11
Mercury watched and listened, tucked out of sight at the top of the stairs.
A husband and wife stood just inside the door, both soaked to the skin.
The lady’s hair was plastered against her face, her coat dripping with rain.
The man’s hat drooped, sitting misshapen and clingy over his eyes.
A small ghost hovered behind them. Despite its diminutive size, it didn’t appear to be a child.
Indeed, its snow-white hair made the ghost seem elderly.
“Mr. Raine is not brokering swaps just now,” Smythe said. “He does not often allow himself a holiday, but is doing so at the moment.”
“Will he resume soon?” the lady asked. “We attempted a London Season with an unfashionable ghost, and it was an utterly regrettable error.” She sounded miserable and more than a little pleading.
This was precisely the sort of circumstance he would have welcomed weeks earlier, before everything had begun falling apart.
“I was not informed of an anticipated resumption date,” Smythe said, not unkindly.
Tacey, hunched next to Mercury, whispered, “Do you recognize them?”
“No. I haven’t brokered a trade for them before.” Mercury looked over his shoulder at the Violet Giant.
The enormous ghost shook his head. It was unlikely, then, that they were bounty hunters.
Down at the front door, the woman asked Smythe another question. “Do you think Mr. Raine will resume brokering before next Season? I don’t think I could bear the difficulties of another Season so out of fashion. Our social standing is not significant enough to overcome that.”
“I suspect he will.” Smythe dipped his head.
The lady turned back to her husband. “We had best be on our way, dear.”
The gentleman opened the door. The sound of splattering rain grew instantly louder.
“Does the village have an inn, by chance?” the lady asked. “I don’t know that we’ll get very far in this weather at night.”
“The tavern offers rooms,” Smythe said. “And hot meals.”
“Wonderful.” The lady smiled at him before stepping past her husband.
The two of them and their ghost stepped out, and Smythe closed the door behind them.
“I hate that we have to turn them away in a downpour,” Mercury said. “I’ve not had to do that before.”
Tacey took his hand. “You aren’t being cruel; you’re being cautious.”
“I slept in the rain often while I was living on the streets of London. No one ever offered me shelter. I was tossed off stoops, splashed by passing carriages.” Mercury didn’t often let himself think about those miserable years.
“We couldn’t stop you from getting wet.” Baby Blue hovered nearby, watching Mercury with unmistakable guilt on his sweet face.
“And I couldn’t do anything to save all of you from having to live on the streets with me.”
“We were together,” Baby said with the tiniest little shrug of his translucent shoulders. “That was the most important thing.”
Mercury smiled at him. “It still is.”
Smythe floated up the stairs to them. “Mr. and Mrs. Brand’s carriage has become mired in the mud at the turn in the drive. They are trying valiantly, with Snaffle’s help, to free it, but Snaffle does not think it will be managed quickly. And he says the horses are suffering.”
The hesitancy in Mercury’s mind was echoed as tension in those around him.
He could feel it and sense it. Yet, what could he do?
There was a chance the Brands weren’t who they portrayed themselves to be.
But if they were, it would be cruel to force them to traipse through mud and rain all the way to the village, assuming they could even find it in such awful weather.
And resigning their horses to grow helplessly stuck in the mud as well was hardly justifiable.
“Does Snaffle think he can free the horses before they injure themselves?” Mercury asked.
Smythe dipped his head. “If he unhitches them from the mired carriage.”
“We can have a ghost keep an eye on the room we offer them,” Mercury said. “We’d have ample warning if they try sneaking around the house or causing any mischief.”
“The last person bent on ‘causing mischief,’” Smythe said, “arrived with a pistol.”
“I know there is danger in having them in the house, but we would know where they are, which helps lessen that risk.”
Mercury met Tacey’s eyes. She was the only one in the house other than him who could be hurt if this proved unwise.
“The Violet Giant didn’t recognize them,” she said, “and they had intended to leave. I think that increases the likelihood that they didn’t come here with malicious intent.”
To Smythe, Mercury said, “Tell the Brands they can stay tonight. Offer them the first bedchamber in the guest wing. And ask Snaffle, once the horses are seen to, to place himself at the top of the drive and warn anyone who attempts to visit that the drive is not passable.”
Smythe left to deliver the messages.
Mercury turned to the Violet Giant. “Will you ask Captain Capitate if he’ll keep an eye on our visitors?”
“Of course.”
“Do we have to keep an eye on them?” Baby Blue asked once the towering phantom had passed through the wall. “We don’t sit anymore. I want to sit.”
Though the little boy hadn’t phrased it eloquently, Mercury knew what he was asking.
During quiet evenings when there were no clients at Aventine, Mercury would often retreat to his sitting room to read a book or a newspaper.
Baby Blue almost always sat beside him. Sometimes they would talk. Sometimes Baby Blue would sleep.
They hadn’t done that in weeks.
“We can go sit,” Mercury said. “The Brands are likely half frozen and completely exhausted. They’ll appreciate retreating directly to a warm room and a comfortable bed and won’t need us entertaining them.”
“May I come as well?” Zizzy asked, listening from not far away.
“Always,” Mercury said.
With a bit of a smile, Tacey asked, “May I come as well?”
His eyes lingered on her, and his heart answered with the softest skip of a beat. “Always.”
“Baby Blue was sleepy.” Zizzy sat on the floor of the sitting room, looking over at Baby, curled in a ball on the sofa next to Mercury, sleeping. “He’s been scared. I think that makes him more tired.”
“Perhaps everything will be quiet for a day or two,” Tacey said. She was sitting on Mercury’s other side. “We could all get some rest that way.”
“Are you tired as well?” Mercury asked her.
She leaned against him. “Today was a particularly harrowing day.”
Mercury slipped his arm around her, tucking her up against him. It had been a very difficult day. A man coming with a weapon, intent on doing harm. Yet another person locked in the tunnel. Harrowing. Worrying. But, in that moment, with her sitting in his arms, it was very nearly perfect.
“How many people do you think we’ll have to keep prisoner here?” Tacey asked.
“The Vanns said quite a few people do the Forever Flame’s bidding.”
From beside Mercury, Baby Blue’s little voice answered. “We’ll be safe here, though.”
“Did we wake you, sweetheart?” Tacey asked.
“A little.” He sounded half asleep still. “We’ll be safe here, won’t we?”
“I cannot think of any place safer than Aventine Manor,” Mercury said.
“And we’ll be together,” Baby Blue insisted.
“Yes. Just as I’ve always promised we would be.”
Tacey tucked herself more cozily against his side. “You will recall, Mercury, that I asked for that same promise from you earlier today.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
He sat there for a moment, his arm around her, Baby Blue curled up beside him.
Zizzy sat on the floor nearby. Though Mercury had no memory of his family, he imagined this must have been what it felt like to have one.
He’d told himself all his life that he didn’t need family or a feeling of home.
But now, having experienced the tiniest taste of it, he knew he would never again feel whole without it.
“I can’t sleep here.” Baby Blue’s voice was a little weepy. The poor thing needed rest.
“Would you sleep better on the foot of my bed?” Mercury asked.
“Yes, please.”
“Let’s wander up that way, then.” Though he hated letting go of Tacey, Mercury stood. The sooner he could help Baby Blue sleep, the sooner Mercury could rest as well. No matter Tacey’s expressed hope that they would have a quiet few days, that was unlikely to actually happen.
Zizzy took Mercury’s place on the sofa next to Tacey. “Have you ever danced at a ball?”
“I have,” Tacey said. “They are elegant and lovely. But, do you know, I have enjoyed the times I have danced here with you far more than even the most fashionable balls I attended in London.”
Zizzy had always struggled to feel at ease with anyone but Mercury. Tacey had quickly won over the wary wraith. They were now wonderful friends. Tacey had become so essential to all of them.
It was a testament to how tired Baby Blue was that he didn’t say a single word as they made their way down the corridor.
Mercury didn’t know how to save the sweet boy from the weight of all that was happening.
Aventine was the safest place they could be, but it was also where the Forever Flame and his bounty hunters knew to look for Mercury.
It was unlikely to be peaceful. Baby Blue would be perpetually exhausted.
They turned a corner and came across Captain Capitate. Next to him, the Brands’ diminutive ghost looked all around, eyes wide with amazement. Wonder must have been one of that specter’s Integral traits.
“Mr. Jones.” Captain Capitate addressed Mercury by the false name they’d decided on for his persona. “The Brands are a bit peckish, but I can’t find the butler to ask for food to be brought to their room. Have you seen him?”
Mercury assumed his lower-class accent. “I haven’t. If I do, I’ll let him know he’s being asked for.”
Captain Capitate turned to the overawed ghost. “Mr. Jones looks after the estate. Repairs things and such. He’s reliable.”
The other ghost nodded absentmindedly, still riveted by the paintings on the walls, the items on tables, the crown molding.
Mercury continued on his way, but did so by a roundabout path, not wanting to make it obvious that he was on his way to the family wing; that would undermine his disguise. By the time he reached his room, Baby Blue’s eyes were barely staying open.
“Lie down and rest,” Mercury told him gently.
“Are you going to leave to look for Smythe?” Baby Blue asked as he curled up on the bed.
“No. I’ll stay here with you.”
Baby Blue closed his eyes. “Just like you promised.”