Ghost Talkers Read online

  He snorted. “Ah yes … the attrition. How unfortunate that the poor women are overcome by sitting quietly all day.”

  Lifting her chin, Ginger opened her mouth to retort—

  “Here now—” Ben sat forward, back stiff as he glared at Keatley. “None of that. The mediums suffer more from this war than you can possibly know.”

  “Please, spare me.”

  “They live through the deaths of every soldier who reports in.” He rose to his feet and leaned over the table. “Every soldier. So I will thank you not to mock them.”

  Ginger compressed her lips. Ben was overstating the case a little. The only deaths she experienced were ones for which it was necessary to enter the soldier’s memories. A simple report could be taken verbally and, sad to say, most soldiers saw nothing of use.

  “Sit down, Captain Harford.” Brigadier-General Davies shifted in his chair. He rubbed the back of his neck, scowling at his cup of tea. “Though his point was not made politically, Keatley is correct in that we were shortsighted. When we implemented the Spirit Corps, we thought the war would be over by now. Keeping it a secret for a few months: difficult, but possible. For a year … well. We were pushing our luck, and, as Harford notes, it’s only a matter of time before the Huns find the corps. So—what can we do?”

  Ginger offered, “We could prime new recruits to report to a different location and gradually relocate.”

  “What of the Tommies currently in the field?” Davies asked.

  “They will continue to report here.”

  “It might be wise to decentralize the department.” Ben’s aura turned a self-satisfied amber. “If we set up several branches of the Spirit Corps in different locations, it would slow the Huns’ ability to find any of them since they’d get conflicting reports. Since Miss Stuyvesant established this location, she would be admirably suited to setting up additional ones.”

  Ginger narrowed her eyes at him, knowing full well what he was attempting. “Lady Penfold depends upon having me here as her liaison. I am afraid it would be too disruptive to send me away.”

  “Perhaps we can appeal to Lady Penfold.” Ben turned from Ginger to the brigadier-general. “I really think Miss Stuyvesant would be best suited for the task.”

  “I can draw up a list of mediums who would be appropriate.” Besides, being at the Le Havre offices was her only opportunity to see Ben. “The challenge is that we’re short staffed as it is. Everyone is already pulling double shifts just to keep up with the deaths. Some mediums will be required to stay here, regardless, and since this is where HQ is, I think one can hardly argue that it makes sense to send your Spirit Corps liaison away.”

  Davies nodded and resettled his glasses. “You make an excellent point. It would be different, of course, if her ladyship ever deigned to come to a meeting. Make up that list for me, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Meanwhile, I want efforts made towards the security here. Keatley, Lethbridge-Stewart: I want you on that. Harford—you said you were getting murmurs in your network?”

  “I am, sir. Nothing definite, but rumors of rumors of the Germans looking for witches. Now, if that’s them trying to establish a Spirit Corps of their own, or trying to find ours, I cannot tell you. Yet.”

  “Mm…” He made another note on his papers. “Well … I want you to go back out and see if you can find anything definite.”

  “Of course, sir.” Ben darted a glance at Ginger.

  Axtell brushed at his trousers and laughed. “What about me?”

  “Good God, man.” Davies waved at him. “You couldn’t sneak up on a blind nun as badly as you reek. Go bathe. The rest of you lot, just clear out. I have work that needs doing.”

  Which was just as well, because Ginger had words for Ben. Very serious words.

  Chapter Three

  Their walk out of Brigadier-General Davies’s office had more strain than Ginger would have liked. If they had not both been sensitives, then their attempts at light banter might have fooled them into complacency. As it was, by the time they reached the exterior, Ginger was more than ready to let her temper fly.

  “Well done with the tea, Merrow,” Ben called over his shoulder. “I shan’t need you till supper, so you are at leave.”

  “Very good, sir.” Merrow saluted and headed toward the main gates.

  Ginger counted to ten, walking at Ben’s side, and waited until she was confident that Merrow was out of earshot. “Do not ever do that sort of thing again.”

  “Ask him to fetch tea instead of you?”

  “I was speaking of your effort to send me away. Against my express wishes.”

  “Your wish is that you be able to continue to do your duty. My wish is for you to be out of harm’s way. This would have given us both what we wanted.”

  Ginger threw her hands in the air. “There will be danger wherever I am. A zeppelin might get past our aeroplanes and bomb us. Or my circle might break and my soul could detach from my body. Or I could fall down our billet’s stupidly steep stairs and break my neck.”

  “Ginger—” He reached for her hand.

  “I am not finished.” She pulled her hand away. He could see well enough how angry she was without the addition of her aura. “The problem is not whether there is danger or not, but that you are making the decision for me. That is what makes me angry.”

  Ben held up his hands in placation. “You cannot fault me for making the attempt, and I did not press the issue. I mean … as your fiancé, it would have been within my rights to have taken Davies aside or appealed to Lady Penfold. But I didn’t.”

  “Do not even think of such a thing.”

  “Of course I am going to think of it, darling. Acting on it would be a step too far, and I promise not to do that.” He glanced up and gave her a lopsided smile. “Probably.”

  Ginger raised one eyebrow, knowing full well the effect it had upon Ben. As she hoped, he looked abashed.

  Pulling off his cap, he swept a hand through his hair. With a sigh, he settled the hat back upon his head. “Please, Ginger…” Ben took a step closer and held out both his hands, palms up. “Look. You can see I am contrite, can you not? Please forgive me.”

  “I can.” Even without touching him, the steel blue of contrition weighed down the whole of his aura. The brick red that had been there before had faded so it only tinged the edges. “And you are also guilty. What are you planning?”

  Ben gave a wry smile, kicking the dust. “Ah … the guilt is because I knew you would be angry with me.”

  “And you did it anyway?”

  “Truly? Yes.” He took a step closer, holding his hands out until she took them. His palms were warm and lined with unfamiliar calluses, a gift of the war. When they made contact, his aura sprang into clearer focus. Beneath the steel blue contrition and the embarrassment lay a layer of fine black mist. Fear nestled against him like a second skin. “I would rather have you furious with me and know you are safe.”

  She could not doubt his sincerity. Nor, truly, could she pretend that she did not understand his impulse. She tried to look sternly at him, lips drawn together in a line, but when they held hands, he could see her aura and already know he was forgiven.

  She said it anyway, because the willingness to act was more important than mere intentions. “I forgive you. This time.”

  “Oh, thank God.” He squeezed her hands. “Otherwise, I do not know who I would take dancing tonight.”

  “Dancing, is it?”

  “There’s a touring company at the hospitality room. I hear they have a fine cornetist. Join me, Miss Stuyvesant?”

  “Thank you, Captain Harford. I would be delighted.” Ginger checked the watch she wore on a chain around her neck. “My next shift ends at eight p.m.”

  “Twenty—”

  “Twenty hundred. Yes, I know. But this is a social call, so … pick me up at my billet at half past?”

  “I shall await your pleasure.” He gave her a bow. “At half pas
t eight o’clock.”

  * * *

  Ginger paused at Helen’s open door, caught by a flash of an elegant yellow gown. Inside, Helen sat in a chair with her head tipped back against the plaster wall of the asylum. She stirred the air lazily with a wooden fan. The elegance of her gown was broken by the skirt hiked up over her knees.

  Ginger leaned in the door. “That’s a lovely gown. Are you going out?”

  “I was.” Her aura fluttered for a moment with a shade of orange frustration. “Too hot.”

  “Should I have left a ghost in here?”

  Helen snapped her fan shut and shook it at Ginger. “Maybe I make you the ghost. Keep me cool.”

  She snorted in response. “I have a long list of people who might serve the army better as cooling units.”

  “Ooo … the meeting went that bad?” Helen patted the bed with the fan before opening it again. “Was it Davies or Axtell this time?”

  Rolling her eyes, Ginger crossed the room and sat on the rough linen of Helen’s bed. “Both, and Keatley. And Ben. Do you know that the brigadier-general actually asked me to make tea? At the staff meeting!”

  “He wouldn’t have asked your aunt that. That’s for sure.”

  “Exactly. As much as I try to tell myself that it has to do with age—”

  “You don’t have a title. She does.” Helen shrugged one shoulder. “It’s why we asked her to be in charge.”

  “Yes … I know. I just thought that once I got in and proved myself, they would stop overlooking me.”

  Helen’s mouth pursed as though she had tasted a lemon. “Trust me. Doesn’t matter how good you are. It won’t ever be enough for them to take you out of the box they put you in. What did Ben do?”

  “Tried to be his usual heroic, gallant self.” Ginger hesitated, then stood and closed the door to the room. She pressed her hands against the worn wood to reassure herself that it was shut all the way. “He wants me to go away—tried to engineer it, in fact, with the brigadier-general—because he thinks the Germans are targeting us. The Spirit Corps.”

  Helen sucked in a breath and closed the fan. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. “Why do they think that?”

  Ginger quickly relayed the details of the “ghost spy” report. If there were any sense in the world, Helen would be the person in charge of the Spirit Corps. She had more experience and a better theoretical grasp of spiritualism than Ginger, and definitely more so than Aunt Edie. But the army brushed all that expertise aside and saw only her colour.

  When Ginger finished, Helen studied the opposite wall, with her eyes narrowed. “So … so we need to move the mediums from here.”

  “Do you think it would be possible to set up a relay from the nexus to a different location?”

  “The problem … so, let’s think. Right now, we’re using the soldier’s ID discs to bind them to the nexus here. It’s set so that they have to report here before they can rest.”

  “Right. Making replacement ID discs with soil from a new location would be simple enough. It’s getting all the soldiers back in for another blood draw that’s the tricky part.”

  “It doesn’t have to be blood. Spit would work, or any other bodily fluid.”

  “It’s the pretext I’m worried about.” The soldiers had to know something about the Spirit Corps program, or they wouldn’t take note of their surroundings as they died. But the ritual that they went through … it was all a mum show. They actually primed the soldiers during their medical examination. They simply did a blood draw, and added the blood to resin ID discs made from the soil at the nexus in the warehouse.

  Helen raised one finger. “Maybe for a vaccination?”

  “As a long-term solution, that might be what we have to do.”

  “So the question is … can we relocate the nexus in the meantime?”

  “Right.” Ginger had gotten the original idea from a spiritualism concept that souls will imprint upon specific places. But Helen had been the one who’d figured out that they could embed that location in each soldier’s ID disc and then bind it to them with their name and blood. “I’ve been thinking of a sort of relay, but I think we’d still need a group here to manage it.”

  “Hm. A relay … the problem is, we’ve made it so that the soldiers don’t get released until they report at Potter’s Field. I think that after reporting, they’d still have to be sent back here for release to the next plane. We’d have to change the way the binding is structured so that they give their report and then come here—only the nexus won’t pull them if they … let me think on it.”

  “It sounds like you are hitting the same stumbling blocks I was.”

  “It’s all a jumble.” Helen opened her fan again. “See if you can get me a list of the places where they are thinking about setting up other branches.”

  “Have you an idea?”

  “Nope.” She shrugged. “But more information is always good.”

  Ginger stood, brushing the soft gauze of her skirt smooth. “Why don’t you come dancing with us? A break might do you some good.”

  “No. Thank you though.”

  “Oh. Do come. You’re already dressed.”

  Helen cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know whether to be pleased that you’ve forgotten or annoyed.”

  “Forgo—oh.” Of course. Helen could not join them at the hospitality tent. She was black. Ginger’s cheeks heated with embarrassment, and her aura must have been just as ruddy. “I’m—I am so sorry. We can go elsewhere. Or—”

  “Ginger. Go dancing with your fellow.” Helen brushed her skirt off her knees and stood. “I’ll step out with my friends. The music will be better anyway.”

  * * *

  Laughing, Ben swung Ginger around in a tight pivot to avoid another couple on the crowded dance floor. The hospitality room was little more than a tent, but panels had been laid out to create a space for dancing. It seemed half the Western Front had found their way into that tent. At the far end, the small brass ensemble drowned out the distant sound of guns.

  The cornetist was as brilliant as promised. And black, but no one seemed to have any objection to him, so long as he was playing. It was absurd that Helen could not join them here. And yet … Ginger recalled with unease how she would have reacted before she worked with Helen.

  She rather hoped that Helen was also enjoying a night out. It was such a delight to be out of the shapeless uniform and pretending to be part of a normal couple in love.

  Across the floor, Joanne and Edna had found partners and danced away, while Ben’s hand at Ginger’s back guided her through the slow-slow-quick-quick of the new dance craze.

  The blue gauze of her skirt billowed as they spun about the floor. It would be nicer if Ben were in evening dress instead of Army drab. Still, under her left hand, his shoulder was delightfully firm. Ginger gave it a squeeze. “How did you have time to learn the foxtrot?”

  “When I was in Paris.” He tilted his head and deployed his dimples. “It was an assignment. You don’t mind that I danced with other women, do you?”

  “Hardly. I dance with other men.”

  He rocked her in a three-part turn. “Part of your hospitality duty. I know. I try not to be jealous.”

  “Do you succeed?”

  “Not really. No.” But he winked, and his aura was amber with pleasure. “Oh, bother. Speaking of duty…”

  Ginger glanced around as Ben steered her off the dance floor towards a beefy man with an aquiline nose. His blond hair had been darkened by a coat of brilliantine and lay flat against his head as if it were painted there. Over the wool and sweat of the assembly floated a scent of musk and honey. “Ben! Old man. I see you have found the prettiest lady available.”

  “Reg.” Ben released his hold on Ginger and shook the big man’s hand. “May I present you to my fiancée, Miss Virginia Stuyvesant. Ginger, my cousin Captain Reginald Harford.”

  “Ah…” Ginger offered her hand. “So you are the infamous
heir presumptive?”

  Laughing, Reginald revealed that dimples were a family trait. “He delights in teasing me with unlikely scenarios. Though I won’t deny that I’d hoped Ben wouldn’t marry.” He bowed over Ginger’s hand as if he were in evening dress. “But, meeting you, I would guess that my chance of inheriting just shrunk significantly. Have you a sister?”

  Ginger laughed. “An only child, I’m afraid.”

  “Pity.” Reginald eyed Ben, and then the dance floor. “Would you mind terribly if I borrowed your fiancée for a dance?”

  Ben shrugged and shook his head. He was all affable on the outside, but his aura suddenly flared green. “Bad timing, I’m afraid. We were just going to call it a night.”

  “Ah well. Another time, Miss Stuyvesant.”

  “I hope so, Captain Harford.” Ginger looked around the crowded tent, spying the girls from her circle. “Over there … do you see the brunette in the blue dress? That’s Edna Newbold. Ask her to dance. Joanne, the girl next to her, will want to, but she’ll step on your feet.”

  Reginald winked at her. “I appreciate the warning.”

  “Reg—” Ben took him by the arm. “Edna is a nice young woman. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

  “But that so limits my opportunities.” He gave a little bow and, with a wink, made his way into the crowd.

  The dancers quickly swallowed him, but Ginger still waited a moment before leaning in to whisper in Ben’s ear. “What was that about?”

  “I told you I was not good at suppressing my jealousy.” Ben offered her his arm and led her through the tent to the outside. “Besides, he had a … certain reputation at university that I cannot be altogether easy with.”

  Alarmed, Ginger looked back toward the tent. “But I just sent him to Edna.”

  “For one dance, in a crowded tent full of servicemen. She will be fine.” Ben frowned. “Unless she has a habit of going home with any man she meets.”

  Ginger smacked his arm. “Don’t be vulgar.”