The Eterna Files by Leanna Renee Hieber

Yours and mine. But someone should know what happened to you, Louis,” Andre stated. “Your sweetheart, perhaps? You adored her, that woman deserves answers—”
    â€œKeep Clara out of it,” Louis warned, an icy whisper in Andre’s ear, “with her condition, I shouldn’t—”
    â€œI’ll leave the key. If they’re as clever as you say, they can figure out what it belongs to without incriminating me. And then I’ll be on my way home, none the wiser for my presence.”
    Louis’s anxiety was unassuaged. “You hid my papers as I asked, didn’t you?”
    â€œI left what you gave me at the college,” Andre assured. Whether or not he’d be telling his employers about the materials or the disaster, he had yet to decide. He wanted to wash his hands of all of it, be done with spying. But survival first. Strategy second.
    Andre stared up at the Romanesque edifice, dark and looming in the early light. Louis’s presence was a cold draft at his neck. The living man shifted the envelope from one hand to the other, considering his task. The door was locked. Andre flipped back the thick cuff of his sleeve to reveal several thin metal implements. In mere moments the lock had been picked and the door swung wide.
    â€œDo I want to know where you learned that?” spectral Louis murmured.
    â€œThe bad egg survives,” Andre muttered.
    Charging up to the third floor, Andre threw wide a wooden door to reveal a long dark room whose decor looked more a lady’s parlor than an office. Depositing the envelope conspicuously in an empty tray, he sped out again. “Onward toward resolution,” he rallied. “And vanishing from the record.”
    He darted out onto Pearl Street, tipped a wide-brimmed hat lower over his brow and turned back to see Louis floating in front of the building, his grayscale form immeasurably eerie in the misty, waterfront dawn. After a moment, he wafted to Andre’s side.
    â€œThere’s so much Clara and I should have shared,” Louis murmured.
    Andre shifted on his feet. “You never told her about me, did you?”
    â€œNo,” Louis insisted. “You came to me in trouble. I never told her I had a twin or betrayed your confidence.”
    â€œAnd I never deserved a brother so good, loyal, and true,” Andre said bitterly, for the first time feeling tears well up. He wouldn’t tell England another word, he decided.
    In the tumultuous, heaving throng, the sheer, maddening bustle that was New York Harbor, Andre made his way through a deep maze of wood and steel, planks, ropes, and sail. One small leather pack slung over his back, a precious ceremonial dagger well-hidden on his person, he wove swiftly to the docks. Louis floating beside him, traveling right through anyone in his way … persons who would think him nothing but a breath of cool breeze.
    Despite Andre’s speed and twisting path, he noticed that a particular face was never far from him in the throng. Even crowded onto the ship that should have carried him safely away, his desire to vanish was thwarted. The follower spoke to the captain in a soft, upper-class British accent. And stared right at Andre where he stood among the massed humanity on deck.
    â€œDamn you, Lord Black, and your spies,” Andre muttered. “Damn you all to hell.”
    *   *   *
    Franklin Fordham lived alone in the stately, Federal-style Brooklyn Heights house the rest of his family had abandoned after his brother’s death in the war, his mother having found it impossible not to be haunted by the place. Franklin bore his own suffering like a pebble in his shoe that he never removed. His brother was dead and Franklin hadn’t been there, fighting at his side, due to a bad leg. Living in the home they had once shared was a form of penance.
    At a sharp rap, he opened the town house door to a most lovely, welcome sight.
    There,