Page 65 of Haunting the Deep

“Says the person who stole our spell ingredients last night.”

His expression is calm. “If you did not charge ahead recklessly, I would not have to interfere.”

I have an overwhelming desire to shake my fist at him, undeniably proving his point that I’m the difficult one.

“I have been looking for Myra,” he says.

I pause. “You have?”

“But I have not found her.”

“What does that mean exactly?” I ask.

“Spirits who do not pass on tend to stay near their homes. But when I looked for your relation Myra, she was not in New York City. I know she traveled when she was alive, but unfortunately I cannot seem to locate any journals or letters that tell me where she frequented. I do not have any good leads as to where she might be. And then there are the other passengers—”

“What other passengers?”

“I have been looking foralltheTitanicpassengers. Not just Myra.”

“Oh.” So he was helping, even though I told him not to?

“Oftentimes with tragedies like this, spirits feel unresolved about how things ended. Many of them stay here like I did, finding it difficult to pass on. Even the passengers who did not die in the shipwreck could potentially feel bound to theTitanic.Large-scale traumas sometimes affect the afterlife of the entire group. I do not know why,” Elijah says.

“You’re really blowing the concept that when you die, things suddenly make sense,” I say.

“Yes, well. I imagine that when I do pass on, everything will become clearer.” There is an emotion in his voice that I can’t quite place.

“After everything that happened in the woods, you had the opportunity to pass on. Didn’t you? Your sister came to get you. Am I missing something here?”

“As in life, death is not always simple or easy,” he says, his eyes asking for me to understand.

There is something so sad and genuine about his voice that I suddenly have the desire to reach out to him. I frown. What’s wrong with me?

Elijah must see something in my expression, because he breaks eye contact and clears his throat. “As I was saying, I have been to the passengers’ homes and their towns. But I have not found any of them.”

I sigh, happy to move on to easier subjects like death warnings and unexplainable missing spirits. “Maybe some of them liked to travel the way Myra did? Maybe they’re just not hanging around in obvious places. Or maybe most of them passed on.”

“Unlikely,” he says. “With a tragedy on the scale of theTitanic,I should have found at least a hundred by now. I have even asked other spirits in the passengers’ hometowns. None of the passengers have been seen in months. Some of them have not been seen in decades.”

“I don’t understand. Where could they all have gone? And why am I seeing Ada, but you can’t find any other spirits? That doesn’t make sense.”

Elijah’s eyebrows furrow. He takes a seat in an armchair. “That is what worries me. From the way you describe her, Ada always speaks in the present, as though she does not remember that she is dead. I have seen many deluded spirits in the past three hundred years, but none believed they were still living. They knew they were dead.”

“So then what’s going on with Ada?” I sit down on the fluffy couch. “Could she be under a spell?”

Elijah leans forward. “I have been asking myself that very question.”

“And if you can’t find Myra, why shouldn’t we try Alice’s suggestion?”

“Forcing a spirit to appear is one of the worst things you could possibly do. The only thing we have is our freedom of choice. If the spell went wrong, you could wind up with a very angry spirit, one who would consequently tell you nothing. Spirits are not missing socks. They are people.”

I stiffen. “I never thought of Myra as a missing sock, and you know that. But evenyoucan’t find her, and she’s one of the only leads we have right now. And considering how little we understand, that’s saying a lot. There must be something we could do to try to get in touch with her.”

Elijah’s quiet for a moment. “You could try speaking to her the way you speak to me.”

“By saying her name?”

“Indeed.”