Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion (16 page)

The light was so close I could almost feel its heat but now it is gone and I am back in that room again, looking at stars through a broken roof. Pain is radiating out from the gold ports in my arm and I curl my body round to escape it. My face is wet with tears. If I open my eyes I will see shadows of things, terrible things. The sky throbs above me, humming as if it were some gigantic engine.

I cannot see the machine but I know that it is close. It burns my skin, sears my flesh, carves its way through my bones. The ash falls thicker and faster until it is done.

“Damned toffs.”

As could have been predicted, Tavistock had complained about their unfounded invasion of his home and Ancrum had had some choice words for Del that afternoon. Afterwards Pickering had bullied them all down to the Victory for an early one, and Del sat nursing her mug, staring into the thick, warm darkness inside.

Rum was her poison of choice, like all good sailors.

Pickering shrugged, “He’s an Earl, of course he likes to through his weight around, but Ancrum knows all about that sort.

Of course he does, he’s one of them.

Del said nothing.

“Come on, Del, cheer up. So you were mistaken, it can happen to the best of us.”

Del lifted her head to stare at Pickering across the dim, smoky air.

“I wasn’t wrong about her,” she said.

Pickering held up his hands, “Of course not.”

Del dropped her gaze. Pickering was right. She had gone to the house and there had been nothing. And now with the Earl’s complaint there would be no going back.

She drained her mug and stood up to go to the bar. It was going to be a long night.

Del sat up in darkness. She was in her bed, breathing hard, her skin chilled by the cold air in the room. There was pain in her right elbow, in the soft flesh on the crook and she rubbed it with her fingers. In the darkness her heartbeat sounded hollow in her ears and she was afraid.

Her breath tasted like ashes on her tongue.

“There you are.”

The bitter throb of a headache had settled behind Del’s eyes and her breakfast looked entirely unappetising. She glanced up at Pickering who was crossing the dining room with quick strides. His blue eyes were bright.

“What is it?”

A grin spilled across his face, as if he had been fighting to hold it back.

“This,” he said, laying something down on the table next to Del’s untouched breakfast. It was a square cut from a newspaper.

Del looked down into a thin, pale face with heavy lidded eyes and sharp features. The girl wore a neat, dark coloured dress fastened with a mourner’s cameo at the throat, her long fingered hands resting in her lap. Her face was solemn.

Despite the slight blur from the cheap print ink, the photograph was a near perfect likeness. Only the hair was wrong. Black and white could not capture the ferocity of those flaming strands.

Del looked up into Pickering’s grinning face.

“Where did you find this?”

“I went to county records and then the library. It’s from the
Mercury
, published five years ago.”

Del looked back down at the scrap of paper, resisting the urge to run her fingers across its surface.

“So, who is she?”

Pickering sobered, his smile fading as abruptly as it had appeared.

“Her name
was
Lavinia Tavistock, Del, that picture is from her obituary,” he cleared his throat awkwardly, lifting a notebook from his pocket. “I have the details. Lavinia Tavistock, late niece of Earl Tavistock, died of consumption at the age of nineteen, while under her uncle’s guardianship. Mother died at birth, father two years before her in a riding accident.”

Del stared down at that still face.

“So she lived in the house?”

“Yes.”

“And she was Aetheric?”

“Registered as a Manipulator and taken out of our files upon her death, which is why it took going to the county registry to find her.”

Del drew in a deep, cold breath.

“Then you’re saying she’s a ‘real’ ghost?”

Pickering frowned, “I am not sure what I’m saying, I just thought you should know.”

Del nodded.

The girl was dead and Del had been seeing quite another type of ghost, an echo of her forged from lingering Aetherica. But after five years that didn’t seem likely. And Aetherics only left such echoes according to unproven Aetherical theory?

“This doesn’t make sense, Pickering, I saw her as plain as I’m seeing you, I felt her power.”

“I know.” Pickering said, “That’s why I got the address of her only other living relative. I think we need some more information. But it will mean a trip to Bath.”

Mrs. Berkley, widow of General Berkley and sister to the Earl, lived in a spacious apartment in a Georgian terrace on Gay Street. She was reluctant to meet with the Ministry and, by the look on her face when Del arrived, would have liked to throw her out on sight. But she didn’t. Perhaps Mrs. Berkley had good manners, or maybe she saw the badge on Del’s coat.

“Lavinia was a lovely girl, so bright, so clever, so accomplished. It’s such a tragic loss.”

“Were you close?”

Mrs. Berkley flushed. “After her father died, I did try to mother her a little. But she got on so well with the Earl, you see. There really didn’t seem to be any need for me to intervene.”

“So Lavinia liked her uncle?”

“Oh, she adored him. That’s why he never told her.”

“Why he never told her…?”

Mrs. Berkley hesitated, “About his heart. Lavinia fell ill in July but in May my brother was told by his doctor that he had an untreatable heart condition.”

Mrs. Berkley sniffed delicately, raising a handkerchief to her eye.

“And to think, he outlived her after all.”

Del nodded, frowning down at the notes she had made of the widow’s words.

Untreatable heart condition.

As they rattled home on the Ether-shuttle, past the ship-fields at Keynsham, Del pondered the widow’s revelation. Five years ago the Earl had been dying but it was his healthy, young niece who was buried instead.
 

Del turned towards Pickering, sitting beside her on the seat.

“Something’s wrong here, Tom.”

“I know,” Pickering sighed. “But I don’t think Ancrum will want to hear it.”

Ancrum didn’t want to hear it. The raid had not secured them any evidence of wrong doing and the Earl was not to be disturbed again.

And what could Del say: that she believed there was some mysterious connection between the Earl’s heart condition and his niece’s death? Ancrum would laugh in her face.

That night she dreamt of the girl; she was walking the city, her arms wrapped about her waist. Her head was bowed while a hot wind whipped at the burning glory of her hair. Del tried to approach her, tried to reach out, but she could not. The Archive book had been quite clear, never touch a Ghost, not unless you wanted to be swallowed up by their power and stolen from your Self.

Never touch a Ghost, even one as pale as porcelain with hair more beautiful than a flame.