12
Mercury sat by the low-burning fire in his room. The night was quiet. The house was still. And Baby Blue was sleeping. Someone looking in from the outside might be excused for thinking that all was well at Aventine Manor.
But they would be wrong.
Mercury didn’t know how to outrun his past. And seeing the toll it was taking on Zizzy and Baby Blue made him all the more anxious about the danger he couldn’t outrun forever.
How could he justify continuing to cause them distress?
But then, being trapped in prison for the rest of his life was not a better circumstance for them. It certainly wasn’t for him.
How confidently he had told Granny Grey that he had a talent for doing impossible things. That was beginning to feel like as much of a lie as the rest of his life.
In the midst of his unhelpful ponderings, the Violet Giant slipped inside. He looked at Baby Blue. “I know the rumbling when I speak is unpleasant for the little one,” he said quietly. “I’ll speak softly and hope that helps.”
“Thank you,” Mercury said.
The Violet Giant turned to Mercury. The ghost’s brow dipped low, narrowing his eyes. His mouth pulled tight. Misgiving mingled with confusion in his gaze.
A feeling of familiar foreboding tiptoed over Mercury. “I know the look on your face.” Mercury swallowed against a lump of apprehension. “What have you inexplicably remembered?”
“At the moment, I am more baffled by the mystery of how I have remembered this than by what the memory is.” He shook his head. “But you do not seem surprised.”
“You are neither the first nor likely the last ghost to experience this decidedly odd phenomenon lately.”
That seemed explanation enough for the Violet Giant. He moved a little closer, watching Mercury closely. “You were taken.”
“Taken? What do you mean?”
“There were so many ghosts in your home. It drew attention. And you were taken.”
Mercury stood. “I was taken from my home?”
The Violet Giant nodded. “Not orphaned. Not abandoned. You were taken. Abducted. Held.”
All Mercury could do for a moment was stare. “I was kidnapped and taken to Moor Cross?”
Another nod.
“They knew you had multiple ghosts. They stood to make a fortune.”
He forced himself to breathe slowly and focus as everything he thought he knew about his past was entirely overturned. He had been kidnapped, stolen away from his family because of the money that would be made. “I wasn’t actually an orphan.”
“You were stolen.”
Mercury’s thoughts raced so fast that he couldn’t separate one from the other. He wasn’t an orphan. He had been kidnapped. The orphanage legally had claim on his ghosts, but not if he could prove that he should never have been there in the first place.
He’d have to prove it.
“Can you remember if my parents are still alive?” He could hardly believe he was asking the question. He had never assumed otherwise.
“That is not part of the memory.”
Mercury paced in a tight circle. If his parents had been alive when he turned eighteen, then Moor Cross had no claim on him. But he had to know who his parents were if he had any hope of proving that, assuming it was even true.
“Do you remember their names?” Mercury asked. “Or mine?” It had been changed by the orphanage; he knew that from a Phantomic Memory the Cream Canary had gained.
“I do not.”
So he couldn’t find them that way. There had been more ghosts at the house than just his, Holly Hock had remembered.
“Do you know how many ghosts there were in my home before I was taken?”
“Forty.”
Forty. “Were there other children in the house, other people?”
“I remember only you, and your mother and father.”
That meant, between them both, his parents had twenty attachments. Mercury’s large number of ghosts had made him legendary. His parents had enough attachments to have garnered notice as well.
Perhaps they’d kept it a secret. Rightly so. In the end, someone had discovered it and kidnapped their son. But that secretiveness meant he now didn’t know who they were.
Mercury’s pacing brought him back around, facing his desk. The quill was twitching once more. This time, the small, inexpert movement felt more frantic, more anxious. Mercury watched it, feeling himself growing a little impatient.
“I don’t think you’re going to be able to move the quill well enough to write with it,” he said.
But it didn’t stop. Indeed, the Reluctant Recluse simply tried harder.
“Do you need me to dip it in ink for you?” he asked.
The quill only twitched more earnestly.
Mercury looked over at the Violet Giant. “You’re certain you can’t tell me what it is he wants to communicate to me?”
“He says no. It must be something secret, or something he’s prevented from verbalizing.”
A secret.
A possibility landed with a hopeful, almost painful thud on his heart. He looked back over at the quill. “Do you know who my parents are? Do you remember?”
Another couple of jerking twitches resulted in absolutely no information. The quill was tossed to the ground in obvious exasperation. Mercury felt frustrated himself. His unreachable Invisible had something important to say, and Mercury had a lot of important questions he needed answered.
“The quill isn’t working,” he said, his voice more tense and forceful than he’d intended. “Please try something else.”
Nothing else in the room moved. Nothing. Was the Reluctant Recluse giving up already?
Mercury started pacing again, rubbing at his temples, trying to breathe through his growing tension.
“The memories you have obtained,” he said to the Violet Giant, “do they include anything about where I lived? The Moor Cross Home for Orphans was on the outskirts of London. Was my home in London, too?”
The Violet Giant’s face twisted in thought. “It doesn’t feel like London.” He held his hands up in a show of helplessness that felt so foreign in such a towering figure. “But it does feel familiar.”
“Familiar to you or familiar to me?” He didn’t know if Phantomic Memories were his memories transferred to the ghosts, or memories merely connected to him.
“I don’t know,” the Violet Giant said again.
Mercury glanced over at the quill, lying perfectly still on the floor. Had the Reluctant Recluse abandoned his efforts? He pushed down a surge of aggravation. Knowing his parents’ identities would change everything. If the Reluctant Recluse knew that . . .
“I’m going to go search around for something he might be able to manipulate more easily than a quill,” the Violet Giant said, then floated through the wall.
Mercury stopped his pacing at the fireplace and leaned his arm against the mantel. I was taken from my parents. I likely wasn’t even an orphan. Everything he had assumed about himself was suddenly thrown into question.
A moment later, his door opened and Tacey rushed inside. “Mercury, we have a problem.”
He was at her side in an instant. “What’s happened?”
“I sent my Invisible to spy on the Brands, just in case.”
Mercury nodded quickly.
“They didn’t come here to make a ghost swap.” She clutched the sleeve of his jacket. “They’re hunting you.”
Blast it.
“I saw them earlier in the corridor,” he said. “Did they say anything that would indicate they recognized me?”
She turned her head a little, clearly looking at her Invisible. “They said they know that you are in this house, but that was all he was able to hear.”
The Brands didn’t know he was aware that they were bounty hunters.
That gave Mercury an advantage. He would need to have a quick conversation with the Quiet Queen.
The ghosts herding people inside the house down to the dungeon needed to coordinate their efforts without immediately tipping their hand.
“Mercury,” Tacey whispered tensely. She motioned to the fireplace.
The glowing embers were moving around in an entirely unnatural way, shifting and jerking and darting about. The Reluctant Recluse? Was he going to attempt to write something in the coals?
But nothing emerged. No words. No letters.
Mercury needed to focus on the threat currently under his roof.
“It’s possible the Brands, or whatever their names actually are, plan to wait until we’re asleep to make their move,” he said. “There are a lot of rooms in the house that are impossible to find if one doesn’t already know where they are.”
“Should we retreat to one of those?”
The Scholar’s room would be a good option.
As far as he knew, none of his other ghosts had ever found the room.
Tacey could find Zizzy and bring her with them.
Mercury would bring Baby Blue. Both ghosts would have a much-needed buffer from the dangers descending on Aventine.
Tacey and Mercury would be out of reach of the Brands while they formulated a strategy.
“We’ll need—”
Pain as searing and sudden as a bolt of lightning shot through every inch of him with such force it physically knocked him back. He stumbled, only just managing to stay on his feet.
Tacey grabbed hold of him. “Mercury?”
He pulled in a tight breath.
“Mercury?” Tacey’s alarmed voice echoed in the periphery of his hearing. He was faintly aware that she was holding on to him, looking at him.
“Baby Blue,” he managed to whisper.
With effort, he grasped hold of his equilibrium. The pain ebbed but didn’t entirely cease. Underneath it was something far worse.
“I can always feel him.” His voice emerged as a whisper again.
He took a breath, then tried once more. “I constantly feel our connection.” Tears stung at the back of his eyes as a terrified grief rushed over him.
It paralleled the feeling of loss he experienced every time he released a ghost during a Transferal but was amplified a thousand times.
“I can’t feel him anymore. The connection—The connection is gone. ”
He looked over at the bed. It was empty. Mercury’s pain gave way to panic. It wasn’t just the connection between them that had disappeared. Baby Blue had.
Tacey’s gaze darted from Mercury to the spot where Baby Blue had been and back a few times. “Where is he?”
Mercury shook his head. He didn’t know. For the first time in his entire life, Mercury didn’t know how to find the tiny little ghost, his dearest little friend, the ghost he felt the most protective of. Mercury had lost him. Well and truly lost him.
A spark of ash popped in the fireplace at their feet. More embers moved. Farther. Faster. The movement sparked a flame. Red and angry. Then another. And another.
A flame. The Reluctant Recluse had managed a message, written in the red-hot embers of fire.
The Forever Flame.