The Spectral City. Leanna Renee Hieber

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СКАЧАТЬ and ghosts, every living or dead soul who had sought her out, enjoyed their work. They did seem to know they were a part of something important, working for a greater good. The spirits that bound themselves to the Precinct, serving the city from beyond the veil, clearly shared in a passion for justice that helped ease any injustices during their often too-short lives. Living and dead, Eve’s girls were full of purpose and dogged determination. They knew they were unique and whatever progress they made would break barriers, leaving room for who might come next. Eve hoped future generations of young women would have it a bit easier and would be taken more seriously in roles of leadership.

      Now Eve lived in-house with her three mediums. They had been working together on various cases and clues for nearly a year now, though the Precinct itself was only officially a few months old. The ghosts who had chosen to support the mediums called Eve’s side of “Fort Denbury” their best haunt. The whole lot of them were generally unflappable souls. But in the past year of work, Eve had never seen a ghost as upset as Zofia was while reporting on Margaret’s disappearance. It went beyond a ghost’s inherent interior melancholy. Zofia was despondent. Sad ghosts carried a melancholy with them like a weight in the air. This was like a millstone.

      Just as Eve was about to send out a psychic siren, a call for her mediums to come back home for a meeting, cutting what had been their night off short, there was a knock at the door. Eve knew who it was immediately. Gran didn’t like the doorbell, stating that it was ‘far too jarring’ and why couldn’t she have a door knocker like the rest of civilized society for the past centuries?

      Letting her Grandmother in, still in the same fine gown from the evening’s festivities, Eve left her in the parlor and went to stoke coals under the back stove to brew a pot of tea.

      When Eve returned, Gran asked, “I assume you’ll call back your operatives?”

      Eve nodded. “Because of the event tonight, I had told them to go out and have a nice dinner somewhere. I couldn’t have predicted we’d have a crisis on our hands.”

      Zofia burst through the parlor wall, her phantom hands wringing the edges of her pinafore apron. “I want Maggie back now.”

      “Indeed, Zofia, indeed. We’ll do everything we can,” Eve assured the ghost.

      “I’d like to go freshen up before I sit down to a séance,” Gran said. “Did you get the plumbing fixed in the upstairs water closet?”

      “I did, thankfully.”

      “Good.” Gran turned and held onto the rail tightly as she climbed the stairs to Eve’s floor, moving with deliberate steps. Gran was getting older, and it took a maturing Eve to see that, noticing the barely perceptible change in pace, every movement taking a hair’s breadth more time as the years went on.

      A sense of guilt washed over Eve in a cool inundation. She should be letting this woman rest.

      Turning at the landing, Gran looked down at her. “Well? While you’re waiting for your girls, we could be brainstorming. While I wash my face and put some peppermint oils behind my ears to perk myself up, come and talk to me.”

      Gran was so very wise but didn’t know the first thing about the fine art of rest. Eve had learned every habit from this indomitable woman, who immediately picked up on her granddaughter’s hesitation. “What is it, my dear? You have a look about you.”

      “I worry I’m taxing you too much,” Eve replied sheepishly as she ascended after her to the second floor. Gran entered Eve’s boudoir and sat down at her rosewood vanity inlaid with pearl and floral marquetry, the fanciest item of furniture she’d allowed Gran to procure for her. Eve followed behind, sitting on a nearby settee whose burgundy brocade matched the vanity stool. “Mother and Father are one thing, but you . . . You’ve earned rest and then some. I think the spirits sense that too, perhaps wanting to spare you—”

      Gran swiveled the chair to stare Eve down, a dainty bottle of scented oil that she herself had gifted Eve clutched in her hand. She withdrew the delicate blown glass stopper to dab a drop of lavender mint oil onto her finger. “I’ve nearly died many times,” Gran began, rubbing a finger behind one ear, then the next, breathing in deeply and squaring her shoulders. “I’ve been haunted by the dead as long as you, them coming to me in childhood and never leaving me alone. If I were to truly stop, the silence would be maddening. I wouldn’t be able to think, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

      Gran continued with the routine of the oil, pressing a dab of it on pressure points about her face, continuing in an ardent tone. “I’ve made mistakes in life. I’ve been selfish, short-sighted. If the spirits stop murmuring I’m left only with guilt.” She stared at herself in the mirror, and Eve sensed Gran feeling her age even if she didn’t look it.

      “We all make mistakes,” Eve said to Gran’s reflection, seeing herself in part profile in the mirror. “You can’t keep taking on Maggie’s as your own. It won’t help her peace or yours.”

      “As a clairvoyant who should know better, I’ve never been able to content myself with that adage of everyone making mistakes. Why have the gift if it won’t keep us from making them?”

      “The rhetorical question of the ages.”

      “Your turn. If I’ve taught you anything it’s how to take care of yourself with simple, restorative comforts,” Gran said, handing her the bottle that had been procured for these precise holistic purposes, when the night was young and full of trying work ahead. Eve placed a dab of oil on her finger, touched each temple and pressed hard upon them, trying to open the channel of her third eye, internally blinking between those two temple points, as wide as she could.

      Just then, the doorbell buzzed, a loud, jarring noise letting them know to expect an entrance. Evelyn jumped and grumbled at the raucous interruption, hating the noise.

      “I know you hate the bell, Gran, but my colleagues and I have made it a sensible practice to ring it even if we have keys, so that if someone was mid-trance, they wouldn’t be surprised by a quiet entrance.”

      “That’s sensible and all, I just hate how jarring it is. I’ll be down in a moment.”

      As Eve descended the stair, Cora opened the door with her key and waved at Eve as she hung her coat in the wardrobe. Cora’s hazel-brown skin was dotted with moisture, her black, tightly spiraled curls up in a lace bonnet. She adjusted the eyelet cuffs of her high-necked blouse and unclasped the pin at her collar sculpted in the shape of an eagle, keeping it pressed in her hand as she gave herself more air, as if the evening had strained her breath.

      “Heavens, they won’t leave me be,” Cora stated. Gesturing behind her, she added. “You feel them? Have they all come out on parade tonight?”

      The icy wake that had been trailing behind the young medium two years Eve’s junior caught up and two ghosts burst across the threshold, bobbing frenetically. Winnie and Cyril, who must have been the ones to collect Cora. The two greyscale spirits were transparent and floating, both holding slight clues as to how they died in their appearance. Winnie, a little girl in a choir robe with dark circles under her silver eyes, having died of consumption; Cyril, a young, broad-shouldered man in shirtsleeves and suspenders, a piano player who had been lost to the same fate, years later. The two spirits of different hue and opacity were drawn to wherever music was most prevalent, tied to this, the city of their birth. They were infrequent haunts of Eve’s association, but it was clear they cared deeply for the precinct’s well-being.

      “Margaret’s gone,” the spirits and Cora all stated at once. СКАЧАТЬ