Chapter 5
Mercury laid in bed that night for hours, unable to sleep. As he often did when sleep was proving frustratingly elusive, he counted ghosts. His ghosts, specifically.
He closed his eyes and thought of each of them in turn.
With his thoughts focused on each individual ghost, he breathed slowly in and slowly out.
After a moment, he could feel the tug of them, like a thread pulling at his innermost self.
One at a time, he found the thread of each ghost. He didn’t pull at it, didn’t loosen it.
He wasn’t trading them; he was reassuring himself that they were still there.
But that night, counting connections wasn’t soothing in the way it usually was.
His mind was too full of his miserable past. He had no memories before the orphanage and far too many memories of his years there.
He wasn’t the only orphan with ghostly attachments; he wasn’t even the only one with multiple.
But at some point, while he was still too young to remember the change, the orphanage governor had realized he had at least five, and until the moment Mercury ran away at almost fourteen years old, the governor had tried repeatedly to discover the actual number.
Regular interrogations. Threats. Withholding meals.
Bribing the other orphans to spy on him.
Imprisoning him in his tiny room. Attempting to imprison his ghosts, which obviously didn’t work since ghosts can simply walk through walls.
In the end, Mercury had managed to convince the governor and his minions that he didn’t know the number—that after a certain number of attachments it was difficult to be entirely sure.
Though he didn’t know if they fully believed him, it was true.
He hadn’t known of all twenty of his attachments until the actual day he’d run away, and only then because one ghost he hadn’t realized was his had come with him.
“More than five attachments,” the governor had once said to one of the women who worked there. “We get to decide what happens to every one of them. We can demand a high sum for trading them; the boy is worth a fortune to us.”
Mercury had been in the corner of the governor’s office, having been subjected to yet another round of questioning after yet another few days of being denied food in an attempt to make him more subservient.
“Not if he gets adopted before adulthood,” the woman had warned. “His ghosts become part of their household, and we would no longer have any claim.”
The governor’s smile had turned inarguably sinister. “If he gets adopted. That can certainly be prevented.”
He was ten years old. They’d locked him in his room during every visit of potential adoptive parents from that day forward. And he had spent those lonely hours planning his escape.
The orphanage, still run by the same governor last he’d heard, had legal claim on all his ghosts and the money he had made trading them. All of it. Every last penny.
But they’d have to find him first.
“I know about you.” The Cream Canary’s declaration returned for the umpteenth time in the twelve hours since she’d said it. He was all but certain she was beginning to recall a Phantomic Memory. What the entirety of that memory would be, he didn’t yet know. And that was ample reason for caution.
At a later hour that morning than he generally preferred rising, Mercury flung back his blankets and told himself to quit moping. Life hadn’t crushed him yet; it certainly wouldn’t do so now.
He dressed quickly but with an eye to looking genteel yet business-minded. And he slipped his iron key in his pocket again, deciding for the second day in a row to keep it with him. The quiet reminder of all he’d done, all he’d survived, and all he’d escaped helped firm his resolve.
The Cream Canary needed to stay. The Padmores needed to go. Time was of the essence with both, but rushing either would likely prove disastrous. Taking too long would as well. The next few days would be a delicate balance.
He wasn’t overly hungry, so he opted to skip breakfast and go for a walk on the grounds instead. The brisk morning air often helped clear his head. He needed that.
Captain Capitate was standing atop a low wall in precisely the posture of a sea captain at the prow of his ship. Gary the Green was wandering among the flowers at the near end of the garden. Weeping William and Testy Tolver were playing a friendly game of lawn billiards.
Mr. Padmore was walking slowly around the edge of the lawn, absorbed with watching the game. It was fascinating the way some ghosts could move objects. They never touched them, yet things flew about.
Mercury had hoped for a few more minutes to himself in which to shake off the last remaining bits of his unpleasant journey through his memories, but he couldn’t possibly address the conundrum in front of him if he avoided the people and the ghost at the center of it.
“Good morning, Mr. Padmore,” Mercury said as he approached. “How are you enjoying Aventine Manor?”
“You have a lovely home.” Mr. Padmore resumed his walk, so Mercury continued on with him. “And your ghosts are endlessly interesting. I haven’t often observed ghosts moving things.”
“I never grow tired of watching them do so.”
“Granny Grey showed herself clever during last night’s game,” Mr. Padmore said. “And she also seems gently spoken.”
“She is both,” Mercury acknowledged.
“Both of our current ghosts are intelligent—I like that—but the Other Hand’s tendency to drone on irritates the Cream Canary, which undermines the harmony in our home.”
He wanted a clever ghost who could be harmonious. Mercury had several of those.
“My wife seems to like Granny Grey as well,” Mr. Padmore continued. “That matters quite a lot.”
These were beginning to feel like more than off-hand observations. Mr. Padmore appeared to be leaning toward choosing Granny Grey. That was complicated for a great many reasons.
He could simply tell them Granny wasn’t his ghost and, therefore, he couldn’t trade them for her.
But then they would likely press Tacey to make the trade.
It could be done even if Tacey wasn’t a broker yet: three-way trades were difficult and complicated, but Mercury had done them before.
He would have to steer the Padmores in a different direction.
“Tell me a little more about your household and your interests,” Mercury said. “That will help me better understand which ghosts might be a good fit.”
“I think Granny Grey would be an excellent fit.” There was just the tiniest bit of defensiveness in his tone.
Mercury needed to gently nudge when a client pushed back against suggestions. “She may very well be. I simply have found over the years that exploring all options and taking time to consider them is most likely to result in a very successful swap. And I very much want your swap to be a success.”
That seemed to appease him a little. “It would be good to see how the Cream Canary gets along with Granny Grey—and any other possible options, I suppose. No point finding ourselves in the same position as when we arrived.”
Mercury nodded. “Wise.”
And an unexpected bit of strategy. If Mercury could find a ghost that the Padmores really liked but wasn’t a good fit for the Cream Canary, he might convince them to trade her instead of the Other Hand. His new clients would be pleased. The Canary would remain at Aventine.
It was a risky strategy, creating the possibility of a bad match in order to encourage a different one. But it was currently his best option. And he would be wise to stop wallowing in self-pity, pull himself out of the miserable recollections of his past, and set his focus on securing his future.