Professional Baby Cuddler

I nod, setting down my chalk and spellbook. “It does sound like there might have been a bit of a misunderstanding.”

“She took against me, that's what happened,” the dead girl says with a scowl. She looks about fourteen, round faced and spotty, with whisps of brown hair peaking out from under her mob-cap. Her face and her crossed arms have a tell-tale bluish tinge to them. A cholera death.

“I been here for don't know how long and never gave any trouble. Nobody ever complained about me 'till her.”

…well, that's not strictly true.

Number 12, Barclay Street has been attracting rumours of haunting since the mid nineteenth century.

Sounds of faint singing and crying in the corridors at night. Cold spots. Doors that open and close by themselves. Animals acting strangely. Harmless, mid to low-level stuff, typical for a bored teenage poltergeist.

Still, pointing that out isn't likely to achieve much, and certainly the most recent complaints of blood running down the walls, screams in the dark and paralysing night terrors seem distinctly out of character.

The ghost toes the chalk again, more tentatively this time. It stays resolutely unbroken.

She could get out if she wanted to. I'm not one of those assholes who brings out their full arsenal of wards and sigils for a first meeting with a level 2 spectre. The summoning circle will keep her in one place for as long as I need her to talk, but it wouldn't hold for a moment if she really fought against it.

I take it as a good sign that she's still here. Pouting or not, she's clearly willing to work with me.

“None of the others could do this,” she says. “None of 'em even saw me.” She looks up. “Are you here to exise me?”

“Exorcise,” I say instinctively, and curse myself when she flinches. “Sorry, no, no! I don't exorcise people from their homes without good reason, not if they're happy where they are.”

“I was happy. Till she started calling in all them ghost hunters.”

Mrs Delaney had been quite persistent in her attempts to 'fix' her haunted house. Most of the people she found were charlatans, of course, but I'd still arranged an appointment as fast as I could once word reached me. It wouldn't have been long before she happened upon somebody with Talent, and unfortunately not everybody in this field knows how to behave like a professional.

“I think we might be able to help each other,” I say, careful to keep my voice calm and level.

“Don't see how. Not unless you can exorcise Her.”

“Not quite what I had in mind.” I pull out my phone and scroll through my photos. “You say that you're not the cause of the most recent incidents of paranormal activity?”

A pause. The ghost gnaws on her lip. I wait, patiently, keeping my body language open and nonthreatening. “I… I knocked her coffee cup over,” she admits at last. “She was being mean and talking on her telephone, saying I done all these things when I never did! So I decided to show her what I could do if I wanted.”

“Hmm.” The ghost eyes me nervously, as if expecting me to pull out a book, bell and candle and banish her on the spot.

“I only tipped it,” she adds. “I didn't break it or nothing!”

“You shouldn't have touched it at all,” I say sternly. “But… I can appreciate that you were frustrated, so let's say no more about it.”

The ghost looks relieved.

“My point is,” I continue, “if you weren't the one making blood rain from the ceiling or tormenting people in their sleep, then what was? There's no other ghosts on the property.” I find the picture I was looking for. “You can get anywhere around the house, right? Including behind the furniture and in the backs of cupboards?”

“Yes'm.”

I hold the phone up so that she can see the picture on the screen. “I'm going to let you go free in a moment, and I need you to see if you can find anything that looks like this.”

The ghost wrinkles her forehead. “What's that when it's at home?”

Fix your hearts or die.

You know how many of us joke that Pride month should be followed by Wrath? Well, this year I feel a deep, burning fury towards all who use transgender lives as political propaganda, bargaining chip or something to be debated and decided on without any of us in the room.

We are human beings. You cannot erase us.

I’ve rarely seen ‘letting go of your lover’ portrayed as a heroic act - in fact, it is almost always the opposite! Steadfast loyalty above all else, no matter what challenges you face, is a trope I love. It’s a trope that’s loved for a reason. and it’s buried deep into western literature. I think of Janet holding Tam Lin, of course, and Sigyn, holding a bowl of venom above Loki, two stories that have deeply resonated with me. This kind of sacrificial, tight-handed loyalty is a deeply feminine trope. I am not saying there aren’t male characters who go through thick and thin for their loves (i think of Orpheus, for example). But this kind of action feels like one of the few ways that women were able to be heroic in older works (Penelope waits for Odyssus), and I think it’s tangled it’s roots into what it means to be feminine, to be a good woman (wife, mother).

The last time I read Fire and Hemlock, I was struck by how many unhappy/abusive/exploitative relationships there are, and how few healthy ones there were. Particularly for Polly - she is neglected in that DWJ parent way, but she also only has unhappy romantic relationships to model herself on. Her mother and father, her father and Johanna, and her mother and the string of lodgers are all terrible in their own ways. Then there are the Leroys, of Seb and Mr Leroy and Laurel (and Laurel’s string of sacrifices). And finally Polly and Seb. While I’d hesitate to call all of these relationships abusive, per se, there is this underlying sense of exploitation that sits amongst all of them.

Using people comes up a lot: Polly’s mother feels used by her father, she uses the lodgers to try and find stability/happiness. Polly is used as a tool for her mother and father to get at each other. The Leroys are of course all using each other, to varying degrees of success. Even Polly’s relationship with Nina sometimes veers into the transactional.

And then there’s Tom, who genuinely likes Polly for who she is, who goes out of his way to connect with her via books and music, and who is also very much using her, despite his guilt. Polly has been so neglected, and he can see that, and sees himself in her, and while it is clear that he is this bright part of her childhood and adolescence, and she is better for knowing him, he still takes advantage of her. Tom, too, has been in a deeply exploitative relationship with Laurel. We know that Laurel predates on young, talented boys, taking them in as children or young teens, and in Tom’s case, marrying them, before finally sacrificing them. If it wasn’t obscured by the setting of england in the 80s and a faerie queen, Laurel would be a perfect metaphor for a groomer or casting-couch type predator. All of this to say that the only non-transactional/exploitative relationships for Polly and Tom in the whole book are Polly’s grandmother, Fiona, and the Quartet, all of whom love Polly and give to her unconditionally, without strings attached. (And maybe Mary Fields, for Tom, but I am not sure).

There is a part of me that wants Polly and Tom’s happy ending to work out. There is another part of me that sees that neither of these people have been in healthy romantic relationships, and that there are some serious non-magical barriers to them being together. They are at different points in their lives, and there is a significant age gap (Tom’s likely in his 30s to Polly’s 19), and there is the history of what their relationship has looked like before.