The duck polished off the bread crumbs and sauntered up for more. He was a stately fellow, with a deeply black head and back, accented in greens and purples. His wings were brown and hung like a prim vest over his white underbelly. His chest was a dappled, reddish color, and it puffed out slightly, like a cravat, tapering away into the white beneath. He came within a few feet and waited, expectantly. I tossed him another handful of crumbs.

“There was a woman,” I recalled. “After Jackaby and I left, there was a woman crying. The victim had a picture of her in his room. The whole thing wasn’t sad—I mean, it was grisly and tragic—but it wasn’t really sad until there was that woman crying. That part didn’t feel like the adventures you read about in books. Jackaby says it isn’t over, either. We met a man today who Jackaby believes will be dead by morning.”

Jenny nodded solemnly, and we watched the duck peck at the bread crumbs for a bit. “You aren’t the first assistant he’s worked with, you know.”

I nodded. “He told me. A handful of them quit on him . . . and wasn’t there someone who stayed on?” I remembered the cryptic journal page I had stumbled upon downstairs, and a grim thought occurred to me. “Is that you, then? You didn’t—you know—during one of his cases, did you?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Die? No, that happened long before I met Mr. Jackaby. And I never worked for the man, if that’s what you thought. This place was my family’s. A number of occupants attempted to move in before he did, but apparently having a resident ghost isn’t good for property values, and word spreads. The lot fell to the city, and that Mayor Spade fellow called on Jackaby in the hopes he could do some sort of exorcism. That was how we met.” She smiled at the memory.

“I take it he didn’t exorcise you?”