Even so, the nature of old things meant they had absorbed a lot of the emotions and memories of the people who had owned them and the history they had witnessed, often leaving a bittersweet resonance. Some buyers seemed attuned to those vibes even if they couldn’t have explained what they sensed, while others were blissfully unaware.
Erik worked his way through the inventory, glad that the prior owner had been meticulous about record-keeping. That meant he could see what items had come through the store, both past and present.
“There it is.” Erik spotted the doomed ship’s name and pulled up the records.
“Find something?” Ben walked out of the kitchen cradling a cup in his hands. He came around to look over Erik’s shoulder at the screen.
“Yeah, I thought it sounded familiar.” Erik pointed to the items that had popped up. “Monty mentioned it.
“TheMohawkburned and sank, but small items washed ashore in the days and weeks afterward. An old man collected them and eventually sold the collection to Trinkets. Somehowa cup and saucer with the ship’s logo survived,” Erik marveled. “Along with a salt shaker and a handful of old buttons.”
“That’s a tie to the ship itself, but not to Lila,” Ben said. “And if the items are inside the store’s protections, it’s probably not what’s anchoring her ghost, especially since she’s haunting places outside the store.”
Erik nodded. “I agree. But it might be enough for Alessia to test our theory about magic being involved in the sinking. If she can figure out what happened, she might be able to neutralize what remains of the spell. Monty’s a strong medium, but he isn’t a witch.”
“Did you sell the pieces, or are they still in storage?” Ben leaned closer for a better look at the photos.
“Storage.” Erik jotted a note to himself on his phone. “They came in right before the store was sold, and I’m guessing it just wasn’t a priority to deal with them.” He looked up at Ben. “How about you?”
Ben grinned. “I think I’ve found our woman in white.”
Erik followed him back to the kitchen and pulled up a chair next to where Ben sat in front of his laptop.
“TheMohawksailed from Boston to New York, then down to Charleston and Jacksonville with passengers and cargo, before turning around and doing the whole trip in reverse,” Ben told him. “There was a bad storm the night theMohawksank, but what doomed it was a fire in the cargo hold. Other ships got the passengers to safety, but all the cargo was lost, and the ship burned to the waterline before it sank,” Ben said.
“What about Lila?” Erik leaned in for a better look at Ben’s screen.
“There’s no Lila on the passenger manifest,” Ben said. “If she was registered, that wasn’t her legal name. Since the official account says all the passengers were saved, I think she must have been a stowaway, like Jon said.”
“That’s going to make it tough to find out who she was,” Erik replied.
Ben nodded. “I know. I did a search on missing women named Lila in the ports where theMohawkstopped in the year it sank. She could have come from other places, but I had to narrow down the search.”
“That was a hundred years ago. If she wasn’t famous, no one might have noticed that she went missing,” Erik said. “And the records are spotty.”
“True. But I think I got a break.” Ben brought up a new screen and pointed to what was posted.
“Delilah McIntosh, also known as Lila, daughter of a prosperous banker in New York, was reported missing right before theMohawkincident. The article leaves it open to whether she ran away or was kidnapped, but there was a reward offered for information and for returning her safely to her family,” Ben said.
The grainy black-and-white photograph of a young woman in her twenties came up on the screen.
“Because her family was well-off, the story got picked up by other papers,” Ben said. “One of her friends was quoted as saying that she had met a man from Charleston and fallen in love with him against her family’s wishes, and that they planned to run away together when she disappeared.”
“You think she was going from New York to Charleston on theMohawkand stowed away so her family couldn’t find and stop her?” Erik asked.
“Seems likely,” Ben replied.
Outside, the wind howled and rain came down in sheets, tapping against the store’s big front windows.
“I think theMohawkitems are in the storage area in the back room,” Erik said. “If not, we’ll have to wait out the storm before we go to the offsite unit.”
“Why don’t you call Alessia and see if she can check if there’s magic involved? If that doesn’t work, we can see if Haley would help dispel Lila’s spirit.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Erik replied. “I’ll call her, and then see if I can find the items from theMohawk.”
“Not going anywhere else tonight,” Ben said. “I’ll start thinking about what we’ve got on hand to make dinner.”
Erik pulled up Alessia’s contact information on his phone and figured she would probably be home, given the bad weather. Alessia Mason was a friend of theirs and a powerful witch. She ran the local coven as well as the Spirit of the Sea gift shop, and her marriage into an old, prominent Cape May family provided a degree of social protection beyond what her magic afforded.
