We entered the library hand in hand, attracting more than a cursory glance from the librarian.

“Hi,” I said, walking over with a smile against her disapproving frown. “We wanted to check the journal archives and any other source you’d have for local history in the early 20th century.” Flashing her my student id card, I added, “It’s for a school project.”

“School project” worked like a charm. The kind of things adults believe when the words “school project” are thrown at them is astounding, as if it were an alternate, dangerous and infectious reality. The knee-jerk reaction suited us fine and the woman, a slim and elegant lady I’d not have pegged as a bookworm, took us to the periodicals section of the library.

It was dark, dank, and claustrophobic, with rows of steel shelves holding binders with dusty, discolored journals from days past. If we had to look through it all, it could take us the best part of the week.

“This shelf,” she said, pointing at one in particular. “You’ll find the binders coded by year and paper.”

“And the papers are whole?” Trevor asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

She nodded and left. I looked around for a chair to toss my bag and jacket, but there was nothing so I just piled it in a corner, hoping that it was dust free. Trevor did the same thing.

“We should probably split the search,” Trevor suggested.

“That’s a good idea. Let’s try the first decades, see if we can find something about their arrival or something.”

I took a 1901. He pulled 1911 free. We started to pore over the faded print and frail papers. Since they were local journals, the news you could find was much more picturesque than anything in a national tirade. Actually, I think it was more picturesque than the current local papers. Balls, marriages, someone destroying someone else’s flowerbeds…

The only good news about the uninteresting reports was the certainty that the arrival of the English family wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.

The letters started to dance in front of my eyes after two hours and three bindings. My eyes were bloodshot and I started to think that this archive would swallow us whole, never allowing us to see the light of day again. But then, Trevor's voice broke the silence.

“There’s something here. A party to introduce their daughter to society.”

I snapped my eyes to his. “What’s her name?”

“Helen,” he smirked. “But at least we know the family existed.” He scanned the brief article for a moment longer. “Check year 1907.”

I put down my binding and struggled to free the correct year. “Any idea about the month?”

“Nope. That’s too much to ask.”

So he kept working his way forward for any relevant mention and I started to study the papers for the beginning of the story.

I was nearly reaching the end of the year when it glared at me out of the page, a huge title in bold with a picture and two columns of narrow print.

“Earls of Derbyshire to move to Chesterfield,” I read aloud. “Jeremy Nightray and his wife, Lady Caroline, have chosen to exchange their ancestral manor for the quieter life in the United States of America. It is an honor for Chesterfield to welcome them into our mist.”

Trevor crouched behind me to read over my shoulder. The article went on to describe the sumptuous house the family would move to and to explain the assets they’d left behind, including a seat in the House of Lords. Very standard, polite fawning.

But the end of the article made me smile. The reporter, obviously intent on giving every juicy bit of gossip she could gather about the newcomers, added that “perhaps the reasons for abandoning their Mother Country were less clear than a cursory glance would suggest. Sources in England spoke of a family curse that the current Lord Nightray would be intent on escaping.”

Bingo.

We weren’t looking for a curse, but really, how different could it be from a haunting?

It was better than nothing.

The current Lord Nightray, Sir Jeremy, might have darker reasons to move his household out of the Mother Country. Ten years ago, when he married the Lady Caroline, he called on the Church of England to perform an exorcism on his land—rumor has it that the Manor has been haunted by the ghost of his great-aunt, Lady Beatrice Nightray.

We believe that the British clergy failed in this instance, as they must have failed in 1850 and 1867, when the one requesting the service was Sir Jeremy’s grandfather and brother of the so-called ghost, George Nightray. Instead of asking for another service, though, Sir Jeremy would have taken matters into his own hands by abandoning the lands haunted by the ghost.

Regardless of the existence of Beatrice Nightray’s ghost, we do have to admit that the circumstances surrounding her death were never explained to the public. We’ve only been able to learn that she died on the lake that marks the border between the Nightray and Stafford properties, and some of the most outraged theories claim that it was a suicide. But why was she there? Why was she alone? Was it truly a suicide?

The icing on the tale comes with the mysterious, sudden death of the Stafford heir, Andrew. Those who are romantics at heart believe that he was in love with Beatrice, whom he’d have met through his best friend – who was none other than George. Upon her death, he’d have followed out of sadness and a broken heart.

“There, we have our ghost,” I said.

“Or our demon.” Trevor nodded to the text. “There are exorcisms, after all.”

I shrugged, more uncomfortable than I cared to be. “They failed. That could explain it.”

“We still don’t know much about the ghost. What it did or how to get rid of it.”

“No, but there must be something else. There’s supposed to be lots of scandal, remember?”

“I guess. From this moment onward, then?”

I nodded, trying to convey a sense of purpose that I was far from feeling, and we went back to work.

I lost track of the time that passed before the next title screamed at my wavering vision.

“Mr. Randall died from unknown causes two weeks after his wedding to Helen Nightray,” I read. “Randall had been twenty-five. He’d been healthy and robust and on his way to inheriting part of his father’s firm as a marriage gift. He had faded after the wedding, the paper says. He’d lost interest in everything—his new wife, his new business, his social life—and exhaustion had claimed him.”

“Or perhaps,” the last lines read, “it had been madness claiming his life. The only thing able to rouse Mr. Randall from his stupor had been his violin. His obsession grew to the point where the Notary Public had been forced to declare him incapable a mere two days before his death, when Mr. Randall had tried to throw the service out of his house, declaring that their clatter didn’t allow him to hear the music. Witnesses swore that Mr. Randall had been playing a tune when he died.”

I blinked as it clicked in place. Oh, God. In a rush, I went back to previous papers and started leafing through them, my hunch morphing into cold dread with each piece of apparently unrelated news.

Fran Beckenridge, brilliant attorney… Jeremy Nightray’s associate.

The acclaimed operetta singer, Diane Garnett… Caroline Nightray says she’s devastated after losing her most steadfast friend.

Harrison Linwood cannot perform at the christening of little Conway Nightray due to his health condition.

All of them died. All of them under unusual circumstances. The papers were hazy on the details, but they mentioned mental instability before death.

“Trevor, we’re looking for the wrong thing.”

He lifted his tired gaze from a musty volume and just stared at me. I explained, “The Nightrays aren’t the important part. Nothing happened with them.”

“I don’t understand…”

“It’s their relationships. It’s not them, but whoever got entangled with them. Those are the ones who… died.”

He was by my side in a moment, scanning the article.

My blood ran cold. At some point, I realized, I had reached out to grasp Trevor's hand, and I was holding onto him for dear life. I searched his face and found his gaze glued to the page. With visible effort, he shook his head and snorted softly, a poor attempt at a laugh.

“But I haven’t married anyone. And I’m definitely not friends with members of a dead family.”

“But you hear the song anyway. That must mean that you’ve been in contact with them somehow. That you’ve…” I trailed off and the papers fell from my limp hands. “Their stuff,” I breathed. “You’ve been in contact with their stuff.”

Trevor's eyes widened as his train of thought caught up with me. “The theater set. Where I got the idea for the damn song in the first place.”

“Exactly.”

He looked away and ran his hand through this hair, pushing the long strands out of his eyes. I saw his fingers tremble and he kept his gaze averted.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What do the dead people have in common then? Attorney, heir, singer, player… I can see where the player and I fit. I could even get the whole operetta thing. But, the rest?”

I didn’t know the other people. They were just names in fading ink, without faces. For me, they were empty figures. Trevor was beside me though, kneeling amid the dust and the papers, and I knew with sick certainty why she’d want him.

“Talent. That must be the common thing.”

He shook his head and I pressed on, “Trevor, you can’t see yourself, but you’re radiant. You’ve this… touch, this vision. And you’ve the power to share it and to move others. The rest must’ve been like that—brilliant, unique, passionate in their own fields. Like the sun to Beatrice’s cold afterlife.” I stopped my babbling when I realized that Trevor didn’t share my burst of energy. He looked slumped, pale and haggard under the artificial light.

“Like a sun going nova,” he said, startling me.

“What?”

“That’s how this is going to end. I sat in a dead girl’s chair, played a song she liked, and now I’m going to explode like fireworks to keep her entertained.”

“It’s not going to end like that,” I said, forcefully.

“I’m going to lose my mind. Sometimes I wonder if I haven’t already.” He looked away, swallowing. “I… the song was playing yesterday, inside their house. It was like a string quartet at a ball. I know it wasn’t real, but I heard every note all the same. I thought I saw her, for a moment. But I didn’t. The window was shuttered. There was nothing to see.”

I grabbed his face, forcing him to look at me. “I’m not letting you go. We’ll find a way. We know what we’re facing, so we’re better prepared than Randall and anyone else. And we have each other. You’re not going anywhere.”

“What if the alternative is worse?”

I frowned. “Nothing could be worse.”

“She’s wretched stuff, Alice.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” His fingers wrapped around my wrist, caressing the skin with his thumb. “It might be nothing. Perhaps my mind playing tricks, my dreams trying to cope. But something tells me that I really saw her, heard her.”

“In the mansion?”

“In my house. Last night. Or somewhere else entirely. I just can’t tell anymore. But she was there, listening while the song was played on a piano. I know it was a man playing, and he was good. Better than I could hope to be. And she was… happy.” His thumb stilled and his fingers tightened their grip, and it almost hurt. I bit back my complaint, though, because his eyes were hollow and haunted, and I needed to know what he was talking about.

When he spoke again, his voice was a broken whisper.

“And she was dead.”

Someone cleared her throat behind me and I jumped out of my skin, half-expecting to face the bloodthirsty phantom of Beatrice. Instead, I found the librarian. She looked perplexed and disgusted at the number of binders lying about us.

Not murderous at all, I tried to tell my rapid beating heart.

“It’s closing time,” she said after a moment.

Crap. We needed more. But somehow, I knew she wouldn’t bend the rules if I told her that a century-old ghost was trying to kill my boyfriend and that research might save his life, so I just smiled and tugged Trevor to his feet.

“Time really flew by,” I said with a smile while we picked up our stuff. “We’ll be back tomorrow for more; thank you very much.”

She nodded and walked behind us to the door, as if she didn’t trust us to go out. She locked up behind our backs and I turned to face Trevor. He looked more serene. Whatever made him talk to me about his dream, vision or whatever, it was gone. I had to bring it back.

“What… else did you see?” I asked as soon as we’d gotten away from the most populated streets in town. Our neighborhood was quiet, and I needed to talk to him before he dropped me off at home.

He shook his head. “Nothing. It wasn’t important. It wasn’t even clear.”

The feeling twisted in my gut, ugly and painful. I knew he was lying. He had started talking about his dream for a reason, but he was closing off with each step we took away from the library.

My house came up as we rounded a corner and I tried to hide my desperation.

“We’ll fix this. Together. But you have to tell me everything so I can help.”

He sneaked a glance to my front door. The light was on inside, in the sitting room, and TV images reflected against the windowpanes. No movement indicated that we were being watched, so he wrapped his arms around me, turning his head to kiss my temple.

“Everything will be okay. Don’t worry.” He took a step back, letting me go. “Love you,” he mouthed.

I didn’t understand. Something had changed since that moment in the library, but I didn’t know what and I didn’t know why. I could only feel him slipping through my fingers like river sand.

God, no. Don’t let this be good-bye.

He walked backwards, his pale, sunken features smiling softly until the dark swallowed him. I wanted to go after him, but I was frozen in place. By the time I could think of following, he was already gone.

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