Chapter 11
Mercury’s ghosts were already in the house when he slipped inside, though they could only have arrived five hundred feet ahead of him.
A not insignificant number of them were gathered in the entryway, watching eagerly and hopefully but also with noticeable nervousness.
When Tacey entered half a step behind him, relief touched every spectral face.
“We have her back.” Though Mercury knew the explanation was not at all needed—his ghosts could all see her there, after all—he found himself needing to hear the words.
Tacey was quickly swarmed, voices all talking at once, expressing excitement, welcome, relief. Like a lone sheep surrounded by a pack of friendly puppies, she was herded into the drawing room, leaving Mercury behind in the entryway.
She’s back, and she’s safe. He repeated that to himself a few times. She’s back, and she’s safe . . . And she knows her captivity was my fault.
He couldn’t prevent the additional thought from creeping in. She deserved his honesty, but what little he had shared in the carriage had put distance between them.
His heart had never before ached for anyone other than himself. It wasn’t a matter of selfishness; he’d simply never had someone lay claim to his affections before. No one ever came close enough to him or stayed long enough with him for that to even be a possibility.
In the doorway of the sitting room, opposite the drawing room where Tacey and her ghostly welcoming committee had retreated, the Scholar hovered, watching Mercury.
“We have her back,” Mercury told him.
A quick smile pulled at his translucent lips. “I know.” His expression turned contemplative once more. “Will we be remaining in London or returning to Aventine Manor?”
“As was pointed out to me by several of the ghosts, the Vanns know they can find me at Aventine.” He crossed to where the Scholar stood. “Though this house is undeniably crowded, it is considerably well hidden, which makes it likely our safest option.”
“From those pursuing you, perhaps. But being in London at all comes with a risk of Phantomic memories. You must take that possibility into consideration.”
“That possibility,” he muttered, hearing the exhaustion in his repetition of the no-longer-apt word.
“’Tis a reality now, your tone would indicate.” The Scholar narrowed his eyes behind his ghostly spectacles. “How many have begun remembering?”
“One.”
“So far,” the Scholar added. “If you stay, there will be more. You will have to face your past head-on if you have any chance of survival.”
“‘My past’? Have you started remembering?”
The Scholar shook his head. “Simply putting the pieces together. Nothing about your current life or circumstances is disreputable and needs to be kept secret. The only logical conclusion is that ’tis your past you’ve hidden, and ’tis your past they are remembering.”
“My past is an enormous tangle of danger and secrets.” Mercury rolled his neck against the stiffness there. “I am not certain how long I can continue staying ahead of it.”
“We have had snippets of this conversation before, Mercury Raine. How often will I have to repeat my advice before you truly hear it?”
Mercury met his pointed gaze once more. “The advice that I ought to accept help?”
With a nod, the Scholar said, “That you need to finally truly trust someone.”
“I did tell Tacey a small bit of this while we were driving back here.” Mercury leaned against the wall. “Admittedly, it was a very small bit.”
“And how did the lass respond?”
“She didn’t.” Mercury folded his arms across his chest. “Not really.”
The Scholar didn’t look away, nor did he appear shocked or appalled. “And has her silence convinced you that you cannot trust her?”
“I know I can.” He knew it with certainty. “But I suspect she doesn’t know if she can trust me, especially since she now is aware that I have kept secrets from her.”
“An excellent way to overcome distrust sown by the keeping of secrets”—the Scholar paused, no doubt to drive his point home—“is by sharing those secrets.”
“What if she doesn’t care to hear them?”
The Scholar motioned in the direction of the drawing room, where ghostly voices continued talking in a cacophony of intermingled words. “Give her the option. What she decides will tell you a great deal.”
Mercury took a step away, but stopped and looked back. “Have you found a spot in the house where you can have some privacy? I know that is important to you.”
The Scholar gave a single nod. “I’ve managed to.”
“It is a cupboard of some kind, isn’t it?”
The same fleeting smile from earlier returned to the Scholar’s face.
“I am sorry to be keeping you away from your comfortable tower room and books for so long,” Mercury said.
“I pilfered a book from the Vanns’ rented home,” the Scholar admitted with something of a wicked grin. “I’m enjoying it immensely.”
“A thief?” Mercury pretended to be scandalized. “I’m shocked!”
The Scholar looked entirely unrepentant.
Mercury crossed the entryway and stepped into the drawing room.
Tacey was sitting on the sofa, surrounded by ghosts.
Baby Blue sat beside her, watching her so closely it seemed he worried that, if he blinked, she would be gone again.
Zizzy sat on Tacey’s other side with a contented smile on her face, the first Mercury had seen from her since they’d left Aventine Manor.
Testy Tolver was the one speaking at the moment. “We are working to formulate a plan should anyone attempt to snatch you away again.”
“I would appreciate that,” Tacey said with an amused but grateful smile. “I didn’t particularly enjoy being a hostage.”
“Did they hurt you?” Weeping William asked the question through tears.
“They did not.” Her assurance was directed to the emotional ghost, but Mercury felt the relief of it to his core despite having heard her say as much once already.
He stepped further inside the drawing room. “Do the lot of you mind if I have a moment to talk with Tacey?”
All his ghosts turned to look at him. Their expressions ranged from pleased to see him to surprised at the interruption to curious about the request.
“Alone?” Baby Blue asked.
“Yes,” Mercury said. “Without any listening ears.”
While Baby and Zizzy looked disappointed as they floated away, a few of the ghosts wore grins that were a bit too knowing.
The Cream Canary even wiggled her eyebrows in a slightly teasing show of encouragement.
Little did any of them know, he wasn’t asking for privacy in order to have a romantic conversation.
He was quite possibly about to eliminate any hope for such a thing.
His ghosts’ departure revealed that Granny Grey, who was Tacey’s ghost, was there as well. Mercury hadn’t spotted her yet. He hadn’t seen her since before Tacey was kidnapped.
“I am relieved to have you back with us,” Mercury said to her. “Are you well? Do you need anything?”
“I, too, am relieved,” Granny answered. “It has been a harrowing few days.”
“I imagine. We really will do all we can to prevent it from happening again,” he promised her.
Granny nodded. “I will leave you two to your conversation.”
With heaviness in her posture, she crossed the room and passed through the wall.
“She refused to leave me while I was being held captive.” Tacey stood, her eyes on the wall where Granny had exited.
“I think it took a toll on her: not the captivity, but feeling so helpless. Fear of people, especially people she doesn’t know, is one of her Integral traits, which left her particularly terrified the whole time.
And she cannot move physical objects, so couldn’t help gather anything useful or attempt to disarm our guard or unlock the door. ”
How well Mercury understood that feeling of helplessness. Underneath his determination in the days since Tacey’s abduction, he had felt anxious and frustrated . . . and guilty.
Tacey turned fully toward him. “I think I deserve to know why I was dragged to London and held prisoner. And I know you know the answer.”
“I do,” he said. “And you do deserve those answers.” He solidified his resolve. “What I am about to tell you is both a closely guarded and incredibly dangerous secret. Most of my ghosts don’t even know.”
Her gaze searched his face. “You are going to trust me with it?”
“I am.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Because you trust me? Or because you feel guilty?”
“The two are not mutually exclusive.” Mercury tucked his hands in his pockets, the fingers of his left hand wrapping around his ever-present iron key. “I do trust you, and that is an excessively rare thing for me.”
Tacey took one step closer to him. “I promise not to spill whatever it is you are about to tell me.”
He was more nervous than he’d expected to be. And, somehow, he also didn’t feel reluctant to lay bare to her something he’d hidden from everyone else for so long. “I was raised in an orphanage, which in and of itself isn’t anything dangerous or scandalous. But I was never adopted.”
That didn’t have any visible impact, so Tacey likely didn’t know of the legal consequences of all he was about to tell her.
“I was mistreated there—that is too soft a word to describe my life at the orphanage, but I don’t care to recount any of it in detail.”
She nodded, empathy touching her look of focus.
“When I was thirteen years old, I ran away. I had nowhere to go, so I came to London and lived on the streets for the next few years, doing what jobs I could to survive, sleeping in doorways, trying to be unobtrusive.”
“That must have been difficult with a pack of ghosts in your wake,” she said.
“After the first few days, most of them chose to wander around on their own, within the five-hundred-foot radius. But, yes. It was a little chaotic for a time.” Mercury paced a little away.
“When I was sixteen, I met a man who was a ghost broker. He didn’t know how many ghosts I had, but he knew the number was more than one.
He suggested that I could become a ghost broker, which would allow me to have an income and maybe a roof over my head. ”
“You were without a home for three years?”
He nodded. “And it was still an improvement over the orphanage.” Lud, those had been miserable years. “He taught me to be a ghost broker; he was a better teacher than I have proven to be.”
“Maybe you were just a better pupil than I have been,” Tacey said with a quick smile.
“Ah, that must be it.” He was grateful for the lighter moment, brief as it was.
“I traded when I could and grew quicker and better at it. I was able to rent a room to live in and eat regularly. By the time I turned eighteen, I had traded all but three of my Originary ghosts. I had been using a false name since leaving the orphanage, but I changed it again: to Mercury Raine. I began ghost brokering in earnest, built a good business, and after a couple of years, left London for Aventine Manor.”
“None of this is dangerous or nefarious,” Tacey said.
There would be no turning back after this.
But he was ready. “There are laws about orphans with ghostly attachments. If an orphan reaches eighteen without being adopted, that orphan’s ghosts belong to the orphanage.
” He wasn’t certain he was explaining this well.
“They are still attached to the orphan, obviously, but the orphanage has the legal right to determine what happens to them. The orphanage gets to decide if the ghosts are traded. Any money made through those trades belongs to the orphanage. The orphanage has claim on any new ghosts the orphan acquires from trades.”
“And you ran away before you were adopted, and before you turned eighteen.” It wasn’t posed as a question, but there was one lingering underneath it.
“In the eyes of the law, I have essentially stolen everything I have built for myself,” he said. “Hiding as I have and preventing them from claiming what is legally theirs makes me a criminal.”
At that, Tacey began slowly pacing of the room. “How steep are the punishments for this particular crime?”
“Imprisonment. The length of said incarceration depends on the severity of the withheld earnings.”
“And if a runaway orphan has made a literal fortune from the trading of ghosts?” Tacey pressed.
“I don’t know of any instances when an orphan who cheated their orphanage out of brokering proceeds was actually hanged for the offense, but I also don’t know of any whose one-time orphanage can claim as much theft as mine can.”
Tacey resumed her pacing. “How is all of this connected to my unexpected journey to London?”
Mercury took the newspaper from the table near the door where he’d left it before leaving for the Forever Flame. It was still open to the page bearing his long-abandoned name. When Tacey’s pacing brought her near him, he turned it so she could see. He pointed at the advertisement.
Tacey took the paper. Her eyes darted back and forth as she quickly read. After a moment, she looked up at him. “Sidney Beckett?”
“That is what I was called at the orphanage, which means the ‘interested party’ looking for me is almost certainly connected to that part of my life.”
Tacey laid the newspaper on the table again. “The Vanns were hoping to get you to London so they could claim this reward.” She resumed her pacing.
“Yes. And they took you with them to the Forever Flame so they could ask for more time to capture me.” He took a breath and firmed his resolve. “Associating with me has put you in danger, and I wasn’t honest enough with you about that.”
She didn’t look back at him, didn’t say anything.
He stepped to the door and took hold of the handle.
His heart sat heavy in his chest, aching already.
But he couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her further, even if that meant letting her go.
“Let me know when you’ve decided what you intend to do and where you want to go now that you know. I’ll help you in whatever way I can.”