Unfair Winds (Threads of Wyrd Book 3) by Camille Duplessis

Author:Camille Duplessis [Duplessis, Camille]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oliver Heber Books
Published: 2024-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

12

He was only passing by David’s door when Theo heard his voice, muffled through the wood. Because Lennie was in the kitchen and not here upstairs, Theo wondered if David felt better and had roused himself to speak with Alastair or perhaps Benson. It had to be the prior. Theo caught no one else’s tones, and especially not Benson’s, which were distinct enough through either wood or thin air. He knocked, thinking to offer tea or something to drink. David carried on talking as though he hadn’t heard.

Nudging the door open carefully, Theo said, “David?”

The scene was not entirely what he’d expected. David was abed under a blanket, not sitting up on the bed.

“Were you given to… habitually murdering?” David asked, his eyes shut.

Peering at him, Theo felt David could be dreaming. He never had spoken in his sleep in all the nights they’d spent together. Granted, they were not always sleeping, yet there’d been enough sleep for Theo to say with certainty he hadn’t heard it. But David was now doing many things he’d never done. Rubbing shoulders with Paul Apollyon, running a public house, speaking with someone like Benson as though they were equals, talking to a⁠—

Theo started when he noticed the man-shaped, opaque shadow lounging in the wingback chair by the unlit hearth. Afternoon sunlight made it obvious and stark enough. The illumination fell on the figure as much as it would fall on an ordinary person, but it underscored just how unfathomably deep its color was.

Talking to a ghost.

The very notion made Theo want to run and find Paul, tell him to go to sleep right this instant. It did not seem the shadowy man noticed him. At the least, it did not react. Perhaps it was just ignoring him. He was about to creep back out the door he’d rather boldly opened, but David’s voice slowed his steps. “But you’re talking of murder as though we’re planning a menu.”

Theo quite wanted to know who was the object of this conversation. That it was Alastair and David having it seemed clear. It might even be Alastair’s proverbial unfinished business.

A great number of people seemed to natter on about ghosts having something left undone, including Benson. He was more prosaic and less dramatic in his suppositions than most, though. Said it could be something so simple as one’s favorite scarf being given to the relative one had secretly most hated. This example seemed oddly specific, so much so that Tom had maintained it could not be made up. But no one wished to ask Benson outright.

In all of the traditional or popular ghost stories, it was always something rather more important than a scarf. One had been murdered and nobody knew the truth of it, or one had been denied the opportunity to marry one’s love, or some such thing.

Theo waited, wanting to hear more.

He was not disappointed. In the natural amount of time it would take someone to reply, for David to then pause and formulate an answer, he mumbled, “My world felt that way, too.

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