Bones and Ashes (19 page)

She was dead.

She couldn’t breathe. Peters stood waiting for her to follow him. She walked down slowly, not wanting to reach the front door. 

Aren waited outside, his face grave. Raiden felt dizzy. She stepped out and pulled the heavy door shut behind her. She leaned back against it. “She’s dead,” she said in a whisper.

Aren took her hand. “How did you know? I only just found out myself.”

She stood there numb. She couldn’t feel anything. She felt as if someone else was controlling her body. “How?” she asked.

“There was a fire. It started in Matherson’s room, the one he rented. The whole building burnt down.”

“What was she doing at the boarding house?”

Aren frowned. “She lived there.”

She didn’t understand. It didn’t make sense. “Are you talking about my grandmother?”

“No, Raiden. She’s fine, at least she was when I last heard. It was the landlady at the boarding house; the woman who showed us the ghost’s room. She died in a fire last night. The door was locked from the inside. I wanted to tell you myself, before you saw it in the papers tomorrow.”

The landlady might have been greedy, but she didn’t deserve to die like that. “Why would someone kill her?” Raiden asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“There’s no explanation for how the fire started. The key was in the lock inside the room, but for some reason she didn’t get out.”

Raiden remembered the lady in the mirror and her fingers around her throat. Suddenly, everything made sense. “The mirror,” Raiden said.

“What mirror?”

“The mirror that was down the back of the wardrobe. It’s how they did it.”

Aren looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

“The door was locked from the inside, but the killer was never in the room. They didn’t need to get out. They used a mirror to start the fire.”

“I didn’t think that was possible.”

“It would be if you had a master mirror.”

Did the lady in the mirror help the Duke kill Matherson? The Duke then had Matherson’s body stolen by the Resurrection Men and destroyed so he could never be raised from the dead and questioned. Was that what had happened to her mother as well? The only thing she didn’t understand was why. Why would the Duke want to kill her mother? And how was he connected to the lady in the mirror?

“Raiden, I know you want to find out what happened to your mother and I will do whatever I can to help you. But I don’t think there’s enough evidence to tie the Duke to Matherson’s murder. It’s entirely circumstantial.”

She could hear the doubt in his voice. Aren didn’t believe her.   

“There’s something else,” Aren said. “The partners have ordered me to get rid of Matherson.”

“But you don’t have his bones or ashes. You’re not strong enough to get rid of him without a link.” She remembered what Matherson had tried to do the last time they had seen him.

“I don’t have a choice. He’s a new ghost. He wasn’t dangerous when he was alive. I think he will cross over.”

“You can’t do it by yourself. You’re not powerful enough.”

“The partners have ordered me to get rid of him. I have to try if I want to keep my job.”

“Let me come with you.”

Aren shook his head. “Not this time. It’s too dangerous.”

“There’s someone in the mirror. Someone has been watching me. You can’t go back there. It’s not safe.”

“What am I meant to tell the partners? That my cousin thinks someone is using a mirror to murder people? They would laugh at me. I don’t have a choice, Raiden. I’m going there tomorrow afternoon.”

There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t help him get rid of the ghost and she was powerless to stop him from going.

“I should go,” Aren said, “before one of your teachers sees me here.” 

She called after him. “Promise me you will take someone with you when you go to see Matherson. I don’t want you to go alone.”

He hesitated before reluctantly nodding. “I’ll see if I can find someone.”

She watched him walk away.

“Raiden Feralis!” Miss Grimble stood behind her. “Why are you standing out here in the dark? Come inside at once.”

Raiden sighed as she went in to listen to Grumble lecture her about her behaviour.

****

Raiden sat at her window. The others had gone to bed, but Raiden couldn’t sleep. It was her fault the landlady was dead. She should have taken the mirror away from her. 

“Raiden Feralis.”

She jumped. The voice sounded like her grandmother. 

“Raiden Feralis!”

She pulled the cover from the mirror. Her grandmother’s image was in the surface. She sat at her desk, her white hair loose about her shoulders. Raiden had never seen her with her hair down before. It made her face look less harsh, more like how a grandmother should look.

“Grandmother,” Raiden said. “I mean, Your Grace.”

Her grandmother didn’t notice her mistake. “I believe I told you not to get involved with this business about the Duke and the fire.”

Raiden froze. Had Aren told her? She had only just seen him; he would have said something if he had spoken with her grandmother. It must have been Xan. After she had spoken with him at the museum, he had gone to see her grandmother. She had trusted him and he had betrayed her. “Yes, you did.”

“Then why are you involved?” She brought her fist down on the desk. Raiden flinched. She had never seen her grandmother angry. She had seen her displeased and annoyed, but she always remained tightly in control of her emotions.

“I’m sorry.”

“You will not leave the school again without my permission. You are to go nowhere, do you understand? You are not to set foot outside of the school without speaking to me first.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I will take your ghosts away. They answer to me, not to you.”

“You can’t.” Marielle and Peters had been with her since she was a child. They were her family.

“Do not disobey me again. This is for your own safety. There are things you do not understand.”

“Then tell me. I’m not a child.”

“It is not safe to talk like this. You do not know who else might be listening. Keep your mirror covered.”

The mirror cut off. She closed her eyes. Why did it always have to be so difficult with her grandmother? She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. Her reflection stared back at her. In the mirror, her eyes were now black.

“Leave me alone,” she told her reflection.

“Why would I want to do that? You’re so much fun, Raiden. Are you going to cry again?” The girl in the mirror rubbed her eyes and made a sobbing sound. “Nobody likes me, nobody cares about me.”

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Did you kill James Matherson?”

Her reflection leaned forward. “He betrayed me. He lied to me. He was going to give it to them. He thought he would get away with it; that I wouldn’t know.” Her black eyes gleamed, her fists were clenched and she was breathing heavily.

“What was he going to give them?” Raiden could feel the amulet through the soft leather of the pouch.

The girl’s expression changed. She laughed. It was a horrible sound, like the sound of harpies. “You think I would tell
you
.” She leaned closer in the mirror. “Do you know what you are, Raiden? You’re a meddler. You involve yourself in things that don’t concern you. Do you know what happens to people who interfere with my affairs?”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Your mother was. She screamed and screamed. I wonder what noise you will make.”

In the mirror, a grey imp appeared on the girl’s shoulder. His horns were longer than Deg’s, not just stubs, and its long pointed ears were pierced with tiny gold hoops. He was missing a chunk out of one ear and he had fully formed wings on his back. That must be what the lumps on Deg’s shoulders had been. The landlady at the boarding house had mentioned she had seen Matherson with a grey imp. Raiden wondered if this was the same one.

Her reflection stroked the imp’s head, whispering soft words to him. He vanished. Raiden heard a click behind her. The grey imp clung to the door handle. He had turned the key in the lock. He let go of the handle and landed on the floor, the key in his hand. Raiden tried to grab him, but he vanished and reappeared on top of her wardrobe. He smiled cruelly and waved the key, taunting her.

She turned back to the mirror. The girl had a ball of fire in her hand. She smiled at Raiden as she walked over to the bed, humming softly. The girl trailed her hand across the bed, setting the covers on fire. Raiden turned to see the covers on her own bed on fire. She watched the flames spreading, unable to move. This was how her mother had died.

She remembered what Miss Radbone had said; “If she can see you, she can hurt you.” She didn’t rush to the bed; instead she grabbed the cover and threw it over the mirror, cutting the girl off. She pulled the burning covers off the bed and threw them onto the floor. She stamped and beat at the flames until they were all out.

Coughing from the smoke, she stumbled to the window and fumbled with the latch. She threw it open and gulped in the clean night air. There was a large black scorch mark on the floorboards and black charred bits of fabric floated down to the floor. She had always been afraid of fire, but she wasn’t dead. She was still alive. Her mother hadn’t been so lucky. Raiden closed her eyes. The lady in the mirror had killed her mother. The Duke was connected somehow. He must be. He’d had Matherson’s body destroyed and he had gone to the boarding house. She had always thought once she knew the truth it would make her mother’s death easier to bear, but she didn’t feel any different.

The imp had disappeared, leaving the key on the floor. With shaking hands, she picked it up and unlocked the door. She slipped into Cassade’s room. Cassade was asleep, snoring softly, oblivious to what had happened in the room next door. Raiden eased herself down next to her and curled up on the edge of the bed, still fully dressed. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself. She lay there awake, to wait until morning.

Chapter Fifteen

When the sun finally rose, Raiden slipped from the bed back to her own room, leaving Cassade still sleeping. She had spent the night awake, waiting for dawn, too afraid to sleep. She stepped over the burnt bedspread that lay in a blackened heap on the floor. The air was still thick with the smell of smoke.

A scratching noise came from beneath her bed. She froze. She knelt down slowly and peered under. A small, familiar green shape crouched there.

Deg emerged cautiously, watching for her reaction. “Deg baad. Deg cum back. Deg sorrey.”

Raiden bit her lip to try and hold back the tears that suddenly threatened her. “It’s all right, Deg. I’m glad you came back.”

She stripped down to her petticoats and went to the bathroom to wash the grime from her face and hands. She didn’t put on the grey day dress that she usually wore to class; instead she pulled on a black hooded dress and tied the pouches of bones and ashes at her waist. She opened Marielle’s pouch and took out the amulet. She hung the chain over her neck and tucked the amulet out of sight in her bodice. She scribbled a note to Cassade explaining she’d had to go out and asking her to tell Mrs Lynch she was ill and then she buttoned up her thick black coat and grabbed her gloves and hat.

Deg watched her from her dressing table. “I think I might need your help, Deg,” she said. He leapt eagerly down and followed her from the room. She slipped the letter under Cassade’s door as she passed. She would see it when she woke. 

In the sitting room, Peters had brought them up breakfast. Raiden gulped down some tea and forced food into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed, not registering what she was eating. Her grandmother had said not to get involved, but she was tired of being lied to.

She would find out who the lady in the mirror was, and then she would get to Aren before he went to see Matherson and together, they would take the amulet to Xan. He would know what to do with it. She swallowed the rest of her tea and rose. She picked Deg up and set him on her shoulder.

Raiden slipped down the stairs, past Blaize’s floor, down the main staircase. The school was quiet; it was just beginning to stir. Outside, the air was grey and thick with fog. A single griffin circled overhead in the bleak sky.

Tobin waited with her carriage. He opened the door as she came down the steps. She stopped and looked back at the school. It would be so easy to go back inside. She could join Cassade for breakfast. No one would know she had left. She could forget about all of this.

“Come on, Deg.” She climbed into the carriage.

****

The carriage pulled up outside the British Museum. The outer façade of the museum was built in a classical design, reminiscent of a Greek temple. Thick, once white columns supported a pediment carved with figures.

“Bring one of them to me,” she said to Peters, who sat across from her.

He nodded and stepped through the wall of the carriage. Raiden twined the ribbons of her reticule around her fingers as she waited for him to return. Deg sat perched on her shoulder, his tiny hands gripping her coat to keep his balance.

Peters materialised across from her. He wasn’t alone. His hand was clamped around the wrist of a pale young woman. She wore a cream, high-waisted dress that had been in fashion during the Napoleonic wars. Her brown hair was curled into ringlets and threaded with ribbons. She was pale, but then she would be pale. She was a ghost.

“What do you want from me?” the ghost asked. Fear filled her voice. The ghost wasn’t forbidden to speak like the ghosts that served Raiden’s family.

“I need your help,” Raiden said. “Do you know who my family are?”

The ghost nodded. “You’re a Feralis.” She said the last word in a whisper. 

Raiden didn’t have her bones or ashes. She had no way to control her, and yet the ghost still feared her family.

“Are you familiar with the museum?” Raiden asked.

“I’m bound to it. I know every corner of it.”

“I need access to the records listing the names of the people imprisoned in mirrors by the Inquisition. Do you know where they’re kept?”

The ghost hesitated. “They’re not kept in the reading rooms. They’re in a separate room that’s kept locked. I don’t have a key. Only the principle librarian has one.”

“I don’t need a key. I just need you to show me where they’re kept.”

A look of terror filled the ghost’s eyes. “I can’t. What if the Inquisition find out?”

“You’re a ghost. They can’t harm you.”

The ghost wrung her hands together. “Ghosts have been disappearing. No one knows what happened to them. There are rumours the Inquisition has found a way to hurt us.”

Aren had said ghosts had been disappearing as well, while Miss Rudge had said the Inquisition had been experimenting with the effect of electricity on the dead. She wondered if the two were connected. “You don’t have to stay. I just need you to show me where the records are kept, and then you can leave.”

“You’re a Feralis. I don’t have a choice.” The ghost smiled bitterly. “We do as you command. The Inquisition will find out what I’ve done and they will punish me, but it doesn’t matter. I will obey. You will tell the Grey Lady I did as you asked?”

“I’ll tell her,” Raiden said.

The ghost nodded. “Meet me inside.” She faded away.

Peters watched the scene, his lips pressed together. She didn’t need him to speak to know he disapproved of what she was about to do. “You can wait here,” she said to him. She reached across and squeezed his hand before she got out of the carriage. She went up the steps into the museum. Deg was a reassuring weight on her shoulder.

The ghost waited for her inside. Raiden followed her through a maze of rooms filled with statues and artifacts from the great demon empires. A crowd was gathered around the Rosetta stone. The stone had allowed Demonic to finally be deciphered.

Eventually, the ghost stopped before a door. “It’s through there,” she said in a whisper.

Raiden set Deg down on the floor. He disappeared. There was a click on the other side and the door opened. She quickly stepped inside and shut it behind her.

Bookcases rose to the ceiling. Stacks of musty documents were piled up on tables that lined the room. The heavy velvet curtains were half closed to protect the fragile documents from the sunlight. Above the fireplace was a portrait of a group of eight skeletons, all wearing red robes, gathered around a table. The date 1558 had been painted in the corner. One of the skeletons made her pause. It had glass blue eyes in its eye sockets. All skeletons looked alike, but she was sure it was Xan.

“Quickly,” the ghost said. “There isn’t much time.” She pulled out two huge books from a shelf and carried them to a reading table. “What you’re looking for should be in here.” The ghost set the heavy books down with a thud. She opened the first. “This book lists all the mirrors. There are pictures so you can identify them. The list of their occupants is in the second book.”

The ghost left her. Raiden stripped off her gloves and carefully opened the first book. On each page was the silhouette of a mirror and a number. Every mirror was slightly different; some were tall and narrow, others small and round. They were numbered from one to one hundred and fifty. The mirror at Matherson’s house had curved outwards in the middle before narrowing. She found the shape of Miss Radbone’s mirror, but there was no time to look up her crime. Mirror number seventy one matched the shape of the broken mirror. She quickly opened the second book and leafed through until she came to the page listing the occupants. Number seventy one was listed as unoccupied. Its last occupant had been in the 1820’s. This couldn’t be right. Only the Inquisition could imprison someone within a mirror and these were their official records. Unless her imprisonment wasn’t official. The lady in the mirror had never been tried for her crime.

She heard voices approaching. She slid the heavy books back onto the shelf. There was no time to get out. She crawled under a reading table and pressed herself into the corner. Deg crouched next to her. The voices became louder as a door opened.

“Bryce is sending back his finds from the dig. There are several items that may be of interest to us.” She had a brief glimpse of two pairs of shoes as two men walked passed. Raiden risked peeking out to get a better look. They weren’t men; they were both skeletons. One wore the black robes of an interrogator, but the other wore red robes like the skeletons in the painting above the fireplace. Red robes were worn by the most senior members of the Inquisition. He wasn’t an interrogator; he was an inquisitor. 

Raiden closed her eyes, too afraid to breathe in case she was caught. The Inquisition were against the dead, and yet some of their members were dead themselves. She risked stealing another glance. As she looked out, the red robed skeleton seemed to stare at the very spot where she was hidden, although with no eyes it was difficult to tell exactly where he was looking. She clenched her hands together - her bare hands. She realised what he was staring at. She had left her gloves on the table.

The door opened and shut and their voices faded away. Raiden waited for several minutes and then crawled out. She pulled on her gloves as she hurried to the door. Deg clung to her shoulder like a monkey. She opened the door. The red robed skeleton stood outside. He appeared to have been waiting for her. Raiden backed away as he entered the room.

“I wasn’t aware anyone had access to these rooms,” he said.

“The door was ajar, so I came in. I didn’t realise it was out of bounds.” She tried to keep the fear out of her voice as she spoke.

“I see.” He peered down at Deg perched on her shoulder. “You do know imps are forbidden. A licence is needed to keep them.”

“Go home, Deg,” she whispered. Deg immediately vanished.

The skeleton strode to the bookcase and pulled out the book she had been reading. He flicked through it, somehow coming to the exact page she had been looking at. “Why would you be interested in magic mirrors?” She jumped as he snapped the book shut.

“I’m not. I chose it randomly.”

The empty space in his eye sockets were pools of darkness. She wished he had glass eyes like Xan. It would make him seem less sinister. “I will have to make a record about this infringement.” He smiled. “As you are so interested in magic mirrors, perhaps you would like to see inside one?”

A chill ran down her arms. He wanted to frighten her. “I have to get back to school.”

“Of course.” He held the door open for her. “Perhaps next time you will be more careful, Lady Feralis.”

He knew who she was. As she left the room, she kept her pace normal. She didn’t want to show him how badly he had frightened her. She looked back to find the skeleton still watching her. She shuddered and quickened her pace.

As she emerged from the museum, she trailed to a stop. Tobin wasn’t where she had left him. There was another carriage waiting; it had no windows and it was pulled by four horses that didn’t move. They stood still as if frozen or dead. 

It was the same carriage that had been outside the boarding house.

The driver was stroking the nose of one of the horses. He wore a shabby brown coat, tied at his waist with a piece of rope. His filthy brown hair was crawling with lice. His left arm was longer and thicker than the other. It was not his original arm. He was a zombie; his left arm had been replaced. He was also missing both his eyes. There was just a hole where they should have been. He let go of the bridle when he saw her and began ambling over.

He was a zombie, but he didn’t walk like a zombie. Zombies dragged their legs. He must have had his spirit put back in his body like Xan, although his flesh hadn’t been removed.

He stopped before her. He would have looked at her if he’d had any eyes. “My master wants to speak to you,” he said, his voice raspy. A maggot wriggled out of his eye socket and fell to the ground. He gestured toward the carriage. “He told me to bring you to him.”

“Who is your master?” Raiden asked. While she was speaking, she loosened the strings of the pouch containing Tobin’s ashes that was tied at her waist, and stirred the ashes inside.

“He sent the carriage for you.”

“Who is he? What does he want?” She looked around for Tobin, but he hadn’t appeared. She stirred his ashes again. 

“He said I was to bring you to him.” He ambled toward her. She backed away.

She tried Peters and Marielle’s remains, but they didn’t materialize either. The strange man was still advancing. She realised they weren’t coming. Her grandmother had warned her she would take her ghosts away if she left the school without her permission. Her ghosts were gone. Raiden turned and ran.