Ghost Talkers

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  “Chasing the hounds.”

  “Chasing the hounds, then. I was not going to go do that, and certainly not sidesaddle. So Dorothy says that while she was there she met your friend Lakefield—who is a good enough chap, but a trifle shorter than her—and then met him again at a field hospital in Gallipoli. She was his nurse, I gather. Well, one thing has led to another, as they say, and they are planning to get married. I suppose they already have, given the date of the letter.”

  “I should have married you.” Ben crossed the room and sank to sit next to her on the sofa. “That way you would at least have a widow’s pension.”

  “Dear … I’m an heiress. Money is not a concern for me.” Ginger slid her hand toward his and shivered at the coolness. “I wish we had married for other, more intimate reasons.”

  His aura blushed rosy and spread out in a soft cloud. The edges of his soul seemed better defined than when he had first returned. “Well … yes. There is that.”

  “Are you able to tell me what happened while you were away?”

  He stared at her for a moment and then blinked. “Right. Yes. There is a salt line all the way around the outer wall of the Spirit Corps. The only way in is through the nexus, and I couldn’t—I tried, but…”

  “But you are no longer primed to go through the nexus.” Ginger sank back on the sofa with a groan. “Well … the salt line means that Helen got my message, which is good, even if it does make things a little more complicated for us.”

  “At least it makes the relocation of the mediums less sinister.”

  “True. It means Helen was taken seriously, which is all to the good.” Ginger drummed her fingers on the cushion, considering her options. “Which means … I can just go there myself instead of skulking around sending secret messages.”

  “I don’t think that’s safe.”

  “Why?”

  Ben opened his mouth, and then shook his head. “I just don’t. You mustn’t go. Do I need a reason for everything?”

  “If you want to convince me, instead of simply forbidding me, then yes. I require a reason.” Ginger levered herself up from the couch. As she stood, the room tipped and swayed. She pressed a palm against the arm of the sofa, steadying herself until the dizziness passed. Perhaps she should stay here and rest for a bit. “Besides which, there is Merrow to consider. If I can’t reach Aunt Edie, then I have to go to Brigadier-General Davies.”

  “But he’s—”

  “Not in London, and your spy friend said ‘Right about the London Traitor.’” And it seemed distinctly unlikely that the brigadier-general was the one who had strangled Ben. “We have to have help. Fact finding, I can do on my own. Rescuing Merrow? I can’t.”

  Ben grimaced, tugging at his collar. He stood and paced around the room with his head bent. “All right. Yes. I suppose it will be safe enough.”

  “I’m so glad you agree.” Ginger shook out her skirt. “Since I was going to go anyway.”

  “Obstinate, headstrong girl.” He gave something like a smile. “I suppose I can’t complain when it’s the thing I love about you.”

  “The thing? That implies that I have only one lovable point.”

  “Well … perhaps more than one. Maybe two things.”

  “I see. And what is the other?”

  “I would say your passion, but that’s part of being headstrong. Or your conviction, but that’s related to being obstinate. Fearless, but that is a combination of both. Perhaps, then, I shall cite your love of Brussels sprouts.”

  Ginger laughed outright, so that her voice bounced back from the plaster ceiling. “You are one of the least romantic men I know.”

  “No, no. Hear me out.” He tilted his head and looked at her with that crooked grin, which brought out his dimples. “You choose the most unfortunate and ill-favoured of the vegetables, and devour it with great relish. You overlook the sulphurous taste, and its resemblance to baby lamb heads—”

  “Baby lambs is redundant.”

  “—baby sheep heads, then.”

  “Or lamb heads, which they do not resemble, being neither wooly nor white. Although they are tiny and cute.”

  “Elvin lambs, then.” Ben held up a finger to stop her protests, and his dimples deepened. “But you prove my point. You overlook all that is horrid about the vegetable and instead focus on the one, questionable, good feature. Though I will say that cuteness is in the eye of the beholder—”

  “But they are so tiny and—”

  “And, I think that if you can have a sincere love for Brussels sprouts and overlook all those flaws, then perhaps you can overlook mine as well.” He took a step closer, and the shivers radiating from Ginger’s centre had little to do with the chill he carried with him. “And it is not the only obscure and odd thing you can find joy in. And that—that is the other reason I love you.”

  Her heart would break. Had broken. Dear lord, she loved him so very much, and had so little time left. Ginger caught her breath in a little gasp. “Well. You’ve regained your power of flirtation, so I can assume you are feeling better.”

  “Always. When I am around you, I am a better man. Or ghost, as the case may be.”

  Ginger shook her head, smiling slowly at him. “You make me look forward to falling asleep tonight.”

  “Do I now?” He winked. “Well, Miss Stuyvesant, that seems terribly forward—”

  Someone pounded on the door. Ginger jumped at the sudden sound, putting her hand to her chest as if she could still her heart. For pity’s sake, it was only the door, not gunfire or anything else threatening. The pounding repeated. Of course. Bernetta was still out with the telegram. She was rather surprised it had taken the girl so long; the hotel had a telegraph counter at the front desk. She turned toward the door, as Ben zoomed past her in a blur of agitated colour.

  When she entered the foyer of the suite, he was just re-emerging from the door. His face was ghastly white. “It’s redcaps.”

  Redcaps? Why would military police be at her aunt’s door? No one knew she was here, save Bernetta—oh. It became less surprising that the young woman was still gone. Ginger wet her lips and kept her voice at a whisper. “How many?”

  “Just two. Is there another way out?”

  She shook her head.

  “Damn. I was hoping for a servant’s entrance.”

  “To the hotel, yes. Not the apartment. Though I would love to be mistaken.” She flinched when the pounding repeated, followed by the knob rattling.

  Ben stuck his head through the door. “They have the manager, who has keys.” He spun in place. “I can’t search for another entrance fast enough.”

  Ginger stepped to the side of the door. When it opened, she would briefly be obscured. “Can you throw a book in the parlour? Only one. I don’t want you to—”

  And then the knob turned. Ginger pressed herself against the wall, holding her breath as the door swung open. Ben caught the edge of the door and nudged it so that it swung fully open, hiding her behind the door. He streaked away into the parlour.

  The MPs entered, boots clattering against the marble of the foyer. In the parlour, glass shattered. One of the MPs said, “What the devil?”

  Ginger wondered what Ben had done as well, but as soon as she heard the MPs run for the parlour, she eased around the door, standing on her toes to keep her heels from making noise on the hard floor. With as much stealth as she possessed, she slipped into the hall.

  The hotel manager was standing by the door. His eyes widened at the sight of her. Ginger raised a finger to her lips, with her brows raised in pleading.

  His eyes narrowed, and he inhaled to shout.

  Ginger didn’t wait; she turned and sprinted for the stairs. Behind her, the hotel manager shouted, “Messieurs! She is here!”

  Lifting her skirt to her knees, Ginger ran down the stairs.

  “Stop, miss! Aw, bloody hell…” The MP’s voice echoed down the stairs from above her.

  Ben appeared by her side. “Get off the stair
s at the second floor.”

  That made no sense. She couldn’t jump from that far off the ground. As the MPs started down the stairs, their heavy boots clattered on the marble and echoed through the stairwell. Ginger hit the second floor and, trusting Ben, pushed the door open.

  He was standing there as she came through and pointed toward the end of the hall. “Servant stairs.” Then he caught the door to keep it from slamming shut. Wisps of his soul curled around the edges.

  Gritting her teeth, Ginger ran for the servant stairs. At the end of the hall, she yanked open the door into the dark, narrow stairwell. The worn wood creaked under her feet as she ran down the steps.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Ben waited for her by the door. He held up a hand to stop her, and then shoved his head through the door. Pulling it back, he nodded. “Out. Then left. Walk.”

  Ginger trembled with the urge to run, but kept her pace to a walk. Her palms were coated with sweat, and her breath came in short gasps against the hard lines of her corset. Her cheeks must have been flushed, but none of the pedestrians she passed gave her a second glance.

  Ben gestured to a street. “Right.”

  He was back to single words. Damn. Damn. Damn. Ginger set her teeth and kept walking. First they had to get away, and that seemed anything but certain.

  * * *

  Ginger pushed open the door of the barn that Ben had led her to. Her feet ached from the miles of walking they—no, really, she had done the walking. Ben had just floated alongside her.

  Although, looking at his ragged figure, the toll that the journey out of Le Havre had taken on him was all too clear. His whole form waved like a piece of limp cheesecloth, ragged and full of holes. He pointed to the ladder that led to the hayloft. “Up.”

  “Must I really?” Tromping through fields after the sun went down, she had tripped more than once on the way here.

  “Safer.”

  If it hadn’t been for him scouting, she would never have evaded the MPs. It seemed silly to second-guess him now. She nodded and limped across the barn to the ladder. Grimacing, Ginger tucked her skirt into her waistband and climbed. The rough wood stung her hands where she had scraped them during one of the falls. Her shoulders and arms ached.

  At the top of the ladder, she crawled into the hayloft, not even bothering to stand. All she wanted was to lie down. “Anything else?”

  “Sleep.”

  “Perchance to dream.” She curled into a ball in the loose hay, squirming to form a little nest, and then was asleep.

  * * *

  She is in the recovery ward at Number 1 General Hospital, going from bed to bed on her rounds. There is a new ghost in the room. When she is off duty as a nurse, she will have to see about forming a circle to try to set him at rest. Lt. Plumber, in the third bed, is a sensitive, but hasn’t had any training.

  Helen is pushing a mop around the floor—only it isn’t Helen, it’s Merrow. The bucket is full of blood, and he’s smearing it on the floor.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Washing up, dearie.” Mrs. Richardson lifts her mop and sets it into the bucket of clean water. She beams at Ginger over her knitting needles from her place by the fire. “Come have a seat next to me.”

  Ginger sits at the fireplace in the nursing lounge—only it isn’t the lounge, it’s her father’s house. Ben is with her, and he’s knitting. He looks at her over the edge of the muffler. The red yarn pools in his lap and drips down onto the floor. “Are you all right, darling?”

  “I’m fine.” Ginger picks up her cocktail, which must be filled with Campari to be so red. “Is there anything we should talk about?”

  “She is dead.” His voice is wrong.

  Ginger lowers her cocktail. Knitting needles are jabbed deep into Ben’s eyes. The blood drips into the muffler and mixes with the yarn in his lap.

  * * *

  “No!” Ginger yanked herself awake, sitting up, and had no idea where she was. The room was dark, and her bed was lumpy. The moon shone through the window, but it wasn’t as high as the window of her room at the asylum. She put her hand down, and the crisp hay reminded her of where she was. The hayloft.

  Ben crouched next to her, wearing worry like a dark blanket. “Are you all right?”

  “Were we—were we lucid dreaming?”

  “No. I thought it would be better if you just got some rest.” He reached out as if he could brush her hair back and just cooled her brow. “Nightmare?”

  She wiped her face and lay back on the straw. “It was fairly dreadful, although too jumbled now to make any sense.”

  “Try to go back to sleep. I worry about you.”

  “I can see that.”

  Ben glanced at the steel blue shrouding him and gave a dry chuckle. “Yes … well. I suppose this is like wearing my heart on my sleeve. Although you could always read me like a book.”

  “My favourite book.” The unease from the dream still clung to her. Mrs. Richardson was dead. She knew that, and yet all the horror of it had come back. She looked out the window and sighed. The moon had moved quite a bit while she dreamt. She wouldn’t be able to sleep again.

  Ginger sat up and picked the straw out of her hair, then crawled to the ladder.

  “What are you doing?”

  “If I can’t sleep, I might as well walk toward Amiens while there’s a moon.” Mrs. Richardson might be dead, but Merrow wasn’t. She remembered the blood in his mop pail and shuddered. But he was not dead—he couldn’t be.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  26 JULY 1916

  Ginger waited for Ben in the alley behind Reg’s building in Amiens. She pressed back into the shadows, desperately hoping that no one would notice her. Ben had approved the alley, as it had two exits. And it was empty, which was more important when one was a woman, alone in the middle of the night.

  Hopefully the farmer’s clothing she was wearing would at least slow down the realization that she was a woman, even if it didn’t entirely hide her figure. She had another pang of guilt at stealing them, but she needed trousers. And she needed to be wearing something different from the nurse’s uniform.

  Ben sank from the second story to stand next to her. His entire aura was aglow with excitement, and he had more animation to his features than he’d had for days. “Merrow is inside.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Some new bruises, but otherwise looks unharmed. He’s trying to open a safe that’s in the same room.”

  “A safe? They put him in a room with their safe?”

  Ben shook his head. “It’s in the cellar. No windows. I’m guessing that it was the most secure place. And—he’s unguarded, thank God.” Ben wet his lips and looked toward the entrance to the building. “Reg isn’t there. The house is empty.”

  “So I can just walk in?”

  “That seems too easy.”

  “I agree.” Ginger stared toward the building. “Do we have an alternate plan?”

  Ben worried at his collar, tugging on it as if he were having trouble breathing. “Damn it. No. Let me scout for you, and if I see anything out of the ordinary, just run.”

  She bit her lips and nodded. As much as she wanted to protest that she couldn’t leave Merrow behind, neither would she be able to rescue him if she were a captive herself.

  She followed Ben through the small backyard of the building. Chickens in a hut clucked lazily as she passed, but gave no cry of alarm. One of the wooden stairs creaked underfoot, and she stopped, waiting to see if anyone would respond. The windows remained dark, which made sense if the house was truly empty. Breathing out, she eased up to the small landing outside the house and tried the door.

  It swung open, already unlocked and not fully latched. Shivering, Ginger glanced behind her at the tiny yard and the alley behind it. “This seems…”

  “Suspicious, yes. God … this feels like a trap.”

  “But the house is empty.”

  Ben nodded. “And I checked in a three-block radius and d
on’t see anyone watching it. No one on the rooftops. Nothing.”

  It was difficult to feel entirely at ease with the door unlocked. Ginger swallowed and entered the narrow plaster hall cutting through the middle of the house. A door to the right led into a kitchen.

  Ben nodded to the door on the left, which was shut. “Servant’s room, but now an officer’s billet. Empty.”

  He led her to a door in the kitchen, which opened onto a narrow flight of stairs leading down. She felt her way to the stairs and grasped the rail. She did not dare light a candle, not without risking someone outside seeing it. Feeling her way, Ginger walked down to the cellar with her heart hammering in her chest.

  In the cellar, two small windows let in a little light, but only enough to show that the room was crowded with boxes and discarded furniture.

  Ben beckoned her to a door on the far side. A thin line of light showed underneath it. “Here. He’s in here.”

  This door was locked. Ginger sighed, resting her head against the wood. “Well, that streak of luck couldn’t continue. I don’t suppose you saw the keys during your scouting?”

  “Alas, no.” Ben crouched by the door. “Have you any hairpins?”

  “Have I…? How do you think I keep my hair up? Of course I have hairpins.” When her hair wasn’t pinned up, it was down to the middle of her back. Ginger pulled a pin loose. “How many do you need?”

  “Just two.”

  “And what will you do with them, O Phantasm of My Heart?”

  He glanced up and grinned, dimples shadowing in his cheeks. “Pick the lock.”

  Ginger paused, holding the hairpins. “Ben … you can’t.”

  “If I can throw books—”

  “No.” She folded her fingers over the pins. “When you are distressed and burning through energy at an alarming rate? Yes. You can throw things. And then you are—you are not right for quite some time after that.”

  “That is my choice to make.” He rose, shoulders setting inside a grim cloak of violet determination.