10
With effort, Mercury removed the heavy metal bar keeping the door to the third tunnel closed. He passed through and to the door of the cell the Vanns currently called home.
He slid open the panel and spoke through it. “Enjoying your stay?” he asked.
Mr. Vann tossed him a look of annoyance and stepped over to the window on the opposite wall. But Mrs. Vann crossed to the door. The look in her eyes was not panicked or angry. It certainly wasn’t penitent. It was shrewd.
“You offered before to release us if we could provide you with useful enough information,” Mrs. Vann said.
Mercury shook his head. “I said I would consider it.”
“What would you like to know?” Mrs. Vann asked. “If it’s something I can tell you, I will.”
“Why is the Forever Flame looking for me? I have no connection to him. No history with that particular ghost.”
“He recently learned something about you that made hunting you very lucrative. He’s not told any of us what that something is.”
That discovery was, no doubt, that Mercury was a runaway orphan who owed a small fortune to Moor Cross Home for Orphans. There could be a reward, either from the governor of the orphanage or the government. Yet, he couldn’t shake the thought that something deeper was at play.
“Do you know who the Forever Flame is attached to?”
“No one does,” she said. “All anyone knows is that he is attached to someone without a family—no spouse or children or parents.”
So an orphan. There was some irony in that. Of course, it only resulted in a legal quagmire if a person was orphaned in childhood and raised in an orphanage.
Mercury wrapped his hand around the iron key in his pocket. “Why is everyone so terrified of that ghost?”
“He is ruthless.” Mrs. Vann’s voice quivered the tiniest bit, the first hint of true worry he’d seen in her.
“It is rumored he has an ability that is as inexplicable as it is terrifying. He uses it to hurt people. They do his bidding because they know he is more than willing to hurt them if they don’t.
And he will hurt the people they care about.
” Something in her expression told him that the last threat held particular sway with her.
“What is it he’s holding over you?” Mercury asked. “I assumed you were simply chasing the bounty.”
“We do need the money.” She wrung her hands. Her brows pulled tight. “But we need it because we are in debt to him. He manipulates people, and then we are never free of him.”
“You have said far too much,” Mr. Vann said, tense and uneasy. “We are in enough danger as it is.”
Mrs. Vann didn’t turn immediately away. “You have unknowingly offered us refuge by keeping us down here. We are safe from him. But you are not.”
Mrs. Vann turned and joined her husband across the cell, leaving Mercury all the more upended.
He slid the slot closed once more. Tension seized his lungs and spun his thoughts. The Forever Flame hurt people. And he hurt those his targets cared about.
Everyone Mercury cared about was in this house.
Ghosts couldn’t be hurt. Not really.
He pushed out a tight breath. People could be hurt.
The Vanns had targeted Tacey. How long before the Forever Flame did the same?
Or worse?
“The man truly had a gun?” Tacey asked, walking with him into the library that night after dinner. Rain pelted the windows. A low-burning fire kept the room from being frigid.
“He did. And I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again.”
“On the contrary,” she said, “I’m certain it will. We need to be extra diligent.”
“There may very well come a point where caution won’t be enough.” The possibility had refused to leave his thoughts all afternoon. “Should that happen, should something happen to me—”
“Don’t talk like that,” Tacey said.
“I am not being fatalistic or abandoning hope,” he said.
“Just as we have plans for getting people into the dungeon and protecting us from them, I have plans for other possible occurrences. Planning for the worst while hoping for the best is how I have survived since running away from the orphanage.” And it was keeping him from panicking now.
Mercury motioned her over to the shelves where the hidden safe was. He made sure she was watching as he pulled the odd little key from its hiding spot. He held it up so she would be sure to see it.
“This is a very important key.”
His fingers brushed her palm as he set the key in her hand. He didn’t allow himself to be distracted by the way that simple touch set his pulse strumming. The Forever Flame hurt people. Mercury needed to help Tacey stay safe.
Mercury turned back to the shelves and removed the blue books. He tapped on the side of the shelf where the knot was.
“That key goes in here. Turn it, and it opens this wall.” He motioned to the back of the shelf. “Should something happen, I need you to come in here and retrieve what’s behind the wall. And then get yourself far from here, to somewhere safe.”
“I do not like you talking this way.” Her voice was too quiet, too worried for his peace of mind. She was watching him with a troubled expression. “You haven’t given up, have you?”
“I haven’t given up. I will simply worry less and my mind will be more at ease if I know that you know about this.” He put the books back in place as he continued. “We will both hope it never becomes necessary, but I need to know that you’re willing to follow through with what I’m asking of you.”
She nodded, then silently returned the key to its hiding place.
They stood a moment, neither looking at the other.
Neither speaking. There was a heaviness in the air between them.
He didn’t really like it, but he understood why it was there.
Things were difficult and uncertain. He wanted to protect her; she wanted to protect him.
In some ways, those two goals were at odds with each other.
After a moment, she turned to face him. “If things grow as dangerous as you are anticipating, promise me you will at least consider grabbing those things from the wall yourself and leaving with me.”
“We would always be fugitives,” he said. “Always on the run. And we wouldn’t have the protections of Aventine.”
“But we would have each other,” she said.
“I think you would be getting the short end of that particular stick.” He started to walk away, but she reached out and took his hand, keeping him there.
“You didn’t tell me if you were willing to agree to that,” she said. “My mind will be more at ease and my heart will worry less if I know that you are going to try very hard not to leave me behind.”
“It certainly wouldn’t be voluntary,” he said.
The tiniest bit of a laugh joined the concern in her eyes. “You wouldn’t voluntarily leave me behind or wouldn’t voluntarily agree not to?”
He threw caution to the wind and cupped her face, brushing his thumb gently over her cheek. “Leaving you is the last thing I want to do.”
She inched closer to him. He bent closer to her. His racing heart pounded so hard that she likely could hear it.
“Then don’t leave me,” she said quietly.
He wrapped his other arm around her waist. “What if that puts you in danger?”
Her gaze didn’t leave his. “What if I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to be away from you?”
She brushed her fingertips along the edge of his collar, brushing ever so lightly against his skin. He pulled her flush with him. Heartbeats aligning. Breaths mingling.
Her voice emerged in an intriguing and mesmerizing whisper. “Now would be an excellent time to kiss me, Mercury Raine.”
He laughed. For the first time in, perhaps, his entire life, Mercury laughed. Far from offended, Tacey laughed right along with him.
“Was that too bold of me?” she said through her chuckles of amusement.
“Not at all. It was so delightfully . . . you.”
She hooked her arms around his neck. “Then it is a good thing that you like . . . me.”
“I very much do.” He bent closer once more, intending to follow her “bold” request of a moment earlier.
But Baby Blue rushed through the wall. “Someone’s coming up the drive!”