8
After a lifetime surrounded by ghosts with a limited understanding of the human need for sleep, Mercury wasn’t overly surprised to be awoken in the middle of the night by a spectral visitor.
It happened shockingly often. He did still require a few moments when it happened to reconcile himself to the disruption.
When the all-too-familiar sensation of being watched in his sleep woke him that night, he took a couple of slow breaths, told himself there was a lot happening at Aventine that would have his ghosts on edge, then opened his eyes.
Holly Hock hovered beside his bed. There were few ghosts at Aventine he would have been more surprised to see there. She had never been in his room before. She seldom came inside the house.
“Is something the matter?” he asked, sitting up.
“Why do I keep remembering so many things I shouldn’t know?”
More Phantomic Memories. Mercury took a tense breath. The Scholar had warned him that the unexplained memories would spread.
Mercury flipped back his blanket and slid off the bed. Baby Blue was curled in a ball at the foot of the bed, sleeping. The movement, fortunately, didn’t wake him.
“Have you remembered something else about my life before the orphanage?” Mercury pulled on his dressing gown.
“There were so many ghosts. So many.”
So many ghosts.
“Perhaps you’re remembering the orphanage,” Mercury said. “There were other orphans who had attachments. No one had more than two except for me. But there were quite a few ghosts in total.”
Again, she shook her head. “In your home. Your family. There were so very many ghosts.”
Did that mean one or both of his parents had multiple attachments as well? Or had there been other people in their home? Grandparents, perhaps. Siblings.
I might have had siblings. Siblings.
He pushed the thought away, not daring to hope.
“Were there other people there beyond me and my parents?”
She blinked a few times. “I don’t remember.”
“If you tried very hard to remember, do you think you could?” A pleading quality entered his voice. “I would very much like to know a little bit about who I am.”
“Who you are,” she said, “has very little to do with who you were born.”
Holly Hock floated out of the room, leaving Mercury frozen in place, thoughts swirling around her pronouncement.
Who you are has very little to do with who you were born.
But he very much wanted to know more about who he had once been. To know anything about who he had once been.
He was a fugitive and an outlaw and, in many ways, a liar.
Life had set him on a path that required that of him.
But that path had also made him resilient and focused.
He’d survived, but he’d also thrived. He’d found strength he might not have otherwise.
He’d lost the family he was born to but he’d gained a family of ghosts who valued him and stood beside him even in the face of overwhelming difficulties.
Who you are has very little to do with who you were born.
The door to his room opened. Tacey stepped inside.
Enough light spilled from the window for him to see the amused and bewildered look on her face.
And in the next moment, he noticed something odder still.
The hem of her nightdress fluttered in the oddest way.
Only the front of it moved, and it did so without any draft or wind to explain the movement.
The fluttering made it almost point at him.
Tacey looked on the verge of laughter, clearly enjoying whatever was happening.
“I haven’t the first idea what is happening,” she said. “I cannot see whatever it is that is tugging on my nightdress, but it obviously wants me to come in here.”
He thought when she first saw the quill moving on his desk that he’d have to explain then. Now he wished he had. This was going to be awkward.
“That is likely the Reluctant Recluse,” Mercury said, shrugging a little at how ridiculous the situation was.
“And who is the Reluctant Recluse?”
“I met a ghost recently with a very unusual ability,” Mercury said. “That ghost can see and hear Invisibles. And he informed me that I have one.”
“You have an Invisible?” Her surprise could not have been more apparent.
“One even I can’t hear or see. He’s likely been with me my entire life, and I hadn’t any idea.”
Tacey blinked a few times and shook her head in silent surprise and confusion. “You can’t see your own Invisible?”
“I can’t.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Tacey said.
“Until I was told about the Reluctant Recluse, neither had I.”
Tacey looked down at her still-tugged nightdress. “And it is this Invisible who is leading me so persistently in here?”
“I suspect he is. Is there force behind the fluttering?” Mercury assumed the Reluctant Recluse’s ability to manipulate physical objects was quite weak, making him struggle with something as light as a quill.
“None at all,” Tacey said. “I’m following out of curiosity, not out of an inability to resist it.”
The hem of her nightdress grew suddenly still, falling back into place. Mercury looked all around the room, wondering what his invisible ghost would move next. But nothing did. Even the quill, which Mercury had made certain to leave out on the little table, sat perfectly still.
“You must’ve brought her in here for a reason,” Mercury said to the room. “Feel free to let me in on the secret.”
The room stayed quiet and still.
Baby Blue shifted a little on the bed, but didn’t wake. Tacey’s eyes were drawn to the little ghost.
“Do you sometimes wish you could give him a hug?” she asked.
“Every day,” Mercury said. “He worried about you while you were missing. He desperately wanted you back. He said that over and over.”
Tacey smiled while she watched him sleep. “Sweet little boy.”
Mercury glanced around the room again. “I suspect the Reluctant Recluse is either not going to tell us why he brought you in here or he’s struggling to do so. Either way, I don’t know that it will do us much good to stand here and wait.”
Tacey looked around as well. “If you find a way to get a message to us,” she said to the room, “please do. But for now, I’m going to go back to bed. I’m tired.”
There was no answer, and nothing moved.
Tacey shot Mercury a look of amusement. “I will assume that means he is in favor of me getting some sleep.”
She was a wonderfully unique sort of person. She didn’t grow annoyed by things that other people might find endlessly frustrating. She hadn’t held against him the fact that he’d kept so many secrets from her. And she didn’t think less of him for what those secrets were.
“May I escort you back down the corridor?” he asked with a flourishing bow and an overdone tone of gentlemanly civility.
She responded by dipping a deep curtsy. “How very gallant of you, sir.”
He held his hand out to her, and she took it. It was such an easy and natural thing between them now. And he longed for her touch when she wasn’t nearby. He had changed so much since meeting her.
They must have made quite the unusual picture, she in her nightdress and he in his dressing gown. Aventine Manor had always been a place for odd sights.
They walked slowly down the corridor. The room she was using was not terribly far from his but not immediately adjacent to it.
They had covered about half the distance when she looked at him, her brows pulled close. “Who is the ghost that has the ability to see Invisibles?”
“The Violet Giant.”
She stopped walking, growing quite still. “He must know that I have one, then.”
“He does.”
“He has never mentioned it.” Her words were quieter, tighter. “I saw him often while I was being held in London. He never so much as hinted that he could see my Invisible.”
“I would guess he was being very careful not to give away your secret. He’s proving himself trustworthy.”
She began walking again, her hand still firmly and comfortably in his. “The Violet Giant was so intimidating when he first visited Aventine. I was always so uncomfortable around the Vanns that I assumed some of my wariness was a reflection of him. I was wrong about that.”
“That is a difficult part of brokering ghost swaps,” Mercury said.
“When I come across a ghost who is truly miserable with the people to whom they are attached, I want so badly to help. But getting that ghost away from their situation would require me to resign a different ghost to that same misery.”
“Have you ever refused to do a swap because the people were so horrible?” she asked.
Mercury nodded. “I find a way to explain it to them other than ‘You’re terrible people. Get out of my house.’ I care too much about the ghosts in my care to be indifferent to the suffering they would endure after a horrid trade.”
They’d reached her door. She paused, looking up at him once more. “I do hope the Reluctant Recluse can find a way to communicate with you. He must be very lonely.”
“I have thought that many times since learning of his existence,” Mercury said. “It weighs on my mind.”
She reached up and gently touched his cheek. “You are a good man, Mercury Raine.”
He smiled a little. “‘For a criminal,’ you mean?”
He leaned the tiniest bit into her touch. Somehow it both calmed him and set his pulse pounding. “I try to be,” he said. “I don’t always succeed.”
“You do more often than you realize.”
She leaned in close. He couldn’t move. Could hardly think. She upended him in the best way.
Tacey lightly kissed his cheek. She lingered there a moment before stepping into her room.
It was all Mercury could do to keep breathing. Did she have any idea how fully she had claimed his heart?