The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross (17 page)

I awoke on the books again. I was lying face down on an ancient tome with the words
An Encyclopedia of Madness
emblazoned on the cover. I sat up quickly and looked around. I was back in that same room in the Forgotten Library. I didn’t see Polonius, though. I didn’t see anyone else.

I was almost relieved to be dead. I hadn’t been sure if my little trick would work if I wasn’t with the faerie when I launched into
Hamlet
. But I suspected that even if the Macbeth curse wasn’t to blame for the deaths, the ghost might operate in the same way as the curse, following actors from production to production and haunting them. Maybe the ghost was like the Tower’s ravens and never forgot a face.

I looked at the table with the ink pot and loose papers amid the scattered books. I wondered if one of those books was the play I needed to find. I took a step toward the table, and that’s when the dead woman erupted from the wall.

She smashed through the books and came stumbling toward me. I saw another body behind her, slumped in an alcove that had been hidden by the books. Polonius. He looked as dead as ever. The alcove was made of more books. I was beginning to suspect the Forgotten Library was nothing but books all the way.

“No more,” the woman said, mist issuing forth from her mouth and forming more of those strange words. She stopped opposite me, and that’s when I saw she wasn’t a woman at all. Or even human, for that matter. It was Peaseblossom, one of the faerie, who stood opposite me. He was wearing the same dress as he had been back in the theatre in Berlin, when he’d been among the dead in the audience. His skin still bore the sickly colour of someone who had been poisoned, so I knew how the ghost had claimed him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him. Or rather, tried to ask him. But once again the words that came out of my mouth were not the words I intended to say. Instead, I said, “How is it with you, lady?” And I knew the scene.

Peaseblossom smiled at me. Let me assure you that a dead faerie smiling at you in an impossible library is not comforting.

“Alas, how is it with you,” Peaseblossom said, stepping toward me, “that you do bend your eye on vacancy and with the incorporal air do hold discourse?”

Once again, I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. But I did know the lines we were speaking. It was the scene from
Hamlet
right after Hamlet has slain the servant Polonius in Queen Gertrude’s closet. The same scene Morgana, Puck, and the poor fey had played in Berlin to start this sorry tale. I took Peaseblossom to be playing the part of Gertrude here, while I was cast in the role of Hamlet. And there was poor Polonius in the wall behind her, playing his part.

“I will bestow him, and will answer well the death I gave him,” I heard myself say. Which made no sense at all, as I hadn’t killed Polonius. Puck had. My line only made sense if I were Hamlet. Which I wasn’t. Except something was making me play the part of Hamlet here in the Forgotten Library. It had to be the ghost.

But then there was the fact that Peaseblossom appeared to be possessed, too. Was there more than one ghost? This was wondrously strange indeed.

“If words be made of breath, and breath of life, I have no life to breathe,” Peaseblossom said to me.

And then I felt that cold wind again, and everything went dim. Peaseblossom lunged forward, trying to wrap his arms around me. Instead, they went through me, as spectral as a ghost, and then he was gone and Polonius was gone and all the books were gone.

Blackout.

I resurrected, lurching upright again on the Drury Lane stage and throwing myself to the side to avoid the spotlight that had already killed me and now lay broken on the floorboards.

Someday I’d get used to this whole death and resurrection thing. Someday.

I dry heaved a little and then caught my breath and looked around. The theatre was still dark, the audience still empty. I’d resurrected quickly, although it had cost me a lot of grace. I’d have to find another angel soon. Or another reserve of grace.

Then I caught the flicker in the corner of my eye and I turned to look at it. The ghost, still standing there.

“The play’s the thing,” he said.

And then he was gone too, fading away back into nothing.

I wondered why he’d waited around for me to come back to tell me that. I doubted he’d been just continuing to act out the play while I lay dead at his feet—although that wasn’t an impossibility, I guess. But I had a feeling he was trying to give me a message with that parting line. If only I knew what it meant. I got to my feet and briefly considered cleaning up the broken spotlight and the blood on the stage. I decided to leave it though. The spotlight had wiped out the record of my conversation with the ghost, so now it just looked like the scene of an accident. Let the stagehands find it in the morning and add to the legend of the theatre ghost.

I left the theatre and found it was still night outside, which meant not that much time had passed. I lost myself in the surrounding streets, stopping only long enough to buy a couple slices of pizza from a late-night shop that obviously catered to drunks. I say obviously not because of the clientele but because of the quality of the food. I ate the slices anyway, but they did little to stop the hunger inside me. The longing for grace was a special kind of emptiness.

I replayed the latest scene from the Forgotten Library in my head as I ate. I still didn’t know where it was, or why I woke up there when I died. It clearly wasn’t of this realm though. It was more like the play the actors at the Globe had found themselves in when I’d summoned the Witches, where they’d been forced to say the lines of the
Macbeth
play. I’d been forced to utter the lines from
Hamlet
the same way. I was just as confused as the actors had been.

What was clear was I’d been possessed twice now, likely by the ghost Marlowe had told me about. Or maybe ghosts, given that I hadn’t been the only one possessed each time I’d visited the library. I had a feeling that I would have been trapped in the library along with Peaseblossom and Polonius if I hadn’t resurrected, pulling me back to my body. So which part of me had been in the library with the others then? My soul? The parts of my consciousness that continued to exist after I died? It was a mystery fit for Frankenstein.

I knew I couldn’t leave Amelia to that fate.

I tossed the empty pizza plate into the garbage and walked away from the shop before I lingered long enough that someone might remember me later. I continued to think things over as I went. I’d succeeded in returning to the Forgotten Library, but I hadn’t been able to get the information I needed. I wasn’t sure how much I could learn about the other play if the ghost kept possessing me every time I visited that library. And I was running out of time. Amelia was running out of time.

I sighed. I knew who I had to turn to for answers next. And as I’d made clear to Baal and Marlowe, I really didn’t want to see him again. But I was out of options.

I found my way to Kensington Gardens to hide out the night. It’s one of the safer spots to seek refuge in London if you’re on the run from the authorities. They tend to leave it alone on account of it reverting to faerie rule after the sun sets. One of those clauses in the treaty between the faerie and the Royals. The faerie didn’t make much use of the gardens these days, but you never knew when they felt like making mischief. I imagined the Royals figured better safe than sorry when it came to policing the place.

I made my way along the Serpentine until I reached the statue of Peter Pan, tucked into a forested glade by the water. The official lore is that J.M. Barrie had the statue created to entertain the children who played in the area at the time he lived. I could tell you the true story, about how it’s not really a statue and wasn’t created by anyone human, but why ruin such a happy tale?

I crawled into the shrubs at the edge of the clearing and tried to quiet my thoughts enough to sleep. I didn’t quite manage that, but I did manage to rest for a while, until the sky began to lighten and Peter began to play his pipes, and all the faerie and animals frozen in the base of the statue joined in with their own calls and songs.

I sighed and sat up, brushing the twigs out of my hair. I wished I had a coffee. I wished I had a bed. I wished I had the life of a regular person who wasn’t awoken from his slumber by a twisted, whistling Peter Pan statue come to life.

Peter turned his head to look at me. “That was a clever piece of improv, playing that scene with the ghost.”

The voice was the sort of voice you’d expect from a set of bronze lips, but I knew who it was instantly from the longing that welled up inside me, pushing even the hunger for grace aside.

Morgana.

“You were there?” I asked. I felt ashamed for not noticing her presence in the theatre, and then I felt angry at myself for my shame.

Morgana smiled and the rest of the creatures on the statue kept up their cacophony. I wondered if they were faerie or fey or just an effect created by Morgana.

“The ring you wear has many uses,” she said. “Keeping you bound to me is just one of them, but it is by no means the most amusing one.”

Not for the first time, I regretted my poor decision-making that had led me to falling into her power again.

“And what have you learned from your latest venture into the theatre world?” Morgana asked.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” I said.

“It is always the way with you,” she said.

“The good news is I figured out what’s haunting your plays,” I said and told her about the ghost that Will had brought to life.

She cocked her head to study me. Well, Peter’s head. Now everything fell silent. That was a small relief, but I suspected it wouldn’t last.

“The bad news is I don’t know how to stop it,” I said. “Not yet. Give me more time.”

“I have to admit I expected more of you,” Morgana said. “I expected you to have solved our little mystery by now. You are a disappointment. As always.” And her words stung me worse than any blade.

“Well, I did find out about the ghost,” I said. “That seems pretty significant to me.”

“Admiring its significance is not the same as stopping it,” Morgana said.

“I’m only human,” I said, which was stretching things a bit. “I can only manage one thing at a time.”

“Well, that’s a pity,” Morgana said. “Because we’re almost ready to perform our new show. It would have been best for all concerned to have this matter settled before we raise the curtain on it.”

The rest of the creatures on the statue looked back and forth between us.

I stood up and stepped closer to the statue. “I say again, leave her out of this,” I said.

“Cross, my love,” Morgana said, and the word “love” felt like it cut me to the bone. “The show must go on.”

“Amelia isn’t just another one of your fey to be casually sacrificed on a whim,” I said. “If she dies before I can figure out how to make this ghost leave you alone, I’ll have no reason to help you anymore. I’d sooner let you keep ownership of my soul for the rest of eternity and watch the ghost destroy your kingdom.” I meant every word, even though her spell made me want to fall to my knees and beg for forgiveness.

“Perhaps that is what will happen,” Morgana said. “And perhaps I could prevent it by doing what you say. But I must admit to a certain curiosity, and Amelia is the key to satisfying my interest.”

“Curiosity about what?” I asked.

“About the nature of the drama we find ourselves in,” Morgana said, smiling that wicked smile of hers, which looked downright eerie on the face of a Peter Pan statue. “Will it be a comedy? Or a tragedy? Only the fate of Amelia can decide it.”

I cursed her then, and I cursed a few other people and gods who had nothing to do with this particular set of events. I even cursed myself a little, because why not?

Then one of the faerie at the base of the statue turned her head to look at me.

“Father,” she said, and I knew as sure as Peter Pan was Morgana that this faerie was Amelia.

And I didn’t know what to say to her.

“Do not fear for me, Father,” she said. “For I do not fear death. I cannot fear what I am.”

And that put an end to my threats and cursing. How could I not try to save her after that? I could not let my daughter utter such words without at least trying to show her what it was to live.

“We will see you again very soon, Cross,” Morgana said, and her voice seemed almost sad now. Perhaps it was just the bronze speaking. “I suggest you stop wasting time sleeping in the bushes like Puck and use your time instead to put an end to this haunting. Someday, you will have all eternity to sleep.”

If only.

And then they were gone and the statue was just the statue again, and a white swan went past on the Serpentine—which could have been a sign or could have just been a white swan. The sun made an appearance behind the trees and the breeze ran its fingers through my hair and it was time to go to work again.