The estate loomed ahead: three stories of mottled, bloodred brick. Sash windows, twelve panes each, or maybe sixteen; I could not be sure of anything, not in these final minutes. It was all so hazy. I urged my feet forward. I must only reach the front steps, the black door, and set down the package.

I glanced up at the gabled roof, tilting and bending beneath the clouds. No smoke bled from the chimney. As suspected, the mistress was not home. This came as a great relief; I had not the strength to talk to her. I would drop the package and go. Crawl away, south, to the nearest set of riverbed stairs. If I could manage to make it so far.

A child scurried by, laughing, nearly tangling herself in my skirts. She spun about me once, twice, playing a game of my senses, reminding me of the baby that fell from my belly. She ran off as quickly as she’d appeared. As my vision blurred with tears, her face seemed to melt away, obscure and indistinct, a phantom. I began to feel a fool for doubting Eliza’s claim that ghosts resided all around her. Perhaps I’d been wrong when I told her these spirits were only remnants of memories, creations of an invigorated imagination. They all seemed so vibrant, so corporeal.

The package. I must drop the package.

A final glance upward, to the dormer windows, where the servants would be. I hoped one would see me drop the paper-wrapped bundle on the porch, just steps ahead, then retrieve it for safekeeping until Mrs. Amwell returned.

Indeed, yes, a servant spotted me! I saw her clear as day behind the window, with her thick black hair, and her chin held high—

I stopped short on the walkway, my fingers loosening on the package; with a soft thunk, it fell to the ground. This was no servant behind the window. It was an apparition. My little Eliza.

I could not move. I could not breathe.

But then a flash, a movement, as the shadow pulled away from the window. I fell to my knees, the urge to cough rising within me again, the colors of London turning to black, everything turning black. My last breath, only seconds away...

And then, in my final, coherent moment, the color around me returning: little Eliza with the bright, youthful eyes I knew so well, floating out of the house in my direction. A rosy flash of glass. I frowned, trying to focus my vision. Clutched in her hand was a tiny vial, so similar in size and shape to the one she’d offered me on the bridge. Only that vial had been blue, and this one was seashell pink. She uncorked it as she ran toward me.

I reached for her bright shadow, finding it all so strange and unexpected: the flush in her cheeks, the inquisitive grin, as though this was not a ghost at all.