The Spectral City. Leanna Renee Hieber

to sleep in there I’d have at least moved you to the settee.”

      Eve took a sip of coffee and groaned in palpable relief. “Well, thank you for the sentiment,” Eve conceded. “No irreparable physical harm done, but no answers gained either in the writing. But I must be off. Vera needs a report made up.”

      * * * *

      Eve walked the several blocks east to her Precinct office on Mercer Street, north of the 15th Ward Station House. The Ghost Precinct had been shoe-horned into an unmarked Metropolitan Police records building whose second floor was all theirs to make reports, hold meetings and do the work of séances and divination. This plain red brick building was where hundreds of unsolved cases sat languishing in file cabinets, most of them dating from a time of unparalleled corruption before Theodore Roosevelt had overturned every rock and cleaned up the force. Paperwork and records were irregular and varied ward to ward, with many in the offices incomplete. The idea was that if Eve and her mediums were ever at a loss for something to do, any number of cases gone cold were readily available to their psychic meddling.

      As exciting as their work might seem to anyone interested in spectral phenomena and the occult, there really was a great deal of mundane paperwork, resulting from an effort towards raising inter-departmental standards of procedure. But it was the paperwork that made any of it legitimate. Without thorough, documented process, so much would be left up to ghostly whispers and the vague pull of instinct, those first clues that, when finally leading to evidence, created a full picture. It was Eve’s plan that after several years at the Precinct, she’d collect her findings and publish a book about all of it.

      It was Preventative Protocol that required the most care—a slippery moral slope that would prove the most dangerous and questionable aspect of the group’s aims. There were two reports from last week Eve hadn’t written up yet. They were seen by one of Roosevelt’s most trusted lieutenants, Mr. Bonhoff, and Roosevelt himself.

      When Eve’s offerings to a now retired sergeant got her noticed by Mr. Bonhoff in the first place, he had engaged Roosevelt directly. It was a discussion the three of them, under Gran’s supervision, had from the start.

      “The rights of our citizens are sacred,” Roosevelt had explained. “In the cases you worked, where you couldn’t have known the circumstances, where you brought clues right to the department’s door, those were at a stage where a murder would have gone unsolved. One already committed and where we were entirely at a loss.”

      “Preventative crime is a trickier wicket,” Roosevelt had continued. “Innocent until proven guilty.”

      “I’ve given this a great deal of thought, sir,” Eve replied. “I agree with you entirely. I would never want a clairvoyant, a ghost, or any activity in the spectral realm, to supersede human free will and independence. Where I believe the ghosts loyal to me can be of most direct use is to perhaps expose the elements of a possible crime and leave it to the living to sort it out amongst themselves. With the dynamics of power in consideration.”

      Roosevelt raised a bushy brow. “In some cases, the helpless just need help,” Eve explained. “I can’t police what ghosts try to affect; they have minds—and missions—of their own. What they will ask me to help with are things they cannot influence all on their own. Sometimes we may need to give things a little push.”

      “Can you give us an example?” Mr. Bonhoff said. He was a quiet, level-headed, steady-handed man interested only in the city’s greater good.

      “I have often held a séance not to draw out information from the dead but to magnify their abilities. Many of them aren’t just here on earth for their own unfinished business, but that of our own mortal failures.”

      “Go on . . .” Bonhoff urged.

      “Why, just last week I was contacted by a ghost begging for intervention on behalf of a child apprenticed to a brute, a child who would not survive another beating. Henry Bergh’s creation of the ASPCA passed animal cruelty laws decades prior. This is, of course, a huge boon, where cases of animal cruelty and domestic abuse can be linked and animals and children might be removed from deadly situations if their plight is known.

      “As my Gran and her circle of philanthropists and clergy have many associates, a contact from the ASPCA was able to go see for himself, and they found both horse and child with open, bleeding sores. The horse was collected and turned over to care, and thanks to an Episcopalian organization the child was able to choose a different apprenticeship. The child chose to work with the church itself, saying that God had saved him so he wished to work to help others in turn. But it was the ghosts that saved him. God didn’t swoop down, the ghosts did, reaching out for a listening ear. I was glad I was there to hear the spirit of the boy’s elder sibling, who came asking if someone could look in on his battered brother. Whatever entity serves as God, I can’t be sure of, but I believe the dead are used to great purpose. Angels among us, even. It would only be fair to stop fearing ghosts and start appreciating what they can do if we but only listen, and act before it’s too late.”

      The gentlemen were very moved by this account, and thusly the protocols for preventative services were quietly instated.

      If an alarm was sounded, a network of various charitable contacts curated by Gran and her dear friend Reverend Blessing, a dynamic man and sometimes exorcist, might be deployed in an instant to check in on a precarious situation where an innocent creature might be in danger.

      The origin of this protocol was particularly on Eve’s mind today as just a few days before Maggie disappeared nearly an identical case to the one she’d used as an example crossed Cora’s spiritual threshold. The same strategy had been deployed to resituate the powerless into a safer environment of their own choosing, rather than merely being a victim of fate.

      The Preventative Protocol was new and the cases thus far were few, as the grounds for stepping in had to be an iron-clad case. Eve required more than one spirit to relate their insights on the person and place. She’d had no second thoughts about what had been done so far, but she wanted to be sure there was continued oversight.

      The latest issue with a farrier and his hired hand needed to be written up, and it had to be documented which ghosts would be checking in on the subject after his transfer to a better condition. Zofia had volunteered, saying that if she could never grow up to have a life of her own, at least she could watch over these young squires mired in pain and try to bring them a life of hope instead.

      Eve wanted to capture the most human and moving details her department oversaw. This was what she wanted the world to know about the dead; just how beautiful they were. She’d convince the world, report by report.

      * * * *

      Only Jenny was in ahead of Eve, paid an hour extra per day to tidy the place up and prepare coffee and tea. It was something Jenny had asked to do, indicating that her parents never wanted their daughter to go without, encouraging her to take as much as she could from a job willing to pay her well.

      The matron who had been assigned to sit watch by the exterior door, Mrs. McDonnell, wasn’t due in for another fifteen minutes or so. She was generally unpleasant to the girls, so Eve liked to avoid her.

      Whenever Jenny was in the office alone, the spirits of her parents often joined her, singing Irish ballads of a faraway home. Mary and Connor Friel’s spirits looked after orphans as an ongoing mission, and Jenny willingly shared them, provided they returned to her when they could. Eve paused outside the door for a long while. The Friels’ ethereal voices hit a keening note and rendered Eve breathless. The music of spirits could stop time. It was perhaps the most civilizing thing, music, the way to bring the whole world together, living and dead, offering some comfort and peace, no matter where or when.

      Eve didn’t want to interrupt—she knew that these moments of privacy were very important for Jenny, the only way she could still feel like she had her own family. Living communally with co-workers, time alone was vital and she tried to be a respectful manager in that regard.

      But the telephone rang from within and that forced Eve into entering, placing her warm hand on the cool glass doorknob, the frosted