Mrs. Erickson left off whatever cooking she’d intended to do. She seldom moved quickly, but made an exception; she was by Kaylin’s side in an instant. “Your arms!”
“They’re fine,” Kaylin replied.
“But they’re—they’re on fire!”
“No, it’s not fire. It’s like magic.” Which wasn’t a lie. “I don’t love it, either. But...your ghost, or one of your ghosts, seems to have set off my defenses.” She spoke as if this was totally normal, even mundane, which calmed Mrs. Erickson down—but not completely.
“He really isn’t dangerous,” she said. “He’s just—”
“Lonely and possessive.” Both of which could cause severe danger when mixed in with the wrong personality. She hoped that Jamal was as much a child as Mrs. Erickson thought he was—if age of death mattered to the dead at all.
She put Mrs. Erickson firmly behind her. “I have no intention of harming him—how could I, if he’s a ghost? I’d just like to stop him from breaking things or driving visitors out of your home.”
“I’ve tried that.”
“Yes, well. You’re a civilian.” Mrs. Erickson’s expression made clear that Jamal didn’t differentiate.
Kaylin’s marks were glowing brightly—a brilliant blue-white that would have caused Kaylin to squint had they not been so much a part of her skin by now. Kaylin had never fully understood what made them light up; she only knew that when they did something was significant.
A ghost that could pitch things across a room was significant, if that’s what was happening. Kaylin had been haunted by the usual regrets and memories; she’d never expected to be haunted by an actual ghost. If there had been ghosts, if they chose to haunt people, she knew whose faces she would have been terrified to see, in part because she would know she deserved their pain and rage.
Not a happy thought. She reminded herself that Jamal—if that’s who it was—had somehow driven out the next-door neighbor the one time he’d entered Mrs. Erickson’s house. Jamal was probably the reason he’d never returned. She exhaled. If Mrs. Erickson intended to follow anyway, she might as well get this over with as quickly as possible, and only in part because she was hungry.
The halls were narrow—everything about the house was. Kaylin listened for any more sounds of objects hitting things, but none came. She hadn’t heard anything shatter, so maybe he’d chosen things that could be retrieved and returned to their proper place.
She found the room down the hall. It was a small parlor, similar to the one that Helen opened up when there were guests, but a lot smaller. There were books on the floor, some facedown, some closed; it depended entirely on how they’d landed.
She didn’t see Jamal. She glanced at Mrs. Erickson, but Mrs. Erickson was looking around the room, so the old woman didn’t see him, either. Maybe he’d gone into hiding because he was aware that he’d behaved badly. If so, Kaylin could sympathize.
But the marks on her arms were still glowing brightly. “Does he usually stay in this room?”
“No, not usually. But here is where he usually shows the most displeasure.”
“Probably because it’s a room meant for guests.”
“Don’t judge him too harshly. Amaldi and Darreno at least have each other. Right now, I’m all he has—and he knows I’m not getting any younger.”
“If he’s afraid of losing his time with you, there are way better ways to spend the time he does have.”
“Loneliness can do terrible things to people.”
Jamal wasn’t in any of the rooms on the first floor. Kaylin therefore headed up to the second floor. She tried, twice, to convince Mrs. Erickson that food was more important, but Mrs. Erickson clearly thought Kaylin was just being polite.
They trudged up to the second floor. There were three rooms—a bedroom at either end and a room she referred to as the family room. “But we don’t use it much anymore.” The door was closed, but Mrs. Erickson continued toward the room at the end of the narrow hall that faced the back of the house.
“This used to be my room, when my parents were alive,” she said quietly. “He’s probably in there.”
Kaylin followed the older woman, and waited for her to open the door. The marks of the Chosen were now almost white. Jamal—whatever he was—was here.
Hope lowered his wing, which she hadn’t asked him to do, but he’d probably done it because he realized that his wing was entirely unnecessary.
Kaylin, without Hope’s intervention, could see Jamal clearly.
Jamal didn’t look like Amaldi or Darreno, neither of whom she could see without Hope’s wing. Something about him was familiar, though; she couldn’t place what immediately.
“Corporal?” Mrs. Erickson’s anxious voice came from behind.
“Call me Kaylin. I’m off duty.” She was certain she’d never seen the child before; was certain that his image hadn’t graced the missing persons files she’d perused over her years as a Hawk, or as a Hawk’s mascot. She was missing something.
She set it aside, for now. “Jamal?”
Jamal’s eyes had widened so much they might have fallen out of their sockets had they not been somehow attached.
“Wait. I just want to have a little chat with you.” Not exactly the most comforting of words, but she realized this only after they’d already left her mouth. “I can see you, just like Mrs. Erickson can.
“She can’t touch you, right? She can’t hurt you.”
This caused him to solidify, his expression folding into lines of anger. “She would never hurt me. She wouldn’t even hurt a spider.” He paused and then added, “Flies don’t count.”
At any other time Kaylin would have laughed. “No. She wouldn’t hurt anyone, given the choice. But you’ve been throwing her things around and scaring any possible visitors she might have, and that should stop.”
Anger compressed into a more familiar sullenness. “She doesn’t need them.”
“Do you know what happened a couple of years ago? You were here when she fell, right?”
Silence. Sullenness gave way to something else—fear? Guilt? Helplessness? They were all mixed together.
“If it hadn’t been for people like us—the Imperial Hawks—she might have died here. She couldn’t move properly, and she has no friends who could visit and check up on her. She’s living alone, as far as most people know—and that gets risky when you get older. You understand that, right?”
“I tried to lift her,” he said, his voice much smaller and much less defiant.
“You shouldn’t try—sometimes when people are hurt, that can make things worse. Or that’s what I was taught when I was training to be a Hawk.”
“But you guys came anyway.”
“Yes—because she comes to the Halls of Law almost every day, and she missed three days.”
“I brought her water.”
“I know you care about her. I’m glad you were here. I’m sure she’s glad you were here, too—but there’s only so much you can do.”
“I’ve been practicing. To try to be able to do more.”
“Jamal, you’re a kid. I’ve been a kid, too. There’s only so much I could have done when I was your age. I don’t like to depend on others, but sometimes we have to accept that we have no choice.” She walked toward him, and he stood, waiting for her; his eyes were on her arms, and she could almost see the reflected glow of their light in his eyes.
“You can see me, too.”
She nodded. As she did, she remembered the Arkon, his private collection, and a piece of armor that had evaporated on touch—her touch, sadly, given the way the Arkon viewed his collection. She remembered the way the marks had glowed then, too.
“Jamal, why are you here?” She asked without anger. As she waited for his reply, Mrs. Erickson peeked in through the open door.
“I don’t know. I was here when I woke up. I’m here now. I can’t leave the house.” He turned toward the open door, his expression a mixture of happiness and guilt. “She was here, too. I’m sorry about the books.”
Mrs. Erickson nodded. But added, “You can’t keep doing the wrong thing and apologizing for it afterward—sometimes you have to learn not to do the wrong thing first.”
He nodded, hanging his head. Kaylin thought him between the age of ten and twelve, although he might have been older when he’d been alive. “Jamal, do you see any of the other ghosts that live here?”
Jamal shrugged. Kaylin couldn’t tell if this was a yes or a no.
“He can see the others,” Mrs. Erickson said.
“How many are there? I don’t see any others now.”
“Three more,” Mrs. Erickson replied. “But they’re not here, right now. They don’t tend to stay when Jamal is in a bad mood.”
This didn’t surprise Kaylin. If she couldn’t stop Jamal, she wasn’t certain she’d stick around while he was having a tantrum, either. “Were they always here as well?”
“Pardon?”
“Were the ghosts in your house always here, or did some of them drift in later?”
Mrs. Erickson blinked. “I...think they were always here, like Jamal. But they aren’t as forceful.”
“When did you first notice them?” Kaylin backed up. “Sorry, let me start again. How long have you lived in this house? Were you born here?”
Mrs. Erickson nodded. “My family wasn’t wealthy, but we had the house. It’s been my only home. When I married, we lived here.”
Kaylin was a bit surprised that Mrs. Erickson had actually been married; the Hawks had never met Mr. Erickson and many privately believed he had never existed. She was then ashamed at the surprise. “Your husband died here?”
Mrs. Erickson nodded. “Don’t look like that, dear. It was a long time ago, now. Long enough that the good memories aren’t overwhelmed by the sense of loss. As for the ghosts? I always saw them. As far back as I can remember.”
“And your husband?”
She shook her head. “When he died, he didn’t return.”
“Do you know who owned this house before your parents?”
She shook her head. “It never occurred to me to ask. It was home, it had always been here. Is this an interrogation?” Her tone was bright, her smile genuine. Her eyes seemed almost to sparkle with delight.
Kaylin, however, reddened. And her stomach growled.
Jamal immediately pointed at that stomach and burst out laughing, which didn’t help.
“I’ll go downstairs and finish making dinner if you want to talk to Jamal for a bit.”
“So you knew her when she was a little girl?”
Jamal nodded. “When she was a baby.” The emphasis on the word was childlike. He was young, and decades hadn’t changed that essential fact.
“She could see you then?”
He nodded. “I used to play with her. I mean—I’d pick up rattles or toys when she started to cry. The others can’t.”
“There are four of you?” At his nod, she continued. “Were they always here when you...woke up?”
He nodded again.
“Can any of you leave the house?”
“No.”
“Do you know how long you’ve been part of the house?”
The question seemed to confuse him, which is what she’d expected. She tried again. “Did you see Mrs. Erickson’s mother and father?”
He nodded.
“Did you see the mother—or father—when they were babies, too?”
He shook his head. “They came later. They were older. They couldn’t see us. Only she could.” He frowned. “And you. You can see me. I don’t know if you’ll be able to see the others.” He hesitated, and then hung his head. “She’s going to go away soon.” He lifted his head. “Can you help?”
“I can’t give people youth.”
Jamal shook his head. “We’re okay being here now—we like Mrs. Erickson. But if she goes away, there won’t be anyone here, and we can’t leave.”
Oh.
“We thought Curly would join us, and that would have been good.”
“Curly?”
“Her husband.”
“His name was Curly?”
“It’s what we called him. She called him Davos. His hair was curly, especially during the summer. It was funny. But he died, and she was sad, and he didn’t come back. I’d’ve come back for her, if I were him.”
“When did you come to the house?”
Silence.
“You must have come here when you were alive.”
Jamal’s eyes widened; his mouth half-open as he stared at Kaylin. He didn’t answer. He vanished.
When Mrs. Erickson called Kaylin down for dinner, she went, but it took her a couple of minutes to shake the Hawk-investigator frame of mind. She was certain that Jamal had died in this house. He had died before Mrs. Erickson’s parents had purchased the house, because he was dead when they arrived.
Kaylin felt certain Jamal’s death was no accident.
Her arms were no longer glowing. Hope was spread across her shoulders as if he were boneless.
Mrs. Erickson placed two plates on the table, one in front of Kaylin and one in front of her own chair; the smell of cheese wafted up from the hot food, causing Kaylin’s stomach to grumble again. She ate, in part to prevent further embarrassment and in part because she was hungry.
Jamal appeared to her left. “You’re sitting in my seat, you know.”
Mrs. Erickson said, “Jamal, she’s a guest.”
“Can’t she sit in a different seat?”
“I only have two chairs.”
He sat on the table, instead. Kaylin thought about what her now-dead mother would have done if Kaylin had tried that, and winced. “I’ll move once I’m finished eating,” she offered. “But you don’t need to sit.”
“You don’t, either! You can eat while you’re standing!”
“It’s harder,” a new voice said. A girl, she thought, although at that age it was hard to tell. She was younger than Jamal, her clothing similar: loose-fitting tunic, leggings. Both were in decent repair, but not new. Her hair was gold-tinted, her eyes bluer; Jamal was ruddier, his eyes a more familiar brown.
“So what? We live here. She’s just visiting.”
“I think we’re supposed to treat visitors better.”
“Why?”
Mrs. Erickson sighed. “Please accept my apologies on their behalf,” she told Kaylin.
“Nope. If Jamal is behaving badly, it’s up to him to apologize and fix his own behavior. He’s not a baby. He’s closer to my age than yours.”
Jamal’s eyes narrowed. “It’s my chair.”
“Would you rather that Mrs. Erickson give up hers and eat standing up instead?”
“No!”
“Then let me finish eating and I’ll give you back your chair.” She wanted to add a few Leontine words to the mix, but wasn’t certain Mrs. Erickson wouldn’t understand them.
Another child joined Jamal, and then, shortly after, a third. These were Mrs. Erickson’s ghosts—and Kaylin could see them all. The marks on her arms were glowing faintly. She was both annoyed by Jamal’s demand, but also sympathetic. She did finish eating quickly—but she always ate quickly. It was a reflex from childhood and she had to work hard to eat as slowly as most of her friends did.
She did leave the chair as soon as she’d finished, with apologies to Mrs. Erickson.
Mrs. Erickson didn’t seem unduly upset. Kaylin wondered if the old woman had had children with her husband, but didn’t ask. If she had, those children were not among these ghosts, and these ghosts had come with the house; they weren’t haunting Mrs. Erickson for any reason other than isolation. Hers and theirs.
Kaylin then stood to the side of Jamal’s chair, and Jamal immediately pounced on it and sat, hard. He wasn’t actually sitting on the chair, but he was pretty good at mimicking it. He watched Mrs. Erickson eat, content. Mrs. Erickson might be lonely, as most of the Hawks assumed she was, but she wasn’t alone.
After dinner, Kaylin helped wash up, taking a bucket of water from the rain barrel and heating it while Jamal and his friends spoke with Mrs. Erickson. She told them about Amaldi and Darreno, and about Kaylin, Severn, and her visit to the Hawks today.
“I always tell them about my day,” Mrs. Erickson said, over her shoulder. “I’d take them all with me if I could, but they’ve never been able to leave. We tried for years,” she added, voice softer. “So I leave, and I try to come back with stories.”
Stories. Stories made up of her activities—her mundane activities—for the day. Kaylin revised all of her assumptions about Mrs. Erickson. She had assumed that the old woman came to the Halls of Law because she was isolated and lonely. That wasn’t the right story, or the whole story.
These children weren’t hers, but they had been here, if Kaylin understood what she’d heard, for the entirety of Mrs. Erickson’s life. She wasn’t getting younger. She knew she’d be leaving them behind when she died, trapped in this house. Maybe other people would move in—but the likelihood that they could see the dead was very low.
No wonder Jamal hated visitors.
“Hey,” he said, looking past Mrs. Erickson to where Kaylin stood. “You can sit. I’m done.” His tone was grudging—but it seemed to please Mrs. Erickson, and that was probably the intent.
None of the children told Kaylin their names, but she picked them up as Mrs. Erickson addressed them. Jamal was the oldest, Callis next, followed by Esmeralda; Katie was youngest. Of the four, Esmeralda was the most transparent; she was also mostly silent. Kaylin couldn’t tell if that was because a stranger was present or not.
But had Kaylin been dead and trapped in the house, she’d’ve probably been far more like Jamal than Esmeralda. She had questions she wanted to ask, and she sat on most of them. Jamal, the boldest of the four, had disappeared when she’d started, and she didn’t want to chase them all away.
She was also worried about the neighbor. The neighborhood itself was considered both good and safe, in the usual Hawk sense of the word, which didn’t mean murder didn’t happen in them. Still, she couldn’t camp out here tonight. She couldn’t spend the evening standing guard outside—she had work in the morning.
But she intended to get herself put on the front desk everyone tried to avoid—because she could ask Mrs. Erickson questions there that she couldn’t bring herself to ask in front of the children they concerned.
“You’re here early today, dear,” Caitlin said, as Kaylin’s jog came to a stop at the desk that all Hawks had to pass to enter Marcus’s branch of the Hawks’ offices.
Kaylin nodded.
“You saw Mrs. Erickson home safely?”
“I did. I want to run a check on one of her neighbors. And I want to run a check on the house she’s living in now. Oh, also: if Severn’s still out with meetings, I want to be put on the front desk again.”
Caitlin’s brow furrowed as her expression shifted into concern about the state of Kaylin’s health.
“I’m fine,” she said, although Caitlin hadn’t actually asked. “But the neighbor appears to be perfectly happy to trounce across her lawn to bully her—even when she’s accompanied by a Hawk.”
“And the house?”
Kaylin winced. “You know those ghosts she’s always talking about?”
“Yes, dear.”
“I met them.”
Caitlin didn’t get involved in office business but she wasn’t oblivious. She glanced at Hope, who was flopping out across Kaylin’s shoulder.
“Sort of.”
“Severn should be in meetings this afternoon.”
“Great. I’ll take front desk from whomever it was handed to. Can you let Sergeant Keele know?”
Kaylin had a to-do list that was impressively long, considering her lack of active, ongoing investigation. Mrs. Erickson, and things tangential to Mrs. Erickson, occupied almost all of it. Mrs. Erickson could see the dead children and—if Jamal was right—had always been able to see them. She could see Amaldi and Darreno, two people who Kaylin felt instinctively weren’t actually dead. She could see Severn’s belt. Or rather, could see that it was magic, and a strong enough magic that it made her squint. Mrs. Erickson had probably never been tested for magical aptitude.
“Caitlin, do you know Mrs. Erickson’s actual name?”
“I believe it was Imelda. Imelda Swindon Erickson.”
“Thanks.”
On the off chance Mrs. Erickson had, at some point in her early life, been tested, some information would be in Records. In Records as well would be information about the former owners of that house. And the current owner of the house one over.
She had the first names of the four children. She knew they were dead—long dead by this point. She knew where they’d probably died: the house itself. Who had the previous owners been? Whoever they were, they were dead and out of the reach of Imperial justice. But the children were still trapped in the house.
She needed to ask questions about Severn’s weapon. Amaldi and Darreno had been terrified at the sight of it. Enough that they had trouble believing Severn was human.
“Records: Missing Persons. Date range: one hundred years ago, to eighty years.”
“Search criteria?”
“Children, age eight to twelve. Also: Esmeralda, Jamal, Callis, and Katie.”
“Full names?”
“Those are the only names I have.” She frowned. Many people avoided the Halls of Law; not all missing persons became the subject of reports. Those that didn’t wouldn’t appear in Records at all—but she had four names, and one of them might. They didn’t look like they were the children of the wealthy, or the reasonably well-off, given the clothing they wore—but she didn’t know enough about the dead because, until yesterday, she mostly hadn’t believed ghosts existed.
No, that wasn’t completely true. She just hadn’t believed human ghosts existed. “Time?”
“Seven forty-five.”
She had to reach the front desk in fifteen minutes, and while the front desk was possessed of a mirror, searching Records in front of civilians was heavily frowned on.
Sergeant Keele wore an expression very similar to Caitlin’s, but with an added dash of deep suspicion. People didn’t volunteer for front desk duty; they were assigned it, and they went with minimal—but obvious—grumbling. Severn was still unavailable, which meant Kaylin was off her beat, and in any other circumstance, she would have stayed quiet and hoped to be passed over.
“I need to speak with Mrs. Erickson,” Kaylin told the sergeant.
“Mrs. Erickson.”
The younger Hawk nodded. “I saw her home yesterday, and we had a spot of trouble from her neighbor.”
“We? As in the both of you?”
“He didn’t seem all that impressed with the Hawk, no.”
Sergeant Keele’s lips compressed, but she nodded; this was an acceptable reason to volunteer for a duty one usually avoided like the plague. “How did she react to this?”
“She tried to make excuses for me, and to point out that I was young and didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”
The sergeant’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. Desk is yours.”
Mrs. Erickson tended to visit the Halls of Law in the early afternoon; Kaylin was certain she spent the mornings baking in preparation for that visit. She wondered if the children crowded into the kitchen while she worked; she suspected they did.
That meant that Kaylin was at the front desk when other, less amiable civilians visited. She dutifully wrote—by hand—the gist of their complaints, and forced herself not to doodle in the margins. Some were property disputes, which was difficult. Some demanded protection from...well, Kaylin wasn’t exactly sure what. She tried her best not to be judgmental, and that lasted about an hour.
Some were serious complaints, one involving domestic violence and children. Those she forwarded immediately to the Hawks whose investigative beat it was. And some were complaints from obviously well-heeled people who had thought it would be a lark—or a test of courage, if not a test of stupidity—to have a party in the warrens.
There was nothing outrageous enough to be humorous, and humor was one of the few rewards of the public desk—albeit a humor that sprouted from outrage and disbelief.
But Mrs. Erickson did make her way to the front desk. Only when Kaylin caught sight of her did she relax. The presence of the neighbor weighed far more heavily on her mind than she’d expected.
Mrs. Erickson was smiling. She carried her usual basket, and when she opened the lid, the smell of her baking filled the small room; it obviously extended past it, because some of Keele’s people appeared in the doorway behind Kaylin’s back.
Kaylin got up from her chair behind the desk and replaced the chair in front of it with something that was both more solid and more comfortable.
“It’s not necessary, dear.” But she took the chair as Kaylin relieved her of the basket. “Thank you for yesterday. I know Jamal wasn’t exactly friendly, but thank you for accepting that.”
“It’s his house, too,” Kaylin replied, lowering her voice. If she now believed in Mrs. Erickson’s ghosts, she also believed most of the Hawks would think she’d gone crazy, and she wanted to avoid that for as long as she could. She hesitated and then said, “I think Jamal’s worried for you.”
“Children sometimes worry when they shouldn’t.” She smiled. “I’m not a child anymore; I worry about them. I don’t suppose you need a place to live?”
Kaylin shook her head. “I have a very large place to live; I’m sure it could accommodate a couple of ghosts—but not if we can’t move them.”
“If you’re wondering about how to free them, I’m not sure there is a way. I did spend some time looking. I’ve spoken to priests, even the Renunciates of Life.”
Kaylin frowned. “I’m not sure I know that one.”
“It’s a small religion that deals far more broadly with the concept of death and permanence—but I had hoped that they might have answers for me, or at least for the children.”
“I take it they didn’t.”
“They couldn’t see the children. The man in charge even insulted me until Jamal started to throw things at his head. You are the only person who’s entered my house since I was born who could see them. And you’re younger than I am. I’m a bit afraid to abandon them—I’m not getting any younger.”
Kaylin nodded, unsurprised. She didn’t know a lot about ghosts; she knew stories, but stories were an echo of imagination and fear. Especially if the ghosts were vengeful ghosts. What she knew at the moment was that her marks had reacted to Jamal.
Ghosts, however, were only one part of the equation.
“Mrs. Erickson, have you ever been tested for magical aptitude?”