The Stars Over Bittergate Bay

Chapter 3

3

“ T here’s a man knocking on the front door of Elmmond House,” Delilah announced, startling Jonas out of his stupor. The calligraphed lines of ecclesiastical Latin had begun to muddle together in his head, even as he plodded through the transcription and translation. He hadn’t realized how close to dropping off he was until she spoke. Delilah leaned in through the doorway, her hands clasped behind her back.

“You changed your clothes.” Jonas cleared his throat, voice gruff from disuse as he straightened up and tugged off his glasses, forcing his eyes to focus on Delilah’s sparkling beaded dress. Her carrot hair was pinned back in a complex chignon.

“Do you think he’s here for the party?”

“How long did it take?”

“Oh this?” Delilah fluffed out some of the beaded tassels with her hands. “It’s something I’ve done before. And besides, you’ve been in here a long time.”

“Not so long.” Jonas grunted as he got slowly to his feet. His hips were stiff. He needed to go on a walk.

“So, as I said, there’s a man?—”

“The party isn’t for a week. No one’s arrived yet, and when he realizes,” Jonas stretched one elbow up over his mouth to cover a yawn, as he pushed his hand through the errant strands of hair that drifted down over his forehead. “He’ll go away.” Jonas closed the old, leather-bound tome. It sent up a small puff of dust that was illuminated by the waning light of the setting sun through the window. Delilah shook her head.

“I think someone ought to tell him there’s no one in Elmmond House.”

“You’re more than welcome to,” Jonas replied. He drew his other arm across his chest and cracked his shoulder. “I’m going to see to supper.”

“Don’t you want to know why he’s come all this way?”

“Not really.”

“He didn’t ask the cab to stay,” Delilah said. Jonas snorted at her.

“You are the nosiest woman I’ve ever met.”

“Well, you are incredibly boring. I have to find entertainment somehow.”

“The next book I’m going to be working through is in French,” Jonas said. “You could start the translation for me. I know you’re fluent.”

“ Non, je ne suis pas ,” she replied in excellent French. Then there was a knock at the door. Delilah grinned as Jonas sighed. “I forgot to mention, he was looking toward the garden cottage.”

“How absentminded of you,” Jonas grumbled. Visitors were irritating, and he hated having to glamour himself in his own home. He took a deep breath and tugged out what was left of his magic. It felt like wrapping himself in an extremely worn dressing gown, comfortable but thin.

Jonas’s glamour covered his orange skin and his onyx horns, but little else. He’d gotten lazier with it over the years, his tattoos a bright black on his illusory peach skin. Between his size, his dark maroon hair, and his tattoos, it would have been easy to mistake him for a wayward circus attraction. His looks kept most people in Hindry from trying to get too friendly. He was other, unusual, and strange, even in his magical disguise. And that was how Jonas Rookwood preferred it.

Another knock on the door. Delilah left down the hall, likely to spy from the front parlor. Jonas buttoned his waistcoat and checked the rest of his appearance with his hands as he walked down the creaking wooden staircase. He elected to keep his sleeves cuffed to his elbows, revealing tattoos in designs ranging from the alchemical and celestial to the strictly earthbound. Hopefully they would encourage this tourist, whoever he was, not to linger.

Jonas pulled open the door midway through the third series of knocks. His first thought, a foolish one, was that Delilah had failed to mention that the man was handsome. He was shorter than Jonas by only a few inches and thinner by a far greater percentage of inches. His black hair was parted in the center and flopped down below his cheekbones. Dark, full eyebrows crowned angled, and currently narrowed, eyes. His nose was long, the tip of it shaped like an arrow and his lips were full. He was young, but then, all humans looked young to Jonas, who was not.

“Can I help you?” Jonas asked, suddenly aware of how unkempt he was.

“Uh, yes,” said the young man, taking the flat cap he’d been kneading between his hands and placing it back on his head. His gaze stuttered over Jonas, and then dropped. He reached for the satchel on his arm, flustered by the intimidating personage Jonas had presented him with. “I’m looking for Jonas Rookwood,” he said as he produced an envelope from a familiar set of stationery. Jonas was surprised to hear his own name come out of the man’s mouth, but he shrugged and held out his hand to receive the letter.

“I’m Jonas Rookwood,” he said.

“Oh.” There was a pause as the man looked at him again, a pink flush coloring the tops of his cheeks as he handed Jonas the envelope. He smelled a bit like an ocean breeze in the summer, a soft tang of salt drifting off him, and not at all an unpleasant one. Jonas arched an eyebrow, scrutinizing the young man until the moment that he realized he was being scrutinized in return. Generally folks just gave him a once-over and moved on.

Unsettled, Jonas turned his attention to the letter, where his name was written on the front in Karolina’s perfect script.

“How do you know Karolina?” Jonas asked. The man’s eyebrow arched.

“We work together.”

“You work at Holyworth?”

“I’m an adjunct there,” he said. Jonas felt uniquely old as he opened the envelope.

Dear Jonas:

Don’t be a prig. This is Sidney Quince. He’s an exceptional astronomer and a very nice man, but I think he’s somehow managed to gain sight in the past four months, through apparently non-traditional methods. He’s got quite a good chart going of the Ascension from the humanist perspective, though he has no idea what it is. Still, I thought you might be able to help him salvage his dissertation. You should be honest with him. I think he can handle it.

At the very least, don’t be as big of a prig as you normally are. Also, he needs to stay with you while he’s in town because he doesn’t have any money. Holyworth’s salaries have not improved much since your permanent sabbatical.

Much love,

Karolina

P.S. Thank you so much for the decanter. Claire loves it and has insisted it take the place of honor on our bar cart. Perhaps you’ll come by for a drink some time.

“Sidney Quince?” Jonas looked up at the young man.

“Yes?” Sidney Quince responded. Jonas sighed. He folded the letter up and stuck it in his back pocket.

“You’d better come in then.”

Sidney stepped into the cottage. He set his luggage on the floor and shrugged out of his grey wool peacoat, his head on a swivel as he took in Jonas’s small foyer.

“What’s that?” Jonas asked, pointing at a familiar leather bag that sat atop a worn suitcase.

“Oh. Yes, sorry!” Sidney said, hanging his coat on the hook by the door and scooping up the bag by its strap. “Karolina said this was yours.”

“It is.” Jonas smiled, surprised, as he took the case from Sidney, the weight of it telling him that his telescope was still inside. Holding the bag in his hands was like receiving an old friend who had been gone for too long. “Where did you find it?”

“Ah, well. It was in astronomy storage, I’m afraid. Though I imagine I’m the first one who had it out in some time. It works a treat.”

“Of course it does,” Jonas said proudly. “I built it myself.”

“Are you an engineer, then?” Sidney asked, eyebrow arched.

“I’m a lot of things.” Jonas shrugged. Then he turned and started down the hall. “Karolina’s note said you had questions about some charts?”

“Yes, actually. But I?—”

“Come on to the library, then. Let’s see them.”

The garden cottage of Elmmond House was part groundkeeper’s suite and part carriage house. Jonas had converted the original outbuildings after he decided the interruptions at the big house were far too numerous for his work. The carriage house he’d retrofitted over a summer into a serviceable library, plugging up drafts as they revealed themselves in winter. It was in a strange location in the cottage for a library, off the back of the kitchen, but it held books alright and was in good proximity for afternoon tea.

The kitchen had a dining area in the corner nook, and on the hob was a pot of fish stew that Jonas had put there to simmer earlier in the afternoon. Sidney’s stomach let out an audible growl as they walked past. Jonas slowed, glancing at Sidney over his shoulder.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Sorry,” Sidney eyed the stovetop. “I’ll just… it smells fantastic. But no. I’m fine. I’ll have something when I get back to town.”

“I thought you were staying here?” Jonas said. Sidney’s cheeks reddened adorably. No. They just reddened.

“Ah. Well, I mean?—”

“We have rooms. There’s also a phone at the big house, so you can call yourself a cab if you change your mind. Fair warning, the houses are haunted,” Jonas added, as he continued into the library and flicked on the light.

“You’re being awfully rude,” Delilah said, stepping through a bookshelf. Sidney screamed and stumbled back, grabbing for the door frame. Jonas only barely caught him by a flailing hand and yanked him upright. Then he arched an eyebrow in Delilah’s direction.

“Who’s being rude now?”

“Oh shit! Can he see me?”

“He’s got sight, somehow,” Jonas said. All the flush had gone from Sidney’s cheeks and he looked rather peaky. Jonas steadied him as best he could, keeping one hand on Sidney’s elbow, as Sidney tried to catch his breath.

“Sorry, what? What in the hell?—?”

“Sidney Quince, please allow me to introduce Delilah Heatherington. Delilah’s been dead for what is it now?”

“Fifty years,” Delilah said, her hand on her chest, her mahogany eyes fixed on Sidney. “But don’t lead with that! Goodness, Mr. Quince, I’m ever so sorry! Usually, Jonas is the only one who can see me. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“How is—?” Sidney stammered, looking from Delilah to Jonas and then back again. The man’s hands were shaking as he straightened up, and Jonas felt a wellspring of sympathy for the chap, even if he wasn’t as steadfast as Karolina had intimated. “I’m very sorry. How is this happening to me?” The question seemed to be posed to the room at large. Delilah and Jonas glanced at each other.

“Have you made a deal with a demon?” Delilah asked. Sidney shook his head.

“Dined with a faerie?” Jonas asked.

“A what? I mean, no— not on purpose?”

“You would know if you had,” Delilah said reassuringly. Sidney looked as though he was about to cry.

“You’ve been granted witch sight, Mr. Quince.” Jonas let go of Sidney’s elbow and walked over to the large table along the far wall to begin clearing it off. “There are only certain types of humans that can see ghosts. Either you’ve always had the ability and it’s recently been unlocked, or something happened to you that gave you ‘sight.’ If we can determine how it happened, we can also determine how best to remove it.”

“Remove it?” Sidney asked.

“Usually being granted sight comes with a cost. Generally, it keeps you tied to whatever being gave it to you in the first place,” Delilah explained, wringing her hands as she looked over at Jonas. “So close to the Ascension. Do you think it’s a coincidence?” Jonas shrugged.

“The Ascension?” Sidney asked.

“There are celestial events at hand, as well as earthly ones, Mr. Quince. Which would you prefer we tackle first?”