Page 17 of Written in Red

Mercury thought on that long after he’d left the dungeon and retreated to his sitting room. His ghosts were choosing to protect him. For so long, he’d kept his past hidden, not wanting to burden them, while at the same time feeling guilty that their precarious situation wasn’t entirely known to them. But they not only hadn’t held it against him, they were willingly and anxiously protecting him.

Tacey was the first person he had told, and that had been excruciatingly difficult to do. Yet she hadn’t flinched, hadn’t blinked. He had initially arranged for her to stay at Aventine so that Granny Grey would stay. The offer had been selfish in so many ways. Yet, Tacey had proven a miracle in his life.

How could gratitude and guilt be so tightly intertwined?

It was in the midst of these swirling thoughts that an enormous boulder of a ghost slid through the wall of the sitting room.

“The Reluctant Recluse told me he believes you would like to speak with me,” the Violet Giant said.

Mercury sat up straighter. “I have been trying desperately to communicate with him ever since you revealed his existence to me, but I haven’t been very successful.”

“He’s able to hear you. He is struggling, though, to make himself heard by you.”

“He’s been attempting to write with a quill but can’t seem to manage it.” Mercury rubbed at his forehead. “He’s fluttered newspapers in front of me, which has helped me learn things. But he can’t seem to move anything heavier than a sheet of newsprint.”

“He is decidedly frustrated.” The Violet Giant’s voice had a tendency to rumble inside a person. That took some getting used to.

“While you’re here, perhaps you could act as messenger?” Mercury suggested.

The ghost’s eyes darted a bit to the side the way Tacey’s did when she was listening to her Invisible attachment. The Reluctant Recluse was likely standing there.

“He says that won’t work in the way he needs it to,” the Violet Giant said, looking at Mercury once more. “I am guessing there’s something he needs to tell you that I am not meant to hear. Or for some reason, he’s prevented from saying it.”

A message so important that the Reluctant Recluse was trying exceptionally hard to get it to Mercury, and the Violet Giant could hear and see this enigmatic Invisible but couldn’t act as a much-needed go-between.

“Do you intend to tell the Vanns that I aided your efforts here today?” the Violet Giant asked.

“When you aided my efforts in London, you asked me to remember that. And I do. I won’t repay your kindness then with unkindness now.”

“I know the Vanns are horrid people,” the Violet Giant said. “If it were within my power to do so, I would not spend another moment within fifteen miles of them, let alone fifteen feet.”

Mercury stood and crossed closer to him. “I wish I could broker a trade for you so you could have that escape. I would not, however, resign any of my ghosts to living in the Vanns’ household, and I don’t think the Vanns would agree to it anyway.”

“Focusing on what cannot be done is futile,” the enormous ghost said. “Let us, instead, discuss what we are able to do, so we can do it.”

Mercury studied him. “Does this mean you intend to keep helping us?”

“If I can.”

Mercury began pacing, his thoughts racing. “How much trouble did the Vanns come here intending to cause?”

“They came back for you,” the Violet Giant said, “but were willing to take Miss Wilde again, if need be.”

“They said, while they were trying to find me in the tunnels, that they would have made her harder to find this time.”

The Violet Giant eyed Mercury as he paced past. “On the journey here, they said they were willing to hurt her if it would force your cooperation. They weren’t exaggerating.”

They would not be permitted to so much as look crosswise at her. The now-grown street urchin, who was as good with his fists as he was at brokering, would make absolutely certain of that.

The Vanns were contained. But they were not the true threat. One didn’t fell a tree by snapping off a branch. It needed to be taken out at the roots.

“The one offering to pay a bounty for me,” Mercury said, “is the Forever Flame. I anticipate that particular ghost will come here at some point.”

“If you are not captured by his minions, he will eventually come for you himself.” The Violet Giant narrowed his gaze a little. “Something about you is of particular importance to him.”

“I don’t know what the Forever Flame looks like. I won’t recognize him when he comes to Aventine.”

“No one who runs bounties for him or owes him favors or allegiance has ever seen him. He’s secretive and hidden, which makes him more dangerous.”