I grinned. ‘Sorry. We trust you, Phil!’ He raised his eyes to the heavens and left.
The Ipsissimus knitted his fingers under his chin and watched me. ‘Are you sure, Ms Wilde, that you wouldn’t like to return to the Order? I really do think you might fit in better than you realise.’
‘She’s sure,’ Winter snapped. Then he looked apologetic. ‘I’m not trying to speak for you,’ he muttered to me.
I gave him a quick, reassuring smile. ‘I know.’
‘Pfffft!’
I jumped as Ipsissimus Grenville’s head appeared next to the stuffed bear’s. Brutus hissed and darted away again. ‘He should speak for you,’ the ghost said. ‘He’s a man. He has a far better understanding of Order matters than you ever could.’
I gritted my teeth. ‘Yes, he does, but only because he used to be in the Order. Not because he happens to be a man.’
Grenville frowned. ‘What do you mean used to be in the Order? Has he been expelled? Did you conspire to have this good man thrown out?’
I didn’t deign to answer that question. I’d already had words once with Grenville about his rudeness and I wasn’t going to repeat myself. Frankly, at this point in time he needed me a great deal more than I needed him.
Ipsissimus Collings looked fascinated. ‘Is that Ipsissimus Grenville?’ He clapped his hands. ‘How wonderful! I’ve been reading his old journals. They’re quite fascinating.’
Grenville harrumphed loudly and floated down from the bear to the Ipsissimus’s face. ‘You’ve been reading my journals? Those are private, sir! In my day a gentleman would never stoop to such an act.’
‘I’ve just reached the part where you went back and perused the diaries of one of your predecessors,’ Ipsissimus Collings burbled happily. ‘And you realised that there was a lot you could learn from the past. Now we can communicate with each other through Ms Wilde, we can learn from you. This is truly a fortuitous opportunity.’
I snorted at Grenville’s expression. His face contorted further and he whipped round. ‘Shut up, woman!’ he thundered. ‘This is all your fault,! Do you have any idea what a mess you’ve created? Just as things finally seemed to be looking up, I’m getting spirits from all over the damn country complaining to me because of what you’ve done!’ His voice was still rising. Whether that was a special gift granted to all ghosts, or whether he’d managed to achieve similar decibels when he was alive, I didn’t know but it was an impressive sound.
I leaned back further in my chair and lifted my legs, propping my feet on the table. Both Ipsissimus Collings and Winter frowned but they were too intrigued by what Grenville might be saying to admonish me. I made a show of inspecting my fingernails; out of the corner of my eye, I could see that steam was almost coming out of Grenville’s ears.
‘Ivy,’ Winter said, ‘does Ipsissimus Grenville have any insights to offer about Blackbeard? Could he perhaps send some ghosts to search for him? They could prove to be our salvation.’
Grenville didn’t react to Winter’s suggestion. His attention remained wholly on me. ‘Don’t you want to know what you’ve done?’ he demanded.
I started to pick at a hangnail as Grenville started to stamp his feet. Perhaps we all regressed into childhood after we died. Spending the afterlife throwing temper tantrums didn’t seem like the best use of a phantom’s time, but maybe with eternity to contemplate there wasn’t much else to do. What did I know?
‘Maybe he could speak to Clare Rees and the other coven ghosts again,’ Ipsissimus Collings suggested. ‘Ask them if they noticed anything to do with animals, or if they had any pets that died recently. If they used a pet crematorium to dispose of their pet’s remains, that might be how Blackbeard targeted them in the first place.’
I looked up. ‘That’s a really good idea.’
‘I can’t talk to anyone else!’ Grenville yelled in my face. ‘They won’t talk to me any more! And it’s all your fault! Because you’ve screwed everything up, the others all want a new representative! We’ve spent a long time working out a schedule. There is a hierarchy and some people have been waiting here for generations. The queue has been established for over a century and you leapfrog it willy-nilly! That last spirit whose curse you smashed had only been here for a decade or two. He was number 22,633 and you put him at the front of the line! And that idiot who couldn’t keep his penis in his clothes wasn’t much higher. This is what happens when women are given a bit of freedom. They mess everything up!’ He held up his palms towards me. ‘I can’t even bear to look at you. You have no understanding of anything.’ He shook his head and vanished.
Winter raised his eyebrows. ‘Well?’
I bit my lip. ‘I don’t think Ipsissimus Grenville is in a good mood. We might be on our own for a while.’
The door banged open and Maidmont reappeared, clutching a piece of paper. His face was shining. ‘I think I have the place,’ he said. ‘I think this might be where Blackbeard is burning his victims.’
There was a brief mutter from underneath the table. ‘Thank fuck,’ Brutus said. ‘We need to depart this hellhole tout suite.’
I started and looked down at him. Had I really just heard that? He blinked innocently and started to lick his paws.
Chapter Fifteen
‘We should call the police and get them to visit the place,’ Ipsissimus Collings said.
Winter pursed his lips. ‘They don’t know what they should be looking for. It’ll be like sending in a barber to do the work of a plumber. It’s not about using magic, it’s about having the knowledge to follow the right clues and find the right person.’
‘There are Arcane Branch witches nearby, some very talented ones. We could send them in.’
‘But they haven’t seen Blackbeard in person. Ivy has. She’ll recognise him faster than anyone else. Besides, if one of the Arcane Branch witches gets twitchy and uses magic by accident, they could ruin everything.’
The Ipsissimus grimaced. ‘But if Blackbeard is there because he works there, he’ll recognise you both and the game will be up.’
Winter drew back his shoulders. ‘If Blackbeard happens to be there, he won’t be walking out of that building unless he’s in our custody or a body bag.’
Even I sucked in a breath at that one. Winter had a way of saying things that could send serious shivers of fear down your spine. It was probably the military blood in him, and the way he managed to be so sincere and yet completely matter-of-fact whilst discussing killing another human being.
The Ipsissimus was prepared to continue arguing. ‘You are both civilians. You have no place…’
‘When you put Ivy on Dead Man’s Hill with an incantation to draw a necromancer’s magic and martyr herself, she was a civilian.’ Winter stared at his old boss, his eyes like chips of blue ice. The moment of silence that followed was one of the most uncomfortable of my life.