Chapter 2 — Chapter 02

Mrs. Ashworth lent me the key to the study but wouldn't go in herself. Fair enough. Widows are entitled to their ghosts, literal or otherwise.

The room was papered in green damask and smelled of old cigars and older paper. Books lined three walls — law texts, city directories, a complete set of Balzac in French that suggested Ashworth had pretensions. The desk was mahogany, massive, the kind that expected to outlive its owner.

I started with the drawers.

Pens, paper, a photograph of Mrs. Ashworth younger and smiling. Letter opener shaped like a dagger. The usual debris of a professional life. Bottom drawer locked, but the key Mrs. Ashworth gave me fit it too.

Inside: a leather journal, a map of the city, and a folder of newspaper clippings. The clippings were all from 1906. Headlines about the earthquake, the fires, the death toll. Nothing unusual — everyone in San Francisco had their scars from that year.

But the map had annotations. Red circles drawn around buildings, most of them crossed out. And one circle, not crossed out, right where the Ashworth mansion stood. Beside it, in Ashworth's handwriting: *THEY'RE STILL HERE.*

I flipped to the journal. The last entry was dated two days before the fire.

> *June 14, 1920*
>
> *I've confirmed it. The cellars beneath Pacific Heights connect to the old storm drains, and the storm drains connect to something older. The Chinese laborers who rebuilt the foundations after the quake — they warned me. Said they found chambers. Said they heard voices in walls that shouldn't have voices.*
>
> *I told myself it was superstition. Then I went down there myself.*
>
> *They're not ghosts. Ghosts are dead people. These are something else. They're the fire that didn't stop burning. They're the rage of ten thousand people who died believing God had abandoned them.*
>
> *I don't know what they want. But they know I know about them. And last night, I heard footsteps in the study while I was sleeping. Footsteps that stopped at my bed and stood there for an hour.*
>
> *Margaret must never know. She'd try to help them. She doesn't understand that some things can't be helped.*

I read it twice. Then I read it a third time, slower.

Either Arthur Ashworth had lost his mind in the months before his death, or he'd stumbled onto something that got him killed. And the pocket watch that kept appearing near the study door — if I believed in ghosts, I'd say he was trying to show me something.

I didn't believe in ghosts.

But I believed in dead men's secrets, and Arthur Ashworth had left plenty of those.

I pocketed the journal and turned to leave.

The door was locked.

I hadn't locked it. The knob turned freely, but the latch wouldn't budge. I knelt, peered at the mechanism — old, but not jammed. It was being held from the outside.

"Mrs. Ashworth?"

No answer.

I pressed my ear to the gap. Footsteps, faint, receding down the hall. Not hers. Hers were light and careful. These were heavier. A man's stride.

I took out my penknife and slid the blade between door and frame, hunting for whatever was holding the latch. It took me three minutes to work it free.

When I stepped into the hall, it was empty. But the front door stood open, and the evening air carried a trace of bay rum cologne.

Arthur Ashworth's journal said he'd heard footsteps in the night. Now I had too.