Lachlan took a healthy draught of his own medicine. ‘You believe both the viscount and the viscountess are dead?’
Thomas nodded.
Rowan waved away Lachlan’s question. ‘He left marks on Clio?’ Her anger was dissolving into something far more troubling: fear.
‘Yes. I didn’t see the ghost, but I saw what he was doing to Clio. Her neck was bruised.’
Lachlan’s cheeks paled. ‘It isn’t the first time. She had a vision in the viscount’s house on the first day. The viscountess slapped him in the vision, but Clio came out of it with a mark on her cheek.’
Of course.
Clio’s behaviour that day had never made sense to Thomas. But it made sense now.
‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’ Rowan might as well have eviscerated Lachlan with a butter knife.
‘Clio told me all was well.’ Lachlan’s voice was strained.
‘Oh yes. It’s perfectly grand a spirit left marks on my niece.’ The next crack of thunder shook the foundations of Scotland Yard.
‘She swore the ghost wasn’t trying to hurt her.’ Thomas shook his head, trying desperately to understand the rules of this new world. ‘She said he mistook her for the murderer. Is she in danger from the ghost?’
Rowan shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps if someone had thought to tell me what the bloody hell was going on before my niece left her coven to fight some murdereralone, I might have more insight.’
Lachlan ran his hand through his hair, tugging hard on the wild curls. ‘You are always so protective of them, Rowan. You can’t keep them locked away forever. They must live their lives.’
‘They cannot live their lives if they are dead.’ Her words dripped with barely contained violence as fear punched Thomas in the gut.
Rowan paced from one end of the small office to the other. ‘Ellie couldn’t see what form the threat took, whether it was a living man or spectre.’ She turned her focus to Thomas. ‘Do you believe this Berty is the one who killed Viscount Beachley?’
Thomas tried to think clearly through the fear that plucked at his wits. Clio was in danger. And he was half a day’s travel away. He was such a fool for leaving her. ‘He has motive. He had the means, and according to Anna, he was there the day her father died.’
Rowan tapped her finger against her blue skirt. ‘As a rule, I am generally more worried about the living than the dead. If he suspects she knows, Clio has more to fear from Berty than Viscount Beachley’s ghost. Especially as the person most capable of protecting her from a violent man ran back to London with his tail between his legs.’
He opened his mouth to argue, but she narrowed her gaze and kept talking.
‘When things got messy, you left. Hardly helpful.’
His rebuttal died because she was right.
‘You said she pulled you into one of her visions? Was the viscount there? Or the viscountess?’
Thomas hadn’t given any specifics about the vision. Rowan might know the truth, but he wasn’t ready to share it aloud. He certainly didn’t want Lachlan to hear the shameful secret he had guarded for so long. ‘No. It wasn’t about them. It was… a memory from my past.’
Rowan’s mouth parted and her grey eyes darkened to the blue of a stormy sea. ‘I see.’
Thomas wished he could say the same. It obviously meant something that Clio was able to see his memories, but while Rowanseemed to know, he didn’t think she would share any information with him.
She began pacing again. A sickly plant in the corner of the room swayed towards her every time she drew near it, like a sunflower following the arc of the sun. Noticing, she paused and spared Lachlan a scathing look. ‘Why have plants if you aren’t going to take care of them?’ She reached out and touched the wilted spider plant. Instantly, it turned from yellow to lush green, the fronds plumping before their eyes.
Lachlan brushed aside her criticism. ‘Rowan, what are you thinking? What did Ellie see?’
Rowan paused, and Thomas would have grabbed the woman by the shoulders and shaken the answers from her if he could have done more than twitch his pinkie. If Clio’s life was at risk, Thomas would tear the bloody ghosts out of the ether where they hid and destroy them with his own hands before he would let them hurt Clio.
‘Nothing was clear to Ellie. Perhaps her closeness to Clio inhibits her sight. But she knew Clio was in danger. No doubt from this Berty. And her destiny, whatever that might be, is inescapable. I nearly had to cast a binding spell to keep Ellie and Helena in the house. They were determined to find Clio. But fighting against fate only guarantees failure.’ She speared Lachlan with a heavy gaze.
Thomas shook his head. ‘I have to go back. I never should have left her. I was running when I should have stayed.’ He stood, belatedly realising he had been released from whatever power had held him. Rowan grabbed his arm, halting him.
The world stopped spinning on its axis as everything went perfectly still. Lachlan was frozen by his desk. A fly hung in mid-flight. Thomas felt the strain of the universe as it flexed to be free.
