Even having chosen to use so many leaves, even knowing that this was a deeper casting than he had attempted in years, Ethan was startled by the might of his conjuring. He felt the pulse in his bones; the entire building seemed to shake. Power hummed in the walls and the floor; it reverberated within his mind until he felt that he would never again hear any other sound. Every conjurer in Boston would know that a potent spell had been cast, but he couldn’t help that.
And yet, nothing else happened. No ghost appeared. Ethan glanced toward Reg, but the old man wasn’t looking at him. Rather, he was turning his head from side to side, perhaps searching for Osborne’s shade. He appeared troubled, even frightened. Ethan had never seen him like this.
“What’s happening?” Ethan asked.
Reg held up a hand to silence him, though he continued to search. At last he faced Ethan again and shook his head.
“It didn’t work?” Ethan asked, incredulous. “But I felt the conjuring. That was one of the most powerful spells I’ve ever cast.”
Reg shook his head again.
“So a ghost can refuse a summons from a conjurer if he isn’t linked the way we are.”
The ghost shrugged, appearing as confused as Ethan felt.
Ethan nearly gave up then. That was what Reg wanted him to do. But another thought came to him. There had been a third conjurer on the Graystone. Jonathan Sharpe had been younger than both Gant and Osborne. Maybe he had been less skilled as a conjurer and thus would be less able to resist Ethan’s summons.
He took more mullein from his pouch, leaving him with enough for only one more minor spell. He would have have to buy more from Janna, and soon.
“There was one other conjurer on the ship,” he told Reg. “I’m going to try summoning him.”
Reg scowled.
“Provoco te, Jonathan Sharpe, ex regno mortuorum ex verbasco.” I summon thee, Jonathan Sharpe, from the realm of the dead, conjured from mullein.
This spell echoed through the building as powerfully as had the first. The old ghost began to look around again, but almost immediately looked back to Ethan, his gleaming eyes as wide as moons.
And at the same time, a second glowing figure took form beside him: a young man, both familiar and strange. Ethan recognized the long hair and fleshy, thick features from the corpse he had seen on Castle William. But that wasn’t the same as knowing a man in this ghostly form. The shade of Jonathan Sharpe towered over Reg, and over Ethan as well. His eyes were similar to those of the old ghost, but his body glowed with an aqua hue. He wore the uniform of a British regular, but as far as Ethan could see, he didn’t carry a weapon. Which was fortunate, because he regarded Ethan with manifest hostility and even took a menacing step toward him. Ethan resisted the urge to back away, knowing-or at least hoping-that the ghost couldn’t harm him.
“My name is Ethan Kaille,” he said. “I summoned you because I’m trying to find the cause of your death and that of every other man on the Graystone. Can you help me?”
The ghost seemed not to hear him. He turned toward Reg and advanced on the old man. Reg fell back and drew his broadsword, something Ethan had never seen him do.
Sharpe’s ghost faltered.
“Sharpe!” Ethan said. “Look at me!”
The shade faced him once more.
“Did you know Caleb Osborne and Simon Gant?”
Sharpe eyed him, looking confused. Finally, he nodded.
“And you knew about the pearls?”
The ghost’s expression turned guarded. He offered no response. “I think they’re the reason you were killed. I think that Gant attacked the ship with that spell so that he wouldn’t have to share them with Osborne.”
Sharpe shook his head, an expression of contempt on his face. Even in death, he remained loyal to his friends. Ethan couldn’t help thinking there was something noble in that.
“They’re hidden somewhere in the city, aren’t they?”
No answer.
“Do you know what kind of conjuring killed you, what kind of spell it was?”
The ghost dragged a finger across his throat, a grim smile on his lips.
“A killing spell. Yes, that’s very helpful.”
Sharpe’s smile melted away, leaving him looking terribly young. His eyes fixed on Ethan’s, he placed his hand over his heart and then made a fist.
Ethan nodded. The spell had attacked their hearts, squeezing them so that they stopped beating. That was why the orange glow from Ethan’s revela potestatem spell had spread outward from the chests of the soldiers on which it worked. “I understand,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
The young man looked away. Reg stepped forward, and though he still held his sword, he placed a hand on Sharpe’s shoulder, and stared hard at Ethan.
“All right,” Ethan said. He sensed that he could have learned more from the dead man, but he also understood that he should have listened to Reg. This was wrong.
“Dimitto vos ambos.” I release you both.
As soon as the words crossed his lips he felt another surge of power. He watched as the two ghosts vanished.
Alone in the darkened room, Ethan muttered a curse. He opened his door, just to let in some light and cool air. But after having a small bit of cheese and smoked meat, he left again, this time heading back to the North End. Spellmaking, it seemed, could help him only so much, and he couldn’t afford to wait for his next chance encounter with Gant. He needed to know where the man was hiding.
Geoffrey Brower and Ethan’s sister Bett lived in a large stone house near North Square in one of the city’s finer neighborhoods. Ethan had been inside once, when he first returned from Barbados and Bett was moved by some uncharacteristically charitable impulse to have him to dinner and introduce him to his nieces and nephew. She hadn’t invited him to the house since.
Reaching the path that led to Bett’s door, Ethan faltered, wondering if coming here had been a mistake. For years Ethan had convinced himself that Bett turned her back on spellmaking because she had no aptitude for it, because the conjurings hadn’t come to her as easily as they did to Ethan and the youngest child in the Kaille household, Susannah. The truth, he had come to realize, was far more complicated, and far less convenient for him. When he and Bett first entered their teen years and began to learn spellmaking from their mother, he had no more skill as a conjurer than she. If anything, her attention to detail made her castings more effective than his.
But she never enjoyed it. Even at that tender age, she seemed to believe that conjuring was wrong in some way. Perhaps she shared their father’s devotion to the Church and more godly pursuits. Or maybe she preferred Ellis’s company to Sarah’s, just as Ethan had felt more comfortable with their mother. Whatever the reason, by the time Susannah began to conjure, Bett had already started to turn away from spellmaking, and from Ethan. Ethan and Susannah were inseparable until Ethan left home to join the navy. Bett always seemed aloof. Only much later did it occur to Ethan to wonder if she had been lonely. And by then, the bond between them had been so badly frayed that he no longer knew how to mend it.
He was ashamed to admit that he often wished Susannah could have settled here in Boston, rather than Bett. But his beloved youngest sister lived an ocean away, in the Scottish Isles, and Bett lived in this grand house before him, with its marble columns and fine gardens.
Taking a long breath, Ethan walked up the broad walkway to their portico and rapped on the door with the brass knocker.
Ethan had thought that a servant would answer his knock-when last he visited, dinner had been served by an African slave. But when the door opened, a young man of perhaps sixteen years stood before him, well-dressed, and looking like he had never labored a day in his life. He was tall and gangly, with a high forehead and narrow nose like his father’s. Poor lad.
“You’re George, aren’t you?” Ethan asked.