Ghostly Echoes by William Ritter Page B

“Everything. The walls, the floor, even the ceiling . . .”
    â€œWhat?” I said.
    â€œHa!” He shook his head and spun in place, marveling at the dark, dusty cobwebs hanging over us. “It’s been scrubbed clean, every inch.”
    I looked around. “This might be why you and Jenny rarely see eye to eye about housekeeping,” I said.
    â€œNot scrubbed clean of dust or droppings,” he said. “There are plenty of those, of course.” I decided not to look too closely for confirmation about the droppings. “Scrubbed clean of magical residue. I can’t pick out any unique otherworldly auras in this space.”
    â€œCouldn’t that just mean that this place doesn’t have any?”
    â€œHardly. When you were young, did you ever spill red wine on your parents’ carpet?”
    I blinked. “Er—yes? I knocked a bottle of merlot off of the table once.”
    â€œAnd what did your mother do to clean it up?”
    â€œNothing. My mother never did the cleaning. She always had a maid handle that sort of thing.”
    â€œPrecisely—white vinegar! Nothing better for a stain. Except that the carpet is never quite like it used to be, is it? Even if you can’t see the red anymore, there’s always something about that spot. It’s a little too clean for the rest of the rug, and it keeps that lingering vinegar smell, right? Now a healthy suspension of sodium bicarbonate might help with that, but there’s always something left behind.”
    â€œYou know a lot about cleaning carpets for someone whose floor looks like a topical map of the East Indies.”
    â€œI know the Viennese waltz, too, but I don’t waste my time doing it every day. Focus, Rook. Someone has layered this space with an essence of natural spirits.”
    â€œThey cleaned the whole building with alcohol?” I said.
    â€œNot that sort of spirits—actual spirits. There are countless varieties of fairy folk, oddlings, and minor deities residing in the world at any given time. Most are confined to the other side of the veil, but nature spirits are especially prevalent on our side. They are largely innocuous. I see them perpetually, so I tend to ignore them, the way you might take no notice of dandelions in a field or clouds in the sky—but in their simplicity they are also a pure source of magic.”
    He gazed around again, breathing in the dusty air. “There is no reason for an industrial building in the middle of the city to reek of nature spirits in exactly the same way that there is no reason for a carpet to reek of vinegar. Someone or something has been here, Miss Rook, and they went to great lengths to scrub themselves from my sight—which means they knew that I would come looking. Whoever was here, they are far more aware of me than I am of them.”
    I swallowed. The already meager sunlight drifting through the dirty windows seemed to dim as if responding to the mood. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I would not care to find myself back here after dark. “Perhaps we should be heading home, sir,” I said. “It’s getting rather late and we have a long walk ahead of us.”
    The streets of New Fiddleham were never empty, but by the time we had made our way out of the Inkling District, the usual bustle of afternoon traffic had ebbed, giving way to the quiet trickle of evening life. Our shadows grew longer and longer as we walked, and the tired sun leaned heavily on the rooftops. I tried to distract myself from my aching feet by running over the moving parts of the case in my mind. Jenny and Howard Carson, the McCafferys, the Hooles—Pavel was the one thread that seemed to tie all three couples together—but loose ends stuck out at every turn.
    We passed through a neighborhood of tired old buildings, the sort that had once been big family estates, but whose ostentatious halls had long since been divided