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“Very.”

She pondered that a moment. “One of the ghosts being traded is an Invisible. Will he become ‘less transparent’?”

Mercury hadn’t thought about that possibility. “We’ll know soon enough.”

Tacey took a breath, slow and steady. She held her hands out, clearly remembering that part of the Transferal.

Mercury looked over at Zizzy and gave her a small, reassuring nod. She set her hand in Tacey’s. It slipped ever so slightly inside. Mercury didn’t know why, but that was a crucial part of the transfer.

“There should be a single sprig of primrose in your bouquet now.”

She nodded silently, forehead creased in concentration.

“Once you can hold that in your mind,” he said, “pull out one of the sprigs of honeysuckle and add another sprig of primrose. You have to keep the overall balance, slowly shifting it until the honeysuckle is gone and its bulk in your attachment bouquet has been replaced by primrose.”

An instant later, Tacey flinched as if she’d been poked. She took a shaking breath.

“Detaching your attachment will strike you as a painful sort of grief,” he told her. “And the struggle to maintain a balance between the two ghosts will exhaust you.”

Tacey opened her eyes and looked at him. The pain and sorrow there almost undid him. He knew what she was feeling.

“If this is too much for you—”

“I’m not enjoying it,” she said, “but I can manage it.”

“You’re certain?” he pressed.

Some doubt entered her expression. “How long does the process take?”

“I’ve managed a Transferal in as short as an hour. Some of them have taken several days.”

She nodded tightly.

“May I stay here with her?” Zizzy asked.

The request did him good, truth be told. Tacey wouldn’t be alone, which was comforting. But it also reassured him that Zizzy wouldn’t be unhappy being attached to her, even if she was sad about being traded, however temporarily.

“During the Transferal, you will be attached to both of us in varying degrees. You can be anywhere within five hundred feet of either of us.”

Zizzy sat on the floor next to the chair Tacey sat in. She watched her with concern. Tacey smiled at her. Mercury knew how much effort she needed to expend to offer that simple reassurance. The process she was undertaking was beyond exhausting.

“Only the four of us and the Scholar know how to find this room,” Mercury reminded Tacey. “You’ll be able to rest while you complete and recover from the Transferal. I’ll see if I can find the Scholar and warn him that you need some peace and quiet.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Mercury slipped from the room, softly closing the door behind him. He’d never been on the non-broker side of a Transferal—his very first trade was one an experienced broker talked him through. It was difficult to make sense of what he was feeling in that moment. Loneliness and grief and feelings of crushing abandonment were part of the price ghost brokers paid to transfer ghosts. That he felt hints of those same things now was likely due more to the fact that he was losing his attachment to Zizzy, and she had been with him all his life. He was also grieving and worried about Baby Blue. And his heart ached for the pain he knew Tacey was feeling.

His distraction was not so significant that he was careless as he made his way through the hidden passages running behind the walls of Aventine. He made no noise, though he could hear plenty of it elsewhere in the house: ghostly voices, furniture scraping floors, chains rattling.

He didn’t know if the mischief his ghosts were causing would make any difference in the end. But keeping the invaders guessing and making them miserable wouldn’t hurt.

Mercury reached the hidden gathering room and found it empty. He didn’t know for certain if the Scholar would happen to wander in, but it seemed the most likely place to stumble upon him or one of the other ghosts who could fetch him.

There was no furniture inside. No windows. The room did happen to have a tremendous amount of dust. And, despite there being no draft and no one else in the room with him, dust in the far corner swirled about, forming a shape.

The same thing had happened in the coals in Mercury’s room the day before.

It was the Reluctant Recluse, Mercury’s impossible Invisible. Mercury couldn’t see him or hear him, which wasn’t supposed to be possible. People could always see and hear their Invisible attachments, though no one else could.