“My mother,” she said quickly. “I’ll go and find her. Whom shall I say—”
“No need,” the figure rasped. “I am expected.” He brushed past her and went into the house, turning down the first hall as though he knew the way.
Grace had thought to follow him, but once he passed by her, she found she was shivering so hard that she could not walk. She clutched her arms around her waist, trying to warm herself, her teeth chattering, and after a minute she was able to make her way back to her bedroom. There was a small fire, and she built it up as best she could, though the shiver would not leave her bones.
* * *
Time seemed to lose all meaning after Jesse’s death. Grace woke, and went about her business mechanically, and slept at night without dreaming. The color of the leaves changed in the gardens, and the briars grew higher. Tatiana wandered from room to shadowy room, not speaking, often staring at the broken clocks on the walls, which always showed the hour of twenty to nine.
They did not comfort each other. Grace knew herself to be alone, so alone that she was nearly not surprised when she began to hallucinate that Jesse was there. She had woken up in the depths of the night, gasping for air. And there he was, still wearing the clothes he had died in. He seemed to float just out of the range of her vision, at the other end of the room. And then all at once he was there next to her, a full, detailed apparition of her dead brother, faintly glowing, smiling just as he would when he was alive.
It was too much to bear, the cruelty of death and the cruelty of her own mind. She screamed.
“Grace!” her brother said in alarm. “Grace, don’t be frightened! It’s only me. It’s me.”
“You’re not real,” Grace said, numb. She forced herself to look up at him.
“I am,” Jesse said, sounding a little offended. “I’m a ghost. You know about ghosts. You weren’t hallucinating that time you saw that fellow drinking blood, either. He was a vampire.”
Grace gave out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “By the Angel,” she said—an expression forbidden in the house, but she could not help herself. “You are real. Only the real Jesse could be so vexing.”
“My apologies. I suppose it’s hard for me to be sensitive to your mourning. Since I’m right here.”
“Yes, but a ghost,” Grace said. She allowed the meaning of this to penetrate her mind and, feeling a bit sharper, allowed herself to look curiously at her brother’s spirit. “Have you been a ghost all this time? Why did you wait so long to come see me?”
Jesse looked grim. “I didn’t. I tried, but—you didn’t hear me. Until now.” He shook his head, puzzled. “Maybe it takes some time for ghosts to return fully. Perhaps there’s paperwork that needs to go through.”
Grace hesitated. “Perhaps,” she said. “Jesse—Mama is up to something. Something secret. I don’t know what it is, but she’s been digging books out of dark corners of the house, and a gentleman came to… assist her with something. Who is he?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse said, his voice thoughtful. He reached out and stroked Grace’s hair, almost absentmindedly. She could feel his touch like cobwebs brushing her. She leaned into him, determined to take what comfort her brother could still offer. “I’ll find out, Grace,” he said. “After all, I can come and go as I please in the house now.”
“No chance of waking Mama up, anymore,” Grace said. “Come back soon, Jesse. I miss you.”
When she woke the next morning, she was half convinced that the whole encounter had been a dream, that it was only a trick of her mind, fevered with sorrow. But Jesse came back the next night, and the night after that—and only at night. And finally, on the fifth night, he explained.
“Mother can now see me as well,” he said in an odd, flat tone. “And she is determined to bring me back from the dead.”
Grace felt a surge of conflicting emotions within her. She could understand why her mother would be driven to do so—the thought of Jesse returned whole to her filled her with such intense hope that she could hardly bear it. And yet. “That man who came—was he a necromancer?”
“A warlock versed in dark magic, yes.” Jesse looked grim. “I have been… preserved,” he said, pronouncing the word with distaste. “That is what she hired him to do. There is a glass coffin in the cellar, with my body in it, unchanging, as if I were some sort of—vampire. Around its throat—my throat—is a gold locket that holds my last breath.”