^^Above: A ghostie from the series Lockwood & Co. (unfortunate it was cancelled, because the books are sooo good). Maybe this one could be one of the Selling ghosties? P.S.: The Drowned Man is not known ghost lore. I made that one up.^^

The Ghosts of Selling House

Compiled by: A. & S. Selling

21 May.

Those bloody Sellings were going to ruin everything. Even my chance at happiness — no matter how small it was. I'd seen the way Marjorie was clinging to Wilkes as we explained what had happened to her parents. Worse, perhaps, was the expression on his face. He'd appeared to like it.

"She kissed him," said Naomi, when I mentioned it at breakfast that morning. "Langdon doesn't think I saw it. But I did."

"But why would she—" I protested. "I didn't even think—"

"Look," Naomi said tiredly, and I saw the sadness in her eyes. "Langdon has a different station than us. He has a reputation to uphold. I think his father would be much less scandalised to hear of Marjorie Selling kissing his son in a carriage than discovering his son in a snicket with another man."

I saw the reasoning, of course — what Marjorie had done was the subject of idle gossip. What I had done could shame Wilkes's family, stain his reputation, and send us both away for life. And if Wilkes was going to play both sides of the aisle and get away with it, there was quite literally nothing I could do to stop him.

"They are a good-looking couple," I admitted.

"Yes, they are," she agreed. "Quite."

"Bloody Sellings," I grumbled, throwing my napkin down angrily.

"I asked Marjorie if she wanted to learn how to hunt," Naomi said offhandedly. "She said no."

"Sometimes, I can't blame her," I said. I leaned back and crossed my arms. "Hunting's not all it's cracked up to be."

"She can ghost-speak, Wells," she said.

I sat forward. "Really?"

"Yes. It's why I asked. That's a rare ability even by hunting standards. I think she could be an exceptional hunter. But she refused because of who her parents are and who her family is. The Sellings pride themselves on male hunters. Not female."

I shrugged. "And according to Norton, Marjorie's the only girl in the family."

Naomi shook her head. "I know something about how that feels."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked. It was either irritation at the Sellings or the fact that it appeared that I'd lost Wilkes's undivided attention that I felt pricking at me.

"Exactly what it sounds like," Naomi snapped at me. "Is it so wrong for me to want a female friend, Wells? To have someone to talk to who might understand what I'm going through as a woman in a man's world?"

"I understand—"

"You don't," she said. "Not fully. Of course you make an effort, and that's really all you can do, being a man yourself. Maybe you're not the picture of hyper-masculinity all the time. But when it comes down to it, you have no idea what it's like for me. No idea."

"What we do doesn't exactly allow for a lot of friends, female or otherwise."

"I disagree," she said. "Hunting's all about teamwork. Why do you think the Guilds send out groups of four or five hunters at a time? Each one with a different area of expertise? Because no matter what creature they encounter, they've prepared for it. What we do...it's twice the work. We have to know twice as much, because it's just two of us."

"I thought you didn't want anything to do with the business anymore," I pointed out. "You said so yourself, that you're done."

"Well, I can't exactly be done if there's still so much left to solve," she said with an exasperated sigh. "Look, Wells. I know it's a long shot. But we make a good team...you, me, Langdon, Marjorie. The way we spirited her away without her family being the wiser...that was teamwork. We did it together. I know you've been doing everything by yourself for a long time, and that is certainly a hard habit to break. But now that the two of them are in our orbits, we have to bring them in. At least...we should make an effort to."

"And both of them are eyes and ears on our enemies," I conceded.

"Yes, you see?" One corner of Naomi's mouth went up. "We need them. As much as they need us. Because our only way out of this now is straight ahead."

—

Sometime around noon, there was a knock at our front door. Naomi, who'd been busy huddled on the floor in the sitting room, with paper and books scattered around her, looked up at me quizzically.

"Who do you think that is?"

"I'll go see," I said, being the one not in the middle of a snowdrift. I pushed myself off the couch and shambled to the front hall. And when I opened it, I almost slammed it shut again just as quickly. "Cornelius? What the bloody hell are you doing here?"

"Look," he said, sounding bored. "Not that I've noticed, but you and your sister are exceptional hunters. And because my sister's postponed coming-out ball is tonight, it's come to my attention that there are some unwanted...beings lurking about our house."

"And your point?" I said, sensing Naomi hovering just steps behind me.

Cornelius sighed heavily, and his eye roll was put-upon. "I want to recruit the two of you to help me. As much as I want to, I cannot deny that your skills would complement mine."

"What sorts of beings are those?" Naomi asked.

"I've brought what you need to know about its previous inhabitants," said Cornelius, holding out a leather-bound folio. "My father says every house in London has ghosts and spirits, but ours are especially restless."

"And not that I've noticed," said Naomi, "but what happened to your face?"

"Ask him," Cornelius answered, jerking his chin at me.

"When would you require us?" I asked, taking the folio from him. "And how would you expect us to dress?"

"Six-thirty. I expect it'll take a long time, so dress for a party. A coming-out ball. I'll leave you to suss out how formal that is."

"And what should we bring?" Naomi asked, when Cornelius began to turn around. "Are they malignant spirits? Spectres or ghosts? Or Wraiths?"

"I'd suggest preparing for anything," said Cornelius. "And there'll be no mystery."

"One more question," I said, just as he reached the end of our front walk. "Did you know your sister can ghost-speak?"

"That's impossible," he said, turning on his heel.

"Is it?" I folded my arms. "Ask her yourself. I'm sure she'll tell you the truth. I just hope you're ready to hear the answer."

"And if I believed you, which I'll clarify now that I do not, what would it mean?"

"That ability is rare enough that most hunters don't think it exists," Naomi said, putting emphasis on most hunters. "But I assure you, it does. In Marjorie."

"She's going to be otherwise occupied, if you're implying she come along with us," Cornelius said, his eyes narrowing. "It is her coming-out, after all."

"She'd be helpful in a Guild hunters' group, that's all I'm going to say about it," I said with a shrug. "You're recruiting us for our expertise and our knowledge. Why not Marjorie as well?"

"Because...because..." Cornelius spluttered for a moment, then waved his hands about like insects were buzzing around his head. "I don't have to explain myself to you. Just be there, at six-thirty."

Then he huffed out a breath and marched off.

"Well, then," Naomi said, putting her head to the side and giving me a look that said I told you so. "I think he's proved my point, hasn't he?"

"Yes," I grumbled, then motioned to the folio still under my arm. "We should study this before tonight. Or else we won't know anything of what's going on."

—

If it was one thing our father had a lot of, it was ghost-hunting gear. Every length of blade we could see, from short daggers to long foils and rapiers. Barrels of rock salt and iron filings. Chains, nets, and ropes, all reinforced with iron. And, inexplicably, flasks labelled Holy Water.

"That's odd," I said, picking one up from the wooden shelf it sat on. "I thought this was only for the vampires."

"It can affect spirits too," Naomi said, peering at the weapons racked along the wall. "They can't cross running water, but if also blessed by a priest, it could burn out any unholy essence if they touch it."

"Unholy essence? Meaning what, exactly?"

"You know murder is in the commandments, don't you?" She turned to me. "'Thou shall not kill.' That's violated every day, practically. And murder victims are much more likely to come back as Wraiths than someone who died naturally. Wraiths and ghouls are so common because murder's so much more common than we like to think about."

"So you can use holy water on a ghoul? Or a Wraith?"

She shrugged. "Throw it on them, and it burns. It can incapacitate them long enough for the hunter to dispatch them."

"Naomi," I said, when she'd wandered over to inspect the barrels.

"Hmm?" She opened one filled with salt and a spider scuttled out. She didn't even notice.

"You know how much I love you, don't you?"

"Wells..." she sighed. "Please don't give me another speech."

"No, it's just..." I scuffed my heel on the ground. "I know how much this hurts both of us, to see what's going on with Wilkes. I just wish we could both make it feel better."

She straightened. "Marjorie pipped us both at the post, I think."

"Which is exactly what both their families wanted to see. I just wish we'd gotten a little warning."

"Feelings don't come with warnings, Wells," she said, tapping the toe of her boot against the barrel. "That's why people are so surprised when they fall in love, or taken over by hate or grief. If we were warned when every feeling was about to come over us, we'd be able to stop them."

"I meant about Marjorie," I said, although she was right about the feelings too. "She came entirely out of nowhere too."

"Well..." Naomi took a deep breath. "Regardless of what our opinions of her are, she's a part of this...plot, whatever it is. And if we're lucky, we'll all get out of it alive."

We packed a carpetbag first, with two nets, a few chains, two iron talismans, and a flask of holy water. Then we each selected a weapon — I chose a rapier with an intricately filigreed handle to protect my hand, and Naomi a shorter but much sharper cutlass-shaped blade.

"Very sharp, sounds like," she said, after swinging it through the air in a couple experimental arcs. The air sang off it in a high-pitched whistle.

"Better to cut through ghosts with," I said. I experimented with my blade too, with some parries and feints. The light from the lantern we'd brought down sparked off the polished iron.

"We'll probably need some of that too," Naomi said, nodding at the salt. "Papa had some shells left, didn't he?"

I nodded. When all else failed — the iron, the holy water, the talismans — there were drastic measures. Which meant some salt-filled shells, shot from a double-barrel shotgun usually reserved for hunting birds, were needed. Ghosts didn't need them so much. It was the Wraiths I was worried about, and quite a few of the spirits that haunted the rooms of the Selling house were those, most likely. Which meant we needed to bring the shotgun and the salt shells.

We packed up the rifle, then the box of empty shells and another full of salt. We still had time to make some, if we worked fast, and still be ready to leave on time.

—

Once we had each made twenty shells, we packed them into the bag — where they would go into an ammunition belt later — and dispersed to change. I did it quickly, having starched my shirtfront, cuffs, and collar just the other night. The final touches — talisman around my neck, rapier attached to my belt with a short silver chain — went on just as Naomi was knocking at my door.

"We'll be late if we don't go now, Wells," she said from outside.

I crossed the room in three strides and opened the door. She was as well-dressed as any young lady of Society we would see tonight: dark pink dress with white accents, talisman around her neck, and a spray of matching flowers in her hair. I couldn't even see her weapon.

"Don't you clean up nicely," she said, straightening my bow tie to conceal the talisman.

"So do you," I said. "A vision."

"Only the good kind," she responded quickly, without missing a beat.

Before heading downstairs I checked on Father, who'd been oddly catatonic since the incident with the zombi. He sat by the window, blanket around his shoulders over his long nightshirt, eyes staring vacantly at somewhere outside the glass. I knew he wouldn't cause any trouble tonight; yet I still put an extra drop of laudanum in his evening tea.

Then we were off. I carried the carpetbag while Naomi hailed the hackney from the corner. The driver seemed surprised at our destination, although I couldn't suss out why. We didn't live in a mean part of London, nor did we know poverty. Stretching funds, yes. And staying well within our means, of course. But we didn't look like urchins.

"He was giving us funny looks, wasn't he?" Naomi asked when he finally dropped us at the top of the Sellings' street.

"Could have told him we were royalty in disguise and he wouldn't have been any less surprised." I shrugged.

"I'm fairly inclined to try that sometime," said Naomi. Apparently she was full of those sayings tonight.

We saw Cornelius as soon as we reached the front steps. He too was dressed in an immaculate tuxedo, with a gleaming rapier sheathed in a similar manner to mine at his belt. Even his bruises appeared to be gone, although I knew he would never admit to using some of his mother's or his sister's makeup to conceal it.

"Chuffed you could make it," he said, his genial tone very clearly forced. The sharpness of his pale blue eyes betrayed him.

"So are we," Naomi answered, with about as much enthusiasm as one would have before they have a tooth pulled.

"We've read about your ancestors," I said, as he executed a perfect about-face and waved us after him. "Did all of them meet nasty ends, or is that only my impression?"

"It's a closely held family secret," he said, weaving around the red-jacketed servers that still bustled about the entrance hall. We had to be just as light on our feet to keep him in sight. "But the Selling family was not as respected back before Queen Victoria's royal charter of the Bromley Guild when she was still a young ruler."

Naomi turned a snort into a cough. "Do you know how many there are, exactly? That haunt this house?"

"Marjorie does," said Cornelius reluctantly. "I've persuaded Mother to let me borrow her for a quarter of an hour."

So he did believe in his sister's extraordinary ability. And he'd just admitted it to us, however indirectly.

We followed him, single-file again, up the stairs. It was almost insulting how posh this house was: every painting was framed in gold gilt, all the walls were covered in silk of varying colours, all the wood was polished to such a high sheen it was like looking in a mirror. I almost didn't want to look at it, but it was everywhere, their wealth. Even in Cornelius's dress shoes, which were far newer than mine.

"Here we are," said Cornelius, after he'd led us down a mirrored hallway with gold on the ceiling to a set of heavily-carved wooden doors. He grasped both handles and pushed them inward, revealing another lavishly-furnished room. In the middle, on a circular red velvet settee, was Marjorie, a vision in blue. "Hello, Marjorie. You've come early."

"Hello, Neely," she said, sitting up straighter at the sight of us. "And you've brought guests."

"Miss Selling," I said with a shallow bow. As far as anyone could tell Cornelius knew nothing about the night of the most recent blood-binding or the one before that. So we had to keep up the pretence that we'd never met in any other situation.

She gave me a nod and a proffered hand. "Mr Hudson, is it?"

"Yes." I took it, brushed her gloved knuckles with my lips, then glanced over at my sister. "And you've met my sister Naomi already?"

"Once, I think." She stood to air-kiss Naomi's cheeks, which seemed to catch her off-guard. No one had ever done that before. "A pleasure to meet you, Miss Hudson."

"All mine, I'm sure," Naomi said, but when Marjorie pulled away she glanced at me, mouthing Such manners without a hint of sarcasm in her expression.

"You're ready to ghost-hunt, I see," said Marjorie, nodding to the carpetbag I carried and my rapier at my belt. "Funny how I've told Mother I was needed downstairs...no doubt she'll discover my lie in a few minutes."

"Then I say we work fast," I said. "Perhaps if you'd be so kind, Miss Selling, to show us where the spirits tend to gather?"

"Yes, I'd be glad to."

This time it was Marjorie who took the lead, out of the sitting room and into the corridor again, then up another flight of polished stairs with a thick red runner down the middle. The rooms on the second floor of the house were for guests, she explained, but back before the Bromley Guild was made official by the Queen, many of its activities went on here.

"Neely and I used to come up here as children too," she said, in a confessional tone. "When Mother became too overbearing. She couldn't find us up here, because we would always play hide-and-go-seek. We knew all the best hiding places."

Cornelius said nothing, and when I glanced over at him his expression was unreadable. But that small slice of childhood had to affect him somehow.

"I've seen at least four spirits here," Marjorie went on, stopping in the middle of the corridor, in front of a large oil portrait of a man in a high collar and mutton-chop sideburns. "One of them's definitely him...our great-grandfather Prospero."

"What happened to him?" I asked. "The manner of his death, I mean?"

"He liked to experiment, didn't he?" Naomi said, elbowing me. That had all been in the folio back at home. "With ghosts?"

Marjorie nodded. "It was a Weeping Woman, wasn't it, Neely?"

Naomi and I exchanged a look. Then she said, "A banshee killed him."

"With its scream, yes," said Cornelius. "Father says he died fighting it. But he really died trying to block his ears."

"I saw his spirit when I was seven," Marjorie said. "Hands plunged into his ears up to his wrists. He came to me at night...muttering things. I can't hear, and things like that."

"Seven years old?" I exclaimed, then moderated my tone. "That must have been terrifying."

"To a child, yes. But Mother didn't believe me. She thought I had a wild imagination. She can't see the ghosts anyway."

That made sense. Ghost-sight faded with age, young children being the most sensitive and older adults the least. Even our father's sight had been fading before his last hunt, probably part of the reason his ghost-madness was so severe. He hadn't been able to see them well enough to fight them off.

But in some, like Marjorie, the ghost-sense didn't fade over time. The fact that she could still hear them was evidence enough. Which was likely why her parents and her uncle used her for blood-binding. Her connection to the afterlife was much stronger than most peoples'.

We moved on after that, to the three other relatives we were most likely to meet: a more distant ancestor, Romulus, killed by a werewolf ripping out his throat; another, Zachariah, not as lucky as our father and dying by a swarm of spirits inside his body; and Polonius, their grandfather, strangled by the vampire he'd tried to blood-bind. Which, using his own blood, had probably been highly likely anyway.

"It's this room," Marjorie said, nodding at a door at the end of the hall. It was shut tight, and most likely locked. "All their experiments happened in there."

"How did they find you, then?" Naomi asked.

"The spirits knew," she said. "They could sense I wasn't like them, the adults. Somehow they knew I could hear them. And that I could respond."

"I don't think Mother believes to this day," said Cornelius. "Thinks she's making it up."

"Those sound far too wild to be fake," said Naomi.

Marjorie smiled wanly. "Mother would beg to differ."

Then, finally, we were inside. The room looked ordinary, except for the fact that it didn't appear to have any purpose. I saw impressions on the rug where a bed frame used to be, and more under the window, probably a dresser. A bedroom at one time, but I couldn't blame any guest for not wanting to sleep in here. There was a certain creeping quality about the air: a feeling of someone standing right behind you.

We worked as quickly as we could after that: Naomi and I laid the chains while Cornelius scattered the holy water and Marjorie filled the ammunition belt with the salt shells we'd made. Then, as Naomi went to help her, I found myself face-to-face with Cornelius for the first time since I'd punched him on the Heath.

"Neither of my parents know we're doing this," he said.

"Did you want them to?"

He shook his head. "Father fed me that rumour. About...you. To turn me against you."

I thought he would have. But instead, I said, "Really?"

"Don't mistake me, I still resent you. But it's not because of...that."

"Is it because you wish you were us? Because I think Marjorie's said something similar."

"Marjorie wants to be her own person. I can't blame her." Cornelius sighed. "We can't choose our lot in life, as much as we want to think we can. Family and duty and all that."

"Well, at least you admitted it. That's progress."

"Don't get used to it," he said, his tone of voice very clearly saying We did not have this conversation.

"Right," said Naomi, interrupting us. "We're all ready."

The four of us stepped over the chains and their outer barrier of holy water, and I felt a shift in the air, as if the spirits sensed we were trying to ward them off. We backed up until we almost touched, facing the walls.

After a few tense minutes of silence, Marjorie said, "There."

We turned. Her eyes were riveted to the far corner of the room, by the window. I couldn't see anything but a faint rippling of the air, just a vaguely human-shaped form that filled what had been empty air before.

Metal rasped: Cornelius drawing his rapier. "Which one is it?"

"Romulus," Marjorie whispered.

"Don't look at him straight on," Naomi said. "You'll see him better that way."

I did as she said. I turned my head and unfocused my vision, and Romulus Selling suddenly appeared out of the corner of my eye. He was tall and spectrally grey, his entire form flickering occasionally. He wore a long coat and a powdered wig from the end of the last century, and his mangled throat shone a gleaming silvery-white. Ghost-blood.

"Definitely a spectre," I said. More substantial than ghosts, but less dangerous than ghouls or Wraiths. In fact, if I wasn't mistaken, Wraiths became spectres if they had no one left alive to remember them. Or if they'd been purposely forgotten about, like Romulus.

"All right, he's close," I heard Naomi say. "Cornelius, you're almost on him."

There was a sudden whhippp of his rapier blade, and Romulus's figure exploded in a shower of blue-green shreds of light.

"That's one," I said.

The next were Prospero and Zachariah, which Cornelius and I dispatched in short order. Both were spectres, weak ones at that, and were hardly threatening. Even Polonius was relatively easy to get rid of, dissipating with one cut through his middle from Naomi's blade.

"Is that it?" I turned around. "That was simple—"

"Wells!" Naomi seized the front of my tuxedo jacket and yanked me back inside the iron-holy water circle. She was staring wide-eyed at the wall opposite us, and I had to extricate myself from her hold to see.

It made me wish I hadn't. A shuffling, clanking figure, more substantial than the rest of the spirits, was making slow but steady progress towards us. It was a ghoul, the most malignant of all the spirits. I'd never seen one before, even with all the years of hunting under my belt. This one looked like he'd risen straight from the bottom of a lake, chains wrapped around his neck, wrists, and ankles. Shreds of clothes and skin hung off his bones, and his eyes rolled in his sockets where the skin had peeled away. There were legends about this type of ghoul, one called the Drowned Man.

Don't misbehave, or the Drowned Man will get you.

Listen to your parents, or the Drowned Man will drag you into the river.

"Marjorie," I said, holding out my rapier towards the ghoul. "I thought you said there were four spirits."

"I...did," she said in a small voice. "I don't know whose spirit this is..."

The Drowned Man lunged suddenly, and I heard Naomi scream — just a short one that was muffled with a hand. He hit the holy water barrier and jumped back, baring his grinning skull's teeth.

"Wh-what do we do?" That was from Cornelius, and I'd never heard him sounding so scared.

"We have to hold him back until someone can fetch the net," I said, realising with a plunge in my stomach that we'd left the bag outside the circle. One of us would have to leave its protection to get it.

"With these?" Naomi held up her blade. "It won't last forever. It'll only make him angry."

"You three hold him off," Marjorie said. "I'll get it."

"Are you mad?" Cornelius caught his sister's elbow and spun her to face him. "You're the only one who's not warded or armed. One touch from that thing could kill you."

"Would you rather be trapped in here all night?" she hissed back.

"Take this." Naomi pushed her own weapon into Marjorie's hand. "If he comes near you, just start swinging it. It's pure iron, so it should do some damage."

"Naomi—" I protested. Now she was unarmed.

"Quiet, Wells," she snapped. Then to Marjorie, she said, "Go. While it's still trying to get at us."

I saw Marjorie step from the circle, and that was when the Drowned Man lunged again. This time he hit the barrier made by the iron, and his hand glanced off it in a shower of blue shreds. I swiped downward at him with my rapier, grazing his front. He screeched, like metal against metal, and tried again. The same result, this time just centimeters from Cornelius's face. I saw Cornelius quite literally jump, stumbling backwards into Naomi.

"Careful!" she yelped.

Cornelius stabbed him through the stomach. The ghoul bowed forward, then lurched as he pulled it out again. He clawed at the barrier, mouth foaming and eyes rolling.

"Oi, over here, you!"

All three of us spun around. Marjorie had cast the blade aside for the shotgun, and had it aimed straight at the ghoul. She'd slung the ammunition belt across her body, and I couldn't help but notice how fitting this looked. She was a natural — anyone could see it.

"Marjorie!" Cornelius barked. "Get back in the circle! Now!"

"Do your bloody worst, ghoulie," she snarled, ignoring Cornelius's order.

The Drowned Man rushed her. There was a loud bang and his head went spinning all the way around, a hole blown in his cheek. She pumped it, then shot him again, in the midsection. Part of his spine blew out.

"Marjorie!" I shouted. "Get past the barrier! He can't touch you!"

She kept backing up, making the ghoul come after her in a horrid version of ring-around-the-rosy. He kept lunging, then retreating, then lunging again when he thought her guard was down. But it never was, not once.

"We have got to get that girl into our business," I heard Naomi breathe behind me. I could only nod in agreement.

Then, suddenly, the doorknob began to rattle, catching us all off-guard. Then it began to open, and all of us, including Marjorie, swung our weapons towards it.

"Don't shoot!"

Standing in the doorway, armed with his own rapier, hands up in the air, was Langdon Wilkes. And I could have sworn all the air left my lungs.