A Plunder of Souls (The Thieftaker Chronicles) (13 page)

He pulled out his knife and held it up for the shade to see. The bobbing of her head was achingly slow, but for the first time a smile touched her lips.

Ethan didn’t cut himself; he didn’t have to for what he needed to do. “
Veni ad me,
” he said in Latin. Come to me.

Uncle Reg materialized beside him, his russet glow adding to the light in the room. He didn’t spare Ethan so much as a glance, but stared hard at the shade before them. She turned her gaze on him, her eyes widening.

“Can you communicate with her?” Ethan asked.

Reg nodded, still not looking at him.

“Ask her—”

Reg rounded on him, eyes blazing.

“Right,” Ethan said. “You know what to ask her.”

Ethan’s ghost faced Patience once more, and for a long time the two shades remained motionless, gazes locked.

“What are they doing?” Darcy finally asked.

“My spectral guide is finding out what he can from your mother’s ghost.”

“To what end?”

“I’m hoping he’ll be able to tell us why she’s here.”

“Can he speak? Great-Grandfather never could.”

“He can’t, either,” Ethan said. “But he can be quite expressive in his own way.”

For several minutes more, the shades regarded each other, communing silently. At last they broke eye contact, and Reg turned to Ethan. He appeared troubled, his eyebrows bunched, his habitual scowl more pronounced than usual.

“She’s not here by choice, is she?” Ethan asked.

Reg shook his head.

“Is she being held here?”

The ghost hesitated before nodding.

“What does that mean?” Darcy asked. “How can she be held here?”

Reg’s gaze flicked to the younger man, but immediately fixed on Ethan again.

“He didn’t like the way I phrased the question,” Ethan said. “I’m not sure yet what he means.” He chewed his lip, eyeing Reg. “It’s not that she’s being held here. Rather, something is preventing her from moving on. Is that right?”

This time Reg didn’t hesitate at all when he nodded.

“A conjuring?”

Another nod, emphatic.

“Is this related to what we saw at the burying grounds today?”

Reg answered with a small shrug.

“We have work to do, you and I.”

A fierce grin split the old ghost’s face.

“Is she … is she well?” Darcy asked. “I feel foolish asking that about a spirit. But is she … suffering in any way?”

Ethan looked to Reg, who shook his head, though he appeared troubled once more. “I don’t think she’s suffering,” Ethan said. “But this isn’t right. She doesn’t belong here, and until she can move on to the realm of the dead, she won’t be content.”

“Is there anything I can do to help her?”

“Don’t be afraid of her,” Ethan said, watching Reg. “Let her see you. Let her see her grandson.”

Reg nodded. Patience, who had been watching Ethan’s exchange with his ghost, turned her glowing eyes to her son and smiled.

Darcy smiled in turn. “We can do that.”

Ethan turned back to Uncle Reg. “
Dimit
—”

Reg threw up a hand, forcing Ethan to stop. He had been about to say
Dimitto te,
Latin for “I release you.”

“There’s more?” he asked.

Reg nodded. He pointed to Patience, and to himself. He held up two fingers. Then a third, a fourth, and a fifth. He held up his other hand, and opened his fist one finger at a time.

“God help us,” Ethan said, breathing the words.

“What is it?” Darcy asked. “What is he trying to say?”

Ethan let out a long shuddering breath. “There are more shades like your mother,” he said. “They can’t leave either, and there are a lot of them.”

Chapter

S
EVEN

After delivering these last tidings, Uncle Reg agreed to be released. Ethan and Darcy joined Ruth in the common room, where they offered her assurance that as unsettling as it might be to have a shade in her home, the ghost of Patience Walters posed no danger to her child or to her. Soon after, Ethan departed their home and, hesitating but for an instant, left New Boston for the opulent mansions of the North End.

This time he made certain to avoid Brattle Street and the barracks of the Twenty-ninth Regiment. Still, he saw many regulars on the streets, including four soldiers who were being taunted by yet another group of reckless young men. “Bloody-backed scoundrels!” the pups shouted. “Lobsters!” One called, “Damn the king! Damn his soldiers!” This drew laughs from his companions. These regulars, like the others Ethan had seen earlier in the day, held their rifles waist high, their bayonets fixed. Ethan half expected them to open fire.

He gave the regulars and the pups taunting them a wide berth, and crossed into the North End by way of Hanover. He then followed Back and Salem streets, making his way past the North Meeting House, with its soaring spire and clock tower, to Ellis Street and the impressive mansion of Alexander Rowan.

It was late to arrive at anyone’s home uninvited and unannounced. It was especially so for one as wealthy and influential as Mr. Rowan. Ethan didn’t care.

The entire Rowan family had behaved strangely in the King’s Chapel Burying Ground, and after his encounter with the shade of Patience Walters, Ethan thought he knew why.

Like the Walters house, the Rowan mansion was constructed of brick. The resemblance ended there. Alexander Rowan’s home stood three stories tall, and had banks of windows across the façade and marble columns on either side of the entrance. The door itself was oak, with a polished brass lion’s-head knocker. Candlelight still glowed in several of the windows on the first and second floors, but not all. Ethan wondered if some in the family were already abed.

He followed the stone path to the door and rapped with the knocker. At first there was no response, and Ethan knocked a second time.

At last the door opened, revealing not a servant, as he had expected, but Mr. Rowan’s son. He was in shirtsleeves, and kept one arm hidden behind his back.

“Yes, what is it?” the young man demanded, sounding cross.

Ethan moved forward a half step, so that the light from within fell upon his face. Rowan the younger retreated a step and produced a pistol, which he held in the hand that had been hidden. Ethan raised his hands to show that he carried no weapon.

“I’m unarmed, Mister Rowan.”

“Who are you?” Rowan asked, though Ethan saw a flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes.

“I’m Ethan Kaille, sir. Reverend Caner has engaged my services to inquire into the unfortunate incidents in the King’s Chapel Burying Ground.”

Rowan lowered the pistol, looking much relieved. “Of course, Mister Kaille. I remember you now.” He frowned. “Are you in the habit of disturbing people in their homes at such a late hour?”

“No, sir, I’m not. I wouldn’t have come without good reason.”

“Well, I’m sorry to say that my father has already retired for the night. If you wish to speak with him, you’ll have to come back in the morning.”

“I believe you can help me, sir.”

If anything, this prompted a deepening of Rowan’s frown. After a brief hesitation, however, he beckoned Ethan into the house and closed the door after him.

“I wonder, sir—”

“Not here,” Rowan said. He walked away, leaving Ethan little choice but to follow.

They crossed through a large parlor, followed a dim corridor toward the back of the house, and entered a well-lit study. An open book rested pages-down on a wooden side table beside a plush chair. When he had shut the door, Rowan faced Ethan, looking like he intended to say something. Instead, he glanced down at the pistol he still held and crossed to a writing desk along the far wall of the study. After placing the weapon in a drawer, he turned to Ethan again.

“Now, what is it you want?”

“Today, at the burying ground, I asked your father if he had noticed anything odd, either here or at your family’s warehouses.”

“Yes, I remember. And he told you that he hadn’t.”

“Aye, he did. But you and I both know that wasn’t true.”

“Now see here, Kaille—!”

“Do you truly expect the ghost to leave of its own accord?” Ethan asked, his voice echoing in the small room.

Rowan gaped at him, looking frightened and young. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Of course you do, sir,” Ethan said, speaking in softer tones. “When did your mother’s shade first appear?”

Rowan shook his head, saying nothing. After a lengthy silence, he dropped into the nearest chair and asked, “How did you know?”

“Yours is not the only family in Boston being haunted. How long has it been?”

“She appeared three nights past. My wife noticed her first. We’ve been living here since Mother died. Father has not been himself since he lost her, and Esther and I felt that he shouldn’t be alone in a house of this size. The servants are all quite competent, of course, but … well, you understand.”

“Aye.”

“On Tuesday night, Esther went into Father and Mother’s room to make certain that his bedclothes had been laid out properly. And when she entered, she saw the … you called it a shade. That’s as good a word as any. It’s a foul, horrible thing. I shudder to think of the fright Esther took.”

“Wait,” Ethan said, his eyes narrowing. “The shade doesn’t look like your mother?”

“Heavens, no. It’s—” He shook his head again. “I suppose there is really no delicate way to say this: It looks like a ghoul in Mother’s clothes.”

Ethan considered this, staring down at his tricorn, which he held in his hands. He had assumed that this ghost would resemble Mrs. Rowan, just as Patience’s shade resembled her.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said at length. “Please go on with your tale.”

“There isn’t much more to tell,” Rowan said. “Esther screamed, and the rest of us hurried to the room. The apparition didn’t flee, as one might expect. It merely stood at the window, gazing out into the night.”

“Did it make any sound? Did it seem to recognize any of you, or make an attempt to communicate?”

“We didn’t give it the chance,” Rowan said, sounding appalled at the very idea. “We removed my father’s personal effects the following morning, and have not been back in the room since. For the past several nights he’s been sleeping in the room that used to belong to Margaret.”

“So, you don’t even know if it’s come back,” Ethan said.

Rowan took a long breath. “We do, actually. Late at night, when the candles in the corridor have been extinguished, I can see the fiend’s glow seeping out from beneath the door.”

“Have you seen it tonight?”

“I haven’t yet looked.”

“I realize that this is an imposition, Mister Rowan, but I would like to see this shade.”

“You mean now?”

“Aye.” When Rowan didn’t answer, Ethan said, “I can come back another night, of course. But it would be every bit as much an imposition then. And perhaps it’s best that we do this tonight, while your father is sleeping, rather than trouble him some other evening.”

Rowan didn’t move. “You said that you’re a thieftaker. What do you think you can accomplish here?”

“I believe the appearance of your mother’s ghost may be tied in some way to what was done to her grave. I believe that seeing her might help me determine how it is she’s come to be here.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you have experience with … beings of this sort?”

He couldn’t very well deny it. “Aye, sir. As I’ve said, yours is not the only household to be so afflicted. I believe I can help you. But I need to see her.”

Rowan wiped sweat from his upper lip with a shaking hand. At length he nodded and stood. “Yes, all right. But I beg of you: Please try to remain quiet as we make our way to the room. I don’t wish to wake my father, or Esther for that matter.”

“I understand, sir. Lead the way; I’ll make as little noise as possible.”

Rowan nodded, and led Ethan from the study, back through the parlor, to a broad curving stairway with a polished wood banister and white balusters. The wood of the steps matched that of the banister. A portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Rowan, he in a black suit, she in a pale blue dress, hung on the wall over the stairs. Several of the steps squeaked as they trod on them. Ethan winced each time it happened, but Rowan did not appear to be too alarmed.

At last, with Ethan lagging behind, the young man turned and whispered, “My father is not so light a sleeper, Mister Kaille. I’m more concerned with any noise you might make in his and Mother’s room, or in the corridor upstairs.”

Reaching the top of the stairway, they turned left and made their way down a dark corridor past several closed doors. At this point, Rowan began to walk more slowly, and with greater care. Ethan did the same.

Halfway down the corridor, Rowan stopped in front of a closed door and looked back at Ethan.

“In here,” he mouthed.

Ethan stepped past the man and pressed on the door latch until he felt it give. He cast one quick glance at Rowan before pushing the door open and slipping into the room. Rowan made no effort to follow, which suited Ethan. He didn’t want to explain what he was doing with a pouch of mullein or a bloody cut on his forearm.

As soon as he was in the bedroom, he saw the shade of Abigail Rowan. She sat on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap.

Or what was left of her hands, in what had once had been her lap.

Rowan had prepared him, but still Ethan shuddered at the sight of her. She wore a dark dress; Ethan thought it must be the gown in which she had been buried. Her face was like something out of a child’s nightmare. Her cheeks were sunken, her lips dried up and pulled back to reveal her teeth and the bone that would have been covered by her gums in life. Her nose was gone; all that remained was the split cavity where it had been. No doubt her eyes would have been equally appalling, but they glowed so brightly that Ethan could not see the horror beneath the glare.

Her hands had darkened and were now covered by what looked like a thin layer of hard, leathery skin. Ethan could see the contours of the bones beneath.

She glowed purest white, like starlight, or the color of a winter moon. She had not been a conjurer in life, and so, it seemed, she did not show a conjurer’s hue in death. Or so he thought. Staring at her intently, Ethan realized that he could discern some faint hint of color in her face. But she was insubstantial, translucent, and he couldn’t be sure that what he saw wasn’t pigment from objects behind her.