Chapter 6 The Interrogation
The house was wider than it was tall, and seemed to have all the comforts in the world—except warmth. Despite the fires blazing in most rooms, a chill still pervaded Leena’s bones. There was something eerily empty about this house—a house that was as discreet and shut in as its master.
With Mr. St. Silas leading her, she noticed that the dining parlor looked untouched and the drawing room seemed unused.
Even the bedroom that Leena was soon to inhabit, much more luxurious than the lumpy bed she was used to sleeping on, was desolate.
This house felt like a stopping place—solely practical and utterly detached, like a posting inn that had been forced to become a home.
She kept pace with Mr. St. Silas, his tour short and perfunctory, his hair even darker within the pools of light from the sconces.
He didn’t look in the least bothered by the presence of a stranger in his home—especially one who could see the dead—as if he knew that the house would keep all his secrets.
How could he leave the blistering world outside—a world designed to cut and bruise—only to hang his coat and wipe his shoes in a house made of sterility and stone?
Did he seek the cold? Shy away from softness?
Leena thought of the house she’d just left behind, small as it was, cluttered with childhood drawings and familiar smells.
Another place that had burrowed into her heart.
At the very least, she thought, the Saint’s house will never haunt me in the same way.
Their last stop was Mr. St. Silas’s study, and the only room within the house that seemed inhabited.
It was unchanged from Leena’s last visit.
Multiple ledgers encircled the room, some tattered and worn, others unopened and unused.
The only new addition was a medium-sized canvas wrapped in oilcloth leaning against a shelf.
It stood out in a place that shunned sentimentality.
Mr. St. Silas ordered tea to be brought in before taking a seat behind his desk. His hair was cut shorter than previously. His eyes—black as ink, a drowning well—seemed to swallow the light rather than reflect it: quick to assess, slow to reveal.
It occurred to Leena that she was in a room alone with him. That she would be alone with him day in and day out. Not for the first time did she worry about her safety, or how she would protect herself if all the rumors that swirled around the Saint of Silence were true.
The silence stretched between them. Neither was willing to break it, both locked in a battle in which the victor was the last to speak.
A tap on the door. The smell of tea wafted into the room, brought in by the same woman who had admitted Leena to the house all those nights ago. Leena remembered the way the woman had tried to drag her from Mr. St. Silas’s office, and the interaction soured her still.
“Mrs. Van, my housekeeper.” Mr. St. Silas again made the brief introduction as he arranged papers into a drawer in his desk.
The housekeeper’s sharp gaze landed on her, distrust lining her harsh eyes. She was a severe-looking woman with skin stretched so tight across her face that it looked ready to split down the middle and reveal the white skull underneath.
As Mrs. Van poured from the teapot, Leena could not avert her gaze from the woman’s hands. The palms were the same size as her own, but the fingers were so elongated that they curled over the teacup edge like the legs of a spider.
“Madam,” Mrs. Van said, as if reading her thoughts.
Leena startled and flushed for the obvious lapse in manners.
Once the housekeeper had left, Leena took a long sip of tea to settle her nerves. Her throat burned full of questions; she wouldn’t let anything curtail her now. “You told me previously that you’d like me to find a ghost for you,” she began.
“Among other things.”
She had been expecting this. Dread swelled in her chest. “What other things?” she asked slowly, fearing she already knew the answer.
“Nothing too odious, I assure you.” He waved a hand.
“You have a gift, a curse, an ability—whatever you’d like to call it—and I’d be a fool not to take full advantage.
” At the look on her face, his mouth twisted upward.
“As part of your duties, you will sit in on my consultations and alert me to any spirits hovering around my customers. You will not question me on why I seek those spirits.”
Leena pursed her lips at his autocratic manner.
He’d been purposely vague about her “duties” when she’d first signed the contract.
She had been too fever-touched at the time to ask him to list them.
She’d caught that slip earlier on when poring over the copy he’d sent her, and she’d been berating herself for it ever since.
She wouldn’t allow him to have the upper hand again.
Mr. St. Silas’s smooth voice cut through her thoughts. “When did you see your first ghost?”
The question startled her and pulled out memories from the recesses of her mind: hazy summers, grand estates, dizzying excitement, dashed hopes.
She remembered that time with a certain perplexity, as if she’d suddenly woken up in a new country and must now learn to speak the language.
“Three years ago,” Leena replied, weighing her answers carefully, “when I was employed as a lady’s companion in Hythe House.”
They watched each other, alert to every minuscule change in the other’s posture. Mr. St. Silas’s shoulders subtly stiffened at the mention of Hythe House.
Interesting.
“You worked for Lord Hargreaves, I presume?” he asked.
“I did, though I met him but a handful of times. I mainly worked for his mother, Her Ladyship. She is Algaraan, and Lord Hargreaves wanted a well-educated girl who could converse with her in her language.” She kept her tone matter-of-fact; she would make sure that pulling answers from her would be like pulling teeth.
Mr. St. Silas drummed his fingers on the desk. “You didn’t finish, Miss Al-Sayer. What triggered your ability to see the dead?”
She took another long sip of her tea, noticing that he didn’t touch his. She remembered the fever that had started it all—collapsing in the estate gardens, then waking to ghosts.
Finally she shrugged, hoping the gesture would annoy him. “I don’t know.”
They both continued to level a look at each other, she over her teacup, he in obvious skepticism.
“It’s the truth. One day I woke up like this and it has never left me since.”
“Out of curiosity”—Mr. St. Silas toyed with the pen in his hand idly—“was there a ghost stalking Hargreaves?”
Leena stirred her tea and added a lump of sugar to it, then grimaced at the taste. She hadn’t had sweetened tea in years, and she’d become accustomed to the bitterness. She busied herself stirring, trying to buy herself time to think. She didn’t trust herself to lie.
“Ah,” Mr. St. Silas said, and for a moment she saw through the nonchalance to the suppressed interest underneath. The pen stilled in his hand even if his posture remained relaxed. “You saw the ghost of his wife, didn’t you?”
Leena’s hand twitched, and she hated that he must’ve noticed the nervous action.
“Did she really die of a wasting illness?” he pressed. “Shocking, isn’t it? She’d been seen in perfect health only days before.”
A faint smile crossed Leena’s lips. She leaned forward eagerly, the teacup tinkling on her knee. “No information comes for free.”
A pause.
“She learns quickly.” His tone was dry.
Mr. St. Silas stood up abruptly from his chair and walked toward the mantel. For a moment there was no sound except the crackling of the burning logs.
“What question do you have?” he finally said into the fire, his tone carefully indifferent.
“I beg your pardon?”
He kept his back turned. “I want to know about Lady Hargreaves. Ask me something in return.”
Leena had a dawning sense that this request was wrestled out of him, that he was not used to making concessions, and she felt a surge of triumph.
Leena tried carefully not to show her hand. She took another sip of her cooling tea. “Tell me about the Wake.”
It was a stab in the dark. She was still unsure if the Wake was a product of fevers or a real, tangible thing, but she would know for certain one way or the other—if not for her mother’s sake, then her father’s.
“Your secret first, madam.” Mr. St. Silas turned, and she felt once more triumphant. That he didn’t look perplexed by her question could only mean that this Wake was not a figment of her imagination.
She cleared her throat. Talking to his back was much easier than when he fully faced her; then she had to contend with the sharp intelligence of his eyes, and there was no hiding behind semi-truths and half-lies.
She weighed her words carefully. “The ghost that haunted Lord Hargreaves was indeed that of his wife. She didn’t die of a wasting illness. She…” Leena hesitated, feeling a creep of shame for revealing His Lordship’s grief.
When she fled His Lordship’s employment and began working instead as a laundress, all the Wardens were cruel and quick to punish her for the smallest infractions.
Working for His Lordship had been a completely different experience.
He was a steady employer, not quick to rail against his servants, and she had never forgotten the unwavering way the phantom had followed him.
As if his longing for his dead wife kept a part of her trapped on this soil. It was unnatural. Unholy.
It was the first phantom she’d ever seen.
She’d initially noticed the murky figure when she rose from a night of illness after fainting in the estate gardens.
It was a woman in a soaking dress, hair dripping, lips tinged blue, and bare feet that left no wet prints on the floor. No one else had noticed this woman trailing behind Lord Hargreaves, and Leena had learned very quickly not to ask.
“Continue,” Mr. St. Silas demanded, no longer hiding his impatience.
She didn’t immediately answer, a part of her still missing in the past.