her wrists, she chided herself not to fuss further. She had to prepare her team for tonight’s instruction no matter her shaken confidence.
Returning to the wood-paneled hall whose upper wall was filled with art purchased from Metropolitan Museum shows, she was glad her grandfather was out yesterday evening at one of his innumerable soirees, all the better so he wasn’t there to witness Prenze’s unsettling visit. Grandpa Stewart had gone in the morning to his Met office, entirely missing the troubling events coming and going. He didn’t worry for her like her mother did, but neither needed any fodder.
Crossing the upstairs hall, Eve found their youngest member Jenny at the other end, tucked into a small bed, recovering from illness brought on by psychic backlash from Albert Prenze, his energy and presence a contagion for the nine-year-old orphan. A cold compress lay on her forehead, a bowl of soup cupped in her small hands. A tray of china and a silver tureen indicated the girls had been taking care and dining in these rooms since last evening.
This small, sickly girl in a large fancy room reminded Eve of the moment Jenny arrived on Eve’s doorstep a year prior, dead parents floating just behind the sudden orphan’s shaking form. The ghosts asked Eve if she could take in their daughter “gifted with the Sight” whose cheeks were stained with tears. Eve did.
Feeling any better? Eve asked Jenny in American Sign Language.
A little, Jenny signed back and returned to her soup.
When Jenny lost her parents, Selective Mutism crept in to steal her voice. She could whisper on occasion if she worked hard to overcome the panic, but considering Eve’s mother, Natalie, once suffered from the same condition also related to a childhood trauma, Natalie had raised Eve with sign as a second language and tutored Jenny until she was proficient as well. No one pressured the child to try to speak unless she wanted to, and the ghosts that involved themselves with the precinct interacted with her just the same. She would speak when she would and when she could. Everything in due time.
Jenny lay on one side of an adjoining suite with open pocket doors, Antonia and Cora having shared the other side during the night. Everyone must have slept fitfully as both women were now napping, one on a divan and the other on a settee. Eve looked at her team, and her heart swelled that she should be so fortunate to have such gifted mediums as these as colleagues.
Cora Dupris, leaning her kerchiefed head back on a velvet-covered divan, was the first member of the Ghost Precinct to find Eve, after a vision told her to leave her Creole family behind in New Orleans and join Eve in New York. Two years younger than Eve, Cora was focused, steeled, impressively mature, and kept Eve on her toes. Her psychometric powers of touching an object and seeing its past had grown exponentially, and the talent was critical in their cases. At the moment, Cora rested with her gloves on, a trick to keep her powers dormant when they weren’t being used. All of them had been overtaxed of late.
Across the room, Antonia Morelli’s tall, lithe form was draped over a settee with more grace than Eve could ever manage, her long, dark hair unpinned and hanging in a braid down her side. She, too, had come to Eve’s doorstep, with her own circumstances in tow, having fled a family that could not accept her for who she truly was; a woman. As gifted a Sensitive as the rest of them, ghosts that were looking after Antonia’s well-being suggested she seek out Eve in hopes of employment. The moment Eve greeted that feminine soul at the door, Antonia admitted that spirits guided her there. She proved herself in an immediate séance, seamlessly becoming part of their team. She was their resident scholar, always researching the latest trends in divination.
Their living precinct thereafter was fully formed. Gran remained the core asset that had suggested the entire Ghost Precinct idea to begin with, making the constant, incessant chatter of the dead into something useful. The shift had made a certain lasting peace with the spirit world as one of the primary yearnings of a ghost was to be seen and heard.
Little Zofia wafted into the room and floated beside Eve. “It happened again, didn’t it?” the child asked. “Wandering off?” The child had an uncanny read on all of them.
“Yes,” Eve said. “It’s very worrying.”
“You’re not the only one.” Zofia floated up to look Eve directly in the eye, her transparent form wavering slightly as a breeze from one open window at the end of the hall rustled the lace curtain behind her. “I couldn’t find Maggie so I floated to where she’d gone before she disappeared.”
“The Prenze mansion?”
“Yes. There are ghosts trapped on the ground floor. In the basement.”
“Why did she return?” Eve asked, worried. “Did she know there were trapped ghosts?”
“No, that’s new to us. She stopped me from going in to help.”
“Good. Whatever Prenze is doing there is dangerous to ghosts.”
Zofia looked down at the luxurious floral carpeting. “You know how I am, if I see someone who needs help… If I see someone who needs to get out… Eve, they can’t get out, you know…” The child trailed off.
“I know you’d do anything, I know, my little hero,” Eve said, reaching out to the cold air. “I don’t know how you do it, face your trauma so bravely.”
The ghost shrugged. “You choose not to think about the things you fear in order to do the things you must. I have to pretend a fire isn’t a fire, even if I rush into them to help other children. Even though I know the blaze can’t hurt me anymore, every time, I have to pretend the flames are instead feathers.”
Eve put a hand to her mouth, eyes watering at this. “You are an inspiration, my dear.”
Zofia smiled broadly, her greyscale cheeks dimpling, and Eve wished for a yearning moment she could have known the happy glow that must have brightened her once olive-toned skin. The thought that this girl could have ever been in the agony of death gutted Eve every time she thought about it.
As if intuiting her melancholy, Zofia patted her hand, which translated to little puffs of cold air. “Remember, I was lost to the smoke before anything took my body,” she offered. “It’s as if you sense pain and suffering, even if there wasn’t any. I see it on your face every time. Don’t let your empathy get away with you.”
“My wise little hero.”
Zofia smiled again before lifting a finger in the air. “Oh, I forgot! Maggie got an idea while she was looking at the cellar and wanted me to tell you not to worry if she’s gone awhile, experimenting.”
Eve raised an eyebrow. “Experimenting?”
“She wouldn’t say on what.”
“Probably because I’d tell her no,” Eve muttered. “She never did commit to our procedures, especially not Preventative Protocol. I’ve had to give up on it. I like the idea of stopping things before they begin, but it creates quite the moral quandary.”
“Maggie lets the mystery of spirit guide her,” Zofia said, sounding so much older than her years, but then again, she was older than she appeared. “We can’t always follow the rules of the living. Sometimes we must follow the wind.”
And with that, the spirit vanished and Eve immediately wanted her back, to feel her, see her, try to take her hand. Privately, Eve hoped if she spent enough time with spirits she loved, perhaps she could easily step into their plane and give them a hug now and again. She’d keep trying.
Having gotten out of bed, Jenny put her soup on the cart stocked with provisions. Prepared for any eventuality, Gran kept her guest rooms filled with anything anyone would need, as if manning a grandly appointed fort during times of siege.
I bet Maggie’s trying to find a different way in, Jenny signed, returning to the bed as Eve went to her side to tuck her back in. Putting a hand to her forehead, Eve noticed Jenny was warm but not dangerously so.
Eve nodded. I hope she does it safely, she replied in sign. While Jenny could hear just fine, Eve liked to keep up the practice of signing.
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