Arabella followed him through a narrow alley to the back of the row. Trey counted houses until he came to the servants’ entrance of the Elliots’ residence. She peered over his shoulder as he sketched a rune in the air. It winked silver and flowed into the lock.
Trey pressed down on the handle, and the door opened with a click.
“That’s it?” asked Arabella from behind him.
“That’s it.”
“It doesn’t seem at all fair that you can do that,” she said softly. She had no breath, of course, but her presence was a cool tingle on his skin.
Trey soft-stepped into the narrow corridor. “Then it’s a good thing I’m on your side.”
An odd sensation had settled over Arabella as she glided through the house, leading Trey up to her bedchamber via the servants’ stairs. The house was at once familiar and strange, as if slumbering under an enchantment. She moved through it like she was in a dream, making no noise on the steps, stirring no air with her passage.
The steps. Remembering, Arabella stopped at the third stair from the top. She turned to Trey, pointing down at it. Then she raised a finger to her lips.
That step creaked.
Why was she bothering to keep quiet? It wasn’t as if anyone else but Trey could see or hear her, anyway.
The thought was quite lowering.
Arabella flitted through the quiet second story, past the balustrade that overlooked the foyer below. The paintings of Uncle Henry’s ancestors were swathes of darker shadow against walls bleached grey in the moonlight filtering from above.
A loud snore shattered the silence. Arabella froze. She found she was holding her breath.
Uncle Henry.
Trey flashed her a grin and gestured. Go on.
Arabella knew that her uncle slept soundly while her aunt regularly dosed herself with a sleeping draught. But Harry… she cast a doubtful glance at her cousin’s door. No light shone from under it, and she couldn’t quite make herself go through the wall to check if he slept.
The sooner we get this over with, the better.
Arabella hurried to her own chamber, around a corner and tucked to the side of the house, looking out into the branches of a chestnut tree. Aunt Cecilia had shown it to her with an apologetic air, but she had never minded being a little removed from the rest of the family.
She stood at the door as Trey came up. He put his hand on the handle and looked a question at her. Are you ready?
Arabella nodded. “Let’s do this.”
Let’s get my life back.
He opened the door and entered. Arabella slipped in behind him and the door closed again.
The first thing Trey did was to check the window, making sure the curtains were drawn shut. Then he muttered under his breath. Three golden lights floated from his hands to three points around the simple four-poster bed.
Her bed.
Arabella forced herself to look down at her own prone body lying there, so small and stiff under the coverlet.
It was like looking at a stranger—a very young stranger. Her face was pale, her lips bloodless. A dark bruise spread from her left temple and down her cheek. The implied violence of it made Arabella shiver.
In contrast, her dark hair was neatly braided under a pretty lace cap she recognized as one belonging to Aunt Cecilia. A starched white night gown was buttoned up to her neck and the coverlet drawn up chastely to her shoulders.
The whole effect was ghastly, as if she were a corpse laid out for her funeral. Arabella wanted to move away, but her legs had turned to jelly.
Trey bent over the girl on the bed, muttering half under his breath. His grey eyes were narrowed and focused, studying things Arabella couldn’t see.
She squinted and looked closer. Almost, she fancied, she could make out a dark blue glimmer all over her body.
Was that the stasis spell?
“Aha,” Trey said on a soft exhalation. He held up his left hand, index finger and thumb pinched together. “Found a life line. You are not completely disembodied, Miss Trent.”
Arabella couldn’t see that he held anything at all. “If you say so. Did you doubt you’d find one?”
“There’s always the possibility,” said Trey. He moved his hands, as if winding invisible thread.
“What would you have done then?” she persisted.
He leveled his grey gaze at her. “Not much left to do if that happens.”
Arabella crossed her arms and hugged herself. Her substance was chilly, but she couldn’t help fidgeting, as if to make up for the unnatural stillness of her body.
Her gaze ran over the rest of the chamber, a pretty room for a young girl, with its pale golden floor, apple-green and milk-white striped wallpaper, and simple furniture. She had thought it the loveliest room when she’d first come to live with the Elliots, and still did, despite her growing experience of finer apartments. For it had been set aside, scrubbed and cleaned, and made over with love—just for her.
An ache constricted Arabella’s throat. Her elegant orange and cream ball gown was draped on a chair pushed to one corner. The clothes press stood next to it in solemn dignity. Silver-backed brushes and glass jars lay scattered in merry confusion on her delicate marble-topped dressing table. Across the room, near the window, was her writing desk, a half-written letter to her cousin Beatrice peeking out from underneath the latest volume of a romance Aunt Cecilia had said she must read. The prayer niche, a narrow recess in the wall by her bed, was full of slips of paper.
Prayer notes, only some of which were hers. Her eyes stung to see them. Her family and friends had placed them there, begging the God-Father for her healing.
Could a ghost cry? Arabella would rather not find out with the Shade Hunter, cold and frowning, standing nearby.
Runes flared as Trey worked in silence. Arabella found herself listening to the small sounds of a house
