A Skull Head Penny Farthing

Huffing and fluffing from her thick skirts Marion's ruddy cheeks turned ever redder.

Face turned into quite the hideous scowl untoward the wealthier of the pair. A young man named Coriander simply one of two accomplices.

With a much more sensitive eye than most.

"I just mean, many have made money off of that man's works and dramatizing his story and renown, if we were to peel that back even a little bit and that's simply the living to think about."

"And you think I haven't thought of it," she lashed, "remember which of us doesn't get to escape every evening."

"Fine," he said huffily and really Marion hardly cared. True, he was dutiful and enjoyable company but in the scheme of things even if they were friends, theirs was a relation dead in the water.

"Ombre is with Althea now, we figured hers would be safer."

"In the crack alleys of Brisbane?"

"Fine, relatively. Besides ghosts stay away from it unless welcome."

What Marion had unearthed, what her spectral shadow Ombre had translated and summoned to ritual for her, and what Althea researched in the dizzying shelves of the scholars' library was a tome written in code and invisible ink, of Ben Franklin's works written and scientific.

'Syla Durth'

Silence Dogood.

Buried within the storied man's history.

And within the name of that reputable young woman was the spirit tormented, left behind-- a former college aged fellow named Thaddeus Thorne.

His last known address marked in the clandestine book as 85 Westerly Way. In Virginia.

"Chartering the boat wouldn't be the problem," Coriander mused, expression stormy, "the problem is, how to explain two young ladies one of which I still am not old enough to court. And I don't want unsightly things said about my parents' hiring practice."