The Fire in the Glass

by Jacquelyn Benson

  She tried to recall what Estelle had told her before about her methods of communicating with the dead. It had sounded much more abstract than what she was describing.

  “Is that normal, then? For you to see them.”

  “No. It’s quite unusual. Hers was just a particularly strong presence.”

  “It was a woman?”

  “Oh, most definitely. A foreigner. She was muttering all through the séance in some incomprehensible language. And that, before you ask, is also very rare.”

  “Foreigners?”

  “Language,” Estelle replied. “The dead don’t generally speak with words. It’s all symbol and suggestion, like reading smoke signals. But I could hear this one and yet that fellow just sat there the whole time as if she wasn’t hissing at his ear.”

  The image was a disturbing one.

  A knock resounded, echoing solidly through the wood of the table.

  “Quiet, Agnes,” Estelle ordered.

  “This competitor of yours. Who was he?”

  “He gave me a name when he made the booking but I’m sure it was false. I’m fairly certain I’d never seen him before, though he did have a forgettable sort of face.”

  Something about Estelle’s description of the man as ‘forgettable’ nagged at her.

  “Dark eyes, brown hair, and a neat mustache?” she asked, taking a chance.

  “There were two or three gentlemen there last night who could match that description,” Estelle replied wryly.

  “Arrived before everybody else?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Lily remembered the man she had let into the drawing room the night before. Yes, his was a forgettable face, yet something about him stuck in her memory. Maybe it was how engrossed he had seemed in Miss Bard’s straw goat head.

  Something about them just makes your skin go cold . . .

  That was how Berta had described the sort of clients that a whore with hopes for longevity quickly learned to pass over. It was a characteristic she said had been true of the physician who treated her at Hartwell’s clinic.

  There had been something about the man in Estelle’s parlor that put him in that same category. He was inexplicably unsettling.

  “Do you think he’ll be back?” Lily asked.

  “I don’t know. Any time another medium has turned up at one of my events before, she was usually trying to puzzle out how I pull off my little tricks. This fellow didn’t seem particularly interested in them. Perhaps he was trying to gauge the quality of the competition before he set up his own shop.”

  The odalisque flickered. The effect startled Lily more than the moving curtain had, coming more unexpectedly.

  Estelle reached under the table and flicked the switch for the magic lantern. The figure vanished. She rose, then moved to the curtains and threw them open. The magic of the room fled, the shimmering hangings and dark corners exposed to the harsh light of the day.

  “Would you like to stay for a vermouth?”

  “Another time, perhaps. I really ought to be going.” Lily rose and moved toward the door.

  “I’m not afraid to die, you know,” Estelle said lightly.

  Lily stopped. She turned toward the older woman, who stood by the edge of the window, the naked light falling across her unadorned features.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked carefully.

  “Because I know you’ve seen something. I make my living reading people, darling, both living and deceased. You are hardly a cipher.”

  Estelle’s tone rang with certainty, leaving Lily sharply aware of how thin any attempt to deny it would sound.

  That left her with nothing to offer but a stunned silence.

  Estelle didn’t seem to mind.

  “I assume you’ve been trying to do something about it,” she went on. “That has to be why you’ve been in and out at all hours of the day and night, when a week ago it was just the odd ride on the heath or jaunt to the theatre. And you’ve been keeping some very interesting company.”

  The glimmer in Estelle’s eye made it clear she was talking about Lord Strangford. Lily thought guiltily of the card in her pocket.

  “I’m not sure that I . . .”

  “No. Don’t,” Estelle cut in, raising her hand. “I know you must have good reasons for not telling me the details. I didn’t bring this up to press you. I just wanted you to know—in case it doesn’t go so well—that . . . it’s fine.”

  “Your dying,” Lily clarified flatly.

  “Yes.”

  “How can you say that?” She blurted, her anger quickening. “How can you say it would be fine?”

  “Because I’ve been surrounded by it my entire life,” Estelle replied simply. “It is not the least bit strange to me. It’s only the unfamiliarity that gets us so riled up. That, and the people left behind. Death is much harder on the living.”

  Her anger rose. It was a palpable thing, one with a mind of its own, pushing her to be far bolder than she would otherwise choose. It searched for a target and settled on Estelle herself, however unfairly.

  “So that’s it, then.”

  “I thought it would serve as something of a comfort,” Estelle replied wryly.

  “No,” Lily retorted. “It does not.”

  A tense silence stretched across the room.

  There was so much more she should say. The words that had come out of her mouth felt unpleasant and insufficient, but a more eloquent and compassionate response refused to come. She was painfully aware that her opportunities to speak to the woman in front of her were almost certainly limited. She should at least apologize for the harshness of her tone.

  “I’m afraid I must be going,” she forced out.

  “Of course,” Estelle replied graciously, unperturbed.

  “If you’ll excuse me?”

  She turned and left. She stalked through the drawing room and out onto Estelle’s landing, shutting the door behind her.

  Her hands were shaking. Was it anger, or regret, or something else? She felt torn, unsure of which way to turn. Part of her pulled to the right, wanting nothing more than to storm through her empty flat and collapse into bed.

  The rest of her, the part quivering with outrage—it wanted to do something.

  She was not angry at Estelle. Her fury belonged to the power that granted her these blasted visions, that moved lives around like pieces on some grand chessboard, part of a game with an end that Lily was not made privy to.

  It continued to taunt her with visions she could do nothing about. She was mad—desperate with rage—that whatever plan it was executing this time involved the woman behind the door at her back being brutally murdered.

  Not this time.

  It was an impulsive thought, one that defied rationality. Every shred of logic, all her years of hard experience, told her that this battle was unwinnable.

  It didn’t matter.

  She had been skimming around the truth for days, telling herself that her efforts were aimed at justice for Lord Deveral or for the women already murdered. That had never been anything but a cover.

  This was about saving Estelle—about winning a battle with fate.

  She knew it was lunacy, a cause with as little chance of success as Icarus trying to fly to the sun.

  It didn’t matter. She was going to try, using every resource at her disposal.

  A wave of frustration shook her. Those resources looked desperately thin. She had only one lead and its link to the threat she sought to avert was beyond tenuous. It lay in an absurd faith that her visions had, for once, done what she asked of them.

  She would pursue it anyway, right to the bitter end.

  That meant she had a favor to ask of someone who had little reason to help her, but first she needed to make sure she was properly equipped for the coming war. There was something she needed to collect.

  Lily turned left, striding down the stairs and pushing out the front door.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE BLOND-HAIRED
MAN STANDING across from her building looked every inch the respectable city clerk, the sort who slaved over books ten hours a day for a boss who made six times his salary. He was too well-dressed to be a punter, too respectable to pass for a loafer. So why had he been lingering on the pavement for the past forty minutes?

  She had never seen the fellow before. It didn’t matter. When she spotted him outside her window after returning from her errand in Highgate, Lily’s instincts asserted that he was there to watch her.

  Having beaten a would-be assailant with her walking stick that morning made her less inclined to second-guess her paranoia.

  It seemed impossible that she could have been followed that morning, particularly traveling by crowded omnibus—a ride she had barely caught, hopping on board just as it pulled away from the stop. So it was unlikely this surveillance related to her trip to the hospital in Southwark.

  Whatever their reason for watching her, she had no intention of allowing herself to be tracked for the rest of this evening’s activities. In fact, her success at what she had planned fairly depended on it.

  Thankfully, that wouldn’t be a problem.

  The Triumph rested between the rusty pitchforks and underused rakes in her elderly neighbor’s garden shed. It was a more humble accommodation for the machine than the bay she rented in Highgate.

  She had retrieved the motorcycle that morning, taking a crowded tram to the edge of the heath. It sported a brand new chain, with little more than a few scratches on the green paint left to indicate what it had suffered.

  The ride back into the city had been significantly faster than the trudge out.

  Lily wheeled the Triumph out of the shed into the narrow alley that separated the buildings. She leaned over to tickle the carbs, then swung a trouser-clad leg over the side, put her feet to the pedals, and spun the engine to life.

  She tore out onto March Place, feeling an inexpressibly deep sense of satisfaction at the shocked look on the face of the out-of-place clerk as she flew past him toward Gower Street.

  It was almost too soon when she arrived at Bedford Square.

  She stopped just shy of the square itself, turning into the mews that ran behind the elegant townhouses. She slid to a stop, propped the Triumph on its kickstand, then strode over and knocked firmly on the carriage house door.

  “Sam?” she called.

  There was no answer.

  She tried the knob. It gave beneath her hand and she stepped inside.

  The bay beside her was entirely taken up with the long, gleaming length of an enormous motorcar, shining like a silver ghost in the dim light of the carriage house. It was the Rolls Royce Sam had mentioned before. It appeared that the chauffeur had completed whatever maintenance had disabled it the night of Annalise Boyden’s death.

  She rolled the motorcycle inside, leaning it against the wall, then made her way past the silent length of the motorcar to the far door.

  It opened onto an elegant garden that extended for the length of both of the townhouses that comprised The Refuge.

  A path to her left led her to a set of steps that descended to a narrow wooden door set on the ground floor of the house. The window beside it was fogged, but Lily could see figures moving on the far side.

  She hesitated. She had no notion what part of the house she had come to. By all rights, she ought to hike back down the mews, around the corner, and up to the front door on Bedford Square, like any proper guest would.

  Then again, she wasn’t really a proper guest. She hadn’t come to call on the master of the house.

  She knocked.

  The door swung open, revealing Cairncross in his shirtsleeves, a handkerchief tied over his nose and mouth, a jeweler’s glass pushed up on his forehead.

  “Miss Albright! What a delightful surprise. Do come in,” he said, as though ladies he was acquainted with frequently showed up at the kitchen door wearing trousers.

  An apothecary cabinet sat on the kitchen table. It looked scarred and battered. Many of the small jars and vials inside of it were cracked or completely broken.

  Cairncross sat down in front of it, picked up a pair of tweezers and lowered the jeweler’s glass. He continued picking what appeared to be tiny shards of broken glass out of a pile of pale tan powder on a tin baking sheet.

  Mrs. Wu cast him a wicked look from where she stood at the stove. She rattled off a string of words. The language was unfamiliar, but the tone was clearly a scold.

  “We have a guest, Mrs. Wu,” Cairncross noted gently. “Our illustrious housekeeper is upset that I am playing with poison where she needs to roll noodles,” he explained to Lily. “Some of these compounds were acquired from regions of the world that cannot be reached without taking a very long camel ride through the Hindu Kush,” he continued, directing his tone to the older woman behind him as he evenly, slowly removed another splinter of glass from the powder. “I would prefer to salvage as much of them as possible and there is more light here than down in the vaults.”

  He sifted the tan substance with a razor, spreading it to a fine mist across the surface of the baking sheet as he studied it again with the jeweler’s glass. Satisfied, he tapped it carefully onto a clean piece of paper. He then used that to funnel the stuff, which amounted to little more than a gram, into a new vial.

  “There we are,” he announced, popping the cork into place. He pulled the handkerchief down to his throat. “The blasted shelves rotted out in the cellar. There was a slow leak. The whole thing collapsed. I’ve no one to blame but myself, of course. It is my responsibility to see to the condition of all the archives.”

  “You have archives in the cellar?” Lily asked.

  “There are parts of Mr. Ash’s collection that are best not left on display,” Cairncross replied seriously.

  “Like Book of Days,” Mrs. Wu contributed, casting a glance at Lily and clearly attempting that less comfortable language out of courtesy to her. “Nasty thing.” She added a further thought in Mandarin.

  “If it comes in here again uninvited, you may call me to remove it. But there would likely be uncomfortable consequences should you go so far as to chuck it into the fire.”

  “The Book of Days?” Lily asked.

  “Never you mind about that. And you needn’t be concerned, Mrs. Wu. I can assure you it is thoroughly restrained.”

  “Hmph,” the housekeeper replied with less than total satisfaction.

  Lily wondered only vaguely of what sort of book had to be restrained in the cellar lest it find its own way into the kitchen, where it would be considered threatening enough to be burned. Her attention had been captured by one of the intact vials in Cairncross’s apothecary case. It was a small, narrow tube of glass filled with a dull green liquid. The contents were identified in a thin, spidery hand, scrawled across a yellowed label in age-dulled brown ink.

  Wine of Jurema

  Lily knew that name. Ash had mentioned it on their walk to Tottenham Court Road.

  A shortcut to a greater sense of their potential power.

  Cairncross rose, carrying the tin baking sheet to the sink. He dampened a piece of newspaper and used it to carefully wipe clean the tray.

  Before she could think twice about it, Lily’s hand flashed out, closed around the vial, and dropped it into her jacket pocket.

  “You had better just dispose of the spotted water hemlock, Mr. Cairncross.”

  The voice from the doorway startled her.

  Lily turned to see Ash and felt a quick start of guilty fear. How long had he been standing there? Long enough to see her snatch the bottle?

  If he had, he gave no indication.

  He was dressed in a long gray silk robe, cut in Chinese style. He looked pale and tired.

  “Well, how would you suggest I dispose of it? Burn it in the fire and hope the vapor doesn’t murder the odd passer-by? Flush it into the Thames? No. We will not dispose of the spotted water hemlock. We have already popped it back into a vial and will return it to the vaults where i
t will be far less likely to send anyone into fatal convulsions.”

  “I defer to your expertise on the matter,” Ash replied evenly. “Miss Albright, would you care to join me for a moment? There is something I wish to show you.”

  The vial in her pocket seemed to grow in weight. Was this just his polite way of calling her aside to confront her about what she’d just done?

  “Of course,” she replied and followed him up into the hallway.

  He spoke as he lead her toward the grand stair.

  “I apologize for the informality of my attire,” he said. “I am not feeling very well today.”

  Lily contemplated her own attire, which currently consisted of a pair of canvas trousers, riding boots, and a fleece-lined driving jacket. She made no comment.

  At the top of the stairs, she was momentarily arrested by the sight of a room opening onto the landing. It was light, the bright windows stripped of any curtains or hangings. The space was utterly empty of any furnishings, but the sun streaming through the glass illuminated a series of weapons mounted on the wall. They were not antiques but a modern and apparently well-used assortment of staffs, swords, and other implements she did not recognize.

  “Ah. You have not seen the studio.”

  “What is it for?”

  “It is where we practice our tàijíquán,” he replied. “I believe I have mentioned something of that art before and its potential application for charismatics?”

  She thought of the crashing impact of bodies hitting the floor she had heard the first day she arrived, and of how Strangford had appeared on the landing that now stood behind her, his dark hair damp with the sweat of his exertion.

  “Is this what you wanted to show me?”

  “No,” Ash replied. “This way.”

  They passed more rooms—some bedrooms and an intimate, informal parlor—then came to a narrower set of stairs that led up to the attic.

  At the top lay a plain wooden door.

  “Through here,” Ash said and pushed it open.

  The space was vast. It extended for the entirety of both of the buildings that made up The Refuge. The air was still and cold, smelling of dust and old wood.