Ghostly Echoes (Jackaby #3)(2)

I hesitated. “What would happen to his subjects?”

“What would happen,” answered Jackaby, “is the reason Lord Reisfar is not around to tell you in person.”

“They killed him?”

“A bit. Not exactly. It’s complicated. His nerves gave out, so he abandoned necropsychology in favor of a less enervating discipline, and was shortly thereafter eaten by a colleague’s manticore. He might or might not still haunt a small rhubarb patch in Brussels. Cryptozoology is an unpredictable discipline. But my point stands!”

“Sir—”

“The matter is settled. Jenny Cavanaugh is in an unstable condition at the best of times, and finding painful answers before she is ready might send her over an internal threshold from which there can be no return.”

I don’t think my employer realized that Jenny had crossed an internal threshold already. Until recently, she had always been reticent about investigating her own death, shying away from solid answers as one who has been burned shies away from the flame. When Jackaby had first moved his practice into her former property, into the home in which she had lived and died, Jenny had not been ready. The truth had been too much for her soul to seek. She had made a decision, however, when she finally enlisted our services to solve her case—and, once made, that decision had become her driving force. She had waited long enough.

Now it was Jackaby who seemed to be dragging his heels to help, but his unavailing attitude only made Jenny more determined to help herself. To her dismay, determination alone could not give her a body, and without one she could do frustratingly little to expedite the case. Which was why she had come to me.

Our first spiritual exercises had been fairly benign, but Jenny still felt more comfortable practicing when Mr. Jackaby was away. We had known each other only six short months, but she had quickly become like a sister to me. She was self-conscious about losing control, and Jackaby only made matters worse by growing increasingly overprotective. We began by attempting to move simple objects one afternoon while he was out.

Jenny remained unable to make physical contact with anything that had not belonged to her in life, but on rare occasions she had managed to break that rule. The key, we found, was not concentration or sheer force of will, but rather perspective.

“I can’t,” she said after we had been at it for an hour. “I can’t move it.”

“Can’t move what?” I asked.

“Your handkerchief.” She waved her hand through the flimsy, crumpled thing on the table. It did not so much as ripple in the breeze.

“No,” I answered. “Not my anything. You can’t move your handkerchief. I gave it to you.”

“My handkerchief, then,” she said. “A lot of good my handkerchief is going to do me when I can’t even stuff it in a pocket!” She gave it a frustrated swat with the back of her hand, and it flopped open on the table.

We both stared at the cloth. Slowly her eyes rose to meet mine, and we were both grinning. It had been the flimsiest of motions, but it was the spark that lit the fire. We scarcely missed a chance to practice after that.

Not every session was as productive as the first, but we made progress over time. Several fragile dishes met their demise in the following weeks, and the frustration of her failures pushed her into spiritual echoes more than once. With each small setback, however, came greater success.

We expanded our tests to leaving the premises, which Jenny had not done since the day she died. This proved an even more daunting task. On our best round, she managed to plant but a single foot on the sidewalk—and it took her most of the afternoon to rematerialize afterward.

When moving outward failed to yield the results we had hoped for, I began to explore moving inward. I knew that this could be even more dangerous territory to tread, but the following day I asked Jenny to think back and tell me what she remembered about that night.

“Oh, Abigail, I’d really rather not . . .” she began.

“Only as much as you feel comfortable,” I said. “The smallest, most inconsequential details. Don’t even think about the big stuff.”

Jenny breathed deeply. Well, she never really breathed; it was more a gesture of comfort, I think. “I was getting dressed,” she said. “Howard was going to take me to the theater.”

“That sounds nice,” I said.

“There was a sound downstairs. The door.”

“Yes?”

“You shouldn’t be here,” said Jenny.

The shiver rippled up my spine even before I felt the temperature drop. I had come to recognize those words. They came from that dark place inside Jenny.

“I know who you are.” Her gown was elegant and pristine, but at the same time it was suddenly torn at the neck and growing darker. She was already fracturing. Jenny’s echoes were like a horrid version of the party favors my mother used to buy—little cards with a bird on one side and an empty cage on the other with a stick running down the middle. When you twirled the stick, the bird was caught. A trick of the eye. As Jenny fluttered in front of me, graceful and grotesque, the two versions of her became one, but some part of my brain knew they did not belong together. Her brow strained and her eyes grew wild with anger and confusion.

“Jenny,” I said, “it’s me. It’s Abigail. You’re safe. There’s no one—”