A deep fog surrounded them, so that they could only just make out the buoy that floated a few feet away, bobbing back and forth. A few pinprick lights glimmered in the distance. May lifted Kitty and tucked him into her sack.
Over the next several minutes, as they all looked on eagerly, the port began to take shape—a wide wooden dock, several ships roped to its pilings, spirits bustling all over its surface: burly ship hands practically bursting out of their long-sleeved shirts, sacks slung over their shoulders or else carrying barrels between them or unloading trunks down the gangways.
May watched, wide-eyed, as they drifted into port and a group of men grabbed the ropes dangling off the sides of their ship and tied them to the nearest pilings. Pumpkin stuck his hand in hers and bit the nails of his other hand. When the boat was fully secured, they all drifted down the gangway and made their way through the bustling spirits on the dock.
As soon as they reached the cobbled square at the end, a man went galloping past within a hairsbreadth of them on what appeared to be an invisible horse, nearly running them over. They jumped out of the way and then turned to watch him. He was riddled with bullet holes, and a bunch of lace flopped at his throat as he rode off into the darkness. “A highwayman,” Beatrice whispered, awed. “They’re very dangerous.”
Above them the moon resembled a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. Carriages drawn by invisible horses bustled in all directions down the foggy, cobblestoned streets. The horsemen were all headless, steering carriages down alleys. The streets were lined with old stone mansions, surrounded by spiky wrought-iron fences, their bottom floors illuminated and the attic-level windows dark, the curtains of these floors moving as if someone in each house was looking out at them. Lightning flashed above. Ladies in tattered dresses and straw hats promenaded along the docks, carrying baskets full of dead roses for sale. One drifted past them and gave them a meaningful look. “Wicked night,” she said.
They all looked at one another, spooked. “I bet they always say that,” Pumpkin said fliply, wagging a hand. May felt Somber Kitty tremble at her back.
They wove their way down the road, gazing at every apparition, awed by the sheer number of creepy specters.
Suddenly Lucius grabbed the backs of their clothes and dragged them into an alley, hissing “Vampire!” Their hearts in their throats, they pressed themselves against the brick wall of the alley, watching the street breathlessly. A moment later a pale, polished man in a black cape drifted past. He moved with oily composure, like a true gentleman, his hands pale and unblemished at his sides, his posture perfect. His face was stony, pale, and merciless. He floated onward slowly, deliberately.
“He’s patrolling,” Bea whispered, sending chills down May’s arms. “All vampires in the realm are on the lookout for troublemakers. They bring them directly to Bo Cleevil’s fortress.”
The group waited several seconds after he had passed before they dared to peek around the corner after him. They just saw the tail of his cape as he vanished down the street into the fog. They entered the street again, this time a little more cautiously, and continued onward, floating past a car guarded by old-fashioned soldiers carrying bayonets, all with mustaches. The car bumped and bucked, its lights flashing on and off.
Fabbio pulled his mustache and nodded at them like a general.
“Possessed cars,” Bea whispered to May, who watched the car in wonder. “They’re the worst on gas mileage.”
“Hey, that looks like a good spot.” Lucius pointed.
They all looked at a modest, crooked wooden house up ahead, a sign hanging out front that announced THE SLEEPING SPECTER INN. May agreed—it would be a relief to get off the spooky street and make their plans. They drifted toward it.
Inside, a warm fire blazed in a rustic tavern room full of wooden tables, a red rug, and a bearskin stretched and hanging above the hearth. A woman sat at one table, leaning her chin thoughtfully on a gleaming arm, reading a book. The innkeeper was wiping down another table. He looked up at them. “Wicked night out,” he said in a deep English accent. “Welcome.” And then he went back to cleaning.
“Ooh, that woman has a golden arm,” Pumpkin whispered to May. “Lucky.”
May elbowed him. “Don’t stare.” The sound of loud, rickety carriage wheels carried in from the street.
“I saya we stay here. Like my uncle Bonino always say—,” Fabbio started.
“Ooh,” Bea interrupted, tugging May’s arm and pulling her to the window. “It’s Lady Howard!”
May peered out beside her. A fearsome carriage had just parked in front of the tavern across the street. It looked to be made of human bones. From its dark window stared a gaunt specter, filmy and gray, her bluish lips pursed together in a frown, her eyes wide and vacant.
“Who’s Lady Howard?” May breathed, awed.
“A murderess.” Bea’s blue eyes opened wide for emphasis. “She rides around in a carriage made of the bones of her four dead husbands. She has to ride around picking blades of grass until every blade is gone.” Bea took a deep breath. “Basically, until the world ends.”
Beatrice, scaring herself, wrapped her arm around May’s but couldn’t tear her eyes from the carriage.
“Can I show you to your rooms?” the innkeeper asked, making them jump. When they realized it was only him, they looked at each other and broke into relieved giggles.
May and Bea’s room was done in red velvet with a red hurricane lamp and long red velvet curtains. May pulled them aside to look out her window. In the back, bathed in the moonlight, was a graveyard. She gazed out at it, then up at the moon.
While Kitty curled peacefully upstairs, the group headed down to the parlor and stayed late into the night, playing cards and enjoying the fire. They turned in around midnight, bleary-eyed. But May and Bea couldn’t help sitting up even later, talking. Somber Kitty kept popping one eye open at them to let them know he was trying to sleep. They shot him apologetic looks and tried to keep their voices low.
“Have you heard anything from the spirits of Risk Falls?” May asked. Risk Falls was a sublime oasis they had stumbled onto while journeying across the Hideous Highlands. Its spirits were reckless and bold, but when it had come to defending the realm against Bo Cleevil, it became clear that they weren’t as brave as they seemed.
Bea shook her head sadly. “No. I telep-a-grammed them a few times, but nothing. I—”
Knock, knock. All three of them, Somber Kitty included, stared at the door. May looked at Bea, who shook her head to indicate that she had no idea who it could be.
May stood up and floated over to peer through the keyhole. All she could see was the waist of a black suit. She looked at Beatrice. “Maybe it’s a message from the Lady!” she whispered. And then, holding her breath, she opened the door a crack. It creaked ominously. “Yes?” she warbled.
A butler with a gaunt face and long, skinny sideburns stood in the hallway. “A note for you, madame,” he said, handing her a yellowed piece of paper. May snatched it out of his hand excitedly.
She unfolded it and read a short note scrawled in blood red ink, her shoulders sinking.
May Bird and date. The pleasure of your company is requested by Her Highness the Duchess of Lauderdale at the palace ball, tomorrow evening, nine p.m.
She looked up at the butler, bewildered.
He nodded his head respectfully, pursing his blue lips. “I suggest you go, madame. It’s in your best interest.”
May blinked at him a few times. “My best interest?”
The butler didn’t answer. He simply bowed and moved down the hall, perfectly erect.
May watched him go, and then drifted inside and showed the note to Beatrice.
“You should go,” Bea said solemnly.
May stared down at the letter. “Why would I go? We’re supposed to be here secretly.”
“May, the Duchess of Lauderdale is quite famous. In life, she murdered her husband. And I hear she can be equally unkind to people who dec
line her invitations.” Bea paused, then made a slicing motion across her throat.
“Oh,” May said, rubbing her neck and swallowing. “Oh?”
“It’s just the way things are done. And I think, well, specters in Portotown are too self-absorbed to know who you are. I doubt they read the papers, and you’ve grown so …” Bea took the letter and stared at it a moment longer, tapping the word “date” with her petite index finger. “The question is not if you are going to go, but who are you going to bring?”
“I’d really rather not.” Pumpkin was lounging on his bed the next morning, his hands behind his head. May stood with her letter at her side, her big brown eyes pleading. “Everybody’ll recognize me. They’ll make me do the whole song and dance, and then another song and dance. They only ever want to hear the big hits.” He sighed. “You go ahead without me. I’m used to big fancy parties. You’ll enjoy it.”
“Meow?”
May looked down at Kitty. “I don’t think they allow banished species as dates,” she muttered sadly.
“You should bring Lucius,” Pumpkin went on, gesturing carelessly toward Lucius, who sat in the windowsill making a slingshot to sling ectoplasm balls at passing specters. This seemed to annoy Fabbio no end, and he kept glancing up at Lucius, his mustache twitching.
May and Lucius looked at each other. Lucius dimmed, then scowled. May looked away, tightening her ponytail and running her fingers through her long black hair.
After a minute or so, Lucius sighed. He plucked at his slingshot restlessly. “Do I have to get dressed up?”
“Probably,” Pumpkin threw in, before May could answer.
“Can I bring my slingshot?”
“No,” May said firmly.
He considered, his blue eyes thoughtful. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
May felt a leap of excitement. “Okay.”
Heading back to her room, May felt mixed up inside. For all her confusion, and fear, and uncertainty, she couldn’t help smiling. She was about to go on her very first date.
Chapter Seventeen
The Duchess’s Ball
As the carriage pulled into the semicircular drive that scooped in front of the palace, May knew there were important things that were supposed to be on her mind, like the Lady of North Farm, and Bo Cleevil’s plans to invade the world of the living. But as she caught sight of the big, dazzling bonfires that lit the way to the palace, and the carriages ahead of them, she felt dizzy with excitement. May had never been to a ball.
The huge palace—three graceful stories of white marble—was stately, noble, and very old, with large marble pillars holding it up. Its vast front verandah and stairs were lit by torches so that it beckoned festively to passersby, the fires sending cheerful shadows dancing across the stone. In the windows above, the curtains occasionally moved as shadowy figures marked the arrivals below.
“It looks like everyone compared notes before they came,” May said worriedly. She watched the other guests disembarking in the queue ahead of them: The ladies all in bright, if moldy, colors—pink and blue and spring green silks, with bunches of ripped lace hanging out of the cuffs and bodices. The most magnificent costumes were the moldiest and most decrepit, and these spectresses held their heads high, their chins pointed into the air. The gentlemen wore pastel suits with lace handkerchiefs. Everyone wore powdered white wigs, laced with cobwebs and decorated with bits of dead flowers.
May looked down at her own dress. Pumpkin had helped her pick it out that afternoon. It was thick black velvet, soft as cat’s fur, with sparkling star-shaped buttons along the bodice, crisscrossed with silken threads as silvery as moonlight. It was covered in dusty cobwebs, sending puffs of dust flying off the fabric every time she moved. The velvet made her hair—combed straight and glossy down her back—look so black it become lost beneath her shoulders, like night. Her neck was strung with ancient pearls, tiny pendants encrusted with rubies, and dripping emeralds.
Lucius had not eased her selfconsciousness in the least. The whole ride, he’d given her legs and arms twisty pinches and stuck his wet pinky in her ear when she wasn’t looking. Now he was swinging his legs and looking out the window restlessly, as if he’d rather be anywhere else. Glowing on the seat next to her in his school uniform, he looked even more out of place than May did. He had at least, she noticed, brushed his hair. And he looked very handsome, though May would never have told him that.
“I should have worn something else,” May whispered, mortified, scrunching up her birdlike white shoulders and feeling, among other things, entirely too tall. Lucius seemed to wake from his daze and looked over at her a tad softly, then at the lovely and decrepit ladies gliding up the stairs.
He wrinkled his nose. “You look worlds better than those old bags,” he said.
“Gee, thanks.”
In another few moments their carriage was next in line and lurched up to the walkway. May and Lucius climbed down from the carriage, May’s stomach full of butterflies, and they floated up the path. May looked at all the other couples, their arms linked together. But she couldn’t bring herself to link her arm through Lucius’s. They reached the stairs. The elegant, gilded doors of the mansion creaked open, and two skeletal doormen in livery grinned at them eyelessly as they drifted inside. The doors closed behind them.
Gazing around, May felt like she had floated into a dream. They were in an enormous ballroom—as sumptuous as velvet. Candelabras hung from the ceiling of the dusty, tapestry-covered hallway, illuminating everything in warm light. An orchestra at the far end of the room played lopsided, off-key classical music. Beautiful specters in elaborate dress, draped in decorative cobwebs, swayed back and forth just above the floor. And above it all, on a marble platform, in a chair made of gold and tattered silk brocade, sat a woman May could only presume was the duchess herself. Her hair was pulled into a great pouf that towered a foot above her head and was adorned with ruby spiders. She held a silver-tipped cane in one hand and swept the room with murderous eyeballs, one of which was covered with a monocle.
May looked at Lucius to share her amazement, but his eyes were pinned to the tables of sweets by the band: piles of coffin-shaped chocolates filled with Grimy Ganache, and glimmering plates stacked with all sorts of tiny, delectable cakes made to look like miniature, sugary graveyards. There were roasts decorated with blood red sauce, pies shaped like bats, and towering black fountains of gooey black drool with severed-finger crackers for dipping. A specter who looked uncannily like Henry the Eighth appeared to be flirting with a young woman by a dilapidated harpsichord in the corner. An inordinate number of guests carried their heads under one arm, and May was sure she recognized Marie Antoinette from a picture in her fifth-grade history book.
Several specters turned to look at them. May shifted from foot to foot, unsure what to do, hoping against hope that no one recognized her as the ten-year-old girl in the shroud whose picture had been plastered across the newspapers three years ago, and whose image hung on WANTED signs all over the city of Ether. And besides, she had no idea how to behave at parties. She took courage from knowing Lucius was by her side. At least she didn’t have to face the crowd alone.
“Ooh, Creaky Cookies,” Lucius breathed, and in a moment he had zipped off in a ball of light. May stared after him, her mouth dropping open, adrift.
“Wicked night, isn’t it?” someone said behind her. She turned. A man in a silk brocade coat and white wig stood behind her, sipping daintily at a glass of black liquid.
“Yes, yes.” Another specter nodded as they moved to include May in their circle. This, apparently, was the way things were done at balls. May nodded politely.
“Yes,” she muttered too.
“The wickedest night I ever saw,” a gentleman with a handlebar mustache began regally, “was when I was eaten by the pygmies in Papua New Guinea in 1893….”
The music played on, and as May listened politely to the endless talk of horrible deaths and the weather, she noticed that many eyes we
re drifting to her repeatedly. A cold shiver ran down her spine. She soon began to hear snippets of comments about her dress, about Lucius (who was now tangled in a curtain behind the piano, it seemed, dropping Itchy Dust in Marie Antoinette’s hair), about the Sleeping Specter Inn where she was staying. The mustachioed man went on and on, pointing to a man in the corner he said was Ferdinand Magellan and relating an adventure they’d had with poltergeists in Booey Butte in their early dead days. May began to drift off, gazing at the people around her who were gazing at her, wondering what they knew….
“My dear?”
May realized she was being addressed. She looked at a headless woman standing across from her, then looked down in the direction of her waist. The woman’s head, with a high white wig and a big mole near the nose, was staring at her.
“Excuse me?” May asked, flustered.
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere?” the head asked politely, with an upper-crusty sniffle.
May lowered her head. She swallowed, feeling her neck and face flush crimson. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m sure that I have,” the head insisted. “In a newspaper, or …?”
May looked about uneasily, feeling behind her instinctively for her bow, which of course she had secreted at the inn. A circle of other spirits, several of them headless, had gravitated around them and were now listening curiously. Clearly they had been waiting for this.
“Yes yes, I remember, it was in the Spectator.” The head looked pleased with herself. She looked like she was always pleased with herself. May sucked in her breath and held it, glancing toward the front door. If she grabbed Lucius now … “You were at the premiere of Drifty Dancing Two, weren’t you?”
To May’s shock, several of the other spirits murmured agreement.
May let out the breath. “No, I—”
“Yes, yes, useless to deny it. You were there on the arm of … who was it, that old scoundrel.” The woman smiled wryly. “Julius Caesar.”