“Jenny, that is absolutely amazing!” I said.
“It is, isn’t it?” she said wistfully. “Just a little bit, at least? Oh, Abigail, I’m exhausted, I’m not ashamed to tell you. I had planned on setting my spoils out in nice triumphant rows when I got back, but it was all I could do to hold myself intact by then. Solidity is sort of like flexing a muscle, except the muscle is in your mind, and your mind is really just an abstract concept. I was basically flexing my entire body into existence the whole way home. But did it merit so much as a Good job, Jenny from that infuriating man?”
Jackaby surfaced from his perusal and looked up at last. His cloud gray eyes found focus on Jenny. From his expression, I couldn’t tell if he had been following our conversation or not. “Completely unexceptional,” he said. “Nothing at all in this batch. We will need to scrutinize them more closely, of course, just to be sure. Oh, and Miss Cavanaugh . . .”
She raised an eyebrow skeptically.
“You performed . . . quite adequately,” he said, “despite expectations.”
Jenny opened her mouth to reply, but then closed it again. Her face fluttered through a series of potential reactions. Finally she just threw up her hands and vanished from sight with a muffled whuph of air closing into the space where she suddenly wasn’t.
“What in heaven’s name was all that?” said Jackaby.
“Exquisite frustration, I believe, sir.”
“Ah. Right.” He slumped into the desk chair and began to fidget absently with the spine of one of the Bibles. “Miss Cavanaugh is a singular and exceptional spirit, you know.”
“Only a suggestion, sir, but that is precisely the sort of thing you might consider saying when she is still present and corporeal.”
“I worry about her.”
“Sir?”
“I have studied ghosts, Miss Rook. I’ve studied ghasts and geists, spirits and spooks, and until recently I believed that I had begun to fathom the science of specters. I thought I understood how ghosts work.”
“I think there may be a few things about this one you’re still missing.”
“More than a few,” he admitted.
“So, ghosting is a science?”
“Everything is a science. Science is just paying attention and sorting out the rules already in place. There are rules governing the undead, to be certain. What worries me is that Miss Cavanaugh is no longer following them.”
“She’s just”—I searched for the right word—“growing.”
“She is, and that’s just it. Growth isn’t how ghosts work. Dead things tend to do the opposite.”
“That’s good, though, isn’t it?”
“It is good beyond anything I have ever dared wish for Miss Cavanaugh. Against all odds, she has a life, of a sort. A strange, impossible, beautiful, heartbreaking, terrifying life.”
“What’s so terrifying about it?”
“It is a life that should not be possible,” he said. “It is a fragile ornament hanging from a tenuous thread. She subsists on borrowed moments, and they might run out at any moment.”
“Of course they will, in the end. For all of us. That’s what life is.”
Jackaby eyed me. “I see my cheery disposition is rubbing off on you.”
“Try to be happy for her, sir,” I said. “And, if I may be so bold, stop keeping her at arm’s length while you’re at it. She’s not a bauble you can wrap in silk and leave on the top shelf. She’s chosen life. You can choose it with her.”
“I’m not keeping her at arm’s length!” Jackaby huffed.
“You performed quite adequately, despite expectations,” I recited.
“She did. That was a compliment.” Jackaby frowned. “It is possible that I do not know how to talk to Jenny.”
“Possible?”
“Probable.”
“We’ll work on it, sir.”
There came a firm rap at the door, and I glanced up to see the frosted window form the words:
r. f. jackaby:
consultant & colleague
“It’s Charlie,” Jackaby said, his gaze penetrating the door. “Come in, Mr. Barker!” My heartbeat quickened. As the door swung open, I felt a flutter, and I privately admonished myself for being so childishly delighted just to see him. Emotions and foolish behavior are much easier to manage when they are someone else’s.
Charlie was dressed in plainclothes; his recent assignments for Commissioner Marlowe had been strictly off the record. He wore a starched white shirt and a chestnut vest over pressed slacks and simple leather brogues.
“Miss Rook!” His chocolate brown eyes brightened as he saw me, and he crossed the room at once to sweep me into a warm embrace. I felt his chest rise and fall. I could hear his heartbeat. He smelled like cedar.
“That will suffice,” Jackaby grumbled loudly from behind me. “Yes, yes. You are young and your love is a hot biscuit and other abysmally romantic metaphors, I’m sure. You do recall that you saw each other yesterday?”
Charlie pulled away but paused to brush a hand gently across my neck. His smile was tired but gratified. I straightened and tried to will the flush out of my cheeks. “Normal people do occasionally express fondness for one another.”
“Yes, fine. I’m familiar with the concept,” he groused. “It’s the bubbly auras and fluttering eyelashes that really test one’s limits.”
“My eyelashes do not flutter,” I said.
“Who said I was talking about your eyelashes? Charlie has eyelashes.”
“I apologize, Mr. Jackaby, for any undue fluttering on my part,” Charlie said diplomatically. “I could use a little fondness right now. My day has been, on the whole, a deeply unsavory experience.”
“Life, as Miss Rook and I were just discussing, is an unsavory experience.”
“It doesn’t always have to be,” I countered.
“What are all these?” Charlie plucked a book of psalms from the unruly pile on the desk. “Have you two robbed a church since I left this morning?”
“No,” said Jackaby. “Not personally. We had to delegate that task. Pilfering parish property has fallen to Miss Cavanaugh this week.”
Charlie rubbed his neck as he dropped the book back on the stack. “Because if there’s one thing New Fiddleham needs right now, it’s a bit more paranormal petty crime.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” I submitted, “the pastor more or less asked us to. He was rather insistent that we should find something in one of his Bibles.”
“You’re certain he won’t go storming into the station house tomorrow to tell the duty officer how he’s been robbed by a ghost?”
I swallowed.
“Not unless he is one himself,” said Jackaby. “He’s dead.”
“What?”
“Quite dead. He’s up in the attic if you would like to check for yourself.”
“Why do you have a dead preacher in your attic?”
“Because we found it easier to carry him up to the coffin than to maneuver it down to him.”
Charlie looked suddenly very tired.
“Enough about our morning,” I said. “You had a difficult patch yourself?”