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“It was a diary from a local family,” I explain quickly when Levi just stands there looking at Laura, obviously in a panic over her excitement. “It just happened to mention Xan—I mean Lysander, and the name and his description caught Levi’s attention.”
She tuts. “Diaries are such interesting things, and so useful for social history. Today’s social history comes in the form of texts and social media and will invariably be lost to time.”
With that gloomy pronouncement, she leads us into the formal drawing room which is decorated in blues and greens and looks no different from all the other drawing rooms we’ve seen so far.
“Sorry,” Levi mutters. “I’m not very good at subterfuge.”
“Not good? If you had a placard on you saying, ‘I’ve met Xander and read his secret sex diary’, that would still be a step up from how dreadful you actually are.”
“Oh, shut up,” he says happily.
The group are gathered around a glass case containing a motley assortment of jewellery, and I’m just about to join them when I see movement out of the corner of my eye. One of the walls is covered with satin wallpaper but a concealed door is currently opening in the middle. The slow, sly way it happens catches my attention, and I watch as a man steps out. He’s scrawny and about five foot five, wearing breeches and a waistcoat over a shirt. His features are tanned to the consistency of old leather, and he has a scar running down his face that gives him a slightly wicked air of which I immediately approve. He’s also a ghost.
I grab Levi’s hand and stay him before he can move closer to the jewellery conversation. “What is it?” he asks.
I nod over at the hidden door and the little man standing there. He looks in that direction and at first, he just squints, bewildered. “Look closer,” I say. “Unfocus your eyes and then focus them.”
“Is it a ghost?”
“It is, but it’s one who I think wants to be known to you.”
I know the moment Levi sees him, because his eyes widen, and he whispers, “Shit.”
“That about sums it up.”
The tour group are now talking animatedly about an atlas or some tea service. It could easily be something else, though. Laura is starting to look a bit harried, so we haven’t got much time before she moves us on.
I steer Levi toward the ghost. His back muscles are tense, and I can’t blame him for being nervous. The past few days haven’t endeared him to the spirit world.
The ghost stands to the side of a cupboard, out of sight from the group. “We have to be quick,” I whisper as we approach him.
The ghost looks us over and says, “You’ll be the lads who are helping the captain, then.”
“Who?” Levi asks.
“Branok,” I say out of the corner of my mouth.
“Aye.” The little man winks. “How is the old bastard?”
It startles a laugh out of me. “I see you know him well.”
He puffs his chest up. “None better. I was the captain’s man in life as I am in death.”
“You’re Jowan,” Levi whispers, eyes wide.
The man cocks his head. “You know me?”
“I have Xander’s diary.”
Humour lights up his face. “Ah, I bet that’s a fair old saucy read.”
I bite my lip to hold in a laugh. “You could say that. Better than a subscription to Pornhub.”
He looks confused and Levi rolls his eyes at me in a far too sassy manner. “Are you here for us?” he asks Jowan.
“Aye,” he says, his humour fading away like the last sparks of a firework. He keeps his gaze fixed on Levi. “But only you, lad.”
“What?” Levi says.
