“Me?” I asked.
“What?”
I glanced at Rose. “Me? You said ‘you can skim’. You usually say we instead of you, unless we’re arguing. You’re assuming I’m reading this list of deaths?”
“I’m going to get started on Standards, since you’re already looking through… what was it?”
I double checked the cover of the book that now lay across my lap. “…Prominent Feuds.”
“Right. You’re reading that. I’ll start on Standards, you get started on the deer book when you’re done reading what you’re reading.”
“I’m already pretty fed up with all this. How long is this death-ledger?”
“Long. But like I said, you can skim down the one column. Will you go over it?”
I craned my neck, but I couldn’t see the bottom shelf on the floor above us. “Can you show me?”
There was a pause. “I could.”
I turned to look at Rose in the mirror. “Please?”
She sighed. “It’s too heavy to lift.”
“You were trying to con me,” I said. “Trying to get me to commit to reading over some ridiculously huge tome.”
“I was. Just a little.”
She managed to look suitably guilty, all things considered.
“Damn it, Rose,” I said, but I couldn’t help smiling, but I wasn’t exactly amused, either. She’d almost gotten me. “We can’t mess with each other when we’re so busy watching our backs against everyone else.”
“I really don’t want to have to read all of that thing,” she said. “And I thought it would be a little funny.”
“There isn’t anything here I want to read,” I said. I tossed Prominent Feuds to the floor. “This plan isn’t working.”
“We’ll find something,” Rose said.
“We haven’t found anything that gives us an exact answer,” I said. “We probably won’t. Nothing modern. All research does is eliminate possibilities. We get through all of these books, read them backwards and forwards, and we’ll be able to say that we probably aren’t breaking the rules and getting ourselves executed if we mess with Laird’s job and family. Not definitely. Just probably.”
“Local powers probably like leaving people a little uncertain,” Rose said.
“Well, it works.”
“We could ask someone. Which is probably how everyone else figures it out. They attend meetings and sit back and they figure out what they can do and what they can’t do.”
“Unless the entire town wants to murder you,” I said. “Kind of throws a wrench in the whole ‘ask a friend’ option.”
“Yeah.”
“Which raises the question. Who do we ask?”
Rose dragged the chair on her side over to a spot beside the mirror, so we could see each other. “Maggie?”
“I don’t trust Maggie. I’m not sure I wholly distrust her either, but I get the feeling that if she could profit from misleading us, she would.”
“If you’re being that selective about our allies, we’re going to be very lonely,” Rose said.
I sighed. “Maybe.”
“The lawyers?”
I nodded slowly, doing my utmost to avoid rejecting the idea out of hand. “Maybe. I don’t like it.”
“I don’t either. But they’re there, and we do need to talk to them sooner than later. You need the allowance if you’re going to pay for what we need, and we have questions they could answer.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Which brings me to my next set of questions. First off, how do we get in touch with them? How do we mail this letter without cluing anyone in to the fact that we did it?”
“The legal documents give a phone number for the lawyers. The little black book says we just need to say the firm’s name three times. Same idea, I think.”
“Which isn’t ominous at all.”
“Not in the slightest,” Rose said, solemn.
“Should we get it over with, then?” I asked.
“We need to do it,” she said. “Downstairs? Feels strange, inviting anyone else here. Even if we know they were here to set things up after Molly died.”
“No,” I said. “I get what you mean. It feels wrong. Downstairs? Living room?”
“Sure,” Rose said. Then she cut in, “Wait. One thing, first. Can you grab a book on your way down?”
“Which?”
“Bookshelf two, third shelf from the bottom. It’s by the same author that wrote the book on Vestiges. Valkyries.”
Meaning I had to climb the ladder up to the next floor, then walk around to the third floor hallway and make my way to the ground floor. A pain.
I bit my tongue before I said as much.
“Sure,” I said. I gathered up the books I needed to have on hand, then made my way to the shelf in question.
The book was easy enough to find. The image on the front was similar to that of the Vestiges book. A woman’s face in profile, complete with a winged helmet, pressed into the leather cover.
“I-” Rose started. She stopped when I jumped a little at hearing her voice.
Right. I had a bicycle side-mirror hanging from a cord around my neck.
“Keep going,” I said, as I made my way downstairs, arms full of books.
“I read it because I thought maybe it was related to vestiges like me. And it is. But this one focuses on ghosts too, on historical elements, and some more practical applications. You’ve got practitioners who specialize a hundred percent on ghosts and vestiges. A kind of necromancy.”
“Death magic.”
“Right. In this case, you’ve got practitioners convincing warriors, usually dying soldiers, that there’s an amazing afterlife of parties and respect for their deeds waiting for them, so the warriors agree to give up their spirits after death. Use that agreement to help make a vestige or create a ghost, a representation of their skills or their knowledge, their strength, whatever else, and imbue all of that into a vessel.”
“Do you want to be imbued into a vessel?” I asked.
“No. That would be worse than being inside these mirrors. Not moving ever.”
“Right,” I said. “But?”
“But I like the concept. I like the author. The book talks about working with ghosts being an option for a practitioner without many resources, in an area where practitioners have already taken hold of everything worth holding, or where the Lord forbids certain practices. You take a ghost, you imbue an object, and you’ve got…”
“A magical item?” I asked.
“A tool, yes. I don’t think every Other in Jacob’s Bell is beholden to one practitioner or another, and we don’t really have a Lord here dictating rules, but in our situation, we don’t have a lot of options.”
“So we use ghosts?” I asked.
“We can. They can be violent, but that’s only a small subsection of the categories they fall into. We know how to protect ourselves.”
“And what makes ghosts easier to contact than any of the other Others?”