When the newspaper trail ran cold, Yvette's thoughts took a sharper turn. If the camera's owner couldn't be tracked through publications, perhaps the photograph's location held answers. After all, the phantom's image required the photographer's physical presence. Maybe witnesses lingered there?

Time pressed urgently. She needed that camera before the Mourning Lady's agents did. Any competent occult organization would immediately recognize its anomalies. This was 1840s London, after all - an era when daguerreotypes demanded subjects to sit frozen for minutes, often braced by specially designed chairs. Yet Muskin's device worked instantaneously through alchemical imaging, its lens crafted from a Otherworldly creature's ocular tissue. Any examination would expose Muskin's fatal oversight.

"Where might I find this haunted lane?" Yvette slid the newspaper across the café counter with feigned nonchalance.

The proprietor's polishing rag stilled. "Let sleeping curses lie, lad. That quarter's quarantine-locked. Plague burns through them like Hell's own fire - yet never crosses to neighboring streets. Dark forces at work, mark my words."

"All the more reason to quicken my step!" She leaned forward, eyes alight with manufactured zeal. "I've traveled from Whitechapel chasing phantoms. Would you have me slink home empty-handed?"

After persistent needling, the man relented with directions and stern warnings.

The plague district announced itself through boarded windows and sulfur-stained quarantine signs. Those too destitute to flee shuffled through fog-choked lanes like consumptive specters. Their wheezing coughs echoed through the derelict maze.

Finding the exact alley proved maddening. Dank courtyards bled into nearly identical brick warrens until - there. The "haunted" tenement blended seamlessly with its neighbors: splintered shutters, windows mummified in newsprint, doorway sagging on rotting hinges. Yvette's stolen photograph showed the phantom hovering precisely here.

Knocks went unanswered. Circling the building, she intercepted a hollow-cheeked woman staggering under laundry and water buckets.

"Allow me." Yvette deftly relieved her burden.

"My thanks," came the rasping reply - a voice scraped raw by sickness.

Leaning closer conspiratorially, she brandished the newspaper. "They say phantoms walk this lane! The photographer caught his specter right here. Ever seen a red-haired gentleman lurking about?"

The woman recoiled as if scalded. Bucket clattering, she fled inside, barricading the door with audible desperation.

Ah. Guilty knowledge indeed.

Retrieving the abandoned wares, Yvette scaled crumbling bricks to a second-story window. Within lay a seamstress's purgatory - mountains of lacework beside a cradle holding an opiate-drugged infant. The mother's existence measured in yards of thread and shillings earned.

She descended stairs silently. The woman's shriek died within Yvette's conjured sphere of silence.

"My apologies for the dramatic entrance." Sovereign coins clinked onto scarred wood. "But a spirit-hunter requires answers. Your daughter's dress - the lace brooch matches our phantom precisely."

Trembling fingers caressed the photograph. "Stitched... hours before she vanished. If that's her ghost..." The woman's chin lifted with fatalistic resolve. "Find who took this. Please. My baby..." Her gesture encompassed the threadbare room. "Those coins buy milk instead of laudanum."

Victorian poverty demanded brutal arithmetic. Coal Clubs and Boot Funds allowed paupers to collectively purchase winter fuel or footwear through weekly pennies. Lose one family member's wages? The fragile scaffold collapsed. Hence the inhuman lace quotas - survival measured in endless stitches.

Emerging into the twilight, Yvette sensed movement - a shadow detaching from brickwork. Her hand flew to the derringer concealed beneath her coat.

A woman clad in logwood-black mourning attire stood in the street. Logwood, the so-called "ink tree," dyed fabrics the deep black reserved for grief—a shade now ubiquitous since the king’s death. To Yvette, however, the dress’s gothic silhouette felt oddly fashionable, a dissonance of eras. Cultural whiplash, she mused.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

The woman—black-haired, brown-eyed, unnervingly pale—studied a compass, its needle twitching erratically. The Funerary Lady. Yvette recognized her from the descriptions: a spiritualist hunting specters.

Hiding in the woman’s blind spot, Yvette observed. A normal compass would steady north. This one skittered like a live thing. Tracking a ghost? she realized.

According to their intelligence, the agency saw this as routine—a rogue spirit needing banishment. But Yvette knew better. Ghosts strong enough to appear in photos were dangerous, and this one had noticed the camera. Worse, its lair likely hid the missing journalist.

Priorities: retrieve the camera or follow the ghost?

Her lone lead—the newspaper—had dried up. Meanwhile, Winslow’s words echoed: "Ghosts grow stronger with each kill." The haunted journalist’s time was dwindling.

Earlier, Winslow’s ghost story had chilled her: a boy peering at midnight feet under his door. "A joke," he’d claimed, too convincingly. Ulysses derided Albion’s quirks—like brothels catering to men nostalgic for schoolyard canings. Yvette’s lips twitched despite herself. Focus.

The Funerary Lady’s compass stabilized ahead. Yvette needed to bypass her. Her new sonic ability might disrupt the needle...

Steaming tea in hand, she pulsed ultrasonic waves. The compass jerked. The spiritualist frowned but followed its false trail.

Go! Yvette darted toward terraced houses. Which one? The compass pointed broadly—she’d need to backtrack.

Rounding a corner, she collided with the Funerary Lady. Rookie mistake.

"Twice now." The woman’s voice iced over. "Who are you?"

Yvette confessed: rumor control for the French spymaster.

"His new schemer? Pathetic." The woman marched past.

A slimy landlord intercepted them, hawking "quality" lodgings. The spiritualist flashed a bureaucratic warrant. The man fawned, surrendering keys to a decrepit house—its door already broken.

Inside reeked of mold and despair. The hunt continued.

Modern London stood as a titan of industry and humanity—a teeming supercity where even crumbling tenements cost fortunes. Most laborers surrendered half their wages to landlords.

The door creaked open, releasing a breath of decayed blood.

Every muscle in Yvette’s body tensed. Her palm found the revolver’s grip, thumb snapping the cylinder into position before the stench fully registered.

They followed the coppery reek to its source: a kitchen where the cutting board’s dark stains spoke of butchery without cleanup. Scattered bones—mice, stray cats, anything small enough to catch—littered the corners.

From above came shuffling steps. The compass spun like a dervish.

Yvette dove through the nearest window, caught the ledge mid-fall, and with a pulse of unnatural force, launched upward into the second story.

He waited at the stairhead—a scarecrow of a man, rust-haired and shaking. The scissors in his hands trembled as he turned, eyes widening at the intruder.

Three steps. A wristlock. Knees planted between his shoulder blades.

“Your tip,” she said, pressing the newspaper to the floorboards by his cheek.

“Yes! Lock me up! Now! Please!” The man’s desperation bordered on euphoria.

Britain’s famed madness, Yvette thought. She’d met those who paid for punishment, but imprisonment fetishists?

The Lady of Funerals ascended, pausing to survey the scene. A curt nod acknowledged Yvette’s work.

Spellcasters paid a cruel price: their world-shaking magic demanded space and precision, weaknesses the Lady’s corsets compounded. Against a blade in close quarters? Only Yvette’s preternatural reflexes prevented bloodshed.

“Sir,” the Lady began, “your aura is... troubled. What walks beside you?”

“You see it?!” His laughter frayed into hiccups. “Even I thought I’d cracked!”

“I listen where others dismiss. Speak.”

The man gaped as at a miracle.

“Watts. Reporter. Started with the camera—a trick! A snare for fools!”

Worst possible outcome. Forgive us, Maskelyne.

“Bought a clock, received a camera instead. Kept it. Normal ones need minutes of light—this took instant shots, even at dusk. The pictures... twisted, but serviceable.”

Corpselight development, Yvette recalled. The dead’s grief stains the plates.

“Later, photographing slums... developed the plate and saw her. A spectre in the frame! Sold the shot to a scandal rag. Easy money... until the dreams came.”

His voice dropped to a whisper.

“Waking here. Lost days. Then the cravings—eating vermin, trash... this body moves without me!”

A jagged sob. “Sacked. Penniless. Take me to prison!”

“Common possession,” the Lady cut in. “The ghost’s no titan—it piggybacked on your consciousness.”

Cornered, Yvette thought. Maskelyne’s secret won’t survive this.

“How do I escape?!”

“Bring the camera. At dusk, I exorcise the spirit.”

“Your name! I’ll make you famous!”

“You’ll forget. Upstairs. Now.”

The camera emerged—an ugly black box, unremarkable save for its lens. Inside, when the Lady pried it open, membrane-like optics glistened.

The Aberrant King’s squid lenses. Maskelyne’s obsession made flesh.

“A mortal’s hands waste such craft,” the Lady said, arranging ritual components.

“Why the props?” Yvette gestured at the salt and candles.

“Mummery. Humans expect smoke and whispers. Let fools think I’m one of them.” Her smile held winter. “When that shade appears, I’ll unmake it.”

Unmake.

Strictly speaking, the ghost hadn’t killed—just forced survival. Spirits were fractals of desire, broken mirrors reflecting single needs.

But Yvette held her tongue. Let the expert work.