I swallowed hard and considered going back downstairs to fetch Jackaby, but I shook the thought from my head. I did not need him to hold my hand through every little thing. Stepping off the path, I wound my way around the pond. The grass was tall and wet, and it did nothing to help the shivers running over my skin as it tickled my legs. A thick veil of ivy draped from the rafters on this side of the room, and as I pushed it aside, I was met with an explosion of movement.
I flew backward, landing on my backside as a flurry of brown and green and white flapped into the air above my head. The startled drake, nestled inconspicuously in the foliage until I nearly trod on it, now soared over the rippling water and away, beating its wings in a mad dash to the opposite side of the building. I caught my breath. Douglas was the pond’s foremost resident, and nothing to be afraid of. The stately waterfowl had once been human, and Jackaby’s assistant, until he had been caught off guard on a creepy caper and fell victim to a curse. Jackaby had never turned his back on the stalwart fellow, so Douglas stayed on, tending the archives with remarkable aptitude for a mallard. What my fine-feathered coworker could not do was weep in a mournful human voice. The cries continued.
Douglas, typically so composed, had fled the scene in such panic, I was left wary of what might have put him on edge. I steeled my nerves and pulled myself to my feet, inching forward to push the curtain of leafy vines aside. Coming through the ivy was like stepping into an ice chest. The moist air condensed into a thick fog, and the bushes on this side of the pond formed a secluded, shadowy glade. It took me a moment to make out the source of the moaning cries. Veiled in the heart of the fog, in the darkest of the shadows, was Jenny Cavanaugh.
Jenny had only ever appeared to me as a spectral beauty, possessed of a mercurial laugh and effortless grace—the spirit of mirth and elegance. The morbid figure now before me was something else entirely. She sat, crouching in the shadows with her head cupped in her hands, and sobs rippled through her shoulders like steam bubbling from a pot. Her hair was draped in damp, matted strands, clinging to her slate-gray arms like algae to a wet rock. Her dress was decrepit and decayed, torn at the collar and hanging lopsided and loose around her neck.
The invasive cold thudded into my chest, and I froze. Jenny’s body faded in and out of clarity with the curls and drifts of mist. Focusing on specific features began to hurt my eyes, like trying to pick out details in a poorly exposed photograph. The dirt and leaves beneath her slipped in and out of view, becoming distorted like the horizon on a hot day as the figure solidified and faded with each heaving breath. All around her the air churned and roiled, ominously volcanic in spite of the icy cold.
The breath I had not taken for several long seconds rushed suddenly into my lungs in a quavering gasp, and Jenny looked up. Her face was like a grim reflection in dark, turbulent waters. She showed no sign of recognition as she rose with shuddering fury to her full height, her expression slipping from misery to wrath. The specter’s eyes, peering from beneath the angry shadows of her brow, held none of the cheer and compassion that had come to define the spirit I knew. They were lit instead with a wild, inhuman frenzy. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said, her voice raw and hushed. Mist boiled around her, and, like a demon from the pit, she burst across the glade toward me.
“J-J-Jenny?” I stammered at last, my voice barely a whisper.
She was not two feet away, barreling at me like a cannon, when a flicker of familiarity blinked across her eyes. In an instant her face became a wash of pitiful confusion, and just as quickly she was simply gone. Momentum carried the wave of cold fog into me, but without its source, it was nothing more than mist. No sooner had it engulfed me than it began to dissipate, slipping into the mossy floor as it faded.
The returning warmth of the third-floor oasis was slow to chase the shivers out of my bones. I trod unsteadily back around the pond and staggered to a stop on the lush green. Douglas flapped over beside me, and we sat together quietly, looking over the pond’s bank for several minutes.
“That was unexpected,” I said at last.