His eyebrows furrowed. “This is a shillelagh. It was cut from Irish blackthorn by a leprechaun craftsman, cured in the furnace of Gofannon, and imbued with supernatural powers of protection. That”—he gestured to the book—“is a book.”

“It’s heavy, though. A leprechaun? Like, the tiny fellows who keep pots of gold at the ends of rainbows?”

“Don’t be asinine. I mean a real leprechaun. That volume is a sixteenth-century original printing. I hope very much that you didn’t intend to use it as a projectile.”

I held out the Historia Lycanthropis, which he collected on his way back to the staircase. “Jackaby,” I said before he disappeared down the passage, “thank you.”

“Whatever should you be thanking me for?”

“Well, for the lodging—and also for taking me on. Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. Just do your best not to die, would you? Oh, and one more thing, Miss Rook. Promise me, if you do become a pigeon or a hedgehog or something, you won’t get all stubborn about it. Now then, I’ve a few things to take care of around the place. Why don’t you help Miss Cavanaugh sort out your room?” His voice faded as he trundled away down the stairs.

Jenny and I spent the remainder of the evening carrying an eclectic assortment of objects up to the third floor. Some of them found homes among the greenery, and others we hauled into an even more crowded attic. Douglas spent the time eating bread crumbs and squawking in disapproval about where we positioned the furniture. Jackaby spent it securing storm shutters and “maintaining safeguards,” which seemed to consist of circling the house with salt, rye, holy water, and garlic.

Across town, Mr. Henderson—the man who had heard the banshee’s silent scream—spent the evening dying. To be more accurate, he spent a very brief portion of the evening dying, and the rest of it being dead.

Chapter Seventeen

I awoke in the morning to the sound of dishes clattering somewhere below me. For just a moment I was back in my parents’ house, my mother making breakfast in the kitchen. I was safe and everything was normal. The faint smell of something burning brought my eyes open, and my disoriented mind tumbled back into a strange, messy room, thousands of miles from home. For all the work Jenny and I had done, every corner was still cluttered with surplus chairs and old desks, their surfaces busy with ornate candlesticks or wooden masks. We had concentrated on the collection crowding the bed, first—and it had been all I could do not to simply collapse into it once its surface was clear. When I finally did, I had barely touched the soft linens before slumber took me.