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Godric put away the accouterments of the Ghost and donned his nightshirt and banyan before leaving his study. As he climbed the stairs to his bedroom, he remembered once again Megs’s question: Why was he still the Ghost of St. Giles? and the answer he’d not spoken:
It was the only way he had left to know he yet breathed.
Chapter Nine
Despair grinned, showing needle-sharp yellow teeth against his deep red skin. “The souls of those caught between Heaven and Hell drown endlessly in the waters below, waiting for time to run out and their release. Rejoice that your beloved’s soul is not condemned to these waters, for those who are trapped here are suicides.” Faith shivered at the imp’s words and watched as a soul in the black water opened its mouth wide as if to scream. No sound issued forth from the void. …
—From The Legend of the Hellequin
Megs stood late the next morning in the garden of Saint House, staring hard at the gnarled old fruit tree. It looked exactly the same as the last time she’d seen it a couple of days ago.
Dead.
Higgins wanted permission to cut it down, but Megs couldn’t find it in her heart to do so. Ugly and gnarled as the tree was, it seemed a lonely thing out here in the garden by itself. Silly, of course, to give human feelings to a tree, but there it was. Megs pitied the old, twisted tree.
“That tree is dead,” came a dark voice from behind her.
She turned, trying to still the fluttering in her breast. Godric stood on the garden path, clad in his habitual somber suit—gray this morning. He regarded her with clear, crystal eyes, searching it seemed for something in her face.
Megs smiled. “That’s what my gardener, Higgins, said as well.”
“I can have it cut down for you.”
“He also offered.”
He looked at her oddly. “You won’t have it cut down, though, will you?”
She wrinkled her nose and placed a hand protectively on the rough bark. “No.”
“Naturally not,” he murmured to himself.
wo drunkards seemed a clownish duo, but Godric’s blood froze in his veins as he considered what might have happened if Megs had encountered them. Very few in St. Giles—drunk or not—were benign when faced with the temptation of a rich, beautiful woman.
His jaw clenched at the thought. Any other woman would’ve stayed far away from this area of London after that first trip. Not Megs, though, and he hardly thought the events of last night would keep her away either. No, she’d declared that she would go back to St. Giles—and continue to do so until she found Fraser-Burnsby’s killer. It might possibly be bravado, but he didn’t think so. His wife was setting a course of suicide.
Damnation. He wouldn’t let her own stubbornness lead to her hurt—or worse. Somehow he needed to find a way to send her back to the country, and the sooner the better.
St. Giles in the Fields church loomed up ahead, the tall steeple bisecting the full moon. Godric crossed to the brick wall surrounding the little graveyard. There was a lock on the gate, but it hung open.
Carefully, he pushed open the gate.
The hinges had been oiled and he slipped inside the churchyard without sound. The wind picked up, bending the branches of a single, pathetic tree and moaning around the headstones. Some might find it eerie, but Godric knew there was far more to fear in St. Giles than where the dead slept.
A very human grunt came from near the opposite wall, and Godric smiled grimly: He hadn’t come in vain tonight. He slid from shadow to shadow around the perimeter of the graveyard, not speaking until he was within feet of his quarry.
“Good evening, Digger.”
Digger Jack, a small, hunched man who happened to be one of the most notorious resurrectionists in London, straightened with a gasp.
His companion, a brawny, lumbering lad, was less sanguine. “It’s the Devil!”
The lad threw down his shovel and sprinted for the cemetery gate with impressive agility, given his size.
Digger Jack made one abortive move, but Godric laid a heavy hand on the other man’s shoulder before he could run. “I need a word with you.”
“Awww!” Digger moaned. “Now, why’d ye ’ave to go an’ do that? Ye’ve scared off Jed. ’Ave ye any idea ’ow ’ard ’tis to find a lad wif a strong back in St. Giles? I’m gettin’ on in years, I am, an’ the lumbago’s been botherin’ me somethin’ fierce. ’Ow’m I to do me work wifout ’is ’elp?”
Godric raised an eyebrow behind his mask. “Sad as your tale of woe is, Digger, I can’t find it in myself to pity you when you’re in the very act of exhuming some poor corpse.”
