The sound of me smacking myself in the forehead with my open palm got devoured by Ambrose’s silken laughter. Thank the goddess for small mercies.
“Her involvement would explain the curious predicament we find ourselves in,” he mused. “Tell me, boy, did she share blood with you? Is that why you have the sense to be afraid when others of your ilk drift into oblivion without a spark of terror to flavor them? Only a goddess such as she could rouse a soul such as yours.”
The dybbuk had made it no secret he was aware I was goddess-touched. He had teased me with it all along. Yet another box checked off in favor of Linus being his vessel.
“Go away.” Oscar stamped his foot, and it shot him into the air like a rocket. “Leave me alone.”
“Would that I could, dear boy, but no.” Ambrose watched him with the patience of a spider waiting for a fly to land in his web. “I can’t.”
Oscar shot me a panicked glance that sealed my fate. All I could do was scramble for a plan.
The dybbuk was grinning now, hungry, his teeth chips of moonlight. “Who’s hiding with you?”
The boy realized what he’d done and blanched, quite a feat considering his usual pallor. “No one.”
“Good effort, but I don’t buy your performance. It smacks of too little, too late.” Ambrose didn’t sound upset by the fact, merely intrigued. “Come out, come out, whoever you are.”
There was nothing for it. He would find me now that he knew to look. The sigil didn’t make us invisible so much as it made us uninteresting, forgettable. If I let him look too hard, he might find Linus too. Assuming it wasn’t Linus I was about to stare down in order to buy a few extra minutes to think of a plan.
Stupid, persistent hope. Here I thought I was all out, but it seemed I was unwilling to give Linus up as a lost cause just yet.
Seeing him with Oscar poked holes in my theories and stretched my nerves thin to breaking. Hope truly was the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. Maybe the Grande Dame had been right keeping her silence until I was freed.
“Ambrose,” I said as I scrubbed off the sigil and stepped from my hiding spot. “What brings you to the Cora Ann?”
A nail rolled behind him from the vicinity of the doorway. I scuffed my shoes to cover the sound and tried not to get my hopes up when any number of things might be to blame, including the poltergeist who was working up a head of steam over his imminent demise.
“We are in a dining room, are we not?” His gesture encompassed the space. “I would have thought my purpose self-explanatory.”
“I’m afraid Oscar is a friend of mine.” I extended a hand, and the boy clasped it hard in his clammy grip. “You can’t have him.”
“You’ve been making promises too big to keep,” he tsked. “You can’t take a meal from my mouth without offering me a replacement.” His luminous eyes fastened on Oscar. “I’m afraid there’s no other spirit in Savannah on par with our friend— Oscar, did you say his name was? You awakened him. Your blood opened his eyes. Unless you’re willing to do the same to another spirit, then you have nothing to barter. And since your objection is no doubt due to his sentience, I doubt you’d condemn another soul to a waking slaughter. So I say again, you have nothing with which to barter.”
“You act like you have a right to him.” I pushed the boy a half step behind me. “You don’t own this boat, this boy or this city. What right do you have to prey on its citizens?”
“I was invited into this city, and that makes it mine. I was invited into one of its citizens, and that gives me the right.” The flames in his hair roared higher, almost licking the ceiling. “I was awakened with a promise, and I will see it manifest.”
“No.”
“No?”
“This is my city.” Sweat dampened my palms. “The people here are under my protection.”
“Ah.” That amused him all the more. “Who granted you sovereignty here?”
“A Woolworth stood alongside General James Oglethorpe at Yamacraw Bluff. A Woolworth was present at the founding of this city.”
A cruel smile cut his mouth. “You’re no Woolworth.”
My Marchand bloodlines were no secret, but I was surprised the dybbuk was so well-informed. He was definitely pulling facts from his vessel to know me so well. “I hate to break it to you, but my adoption paperwork says otherwise. I am Maud Woolworth’s daughter in all ways except blood.”
“Blood is what defines you.” He glanced between me and Oscar. “In your case, it is all that defines you.”
A twinge I couldn’t hide left him grinning. Only my blood had granted me freedom. The Grande Dame measured me by its potential, but I refused to let it define me. “What do you know about my blood?”
“More than you do.” His hair returned to its usual corona. “More than you ever will at the rate you’re going.”
“It’s been a hard few years. Sorry if I’m not up to snuff.”
“Atramentous,” he breathed with profound reverence, “creates diamonds from the rough.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree.”
“You wouldn’t be the woman you are today without the time you spent there.”
“You’re right.” I awarded him the point. “I would be normal, well-adjusted, and I wouldn’t wake screaming in the mornings. I would be working toward a degree, hanging out with my friends, and generally doing all the things average people do with their time.”
Instead I wasn’t on speaking terms with normal, screamed myself hoarse in my sleep, worked toward the level of proficiency most practitioners acquired around age ten, and looked over my shoulder every time I left the house, making it hard to pal around with friends when my mind was elsewhere.
“Normal,” he spat. “Average.” His hair sizzled around his face. “Ordinary is a death sentence.”
“Again, I gotta disagree with you there.” I would trade my eyeteeth to have my old life with Maud back.
The unnatural cant of his head alarmed me. “Say that louder next time.”
“Say…?” Oh. Oh crap. “You heard what I was thinking.”
“How else do you think I hook them so deep?” He chuckled. “I’m a tradesman, Grier, an entrepreneur.”
“Are bargains offered the only thoughts you can detect?”
“I don’t have to read your mind to know what you’re thinking. It’s written all over your face. But alas, I’m only privy to what’s offered to me. I can’t take anything from anyone. All I am, all I have, is freely given.”
“I doubt that.” I kept watch from the corner of my eye for any motion that might indicate a rescue was underway, but no Elite boots pounded up the stairs, and Linus remained a big question mark. Guess it was up to me to squirm out of this on my own. “Who bargained with you?”
“Ah.” He touched a finger to the side of his nose. “That information comes with a price. Will you pay it?”
“Nope.” I had enough chaos in my life, thanks. “Just making conversation.”
“You can’t save him.” Ambrose was well aware of what I was doing. “You might as well stand aside. The longer you drag this out, the more hope you give him. That’s crueler than anything I will do to him.”
There wasn’t much of Oscar to start with, but I used him for cover while I eased a hand into my pocket. Fountain pens were so much stealthier than using a brush and a jar of ink. Talk about your combat applications. Linus was a genius. Whether or not that genius was evil remained to be seen.
Trembling with urgency, I scribbled a row of sigils across the back of Oscar’s hand. I figured if I could feel him, I could affect him, and my theory was proven correct when he jolted as the magic snapped into place around him. That power was a pale echo of the symphony playing through Woolly’s eaves, but the soft melody of this ward told me it had anchored despite the water sloshing far beneath us.
“A pen,” Ambrose marveled. “How fascinating. Wherever did you get it?”
Nice how no one assumed I had made it myself. “From a friend.”