The Other Side of Midnight

by Simone St. James

  He ran a hand through his hair, rumpling it. “It explains why she took the job with the Dubbses. If she was having problems with her powers, she was funding her own retirement.”

  My heart was racing in my chest. I had never put the thought into words before, that my powers could leave me. It was terrifying, unfamiliar—and yet part of it was so exciting I could barely begin to fathom it. What would I be if I was not The Fantastique? What would I do if I couldn’t see the dead? I couldn’t be normal—I could never be normal. And yet . . .

  “I suppose,” I said slowly, “you’re going to miss your chance. To do tests on me. If you want to do tests on me, that is.”

  “Is that an offer?” he asked. But then he shook his head. “Don’t answer that. I’m not going to test you, Ellie. I don’t think I’m going to do that work ever again.” He leaned over me and his scent came to me like a drug, clean male sweat and faint laundry soap from the sheets we’d rumpled. “I suppose I should spend the rest of the night trying to convince you to abandon this plan, that you shouldn’t put yourself in danger, that you’re a defenseless female and you should let us manly types take care of this sort of business.”

  I took in a luxurious breath of him. “And I should spend the rest of the night asking how many girls you’ve brought here and whether they were pretty, and wondering if I’m special.”

  He made a sound and the bed shook for a second; I realized it was the quiet vibration of laughter. James Hawley was laughing. “You’re not really going to ask that, are you?”

  I thought it over. “No.”

  “How brave and modern of you.” He leaned over me further and kissed me just behind the ear, slow and soft, his breath warm on my skin. It was gentle, and it sent a shock straight down my body. “The answers are none, no, and yes, you are. Fine, then. We’ll do it your way. I’m coming with you tomorrow,” he said.

  “I know,” I replied, sliding an arm around his neck. “Now hush.” And we did not talk for a long, long time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  My street in St. John’s Wood was quiet when I arrived home the next morning. The rain had moved off at dawn, leaving the pavements soaked and empty, the clouds breaking up in ragged pieces. The husbands on my street had gone off to work in the city, and the wives were home behind their curtains, doubtlessly staring in disapproving curiosity at the guest who waited on my doorstep.

  Fitzroy Todd wore an impeccably tailored evening jacket, now rumpled and damp. His tie was undone, the top buttons of his shirt open. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw. He lounged on my front doorstep as if he owned the street, his dark-clad legs sprawled over the cobblestones of my front walk, his feet in their once shined shoes crossed negligently at the ankles. His hair was messy and he looked as if he’d spent the night in a sewer. And yet when he saw me, he laughed.

  “Well, good morning!” he said.

  I came up my front walk and stood by his feet. “What do you want?”

  He laughed at me again, and he didn’t move. “Ellie Winter,” he said. “I do believe you’ve been out all night.”

  “God, are you still drunk? It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

  “And I was drinking until six. It will wear off soon, darling.” He looked me up and down, assessing, a half grin on his face. “You’ve done a good job of cleaning up, I must admit, but unless I’m very much mistaken you’re wearing yesterday’s clothes. I can always tell when a girl is wearing yesterday’s clothes.”

  I tilted my head, surprised to find I wasn’t the least bit embarrassed. A night as good as the one I’d had seemed to have its benefits. “I didn’t take you for a prude.”

  “God, I couldn’t be happier. You’ll get no judgment from me.”

  I looked down the street. Three doors down, a curtain twitched in a window. “Come inside,” I told him. “My neighbors hate me already.”

  He followed me into the house. “This is very nice, in a bourgeois sort of way.”

  “Shut it, you snob,” I said. “You can sit in the kitchen, but if you think I’m making you coffee, you can think again.”

  “Ellie!” he cried, pleased. “That’s the girl I remember. That sharp tongue, and always a lot of jazz in her. We missed you, you know.”

  “I was always the wet blanket, and you know it perfectly,” I replied. Pickwick was in the kitchen; my daily woman must have dropped him off early. He looked rested and well fed, but I opened the door and let him out into the back garden just in case. “Now sit on that chair there and stop trying to flatter me. What do you want?”

  Fitz made no comment about the dog—he was too caught up in his own problems, as usual. He sat at the table, and I had to admit that in the harsh morning light his years of dissolution didn’t sit on him very well. His face looked lined and pale from too many dark nightclubs, and, even more surprisingly, there seemed to be a smell about him, as if he’d passed out in something awful. The Fitz I knew may have been somewhat—all right, terribly—flawed, but he had always been impeccably groomed.

  He put his hands on the table, his jocular manner draining away. “Well, Ellie, I suppose I’ll get to it.” He rubbed a hand up and down his face. “I seem to be in a small spot of trouble.”

  I looked through my cupboards, trying to find something to put out in case Pickwick was hungry. “What is it?”

  “I suppose you may have heard—Ramona died. She was murdered.”

  Some of the good feeling from the night before evaporated. I took a tin of meat from the cupboard with numb fingers. “Yes. I heard.”

  “Someone choked her. I heard it was a—a garrote, you know, some sort of wire.”

  I turned and looked at him. James hadn’t told me exactly how Ramona had died, and I hadn’t asked. He’s some sort of professional, James had said. I pictured the body on the floor, the way I’d seen it in my mind when I’d knocked on her door that day, so still, the arms reaching.

  I looked more closely at Fitz. Sweat was beading on his brow. He and Ramona had both been in attendance at the séance when Gloria died, so they had at least been acquainted. But he looked torn now, and strangely guilty, and some of the missing pieces fell into place. “You knew her,” I said. “You were the one who invited her to Gloria’s séance.”

  “I didn’t invite her,” he protested. “I swear it. But when I told her about it, she was adamant. She wanted to go. She wanted to see Gloria in action, she said, and she wanted a chance at such a rich client.” He breathed out, rubbed his face again, that strange smell wafting from him as he moved. “She needed the chance, she said, and she was going to take it whether I allowed it or not.”

  “You were lovers.” It all made sense now—how Ramona knew so much about Gloria, about me. How she’d known what Gloria did in her séances. Why she’d hated Gloria so bitterly. I was sick of hearing about the great Gloria Sutter, the irreplaceable Gloria Sutter. “You were trying to replace Gloria with her.”

  He shrugged, and then he laughed mirthlessly. “Gloria wouldn’t take me back.”

  Ramona with her glossy black bob, her kohl-rimmed eyes. She’d looked nothing like Gloria, but she’d done her best to try. Ramona with her savage will for survival, her pinpointed pupils. “And the drugs?” I asked him. “What about the drugs?”

  A flicker of surprise crossed his face that he didn’t bother to hide. He’d had no idea I knew. “I tried to get her off them, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  I stared at him. “That’s a lie,” I said, suddenly certain. “You gave them to her. You supplied them. You’re the only one who had the money.”

  Are you asking if I’m for sale? Name a price, handsome, and I’ll consider it. She’d practically told us everything that night, if only I’d opened my eyes to see it. How could I have been so stupid?

  “Ellie, you don’t understand.” Fitz was nearly pleading with me. “The drugs had a hold on her. I
wanted to get her clean. I did. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Why are you here, Fitz?” I said to him. “Why have you come to my house for the first time? What do you want from me?”

  He was silent for a moment, and I heard a polite scratching at the back door. I let Pickwick in, then worked on putting down some food and water for him. Even if my daily woman had already fed him, I still wanted to do it myself, as an offering. He gave me a placid look and a single thump of his tail in thanks.

  “All right,” Fitz said, as if we’d had some sort of argument that had exhausted him. “You’re right—there’s no point in going over everything. What’s past is past. The fact is, Ellie, I’m in a spot and I need a loaner of a little bit of money.”

  “What?” The request was so outrageous that if I hadn’t had a creeping feeling of wrongness climbing my spine and the back of my neck, I would have laughed. “You want money? What for?”

  “Just to get out of London for a little while. Take a little trip, you know.”

  “And you don’t have your own money for this?” His dinner jacket alone, which he seemed to have rubbed in garbage, cost more than a month’s earnings for me.

  “I’m a little out of pocket right now.”

  “Then go to your parents.”

  He looked away. “They won’t give me anything. My allowance is gone, and Father says he’s finished handing me money.”

  I pulled out a kitchen chair. “What about the fee you got from the Dubbses?”

  Still he looked away. He really did look awful, his skin pouching under his eyes. I’d never seen him look like this before, even after he’d been on a multiday bender. “It’s gone,” he replied finally, seeming to grit the words out. He turned back to me. “Ellie, I have to get out of London, and quickly. Ramona is dead. Do you understand?”

  “And you think you could be next,” I said. “Why?”

  He didn’t answer me. I looked into his bloodshot eyes, and suddenly I felt a strange, slow jolt of panic, a pulse of it injecting itself heartbeat by heartbeat into my veins. It felt as if something was crawling up my back on invisible insect legs, and a telltale itch was beginning at the base of my skull. And the smell . . . the smell . . .

  “Fitz,” I said, trying to keep my voice under control, trying not to scream. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Ellie, I swear I didn’t.”

  Someone is here, I thought, the words a certainty in my mind. I glanced at Pickwick and saw him sitting next to his bowl, his food half eaten, his ears pricked up. “Fitz, what did you do?”

  “Nothing!” His shout was hoarse. “A few weeks ago a fellow came to me. He said he knew about Ramona, about the drugs. He knew I was selling them to supplement my allowance. I don’t know how he knew, but he did. He told me the only way I could stay out of prison was to do as he asked.”

  “And what was that?”

  “To go to Gloria and ask her to do this one job. This one séance, for these clients, the Dubbses. To convince her to do it.”

  “So the Dubbses weren’t friends of yours,” I said. “You didn’t meet them at a party. They didn’t wear you down with requests to meet with Gloria. All of that was a lie.”

  “It was the cover he gave me,” Fitz said. “The man. He made me memorize it. It’s the story I gave the police, the story I gave you when you visited me, and the story I gave Davies. Davies said no—that part was true. But I couldn’t leave it, or my parents would find out and I’d go to jail. So I followed Gloria around for a few days, you know, and I got her alone.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She laughed at me.” Even in his extreme state, Fitz managed a flash of hurt outrage. “She told me to go to hell. She was in one of her wild moods. But she came to me two days later to ask how much money was in it, and I knew I had her.”

  I pressed my hands to my forehead. “Oh, my God, Gloria,” I said softly. “You walked into a trap.”

  “I didn’t think anyone would hurt her!” Fitz nearly shouted. “I swear, if I’d known, I wouldn’t have—”

  “Wouldn’t you?” I said, and he drew back, silent. “So Ramona was telling the truth when she said the Dubbses didn’t want either of you there. When she said they wanted both of you to turn back and go home when they saw you at the train station. You were never invited along at all. They wanted Gloria alone.”

  “I wanted to be there,” he protested. “In case she needed protection.”

  “No, you wanted to be there because you saw a potential mark with money, just like Gloria did.” I leaned back in my chair. “This man—the one who came to you. Who was he?”

  Fitz shook his head. “I don’t know. He didn’t give his name.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Like a fellow—any fellow. Brownish hair, not too tall. Tony accent, but not too upper, if you know what I mean. His suit was decent, but I didn’t recognize it.” He leaned forward. “He knew everything about what I was . . . into, Ellie. Everything. I thought maybe he was from the Yard at first, but what would they want with Gloria?”

  The man who had abducted Davies had been dark haired and nondescript. The man who had killed Ramona had looked the same. I felt suddenly overwhelmed by the number of nondescript men in England. “You’re saying you think he was higher up,” I said to Fitz.

  “What else could it be?” he said.

  I looked around the room. I was still chilled, and Pickwick still sat quiet, his ears pricked. Go away, I thought at whoever it was. Don’t show yourself.

  “What is it?” Fitz was following my gaze around the room. “Do you think someone is listening?”

  “Why Ramona?” I said to him. “If whoever it was got what they wanted, if you led them to Gloria and he killed her, then why kill Ramona after the fact?” I searched his face. “Tell me.”

  “She saw something,” he said. “At least, I think she did. It was an accident. The séance was going nowhere, and Gloria had walked out, saying she needed air. Ramona needed a hit, so we went out into the trees.” He looked at my face, hardened his jaw. “She saw something—over my shoulder. I could tell. She got very quiet, said only that she wanted to go back into the house. I thought about it when we discovered Gloria had been killed, but there was so much chaos that I didn’t ask her about it, and of course I didn’t tell the police. I didn’t think about it again until she was killed. I swear to you I didn’t. But that’s why she was killed—it must be. And what if the man who did it doesn’t believe I know nothing?”

  “Fitz, you have to go to the police. You have to. The Yard is working under all the wrong information. If they knew about the setup—”

  He laughed. “And tell them exactly what I’ve been up to? What I was doing outside in the trees? Do you think I’m out of my mind? My father would disown me. I won’t do it.”

  “You’d rather be killed?”

  “I won’t be killed if you loan me the money to get out of London. Just for a little while, until all of this cools down.”

  I opened my mouth to reply to him, to reason with him, and then I stopped.

  Ramona stood behind Fitz’s shoulder, her face a white smear in the shadows of the kitchen. Her dark-rimmed eyes were fixed on him, and she did not look at me. I could see through the shadows that she wore the dressing gown she’d had on when she’d warned me away from the door of her flat.

  I forced my gaze back to Fitz, who was still talking. My headache lit up as if someone had touched a match to it, a lick of pain that traveled up from the base of my skull. Go away, I tried to tell her through the fog, but from the corner of my eye I could still see her there, standing in the shadows, watching.

  “God, it’s been horrible,” Fitz was saying to me. He was oblivious to the figure behind him in the corner. “I had to tell lies to the police, to you, to everyone. I’ve barely
been able to hold it together, and sometimes I feel like I’m about to go mad. The only thing that makes me sleep is alcohol, and last night . . . last night I only had nightmares.”

  I stared at him, and through the pain pounding my brain I could feel no pity. I’d always known that Fitzroy Todd was shallow and somehow hard, but I’d never really understood the extent of it. I’d never seen a spirit follow a living person before, though I’d dealt enough years with the dead to know it was possible. The dead I’d seen were tied to old emotions, to things left undone. I rubbed my forehead, which did nothing to ease the pain, and a sudden idea occurred to me. I took a gamble.

  “Fitz,” I said, “what do the numbers 321B mean to you?”

  He broke off his lament, confused. “I beg pardon?”

  “The numbers 321B,” I repeated patiently. “Just think about it. Do they have any meaning to you?”

  “Do you mean like a puzzle? I’m no good at these things, Ellie. What about my problem?”

  “It could be an address,” I persisted.

  He frowned. “Well, Octavia Murtry lives at Harriet Walk, number 321B.” His gaze hardened, suddenly curious. “Why do you ask?”

  Octavia Murtry. My God. “I saw it written down somewhere.”

  “Really? Where?”

  My mind spun. It must have been Octavia that Gloria had seen the day before she died. But I didn’t trust the man across from me, so I made something up. “It was—written on the blotter on Inspector Merriken’s desk when he interviewed me yesterday.”

  Fitz assessed that, his bloodshot gaze traveling over me. “Well, I don’t know what they’d want with Octavia. She wasn’t there that night.”

  “Neither was I, but they interviewed me.”

  He shrugged, accepting it at last. Behind his shoulder, Ramona moved, a strange sliding motion. She was coming closer to him, inch by inch. Suddenly I felt sick, my stomach rebelling at the fear and the horrible sight and the awful smell of her, at the pain that kept her here in my kitchen, at the throbbing pain in my head. I wanted to stand up and scream. In an overwhelming rush, it suddenly seemed I’d spent so much of my life in the company of the dead that I’d never lived much of a life.