MARY: How in the world do you keep all this straight in your head? It’s like a giant tangle of string. The hardest thing about our trip to Budapest was finding out that no one was who I thought they were—Nurse Adams, who took care of my mother for so long, was actually Eva Gottleib, and Mina wasn’t just my governess, but had been spying on me for the British Society’s Subcommittee on Bibliographic Citation Format, and Helen Raymond wasn’t just the director of the Society of St. Mary Magdalen, but the result of an experiment in biological transmutation by Dr. Raymond, who had been the chair of the British chapter of the Alchemical Society.…
CATHERINE: I keep notes, of course. Although sometimes it’s hard to remember things like dates and train schedules. You’re better at those sorts of things than I am.
As soon as they had learned that Alice was missing, Mary and Justine had packed their bags—and Mary had packed for Diana, to make sure she did not sneak a wolfdog into her suitcase! They had left the next day. Catherine and Beatrice had stayed to fulfill their contract with Lorenzo’s Circus of Marvels and Delights, which was performing in Budapest to packed houses, but they would leave as soon as their obligations were over. Mary would be glad when they were all back in London! Where were Alice, Mr. Holmes, and Dr. Watson? As soon as she and Justine arrived back at 11 Park Terrace, Mary would try to find out. Mrs. Raymond might be connected in some way—Mary still remembered the formidable director of the Magdalen Society, with her iron-gray hair and cold, hard eyes. Was the mysterious Dr. Raymond connected as well? This was another adventure, coming right on the heels of the last one—adventures seemed to do that. They never gave one enough time to rest. Whatever dangers awaited them in London, they would need the full strength of the Athena Club.
MARY: Are our readers going to know what the Athena Club is?
CATHERINE: They will if they read the first two books! Which they should, and I hope if they are reading this volume and have not read the previous ones, they will go right out and purchase them. Two shillings each, a bargain at the price!
While Mary was staring out the train window at the houses of Calais with their neat gardens, and mentally calculating how many francs she would have to pay for ferry tickets, Justine was also remembering their adventures in Europe. For the first time since she had been resurrected by Victor Frankenstein, she had been—not quite home, but almost. Hearing French and German, eating food whose flavors were familiar from her childhood, she had felt closer to home than she ever did in England. Driving in the coach through the mountains of Styria, even though they had been driving into a trap set by the despicable Edward Hyde, she had felt a sense of joy from the air and altitude. And then confronting Adam again! Frankenstein’s first creation, who had loved her and tortured her, if anything so cruel and desperate could be called love. In his letter to Mary, Hyde had written that Adam was dead. Justine wondered if she could believe him—she had once seen Adam die in a fire with her own eyes, and yet she had found him again, terribly injured, in Styria. But reason told her that he must be dead indeed, that he could not have survived those injuries much longer. When she had read Hyde’s letter, she had felt, for the first time in her second life, a sense of release from bondage, of that peace the Bible spoke of which passeth all understanding. It was wrong to rejoice in his death, and yet she could not help doing so. Well, she would pray about it in St. James’s, the church she and Beatrice attended across from Spanish Place. It would be nice to speak with Father O’Brian again!
How fortunate she was to have everything she needed: friends who loved her, a home to return to. The one thing she had truly missed had been her painting studio. That study of flowers in a blue vase was still sitting on her easel, unfinished. Would she have time to finish it when they got home? Perhaps after they had found Alice. Poor little Alice… where could she be? And then, like Mary, Justine worried about the kitchen maid, and Mr. Holmes, and Dr. Watson, all so mysteriously vanished.
While Mary and Justine’s train drew into the station at Calais, Catherine—
DIANA: What about me? You haven’t said anything about me. I was on that train too.
Diana continued to snore in her sleep. She woke only when the train lurched and she almost rolled off Justine’s lap and onto the floor. The first words out of her mouth were: “Bloody hell!” Since she had been asleep for the entire journey, she had not said or thought anything worth reporting.
CATHERINE: There, satisfied? Oh no, you don’t! If you kick me again, I’m going to bite you so hard.…
Meanwhile, Catherine was eating a very good sausage, flavored with red pepper, in the dining room of Count Dracula’s house in Budapest. Madam Zora, the circus’s snake charmer, had just been thanking Mina Murray for inviting her to stay at the Count’s town residence while the circus was performing.
“Don’t thank me,” said Mina with a smile. “I’m not the mistress here. The Count decides who stays or goes—sometimes unceremoniously! But he likes having all of you girls here—he says it gives this old mausoleum a semblance of life—and you are welcome to stay as long as you wish.”
“Beatrice and I would have gone already if the circus hadn’t been held over until Thursday!” said Catherine. “But Lorenzo’s making so much money—he says everyone who’s anyone is in Budapest right now, for the Emperor’s visit. The theater is packed every night. And if anyone deserves it, he does—considering all those years we traveled around the countryside in wagons, barely able to afford food for the trick ponies or performing dogs!”
“He’s giving us all double wages,” said Zora with satisfaction. “But thank you all the same, Mina. Not everyone would want a bunch of poisonous snakes in their house. I didn’t know what to do after one of them got loose and the hotel kicked me out. And it wasn’t even one of the poisonous ones, just Buttercup! She looks impressive—most people have never seen an albino python—but she wouldn’t hurt anyone, not really. I mean, unless they scared her.” Although on stage Zora spoke with the accent of the Mysterious East, this morning it was evident that the east she came from was Hackney in the East End of London. She ate the final bite of her omelet appreciatively.
Just then Kati, the parlor maid, came in carrying a silver tray. She said something to Mina in Hungarian—Catherine still could not make heads or tails of that language! Mina picked a piece of paper off the tray and looked at it intently. Even from the back, it had the distinctive appearance of a telegram.
“This is from Irene Norton,” said Mina, putting it down on the table. “She says she’s found the warehouse in Vienna where Van Helsing was creating and mesmerizing vampires, and where they still maintain a sort of nest. She asks if we’d like to join her for a vampire hunt. You and Beatrice need to get back to London, don’t you? But I could go. After all, I have developed a sort of expertise in vampires!”
“I pity Van Helsing’s vampires, with two such formidable opponents to deal with!” It was Count Dracula, who had entered as silently as he always did. Catherine looked him over with satisfaction. He was such a perfect romantic hero! Not, perhaps, particularly tall, but with the easy, upright carriage of an aristocrat and military man. High cheekbones, an aquiline nose, a forehead that indicated intellect, interesting pallor, and the sort of dark, floppy hair that would have delighted Mrs. Radcliffe. And he usually dressed in black. Yes, she would have to see if she could fit him into one of her books, somehow!
Mina turned to him with a frown, not of anger but as though she were thinking hard. “I should go, shouldn’t I? Irene has more resources than I do, but she has very little experience fighting vampires, whereas I—well, I’ve learned a great deal about them in the years since poor Lucy was transformed into one. You can’t come, I suppose, Vlad? Not with the Emperor himself arriving for a state visit this week?”
The Count shook his head. “Much as I would like to see a Hungary free of Austrian influence—I was proud to stand with Kossuth, and would again, despite the failure of our cause—I have official duties to perform. I
must stay and represent my country. But you might ask Carmilla. It would take her no more than a day to drive from the schloss to Vienna, and she has always enjoyed hunting—even our kind, when they prove dangerous.”
Mina nodded. “I’ll send her a telegram today. I’m sure Irene could use all the help she can get.” She turned to Catherine and Zora. “Will you girls and Beatrice be all right here without me? You’re too old to need chaperones, I think.”
Catherine laughed. “I should think so! Anyway, Bea and I are leaving on Friday morning. We want to get back to London as soon as we can.”
“And Lorenzo’s circus is leaving too,” said Zora. “We’re booked all the way to Constantinople!”
Catherine could not help feeling envious. She would have liked to stay with the circus, playing her part as La Femme Panthère, the Panther Woman of the Andes, all the way to that fabled city. But the Athena Club needed her. How would they rescue Alice without her help?
DIANA: You’re not indispensable, you know!
JUSTINE: She certainly is! You are, Catherine. We could not do without you.
DIANA: You’re not going to edit that out, are you? You never edit out anything that makes you sound important.
But what were the Count and his parlor maid talking about? Kati was speaking to him in rapid Hungarian. He seemed to be arguing with her—he raised his hands and swept them through his hair in exasperation, creating even more perfect waves. She curtseyed and walked out of the room, holding the silver tray. “Kati!” he called after her; then to Catherine’s surprise he followed her out of the room, still expostulating.
“What in the world was that about?” asked Zora.
Mina looked both incredulous and amused. “Evidently, young Kati has decided to go work for Ayesha! Do you remember Ayesha’s assistant—Ibolya, I think her name was? Well, she and Kati were at school together, and Ibolya’s going off to Zurich to study medicine, so the President of the Alchemical Society needs a new assistant—and Kati has taken the job! She just gave her two weeks’ notice. You know how Vlad feels about that Ayesha—although to be honest, I think he was in love with her once, before she expelled him from the Alchemical Society. Not that I’m blaming her, considering the underhanded tactics he used in that election! I care for Vlad very much, but medieval Hungarian aristocrats don’t fight according to Hoyle.” She put her hand on the telegram and regarded it thoughtfully for a moment. “Sometimes I think he’s still a little in love with her, despite everything. Of course she offered this position to Kati to spite him—she’s still angry, and now he’s going to be angry as well. Over a parlor maid! Although I admit that Kati is an exceptionally good one. Anyway, he’s going to be impossible for the rest of the day. All right, I’m done with lunch. I need to telegraph Irene and Carmilla, then purchase a train ticket to Vienna. The two of you have tonight’s performance to prepare for. I wonder where Beatrice has gone off to. The cook prepared some lovely goop for her, and now it will go to waste.”
“She’s probably with Clarence somewhere,” said Catherine. “She seems to spend every waking moment with him nowadays.”
BEATRICE: That is not fair, Cat! Particularly when I was trying so hard not to spend time with him. I wanted him to forget me, to find—well, not someone else exactly, but perhaps something to do other than converse with a poisonous woman.
Beatrice was, in fact, with Clarence Jefferson at that moment, as Catherine had suspected. She looked around at the dark, paneled walls of the Centrál Kávéház. She and Clarence had gotten into the habit of coming here after rehearsals. She would sip an elderflower tisane and he would drink a dark, aromatic espresso. But this morning she had gone to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for the first meeting of the Committee on Ethics in Alchemical Experimentation, so she and Clarence had decided to meet here for lunch and go on to rehearsals together. She was wearing the green dress she had been given by Mr. Worth himself in Paris, for no special reason—she had simply felt like wearing it this morning. Certainly she had not dressed up particularly for Clarence! Not that he ever seemed to notice what she was wearing, anyway. His attention always seemed to be entirely on her—although at the moment, some of it was focused on stirring his coffee.
He, too, seemed to have dressed with care, but then he always did, unless he was helping Atlas and the acrobatic Kaminski Brothers put up or take down sets. She could see in him the lawyer he had once been, before he had been tried and acquitted for murder—miraculously, for a black man in America who had shot and killed a white police officer, even before a crowd of witnesses who could swear it was in self-defense. That evening, he would be dressed as the Zulu Prince, who danced his native dances for an appreciative audience—one more attraction in Lorenzo’s Circus of Marvels and Delights.
She felt, once again, a deep sense of guilt that he was sitting here with her, when he could be with any number of women who were not poisonous and with whom he could have an ordinary relationship. She had told him that once—he had replied, touching her cheek for just a moment, not long enough for his fingertips to blister, “I don’t want ordinary, Bea. I want you.”
Now, he reached across the table and took her gloved hand. “Honey, you look a million miles away. What are you thinking?”
“That I will miss this place. Soon, Catherine and I will be returning to London, and you will be leaving with the circus for—where do you go next?”
“Bucharest, then Varna, then Constantinople. And after that… maybe Athens? Lorenzo wasn’t sure the last time I talked to him. I wish you could come with us. We could use a Poisonous Girl. By the way, how did the committee meeting go?”
“Well enough, I suppose. Frau Gottleib and Professor Holly agreed that the Société des Alchimistes needs a set of ethical rules to guide alchemical research. They asked me to produce a first draft for their comments and revisions. Once we agree on a second draft, we will present it to Ayesha. What she will think of it, only Heaven knows!”
“I’d like to meet this Ayesha,” said Clarence.
Beatrice looked at him with alarm. “Why? What is the President of the Alchemical Society to you?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” he said, looking at her with a puzzled frown, as though trying to understand her reaction. He pulled his hand away. “You told me she was a black woman—Egyptian, you said? And she’s the head of this Alchemical Society. She sounds impressive, and like someone I’d be interested in meeting, that’s all.”
Why had the thought of Clarence meeting Ayesha caused a sudden pang in her chest, as though she had been struck through the heart with one of Ayesha’s lightning bolts? Involuntarily, she put her hand where she had felt it. Yes, Ayesha was a beautiful woman, but that did not mean all men would fall in love with her, did it? Anyway it would be good for Clarence to fall in love with someone else… only not Ayesha. One could not compete with someone like Ayesha.
Clarence finished his soup, chicken in a paprika broth, and wiped the bowl with a piece of bread to get at the last of the spicy red liquid. Beatrice had already finished a cucumber salad. It was a little too substantial for her—she seldom ate anything that was not in liquid form—but she had felt awkward merely drinking while he ate. She did not know what to say, so she fiddled with her fork.
“Anyway, I must help rescue Alice, if indeed she has been kidnapped,” she said at last. “I am—we are all—terribly worried about her. The circus can get along very well without me, but the Athena Club—well, I would not want to abandon my friends.”
“Of course not, and I’m not asking you to.” Clarence ate a final piece of bread and signaled to the waiter. “I know how important the Athena Club is to—well, to all of you, including Cat. I just wish you and I could spend more time together.”
“But we should not spend more time together,” said Beatrice. “The more of my poison you inhale—”
“I know, I know, you don’t need to remind me.” He sounded impatient, annoyed. But she did need to keep reminding him, didn’t she? Becaus
e she did not want him to suffer the fate of her first love, Giovanni, who had spent so much time with her in her father’s garden that he too had become poisonous. He had died from drinking an antidote that he believed would return him to his natural state. No, she would not allow such a thing to happen to Clarence. It was good that soon they would be parted and he would go to Constantinople. There was no Ayesha in Constantinople.…
CATHERINE: So is it good or bad that Lorenzo’s circus has been offered a permanent position at the Alhambra? You get to see him as often as you like—
BEATRICE: Which is not often enough for him! Truly, I do not know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that Clarence and I can spend more time together. I know you disapprove, Cat—
CATHERINE: I don’t disapprove. I just don’t want him to die of poison. Well, at least he didn’t fall for Ayesha, which would have been worse!
BEATRICE: He did, just a little. It’s difficult not to, I think.
Clarence paid the bill. Beatrice had tried, the first time they had come to the Centrál Kávéház, to pay for herself, but he had said, “Honey, at least allow me to do this.” So she had not insisted.
After they rose from the table, he took her manteau from the back of her chair and draped it over her shoulders. When they had first started spending time together, gestures like these had confused her. Certainly her father had never done such things, nor Giovanni, either. Slowly, she had come to realize they were the gestures men made toward women when they wished to be courteous, or romantic, or both. And Clarence was unfailingly courteous toward women, even when he was angry, as he had been at Zora for losing one of her snakes in the hotel. The entire circus had been asked to leave, but allowed to stay after Zora had promised to remove herself and her snakes to Count Dracula’s residence.
The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl Page 2