Ghostlight (The Reflected City Book 1) by Rabia Gale (i can read with my eyes shut TXT) 📗

a spell on Atwater to foil any attempts to get intelligence from him.”

“You sensed this?” Trey frowned.

“No, but spells that affect the mind can be buried so deep, it would need an entire circle of magicians to ferret them out. Atwater knows more than he’s telling, but I cannot force it out of him with the tools currently at my disposal.”

“I had not guessed that you were so suspicious, sir.” A newfound respect for the man stirred inside Trey. So Winter was more than the usual hidebound aristocrat convinced that there were boundaries no one of his class would dare violate.

“I wasn’t chosen to head this Bureau solely on my good looks, Shield.”

“Right now, Miss Trent is our only source,” pressed Trey. “I’m certain she remembered something important. The Duchess sensed there’s something bigger going on and Arabella spoke of miasma. We can’t overlook that.”

“Miasma is troubling.” Winter sat down and pulled a sheet of paper towards him.

Troubling was an understatement.

Miasma was noxious stuff from the Shadow Lands. It could corrode iron, smother elementals, burn flesh. It could reach inside of you, twist your memories, give you nightmares, poison your very soul.

During the Great Incursion, the vanguard of the Demon Lord Astrofael had been armed with weapons of miasma. They had used them to invade the dreams of thousands of people and turn hundreds to their own ends.

Now there were even fewer phantasmists to deal with another incursion from the Shadow Lands. And if they had smuggled miasma into Vaeland…

“I’m going after Arabella,” said Trey abruptly. “She’s the only one who knows.”

“Agreed,” said Winter, sketching with a pencil. “It’s unfortunate that you hid the girl’s presence, but we can discuss that later.”

“What?” Trey had expected more resistance.

“You’re going into the Shadow Lands to track her.” Winter put down his pencil, turned the paper around, and slid it across his desk. Trey leaned over the sketched spell. “But with proper precautions.”

Trey perused the page. “It’ll be easier if I don’t leave my body behind.”

“And more dangerous. We need to be able to bring you back if things go wrong. Trey,” said Winter as he opened his mouth to argue, using his given name for the first time, “you’re the only Border Walker we have. Even if miasma is involved—and we don’t know for certain that it is, despite what Miss Trent said—I’m not taking undue risks. Understood?”

Winter was not going to budge, Trey saw. He gave a curt nod. “Understood, sir.”

Arabella remembered.

She remembered hurrying across the street in the deepening twilight, stumbling in her haste. She remembered thinking how quickly the gloom had fallen over the Fleet, huddled in the shadow of All Saints’.

She remembered being uncertain, afraid, half-wishing she had never set out on this mad scheme to save Harry from the clutches of his creditors—or worse, a scolding from his father.

She knew, none better, how a guardian’s displeasure could hurt.

Arabella clung to the door handle of the pawnshop as if it were a life line. She barely noticed the stuffed crocodile head in the grimy window as she eased open the door. Its single bell shivered but didn’t ring out, so timid and quiet was her entrance.

Arabella edged into the shop, eyes wide. A deeper gloom shrouded the place, this one old and musty and comprised of shadows accumulated over the years. It was a treasure cave and a pirate’s hoard all at once—that is, if kings and pirates collected boxes of shoes, sticks of furniture, cross china cats, and tarnished trinkets.

There was no one behind the counter, but voices emanated from a back room. Arabella called out, “Hello?”, but her mouth was so dry, her attitude so hesitant, it didn’t come out above a breath.

The murmured conversation came to her in ebbs and flows, in sentence fragments and half-heard words. One voice was nasal and high-pitched, with a whine in it that ran like fingernails down Arabella’s nerves. The other…

The other she couldn’t recall at all.

But the nasal voice went on and on, seeming to rise in agitation. Arabella heard, “… miasma… dangerous… compressed into globes… at the Viewing…”

The other voice soothed. At least, that’s what Arabella thought even though she could neither remember its sound or the words it spoke. The nasal voice lowered as if placated.

Arabella shifted in discomfort, not liking being an inadvertent eavesdropper, not liking the tenor of the conversation. Lord Atwater or no, she wanted to be out of here. She backed towards the door.

Just as the curtain partitioning the back room from the shop rippled, as if being drawn back.

Arabella seized the handle, opened the door, and then shut it with a slam. The bell jangled as the curtain was whipped aside.

She stood there, looking around, as if she’d just come in.

The man who’d drawn the curtain back was thin and stooped, with stringy hair and narrow eyes. Alarm, surprise, and displeasure flickered across his face in quick succession, then vanished. An oily smile stretched his lips and a hard, speculative gleam came into his eyes.

Arabella disliked him at once, but she fixed a smile on her face and hoped it didn’t look too forced.

“Well, well, young lady,” said the man. He clasped his hands together in what he probably thought was a genial manner. “What can I help you with?”

This was the owner of the nasal whine. Arabella went forward, though it was a wrench to leave her station by the exit and walk further into the pawnbroker’s lair. “Are you Mr. Gibbs?” she asked, referencing the name on the sign and cocking her head in a manner she knew was charming. “I have a small financial problem I hope you can assist me with?”

Another person stepped out from behind Gibbs. Arabella said, in feigned surprise, “Oh, are you busy?” She retreated a step, closer to the door again.

“No, no,” said Gibbs. “My visitor was just leaving.”

The visitor was—and here Arabella experienced another mystifying blank in her memory. She couldn’t recollect anything about this person. Man or