Ghostly Echoes (Jackaby #3)(40)

Finstern’s face lit up. “You’re the dead woman?” he said to the room. “Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you. I don’t like you.” Jenny’s voice was flat.

Finstern clapped like a toddler at a puppet show. “Brilliant! I told Edison it was possible! I told him communication with the other side could only be a matter of calibration and sensitivity. He scoffed at my designs for a spirit phone—of course he didn’t let me keep them, either. This is marvelous, though. How are you speaking?”

“I don’t know. How are you speaking?” Jenny did not sound amused.

“Practiced modulation of the vocal chords. Do you have a larynx? Is there a frequency you need to employ to become audible? Can you see frequencies? Tell me, how many spirits like yourself reside in a city of, say, a hundred thousand?”

“I don’t know!” Jenny said. “I’m not an expert on ghosts, I just am one.”

“Of course,” Jackaby said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“If our answers lie with the dead—then perhaps we should speak with someone who is an expert on ghosts. You’re brilliant, Miss Cavanaugh, and absolutely right. Nobody knows what Hoole was building better than Hoole. All we need is a means of communicating with him from beyond the grave.”

“Oh, is that all,” I said.

“There are a handful of mediums operating in New Fiddleham,” Jackaby continued. “Lieutenant Dupin used to see one every month to have his cards read.”

“Mediums lie,” Finstern said. “Misrepresentation of observable phenomena. It’s not real.”

“It’s called showmanship,” Jackaby said.

“It is invalid data.”

“Not everything needs validation to be real. Charlie may be onto something. It’s worth a try, anyway.”

Jackaby set Charlie to watching Mr. Finstern and sent me to check on Mrs. Hoole while he darted into his laboratory to make the necessary preparations. I slipped outside and knocked on the door to the cellar.

The bolts click, click, clicked and the door swung open. The widow was in one piece, but she did not look as though she had slept a wink.

“You really shouldn’t open the door straightaway,” I said. “I could have been anyone.”

Mrs. Hoole nodded. “Of course you could. That was stupid of me.”

“Are you all right?” I said. “We’re going out to see if we can find some answers. It’s probably best that you keep yourself sealed in. Do you need anything, though?”

She shook her head. “Why did you protect me?” she asked. “Last night when that monster attacked me, you jumped in front of him. You don’t know me. As you say, I could have been anyone.”

“Oh. It was just the right thing to do, I suppose.”

“How do you know if you’re doing the right thing?” she asked. “I keep trying, but sometimes I feel as though I’ve done nothing but the wrong thing all my life.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true,” I said. “You keep trying—and in the end I think maybe that’s the only right thing anybody can do.”

She nodded, although she did not seem bolstered by the advice. “Thank you, Miss Rook. You have been far too kind.”

Mrs. Hoole pulled the cellar door gently closed and I heard the locks click, click, click back in place.

I hastened back into the house, where I met Jackaby emerging from his laboratory with his satchel slung over his shoulder and a long brown cord in his hand. The bag on his arm looked even heavier than usual, but he didn’t seem to be bothered. “Ready?” he asked.

“As ever, sir.”

We returned to the foyer, and Jackaby held out the cord to Charlie.

“A leash?” Charlie said. “Toby is really very well trained, sir. I don’t know that that’s necessary.”

“Toby’s staying here,” Jackaby said. “Don’t worry, Douglas is a reliable custodian.”

“Douglas is a duck.”

“Yes, well, he wasn’t always!” Jackaby was still a little sensitive on the subject of Douglas’s transformation. He blamed himself for allowing his former assistant to blunder into harm’s way in the first place. To his credit, Jackaby had long since found the means to reverse the curse. It was Douglas who chose to remain in fowl form, which frustrated my employer to no end. “The bullheaded bird is more than capable of looking after your mutt for a few hours. The leash is for you.”

Charlie glanced at Finstern, who was pacing the room. The inventor didn’t seem to be listening. He leaned down to look into Ogden’s terrarium, about to tap the glass with his finger.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Jenny’s voice chided. Finstern looked up and all around him.

“You can’t mean to suggest that I wear . . .” Charlie whispered to Jackaby.

“You can’t very well go walking down the street in broad daylight, can you? And as much fun as it sounds to travel through New Fiddleham exclusively through back gardens and over hedges, we are a bit short on time. We can go without you, if you prefer?”

Charlie took the leash without enthusiasm. “I’ll be right back.”

“No,” said Jackaby loudly, so that the inventor could hear. “You won’t. Do release the hound, though. We’ll be taking our guard dog with us.”