Ghosts of Averoigne

She sat up straight and sipped her coffee. Thankfully it was delicious.

Kara raised her cup. “I am now.”

Thirteen

Work was work. Right now that’s all Kara wanted, especially considering she was seated across from Jeremy. And especially when it came to Logan.

“So you’ve been here for three weeks,” Kara said. Her elbows were propped up on the table as she held her cup with two hands. “What do you have?”

Jeremy fidgeted with his glasses. It was something he did often. Kara used to think it was cute. Right now she wasn’t so sure.

“For the first two weeks I didn’t find much,” he replied. “But in the last few days…”

“Things have ramped up.”

“Yes.”

He reached down into a briefcase and returned with a familiar red folder. Kara had to chuckle. She’d never seen Jeremy with a briefcase before, but somehow it suited him.

“This,” he said, extracting something from within, “is probably the most important thing that I found.”

He pushed something across the table, between the both of them. Kara snatched it quickly and brought it over to her side.

It was an old, dog-eared, photograph. Not quite a tintype, but one of the earliest developed color images. Autochrome, probably — all muted beiges and browns and grays. A frozen slice of time.

In the photo, a man with long mustaches sat a rounded table wearing a turn-of-last-century suit and tie. His hands were flat on the table, palms down.

“Who’s this?”

“That,” Jeremy went on, “is Rudolph Northrop. Or rather, was. The photo you’re holding is a hundred years old.”

Kara went to work scrutinizing every last faded detail. The table was covered with a cloth. Across its surface were several items they all recognized: a thick leather book, a small bell, a lit candle with some kind of markings scratched into one side. A round scrying crystal glimmered in the dead center, mounted on a cast-iron frame. It refracted the candle’s light, throwing the outer edges of everything into shadow.

“He’s performing a ritual,” said Logan. It was a statement, not a question.

Jeremy nodded. “Yes, I thought so too.”

The finer details of the photo fell under Kara’s analytical eye. The bell was likely silver. She could tell that from the color. And the feathered markings on the candle looked triangular, although she couldn’t make them out. The book she didn’t recognize either, but its leather-bound cover was protected with thick brass corner-guards. It looked old. Everything did.

“Where was this taken?” she asked.

“Somewhere in the hotel,” Jeremy replied. “At least that’s what the owner tells me. I found this photo hanging on the wall of their lounge, along with some others just as old. All of them depicted the hotel back in its heyday, when it was first built.”

“But you only took this one?” Logan asked skeptically. Jeremy shot him a disdainful look.

“This was the only one that seemed relevant.”

Kara examined the background details. The man sat flanked by two tall bookcases, looming behind him. They were plain and nondescript, but a spectacular Venetian mirror hung horizontally between them, eerily reflecting the back of his head.

“So all this stuff back here—”

“Doesn’t exist anywhere in the hotel,” Jeremy answered before she even finished. “Trust me, I’ve looked.”

Logan chuckled and leaned back. It was more of a scoff.

“So that’s it?” he sneered. “You’ve been here three weeks, and all you have is a single photo? Of a guy who’s maybe performing a seance?”

“A ritual,” Jeremy corrected, “not a seance. But yes, definitely some kind of ceremony.”