A Summoning of Souls Read online

  At the dawn of the twentieth century, New York City houses both the living and the dead. And when it comes to crimes of an otherworldly nature, it falls to the psychics and spirits of the city’s finest secret agency—The Ghost Precinct—to serve justice beyond the earthly realm . . .

  The ethereal denizens of New York owe a great debt to Eve Whitby, the young talented medium who leads the all-female Spiritualists in the police department’s Ghost Precinct. Without her team’s efforts on behalf of the incorporeal, many souls would have been lost or damned by both human and inhuman means.

  But now Eve faces an enemy determined to exorcise the city’s ghostly population once and for all. Albert Prenze is supposed to be dead. Instead he is very much alive, having assumed the identity of his twin brother Alfred, and taken control of the family’s dubiously made fortune. With unlimited wealth at his disposal, Albert uses experimental technology to banish ghosts to an eternal darkness forever.

  To achieve his vicious ends, Albert plots to manipulate Eve and twist her abilities into a psychic weapon—a weapon that not only poses a threat to spirits but to everyone she cares for, including her beloved Detective Horowitz . . .

  Visit us at www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Books by Leanna Renee Hieber

  The Spectral City series:

  The Spectral City

  A Sanctuary of Spirits

  A Summoning of Souls

  The Magic Most Foul trilogy

  Darker Still

  The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart

  The Double Life of Incorporate Things

  The Strangely Beautiful saga:

  Strangely Beautiful

  Perilous Prophecy

  Miss Violet and the Great War

  The Eterna Files trilogy:

  The Eterna Files

  Eterna and Omega

  The Eterna Solution

  A Summoning of Souls

  Leanna Renee Hieber

  REBEL BASE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Contents

  Books by Leanna Renee Hieber

  A Summoning of Souls

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Acknowledgments

  Meet the Author

  A Sanctuary of Spirits Preview

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Copyright

  Rebel Base Books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2020 by Leanna Renee Hieber

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  First Electronic Edition: July 2020

  eISBN-13: 978-1-63573-060-9

  eISBN-10: 1-63573-060-0

  First Print Edition: July 2020

  ISBN-13: 978-1-63573-063-0

  ISBN-10: 1-63573-063-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To the spirit world, may we always be a force for good…

  Prologue

  Manhattan 1899

  Margaret Hathorn wafted along Fifth Avenue in her favorite ballgown, forever sporting the opulent fashion of the eighties; her skirts doubled with a fine bustle decked in bows and gathers, her dark hair pinned up with a few cascading ringlets.

  To the living eye, the young woman was transparent and all in greyscale, but Maggie’s favorite dress had been a bright rose as pretty as she’d once been praised to be. Glancing down at her rustling skirts, an undulating pattern hovering over the cobblestones, to her eye, the rose was faded but it still held a whisper of blushing color, a little slip of life.

  At present, the wraith was on an important mission.

  Looking in the front windows of opulent mansions, Maggie startled the occasional child who was looking out of them. The act, if she were honest with herself, gave her a distinct delight. It wasn’t that Maggie wanted to be a terror, but she had to take her pleasures where she could. And Maggie had always liked to be seen; whether in an admittedly shallow life, or now as a more mature ghost.

  For some, becoming a ghost wasn’t a choice. But for Maggie, she retained every bit of agency she wanted. No, she couldn’t pick things up or feel touch and embraces like she used to, but one adapted. At any point she wished, she could say goodbye to her loved ones, corporeal and non, and leave for that Sweet Summerland the Spiritualists spoke of; eternal rest in some wonderful Elysian Field. Someday. But not yet. There was so very much to do.

  Death had rearranged Margaret Hathorn’s priorities. Having been caught up in all manner of terrible things she’d unwittingly unleashed, she was murdered nearly two decades prior. Having sacrificed herself to save others, the act absolved her of torments caused by her ignorance. Her spirit lived on to make sure that Eve Whitby, the daughter of those she gave her life for, had a ghostly auntie always watching over her. It was Maggie and Eve’s mutual mission to help make New York that much safer and brighter, instilling a spectral purpose she’d never had as a snobbish socialite.

  The spirit paused before the target address. Every time Maggie tried to return to this terrible house, her spectral form quailed, as if the wisp of her that remained could not bear to confront this place of trauma again.

  The Prenze mansion. Patriarchs of tonics and dubious cure-alls, the Prenze twins had made a fortune off chronic pain and symptoms of disease the medical profession had yet to cure. One twin, Albert Prenze, had died in an industrial accident at one of their London warehouses. Or so it had been said.

  Albert was, in fact, alive, operating under a false name and acting from the shadows. Even his twin brother Alfred didn’t know he was alive.

  None of these details would be impo
rtant to Maggie had Albert Prenze not made two things very clear: He was intent on destroying any ghost he could, no matter if they wished to haunt on and help mortals or not. And he was sure Eve Whitby and her Ghost Precinct of the New York Police Department was an obstacle in his aim.

  Well, the man wasn’t wrong; they were obstacles. And living and dead, they were about to fight back. Maggie just didn’t know how. Thus, her research expedition.

  Floating into the Prenze hedgerows, she waited. The thick, manicured branches around her made her feel safer, as if she were in the brambles surrounding an evil fairy-tale castle.

  Again, Maggie tried to remember what exactly happened the night she’d disappeared. When Albert Prenze had tried to break what remained of her soul in two, never to haunt again. She’d been drawn to the mansion by the spirit of children that wanted her help. For whatever reason, she’d been able to get in that night, but never since. She remembered the electric lights had been odd, and perhaps a malfunction in what she now knew was an electrical blockade, snapping at spirits like a switch to keep them from coming in or out.

  When she had gone inside, she did as the two siblings had asked and she managed to muster a small burst of physical force to send a collection of postmortem photography flying. In doing so, she’d roused the attention of their present nemesis. He had sent his houseguests out of the room, turned to her with a cruel sneer, and flipped a switch that tore her out of existence.

  As if swatting Maggie from this memory, a ghostly, wrinkled hand slapped against the glass of the thin basement window. Maggie started, almost tumbling out of the hedge.

  “Help us,” came a desperate, elderly voice trying to travel the distance to her spectral ear. “He wants to kill us all. End us forever.”

  “We’ll do everything we can,” Maggie murmured back, unsure if she could be heard.

  The sharp whinny of a horse as a driver cracked a whip was like an extension of the faint scream she heard coming from that cellar room. Looking behind her, she wanted to get the attention of the living, “Do you hear that? Can anyone help them?” But she couldn’t.

  So much was happening in New York City, so many people in their own little worlds and here in the finest part of town, everyone’s little world was opulent and more important, it was clear, than anything that happened in anyone else’s. These ghosts were alone, for all they knew, with no one but themselves to care.

  “We care; we’ll find you. Hold fast,” Maggie said, doubting she could be heard from the hedgerows, but she had to say it. She had been abandoned before, in life, by society’s finest, and it was the worst of betrayals because they of all people could have afforded to help her.

  Maggie was startled by a presence appearing beside her, a dark-haired little girl in a white dress singed at the hem who immediately began exclaiming in a thick Polish accent, “They’re trapped! I have to show them the way out!” The ghost of Zofia Berezowska was about to float forward toward the window when Maggie grabbed her and held her close.

  The ten-year-old ghost that had died at work in a garment district fire had devoted her spectral life to helping the living out of myriad dangers, pointing the way out when smoke cleared or pushing something over to sound an alarm or summon help, fearless in rushing to the rescue.

  “Zofia, love, not here.” Maggie clutched the young ghost she thought of as a little sister even tighter, her voice breaking. “Not here you can’t! Don’t you know this place is dangerous? This is the Prenze mansion, the place I thought killed me!” The first time she’d been murdered was quite enough, and she didn’t like the prospect of dying a second time.

  “Then why are you here?” Zofia threaded her fingers through Maggie’s. “I came looking for you. After losing you, don’t you think I might look after you better than before?” They floated together, weightless but connected.

  It had taken Maggie time to get used to how much touch was different in death. An embrace was half as full as the fortitude of life. Of course, neither she nor Zofia could touch the living at all beyond the caress of a cold breeze, so the ability for a spirit to have solid contact with another spirit was one of the comforts of this existence. Maggie tried very hard to appreciate her existence as one of floating, subtle, muted nuance. As it registered to her senses, death was full of gentle touch and quiet whispers. Death was soft and delicate.

  The girls stared at the imposing mansion before them, the hands at the window, imploring, pointing. “That’s more than I can bear,” Zofia said.

  “And that’s why I’m back,” Maggie countered. “I don’t know how we’re going to prove the evil of this house in ways that the living can prosecute, but this is now our sole focus.”

  “What if we could compel someone living to go in for us?” Zofia asked. “Someone who isn’t Eve or any of the precinct operatives, seeing as they’re known now by the family.”

  “That…could work,” Maggie said, her mind already whirring. She’d taken note of several Sensitives in the city, not those as gifted as ran the Ghost Precinct she worked for, but ones who did see or sense. “We might find an ally I hadn’t thought to utilize.… Good thinking, little one!”

  Zofia looked up at Maggie proudly, and for a moment in those wide, dark irises of the child’s eyes, Maggie saw the reflection of the fire that had signaled her doom. Even ghosts were haunted. The choice was theirs if they would let it entirely define them, or motivate them to a new mission.

  There was movement in the basement. A form loomed in a dim doorway before darkness overtook the cellar level again. The ghostly palms withdrew from the barred windows, but the sounds of sobs overtook the exterior garden.

  A murderer of ghosts, living like a king in the finest part of Manhattan.

  “The Ghost Precinct has to root him out,” Zofia murmured. “Force him into the light.”

  “I already have an idea. Tell the girls I’m off on an experiment and not to worry if I’m not back for a bit. Let’s see if I can scare up some help.”

  Chapter One

  Eve Whitby came to in a forest glade with no memory of how she’d gotten there.

  Before her was a stone cairn, and from its foundation rose a single sandstone Gothic arch, the only standing evidence of a chapel that had never been built.

  Eve recognized this sacred place, having been called here before to commune with the spirit world. This was a place that spirits called Sanctuary, and she must have sleepwalked to this precipice between worlds. Again.

  The sky was brightening; dawn had broken on a cool, late autumn morning as the last months of the nineteenth century were shortening.

  The realization of where she had wandered came with a wave of terrors: Where were her colleagues, and were they all right? As director of the Ghost Precinct, she was responsible for three young women, gifted psychic mediums. As leader, she was setting a poor precedent of wandering off unannounced, a rule she’d made her team promise they’d never break.

  The last thing she remembered was trying to get to sleep after Albert Prenze, a man with no morals, a vehement hatred of ghosts, a terrifying capacity to mesmerize and compel his subjects, and a likely culprit of murder, had drawn her and dear Detective Horowitz outside into a confrontation, threatening them before disappearing.

  She and Jacob Horowitz had parted ways after a breathless, private moment together, and her heart burned with a flame it had never before experienced while her mind raced with terrors of the present case. The combination of yearning and fear hadn’t made for a pleasant night’s sleep in her grandmother’s fine townhouse. But, being so restless, she should have remembered rising, throwing a housecoat and wool coat over her nightdress and getting on a northbound train to exit outside the city limits on the Hudson River Line. But she didn’t.

  Jacob. Was he here now? Her heart spasmed. Whirling around, she found herself alone with only the pine trees and a few maples losing the remainder of the
ir colorful leaves, one by one like slow tears, dripping from the tall eaves above her head. The last time she was at this precarious doorway where soul separated from body, Jacob had been there to catch her when she came to, making her feel safe, alive, delighted.

  But there was no such comfort here now. There were only soft voices from unseen sources, echoing on the breeze.

  Eve had grown up quickly due to necessity. Her nineteen years of life were entirely haunted. But that didn’t mean she was inured to spectral chill or the threats brought on by certain paranormal experiences. There were things even seasoned minds and old souls should fear. The whispered phrase that distinctly emanated from the stone arch directly before her was one such thing; a recurring warning of late, from the spirit world to hers.

  “Don’t let anything in!”

  The phrase repeated itself on the air. Eve crept forward and placed her ear against the cool grey surface, listening to the murmur of spirits, as if whispering on the other side of a door.

  Then, a voice she recognized. A friend.

  “Eve isn’t ‘anything’; she’s my trusted ally in the living world,” explained the voice of Episcopalian deaconess Lily Strand, a woman of the cloth whose ghost had devoted herself to the safety of children’s spirits. Lily was Eve’s guide through Sanctuary, a space outside life and death that had pieced together the souls of attacked loved ones, a service for which Eve would be forever grateful.

  “Deaconess Strand,” Eve called to the arch. “Lily. I don’t know how I got here. Did you call for me again?” The pine trees rustled an answer she didn’t understand.

  A hand clamped on her shoulder, and she pitched forward through the archway, almost striking her head on the stone cairn covered in moss and ivy at her feet. She plummeted in a hazy fall.

  Just as Eve was about to crash into a wooden doorway, she closed her eyes and braced for an impact that never came. She was wrested to her feet, gravity shifting, the world righting itself. Opening her eyes, the willowy, sharp-featured Strand stared at her, dressed in a simple blue sisters’ habit. The deaconess released her grip on Eve’s arms. They stood just outside what appeared to be a large cathedral when she’d just moments ago been in an empty forest clearing. Arches and spires soared away from them into oblivion. The building changed depending on one’s general beliefs, familiar comforts or favorite architecture.