by Gregory Ashe
Bad. Infected.
He’d seen wounds like that in the war. Wounds that didn’t get better.
God, he was so hot. Maybe Irene could set the kettle on his side and boil water for her tea. Then, at least, he’d be of some use.
One last, vertiginous step, and then he was at the window. He rested a cheek against the glass. His skin stuck to the frosted surface.
Wonderful. Bliss.
He flipped the latches, pulled his cheek away, and lifted the window. Icy air brushed his chest and neck, colder and better than any kiss.
He wondered what Irene’s lips felt like.
He wondered why he wondered that.
“Gracious, Cian.” Pearl stood in the doorway, a basin in her arms and a towel over her shoulder. In the cool air, steam poured off the water in the basin. “What are you doing?”
“I was hot.”
“You need to rest.” Pearl set the basin down and guided Cian back to the sofa. To be truthful, it was more than guidance. She had one arm around his waist, her hands careful of his wounds, and practically carried him. When she had him settled on the sofa, she retrieved the blanket from the floor, but Cian shook his head. The heat chased sparks through his brain, giving words plenty of shifting shadows in which to hide.
The worry on Pearl’s face was obvious.
She retrieved the basin and set it by his side. For a long while, she sat there, until the water had cooled. Then she wet the corner of the towel and gently cleaned his face, his neck, his arms, his legs. The water helped with the heat. A little. Cian felt himself slipping into sleep.
Later, he heard Irene’s voice, drifting at the edge of his dreams. Whatever she said, the words skipped off the surface of sleep. But Pearl’s words came to him, clear and deep and true, like a rung bell.
“He’s burning up.”
Irene paced the living room of Harry’s apartment. She had thrown her coat across the back of a chair in order to pace better. The tasteful art, the gold and silver and crystal, the patterned sofa and the matching chairs—all of it was hateful. Harry lounged in one of the chairs—the one not occupied by her coat—looking like he wanted a cigarette, or a drink, or probably both.
“I don’t know how you can just sit there,” Irene said as she whirled around to pace again.
Harry raised an eyebrow.
Irene flushed. It was the third time she’d said it.
She marched across the room again.
When she reached the end of her path and turned, a rap came at the front door. Harry rose with easy grace, crossed to the door, and opened it. He stepped back and let Freddy into the room. The old Hun shrugged out of his coat, which Harry took, but he kept his grip on his cane. The two men spoke in low voices for a moment.
“Well?” Irene said.
For the first time, a flicker of irritation lighted Harry’s face. It vanished again, and he looked at Freddy.
“I need to see him,” was all the Hun said.
“Then go see him,” Irene said. “This is perfectly ridiculous. He’s dying.”
“Enough, Irene,” Harry said. “We’re doing what we can.”
Freddy looked as though he wanted to say something. Instead of waiting, though, Irene dug her cigarette case out of her coat and stormed to the back of the apartment—knocking a small porcelain statuette to the ground on the way. She thought she might smile at the crash and the silence that followed. Instead, she almost cried.
On the balcony at the rear of the apartment, without her coat, Irene faced into the wind. The cold cut through the short, thin dress, raising goosebumps on her exposed arms and legs. She lit a cigarette, puffed once, and ground it out on the metal rail. Her fingers were trembling, and the cigarette slipped from her hand, vanishing into the darkness below.
Night had closed on the city. A few stars sailed between the clouds and smoke overhead. In the building behind Harry’s apartment, windows showed yellow squares of light and warmth. Irene stared through the window that was at her level. A woman in a ratty house dress was bent over a gas stove, stirring something in a pot. A man came in, dressed in suit and coat, and kissed her on the cheek. She went back to stirring. He disappeared through the doorway. Was he just getting home? Or was he leaving?
A footstep on the balcony announced another person. Harry draped Irene’s coat around her shoulders and leaned on the rail. Close to her, but not too close.
Through the window, Irene saw the man return to the kitchen, dressed only in his shirt sleeves now, his hair curling across his brow. He was young. They both were, Irene realized. She wanted another cigarette, but her fingers were too tight around the case.
“Do you think they love each other?” she said.
Harry laughed, but when he looked at Irene’s face, he stopped.
“Do they fight?” she asked.
“I didn’t think you were a romantic.”
Irene felt a ghost of a smile reach her lips as she thought about Francis Derby. “I’m not.”
In the tiny rectangle opposite, where another world seemed to float, the woman served something on a plate from the oven.
“Fish,” Harry said. “I hate fish.”
“Are you a romantic, Henry Witte?” Irene said.
Harry was silent for a long time. When Irene turned, she saw pain in his eyes. She thought she understood, for the first time, Pearl.
“It’s cold,” Harry said. His voice was rough and distant. “And we won’t do Cian any good standing out here.”
Irene let him lead her back to the living room. She settled herself on the sofa as Freddy returned. The old Hun stroked his trimmed beard as he took one of the chairs.
“Well?” Irene said.
“We have seen this before,” Freddy said, looking at Harry.
“Damn it,” Harry said. “You’re sure?”
Freddy nodded.
Harry cupped his hands over his mouth.
“What? What have you seen before?” Irene asked.
“This type of wound. Whatever attacked you that night, it was not one of the Children.”
“You mean it wasn’t a person. I already told you that.”
“It wasn’t a construct either.”
Harry still had his hands over his mouth.
“What does that mean?” Irene said. “What do we do now?”
Freddy shrugged.
Irene stared at him. Then she gathered her purse and her clutch and stood. “This is madness. He needs a doctor.”
“I am very sorry,” Freddy said, also rising, “but a doctor cannot help him. The illness is not natural, perhaps not even of this world, and—”
“Stop,” Irene cried. “Stop it. All of it. I’ve played along with this nonsense long enough. I’m going to get him help.”
“Miss Irene,” Freddy began.
Irene started for the door. Harry darted from his chair and grabbed her arm.
“You know what you saw,” he said. “You know these things are real. You know the danger out there, and Cian knew it too.”
Irene thought of the man in the suit and the hat, kissing the woman in the ratty house dress. She stared at Harry’s hand until he removed it. Then she pulled on her coat, buttoned it, and opened the door.
“He saved me,” Irene said. Her voice sounded strange, as though she were speaking into a tin can, but she didn’t care.
She shut the door behind her. Harry didn’t follow.
Irene made her way to the river in the darkness. The cold was worse now, pinching her cheeks, forcing her breath through tiny white spirals. Life bled from the streets, until she found herself walking block after block alone, with only the hiss of the lamps for company. Snow began to fall in curtains, swells that rose in the wind, degenerating into frenzied whorls as they neared the lamps. The smoke and soot from the city tainted the edges of the snowflakes, so that they looked like the kind of snow that might have taken a tumble in a chimney or played in the lampblack. Disreputable snow.
It wasn’t the sn
ow Irene remembered from her childhood. Memories of childhood weren’t all pleasant—her grandmother’s fetid breath, her freezing feet, one hand clamped around Irene’s arm—but for the most part, Irene’s life had been happy until Francis Derby. Until the morning when, with grass clinging to her neck and shoulder, leaving red prints when it was pulled free, Irene had told her father what Francis had done to her. Until she had seen, for the first time, fear in her father’s face.
Until he had betrayed her.
It had been that expression, and his cowardice, that had made him a person in her life. Before then, he had been a force—elemental, overwhelming, dark suits and smiles and steady, as mountains were steady, even before Irene had ever seen a mountain. But the fear in his face had made George Lovell into a man, with all the shallow places, all the cut corners.
Once, when Irene had been no more than six or seven, snows had buried the house up to the windows. In a rare fit of joviality, Papa had opened one of the windows, set Irene on the drifts of snow, and climbed out after her. They had spent an afternoon in a world draped in white. At Papa’s urging, they had dug out a small snow cave, where Irene had promptly set to work serving an invisible tea. She had fallen asleep in Papa’s arms, in the depths of the snow cave. When she had woken, hours or minutes later, warm in her bed, she had known she had a Papa who loved her.
Irene blew out a streamer of white breath, tried to work warmth into her frozen fingers, and studied the building before her. The Old Cathedral was colder and more silent than any memory. Its verdigris steeple was nothing more than a finger held up to test the wind. Shadows hung from the pillared entrance like tattered curtains. From where she stood, Irene thought she felt the presence that waited inside the church. A part of her insisted that this was nothing more than her imagination—that she had been under too much strain these last days, that she was being too trusting of Harry’s nonsense, and that, to be frank, she was teetering on the edge of madness.
Another part, though, was sure that she was not imagining the presence. It waited for her. It hungered.
Snowflakes dusted her collarbone, and Irene brushed them away.
Papa had held her warm and safe in the cave.
Cian was dying.
She crossed the street and only slipped once.
The shadows were soft as silk against her skin. Irene found her way to the door without any trouble. She raised her hand to knock, then smiled, realized it was unnecessary. Marie-Thérèse was waiting. She pushed the massive door and it swung open.
Within, the nave of the church was dark, and the air scented with something musky and resinous. It clung to Irene’s nostrils and the back of her throat with a burn that reminded her of cinnamon. The pews slumped like broken backs down the length of the nave, and the light from the street gleamed on gold and copper deeper in the building. Irene stepped into the nave.
The door shut behind her.
She thought of the snow cave, and of Papa’s face the morning she had left home, and of returning home with the box in hand. Proof. And, perhaps, if she were honest with herself, a way to please him.
She thought of Cian too.
She didn’t bother to look back at the door.
Instead, she stepped deeper into the nave.
“Marie-Thérèse,” she said.
The word slipped between the white pillars, disappearing into the darkness and coming back with the sound of a voice that had brushed glass.
“Irene Lovell,” Marie-Thérèse said.
Irene turned around. The pale, translucent form of Marie-Thérèse sat in the rearmost pew. As before, the dead woman glowed white, but without shedding any light on the room around her. With long dark hair parted above a round face, the woman was plump, almost fleshy in spite of her insubstantial appearance. A smile hovered over a small, European mouth.
“What have you called me for?” Marie-Thérèse asked.
“You know why I’m here,” Irene said.
Marie-Thérèse shook her head, but her smile grew. “I knew you were coming.” She paused, stood, her dress flowing in lines of shining white. “I do not know why.”
“You know.”
Marie-Thérèse’s smile became harder. “A deal.”
“You said that you could grant me anything my heart desired.”
Marie-Thérèse drifted closer.
Irene held her ground. “Is that true?”
“What does your heart desire?”
A snow cave. Francis Derby. The box.
Cian pushing her to the side when that monster had leaped at her.
“What is the price?” Irene asked.
Marie-Thérèse circled Irene like a woman eying a bad piece of muslin.
“I won’t deal with you without knowing the price.”
“You might as well ask a butcher the price without naming the cut you’d like,” Marie-Thérèse said.
For a moment, Irene was silent. She followed Marie-Thérèse with her eyes, her heart dropping by inches.
“What do you ask in return for healing someone? Can you even do such a thing?”
“Indeed I can. You can pay the first price. The one I named to you when we first met.”
A voice in the back of Irene’s mind screamed. It was a mad, terrified sound that threatened to overwhelm her. Irene pressed her lips shut and shook her head.
“Pity,” Marie-Thérèse said. She settled into the closest pew, draping ghostly hands over her knees, her back straight as she looked at Irene. “The box. More specifically, the mask.”
“The mask? What mask?”
Marie-Thérèse’s eyes widened, and she laughed. Her laughter was the only sound in the church, a high sound like wind trapped in a chime. “You didn’t know?” she finally asked.
Irene shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What mask?”
Marie-Thérèse laughed again, waving a hand as though trying to clear the air. “My dear girl, I’m not laughing at you. I’m simply surprised that you’ve let Harry pull you along by the nose for so long. What did you think was in the box?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t given it much thought.”
“I see.” Marie-Thérèse surged to her feet and stalked towards Irene. This time, Irene retreated until she bumped into a pew. Marie-Thérèse pinned her there, one finger inches from Irene’s throat. “And tell me. What else haven’t you given much thought? When you came here, I thought you were one of Witte’s toy soldiers, like the Hun and that other woman. You were surprised to find me. I blamed myself for staking my claim on you so openly. Now, I find myself asking new questions. I find myself wondering if George Lovell has raised a fool on purpose or merely by accident.”
Irene steadied herself and forced her next words to come evenly. “You want this mask in return for healing Cian?”
“The Irishman? The one who was with you that night?”
Irene nodded.
A smile curled Marie-Thérèse’s lips. “Then, yes. The mask. And if you think that you can run to Harry for help, let me assure you that our deal is binding. Harry Witte is many things, but he is not foolish enough to challenge me on this.”
“I cannot give you the mask. It isn’t mine to give.”
Marie-Thérèse said nothing for a moment. She cocked her head. Her eyes were the eyes of something that hunted by night.
“Then I want you to find the mask. You do not have to give it to me. Only find it. With Harry, without him. As you wish.”
“How?”
“I’ll make sure you can find it.”
And nothing more than that.
Irene nodded. “I keep my word. But I want Cian healed first. Tonight. Then I will start looking for the mask.”
“Very well. The Irishman first.”
For the first time in what felt like ages, Irene felt herself smile. “Perfect.”
Marie-Thérèse glided towards Irene, pulling a ring from one finger. She dropped the ring into Irene’s hand. Rather than passing through Irene
’s flesh, as Irene half-expected, the ring landed in her palm with reassuring weight. It was a heavy gold band without any stones, wrought in a pattern of flowering ivy.
“Give it to the Irishman,” Marie-Thérèse said.
Irene pocketed the ring. “A pleasure.”
She made her way to the door. When Irene grabbed the brass ring, Marie-Thérèse’s voice came to her as though from a great distance.
“You have a fortnight to find the mask, Irene Lovell.”
No threats, no promises. Only silence followed the words. Irene let herself out into the driving snow.
Her steps were slower on the way back. Her shoes packed the snow into smudged silhouettes. The wind swirled dirty snowflakes in her path.
She thought, once, of what she had bargained away. Once more, she remembered the snow cave, and Papa. She started to cry, but it was too cold, and crying hurt, and so she forced herself to stop. Her eyes stung for another block. She stopped at the next street corner. Beyond the edge of the gas lamp, the snow flung itself into a void. The air tasted of horse droppings and cold.
She let the wind carry away one more childhood memory, like a soiled snowflake.
And then she focused on finding her way back to Harry Witte’s apartment.
The snow was falling thicker. Irene paused at the next street and looked back. Already the drifts were swallowing her steps. Scraps of rotted newspaper peered out from the slush. Irene could pick out a fragment of a headline. A Debutante’s Delight—The rest of the phrase had vanished in the snow, but it didn’t matter. She’d spent enough nights at debuts, enough nights with champagne tickling the back of her throat and hands tickling the backs of her knees, and one more didn’t interest her.
Behind her came the muffled crunch of footsteps in the snow. The snow hid any sign of another person, and Irene’s heart beat faster. She picked up her pace, crossing the ice that hatched the street. The snow fell heavier, rich ermine swells, thick enough that it was almost warm. On a night like this, everything looked the same. The stores, blanketed in white, were nothing more than polished dentures, waiting to snap open and shut. Frost lace spread across windows, hiding whatever lurked inside. The streets were untouched by any passage, even Irene’s, as though the world had conspired to erase any evidence of her.