The Gentleman and the Thief (The Dread Penny Society #2) - Sarah M. Eden Page 0,3
when calling at Elizabeth’s school. Though he would never have admitted it out loud, he’d been almost immediately smitten with the sweet-natured music teacher. He’d been by the school a few times since but received little more than a very kind, very vague greeting.
Spending an evening in her company would be both wonderful and torturous.
The DPS meeting wound to a close. Rather than wander back to his flat, Hollis retreated upstairs to the library. Dropping into a leather chair near the window, he pulled the penny dreadful he’d purchased earlier from his jacket pocket.
Holding one of Lafayette Jones’s stories in its final form hadn’t yet stopped being a first-rate feeling. Randolph would be troubled if he knew his brother spent his days reading such uncivilized literature, especially considering Jones’s work was meant more for children, and working-class children at that. Yes, Randolph would not like knowing Hollis had read it.
He grinned a touch wickedly. If only Randolph knew Hollis had written it.
by Lafayette Jones
Chapter I
Ace Bowen had been a student at Higglebottom’s School for the Dead for a few months and was quickly becoming the school’s most legendary pupil. He was learning the art of being a ghost faster than anyone before him, and he did it with flair.
He walked the corridors of Higglebottom’s with an otherworldly strut. Ghosts could walk, no matter that the living seemed to think all they did was float. Floating, in fact, was more difficult.
The other students always waved to him as he passed. The staff shook their ghostly heads in amusement. He was the life of the school, so to speak. He, along with his friends, Bathwater and Snout, was also the source of most of its mischief.
“Pouring ink into the laundry cauldron so the haunting shrouds all turned light-blue. Tightening all the floorboards so none squeaked during the Third Form’s ‘Ghost Walking’ exams.” Professor Rattlebag had been listing the boys’ pranks. He wasn’t likely to finish before the end of the dinner hour. “Teaching the school parrot to mimic the sound of rattling chains so Professor Dankworth could not be heard during her ‘Disguise Ghost Conversations with Sundry Sounds’ lesson.”
Oh, the parrot could mimic more sounds than just chains. Bathwater sputtered, trying to hold back a laugh. Ace lounged in a chair that wasn’t there—a skill most students didn’t master until at least Third Form.
“I think it best you three go directly to your dormitory,” Rattlebag said. “There will be no dinner for you.”
Skipping dinner wasn’t much of a punishment as ghosts did not actually need to eat, but learning to pretend as if they did proved helpful when wanting to go unnoticed amongst hungry Perishables.
The boys rose and made their way toward the office door. Ace aimed his path toward the wall.
“Not through the wall, Mr. Bowen,” Rattlebag said, sounding far too tired for a ghost who’d not needed sleep in nearly a millennium. “You haven’t mastered the skill yet. Nurse Snodsbury was quite put out the last time she had to reassemble you.”
Willing to save Snodsbury a bit of bother, Ace passed through the open door with his ghostly feet a few inches off the floor, another skill a First Form was not meant to have mastered.
No, Higglebottom’s had never seen a student quite like him.
“Rattlebag has no sense of humor,” Snout said as they walked toward their dormitory. “Those gags were brilliant.”
Bathwater shrugged. “Maybe things stop being funny after you’ve been dead nine hundred years.”
“Rattlebag certainly stopped being funny,” Ace said.
They all laughed, not the least worried about punishments or expulsion. The teachers liked them, despite the havoc they wreaked.
“Two weeks until the Spirit Trials,” Snout said. “Do you mean to ask Cropper to join our team?”
Ace was considering it. They needed a crack team for that term’s trials.
For eight hundred years, school terms at Higglebottom’s School for the Dead had ended with the Spirit Trials, a series of tests in which the students demonstrated all they had learned about being a proper ghost. A high enough score allowed the winning team to advance to the next Form early.
Ace was bored to death, as it were, of First Form studies. “Cropper’s whip smart. But he’s not a lot of fun.”
Bathwater attempted to sit in an absent chair but mismanaged the thing, spilling onto and partway through the floor. “I guess I’m not so whip smart, myself,” he said, pulling himself up with some effort. He managed to not leave any bits of himself behind.