Ghostly Echoes (Jackaby #3)(46)

“Was this room different when we left?” Finstern asked. “Something seems different.” I glared at him. Jackaby continued on through the hallway, and I followed. The bust of Shakespeare had been knocked roughly aside, leaving a hole in the plaster of the wall and cracking the bard’s cranium in two.

Jackaby stalked straight out the back door as I paused to survey the damage in each room. Jackaby’s office was in no better shape than the front room. The heavy safe appeared to have been thrown directly through the standing blackboard, leaving the former upside-down on the floor and reducing the latter to shards of chalky slate and broken wood. The laboratory across the hall was strewn with bits of broken beakers and bottles, and steam whistled steadily from two or three bent pipes no longer connected to their big brass boiler.

The back door slammed shut so violently it rattled the broken glassware at my feet. I stepped out in the hallway to intercept Jackaby as he stormed back inside. “She’s gone!”

“Mrs. Hoole? No!” I felt dizzy. We had promised the widow our protection and we had failed her. “But I thought the cellar was safeguarded! How did they—”

“They didn’t,” Jackaby snarled. “The wards are still active. There’s not a jam jar out of place. The cellar wasn’t breached. They didn’t do anything—she did. The bolts were thrown from the inside.”

“She opened it herself? But why?”

Jackaby was fuming. “This,” he said through gritted teeth, “is why I don’t like secrets!”

I followed him as he tramped up the stairs. We emerged on the second floor. A cabinet toward the far end of the hall had toppled. It stood wedged diagonally against the opposite wall, its doors hanging open and its contents spilled on the floor.

“Argh. Stay on this side of the house,” Jackaby warned as he trod forward angrily. “Some of those artifacts are highly unstable. I’ll set it right myself.” His fists were clenched as he went to see to it.

My room was first on the right. It had been ransacked as well. The chest of drawers had been emptied and my dresses and shirtwaists lay all over. Directly in the center of my bed lay the sketch of Owen Finstern with the little carved stone resting on top of it. It was hard not to take their placement as a sign. They had sent Pavel to collect, and he had come back worse for wear and without their quarry.

As I scooped them up angrily, the door to my armoire rattled. I tensed, holding my breath. It rattled again, this time accompanied by a bark and a muffled quack. “Oh! Douglas!” I relaxed and stuffed Pavel’s little mementos in my pocket as I opened the door. Douglas burst out, flapping across the room and squawking. He perched on my headboard and shook out his feathers. Toby was cowering in the back of the armoire, and I patted his head. “It’s all right, boy,” I said.

Across the hall, Jenny’s door hung open, as well. I tiptoed over. Her room looked untouched at first glance, and I almost dared to imagine the perpetrators had spared her the indignity of trespassing there. Then my eyes fell to the floor.

A shape had been carved into the wood. It was just a silhouette etched in crude, jagged lines, but the image was clear. The rough cuts outlined the body of a woman in a flowing dress, lying sprawled in the center of the room. There, in the center, where the woman’s heart should be, lay a tarnished pewter locket. I did not need to open it to know it was the locket from the photograph, the locket from Howard with love.

“Abigail?” Jenny said behind me. “What are you looking at?”

I spun around. “Oh, Jenny—don’t . . .” but she was already past me.

Jenny stooped, and her fingers traced the rough gashes in the wood. With trembling slowness she reached out and took hold of the locket. She clutched it so tightly her fist shook, and she pulled it to her chest. Her whole body fluttered like a moving picture in a broken penny arcade machine. Her hair whipped behind her and the windows shook. The wind stole my breath and sent shivers down my neck.

“Jenny, she’s gone. It’s over. She can’t hurt you anymore. She’s just trying to—”

Without warning the windows exploded. I held an arm in front of my face as tiny bits of glass spun around the room

“Jenny!”

Jackaby was behind me at once. The wind was deafening, but he stepped past me and spoke quietly, earnestly. “You’re not alone, Miss Cavanaugh. Not this time. Not now. Not ever, ever again.”

The wind died down as quickly as it had started, glass skittering along the ground and coming to a rest with a million little tinkles. Jenny blinked into view in front of Jackaby, fluttering in and out of sight. Her eyes were sad and desperate as she reached a hand toward him. Her lip quivered. Her translucent fingers brushed his stubbled jaw and then she flickered again. In the same instant, her body lay motionless in the center of the room, a perfect fit within the lines of the grisly silhouette. Her eyes stared blankly ahead, and the darkness that saturated her dress was beginning to spread like a grim shadow on the floor.

And then the room was silent and Jenny was gone.

“Too far.” Jackaby’s eyes were steel as he slid a long bronze knife and a little red pouch into the inner pockets of his coat. He had blown into his laboratory like a savage gale, and I knew his moods well enough to know I should stay out of his way. A broken test tube crunched under his shoes. He ignored it, picking over what was left of his work space as he stocked up for the journey ahead. I watched from the doorway as he pulled drawers out of a damaged storage rack, throwing them on the floor one after another as they failed to produce whatever artifact he was looking for. “Too far.”