Remembered

by Caroline Hanson

  She’d killed those people so easily. She’d enjoyed it. The way she’d groped that woman, the way she’d used her.

  Was he the same way? Of course he would be. Of course. That’s what they were. Beauty and death. I had to remember that. This was what Hetty had wanted me to see. Why she cut me loose and didn’t love me anymore. Because I’d wind up like those people, ribs broken, blood swallowed down with my life…Hetty thought that I wanted it to happen. I threw up again in the bushes, halfway back to the infirmary, wiping tears and snot on my starched white apron.

  I saw his face in my mind, heard his voice saying my name in that cool, crisp tone as I stumbled up the final steps. If he wanted me, I would say no. Of course! I imagined myself saying no, turning away from his…need or lust or hunger. Of course I would. Of course! I would never, ever want that.

  Never, ever, ever.

  7

  I shouted for Hetty, but was met with silence. I went to the back room, locked the door behind me, and pulled up the floor board. The phone lay there, small and black, incongruously reminding me of a huge, still insect. I touched the button with a picture of a telephone on it and it lit up like a dozen fireflies were trapped inside. I went through the directions Hetty had given me and then put it to my ear to listen, hearing the odd beeping as it rang. And then a voice—odd, female, mechanical—told me to leave a message. I cleared my throat, my words halting, as I wasn’t quite sure what to say. “Lord Marchant…this is Rebecca Finner, from the infirmary…home.” I had to take a breath, my voice was shaking. “Your sister wants me to tell you that bodies are staining the fl-floors. In your house. She just…” I had to swallow before I could speak again. “The servants fled. There are a lot of bodies. You need to come home now…please…thank you….” What did I do now? Hang up? Should I say something else? I pushed the red telephone button and stared at the odd little device for a moment, as if it would tell me I’d done it properly. Give me a sign. But all it did was go dark after a moment, like dead fireflies, I thought morbidly, perhaps even hysterically, and then I put the phone away.

  What was I supposed to do now? Go back? The Infinite would step in to stop Lady Cassandra. The Council was probably already there, cleaning up the mess, wiping away the survivors’ memories of the dead, making the witnesses ignorant.

  I heard the front door close, and I rushed out to see Hetty. I was going to throw my arms around her and apologize, swear to her that I understood now and that I would be smarter. She’d forgive me. I’d make her love me again.

  I skidded to a halt in the main room, shoving my hands out to the wall to stop myself from going even a step further. I dropped into a curtsy. “Lady Cassandra,” I said, and tried to remember if the back door was open. Could I make it out before she killed me?

  Probably not.

  She was a beautiful fright. An angel of death. Her dress had been cream-colored, and now it was dark with blood, parts of it almost black, some of it pinkish like the blood had been diluted and I…oh no. My lip trembled in fear, and I blinked back tears.

  She looked me over from head to toe rather thoroughly, one hand going to her blonde hair, fluffing it absently, her hand covered in dried blood.

  “There is vomit everywhere. Outside my house, on the pathway to here, it’s perfectly foul!”

  “I’m sorry, my Lady.”

  “Oh. It was you, was it?” She seemed surprised. “Are you ill?”

  “No, madam.”

  “And yet you threw up?” She swayed closer to me.

  “Yes, madam. I’m sorry, madam!”

  “Well, I’m not sure what sort of training you’ve had as a healer, but if you’re throwing up, then I’d say you are sick. That seems perfectly obvious to me.” She blinked twice, then smiled brilliantly. “Maybe I should be the healer,” she said, and she laughed. She sobered almost instantly. “Maybe you’re being poisoned too.” She snapped her fingers, shifting from happy to suspicious faster than my heart could beat. “Who would poison you and why?” she demanded.

  Lord Dalmaine appeared in the open doorway, seeming out of breath which was fairly astonishing in and of itself. His blue eyes surveyed the room, and if I had to guess I would have said that the lack of bodies and blood was a relief to him. Lady Cassandra whirled to face him and he grimaced, making a sort of clucking sound at her. “It would appear the rumors are true. You’ve had quite the entertaining morning, haven’t you, my love?”

  Lady Cassandra threw herself into his arms. “Alley! It’s positively awful. I’m being poisoned! My servants are unfaithful, plotting against me! We must make them tell the truth.”

  He rubbed his hands up and down her arms as if he were trying to warm her. His voice was soft, like talking to a child. “They can’t tell you now, love, you killed them all.”

  “La, you overreact. Not all. A few. A handful, perhaps,” she said, shrugging dismissively.

  “The Council isn’t happy.”

  “They’re never happy! And if they try to chastise me, I can assure you they will regret it!”

  “Leander won’t like that.”

  “Damn him, anyway. What can he do? He can do anything he damn well pleases, but he won’t. There is the real question, ‘what won’t my idiot brother do to help me?’”

  He made a soothing noise, still holding her arms to keep her close, but his gaze was fixed on me. His attention was thorough, as if he were trying to memorize me. “Cassie, who is this?”

  “The younger healer. She contacted Leander for me. He needs to come home, Alley. Needs to figure out who’s doing this to me! But it’s his last chance with me, I swear it to you!”

  His gaze cut back to Lady Cassandra, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Who is doing what to you?”

  “Poison!” she said, stamping her foot like a small child. “I am being poisoned. Maybe you are too!”

  Lord Dalmaine was silent for a long moment, and I noticed a small line between his brows as he continued to hold her in place, something I was grateful for. I felt safer already, a hint of the terror that overcame me beginning to recede. Lord Dalmaine would protect me. He was Lord Marchant’s friend, an Infinite who almost never killed any of his servants. “She said you’re both being poisoned?” he finally asked, and I suspected he was just asking me to humor her. Which was a sensible plan. Always humor the insane when they can kill you before you can beg.

  “I don’t think I’m being poisoned, my Lord. I was sick on the path, and I think it confused the situation,” I said, trying to be delicate. It was horrible and surreal to have the two of them here, in my home.

  “Didn’t you see all the vomit?” she asked Lord Dalmaine. “And she can contact Leander! So can I, under normal circumstances! But my wires were cut so I couldn’t tell him about the poison. They must know she has one too.”

  His nostrils flared, his gaze sharpening as he looked me over again. “You have a phone here?”

  “I don’t. The infirmary has one for emergencies. To contact Lord Marchant. I’ve never used it before now,” I said, and I was very careful to never look him in the eye. I stared at the hollow of his throat instead.

  “And did you call him already?” he asked, and there was something so chilling about the question that I almost lied and said I hadn’t. I had the impression he didn’t want me to contact Lord Marchant. But I couldn’t imagine why he wouldn’t.

  “Yes, I contacted him a few minutes ago.”

  He grunted. “So Lee will be here tomorrow, probably.”

  “You’re not mad, Alley, are you? I need him. We do. Let him find the poisoner. Get his hands dirty for once. Everyone thinks he’s such a paragon.”

  “There is no poison,” he snapped.

  She screeched and tried to slap him. “I’m being poisoned!”

  “Cassie, no. Who would do so? Why? And with what?”

  This made her pause for a moment.

  He squatted slightly, putting them at eye level with each other. “Let’s discuss this later. We have
a mess to clean up. You need to go before the Council as soon as possible.”

  She nodded jerkily. “I killed those people,” she said, and now her voice was wavering with emotion. “Leander will be angry if we don’t find the poisoner before he gets here. He’ll blame me! He always blames me.” And then she started to cry.

  He pulled her close, hugging her tight to his chest. But he was looking at me as he spoke. “You always kill people, my sweet. Is it more than usual? Well, yes. Since we’ve been here anyway. God, do you remember Spain in 1630? That was a good year.”

  After a moment she giggled, burrowing into his chest. “I do. I do remember.”

  He gave her a quick kiss on the top of her head. “You and that monastery. They all thought they’d died and gone to Heaven.”

  “With a slight detour through Hell,” she said, voice lowering, almost a purr.

  He sighed, moved her so he could look into her eyes, “Ah, my love. The good old days. Do you miss it? The glamour and excitement? The variety?”

  “Of course I do. I wish it were safe for us,” she murmured, her clean hand smoothing down his chest, stroking his green velvet doublet. “I’m tired, Alley. Take me home,” she said, and held out her arms.

  He smiled at her indulgently and swept her up in his arms, carrying her as if she were a bride going through the door to her new home. And then the smile slid off of his face, and he looked at me coldly. “You come, too.”

  “Me?” My stomach clenched in a hard knot.

  “Oh yes. I have questions for you, my dear. And I know Lee will, too. You know about his phones, you were quick on the scene when the killing started…something doesn’t add up about you. What’s your name again?”

  “Rebecca Finner.”

  “Hmm….Let’s go. You can have some time to think about your story while you wait for Lee to arrive. He’s good at getting to the truth.” A smile. “Better than you’d think, considering what a stick in the mud he’s become.”

  “No! I want to walk. I’m not a child!” She struggled in his arms.

  Lord Dalmaine sighed and set her down on the ground. She tried to fix her dress, which was ridiculous, considering how bloody it was.

  “Hetty, my mentor, will wonder where I’ve gone. Perhaps I should wait for her return?” Questioning his orders was dangerous, treasonous even, but I suspected that going with them was a very bad, maybe even fatal, idea.

  “No, I don’t think that will do at all. Now come along,” he commanded. He turned away, and I fell in step behind them as they went back to the Marchant estate.

  Lady Cassandra’s shoulders started to shake, the sound of a muffled sob drifting back to me as I followed them. Lord Dalmaine put out a consoling hand to Lady Cassandra, and she began screaming, shouting. I took a step back, desperate to run away. She was mad. She really was. If I went into that house, I would never come out. I just knew it, felt it in my soul.

  “It’s a plot, damn it! God damn them all! Think they can do this to me? To me!?” she shrieked, banging on her chest. “I own them, Alistair. I own this whole blighted island and they live because I let them. Those pious shits. And they are all jealous of me! It could be any of them!”

  Lord Dalmaine looked about the path nervously, as though he didn’t want her to be overheard. “We’re almost home. Let’s get inside, and then we can talk. You need to calm down,” he said, voice low and reasonable.

  “No! I want them to know. Vengeance is coming. Do you hear me? Come see, look what they did!” she said, and began walking again. Lord Dalmaine turned to look at me, the sun highlighting his golden hair. He was considered the most handsome Lord. His golden good looks and strength, the fact that he was tall and broad-shouldered. He had a fairy-tale prince sort of handsomeness that made all the girls swoon. He always smiled and laughed, and it was this charm he turned on me now. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t kill you. We’ll let Lee decide.”

  “I didn’t…I haven’t done anything,” I said, and went into a deep, deep curtsy, my body trembling so much I almost fell. “Please! I won’t say anything. Please let me go back to the infirmary.”

  He laughed. “I don’t know what you’ve done or not done. I don’t really care. But Cassie is upset, and she wants you thrown in the dungeon until Lee gets here, and who am I to deny my Lady anything?”

  I considered bolting, just turning and running away. He must have seen it on my face or my body language. How many times had he seen a human contemplate running from him? “Do that, my dear, and I’ll rip your arm off and then throw you in the dungeon. Does that help your decision-making?”

  I nodded shallowly, feeling sick and shocked, my ears ringing dully as I followed him. The Marchant estate loomed closer and closer. Lady Cassandra had gone on ahead, and it wasn’t until we were standing at the threshold that I heard her again.

  She was shrieking like a banshee in the entryway, sitting in a puddle of skirts and blood as she leaned over a body. He hadn’t been there when I left. A man, now headless, his heart sitting on top of his stomach, just below the giant hole in his chest.

  Lord Dalmaine whistled at the sight, then snapped his fingers at me, demanding I come closer. I’d stopped in the doorway and not even realized.

  “Ripped clean out. Well, that’s going to make anyone a little cross. Do you know him?” he asked me conversationally. I found myself peering at the body, bile in my throat. Whoever he’d been, I couldn’t tell now. “Richard Clark. Nice enough chap. He made Lady Cassandra happy. She’d gotten permission to change him, you see. The first human to be changed in a hundred years and only because the Marchant line is so reduced. Just Lee and Cassie now. And he’s always gone and she’s a little temperamental at times…it seemed like a good solution to me. Someone else to deal with her.” I leaned heavily against the wall, feeling sick and confused. Why was he talking to me while Lady Cassandra sat there weeping?

  He sighed. “Oh well. She didn’t do this,” he said to me, inclining his head. “No, this is the Council. Vengeance is swift, I suppose. God, there are going to be meetings all weekend long to discuss this debacle. Bureaucracy. It’s hell. Absolute hell.”

  How could he be having a conversation with me—or at me, as it seemed painfully one-sided—while his lover was shrieking beside her dead intended? I was so numb by this time that the enormity of what he’d told me didn’t really sink in. Lady Cassandra had petitioned to expand the Marchant line? This man was supposed to be changed into one of them? I’d never heard of such a thing happening! It had never been done on the island, at least as far as I knew.

  I looked at Lord Dalmaine then, his arms crossed as he leaned casually against the wall. There was something about him…I found myself looking him over for blood, wondering if he’d done it. Somehow killed this man, cleaned up, and made it to the infirmary…he couldn’t have been that fast. Not with the most godlike powers in the world could he have done that. But there was something so cold and hard about him that I wouldn’t have been surprised. And Lady Cassandra was his paramour. Surely he wasn’t happy about her taking a partner.

  He sighed, looked around theatrically. “This house, in my opinion, has a major design flaw. To get to the dungeons you have to go through the house. I told Lee at the very beginning to build a proper dungeon we could access from somewhere a bit more remote. Who really wants to parade victims past the kitchen staff? It undermines a servant’s loyalty.” Then he led me to the dungeon.

  This was typical of the Infinite. They were narcissistic and spoke of our life and death, torturing or maiming us, and we were expected to agree, maybe even have an opinion, make ourselves distant from the act of our own demise.

  Now I think that expecting this of us, this detached involvement in our own death, is also a form of torture. Like expecting cows to eat grass happily while they are a fence away from the slaughterhouse.

  Anyway, I just didn’t have it in me to do the pretty. That’s what we called it. Putting on an act or using our manners before our bett
ers. It’s an antiquated expression the Infinite brought over from the old world.

  “Come see the kitchens,” he said, and pushed off the wall, expecting me to follow him. I didn’t want to. God, I didn’t want to. But he’d rip my arm off. It was fair warning he’d given me.

  The dungeons, I thought, he’s taking me to the dungeons. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t for long, that Lord Marchant would be here tomorrow to set me free, but that was assuming I’d called him correctly!

  Oh, what if I’d done it wrong?

  Lord Dalmaine was watching me, waiting for me at the end of the hall. “Here we are. And through this door is the pantry,” he said, as if he were giving me a tour of the house. The kitchen is gigantic, able to cook feasts for hundreds of people if need be. Food was half-chopped and left on surfaces. A cat sat next to the sink, eating a steak that the cook must have been about to put in the oven before her mistress went berserk.

  “And look, see that?” Lord Dalmaine said, oblivious to my inner turmoil as he led me to the dungeon. “Another door.” He opened it, his tone casual, a bland smile on his face. He must have known how terrified I was. He thrived on it.

  I know that now.

  “Very dark down there. Watch your step,” he said, as he descended the stone steps. He muttered something and then made a satisfied noise. Light flared and I saw him, still holding the cord for the single light bulb that illuminated the way down.

  He snapped his fingers at me to hurry and took the steps two at a time until he reached the bottom. It was damp there, the transition of temperatures a shock. I shivered and held tight to the wooden rail as if it were a raft in the ocean.

  In front of us was a metal gate that went from floor to ceiling. He took a key off the wall, opening the lock. The door opened soundlessly. Well oiled. Didn’t that mean the area was used frequently? And was that a good thing or a bad thing? Did it mean I’d be checked on?