Page 18

“I don't want it in my house, but I'm hesitant to leave it here.”

“I can hide it in the locked cabinet for now.” I took the crucible out of the furnace with the tongs and dumped the silver piece onto the table. After replacing the crucible, I used the tongs to pick up the piece and set it on a cleaning pad. It didn't char the pad, so I risked a quick touch. “It's not even warm.”

“That's a hell of a protection spell.”

Since I knew nothing could hurt it, I didn't bother wrapping the piece. I unlocked the reliquary's cabinet, and tucked the silver piece into a crevice above the cabinet door. If someone opened the cabinet, they wouldn't see it. After I locked the cabinet again, we left the smoky lab. Curtis returned with the air purifier, set it up, and I locked the lab door. It was a relief to leave.

Twenty minutes later, we entered a quieter stretch of the city lined in brick row houses with black shutters and window boxes gone leggy with the last of autumn's chrysanthemums. Tristan parked in front of a townhouse that looked exactly like its neighbors.

“This is it?” I got out and looked up at the ordinary house.

“What did you expect?” He led me up the steps.

“I guess something fancier. You said he collects information.”

The door opened just as I finished speaking, startling me. The man on the other side looked to be somewhere in his fifties, with silver threading through his dark hair. He wore a brown cardigan, and a pair of glasses sat halfway up his forehead. Overall, he had the look of a man who belonged behind a reference desk in a library.

“Tristan Bane,” he said with some surprise and stepped back to let us in. “It's been what, forty years?”

“Closer to sixty,” Tristan said. “You're slipping, Haversham.”

“I have to prioritize information.” He tapped his temple and peered at me. “And you brought company. That's new.”

“Destiny Takeda.” I offered my hand.

His grip was warm, dry, entirely unremarkable, and I felt a small flicker of disappointment at that, as though some part of me had expected cold skin or no pulse at all.

He smiled as if he knew. “Haversham. One name, like Bono. Come on in.”

We followed Haversham down a narrow hallway lined with framed, hand drawn maps of cities, and into a sitting room. The scent of tea and old books added as much ambiance as the Victorian rolltop desk near the window. Bookshelves took up every inch of wall space, even behind the desk. A grandfather clock ticked in the corner, its pendulum swinging.

“Sit.” Haversham gestured to a settee upholstered in faded burgundy velvet, the nap worn thin along the armrests. “Tea? Or something stronger?”

“Stronger.” Tristan waited for me to sit and then sat next to me.

“Tea's fine for me, thank you.” I smiled, wondering when the paranormal would peek its head around the corner. In all the ghost tiktoks I've seen, peeking around things is mandatory.

As Haversham poured our drinks at a sideboard—from a crystal decanter and then porcelain teapot wrapped in a knit cozy—the paranormal peeked.

Between my art background and my training in restoration, I could spot details other people missed. Haversham's chest had been moving in a steady rhythm with his breaths. But once he started pouring our drinks, it stopped.

It must have shown on my face, because as he handed me my drink, he grinned and took a deep breath. “I forget to breathe when I'm distracted.”

“You forget to breathe?”

“It's not as necessary as it once was.” Haversham handed Tristan his glass, poured some tea into his cup, and settled into the armchair across from us. “I'm not entirely alive, Ms. Takeda. I'm not entirely dead either.”

“He's a revenant,” Tristan said, before I could ask.

“Just so.” Haversham sipped his tea. “We revenants are people who refuse to die. I'm very stubborn, you see. I'm also very nosy. I've made a business out of it. A lot of my kind do. I guess nosiness comes with the territory.”

Sitting there with my cup of tea in my hands, I stared at Haversham and wondered why I wasn't more shocked. Or afraid. Perhaps because it was hard to be afraid of a man who sat in a wing chair with a cup of tea, flinching when his glasses fell from his forehead to his nose. Instead of fear, I felt curious. Haversham was a scientific impossibility, and I wanted to understand how he had survived. It couldn't be as simple as being too stubborn to die. If if it was that easy...

I turned to look at Tristan, “Is Hitler a revenant?”

Tristan's eyes went wide as he coughed. “Why would you ask that?”

Haversham chuckled. “Stubbornness! No, my dear. If Hitler had managed to cheat death, one of us would have killed him. We would never allow such as he to be such as we.” He winked.