Trey threaded his way over to her, past a pedestal bearing a goblin-made tea pot, a worn chair swathed in shawls and lace, and a friendly gathering of brass-bound sea trunks. The tea pot was a surprise—he couldn’t imagine what kind of hardship would induce a goblin to give up so precious a family heirloom.
At the counter, Arabella finally managed to solidify her fingers enough to grasp the handle. Her pleased expression gave away to chagrin when she realized she couldn’t actually lift the thing. Trey bit back a chuckle with difficulty.
“Allow me,” he began, then checked.
There was a faint but unmistakable feel in the air. A chill both gentle and alien caressed his cheek and tingled against his lips.
It was the scent of the Shadow Lands.
“What—?” began Arabella, as protective runes shone around both her and Trey. Trey gestured for silence, Sorrow already in his left hand. He moved around the counter and jerked aside the tattered velvet curtain into a back room.
It wasn’t so much a scent that assaulted him as mingled pressure and temperature. Ice and fire seemed to strike his skin. That alone told him what had happened, but the rigid corpse on the floor, pale and drained, rimmed with hoar, confirmed it.
A ghoul had been here.
Arabella was a warm, anxious presence behind him. “Is it Mr. Gibbs?”
Trey cast a quick probe around the room, detecting no phantasms nor any traps they might’ve left behind. Any portals into the Shadow Lands had long since closed.
There were no traces to follow.
He dropped to his knees beside the corpse, noting the wide staring eyes and fixed grimace. The man had been unlovely in life, with a greasy fringe of hair, bad teeth, and pocked face. Death had not been kinder to him. His skin was shrunken tight against his bones and his limbs were in an inelegant sprawl.
“This the man?” Trey asked Arabella, not looking at her.
“Yes.” She sounded shaken, but she hadn’t lost her senses over it. Good, she wasn’t prone to the vapors.
Trey knew what he would find, but he checked anyway. There was no life left in the man at all. Ghouls were too thorough—and greedy. And even if his spirit had lingered, Trey knew that it would be mute and unresponsive, blank eyes focused on inward horrors it could not escape.
“What did this?” Arabella asked softly.
“A ghoul.” He didn’t add one of the nastiest phantasms in the Shadow Lands. The God-Father knew she’d already had enough horrible experiences from this adventure to give her bad dreams for a while.
Arabella slipped past him, her skirt sparking against his hand. She didn’t seem to notice it, her gaze traveling the shelves and surfaces.
Trey followed the direction of her stare. “Looks like our Mr. Gibbs wasn’t content with just flirting with lawlessness.” He stood and scanned the jars and bottles. What he recognized was all potent, used in foul magic, and strictly forbidden in Vaeland. “Mermaid scales. Pegasus blood. The excise men will have a field day with this.”
None of the contraband was from the Shadow Lands. Trey should’ve been relieved by this, but the sight only increased his tension.
“Bileflower,” Arabella murmured to herself, paler than he had seen her yet. The jar she paused at was small and unlabeled, full of blackish-purple ooze. Darker shapes floated in it.
Trey gave her a sharp look. “Not the kind of thing I’d expect a debutante to know.”
Arabella blinked at him. “Oh. Well, I come from Umbrax, after all.”
“Hmm.” Trey was no authority on what passed for common knowledge in that unfamiliar county. Arabella’s expression bothered him more than he would’ve have admitted at the moment. He couldn’t read the look in her eyes as she examined Gibbs’s contraband, but if he had to put a word to it, the only one he could think of was…
… harrowed.
Trey bent and rifled through the corpse’s jacket pockets, coming up with a key ring. “All right, then.”
Arabella looked scandalized. “What are you doing?”
“Very shortly, excise men from the Home Office will be crawling all over this place,” he told her, “because I’ll have to report this. If we want to get your ring without them looking over my shoulder, now’s our chance.” The keys chimed against each other as he examined the bank of safe boxes set into the wall.
None were numbered, but he counted across until he found the thirteenth one. A key labeled 13 fit smoothly into the lock.
The safe box, though, was empty.
Trey frowned, then went to work, opening every box. One by one, he pulled them out and rifled through a jumble of watches, rings, pendants, brooches, and the valuables of dozens of wrecked lives.
There was no sapphire ring to be found. Arabella shook her head every time he dumped the contents onto a table.
Trey turned to the shelves. Covering his hands with aether to avoid contamination, he took down jars and peered behind them. Arabella, too, ghosted her searching fingers through every nook and cranny.
Nothing.
Trey poked through every pocket in Gibbs’s clothing. “He might’ve taken it home with him,” he said.
“Do you think it likely?” asked Arabella.
“No.”
It bothered him. It bothered him that not an hour after she’d left this place, Arabella had been hit by a carriage that vanished into the night. It bothered him that Gibbs had been killed by a ghoul a day later.
And now Arabella’s ring was gone. Trey’s hand clenched. With an important personal possession, a dark magician had a range of options at his disposal.
Like keeping a spirit from returning to her body.
“Do you remember anything odd from your visit here, Arabella? Something that seemed trivial at the time? Think, Arabella.”
“You mean, like runes or strange smells or sorcerous incantations?” Arabella wrinkled her nose. “N-no, though… when I entered I had to wait a little bit, because Mr. Gibbs was back here. He was talking to someone. I heard their voices.” She looked around the room, as if expecting Gibbs’s unknown visitor
