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Charles was finding that while ghosts didn’t get tired or hungry, they absolutely did get bored.
The two ghosts had been walking for ages, since the sun rose, and they’d finally gotten out of the densest part of London, but Charles suspected they were still pretty well in the area people called London, generally.
Still, the highways had green space beside them now, so they must be getting somewhere.
Charles had had to stop his little game called ‘let the cars run right through me,’ because it bothered Edwin. So now he was just throwing and catching a rock he’d found.
Edwin was definitely better than Charles at reading the map they’d borrowed from the library, they’d figured that out pretty early this morning, so Charles was just walking behind Edwin, bored out of his transparent skull.
Then Edwin stopped, and Charles nearly ran into him.
“What is it?” Charles asked, looking around, but all he could see was winter-dull meadows and overcast sky.
“I’d forgotten how big the sky was,” Edwin said with a sort of hushed awe.
Charles suddenly lost all thoughts about his own discomfort, seeing the awe on Edwin’s face and knowing the decades of torture that had put it there.
“Yeah, mate,” he said. “We’ve got the whole world to explore, and it’s a pretty big place.”
Edwin just blinked up at the sky for a long moment, and Charles couldn’t bring himself to interrupt that, even though their excruciatingly slow progress had become no progress at all.
It was when Edwin started to look like he might cry that Charles cleared his throat. “How much longer do we go straight along this road, then?” he asked.
Edwin seemed to shake himself back to their objective. “Right, I was looking for more of those useful signs. I believe it’s only a few more miles.”
Charles sighed, but now that he was reminded how rough Edwin had had it, he was determined to make the best of things.
“So, if you could pick any kind of magic to learn, what would it be?” he asked.
“I couldn’t possibly say,” Edwin replied, frowning. “I have only the vaguest of ideas what kinds of magic exist, as of yet.”
“No, I mean,” Charles said, shaking his head, “if you could do anything. Doesn’t have to be something that actually exists. Like, I’d like to learn a spell that makes me be able to… jump really high. Like that.”
“I suppose I’ve often wished to be invisible,” Edwin said, “but that is rather a moot point, now.”
“Right, you’re all set there!” Charles grinned at him. “So what else?”
They talked about that for a while, and then about magic in the stories they’d heard, and then Charles found himself describing the plot of Labyrinth in detail while Edwin made increasingly snarky comments about it, and then Charles got onto the whole subject of Bowie, and before he knew it they were coming up on their destination.
“This is right in the middle of nowhere, isn’t it?” Charles mused.
“Is it?” Edwin asked. “The roads are paved so smoothly, even in the countryside. I suppose it must be superior to drive now than to take a train. Are there still trains?”
Charles took a moment to absorb that.
“Bollocks!” he said. “We could’ve taken the train, at least partway. I’m an idiot.”
He had toyed with the idea of trying to hitch a ride in someone’s car, but they’d dismissed it as being too risky. They might get turned around, or worse, lose track of each other. Cars were unpredictable.
He’d never thought about the train.
“It will take time for both of us to become accustomed to being ghosts,” Edwin said. “To the things we can and cannot do. We can attempt the train on the way back.”
“Right,” said Charles, and tried to push away the feeling that he wasn’t nearly smart enough to be Edwin’s guide to the modern world.
“I, for example, will feel quite lost until we can obtain at least one volume on the workings of magic,” Edwin offered.
Yeah, they were both sort of playing this by ear, Charles supposed.
He took a determined breath.
“Let’s get on that, then,” he said. “Which way now?”
Edwin pointed to a shadow on the horizon. “I believe that’s our target,” he said. “The Mould country house.”
“Brills!” Charles said, and started off in that direction.
Edwin was a little slower to follow, and it took Charles a moment to remember that this was the place, and the family, that had spawned the boy who had killed Edwin.
“Do you want me to go ahead without you?” Charles asked. “Scope things out, like?”
“Absolutely not,” Edwin said, squared his shoulders, and strode ahead purposefully.
The same way he had when Charles had volunteered to test about the possession thing. But Charles didn’t want to let Edwin do the dangerous thing by himself this time, either.
“Right, we’ll go together,” said Charles.
So they strode across the lawn, side by side. Charles absently brushed a spiderweb off his face.
Then Edwin stopped. “Did you feel that?” he asked.
“No,” said Charles, and then remembered that he usually didn’t feel much of anything now, but he’d felt that little brush across his cheek. “Maybe?” he added. “Like what?”
“Like spider silk,” said Edwin.
“Yeah. Didn’t think much about it, but it is weird, right?”
“I had hoped that, not feeling anything as a ghost, I would be unbothered by spiders,” Edwin said with a shudder.
Charles frowned. “Is there something magic about spiders that makes them different? Like, because they’re spooky, like ghosts? Or was it just one especially magic spider?”
“Did you actually see a spider?” Edwin asked him. “Or was it only a similar sensation? We are in a rather open area for webs, and I must admit, I am not as familiar with the feeling as you may be, but there was something different about it.”
Charles thought back, tracing his hand back across his cheek. “It was just, it barely caught my attention. It didn’t, really. My body — well. My me. Sort of knew something was there, but I can’t say I really, like, felt it, felt it, like?”
“Yes, I would concur with your assessment,” Edwin said. “Well, we are approaching a place where we suspect that knowledge of magic is available. Perhaps someone is making use of that knowledge.”
The dark lump of building in the distance was starting to look menacing, to Charles’s eyes.
“Are you sure about this, mate?” he asked Edwin. “We could find another way.”
“It will be rather difficult to learn to use magic if we are afraid to approach other magic users,” Edwin argued.
“Yeah, but like,” Charles gestured at the house, “this is the people who had the book that killed you.”
“It can hardly do so a second time,” Edwin said. “And if it somehow can, I would prefer to know.”
“You’re absolutely fearless, aren’t you?” Charles asked with a dawning awe.
“Hardly,” Edwin said, but he didn’t hesitate to keep walking ahead.
Charles couldn’t do anything but follow.
And soon he was distracted from the thoughts of what danger they might be walking into.
The estate was practically a castle.
“Posh, innit?” Charles said, gaping. “Don’t think I’ve ever been in a house this big.”
“My family’s country house was much the same, if I recall,” Edwin said offhand. “Well. Shall we see if we can find a library or study of some sort?”
“Where do we even start?” Charles wondered, blinking at the place.
“A room with large windows,” Edwin said, “but not so large as to indicate a grand hall. Here, perhaps.” He indicated one wall of the nearest wing.
Charles poked his head in.
There were several people in the room.
There was a man in very old fashioned clothes looking right back.
The man winked. Straight at Charles.
Charles yanked himself right back through the wall.
“Are you all right, Charles?” Edwin asked. “You look… well, like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Yeah,” Charles said with a nod, not sure which part he was agreeing with. Both, maybe. “I think maybe we should… look somewhere else for what we need,” he told Edwin, who was still looking concerned. “This place is pretty occupied already.”
Before Edwin could respond, the man in the ruffled neckcloth had stepped through the wall and outside to join them.
“Hello, boys,” said the ghost.
“We beg your pardon for intruding,” Edwin said.
“No, no, not at all,” the ghost said. “Do come inside. It’s been ages since we’ve had visitors we could hold a proper conversation with.” He beckoned, and started back through the wall.
Charles and Edwin exchanged a look, then followed.
“We’ve got visitors!” the man in the ruffled neckcloth announced to the rest of the room.
“And who are these visitors?” an old woman asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Hallo!” Charles greeted with a wave. “I’m Charles, and this is Edwin.”
A middle aged man in a suit that was just a bit old fashioned took a few steps towards the boys.
“Charles looks like a modern hoodlum,” he said dismissively.
Edwin brandished his chin at the man. “He is my friend, and I will thank you to treat him with respect.”
“But you,” the man continued as if he hadn’t heard, “you seem interesting.” He gestured to Edwin. “And why are you here.”
Edwin turned to the man in the neckcloth who had welcomed them in. “We are attempting to research magic and the supernatural,” he said.
The old woman’s eyes went sharp. “And how did that search bring you here?” she asked.
Edwin straightened his jacket and folded his hands together.
“Well, I shall tell you,” he said, and Charles could tell he was nervous, but he was hiding it pretty well. “It began at Saint Hilarion’s school with a young man by the name of Simon Mould.”
All three ghosts had their eyes trained directly on Edwin now. Only the woman sitting at the desk, her salt and pepper head bent over her work, didn’t seem to hear.
“Were you there when Simon disappeared?” the man in the plain dark suit asked urgently. “Do you know what happened to him?”
“I do not know his fate with any certainty,” Edwin admitted, “but I know the night in question. I was there.”
“Oh, dear,” said the old woman. “Was that when you died? You do look about his age.”
Her eyes held unutterable sadness.
“Yes,” Edwin agreed. “That very night.”
“What happened?” the man in the dark suit demanded again.
“I was taken from my bed,” Edwin began.
“By who?” the man in the dark suit interrupted immediately.
“The other boys,” Edwin answered.
“Was Simon taken?” the same man asked.
“Simon was the ringleader,” Edwin said.
“No!” the man pointed a finger at Edwin. “Don’t even try and tell me such horrible lies!”
“Oi,” Charles said, stepping up between them, “if he says that’s what happened, then that’s what happened! No call to be like that about it!”
“This doesn’t concern you, you little ruffian,” the man said.
“Anyone threatening Edwin like that is gonna concern me!” Charles said, narrowing his eyes.
“Oh, let him have his little bodyguard,” the man in the ruffled neckcloth said. “It’s not as if he’s an actual threat, he’s a fresh ghost. Dead, what, a few days?”
“What about it?” Charles said, turning his glare in that direction.
“Child,” said the old woman with the sad eyes, “you have absolutely no idea how far out of your depth you are.”
Charles wanted to snap at her. Edwin was gonna study magic, and be a great magician and a detective for ghosts, and Charles was going to be there to help any way he could.
He wasn’t useless. He wasn’t! Edwin had said!
“Charles, they are correct,” Edwin said. “There is much to the supernatural world that we are ignorant of. That is why we are here. To learn.”
“Right,” Charles said, taking a breath. He couldn’t be a ghost detective yet, he barely knew anything about being a ghost except what Edwin had told him, and Edwin was pretty new at it, too.
He was kind of useless right now.
“So you said the other boys took you from your bed,” the old woman prompted. “And Simon was part of it?”
“Yes,” Edwin said.
“Why would he do that?” the man in the dark suit demanded.
“What did he do?” the old woman asked, not as forceful but still just as focused.
This felt like an interrogation. Edwin was trembling.
They didn’t need to be here. They could leave, they didn’t need to take this kind of disrespect.
But Edwin had said he needed to know what they could find out here about what had happened to him.
Well, if he couldn’t be a detective yet, Charles was at least determined to be Edwin’s friend.
Charles made sure Edwin saw him, then bumped their shoulders together, hoping the contact would be reassuring.
Edwin seemed to relax, so Charles stayed just there, pressed to Edwin’s side. It was the least he could do.
“Simon…” Edwin swallowed, then began again. “He had a book. He said he’d stolen it from his older brother.”
“Oh, dear,” said the man with the ruffled neckcloth.
“What did it look like?” the man in the dark suit asked, dangerously quiet.
“The pages were perhaps the size of a foolscap folio,” Edwin said, “but it was thick, several inches thick. The cover was black. I… can’t remember any more. It was long ago, and my attention was elsewhere.”
“That’s all right, child,” the old woman said. “What happened then?”
“They summoned a demon,” Edwin said.
The room went quiet. Even the scratch of the pen from the living woman at the desk stopped, for a second or two. But it started up again soon enough.
“A demon?” the man in the dark suit asked, his voice raspy and quiet and hushed. He looked horrified.
“The others,” Edwin said, swallowing again, “Simon, the rest, they all seemed to vanish in an instant, in a shower of sparks. But the demon spoke to me. I was the sacrifice, you see.”
The old woman covered her mouth with her hand. The man in the dark suit sat heavily on the corner of the desk.
“They sacrificed you to a demon?” the man in the ruffled neckcloth asked carefully.
“Yes,” Edwin answered. “And the demon took me to Hell. And that is how I come to know that there are books that have passed through the hands of this family that contain powerful rituals, rituals that can bend the powers of the universe.”
“Yes,” the man in the dark suit said brokenly. “Yes, that book was mine. And I never should have let Simon get his hands on it, or get anywhere near it.”
“Bringing it into the house at all was a major miscalculation, in my view,” said the man with the ruffled neckcloth. “And that was certainly none of your doing, Roger.”
Roger Mould. The older brother. This was him, then. His ghost.
“Oh, my poor Simon,” said the old woman. “He was always such a sensitive child.”
“That is not quite how I would have described him,” the man with the ruffled neckcloth said. “And I suspect neither would Edwin, here. But having volumes of black magic in the house can hardly have helped with that.”
“You were right,” Roger told the other man. “You’ve always been right. They were not to be trifled with.” He shook his head. “Such things should be kept as far away from the family as possible.”
“I have not always been right,” the man said grimly, “or the family would never have begun to develop such a collection.”
“I suppose you came looking for revenge,” the old woman said, eyes on Edwin. “Revenge on our family, for what my youngest son did to you.”
Edwin shook his head emphatically. “No, ma’am,” he said. “I mean no harm to anyone here. I came here only seeking knowledge.”
“And if we gave you that knowledge,” the man with the ruffled neckcloth asked, “what would you do with it?”
“Study it,” Edwin said. “Protect myself against others who would use it against me. Protect Charles. And help other ghosts who might be in need of assistance.”
The three ghosts of the house all looked at Edwin for a long moment.
“Yes,” said Roger. “I think he should have them. All of them. Do you agree, Mother?”
The old woman narrowed her eyes. “If you ever do use them against the family, the most terrible of curses will befall you. Isn’t that right, Francis?”
“Yes, indeed,” said the man with the ruffled neckcloth. “Unless it is in defense of yourself or others.”
“I find your terms agreeable,” Edwin said. “How many books of magic do you have?”
“The black book disappeared with Simon,” Roger told him. “We have two other volumes of a similar size, and a few other, smaller books, along with some loose notes.”
“Between the two of us,” Edwin said, looking to Charles, “I believe we should be able to manage to carry those.”
“Well,” said the woman at the desk, speaking for the first time, “you are both quite lucky that you’ve arrived while Father is out of town. But if you leave the same way you arrived, taking all his magic books, he will follow you. His wards will make sure of that.”
“Yes, Elizabeth, you’re quite right,” Francis said. “They’ll need to go by mirror.”
“By mirror?” Charles asked.
“Yes, do you know how, Edwin?” Roger asked.
Edwin shook his head. “I only escaped Hell a few days ago,” he said. “I’m hardly more experienced as a ghost than Charles is.”
Francis drew in a breath. “Then I shall escort them,” he said. “But taking the books through the mirror, without a ghost bag, could prove tricky.”
“What’s a ghost bag?” Charles asked.
“A ghost bag,” said Francis, “is a bag that’s become so familiar to a ghost that it’s part of their person, and therefore able to be carried through mirrors. You’ll be able to carry anything that you can fit into your pockets, because your pockets are already part of your person, but I don’t think you’ll manage the books that way.”
Elizabeth had gotten up from the desk and was fishing around in a locking cabinet in the corner of the study. The large volumes plunked heavily onto the desk.
“My pockets aren’t quite that big,” Charles had to admit.
“They should all be able to fit into my doctor’s bag,” Roger said. “You can keep the bag. As a gift.”
“But you use that bag so often!” his mother objected.
“Yes, that’s what makes it a good solid ghost bag,” Roger said with a crooked little smile. “But, Mother. I’ve been a ghost on Earth because I didn’t know what happened to Simon, or the black book, or what would become of the family if they continued to dabble in magic. Isn’t that why you’ve remained for so long?”
“Do you think perhaps it’s time for us to go?” his mother asked.
“I don’t want to leave the family undefended,” Roger hedged.
“Not to worry,” said Francis. “My unfinished business has always had a bit of a wider scope. I introduced magic to this family, and have always regretted that. Well, now that I am one of the more formidable things that go bump in the night, I think the best thing I can do for this family is to make sure they never have need of magic. And for that, I will need to remain a ghost on Earth.”
“Thank you, Francis,” said Roger, who was now loading books and papers into a sturdy-looking brown leather doctor’s bag.
“You don’t have to thank me for staying to clean up my own mess,” Francis objected.
Roger and Simon’s mother gave Francis a pat on the cheek. “It’s not only your mess, Francis, and we will thank you.”
Then she turned to Edwin.
“And I will thank you, too,” she told Edwin, a little stiffly. “It’s certainly not happy news you brought, but it was news I’ve needed to hear for a very long time.”
Edwin gave her a little nod in return.
Roger pressed the bag into Edwin’s hands. “That’s yours now,” he said. “Take care of it, and it’ll take care of your things. Now. Get those books as far away from my nephew and his family as you can, and maybe they’ll have a more peaceful life.”
“I’m just as happy to be rid of them, myself,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve already almost died once this lifetime, because of those books.”
“Now, take my hands,” said Francis briskly. “One each, and hold tight. Where would you like to go?”
“London,” Charles told him. “Anywhere in London would be great.”
“Well, that’s easy enough. Right, there’s a large enough mirror in the front hall, just this way.”
As they left the study, they could hear the sound of enormous wings.
“Hold tight, as I said,” Francis told them, taking their hands and leading them to a grand tall mirror. “Now, I’m picturing my destination, it’s one I know well, which helps. One of the fitting rooms at Harrods, Elizabeth likes to shop there when she’s in the city, and we like to watch over her. Well, I suppose it’s just me, now. Well, anyway. Here we go!”
Francis stepped through the glass, pulling the other two along through a chaotoc kaleidoscope of other places. And then they popped out, as promised, in a fitting room at Harrods.
“There you are,” Francis said.
“Thank you,” Edwin told him. “For the books, and all of your help.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said Francis. “You’ve done the family a great service. Now, you two take care of yourselves. I’ve got to be getting back.”
“Thanks, Francis!” Charles told him anyway, and waved as he popped back through the mirror and away.
Edwin looked a bit shellshocked.
“You all right, mate?” Charles asked him.
“That was… a lot of information,” Edwin said. “Oh, I never got to ask what they meant about wards! Do you think that was the spiderweb feeling thing we felt out on the lawn?”
“Dunno,” said Charles. “But I bet one of these books could tell us.”
“Quite true,” said Edwin. “I will need to study them carefully.” He opened the bag, and took out a small, well-worn brown volume, opening it.
A little slip of paper fell out, but Charles caught it before it got far.
“What is that?” Edwin asked.
Charles looked down at the paper. “It’s a receipt,” he said, slowly starting to smile. “From a magic shop in Soho. Got an address and everything!”
“Well, that could certainly be useful!” Edwin remarked. “Good catch, Charles.”
Charles beamed at the praise.
This was going to be interesting.
A whole new world was opening to them.