The Stolen Ghosts Read online

  “Sarah!”

  “Dad! What are you doing here?” asked Sarah when her father finally put her down.

  “We were so worried when we found you’d gone. Your mother was completely beside herself, but then she remembered that little trick you showed us for finding a lost mobile phone. You’d left your account logged in on your laptop so she pinged yours,” replied her father. “She was giving me directions by text. The site said you were in that building but when I tried knocking on the door the old woman who answered had no clue what I was talking about. It seemed safer to just wait.”

  “How did you know I’d come out?” Sarah wasn’t sure how much to tell her father about her adventure.

  “Aside from a brief blip when you disappeared off the map, you’ve been in there the whole time. You had to come out eventually,” said her father.

  “Where’s Mum?”

  “She’s at home. She wanted to get a few things ready for us coming back. Apparently there was a dreadful thunderstorm there about an hour ago.”

  Sarah nodded and glanced back at the women’s society. She wasn’t sure how much to tell him. Her parents hadn’t exactly been thrilled about the plan in the first place.

  “Well I’m done here now, so we can go home.”

  “Are you going to tell me what happened? It’s not every day your daughter tells you she’s met some strange man and then runs off to be with him.” Her father raised an eyebrow and Sarah groaned.

  “I didn’t run off to be with him, Dad. He was already with me. I just helped him to get home. And Fowlis is a lot of things but he’s definitely not strange.”

  “Sarah—”

  “You didn’t believe me when I told you what was going on in the house so why would you believe me now? No, all you need to know is it’s over and I’m actually really looking forward to starting college.”

  “Wow, that is a change of heart. Very well, I won’t push you to talk about it. But you know you can if you want to. Or need to.”

  Sarah steered her father out of the square. They followed the route back towards the tube station in silence and her thoughts wandered to Fowlis’s parting words about her new gift. Where would she would be likely to see any of the creatures Arthur mentioned? Would she know a haunter when she saw one? Would he or she look like Fowlis while he was on her plane, or would they look like a normal person?

  Her father’s ringtone broke the silence. He fished about in the depths of a coat pocket for his mobile phone. He spoke briefly and hung up.

  “That was your mother. She’s booked us tickets for the 8pm train back to Newcastle. Would you care for a spot of dinner before we go?”

  * * *

  They climbed back up into the noisy air of London at King’s Cross. The escalator carried them upstairs to the food court where they found a table inside a burger restaurant. Sarah’s father placed the order while Sarah stared out of the window. A mother sat at a table outside, three older children running rings around her while she attempted to clean the face of a younger fourth child. Beyond them, a young man stood at the rail, staring down towards the concourse below. His threadbare suit and battered fedora reminded Sarah of the wartime dramas they’d watched on television. She couldn’t guess at the colour, since he was various shades of dark grey. He flickered occasionally, like he was broadcast live over a choppy internet connection.

  The young man turned to look at her. His forlorn expression dissolved, replaced by a beaming smile. He waved at her and vanished. A second later, a man walking past tripped and skidded past the children. The eldest child looked up at the adult and clapped. The man peered at his feet in confusion, but Sarah knew a ghostly foot had tangled with his legs. A cleaner pushed rubbish into a pile near the escalator and a sudden gust whipped the flurry of papers into a frenzy. Sarah frowned until the papers settled neatly into a stack at the cleaner’s feet. She sniggered.

  “Sarah? Everything all right?” asked her father.

  “Yeah. I’m fine.” Sarah turned from the window and smiled. “Just got a new perspective on things, I suppose.”

  The waiter brought their food and promptly sped away to serve another table. Sarah picked up a bottle of ketchup. An older man at the next table leafed through a London guidebook.

  “I think this area was bombed during the war, Patricia,” he said to his wife.

  “Really? Oh you’d never tell,” replied the woman.

  “Sorry to interrupt your dinner, sir, but yeah, it was,” replied Sarah. The man nodded his thanks and showed his wife something in the guidebook.

  “How did you know that?” asked her father.

  “A friend told me.”

  A movement behind her father pulled Sarah’s attention to the mirror on the back wall. Fowlis stood on the other side of the glass, a soft breeze ruffling the feather dangling from his hat. Fowlis doffed his hat and grinned. Sarah gave a vague salute, honed after years of watching war films. She swore she heard a familiar chuckle as the mirror returned to its view of the restaurant.

  Fowlis would be back.

  Well then!

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  Thank you!

  At the start of this book, I promised you a complimentary story collection. So if you enjoyed this book, and you want to get to know Fowlis Westerby a little better, then join my mailing list to receive Tales of the Ghost Master General free!

  Find out what happened when Fowlis told his own ghost story. Hear about his epic duel with a samurai. And discover how Fowlis finds new recruits for the World Beyond the Veil.

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  Meet the Author

  Icy Sedgwick was born in the north east of England, and is currently based in Newcastle, where she teaches graphic design and marketing. She had her first book, the pulp Western adventure, The Guns of Retribution, published in September 2011. She now writes supernatural adventure novels and dark fantasy with a Gothic twist. When she isn’t writing or teaching, she’s working on a PhD in Film Studies, knitting, exploring graveyards, or watching history documentaries.

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