“If I were writing a novel in which someone set up a headquarters for their criminal enterprises,” Lucie said, “I would describe a place just like this.”
“Wishing you had your notebook?” said Cordelia, checking to make sure Cortana was firmly strapped to her back. Her fingers brushed the new scabbard her father had given her, and she sighed inwardly. She was not sure she could quite love it, just as she was no longer quite sure how she felt about her father.
Lucie winked. “You know me too well.”
The steps, surprisingly, held their weight as they climbed carefully and lightly up one by one. James led the way, laying a finger to his lips, and the other five followed through the doorway and down a low-ceilinged, pitch-black, spidery corridor. Webs brushed unpleasantly against Cordelia’s face as they moved silently along, and she could hear the scrabbling of rats inside the walls.
Suddenly they were in a wide-open space, no doubt the main factory floor, with iron pillars all around it like a cloister in a cathedral. A peaked glass roof with iron ribs arched high above, and a gallery circled the room halfway up. Large metal hooks dangled from iron chains attached to gantries overhead. ILMAKERS, the sign outside had said. It must have been a sailmaker’s factory, where swaths of canvas would have been hung up to dry. Now, the empty hooks spun lazily in the dusty air; beneath them, dimly lit by the roof-light, lay the ruins of an enormous, splintered loom.
Lucie looked around, her face tight. “She’s here,” she said.
James shot her a curious, sideways look. “Filomena? Where?”
Lucie didn’t answer. She was already scrambling past a number of rusting iron machines whose purpose was unclear, picking her way over the cluttered floorboards. “Filomena?” she called. She kicked aside a chunk of rotting plaster. “Filomena!”
The others exchanged glances. Anna took out a witchlight rune-stone, sending up a flare of light; the others fell into step, following Lucie. She seemed to be making her way toward the center of the room, where debris lay in dark heaps. She made a strangled sound. “Come here!”
Cordelia leaped over a piece of broken floorboard, finding Lucie standing white-faced and ill-looking over a pile of what looked like discarded rags. The floor was stained with a dark sludge. “Luce?”
The others had arrived, bringing with them the comfort of witchlight. Anna prodded the rags with her boot, then knelt to look more closely, using the tip of her finger to lift a corner of the fabric. Her face tightened. “This is the shawl Filomena was wearing when she left my flat.”
Thomas speared another dark piece of clothing with a dagger, holding it aloft. “And this is someone’s cloak. Stained with blood—”
Lucie held her hand out. “Could I see the shawl—please?”
Anna handed it to her. The shawl was of a pale cashmere, torn and ragged now. James stood back as Lucie bunched the fabric up in her hand, her lips moving, though she was making no sound. Cordelia had thought she knew all Lucie’s moods, but she had not seen her like this—so intent, so inward in her concentration.
Something glimmered in the air. Lucie looked up, and in her eyes Cordelia could see a reflection of the growing light, as if two lamps glowed within her pupils. “Filomena?” Lucie said. “Filomena, is that you?”
The shimmer resolved itself, like a sketch being filled in around the edges, taking form and shape. A long yellow dress, a blood-splattered white shoe on a slender foot. Long dark hair, catching the faint breeze, swaying like black sailcloth. The ghost of a girl, hovering above them, wrapped in the translucent ghost of a shawl.
Filomena di Angelo.
“Mi sono persa. Ho tanto freddo,” the ghost whispered, her voice desolate. Oh, I am lost. And so cold.
Cordelia glanced around at the others’ puzzled faces; it seemed she was the only one who spoke Italian. “You are among friends, Filomena,” she said gently.
“I drifted in shadow,” said the ghost-girl, in English. “Now you have called my name. Why?”
“To secure justice,” said Lucie. “You should not have died. Who did this to you?”
Filomena gazed down at them. Cordelia felt the hairs along the back of her neck rise. She had never thought closely about how eerie it must be for Lucie, for James, to be able to see the dead. They were not simply insubstantial people. They were very alien indeed. Filomena’s eyes, which had been so dark, were entirely white now—no iris at all, only two single black pinpoints of pupils. “He came out of the shadows. There was a blade in his hand. I fought him. I cut him. He bled. Red blood, like a man. But his eyes…” Filomena’s mouth twisted, elongating strangely. “They were filled with hate. Such hate.”