Page 22 of Written in Red

“Do you and Baby Blue have to take part up here? I know you haven’t particularly liked the way things have changed at Aventine.”

Zizzy’s nod was small and apprehensive but also firm. “We want to help. We need to help.”

Mercury didn’t know what their strategy was inside the house, but it proved successful. Not a quarter of an hour later, two men moved with furtive steps into the tunnels. Whispering low to each other, they spoke of needing to find “the criminal” quickly so they could get out of the “blasted maze” they’d found themselves in.

Everything played out as it had with the Vanns, except these new arrivals were locked into a room down the first tunnel. And they proved as unhelpful and uncooperative as the Vanns. Neither would give him the slightest information about the Forever Flame, what the ghost looked like or why he was pursuing Mercury.

Nothing.

“Then I suppose you’ll simply have to stay down here,” Mercury said as he made to close the slot in the door.

“We can’t fail in this,” one of the men said. “He’ll come after us. He’ll punish us.”

“You’re not the first person to tell me they’re afraid of him,” Mercury said.

“Anyone with sense is afraid of the Forever Flame.”

Mercury held the man’s gaze. “Then help me defeat him.”

In a whisper of dread, the man said, “He cannot be defeated.”

Over the next five days, four more strangers came to Aventine. One proved to be a would-be client, who left disappointed but without argument. The other three were intruders who sneaked onto the grounds of Aventine Manor. All three were herded into the tunnels, some more swiftly and easily than others, and locked into rooms. None of them had ghosts, so the entrapment room remained empty. Testy Tolver and Weeping William installed doors on two more offshoot tunnels. Rum Nicky grew quickly adept at navigating with food for the growing list of prisoners.

By the time one week had passed since the Vanns had ushered in the flood of bounty hunters, Mercury was well and truly tired of intruders. The general feeling among his ghosts matched his. How many people would the Forever Flame convince to come hunt Mercury? And how long would they have to keep prisoners in the tunnels?

Holly Hock had been on the grounds all day despite the near-constant drizzle. Rain didn’t bother ghosts. Mercury wandered out during a break in the weather. He crossed paths with her in the field to the east of the eastern lawn. It was left to grow as it chose, wild and uncultivated, with clumps of wildflowers peeking out among the long grass swaying in the breeze.

“Anything I can do out here?” he asked. “I realize you don’t actually need the help of your pretend assistant groundskeeper, but I find myself wishing to be useful.”

Her gaze was intent on the spot of ground directly in front of her. “I passed through a window in one of the tunnel rooms and emerged above ground here. But the window isn’t where I just was.” She motioned to where she was looking. “And it isn’t just ‘not there’ visually. I tried passing back through the same spot, but it is solid ground. No window. No tunnel.”

“Aventine guards its secrets,” Mercury said. “And those secrets seem to defy explanation. The rules about what is and what can be are broken with ease.”

Your life is broken in many ways. And you have been brought to this place that further shatters things. There must be a reason. That mystery, I suspect, lies at the heart of all the others.

The Scholar’s unnerving pronouncement had returned to Mercury’s thoughts often, and each time proved as disconcerting as the last. His entire life had been an unending mystery, a jumble of dangerous secrets. Aventine had been a safe haven from it all. Now even his refuge was fracturing around him.

“Mercury.” Holly Hock’s whisper was tense and worried. He followed her wide-eyed gaze.

A man was moving furtively toward the house.

“Another one,” Mercury muttered to himself.

His annoyance shifted to worry when the dim sunlight glinted off something in the intruder’s hand.

Mercury watched a moment longer, wanting to be sure of what he was seeing.

The light illuminated it once more, and Mercury knew without a doubt: this bounty hunter had arrived with a gun.

The man could be nudged into the tunnels just as all the others had been. But should the confusion of that dark maze, with all its noises and shadows, spook him, the intruder might fire his weapon. None of the ghosts could be hurt by it, of course, but Tacey could. Mercury could be as well, of course. But it was Tacey he worried about most.

She hadn’t asked for the danger she was now facing. She wasn’t a criminal with a secretive past. She didn’t deserve any of this.

“Do you think you can distract him?” Mercury asked Holly Hock. “Perhaps pretend you think he is here to swap a ghost and talk to him about that for a while?”

“I think so,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“If I can manage it, surprise and disarm him.”