A Summoning of Souls. Leanna Renee Hieber

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СКАЧАТЬ part of town, everyone’s little world was opulent and more important, it was clear, than anything that happened in anyone else’s. These ghosts were alone, for all they knew, with no one but themselves to care.

      “We care; we’ll find you. Hold fast,” Maggie said, doubting she could be heard from the hedgerows, but she had to say it. She had been abandoned before, in life, by society’s finest, and it was the worst of betrayals because they of all people could have afforded to help her.

      Maggie was startled by a presence appearing beside her, a dark-haired little girl in a white dress singed at the hem who immediately began exclaiming in a thick Polish accent, “They’re trapped! I have to show them the way out!” The ghost of Zofia Berezowska was about to float forward toward the window when Maggie grabbed her and held her close.

      The ten-year-old ghost that had died at work in a garment district fire had devoted her spectral life to helping the living out of myriad dangers, pointing the way out when smoke cleared or pushing something over to sound an alarm or summon help, fearless in rushing to the rescue.

      “Zofia, love, not here.” Maggie clutched the young ghost she thought of as a little sister even tighter, her voice breaking. “Not here you can’t! Don’t you know this place is dangerous? This is the Prenze mansion, the place I thought killed me!” The first time she’d been murdered was quite enough, and she didn’t like the prospect of dying a second time.

      “Then why are you here?” Zofia threaded her fingers through Maggie’s. “I came looking for you. After losing you, don’t you think I might look after you better than before?” They floated together, weightless but connected.

      It had taken Maggie time to get used to how much touch was different in death. An embrace was half as full as the fortitude of life. Of course, neither she nor Zofia could touch the living at all beyond the caress of a cold breeze, so the ability for a spirit to have solid contact with another spirit was one of the comforts of this existence. Maggie tried very hard to appreciate her existence as one of floating, subtle, muted nuance. As it registered to her senses, death was full of gentle touch and quiet whispers. Death was soft and delicate.

      The girls stared at the imposing mansion before them, the hands at the window, imploring, pointing. “That’s more than I can bear,” Zofia said.

      “And that’s why I’m back,” Maggie countered. “I don’t know how we’re going to prove the evil of this house in ways that the living can prosecute, but this is now our sole focus.”

      “What if we could compel someone living to go in for us?” Zofia asked. “Someone who isn’t Eve or any of the precinct operatives, seeing as they’re known now by the family.”

      “That…could work,” Maggie said, her mind already whirring. She’d taken note of several Sensitives in the city, not those as gifted as ran the Ghost Precinct she worked for, but ones who did see or sense. “We might find an ally I hadn’t thought to utilize.… Good thinking, little one!”

      Zofia looked up at Maggie proudly, and for a moment in those wide, dark irises of the child’s eyes, Maggie saw the reflection of the fire that had signaled her doom. Even ghosts were haunted. The choice was theirs if they would let it entirely define them, or motivate them to a new mission.

      There was movement in the basement. A form loomed in a dim doorway before darkness overtook the cellar level again. The ghostly palms withdrew from the barred windows, but the sounds of sobs overtook the exterior garden.

      A murderer of ghosts, living like a king in the finest part of Manhattan.

      “The Ghost Precinct has to root him out,” Zofia murmured. “Force him into the light.”

      “I already have an idea. Tell the girls I’m off on an experiment and not to worry if I’m not back for a bit. Let’s see if I can scare up some help.”

      Chapter One

      Eve Whitby came to in a forest glade with no memory of how she’d gotten there.

      Before her was a stone cairn, and from its foundation rose a single sandstone Gothic arch, the only standing evidence of a chapel that had never been built.

      Eve recognized this sacred place, having been called here before to commune with the spirit world. This was a place that spirits called Sanctuary, and she must have sleepwalked to this precipice between worlds. Again.

      The sky was brightening; dawn had broken on a cool, late autumn morning as the last months of the nineteenth century were shortening.

      The realization of where she had wandered came with a wave of terrors: Where were her colleagues, and were they all right? As director of the Ghost Precinct, she was responsible for three young women, gifted psychic mediums. As leader, she was setting a poor precedent of wandering off unannounced, a rule she’d made her team promise they’d never break.

      The last thing she remembered was trying to get to sleep after Albert Prenze, a man with no morals, a vehement hatred of ghosts, a terrifying capacity to mesmerize and compel his subjects, and a likely culprit of murder, had drawn her and dear Detective Horowitz outside into a confrontation, threatening them before disappearing.

      She and Jacob Horowitz had parted ways after a breathless, private moment together, and her heart burned with a flame it had never before experienced while her mind raced with terrors of the present case. The combination of yearning and fear hadn’t made for a pleasant night’s sleep in her grandmother’s fine townhouse. But, being so restless, she should have remembered rising, throwing a housecoat and wool coat over her nightdress and getting on a northbound train to exit outside the city limits on the Hudson River Line. But she didn’t.

      Jacob. Was he here now? Her heart spasmed. Whirling around, she found herself alone with only the pine trees and a few maples losing the remainder of their colorful leaves, one by one like slow tears, dripping from the tall eaves above her head. The last time she was at this precarious doorway where soul separated from body, Jacob had been there to catch her when she came to, making her feel safe, alive, delighted.

      But there was no such comfort here now. There were only soft voices from unseen sources, echoing on the breeze.

      Eve had grown up quickly due to necessity. Her nineteen years of life were entirely haunted. But that didn’t mean she was inured to spectral chill or the threats brought on by certain paranormal experiences. There were things even seasoned minds and old souls should fear. The whispered phrase that distinctly emanated from the stone arch directly before her was one such thing; a recurring warning of late, from the spirit world to hers.

      “Don’t let anything in!”

      The phrase repeated itself on the air. Eve crept forward and placed her ear against the cool grey surface, listening to the murmur of spirits, as if whispering on the other side of a door.

      Then, a voice she recognized. A friend.

      “Eve isn’t ‘anything’; she’s my trusted ally in the living world,” explained the voice of Episcopalian deaconess Lily Strand, a woman of the cloth whose ghost had devoted herself to the safety of children’s spirits. Lily was Eve’s guide through Sanctuary, a space outside life and death that had pieced together the souls of attacked loved ones, a service for which Eve would be forever grateful.

      “Deaconess Strand,” Eve called to the arch. “Lily. I don’t know how I got here. Did you call for me again?” The pine trees СКАЧАТЬ