Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences (4 page)

Books lowered himself to one knee, looking up at her with a delighted smile on his face. “It would be most unprecedented in the intelligence community to have a ghost agent,” Books said, trying to keep a casual tone but it was clear he was utterly captivated by the concept. “But you’d have to
want
it, young lady. Truly want it. You were mistaken for human because you had no idea of your state. You have to
will
yourself into being.”

“But…you want me to stay?” Bettina asked. She’d never had a home. She’d never had a family. She’d never been taken in. Never wanted.

A yearning so pure welled up inside of her. She wanted this indeed. This hope. This belonging. A distinct new happiness filling an old empty void. Suddenly, she was conscientious of the floor. She understood what was solid and what was shade and the coexistence therein.

“Yes!” Mrs Marsh exclaimed, all stoicism cast aside, a mother longing for a child, no matter what kind of state that child was in...

Bettina smiled, rose and glided to the door. As she did she heard Mrs Marsh hiss a breath, as if she was about to beg her not to go again. Bettina turned, feeling movement in a new way. It was interesting, fascinating. And yes, it was quite fun.

Bettina would, most assuredly, tell them all about it.

“I don’t need the device,” Bettina replied. “I just need to be with them. My kind. And then I’ll come home and tell you everything.”

It was the first time Bettina had ever said “home”.

And she had never felt so alive as she floated through the door and out onto bustling, ever-so-haunted New York City.

A Feast of Famine

Karina Cooper

Galway, Ireland

Winter, 1879

Miss Lobelia Snow was a
natural
. As providence would have it, she had been born with the best of all the world about her: the exquisite appearance inherently guaranteed by excellent breeding, the effortless carriage of one confident with her place in the world, the fortunes of a well-heeled family, an intellect considered to be both clever
and
engaging, and an uncanny grasp of social interaction.

She was, in a word, gifted, and well did London’s society know it.

So it was the great scandal of 1865 when at the accomplished age of fifteen, Miss Snow announced at her coming out that she would not be marrying at all, and would all the fuss about it please turn to her four sisters?

What furore this caused became the toast of the gossiping town, yet there was no hoped-for announcement of marriage that year, nor at the next. After three elegant but remarkably unsuccessful seasons, Miss Snow was declared with some heartache to be firmly
on the shelf
.

Some years later, only a fortnight from her thirtieth birthday—and the highly anticipated label of
hopeless spinster
—Miss Snow could claim herself in possession of three rather notable accomplishments. The first being her role as indulgent aunt to seventeen nieces and nephews, the lot of which appeared to be rather more agile, precocious, and sticky than society would have led her to believe children to be. All the better to visit with gifts and spun sugar, then leave them with their rightful parents.

The second accomplishment being the ring worn upon her right hand. With no insignia in place, nor any particular marker upon it, none but those who knew what to look for would recognise it as a tracking ring from the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences—her truest and most lasting love.

The third accomplishment, Miss Snow reflected as she alighted from the one-man mail-coach kind enough to carry her from Dublin to Galway, was her history. Comprised of a long string of successes, Miss Snow’s resume was a laudable one, her reputation that of an agent who could be trusted to get a job done. This would explain why she found herself currently in possession of the name of a man who was to be her partner in this current endeavour, written inside a mandate from Director Fount:

Have received word of plague in Galway. Mirrors historical activities, research enclosed. Travel immediately. Rendezvous with resident agent T. Kensington Kennedy.

Director Fount, if indeed he had written the letter, was taciturn to the point of rudeness. More likely, this had been transcribed by another, and delivered post-haste.

Nevertheless, Miss Snow was not an agent who questioned her orders. So prepared, she waved cheerfully at the skeletally thin old man who’d manned the levers guiding the mail coach and twitched her coat more firmly into place about her neck. The cold in Galway was bitingly refreshing, and she expected her cheeks to bloom as rosy as that of the hearty Irish folk who lived here.

If a majority of said hearty Irish folk staring at her seemed to be doing so rather too hard, Miss Snow acclimated it to the slim line of her trousers and the impact of her smile—a force to be reckoned with on any day, or so her many suitors had claimed.

That she was British, and therefore the enemy in these trying times, was all part of the game.

Caitriona Kensington Kennedy was a girl who took after her da more than most would like. She was taller than most lads, burdened with his wide shoulders and thick arms—which was useful for the work she’d helped him complete, to be sure, but not at all what a lass should be known for.

That the two of them, father and daughter, had crafted such delicate items as to be courted the world ‘round did not seem to matter to the residents of Galway. She should have been married long ago, they said, and did a disservice to her father’s upbringing in saying it.

At least, she’d been given a reprieve from such concern while she’d tended to her da, even if it was a reprieve she would have given near anything to not have.

While the tensions between the farmers and their British landlords had ensured that most tongues remained fixated on the returning famine and the rent those bloody landlords demanded despite it, Caity spent the past fortnight at her da’s bedside, bathing his fevered brow and coaxing what little food or water he’d accept into his parched mouth.

In the end, only whiskey would do. He spat out everything else—food and water—as if it caused his tongue to swell.

Now that he’d gone, the wake held and the funeral rites finished, she stood at the side of his cold, freshly turned grave and wasn’t sure if she was to cry or sigh in relief. The final days and nights had been bad; so much so that she’d felt guilt for thinking it a welcome end for them both.

It wasn’t raining today, though it should have been. Ireland lost a good man.

Maybe, she thought as she hunched her shoulders against December’s frigid wind, Ireland wasn’t weeping because she got to claim him in the end. Buried in the earth as he was, he’d rot with all of the too many good men Ireland had claimed when the famine turned bad enough to starve her sons and daughters.

One day, Caity’d be right there, next to her proud da and sweet ma, who’d been taken by a different fever long before the potatoes went to rot again and the first blood spilled in this sodding land war. Until that time, she wondered if she’d ever find warmth again.

“Are you Mr Kennedy’s daughter?”

The voice came from behind her, carried on the wind in such a way that it seemed to float like an angel’s hosanna. The educated tones of an English woman did not belong in Galway, no matter what landlords might claim Connacht.

Caity turned, her back up already, though she couldn’t figure just why. Perhaps more of the tension besetting the province had affected her than she’d thought.

The woman who stood a respectful distance away was not a sight Caity expected to see. She wore trousers, which was all fine and well for some of the working lasses, but odd on a lady, and her hair was wound into a fetching coil, sleek but for a bit of a wave. It was the healthy colour of good soil to plant in, rich like the darkest wood, and framing a truly lovely face.

From the top of her low hat to the tips of her glossy riding boots, the lady was—well, she was a
lady
. In trousers.

Caity’s brow furrowed.

“Oh, dear, are you simple?” The question seemed as if it should cause offense, but it was asked with such a winsome smile that Caity flushed, deeply embarrassed to be so charmed. “I’m looking for the daughter of T. Kensington Kennedy.”

Her da’s name earned a narrowed glare. “Who’s askin’?” she demanded. “We’ve got no call for entertainin’ the likes of—” She caught herself, her callused hands curling into fists inside her father’s old coat pockets.
We
. As if her da were still alive.

Sympathy filled the stranger’s smile. “I know you’re grieving, and I’m sorry,” she said gently. “But there’s foul things afoot and I’m in need of a partner.” She gave no opportunity to interrupt, striding forward with a gloved hand outstretched. “My name is Miss Lobelia Snow, you may address me as Miss Snow. Are you T. Kensington Kennedy’s oldest?”

“Only,” she replied, accepting the hand and feeling rather more as if the wind had swept her up off her feet to deposit her in this woman’s oddly compelling presence. “Me ma named me Caitriona, me da gave me Kensington. I was the only child.”

“C. Kensington Kennedy?” Her smile quirked, bringing a lovely warmth to eyes the colour of moss in a clear spring. “Delightfully apropos. You’ve the shoulders of a blacksmith, but the hands—” her gaze fell to the scarred fingers clasped between soft kid gloves “—of a tinkerer. Tell me, Miss Kennedy, did your father teach you anything?”

Caity snatched her hand back, bothered when it tingled. The sudden loss of warmth from Miss Snow’s handshake should not have been so obvious. Her eyebrows drew down so hard, she could see her own black eyelashes as she glowered. “He taught me everything he knew,” she said firmly. “I can do anything he’d be needed for.” And she would, too, in his name.
That
was the way she’d respect his memory.

That she hadn’t quite decided that until this moment was tucked away for later thinking.

Miss Snow’s smile ratcheted up to near blinding delight. “Wonderful! Exactly what I’d hoped to hear. I confess, my dear, you are not at all what I’d expected, but I believe providence is smiling.” She beckoned. “Come, there’s work to be done.”

“But I—”

“Come, now,” she insisted, much more imperiously than a British woman should on such dangerous ground. She strode back towards the gate, where the wrought iron separated the living from the dead.

Caity shot an apologetic glance to the pair of graves, one covered by winter dark grass and the other a hillock of turned earth, and hurried to catch up with the strange woman before she strode out of sight.

Miss Snow possessed a remarkable sense of people. Although C. Kensington Kennedy did not particularly look like agency material, there was something to the way she held herself—as if she was greatly aware of her height, yet could not be shamed to bow for the comfort of others. She was a full head taller than Miss Snow, who was not herself a petite woman, and the width of her shoulders beneath her patched coat suggested she was no stranger to hard work.

If she was half the master crafter her father was, Miss Snow would return to London with a report
and
a new agent, rather than just the one.