No Proper Lady

by Isabel Cooper

  Simple charm could have a great influence. So could deceit. Alex had always been able to get any woman he wanted. There were plenty of tactics that he was willing to use unscrupulously, even without bringing magic into the picture.

  Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won? The lines from Shakespeare came back to Simon, mocking and sure.

  No. Joan knew Alex’s true nature. She was no innocent. She’d come here to kill the man, for Heaven’s sake.

  You wouldn’t let her. You said there was a chance he’d repent.

  Eleanor was watching him closely now, her eyes mild but concerned. “I think,” she said slowly, “that the sooner this is over—whatever it is—the better we’ll all be. It’s hard on Joan as well.”

  “Is it?” Simon turned away from Joan and Alex. “Has she talked to you?”

  “No, of course not,” Eleanor said, blinking. “You told her not to. But she’s been restless ever since the ball, especially on nights when they’ve met. I hear her walking the floor next to me sometimes when she thinks everyone’s asleep.”

  His first thought was of the night in his library, of the pain on Joan’s face and the way she’d looked at the desk, alone and surrounded by darkness. She’d seemed less shadowed, under less strain, when they’d come to London.

  But perhaps she’d just become better at concealing it from Simon, or he’d made himself blind to it, as he’d been blind to so many things in the past. If he went to her one night, offered comfort…

  It was quite possible that she’d turn away. At best. After all, he’d had his chance once. If she chose to seek distraction with someone she didn’t work with, someone who hadn’t rejected her once, he couldn’t quite blame her.

  On the heels of that thought, Simon realized that Joan might be losing sleep for many reasons now. God knew his own nights hadn’t been entirely restful, with her in his mind.

  He wished he could be certain that he was in hers.

  Eleanor looked up at Simon, biting her lip. “You…won’t tell her I said anything, will you? I wouldn’t want her to feel I was gossiping. I’m just…well, worried.”

  “I’ll keep it a secret,” Simon said, and tried to smile. He would, after all, because he doubted anything good would come of confronting Joan with the information.

  No matter how much he wished otherwise.

  Chapter 29

  “Meeting Reynell again?”

  Joan was in the hall, putting on her hat and gloves, when Simon came around the corner. The way he looked her over, though she wore the same pink-and-gray dress he’d seen many times before, stirred her blood. The way he asked the question irritated her. It was too knowing somehow and too resigned.

  This was your idea, buddy.

  So she shrugged and glanced in the mirror before she replied. “I do sometimes see other people, you know.”

  Simon nodded. “But this time—”

  “Yes. We’re meeting some of his friends.” She added, “Spiritualist friends,” trying to remind Simon of the reason for all this.

  He’d been acting more than a little weird lately: hiding out in his study most of the time, not talking a whole lot when she did see him, and almost flinching every time Reynell’s name came up. Second thoughts, maybe, now that push had come to shove. Maybe deceiving his old buddy seemed worse now, or maybe the possibility of having to kill Reynell was scaring him.

  Maybe he was just scared now that they were coming closer to their goal. Joan could sympathize.

  She’d had no chance to talk to him about it, though. Either he “wasn’t to be disturbed” or they were in public or with Eleanor. One of these days, Joan thought, she’d have it out with him, and to hell with “not to be disturbed.” Not right now, though. “I’ll be back before dinner,” she said, and headed out the door.

  ***

  Simon knelt in darkness. After he’d traced the necessary designs on the floor of his “private study,” he’d blown out the candle, leaving the room in darkness. Then he’d closed his eyes. No special clothing this time. It would only remind him of what he was trying to leave behind.

  The floor in this room was harder than its twin back at Englefield and colder too, made of stone rather than wood. Simon acknowledged the cold, recognized the hardness, and then sent the thought away, letting it become part of the black formlessness that was slowly filling his mind.

  He breathed in slowly, smelling sandalwood, cinnamon, and a touch of opium. The last was an unfortunately necessary part of leaving his body and the reason he’d done it only a few times before. There were houses in France that he still remembered in his nightmares. He’d seen them only briefly, but that had been enough.

  That thought too became part of the blackness. Simon held still with the backs of his hands resting on his thighs, filled his lungs again, and tried to think of nothing.

  It was hard, harder than it had been since his first time, when he’d had to overcome both his own disbelief and the impatience that was part of being fifteen. Now there was neither, but dread had taken their place. Simply knowing how much he needed to succeed at this would keep him from doing so, and yet that knowledge clung to him long after he’d lost awareness of his knees and stopped consciously smelling the incense.

  But he was stubborn, and he was trained.

  In time, fear vanished. Anticipation vanished. Simon no longer thought of Joan and Eleanor or of how much he risked on this journey. He simply floated in blackness that wasn’t true blackness because it really had no color; he existed no longer as a body or even quite as a mind. There was an eternal void that was also the form of everything, and Simon was almost a part of it.

  Not quite. He was separate enough to feel the power as it began to wash over him like a warm breeze and to clutch it as he’d grabbed for Aladdin’s reins on that cloudy day back in early June.

  The power filled him, and Simon was suddenly aware of himself again. He had a presence but not a human one. There were wings, instead, beating without any command of his, and the feeling that he was hovering in the air. When he looked down, he saw a hunting bird’s talons, faint and blue.

  Owl, he thought, embracing the familiar, and his form seemed more solid with the word.

  The room was back too. Now it was overlaid with green and blue and gold, gold particularly in the circles inscribed around Simon’s body, which still knelt on the floor. The circles looked brighter and more real than anything else in the room, as if stone, wood, and even flesh were no more than the sheets laid over the furniture in a closed house, with only what lay beneath them to give them shape.

  God willing, he thought, the book would stand out the same way.

  Flapping his wings, he wheeled away from the body and out through the wall.

  ***

  Outside one’s body, travel was much simpler: only a matter of thinking hard enough about the place where one wished to go and being familiar with it. Simon had known Reynell’s house a long time. As he flew through the streets, he only had to keep a part of his mind trained on the house. It pulled at him like a magnet, and he knew exactly which way to go.

  That was fortunate. Simon could easily have been distracted for a very long time by the things he saw on the way.

  There were spirits in the air, dancing, ephemeral things. Simon spoke to a few of them briefly, but they mostly kept their own counsel, if they had any to keep. The people below him were more interesting. He could see auras in this form, after all.

  Some of the people in the streets had a swirl of bright colors surrounding them, like a child’s toy or a music-hall advertisement. Others were dimmer. Or darker. Some of the latter were blotched in places with what seemed like rot. Simon saw one man who walked inside a black cloud, and he didn’t stop to look twice.

  Houses had auras too, as golden as a hearth fire or dull wool-jumper gray or, in one case, a very oceanic blue-green. The last time he’d seen Alex’s from this vantage point, it had been an almost ethereal shade of silve
r. When Simon drew closer, he realized how much that had changed.

  In the physical world, it was a handsome, well-made house in the fashionable part of town. Alex’s father kept mostly to the country these days, so Alex had the place all to himself. Looking at it from the astral, that much—and more—was plain.

  The silver had become gray but not merely dull, as the other house’s aura had been. This gray was dead and leprous, with a slight reddish cast that suggested rust or worse. The whole aura seemed to crawl, and the windows yawned like mouths.

  Beyond them—what?

  Simon flew up to the study window but didn’t approach. Not yet. Alex might not suspect anything specific, but he had wards up all the same. Simon could see them as he grew closer, rising concentric circles around the house that glowed faintly green. If he wasn’t very careful, Reynell would know about the intrusion.

  Then again, wards had always been one of the areas where Simon had bested his friend. Alex had teased him about it when they were boys—You’d make a good parson, Grenville, with a mind like that. Thank God you have me to keep you out of danger, eh?

  When Simon got close enough to make out the patterns, he saw what he’d been expecting and nearly laughed. Whatever skill he’d gained elsewhere, Alex was as clumsy at ward-craft as he’d ever been. There was a point, just at hand, where a bit of unraveling would let Simon slip in like a cat through a stable door.

  He stopped himself midair, reached out with one claw, and just…nudged one of the symbols. Very gently.

  It floated out of the way, and he slipped past, through the window and into the study.

  He almost screamed.

  There was something here. Simon didn’t know if it was Joan’s book or not. If it was, even incomplete, it was more powerful than he could’ve imagined. The whole room was covered in blackness. It writhed and rippled. It hissed—or something did, just loudly enough to insinuate itself into the senses.

  Somewhere beneath it, Simon saw blood oozing from the walls.

  This isn’t the book. Or it isn’t just the book. Something horrible happened here.

  Alex, what are you doing?

  Simon tried to peer closer, to see if there was a spot where the book itself—or whatever—lay. Slowly, beyond the spasmodic movements, a deeper darkness started to appear—

  Something moved behind him.

  Simon bolted forward toward the window, thanking God that shock had kept him from coming too far into the room. He made it as far as the sill before a tentacle wrapped around his leg.

  The…creature…surged forward. Its tentacle pulled back at the same time, tugging at Simon. His leg burned at the touch. Simon pulled back, raking at the creature with his other claw, and the thing shuddered in what might have been pain.

  Its grip was strong, though. It yanked again, and this time Simon went with it.

  As he did, the world started to blur. The walls of the study melted like spun sugar in the rain, and the air crackled black and white. Simon felt that he was moving—spinning—very fast, not just toward the tentacled creature but toward something much larger. Somewhere much larger.

  It was taking him home.

  Simon cried out, seven short words of Power. Strength poured out of him, leaving him as weak as an invalid, but coursing into the burning gold runes that appeared in the thing’s strange not-flesh. It lurched backward.

  Then it threw him, casting him away from itself without any aim, only with its own version of desperation. Simon flew, and the world became a whirlwind around him.

  He could not perceive most of the places he passed through. God was that merciful, at least, or perhaps his own mind intervened to save itself. All he saw was a jumble of shapes and colors, most unrecognizable but some sickeningly familiar. They rushed by at great speed, as if he were looking out the window of some absurdly fast-moving train.

  Simon clung to humanity by teeth and nails. He thought of a world where things fell down and triangles had three sides, where people walked upright with two arms and one head each. For a minute, he held those thoughts—but they were too abstract, and the shapes he saw blasted them out of his mind quickly.

  Then he pictured Joan’s face. Not as it had been recently, laughing above silk dresses or under broad hats. He thought of her at her most savage, when she’d sprung up from the library table with the letter opener; he remembered her in the circle of stones. He clung to that memory of strength and prayed for the whirlwind to stop.

  Then it did. And he was somewhere else.

  The sky was greenish gray, lit sullenly by flickering lightning. Dark shapes moved there too, huge and purposeful. Their outlines hurt the eye.

  Simon hung in the air below them, still a spirit and hopefully beneath their notice.

  Below him was a city. Or what had been one once.

  In places, the buildings still stood, high steel squares with many small windows, most of them broken by now. Other buildings raised jagged, shattered edges to the sky or had disintegrated into a welter of rust and beams. Between them, the narrow streets were full of rusting metal boxes.

  Automobiles? Simon had seen illustrations in the papers. These were sleeker, though, and smaller. The shape might be similar—in the future.

  He’d been thinking of Joan.

  Logically, he had no way to be certain he was in her time. She’d given no real descriptions, named no identifying features save squalor, and a hundred worlds might be as bleak or worse. In his gut, though, Simon knew where he was.

  This is her world.

  Another flash of lightning allowed him to see more clearly.

  The automobiles were packed together, with maybe an inch or two between some of them, in a jam worse than any London traffic he’d ever seen. Thousands of them, Simon thought, maybe hundreds of thousands. Even with one person in each, there’d been a vast river of people in those streets once.

  The knowledge crept into his mind, sickening and inescapable. They were trying to get away.

  He was suddenly very glad that he couldn’t see into the automobiles. Perhaps, he told himself, they were all empty. Perhaps everyone had gotten out, when it became clear that driving wouldn’t help, and had escaped on foot. He doubted it.

  We were losing, Joan had said.

  White mounds were piled against the buildings. Not snow. As he watched, an…object…fell from the top of one, rolling down it and finally coming to rest against the rusted side of an automobile.

  Figures moved in the darkness: human figures, or near enough, running from the shelter of one building to huddle against the side of another. No—not running. Scurrying.

  They were prey. And they knew it.

  One of them looked upward, responding to who knew what. Simon glimpsed a face, very small from that distance, that was one-eyed, gaunt, and desperate. Then a formless darkness whipped down and blotted it out.

  The others ran instantly and as one. Their very organization was horrible in its meaning. This death, horrible as it was, was no shock. Perhaps no death was in this place.

  Darkness followed very quickly.

  Simon would have screamed. But he knew nobody could hear him.

  Chapter 30

  Well, that was…illuminating. And I need a bath.

  Spending time with Reynell was better in a crowd. He still smirked and posed and preened at her, he still had his disturbing moments of actual charm, and Joan still wanted to get everything over with and shoot him in the head right there. But there were people to distract him, whether by chance or intention.

  This crowd hadn’t been great, though, even if some of the magical theory had been interesting. It was really disturbing to see how enthusiastic some of them were about Reynell and how even the ones like Cole and Cunningham stayed quiet. Either Reynell had messed with people’s minds or there was something wrong with them. Or both. Probably both.

  Thomson had been there, of course, and had looked ready to cry when Reynell had spent most of his time flirting with Joan. Sorr
y, kid. It’s for your own good anyhow. The others seemed to have given up attracting his attention as a lost cause. A few of them, to their credit, didn’t seem to give a damn.

  A few of them had actually seemed to know what they were doing. Joan had said as much to Reynell, though implying less than she knew, and he’d looked pleased. “Your judgment seems quite sound. I’m very impressed.”

  “You should see me buying hats,” she’d said.

  So it had been a success. She still needed a bath.

  Joan opened her eyes as the carriage drew up to Simon’s town house, sighed, and let the footman help her out. “Are the Grenvilles both home?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, opening the door. “Miss Grenville’s in the library, ma’am, and Mr. Grenville’s in his personal study.”

  “Of course he is,” she muttered dryly. She handed the footman her hat and cloak, stepped into the house, and almost swore aloud.

  The sensor behind her ear had suddenly flashed red-hot. Magic, active magic, and powerful stuff. Joan looked toward the stairs. “How long has Mr. Grenville been in his study?”

  “These three hours, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ignoring the worry on his face, she picked up her stupid skirt and almost ran for the stairs.

  Of course, everything could be fine. Some spells took a couple hours. Most of them required more than one person, but in theory you could probably do them on your own. There were spells that might have set off her sensor, even from the hall.

  But those were huge spells, with huge effects, and you’d tell someone before you were going to cast one.

  Probably.

  Unless you were used to a world where nobody believed in that sort of thing.

  Joan reached the top of the landing and hurried down the hall.

  He would have told her, though. Oh, he’d been weird and distant lately, but they were allies, weren’t they? Even friends, she’d thought.