Soulstar

by C. L. Polk

  Jean-Marie sat with us, full of talk about how well the sturdy old building had held up, their plans to restore additional floors of the hotel, and the volunteers who were coming to start teaching the Cages what they ought to have learned in school.

  “Everything’s coming together wonderfully,” I said, but I couldn’t hide my glance at Miss Minerva and the empty place set beside her. Nolene hadn’t accepted the invitation to celebrate the new clan house. She hadn’t been back since vowing to put the law on Clan Cage. Minerva had gained a clan, but had lost her last relative, and that was a loss that ached.

  “Thank you for the yarn,” Jean-Marie said. “And the spinning wheel. Emma and Darrell are already scheduling who gets to use it and when.”

  Emma had moved out of Winnie and Duke’s apartment, but they were her guests at the table. Duke held Cora in his lap to give Emma a chance to eat, telling his part of the table stories that had everyone spellbound. Everywhere I looked were animated, happy people, excited for their new clan and their new home.

  “It’s a good night,” I said. “And you remember, if you’re short on anything—”

  “We’ll say so. But we have enough for now,” Jean-Marie said. “Everyone has been so generous.”

  “Everyone looks so happy.”

  “We are. This is exactly what we needed,” Jean-Marie said. “We’re together, and we’re in charge. We can come and go as we want, we have a home, we have the clan—thank you so much for helping us.”

  “It’s uza,” I said. “We’re all happy to do it.”

  “Headmaster Bell brought schoolbooks. They’re worn out, but still good. And he went to the school board to bully them into hiring our volunteer teachers, so they’ll be paid, and Dr. Singer will be coming so anyone who wants to talk to him can—”

  A draft billowed through the room, chilly on the skin. Jean-Marie stopped talking as the room fumbled its way to silence. I leaned back to look at the people who had walked inside, my heart dropping as I recognized Nolene Brown. With her was a man with a sealed document tube that made my stomach churn. I recognized the blue ribbon tied around the tube, signaling that it was a notice of a civil lawsuit and not criminal charges. Nolene was suing.

  The third person with Nolene made Zelind duck kher head, for Birdie Bay strode in beside her, cold and glittering in a blue fox coat. She patted Nolene’s hand and stood by, solicitous as an aunt as the court clerk presented the tube to Minerva.

  “Thank you. You may leave now,” Miss Minerva said.

  The court officer stood firm. “I need to determine whether you understand the nature of the suit laid on your behalf.”

  “On my behalf?” Miss Minerva asked. “I haven’t any reason to sue anyone. I never asked for you. You may leave now.”

  I knew then what was inside that tube, and I shot a fierce look at Nolene before leaning closer to Minerva. “Nolene is suing for guardianship,” I said. “She’s arguing that you are incapable of making sound decisions, or that you’re infirm, and no longer mentally competent.”

  Minerva gazed at me, and I saw it when the light in her eyes cracked in half. Then she rose to her feet and took the tube from the court officer’s hands.

  “I disagree, naturally. I reject this document. It is scurrilous, it is grasping, and it comes from no family of mine.”

  Nolene gasped. “Granny Min—”

  “You may call me that no longer,” Minerva said. “To you, I am Miss Minerva Cage, and no relation of yours. Your suit holds no water. You are on my property. Get out.”

  “Miss Brown,” Birdie said, “I can see you’re distraught.”

  “And you,” Minerva said. “You’ve been sniffing around this hotel’s skirts for fifteen years. I told you then and I’m telling you now: The Princess Mary is not for sale. Now it belongs to Clan Cage, held in cooperative trust by the whole of the clan—”

  “Enclosed is the motion to block the founding of your cooperative trust, pending the findings of your mental state in court,” the court officer said. “You have taken the notice from my hands. The suit is now in motion. Though frankly, Miss Cage, I wish you luck.”

  Nolene gasped again, but the clerk ignored her as he walked out of the dining hall.

  “Granny Min—”

  “Get out,” Minerva said. “Get out right now, and never come back. No flesh and blood would do this to me. You’re trespassing. Now leave.”

  “I’ve seen enough.” Birdie took Nolene’s arm. “Come along. We have to report this to your advocate.”

  Birdie’s advocate, if you wanted to be honest about it. I could see the lines of this particular web—Birdie had wanted the hotel, or maybe the land the hotel occupied, and now she’d found a way to get it. She could see the case go to trial, but Miss Minerva was as sharp as a needle. They’d never win it that way.

  “You need an advocate,” I said into the astonished murmurs in the room. “You need one now.”

  “I’m an advocate.” A man stood up. “Charles Brown of the Sure Winds. If you’ll allow me to consult for you, I can look at these motions immediately.”

  “You’d better come with me,” Minerva said, and she unhooked her cane from the back of her chair. “Serve dessert. This is not going to stop us. We’re going to fight back.”

  But the mood had broken. Zelind and I made our excuses with everyone else and left the hotel, standing on a smoke-scented street.

  “That’s too strong to be a chimney,” Zelind said, and the small crowd around us ventured to the intersection to get a better view of the evening sky.

  “There,” someone said, and we swiveled our heads to a billowing cloud of black smoke. “Up the hill.”

  “That’s a house fire,” Zelind said. “If the wind shifts wrong, the whole block could go up.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “They might need a nurse. Make sure the firehouse down on Eighth Street has sent a wagon. Anyone who wants to help, come on. We’ve got to keep that from spreading.”

  * * *

  The whole family huddled on the lawn, and I wanted to cry. An older man in judicial robes; his younger wife in a long, shimmering gown; a coltish, lanky girl in a lace frock that must have been her Merrymonth festival dress; and identical boys in short pants and long hair all watched the fire that belched through the roof.

  Every single one of them was dead. Reddened, blistered skin and black patches smeared their arms and faces. The young wife clung to her daughter’s shoulders, holding her back from trying to run inside, though the flames couldn’t hurt her any longer.

  I moved to speak to them, but Zelind slipped kher arms around me, pulling me back from the lawn and into the street, away from the thick smoke and intense heat. Volunteers sweated over the water pumps, and firefighters sprayed the neighboring houses, trying to keep the blaze from jumping from one roof to another.

  The fire blazed on, ferocious and starving. Zelind found the sergeant in charge, dragging me along to his side. “What can we do to help?”

  “Pump,” the sergeant said. “If you can pump water, all of us can fight the blaze.”

  “Whose house was this?” I asked. I had to shout to be heard.

  “Belonged to Judge Battle,” the sergeant said. “All of them are dead in there. Every room’s lit up. It’s going to come down any moment.”

  The roof shifted at his words, half of it falling into the house below.

  “And there it goes,” he said. “Water on!”

  Firefighters directed their hoses to the burning house, soaking everything they could. Two more fire wagons showed up, and the emptied ones moved aside to trade places.

  The family watched until their home was a smoking, blackened heap. The house leaned backward, pulling away from what had once been a pretty covered porch. I turned to the sergeant and pointed at the family.

  “Do you want me to ask them what happened?”

  “You can do that?” He pushed his helmet back on his head. “I want to know. It can’t be evidence, but they
had fire ladders outside the upper windows. They could have escaped.”

  I nodded and came closer to the family. “Ahoy. Do you know what happened to you?”

  The judge turned his head. “They were banging. All the windows and doors, banging all at once. Hammering.”

  That made no sense. “The windows were banging?” I asked. “Why were they banging?”

  “They were hammering,” the judge said. “Hammering them shut. We couldn’t get out. We shouted at them. They looked in the windows at us. And then the fire in the grate rose to the ceiling. The house burned. We couldn’t get out.”

  People with hammers and nails and the will to do murder, to make the last moments of these poor people horrible and terrifying. “I’m so sorry.”

  “They were monsters,” the judge said. “Who would murder my wife? Who would murder my children? They never did anything to anyone.”

  He didn’t include himself in that protestation of innocence. Judges made enemies every time they handed down a conviction. But who would do such a terrible thing as nail shut the escapes and then burn the house down around his family?

  “Mrs. Thorpe,” a stranger said.

  I beheld a constable in brown tunic and brass buttons. “Constable?”

  “Come with me, please.”

  “If you need to ask the family questions,” I said, turning to face Constable … Miller, her shiny name tag read. “I know they’re not evidence, but if it will help—”

  “Come with me, please,” Constable Miller repeated. “We want you to answer some questions.”

  Another figure turned away from a crowd of neighbors, and I recognized Corporal Moore.

  “Please come along quietly,” Moore said.

  I stepped back. “I will not. What are you charging me with?”

  “We have the authority to question you, as a person of interest in an investigation.”

  “Nothing, then. Am I free to go?”

  “I could hold you on suspicion. Instead, I ask you to submit to questioning in an investigation.”

  He took my arm, then, and led me away from Zelind and the crowd. He stopped at a sidecar bicycle. “Please get in.”

  Fuming, I pedaled back to Central Police. I refused an offer of water, and sat in the interview room’s uncomfortable, odd-legged chair.

  “Thank you for coming along quietly.”

  “I won’t answer any questions without an advocate present to protect my interests.”

  “Now, that just makes you look more suspicious,” Corporal Moore said. “This is the second arson case we’ve found you at. It’s reasonable to wonder at your connection.”

  “There is no connection,” I said. “Arrest me, if you have the evidence.”

  Now the corporal’s patient expression vanished. “First we find you at the burning of the asylum where witches were held before trial and transportation to the asylums. Now we find you at the burning home of a judge who presided over dozens of trials that convicted witches. I think you have a connection to these fires, and I mean to find out what it is.”

  I scoffed and crossed my arms over my chest. “What do you think, Corporal? Do you think that I set fire to these places and I murdered Jacob Clarke for—what could I possibly want from these actions?”

  “Revenge,” Corporal Moore said.

  The scent of gin tickled my memory. “I assure you, Corporal. I didn’t set these fires. I didn’t kill Jacob Clarke. And you can’t charge me with these crimes based on what a good story it would make. But if you keep trying to pin me, you’re going to let the real criminals escape.”

  “Oh? And who are the real criminals?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. It wasn’t a lie; I only had a guess. “Now either get me an advocate—who will tell you to let me go—or just let me go yourself. I didn’t have anything to do with these crimes, but you keep harassing me instead of looking for the real culprit.”

  He licked his lips and shifted his weight. “I can keep you for a full day.”

  “Then take me to a holding cell,” I said. “It’ll be one more item in my civil complaint, is all.”

  Moore blew a frustrated breath out of his nose. “You’re good. But I’m better.”

  “I hope you are,” I said. “Because then you’ll stop harassing me and set to finding out who did this.”

  He had to let me go, but not before he blacked my fingers making impressions of the ridges on the tips. I stood out in the street, three miles from home, and set off down Eighth Street.

  When I got to the corner of Eighth and Quimby, I turned my back on the way home and ventured east, headed for Five Corners.

  * * *

  The Rook Saloon’s triangular building was the only open establishment in the intersection of five streets in the heart of East Riverside, and tonight it smelled like a bonfire extinguished by cider. I sidestepped gobs of filth nestled in sawdust, taking a careful path between tables where drinkers sprayed laughter and talk.

  Conversation faltered when someone caught notice. He scrambled off the tall stool and took off his hat, looking like he’d just been caught lazing about at work. “Auntie.”

  I searched about for his name and nodded. “Henry. You’ve recovered well, it seems.”

  “Yes, Auntie.” He lifted one hand and waggled his fingers, twisting his wrist to show how well the break had healed. “It aches when the weather turns, but it’s sound.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’ve come to see Miss Wolf. Is she in?”

  Now more people from more tables watched me. I knew most of the people here, as patients from the clinic or from medical examinations in the local jails or strictly by their reputation, but I didn’t frequent the Rook. I didn’t drink in saloons at all, much less the one that was the roost of criminals and ne’er-do-wells.

  Perhaps I should have hesitated before walking straight into Jamille’s domain. But I waited politely while they buzzed and whispered and shrugged. Finally, Henry escorted me to a door within the saloon flanked by a pair of gentlemen who hadn’t had a drop.

  “Wait,” one of them said, and disappeared inside. I stood in place, heels together, hands clasped before me, and fought the urge to look behind me for whoever’s gaze bored into my back.

  Presently, the man came back. “She’ll see you. Don’t touch anything. Don’t talk to anyone.”

  I nodded, and he led me inside. Gas lamps flickered in the draft, steadying as the door clicked shut behind me.

  I entered a room filled with tables of women wrapping coins in paper and tallying the results. The bonfire smell was replaced by cigarettes and perfume, with a thread of unclean water sliding beneath.

  You don’t talk to counters. You don’t touch a counter, or their tally, or anything in that room if you like your face the way it is. I slipped past their curious gazes and headed for the chamber beyond the counting room.

  Basil leaned against the wall, smoking a gasper. He winked, and I could smell smoke hanging on him like an accusation. “It’s quite a surprise to see you here, Auntie.”

  Jamille Wolf sat behind a desk that shouldn’t have surprised me—she had turned petty crime into a business, and so she had ledgers, and reports, and all the other trappings of a manager. Her pen was silver filigree, matching the ornament on a box of pipe tobacco, open to release the sweet, creamy scent of Miller’s Black Cherry. She picked up a fat-bowled pipe and gestured at a chair on the other side of her wide oak desk, where a glass of water perched next to an ashtray. “Basil. Get Auntie a drink.”

  “I’m fine, Cousin, thank you for the kindness,” I said, and Basil leaned against the wall once more.

  I ventured across the office, taking the chair before Jamille. Above her head hung a portrait of elder brother Jonathan dressed in the round-cornered collar and striped jacket of a Queens University scholar. It was garlanded with a white ribbon, tied in a bow that resembled a butterfly in flight.

  “Cousin? Family business, then. What brings you here, at an hour when you
must usually be snug in your bed?”

  “I was in the area when Kingston Asylum burned,” I said. “And now tonight, I’ve come back from the fire that killed a judge and his family.”

  “It did?” Jamille asked, glancing at me over the bowl of her pipe. “What a thing.”

  “I spoke to him,” I continued. “They reported something awful—that people nailed the doors and windows shut, and then set the house ablaze.”

  Jamille cocked her head. “Really.”

  “People died at Kingston Asylum too, all to smoke inhalation and the flames. Save one.”

  “And that one was special?” Jamille asked.

  I ignored the mean little smirk on her face. “That last person I mention was the first to die. Shot in the head—probably by the people who came to set the fire.”

  “What a thing,” Jamille repeated. “And why have you come to me with this news?”

  “Because I can add two and two,” I said. “Because I can draw the line between the asylum that held witches to be examined, and a judge who convicted witches. I am certain that Jonathan was held at Kingston Asylum, but here’s what I’m wondering, Miss Jamille.…”

  Jamille sat perfectly still, the unlit pipe cradled in her hand. She listened to every word without moving so much as a muscle. She stared into my eyes, her mouth just slightly open, the gap from her missing tooth showing. When she finally spoke, it was so quiet I nearly missed it.

  “What do you wonder?”

  “If I were to visit the archives, would I find that the judge who died tonight was the judge who convicted your brother?”

  Basil shifted his weight and took a step toward me. Jamille lifted her hand, and Basil stopped.

  “You’re telling me this instead of the police,” Jamille said.

  “I am,” I said. “I have no proof. Just an interesting story. But if that story is true, Miss Jamille—these fires are not going to solve anything. They’re making things worse. If someone makes the same connection I did, that’s a story in the papers accusing us of violence, of being dangerous, that every lie told about witches that put them in asylums for their lives is actually true.”