fluttered along the brick walls and across the ceiling. Keira exhaled, and the plume of telltale mist drifted away from her.
“Frank?” She hated that her voice was shaking, but so were her legs. “Frank Crispin? My name is Keira. I’m here to help you.”
Chapter Nineteen
As the echoes of Keira’s voice faded, she lowered her guard and allowed the mill’s emotions to flood around her. Generations of suffering, fear, and pain hit her like a punch and dropped her to her knees. Keira retched, doubling over, but her body wasn’t trying to expel food. It was trying to purge itself of the echoes of past lives.
She knew the sensation would stop if she tried to block it, but instead, she opened herself to it, welcoming every hateful, hurtful memory the spirits wanted to give her. To her surprise, the pain had an end. She started to taste different emotions. There was hope—the poor worker woman whose wealthy aunt had invited her to visit. Joy—a healthy child had been born. Love. Laughter. Kindness. Generosity.
Keira touched her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears she didn’t remember shedding. The flood of memories, both the pleasant and the painful, swelled inside her, threatening to overwhelm her, then abated, like a receding wave.
Keira sucked in a breath. Dizziness made her want to curl into a ball and wait for the sensations to pass, but she had a task to complete. She found the aching muscle and pulled on it to open her second sight.
The mill was full of the translucent spirits. Some had striking features and black eyes; others appeared as dull blurs. Many watched her, but others paced restlessly or sat at the tables. She saw old-fashioned construction uniforms; those were the workers who had perished while building the mill. She saw a large man with his shirt unbuttoned and a sweaty face; death from a heart attack, she thought. Several women, sickly looking, clustered together in the same way they must have taken solace from each other in life.
And then there were the accidental deaths. Limbs torn off by the whirring machine rotors. Faces blistered from boiling water. One woman had blood dribbling from her eyes, cheek, and lips, where she had been beaten to death.
Keira counted more than thirty spirits, and their clothing styles spanned at least fifty years. She took another breath to clear her head. “Which of you is Frank Crispin?”
None of the spirits moved for a moment, then the sweaty man with the unbuttoned shirt approached. He was too old to be Frank—he looked at least fifty—but his clothes suggested he ranked above the menial workers surrounding him. A foreman, Keira thought, or perhaps one of the accountants. His smile was unexpectedly kind as he beckoned to her.
The muscle screamed from the prolonged use, and Keira struggled to keep it active as she rose and stumbled after the foreman. He led her to a clear section of the floor, then glanced upward. One finger pointed toward the ceiling, then lowered as though drawing an invisible line and traced around his throat.
Keira looked up. A metal pipe ran above their heads, four feet out of reach. “Is this where Frank hung himself?”
The foreman nodded, the sweat dotting his face glistening in her flashlight’s beam.
“But his spirit didn’t linger?”
He spread his hands and shook his head.
Damn.
She turned to look across the mill. Its spirits, so faint they were nearly invisible in the low light, had gathered around, watching her with dead eyes. Seeing them trapped there, waiting for something or someone that would likely never come, was agonizing.
“I’m sorry,” she said, but she found it difficult to verbalize what she was sorry for. Everything, I suppose. I’m sorry that you died here. I’m sorry that you couldn’t move on. I’m sorry I can’t help.
Unbearable pain radiated through her head. She relaxed the muscle, and the figures faded from sight. The relief nearly dropped Keira to her knees again, and she grabbed the back of a nearby chair to stabilize herself.
Prickles sparked where her skin touched the wood. They coursed up her arm, stinging like a low electrical current. She blinked, and suddenly, her eyes showed her a new sight.
She was still in the mill, but it was no longer night. A bloodred sunset sent violent stripes of color through the narrow windows and painted them across the floor. A thin, dark-haired man walked through the room. His black suit was disheveled, and his face blotchy and wet with tears. A length