by Matt Ruff
Ruby smiled, already grown accustomed to Hillary’s good fortune. A private audience with the head of the employment agency: Why not? Just don’t let her see your ankles.
She was reaching for the buzzer beside the glass doors when she noticed a bead of blood on the tip of her finger. She frowned, thinking Amy must have nicked her during the manicure, but when she turned her hand over, it wasn’t just her index finger that was bleeding: Red liquid was welling up from under all of her nails.
The same panic that had seized her on waking now gripped her again. She felt her heart flutter and skip—only it wasn’t her heart, it was her breastbone, expanding in her chest, as if a clamp that held the two halves of her rib cage together had suddenly sprung loose. “Oh, no,” Ruby said.
Behind her, the elevator began to close its doors. She turned and lunged for it, smearing blood on the polished metal as she clawed her way back inside.
By the time the doors slid shut again, the transformation back to her old self was fully under way. As her torso thickened, the bra began to constrict her. She dropped the coat and purse, and groped down the back of her dress with both hands. The red shoes bit cruelly into her swelling feet. Reflected in the doors, she saw Hillary’s beautiful hair coarsen, darken, and twist, while the white of her skin drained away.
With a ferocious tug, Ruby snapped the clasp of the bra. She gasped and bent forward, wiping more blood down the front of her dress, and watched as the last of the whiteness vanished from her hands and forearms.
The elevator, which had been moving, jolted to a halt. Quickly Ruby snatched up her coat—it was hers again—and buttoned it closed over the worst of the mess. The elevator doors opened. She tried to pat her hair into place, realized it was hopeless, and stumbled out into the lobby.
“Who the fuck are you?” the guard said.
“Just leaving,” Ruby replied, flashing him a smile that was more like a grimace. She started limping for the exit, the shoes making each step absolute agony. The guard said something else to her, but Ruby kept on going, praying she could withstand the pain long enough to hail a taxi.
Three days later, she returned to the house in Hyde Park.
She resisted as long as she could, knowing it was madness to go back there, and that the only sane course was to treat the entire incident as if it had never happened. For the first twenty-four hours after she got home, she almost had herself convinced she was going to be sensible. But on the second day, when the swelling in her feet had gone down and she could walk again, she realized she had no interest in resuming her job search—not as Ruby Dandridge, anyway.
And so on the morning of the third day she rose early and dressed warm. She thought she might have to hunt around to find the townhouse again, but when the cabbie asked her “Where to?” the address just came to her.
On second viewing, the place seemed less like a castle; it was just a big old house in need of maintenance. But there was still an aura of enchantment about it, and Ruby stood for a long time on the sidewalk outside the gate. Last chance, she told herself. You go back in there, you might not escape a second time.
But she hadn’t even escaped the first time.
She clutched her purse and stepped through the gate. She was halfway up the walk when the front door opened and Caleb Braithwhite looked out smiling.
“Hello, Ruby,” he said.
“Do you remember taking the elixir?”
They sat on opposite sides of a little parlor just off the entryway. Ruby had her knife out, and she’d made Braithwhite leave the front door open, so she could hear street noises behind her and feel the frigid outside air snaking under her chair and around her ankles.
“I remember you offering me some kind of potion,” Ruby said. “I don’t remember drinking it.”
Braithwhite nodded as if he’d been expecting this answer. “That’s my fault, I’m afraid. I knew the transformation would be a shock to you, but I should have thought more about what else you’d had to drink that night.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You put something in my drinks?”
“No. You were tipsy, but—”
“I was more than tipsy,” Ruby said.
“You were still in your right mind when you made the choice,” Braithwhite said. “But the shock of the transformation, on top of the effects of the alcohol, set off a panic attack. Perfectly understandable—the change really is quite startling.”
“Startling,” Ruby said, recalling the switch back in the elevator.
“You ended up passing out from the shock. I thought you’d just fainted, but you were out cold, so I carried you upstairs and put you into bed. I figured you’d be fine in a few hours.”
Remembering the slick feel of the satin against her skin: “You took my clothes off?”
“They were falling off you. You’d torn your dress during the panic attack.”
“So you decided to finish the job? Just took the liberty?”
“No liberties. I put you into bed, that’s all. And then waited up to see if you’d wake. But you slept through the night . . . In the morning I had some work to do, down in the basement, and when I came back up to check on you, you’d gone. I decided not to chase after you. I didn’t want to upset you any more than I already had, and I expected you’d come back on your own. I’ve made some adjustments to the elixir formula,” he added. “The next time you take it, the change should be less jarring.”
“Who said there’s going to be a next time?”
“That is why you’re here, isn’t it?” He gave her a long look. “But before we go any farther,” he continued, “there’s something I need to come clean about: It wasn’t an accident, the two of us meeting up the way we did.”
“What do you mean?” Ruby said.
“I have a powerful intuition,” Braithwhite told her. “A talent for sensing opportunities. I’m very good at finding ways to get what I want. I needed to be, to have any chance at satisfaction while my father was alive.”
“You’re saying your intuition told you to come find me on that corner?”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “But there’s more to it than that. There are some things I haven’t told you about what I’m doing in Chicago that may upset you. And I do want to come clean, but I need you to understand—”
“Oh, I understand,” Ruby interrupted. “You’re telling me you’re a liar, and New Year’s Eve was just a setup.” She shrugged, like this was no big thing to her, but in fact she felt betrayed, and furious that she’d allowed herself to be taken in. “You’re a smooth operator, I’ll grant you that.”
“No!” Braithwhite said. “No, Ruby, it wasn’t like that. I did have an agenda that night, it’s true. But I also enjoyed myself. It was fun, being out with you. The conversation, the dancing. The kissing.” He smiled.
“Yeah, you can just go on and forget about that,” Ruby said, wagging the knife.
“All right.” Braithwhite put his hands up, but his smile said: We’ll see.
“What about those two men by the car?” she asked. “Was that—”
“A coincidence. A happy accident.”
“Happy?”
“It’s not that I wasn’t pleased with the way the night was already going.” Another smile. “But at some point I did need to come around to making my offer, and if we’d gotten any more intimate, that might have been . . . awkward. Running into those men provided a useful change in mood.”
“What if they’d killed us?” Ruby said. “What would the mood have been like then?”
“There’s no way they could have hurt me. And you were never in any real danger, either.”
Ruby shook her head. “You’re just a piece of work, aren’t you?”
“I’m a man who knows what he wants—and how to get it,” Braithwhite said. “I understand you’re angry, and you have reason to be, but be honest, Ruby: I was right. You want this.”
“Even if I do,” Ruby said, “that doesn’t mean I’m not out of my damn mind.”
It had gotten very cold, so with Ruby’s permission, Braithwhite shut the front door. They went back into the kitchen. Braithwhite set a teakettle on the stove, and then he and Ruby sat at the table, in the sun.
He told her a story. It began in Massachusetts in 1795, with a coven of white men led by Titus Braithwhite, a cousin to one of Caleb’s paternal ancestors. The coven had sought to harness the power of creation, but had gotten something wrong—said “open sesame” when they should have said “abracadabra”—and called down Armageddon instead.
The story then jumped ahead a hundred years, to Caleb’s grandfather, Addison, who’d formed a coven of his own, and Caleb’s father, Samuel, who’d expanded the coven and built a new manor house on the ruin of Titus Braithwhite’s old estate. In the course of their researches, they learned about a slave girl, Hannah, who’d escaped Titus Braithwhite’s apocalypse, bearing her old master’s unborn child. They spent years trying to find out what had become of her, but it was Caleb and his intuition that finally solved the puzzle and tracked down the last surviving member of that particular bloodline.
As Braithwhite described the plot his father had hatched to lure Atticus out to Massachusetts, Ruby remembered a phone call she’d gotten from George Berry last June, asking if she could watch Horace while George and Atticus went east to deal with some sort of family business. And she recalled who else had tagged along on that road trip.
“When Atticus and George came to your daddy’s house,” Ruby asked, “were they alone, or—”
“They were supposed to be,” Braithwhite said. “But your sister decided to come with them.” Making it sound like a compliment, he added: “Letitia’s a difficult girl.”
You don’t know the half of it, Ruby thought, but then she thought, Or maybe you do.
This chapter of the story ended with Braithwhite betraying his father and saving the lives of Atticus and the others. Then, after a brief time out to collect his inheritance, Braithwhite had come to Chicago and made contact with another white men’s coven. There was more backstory here, but at the first mention of the name Hiram Winthrop, Ruby interrupted: “Winthrop? As in the Winthrop House?”
“Yes. And to answer your next few questions in advance, yes, I’m the one responsible for Letitia getting the house. The lawyer who gave her the money and the Realtor were both working for me. Penumbra Real Estate is a company my father set up. I’m the real owner of the property.”
Ruby was shaking her head before he’d finished. “I knew it!” she said. “I knew it was too good to be true!” She glared at him. “Why? Why her?”
“Intuition,” Braithwhite said calmly. “I had thought about moving into the Winthrop House myself. I believe the house is hiding some valuable secrets—but uncovering them meant dealing with Winthrop’s ghost. And not that I don’t love a good contest of wills, but it occurred to me there might be a better candidate for this one.”
“Letitia? But why would you think—”
“Your sister is very tenacious. I had a feeling that if she were properly motivated—if it meant she got to keep the house—she’d find a way to tame Winthrop. Obviously, I was right.”
“Yeah, you were right,” Ruby said. “But you were wrong, too. ’Titia doesn’t know it was you who gave her the house, does she?”
“No, and I hope you won’t tell her. It wouldn’t make her happy.”
“Like you care if she’s happy.”
“I do care, actually,” Braithwhite said. “I like Letitia.”
“But she doesn’t like you, does she? So even now she’s living in the Winthrop House, it doesn’t get you what you want. You can’t go ask her if she’s found anything.”
“No,” Braithwhite agreed. “But you can.”
“And that’s the job? You want me to spy on my sister?”
“As a small part of the job,” he said delicately, “I’d like you to spend some time with your sister. Don’t interrogate her; just ask how she’s been, see if she volunteers anything. Strike up a conversation with Atticus too, and whatever other tenants you can. Maybe do a little poking around the house yourself.”
“What, on my own?” Ruby said. “Not a chance.”
“All right. Just talk to the tenants, then. See if anyone’s stumbled across anything interesting: Books, maps, keys, strange devices. Secret rooms. I’d also like to know if anyone else has come around asking questions, or if anyone seems to be watching the house.”
“Anyone like who?”
“White men,” Braithwhite said. “Police, especially.”
She regarded him coldly. “What have you got my sister mixed up in?”
“That’s another long story. And I’ll tell it to you, but first, there’s a gathering I’d like you to attend, tomorrow night. It’ll answer a lot of your questions—and afterwards, we can talk about the rest of the job.”
“What kind of gathering? You talking about a party?”
“Don’t worry, you won’t be serving canapés. You’ll be a guest.”
“Yeah, well,” Ruby said, “my party dress got torn.”
Braithwhite placed a small glass vial on the table, the red liquid inside it seeming to glow in the sunlight.
“I’ve got something that’ll fit you,” he said.
“Practical divination,” the old woman said. “Not gypsy mumbo-jumbo, but rational forecasting, based on math. It’s been the main focus of our research since October of ’29, and we’ve made solid progress, notwithstanding the odd bobble now and then. More recently, I’ve also developed a personal interest in the restorative arts.” She looked down at the sclerotic hand that gripped the cane she leaned on. “Would that I’d begun a bit sooner, but one always assumes one will have more time . . . So what about you, dearie? What’s your field?”
“I talk to dead people,” Hillary said.
“By what method? Spirit radio? Barton’s teletype? Not planchette, surely?”
“No, I just talk to them. It’s a gift. My mother could do it, too.”
The woman drew back slightly, lips pursed, as if Hillary had said something distasteful. But then she grinned wolfishly, and chuckled. “A gift! Careful who you say that to in here, dearie. They’re liable to burn you for a witch.”
“Small-minded people don’t scare me,” Hillary said, which earned another chuckle.
“No,” said the old woman, “I can see they don’t . . . Nantucket, you said?”
Hillary nodded. “We’re a small lodge. Smaller than we used to be. Our lodgemaster defected to Ardham last spring. We’re still reorganizing.”
“Ardham.” The old woman pursed her lips again. “I lost one of mine to them, too. But I understand he came to a bad end. As did his seducer, Mr. Braithwhite.” Another chuckle. “Let’s have some champagne, shall we, dearie? Where’s that waiter?”
As the old woman turned, slowly, in search of a drinks tray, Ruby surfaced and made her own scan of the ballroom, looking for Caleb Braithwhite.
Earlier she’d sat with him in his car in the parking lot of this country club, watching through tinted glass as the other guests arrived, Braithwhite identifying each one by the city whose sorcerers’ coven they represented: Baltimore. Atlanta. New Orleans. Las Vegas. Los Angeles. Some two dozen more. The old woman was New York.
In between limousine arrivals, Braithwhite gave Ruby her cover story. “You shouldn’t have to say much. You’ll be the only good-looking woman there. Most of them will want to flirt with you. Let them. Smile and look fascinated, and let them talk. See what they give away.”
The plan was for the two of them to arrive separately, so when the time came, Braithwhite drove several miles to a garage where Ruby’s own limousine waited. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “You’ll be fine. Just mingle and observe.”
Ruby was worried, though, and so nervous that by the time the limo had brought her back, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to go through with
it. In desperation she sought Hillary’s eyes in the rearview; Hillary looked back in that arch way she had, ready to take charge. So Ruby let her: It was Hillary who stepped confidently from the limo to the curb, Hillary who strode into the club as if she owned the place, barely pausing to show her invitation to the dark-suited men at the door.
In the lobby she stopped to check herself in a mirror. The physical transformation, though no less strange, had been painless this time. Her red hair had come back full-length; rather than cut it again, she’d decided to wear it natural. Brushed out and lightly tousled by the winter wind, it had a wildness that contrasted nicely with her dress: red huntress in a black evening gown.
She proceeded to the ballroom. The buzz of conversation dipped as she entered and heads turned her way. Hillary assessed the crowd, deciding where to start, settling on an elderly trio—San Francisco, St. Louis, and Des Moines—giving her dirty-old-man looks from a nearby table.
She went over and introduced herself. Upon learning Hillary was from Nantucket, San Francisco quipped, “I think I know a limerick about you,” to which St. Louis replied, “No, no—you mean her brother!” while Des Moines wet his lips and counted the freckles in her cleavage. Two fools and a toad, Ruby thought, but Hillary didn’t even bother to be bothered.
She sat and took their measures. San Francisco, despite his jocularity, was in considerable pain. He kept palming his abdomen and grimacing, and each time he did so, he looked over at the table where Los Angeles was sitting. Des Moines was insecure and self-conscious, and glad to meet someone whose lodge, he thought, must be even more insignificant than his own. Yet even as he judged Hillary to be beneath him, he also felt a need to impress her. He bragged about his lodge’s library and its most recent acquisition, something called the Codex Phantasmagoria. “The Ziegler transcription, with all seven commentaries. You know how rare that is?” She didn’t, but she sensed that St. Louis wanted the Codex for himself, and was making nice to Des Moines in hopes of getting a chance to steal it.