Page 6 of Written in Red

Tacey set her hand on his arm, pulling his attention back to her. She smiled at him. He’d missed that smile while they’d searched for her in London. He would miss it again if they were forced apart by the dangers of his past. He couldn’t allow that to happen.

“You said you discovered that your connection to Granny Grey is associated with the scent of lilacs,” Mercury said. “Would it help you grow more adept at locating that connection if Holly Hock gathered lilacs from the hothouse?”

“Aventine has a hothouse?”

He nodded. “It is a little difficult to find. I suspect Holly Hock likes that about it.”

“I will ask her if she’ll cut some lilacs for me. That will help me practice.”

“Excellent.” He needed her to be adept at brokering, but she never would be if she couldn’t take hold of her connections. “Let me know when you’re ready to practice releasing and creating new connections.”

“Will you make me a promise in return?” she asked.

“That depends on what the promise is.”

“Only this: that you will someday explain to me how it is that”—she turned her head in the direction of the little table under the window—“the quill on your table has been moving on its own for the last five minutes.”

He looked there as well and saw precisely what she described. The quill shifted about in small movements, more than could be explained by a draft. It wasn’t upright or writing anything. He was certain the quill was being moved by the Reluctant Recluse, his Invisible. No one knew about him. Mercury hadn’t mere weeks earlier.

Was the ghost attempting to write something but couldn’t move the quill sufficiently?

“I am desperately curious,” she said. “But I also suspect the answer is something you might not be ready to tell me.”

He looked back at her. “You mean to be patient with me?”

“I have come to know you well enough these past weeks to realize you need time to be ready to spill your secrets.” She touched his face, and his pulse picked up pace. “I don’t mind waiting until you’re ready.”

Mercury kept perfectly still, not wanting to break the spell of the moment. Her touch was healing and reassuring and upending in the very best way.

Without further comment, she stepped away and out of the room. He watched her go, forcing himself not to sigh out loud. He was very much losing his heart to her, which was a dangerous proposition for any person on the run from the law. When the consequences of that were soon to be at his very door, “dangerous” felt like too trivial of a description.

Baby Blue slipped inside. His little shoulders drooped. “Do we have to go back into the tunnels? I’m so tired.”

Mercury motioned to the bed. “You can stay up here and sleep.”

“Will you stay with me?” The pleading in his voice tugged at Mercury. The upheaval and danger of the past weeks had taken a toll on the sweet specter.

“I’ll stay,” Mercury promised. “And I won’t let anything happen to you.”

3

“The tunnels are ready,” Mercury said. “So it’s time to set our strategy in place.”

He stood in front of the open wall in the dungeon, addressing twelve of his ghosts, as well as Granny Grey, Tacey, and likely both her Invisible attachment and the Reluctant Recluse. Two of the ghosts present were so insistent on hermitry that they were entirely unknown to the rest of the household. They drew repeated glances from the other ghosts.

“The Winged Monk will watch from the rooftops for new arrivals or people sniffing around,” Mercury said. “Smythe will stand watch at the door to redirect inquisitive visitors. Baby Blue and Zizzy have requested to not return to the tunnels, so they will remain in the house.”

Looks of empathetic understanding answered that. They all loved the youngest Aventine ghosts. Everyone did.

“There are others here at Aventine for whom isolation is too deep a need to leave their reclusion. I will not force them to participate.”

That brought nods of understanding.

“I’ve asked Snaffle to do what he can to redirect any horses that make their way onto the property, whether being ridden or pulling a carriage.”

“Who is Snaffle?” Tacey asked.

The question was silently echoed in many of the faces around her.