waxy rather than slippery. She quickened her pace towards the building she had seen from the grove of skeletal trees.

  Up closer, the structure reminded Arabella of a sadly lopsided layered cake. It had a softened look, the architectural features—balconies, casements, turrets, molding—all running together. The castle, or so she thought it had once been, hadn’t crumbled so much as melted.

  Yellow lights flickered in shapeless windows. Arabella climbed up the steps, brown and sticky; through a portico that smelled like yesterday’s baking; and into the open doorway.

  She crossed a short stretch of what she hoped was only red carpet and stood at the top of a grand stairway, looking down into an immense ballroom filled with people. The chamber stood open to a cloudy night sky, moon and stars veiled from sight. Men and women, dressed in costumes of all kinds, from straight white robes to hooped skirts to knee-length tunics and sandals crisscrossing over bare legs, swirled around. Their chatter and laughter filled the space with a kind of tiny roar, like the sound of the ocean in a sea shell.

  Arabella descended the stairs, each step rounded and hard like fossilized bread. It was covered in velvety green carpeting that on closer inspection resembled furry mold. The balustrade was riddled with holes, and Arabella could’ve sworn she saw something wriggle in one of them. She lifted her skirt and walked carefully, trying not to touch anything.