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“I cannot tell you that,” the Invisible told him.

Mercury began pacing. “How is it that you’re familiar to me? You are an Invisible. The only way I could ever have seen you before is if you were my attachment, and you have never been.”

“I cannot—”

“—cannot tell me that.”

Mercury’s pacing picked up speed. He had carried so many secrets for so long, and he was discovering he had more than even he knew. It was just as the Scholar said. You carry more secrets than you realize.

“You have the same name that I gave myself. But you would have had it your entire existence. You have never been my attachment, yet you are familiar to me.” Mercury couldn’t make the least sense out of any of it. “You weren’t able to tell Tacey what your name is. Can I tell her? Or will I also find that somehow impossible?”

“I don’t know,” the Invisible said.

Mercury wasn’t sure he would tell her even if he could. He couldn’t explain the coincidence even to himself. How would he explain it to her? And he couldn’t think of the ghost even in his own mind as “Mercury Raine.” That was too confusing. The ghost was the Mercury Raine who was invisible to everyone else.

Invisible Rain. It felt like a name a ghost might have. Mercury could think of this ghost that way. It was the only thing that would prevent his brain from simply melting into a heap of confused mush.

Into this moment of perplexed thoughts and frustrating uncertainty, the Quiet Queen slipped into the room. Mercury had to remind himself not to give any indication that he wasn’t alone in the room. The Quiet Queen, after all, didn’t know about the Reluctant Recluse or the Invisible Rain. No one could see or hear the Reluctant Recluse. Only Mercury could see and hear the Invisible Rain.

“I’d hoped to find you here,” the Quiet Queen said. “Despite our efforts at haunting him, the Governor has managed to fall asleep. The ghosts are wondering if we ought to redouble our efforts at tormenting him.”

It was a good question. It would help tremendously if the Governor was miserable enough to leave Aventine Manor. But if they overplayed their hand, they might simply earn more of the Forever Flame’s wrath.

“Tell them to keep doing what they have been doing but with care. Rendering the invaders annoyed feels safer than making them angry.”

“The ghosts would not truly be in danger, unlike you and Tacey.”

Mercury wished he were at all sure of that. “I don’t want what happened to Baby Blue to happen to any of the rest of you.”

That hit its mark. The Quiet Queen nodded somberly. “I will tell the ghosts to continue as they have been. Carefully.” She slipped from the room.

Mercury watched her go. The thought of his ghosts being truly unsafe for the first time in their entire existences shifted something inside him. The fight that had been draining from him returned with force.

“I know that look on your face,” the Invisible Rain said. “You have decided on your next course of action.”

Through tense lips, Mercury said, “I have a message to deliver.”

On that declaration, he pulled open the door to the gathering room and stepped out into the hidden passageway. Quickly but quietly, he made his way through the labyrinth of secret hallways. He could hear the ghosts in the midst of their efforts: furniture moving, shouts, cries.

Mercury reached an exit from the hidden portion of the house out onto the third story. This was where the Governor, under the guise of Mr. Brand, had been staying after Mercury had taken pity on new arrivals caught in poor weather. His compassion had betrayed him.

In a voice so quiet it hardly made noise, he spoke to his new Invisible attachment. “Search out these rooms, find where the Governor and Mrs. Brand are, and make certain the Forever Flame is nowhere nearby.”

The Invisible Rain nodded and slipped through the still-closed door and out of sight.

His name is Mercury Raine. That made no sense.

Mercury had been on the streets of London for years before he’d changed his name to hide his identity. “Mercury” was the name of one of the ancient Roman gods. It had made him laugh to think that a runaway orphan with no home and no family would be called something so grand. He’d settled on Raine as a surname because the two went well together.

He had invented it.

So how was it that he now had a ghost, one he could not possibly have met before, who was nonetheless familiar to him, who had that name?

It was impossible.

The very subject of his pondering slipped back into the passageway a moment later. “The Governor is sleeping in the third room on the left. Mrs. Brand is in the room directly across from his. They are both alone.” The Invisible Rain didn’t have to lower his voice; Mercury was the only one who could hear him.

Mercury slipped from the safety of the hidden passageway into the main corridor beyond. He moved with stealthy steps to the third door on the left. The Governor hadn’t bothered to lock it. He likely thought Mercury was too afraid to do anything as bold as step inside. The Governor had underestimated Mercury from the beginning.