Nella looked me hard in the eye. “You listen here, Eliza. No potion has the power to remove spirits from the empty air we breathe. If one did exist, and if I had been the one to brew and bottle such a tincture, I would be a rich woman, living in a manor somewhere.” She traced a fingernail over a scratch on the table where we sat. “Bravery you have in telling me the truth. But I’m sorry, child. I cannot help you and you cannot stay here.”

Discouragement coursed through me; no matter my pleas, Nella had not offered to help me in any way, not even by offering a place to stay until Mrs. Amwell returned. And yet, I clung to the tremor in her voice. “Do you believe in spirits? Mrs. Amwell does not believe me, not even a bit.”

“I do not believe in ghosts, if that is what you’re asking of me. Little clouds of evil that children, like you, fear in the night. Think of it—if we become a ghost when we die, and if we haunt the places we once lived, would not all of London be in a perpetual fog?” She paused as the fire crackled loudly behind her. “But I do believe that sometimes, we feel remnants of those who lived before. These are not spirits, but rather creations of our own desperate imaginations.”

“So Johanna, who cries in the room next to mine...you think I am imagining her?” It was impossible; I’d never even met the girl.

Nella shrugged. “I cannot say, child. I have not known you long, but you are young, and therefore prone to wild ideas.”

“I am twelve,” I snapped back, my patience finally gone. “I am not so young.”

Meeting my eyes, Nella stood at last, grimacing, and made her way to the large cupboard at the back of the room. She ran her finger along the spines of several books, clicking her tongue against her teeth. Not finding what she wanted, she opened one of the cupboard doors and searched another stack of books, this one more disorderly than the last. Toward the bottom of the pile, she tugged on the spine of a small book and withdrew it.

It was very thin, more a pamphlet than a book, and the soft cover was torn at one corner. “This belonged to my mother,” she said, handing the book to me. “Though I never saw her open it, and I have seen no need myself.”

Peeling open the faded burgundy cover, I gasped at the frontispiece; it was an image of a woman giving birth to a bounty of fresh harvest, turnips and strawberries and mushrooms. Scattered around her bare breasts were several fish and a newborn pig. “What is this?” I asked Nella, my cheeks flushing.