Ghost Talkers (27 page)

Merrow asked the question before she could. “Maybe—if you remember what the code was—we could translate it for you?”

“Brutus.” Ben squeezed his eyes shut and a veil of violet concentration shrouded his features. “Not Brutus—”

“Caesar? A Caesar cipher, sir?” Merrow nodded, relief and triumph blossoming in his aura, followed by confusion. “Caesar's the easiest to crack. I'm surprised you used it.”

“Baker's tale.”

Ginger turned to look at him, letting Merrow take the book. “Pardon?”

“Baker's tale. No—Baker's wife. The knight, the canter, the … Chaucer!”

He'd said it was a Caesar cipher, but perhaps he used more than one method to encrypt it. “It's a book code using
The Canterbury Tales
?”

Ben shook his head and pointed at the book. “Chaucer!”

“I'm sorry. I don't understand.” Perhaps if she were not close to fainting with exhaustion, she might be able to follow him.

“Chaucer in the centre. It's. I was—in the centre. I was chaucering.”

“You were chaucering?” She could make no sense of it. He'd studied the classics at university, with an eye toward historical texts—before the war, that was. She grasped at straws. “You were writing in Middle English?”

“Yes!” Ben shot to the ceiling and zoomed around the tiny room. “Yes, yes, yes!”

“Well … I'm not sure you needed to do anything more than that to encrypt it.” Ginger put her hands on her hips and turned to Merrow. “I don't suppose you have Middle English among your tricks, do you?”

He shook his head, frowning over the text. “But there are three names … At least. Yes. See?” He held the book out and pointed to a short list.

NGXLUXJ

GDZKRR

YOTIRGOX

“And those are names? How in the world can you tell?” Ginger frowned over the text.

“I guessed, to be honest.” He squinted at them and pointed at the first. “If this were Harford, then the next would be … Axtell.”

Ginger shivered, but there was no real surprise there. “And the third?”

“Sinclair.”

She shook her head. “I don't know him.”

Merrow looked uneasy, glancing at Ben to see if he'd explain, but language still seemed far away from his grasp. Turning through the pages, Merrow said, “That's Ben's superior in London. I figure … I figure that's who the German spy was directing him to.”

“And that would be why he didn't want to put this in plain text or in any reports.” Ginger covered her face with her hands. Reginald, Ben's cousin, of whose guilt she could have no doubt. German on his mother's side, and with other reasons to wish his cousin might not return from the war.

It likely also explained why Axtell was investigating the Baker Street trench. He wasn't looking for foreign spies there; he was trying to find Ben's contact.

“So we—we should head to London, I guess.”

“To London? Why? Axtell and Reg are here.”

“Well … to warn the London branch of mediums. About the bombing. That's where the main branch is, right?”

“To—” She stopped and stared at Merrow. She had forgotten that she had lied to him. Only a small corps of people knew what happened in Potter's Field. “The bombing the German spy warned us about. Targeting the London Branch—that's a code name. The London Branch is here. It's the women working for the Spirit Corps in Le Havre.”

Merrow swore, shock running through his aura. He cleared his throat. “I'm betting Captain Reginald didn't go to the front at all. Not if he thinks we're close to finding all this out.” He looked from her to Ben. “I'll run word. As a soldier, I'll be able to travel faster than you. And the captain … he needs looking after.”

Ginger hated to send Merrow alone, but he was right and she was, frankly, exhausted. “Thank you.”

Merrow folded Ben's notebook and tucked it into his pocket. He started sorting through the rest of the papers. “Wish I'd thought to bring a bag.”

Groaning a little, Ginger stood and walked to the door. “I'll see if I can find a pillowcase.”

“There's a bedroom at the top of the…”

Ginger stopped. Merrow had heard her.

She hadn't been touching him, and he had heard her.

Heart pounding, Ginger stood in the doorway, praying that she was wrong. Merrow had said that he might get some hearing back. And she had seen the blood at his ears after the blast—but she knew how to fake that now. No—no. He had been locked in this room.

Or had he locked himself in? The door to the house had been unlocked.

Ginger shivered. She was simply overtired, and Ben's paranoia was creeping in.

She turned. Merrow was watching her, and any doubt dropped away at the sight of his aura. It was a mixture of spikes of alarm and the murky brown of someone regretting a mistake.

Ginger took a step back, reaching for the door. Merrow surged to his feet, scattering papers around him.

She broke into a sprint and raced for the stairs to the upper floor.

Footsteps pounded after her. With a roar, Ben spread out to fill the cellar in a wall of red rage and wind. Loose boards and debris kicked up in a maelstrom, blinding Ginger for a moment. She stumbled.

Ginger landed hard on her knees, scraping her hands on the rough floor. Glancing over her shoulder, Ginger staggered back to her feet. Merrow was not five feet behind her, one arm raised against the onslaught of wood and paper that Ben hurled at him. The other hand held a loose coil of wire. A garrote.

He kept coming, pressing through as boards flew at him.

Ben would shred his remaining memories. His spirit was already dim and hazy amidst his tangible anger. Ginger had to stop Merrow while there was still something of Ben left. If she could lock him in the cellar again …

She snatched a board from the air and ran at Merrow, screaming at the top of her lungs. Sheer surprise carried her past his guard and into range to land a blow solidly on the side of his chest. He fell back a step.

Ginger swung again, but this time Merrow stepped to the side and dodged the board with ease. He reached past it to catch her wrist, twisting it hard. The board tumbled from her limp fingers.

With an inarticulate cry, Ben grabbed for Merrow, and his hands passed through him. The papers and wood dropped to the ground as he tried again and again to catch hold of the man. Disregarding him, Merrow pulled Ginger toward him, twisting her arm until it cracked.

Ginger dropped to her knees, half-blind with pain.

Leaning over her, the hard set of Merrow's jaw made his apparent youth a lie. He cuffed her with the back of his hand, knocking her head to the side. Ginger raised her free hand and tried to slap him, but came nowhere near his face.

Merrow hit her again, and the room went black.

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ginger is in the ocean, within the shelter of a canvas bathing machine. She hasn't seen one of those since she was a little girl. The waves are muted by the structure so there is only the barest tug at the pantaloons of her bathing costume. The ocean is cool, but a welcome relief from the summer heat. Thank heavens Ben suggested a trip to Brighton.

The stony shore is so refreshingly novel compared to the beach at home.

A shadow passes across the ceiling of the little box as a bird wheels overhead. Ginger closes her eyes and relaxes into the embrace of the ocean. It supports her, while the bathing costume pulls her down, encouraging her to sink into the waves.

“Oh.” Ginger raised her head and turned to look around the canvas. “I'm dreaming. Ben?”

“Here.” His shadow appeared on the outside of the canvas.

She sighed. It had been too much to hope that Ben would be restored to lucidity just because it was a lucid dream. Still, she reached for the door to step out of the canvas.

“I wouldn't.” His silhouette bent its head, a bead of water dripping from his curls. “If I were you, I would stay put.”

She pressed her hand against the canvas. “Are you feeling better?”

He shrugged, and she could hear the grin in his voice. “Well … that's an interesting question, coming from a woman who has been knocked unconscious.”

“We are discussing you.” She stirred the water with one hand, anxious to be out of the canvas box. “Now. Your state is…?”

“Fine.”

“Truly?”

“Another interesting question. Is my answer true, or simply what you want me to say?” The shadow-Ben laid a finger over his lips. “Sh. Don't answer, dearest. I couldn't bear to hear that you are happy to have a fiancé
who parrots your thoughts.”

“Oh! You are such a tease.” She left aside the question of if he was still truly her fiancé
since there was no possibility of marriage. “I am going to take that as proof that you are speaking your own mind.”

“As you wish.”

Ginger narrowed her eyes at his shadow. “To your original question … Merrow was pretending to be deaf. Why? It doesn't make any sense.” Certainly, his other injuries had been real enough, like the contusion on his forehead from the explosion.

Or from being hit by someone's head while, say, strangling them.

“I dunno. It made eavesdropping very easy, and it forced you to stay close to him.”

“Which brings me back wondering why. I mean, why go around with me?”

“Well…” Ben tilted his head, considering the question. “According to the message from my German contact, they were trying to figure out how the Spirit Corps worked. You'd be a logical person to go to for that.”

“Are we certain that's what they are after? Merrow translated that message and the list of suspects, which means he could have lied about either or both.”

Ben turned so his fine patrician nose showed in profile and stroked his mustache. “My guess is that he only altered parts of it. He wouldn't want to risk screwing up a confirmation passphrase.”

“A what?”

“Like the salutation we used in our letters.
My dear …
meant I was safe. Or, at least, thought I was.”

“So, we are once again in a position of needing to get our hands on your notebook.”

He laid a hand against the canvas and drew a circle. The moisture from his finger glowed in a translucent trail upon the fabric. “First step: you'll need to wake up.”

*   *   *

The transition between sleep and waking was difficult to define. Ginger still had the sensation of swaying in the ocean, but without the warmth. Turning her head, she looked for Ben's shadow, but her entire vision was filled with shadow.

The pain in her head was the only thing that gave her any certainty that she was awake. She stared up and slowly gathered her senses about her. At the moment, she was not in the ocean, but lying in the dark on a hard floor.

Ginger shifted and winced as a rope dug into her wrists. “Lovely.”

Ben crouched next to her. Oddly, she could see him via the spirit plane while her own form was invisible. His brows were drawn together in concern. “Awake?”

“Barely.” Ginger flexed her legs, and a hard coil of rope at her ankles told her she was bound there as well. “I wonder why he didn't just kill me. Not that I'm complaining.”

“Fabergé.” Ben made a low growl and tapped her forehead, his finger leaving a chill. “Fabergé—egg.”

“Are you saying I'm expensive and gaudy? Hm. I shall choose instead to think you mean that I'm smart and contain a wealth within.”

“Yes.” The relief in his voice concealed a sob.

“I'll make a note that you think so.” She pressed an elbow into the floor and struggled to sit up with her hands bound. The sense of being in the ocean returned, and she had to stop, buffeted by a tide of her own pulse in her head. “I don't suppose there's a blade of any sort in here, is there?”

“He is too great a niggard that will werne a man to light a candle at his lantern; He shall have never the less light, pardie.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, thinking. “Is that a random use of Middle English, or are you suggesting that there is a candle that I might light?”

“There is a candle that you might light.”

As much of a relief as it was to hear Ben reply in a full sentence, Ginger was painfully aware that he had only parroted words. It didn't matter. His soul was still Ben's, even if he had to borrow language to communicate. “I presume there are matches too, or you would not be so cruel as to mention the hope of light.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then. Lead on. I can see you, even if I can see nothing else in this dismal room.” She inched after Ben's glowing figure, again grateful that she wore trousers. Ginger had to assume that she was still in the cellar where they had found Merrow. In hindsight, it seemed clear that Merrow had broken into the building rather than being held here against his will. It would explain why the exterior door was unlocked. Had he locked the cellar door when he heard Ginger upstairs?

Ben stood and rested his hands on … something. For all the glow he emitted in her second sight, he illuminated nothing in the physical world.

Gritting her teeth, Ginger sat up on her haunches and reached out. A rough wood beam met her hands. A table leg, she thought. Ginger followed it up and fumbled over the surface with her bound hands until she found a smooth, waxy cylinder embedded in the middle of Ben's icy hands. “Candle achieved. Now … matches?”

With a wink, Ben moved his hands only a little farther away. She put her own hands into his and felt the box between his fingers. With a sigh of relief, Ginger sank back to sit on the ground. It took a few tries before she found the best way to hold her collection.