He walked briskly ahead of her. “Come. I’ll give you a tour.”

  The house was wider than it was tall, and seemed to have all the comforts in the world—except warmth. Despite the fires blazing in most rooms, a chill still pervaded Leena’s bones. There was something eerily empty about this house—a house that was as discreet and shut in as its master.

  With Mr. St. Silas leading her, she noticed that the dining parlor looked untouched and the drawing room seemed unused. Even the bedroom that Leena was soon to inhabit, much more luxurious than the lumpy bed she was used to sleeping on, was desolate. This house felt like a stopping place—solely practical and utterly detached, like a posting inn that had been forced to become a home. She kept pace with Mr. St. Silas, his tour short and perfunctory, his hair even darker within the pools of light from the sconces. He didn’t look in the least bothered by the presence of a stranger in his home—especially one who could see the dead—as if he knew that the house would keep all his secrets.

  How could he leave the blistering world outside—a world designed to cut and bruise—only to hang his coat and wipe his shoes in a house made of sterility and stone? Did he seek the cold? Shy away from softness? Leena thought of the house she’d just left behind, small as it was, cluttered with childhood drawings and familiar smells. Another place that had burrowed into her heart.

  At the very least, she thought, the Saint’s house will never haunt me in the same way.

  Their last stop was Mr. St. Silas’s study, and the only room within the house that seemed inhabited. It was unchanged from Leena’s last visit. Multiple ledgers encircled the room, some tattered and worn, others unopened and unused. The only new addition was a medium-sized canvas wrapped in oilcloth leaning against a shelf. It stood out in a place that shunned sentimentality.

  Mr. St. Silas ordered tea to be brought in before taking a seat behind his desk. His hair was cut shorter than previously. His eyes—black as ink, a drowning well—seemed to swallow the light rather than reflect it: quick to assess, slow to reveal.

  It occurred to Leena that she was in a room alone with him. That she would be alone with him day in and day out. Not for the first time did she worry about her safety, or how she would protect herself if all the rumors that swirled around the Saint of Silence were true.

  The silence stretched between them. Neither was willing to break it, both locked in a battle in which the victor was the last to speak.

  A tap on the door. The smell of tea wafted into the room, brought in by the same woman who had admitted Leena to the house all those nights ago. Leena remembered the way the woman had tried to drag her from Mr. St. Silas’s office, and the interaction soured her still.

  “Mrs. Van, my housekeeper.” Mr. St. Silas again made the brief introduction as he arranged papers into a drawer in his desk.

  The housekeeper’s sharp gaze landed on her, distrust lining her harsh eyes. She was a severe-looking woman with skin stretched so tight across her face that it looked ready to split down the middle and reveal the white skull underneath.

  As Mrs. Van poured from the teapot, Leena could not avert her gaze from the woman’s hands. The palms were the same size as her own, but the fingers were so elongated that they curled over the teacup edge like the legs of a spider.

  “Madam,” Mrs. Van said, as if reading her thoughts.

  Leena startled and flushed for the obvious lapse in manners.

  Once the housekeeper had left, Leena took a long sip of tea to settle her nerves. Her throat burned full of questions; she wouldn’t let anything curtail her now. “You told me previously that you’d like me to find a ghost for you,” she began.

  “Among other things.”

  She had been expecting this. Dread swelled in her chest. “What other things?” she asked slowly, fearing she already knew the answer.

  “Nothing too odious, I assure you.” He waved a hand. “You have a gift, a curse, an ability—whatever you’d like to call it—and I’d be a fool not to take full advantage.” At the look on her face, his mouth twisted upward. “As part of your duties, you will sit in on my consultations and alert me to any spirits hovering around my customers. You will not question me on why I seek those spirits.”

  Leena pursed her lips at his autocratic manner. He’d been purposely vague about her “duties” when she’d first signed the contract. She had been too fever-touched at the time to ask him to list them. She’d caught that slip earlier on when poring over the copy he’d sent her, and she’d been berating herself for it ever since.

  She wouldn’t allow him to have the upper hand again.

  Mr. St. Silas’s smooth voice cut through her thoughts. “When did you see your first ghost?”

  The question startled her and pulled out memories from the recesses of her mind: hazy summers, grand estates, dizzying excitement, dashed hopes.

  She remembered that time with a certain perplexity, as if she’d suddenly woken up in a new country and must now learn to speak the language.

  “Three years ago,” Leena replied, weighing her answers carefully, “when I was employed as a lady’s companion in Hythe House.”

  They watched each other, alert to every minuscule change in the other’s posture. Mr. St. Silas’s shoulders subtly stiffened at the mention of Hythe House.

  Interesting.

  “You worked for Lord Hargreaves, I presume?” he asked.

  “I did, though I met him but a handful of times. I mainly worked for his mother, Her Ladyship. She is Algaraan, and Lord Hargreaves wanted a well-educated girl who could converse with her in her language.” She kept her tone matter-of-fact; she would make sure that pulling answers from her would be like pulling teeth.

  Mr. St. Silas drummed his fingers on the desk. “You didn’t finish, Miss Al-Sayer. What triggered your ability to see the dead?”

  She took another long sip of her tea, noticing that he didn’t touch his. She remembered the fever that had started it all—collapsing in the estate gardens, then waking to ghosts.

  Finally she shrugged, hoping the gesture would annoy him. “I don’t know.”

  They both continued to level a look at each other, she over her teacup, he in obvious skepticism.

  “It’s the truth. One day I woke up like this and it has never left me since.”

  “Out of curiosity”—Mr. St. Silas toyed with the pen in his hand idly—“was there a ghost stalking Hargreaves?”

  Leena stirred her tea and added a lump of sugar to it, then grimaced at the taste. She hadn’t had sweetened tea in years, and she’d become accustomed to the bitterness. She busied herself stirring, trying to buy herself time to think. She didn’t trust herself to lie.

  “Ah,” Mr. St. Silas said, and for a moment she saw through the nonchalance to the suppressed interest underneath. The pen stilled in his hand even if his posture remained relaxed. “You saw the ghost of his wife, didn’t you?”

  Leena’s hand twitched, and she hated that he must’ve noticed the nervous action.

  “Did she really die of a wasting illness?” he pressed. “Shocking, isn’t it? She’d been seen in perfect health only days before.”

  A faint smile crossed Leena’s lips. She leaned forward eagerly, the teacup tinkling on her knee. “No information comes for free.”

  A pause.

  “She learns quickly.” His tone was dry.

  Mr. St. Silas stood up abruptly from his chair and walked toward the mantel. For a moment there was no sound except the crackling of the burning logs.

  “What question do you have?” he finally said into the fire, his tone carefully indifferent.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He kept his back turned. “I want to know about Lady Hargreaves. Ask me something in return.”

  Leena had a dawning sense that this request was wrestled out of him, that he was not used to making concessions, and she felt a surge of triumph.

  Leena tried carefully not to show her hand. She took another sip of her cooling tea. “Tell me about the Wake.”

  It was a stab in the dark. She was still unsure if the Wake was a product of fevers or a real, tangible thing, but she would know for certain one way or the other—if not for her mother’s sake, then her father’s.

  “Your secret first, madam.” Mr. St. Silas turned, and she felt once more triumphant. That he didn’t look perplexed by her question could only mean that this Wake was not a figment of her imagination.

  She cleared her throat. Talking to his back was much easier than when he fully faced her; then she had to contend with the sharp intelligence of his eyes, and there was no hiding behind semi-truths and half-lies.

  She weighed her words carefully. “The ghost that haunted Lord Hargreaves was indeed that of his wife. She didn’t die of a wasting illness. She…” Leena hesitated, feeling a creep of shame for revealing His Lordship’s grief.

  When she fled His Lordship’s employment and began working instead as a laundress, all the Wardens were cruel and quick to punish her for the smallest infractions. Working for His Lordship had been a completely different experience. He was a steady employer, not quick to rail against his servants, and she had never forgotten the unwavering way the phantom had followed him. As if his longing for his dead wife kept a part of her trapped on this soil. It was unnatural. Unholy.

  It was the first phantom she’d ever seen.

  She’d initially noticed the murky figure when she rose from a night of illness after fainting in the estate gardens.

  It was a woman in a soaking dress, hair dripping, lips tinged blue, and bare feet that left no wet prints on the floor. No one else had noticed this woman trailing behind Lord Hargreaves, and Leena had learned very quickly not to ask.

  “Continue,” Mr. St. Silas demanded, no longer hiding his impatience.

  She didn’t immediately answer, a part of her still missing in the past.

  “Drowned,” Leena finally replied into the still room, that single word echoing like water droplets in a cave. “Her pockets were filled with rocks.”

  He absorbed the information hungrily. “That’s why they lied about the cause of her death.” Mr. St. Silas’s brows furrowed as if rapidly working through a puzzle. Watching him carefully once more, Leena wondered why a tragic family affair would interest him to this extent. Surely he had a thousand better secrets.

  “I believe it is your turn now, sir,” Leena challenged after a long interim.

  Mr. St. Silas sat down again, folding his arms over the hard planes of his chest. “The Wake is a group of aristocrats that tends to work in the shadows, dealing in all manner of…business.”

  “What do they have to do with prisoners?” Leena asked, her own hunger now showing. She thought of her baba. Why else, as her mother had warned, would this Wake take him?

  Mr. St. Silas played this game too well. Now it was his turn to drag out the silence to torture. Finally, his response came, slow and calculated. “There is a booming business involved in trading prisoners, both across Morland and…to other continents. Most aristo families have not safeguarded their wealth sufficiently, so they must find other ways to restore their family coffers. Smuggling prisoners out of Newtorn Prison and…selling them…is extraordinarily profitable these days.”

  Leena’s mouth went dry, and a wave of nausea rolled through her stomach.

  “Who do they sell the prisoners to?” Leena edged forward in her seat in agitation.

  “I believe I have met my end of the bargain, Miss Al-Sayer—surely you must agree?” Mr. St. Silas glanced away from her and toward the timepiece attached to his waistcoat, a habit Leena noticed he regularly displayed. “If you would like more information, then you must be willing to trade another secret in turn.”

  Fury burned Leena’s face like a kiss.

  “What do you want to know?” she spat through gritted teeth.

  There was devilry in his eyes. “From you? More and more. Everything.”

  “So that you can find other ways to use me for your own gain?”

  His answering smirk was lazy. “Was there a doubt?”

  Leena seethed silently. Just as he was siphoning her for precious information, she would do the same to him, until she bled him dry of every single fact about the Wake. Then she would find his ghost and be rid of him.

  Whether fate or chance had intertwined their paths, one certainty was growing with every passing minute: Mr. St. Silas would be the answer to finding her father—to saving him, as her mother had begged Leena to do—just as Leena was the answer to the Saint’s missing ghost.

  Mr. St. Silas stood and walked toward the canvas situated in the corner of the large study, deftly removing the oilcloth that had been covering it. “I had Lord Avon’s portrait sent for.”

  Leena swallowed her anger, turning her attention toward the ghost she was indentured to find.

  “Is the depiction accurate?” She rose to view the painting better.

  “True enough, but he was significantly less holy,” Mr. St. Silas replied dryly.

  Leena understood what he meant.

  Lord Avon was divine—a fatal mix of power, vitality, and consequence. His aristocratic features, finely molded over sharp bones, were both remote and compelling. He sat in a wingback chair by a window, a hound by his feet, an easy athleticism to the set of his shoulders. He was unadorned with finery except for a wedding band on one hand and a silver ring on the other, carrying a red leather book in a relaxed hold. The scenery behind him was muted in the face of his glory; his fair hair muffled the sun; his blue eyes deadened the sky. All at once, he seemed to be both cradled by the world and superior to it.

  Only death could claim such a man.

  “What illness killed him?” Leena whispered, remembering his obituary in one of the old newspapers she’d found.

  “None,” Mr. St. Silas responded, his voice carrying no deference to the departed. “He was murdered—a sword through the heart.”

  Leena’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. “He was murdered? By whom?”

  “Unknown.”

  “Any guesses?”

  Mr. St. Silas leaned back on the edge of his desk, his expression undisturbed. “It does not concern me.”

  “I’ve done my own research.” Leena attempted to rearrange the tenuous image she’d built of Lord Avon with this new piece of unsettling information. “The cause of death in his obituary didn’t mention murder. It was far more tame than that: undisclosed illness.”

  He didn’t answer her. Instead, he raised a brow. “What do you know about the aristos, Miss Al-Sayer?”

  She shrugged. “I briefly interacted with a few of them while I worked in Hythe House.”

  “Then you will know that Avon is an old name, with a line that can be traced back to the first families in the country.” A deliberate pause. “What is the one thing that the aristos value above everything else?”

  “Power? Wealth?”

  “Legacy.” Mr. St. Silas’s voice held an odd note. “If Percival Avon died in mysterious circumstances, then it’s not worth the scandal to investigate any further.”

  Leena could only stare at him in astonishment. That sort of ideology—a loyalty to an intangible concept—was far beyond her world of drudgery.

  Seeing the incomprehension on her face, Mr. St. Silas smiled grimly. “For the aristos, the endurance of their legacy must be protected above all else. Very likely, Lord Avon would rather his death certificate be written with lies than have his family name tarnished with the truth.”

  Leena’s face reflected a sharp bitterness. There was a certain privilege to having the resources to seek justice, but choosing not to, while the Al-Sayers—unmoored in this country, a fragmented family without influence and without power—would never have the chance to find justice for their father…

  Mr. St. Silas didn’t miss her disgust.

  “And he left no heirs,” Leena said after a long moment.

  Mr. St. Silas regarded the portrait impassively. “By that point, there was no one left in this world to inquire after him.”

  “What about Weavingshaw?” Leena demanded, not allowing him a chance to take control of the subject once more.

  She was surprised to see a subtle flexion of his jaw.

  “What about Weavingshaw?” he replied in measured tones.

  “If Lord Avon left no relations, who inherited the estate?”

  “It was purchased by a tradesman named Mr. Martin following Lord Avon’s death.” He relayed the information without much pause, and Leena felt relieved that at least some parts of her research were confirmed.

  Yet the chime of her mother’s warning sounded once more in her ears: Beware the promise of Weavingshaw. Still, there was an ancient stirring in Leena’s bones, a deep understanding that Weavingshaw held the key to the Avons—and, therefore, a key to her own freedom.

  “We must go to Weavingshaw.” Although her tone was decisive, she felt an odd ache in her words, that of a disobedient daughter. “The ghost of Lord Avon may haunt those halls.”

  “I don’t doubt we will eventually have to step foot in Weavingshaw.” Mr. St. Silas’s words were stretched, grim. Leena could tell that the estate evoked some deep emotion in him, but whether it was hatred or love she could not say.

  She wanted to question him further, to ask him why the grand house provoked such a reaction from him when everything else seemed not to bother him in the slightest. But she sensed that she would receive only harsh silence in exchange.

  “One thing I’ve learned about the dead is that certain objects can anchor them to the living,” Leena began again, watching him from underneath her lashes to see if another subtle expression could be provoked by her words. “Do you know of any trinkets, or even a person, that might’ve been important to His Lordship?”