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The ghosts were everywhere. Even in the orphan’s public car, previously swept clear, specters were flitting through the walls briefly. However echoes of Cassie’s magic remained there, driving the ghosts away quickly. It left a strange impression, as if the edges of the car had turned blurry with the faces of ghosts flicking in and out. The other cars were worse, with ghost flailing, yelling and swooping at people at random intervals.

“Strange that we haven’t attracted any ghosts,” Brandon muttered.

“We’re probably too far away from any remnants of people we know,” Cassie said. “Small blessings from the Lady there.”

“Are you sure none of this is dangerous?” Brandon asked, watching as a living woman struggled against tears, clutching at the intangible form of a boy on the seat beside her.

“So long as they remain in the normal classes of ghost they don’t have any physical power,” Cassie said, looking away from the scene uneasily. “But that doesn’t mean specters can’t manipulate people verbally, in fact they’re uniquely suited to it because they know those they’re bound to. They’re just as dangerous to the mind as any living creature. Haunts – ghosts that are bound to places or objects – are less likely to do it but all I’m seeing and hearing are specters.”

Brandon stepped out into the airway between the last public car and the luggage car, eyeing the growing swarms of ghosts that billowed through the night sky, voices merging with the wind in a constant surussus of half heard, unsettling words. “What happens when they stop being normal ghosts?”

“Then you have a revenant,” Cassie called over the wind. “Or a poltergeist if you ask the Teutonic wizards. Either word means the same – a ghost that can fling objects, freeze people and is no longer bound to a single person, place or thing.”

The luggage car door slammed shut behind them but to Brandon’s surprise the piles of luggage were swarming with just as many specters as the rest of the train. “Interesting. Are we changing our mind about there being no haunts on this train?”

“This may be the locus of power Mr. Harper was looking for. That, or every piece of clothing and luggage is bound to a haunt,” Cassie murmured.

Brandon frowned and started looking through the luggage carefully. Most of it was in trunks, locked closed, difficult if not impossible for a regular person to open. Smaller items were kept in wooden cubbyholes with locked doors, which Brandon knew could only be opened by a conductor with a master key or the passenger who rented it, who was given the relevant key.

“If an object was the focus of all this, how big would it be?” He asked.

Cassie shrugged, resting her ear against one of the trunks while working the fistful of Harper’s magical scrap in one hand. “It could be as small as a jewel or curio portrait.”

Brandon grunted and closed his eyes. Cassie might be able to hear and speak to things beyond but his initiation into the stone circle had given him the strength and heart of the yew. He ran his fingers along the doors of the cubbies and the lids of trunks, looking for the telltale signs of recent human touch. Behind him, Cassie began humming quietly. Brandon frowned, annoyed that she kept pushing her gift when she was in no danger. No matter how Harper’s gizmo interacted with her talents it wouldn’t help her forever. Either its magic would give out or Harper would take it back but the habit of relying on it would remain.

And at the rate she was going she’d be blind by thirty.

Then again all stone singers had to face that reality sooner or later, even if they never consciously used their magic. He thought he’d accepted that, watching his father slowly lose his vision as he grew up. But it turned out dreading his sister’s eventual decline had its own kind of horror to it. He realized he’d stopped searching and pushed himself forward again. A few minutes later he reached the far end of the baggage car and sighed, shifting his shoulders as the yew roots relaxed and his magic went dormant. “Nothing here. I’d guess no one needed their luggage in the last twelve hours. Any chance someone set their ghost attracting talisman earlier in the day and we just saw the effects now?”

“Most magic dealing with spirits only functions at night,” Cassie said between bars of her tune. Another half minute of humming and she opened her eyes again. “None of these ghosts seems more powerful than the others. If there’s a ghost general behind this its not at this end of the train.”

“Could the magic be set up one night and activated the next?”

“Not if sunlight touches it.” She gestured to the high windows of the train car. “So the windows make it unlikely the spell was cast out in the open. If none of this luggage has been tampered with then there’s no place for the spell to survive the dawn.”

Brandon glanced at the back of the train car. “That just leaves the caboose.”

“That’s the crew’s territory,” Cassie said, doubtful. “Why would one of them sabotage their own train?”

“Maybe they’re not,” Brandon countered. “Maybe one of them is just haunted by the ghost general, as you put it.”

“Well either way they aren’t going to let us in. The crew cars are always locked,” Cassie mused. “Though I’m sure Mr. Harper could gain entry. Perhaps we should go and find him.”

She turned and headed past him towards the door but Brandon stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Cassie. When you heard the call, what was it?”

“I told you, Brandon, there weren’t words. Just stonesong. And I could tell it was coming from this direction.”

“Cassie. Just because I can’t hear stonesong myself doesn’t mean I don’t know anything about it. My father is a stonesinger, same as yours.” He gave her a knowing smile. “And he knew us well enough to warn me of the kinds of things you might learn but not share. So. Out with it. What did you hear when the call came?”

She sighed. “A sound like an ocean of trees, all folding in on themselves until nothing was left but the whisper of wind through the leaves.”

A frown pressed down on Brandon’s face. “And that was enough for you to rush us out onto this sky train with less than half an hour to spare?”

His sister nodded glumly. “I’ve heard it before.”

“Really?”

“Not exactly the same, you understand,” she hastened to add. “But something very similar when I was nine and we went to Stonehenge for your initiation into the First Circle.”

“You believe there’s a druid out here somewhere,” Brandon said, realization dawning. “Perhaps even Harper himself. He knew enough to recognize me, although he didn’t identify himself as such.”

“Morainhenge is gone,” Cassie replied. “There can’t be any proper druids here anymore, can there? Besides, Harper talks like a Regular, not a Lakeshire man.”

Brandon snorted, she was wrong on the first count and they were hardly the best judges on the second. The again, there were many things she could hear that he couldn’t. “Then we keep looking for the druid that’s the source. Do you think he’s connected to the ghosts here, somehow?”

She shook her head. “No druid I’ve met sounds remotely like that. But I have heard the sound before, from the Book of Linds.”

“Is that a fact.” Which changed all the implications entirely, didn’t it. “You were called by a relic, not a druid.”

Cassie nodded. “Either the Manual of Sulfur or Pelinor’s Journal is somewhere nearby. I can’t say where, just that it’s in this direction.”

“Well,” Brandon said, “that’s useful if we survive these ghosts. I doubt either one is close enough to help us right this moment.”

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