Page 20 of Written in Red

The room stayed quiet and still.

Baby Blue shifted a little on the bed, but didn’t wake. Tacey’s eyes were drawn to the little ghost.

“Do you sometimes wish you could give him a hug?” she asked.

“Every day,” Mercury said. “He worried about you while you were missing. He desperately wanted you back. He said that over and over.”

Tacey smiled while she watched him sleep. “Sweet little boy.”

Mercury glanced around the room again. “I suspect the Reluctant Recluse is either not going to tell us why he brought you in here or he’s struggling to do so. Either way, I don’t know that it will do us much good to stand here and wait.”

Tacey looked around as well. “If you find a way to get a message to us,” she said to the room, “please do. But for now, I’m going to go back to bed. I’m tired.”

There was no answer, and nothing moved.

Tacey shot Mercury a look of amusement. “I will assume that means he is in favor of me getting some sleep.”

She was a wonderfully unique sort of person. She didn’t grow annoyed by things that other people might find endlessly frustrating. She hadn’t held against him the fact that he’d kept so many secrets from her. And she didn’t think less of him for what those secrets were.

“May I escort you back down the corridor?” he asked with a flourishing bow and an overdone tone of gentlemanly civility.

She responded by dipping a deep curtsy. “How very gallant of you, sir.”

He held his hand out to her, and she took it. It was such an easy and natural thing between them now. And he longed for her touch when she wasn’t nearby. He had changed so much since meeting her.

They must have made quite the unusual picture, she in her nightdress and he in his dressing gown. Aventine Manor had always been a place for odd sights.

They walked slowly down the corridor. The room she was using was not terribly far from his but not immediately adjacent to it.

They had covered about half the distance when she looked at him, her brows pulled close. “Who is the ghost that has the ability to see Invisibles?”

“The Violet Giant.”

She stopped walking, growing quite still. “He must know that I have one, then.”

“He does.”

“He has never mentioned it.” Her words were quieter, tighter. “I saw him often while I was being held in London. He never so much as hinted that he could see my Invisible.”

“I would guess he was being very careful not to give away your secret. He’s proving himself trustworthy.”

She began walking again, her hand still firmly and comfortably in his. “The Violet Giant was so intimidating when he first visited Aventine. I was always so uncomfortable around the Vanns that I assumed some of my wariness was a reflection of him. I was wrong about that.”

“That is a difficult part of brokering ghost swaps,” Mercury said. “When I come across a ghost who is truly miserable with the people to whom they are attached, I want so badly to help. But getting that ghost away from their situation would require me to resign a different ghost to that same misery.”

“Have you ever refused to do a swap because the people were so horrible?” she asked.

Mercury nodded. “I find a way to explain it to them other than ‘You’re terrible people. Get out of my house.’ I care too much about the ghosts in my care to be indifferent to the suffering they would endure after a horrid trade.”

They’d reached her door. She paused, looking up at him once more. “I do hope the Reluctant Recluse can find a way to communicate with you. He must be very lonely.”

“I have thought that many times since learning of his existence,” Mercury said. “It weighs on my mind.”

She reached up and gently touched his cheek. “You are a good man, Mercury Raine.”

He smiled a little. “‘For a criminal,’ you mean?”

He leaned the tiniest bit into her touch. Somehow it both calmed him and set his pulse pounding. “I try to be,” he said. “I don’t always succeed.”