The Double Life of Incorporate Things (Magic Most Foul)

by Hieber, Leanna

  I looked away, another wave of emotion threatening to drag me under. I needed to remain sane. I needed to get out of this damned bed, and no further fits would get me out of it any faster. Mrs. Northe took her cue and changed the subject.

  “If something was possessing George, it left with George, who remains comatose in a nearby hospital, with a police officer on guard. It would seem the toxin does like to feed upon emotion. Hence Veil’s Association being quite the group to target. Lovely people, truly, though I had to eventually insist they all leave my home after all the events.”

  “Did they overstay their welcome?”

  “Ah, no, they just like finery as a whole, it would seem, and I’m not sure any of them are much used to fine homes, so they were a bit entranced here. I admit, I did, once you were seen to, have quite a wonderful conversation with Mister Zhee about Peking. Amazing city, Peking. I’ll have to take you sometime.” Mrs. Northe said this so casually as if China were not on the other side of the world but just a train ride away. I supposed, for the wealthy, distances were not as long or as implausible. She was examining my limbs and skin as she continued speaking.

  “He misses it very much. His wife, of course, he misses more so. What a shame this country won’t let the women of his country in. Who can begrudge a man for taking work when it’s offered and wanting to be with his family while he does it? Is this not a city were the world comes to make their way?”

  This was news to me that only men of China were allowed here and not the women. How painful. Mrs. Northe seemed satisfied with the look of me; at least I couldn’t discern any concern on her face, and while she did not unwind my bindings entirely, she did loosen them as she continued:

  “It seems one of the Association members managed to extract Zhee from a crime syndicate that kept him as if he were a slave. Frightening what people will exploit from the needy. That Association”—she shook her head in amazement—”is filled with amazing stories of resilience and reinvention. No one there is exactly as they seem, and every last one of them has a fighting spirit in them that utterly defies their romanticisms. Zhee is now a valuable asset to Veil, a guard and friend, teaching Veil about the East and about the various disciplines he practices. Veil is like a sponge. I’ve never seen anyone drink up and absorb more details; he is an endless student of the world. Ridiculous and irascible, but what a good heart inside that restless, attention-seeking body. Maybe one day he’ll even commit it to that poor, pining Lavinia.” She chuckled, leaning close to murmur the last, as Lavinia was likely in the house, still “recovering” until she made her own way.

  I hoped, for Lavinia, that Veil would do just that, help them build a life together now that she’d lost her parents’ blessing, good will, and fortune. Fortune.

  “Now, can you speak about the dream without an adverse reaction?” Mrs. Northe prompted.

  I took a deep breath. I thought of that terrible corridor and tried not to relive the horrible sensation of its collapse, of being trapped, of watching Jonathon disappear from me...

  “Jonathon is gone,” I managed to say after a moment. “Back in England or at least en route. He was telling me I couldn’t follow, and something about numbers, about the sequence, about that being important.”

  “Would he not have told us he was traveling again? He said nothing to me, were you informed—”

  “I think the spy must have dragged him away before he could write,” I replied. As Mrs. Northe’s eyebrows raised, I bit my lip. I remembered we hadn’t ever told her about Brinkman. I swallowed hard. “Oh. Yes. There was a spy in town.”

  “Really? Is that so? And when were you going to mention that to me, pray tell? Were you ever going to—”

  “For his safety, we thought we’d not—”

  Mrs. Northe batted her hand to stop me. “Well, Rupert—Senator Bishop”—she hastily corrected herself from the easy familiarity—”will want to know that. I knew you were hiding something, something important, but I thought maybe it was just that Jonathon had stolen your virtue or something—”

  “No!” I protested, my face growing hot with a furious blush. “He’s a gentleman—”

  “A spy,” she continued, as if she hadn’t even heard me. I blushed even brighter but lest she think “the lady doth protest too much,” I let the matter go, and she continued. “How very interesting. Espionage. And you think this spy made off with Jonathon?”

  “Why else would he not leave a note? Or send a telegraph via Morse, for transcript from the steamer? Information in our dreams could not be trusted without circumspection. I’d like to think he’d not hide his exit from me unless it was hasty, and that he was in danger. Society operatives must have trailed him and found him, so he ran. I hope I can trust Brinkman to keep him safe in the meantime. Until I can get there.”

  “You’re not getting there, Natalie, I can’t possibly—”

  “You can’t expect me to just lie here—”

  Her hazel eyes now flashed at me like lightning. She was shaking. “I could never live with myself, I...I just can’t, Natalie. There are things I know, things that Amelia told me before she passed, things I’ve intuited—”

  “About what? You can’t play that game with me again; you withheld things from me before, about what the spirits said, about what my mother’s spirit said—”

  “The simple fact is if you go to England, your father will never trust me again for putting you in direct danger. And he’d never again trust you. And he shouldn’t—”

  “Why? Why do you even care about my father? More so than me?” I blurted finally. She turned to me and smiled, and in that smile and the soft, nurturing look in her eyes, I felt the full breadth and scope of my youth in comparison to the life she’d lived, and I felt very small.

  “Natalie Stewart. Let’s not play games with who has more of my affection.”

  “What do you even see in my father?” I grumbled, suddenly very resentful I woke up screaming and he was not there, as if this whole maddening part of my life just didn’t include him at all. “When I went under, did he just stand in the corner being terrified, when you were doing things, or did he step up and acknowledge what’s going on? Where is he now?”

  “He is at work, so you can keep the roof over your head—”

  “But truly, I ask you, what do you see in him, he’s not of your league—”

  “Natalie Stewart, you listen to me right now! Don’t you dare for one more moment let that toxin inside of you make you more ungrateful than you already are.” I’d never heard her take such a scolding tone, and I was taken aback. She took a deep breath. “Your father is a quiet, kind, intelligent man who treats me not as an inferior species. You’d be surprised how rare that is. While aware of my wealth and status, he does not put me upon a pedestal, for that is just as alienating. He meets me eye to eye and mind to mind. He shares his thoughts and is interested, genuinely, in mine. He has a quiet confidence that does not seek to dominate me but allows me my strengths as I would allow anyone theirs. This is a very difficult quality to find in men of this age, my dear.”

  Her tone shifted from this spirited defense of my father to something more gently world-weary. “You’ve been spoiled by Jonathon, a man of a forward mind, dear. You don’t really know the sorts of gentlemen that are out there, seeking to strangle a woman and keep her forever at heel, forever seen as solely domestic, forever out of realms of thought, employment, rights, and issues considered too intense for our ‘delicate’ sensibilities.” She bit upon her words as if they were sour. “Delicacy be damned. Delicate is for lace, and I look damned fine in lace, but my spirit should not be confused with what I wear.”

  I sat with all these words a moment, utterly taken aback by this chastisement, surprised by the depth of response, and suddenly I felt a pride in my heart for the man who had always tried to do right by the women of his life. I imagined, from what I’d heard about my mother, she’d have said something similar. Seeking out powerful women only meant he was conf
ident enough in himself not to have anything to prove. Nothing but love. And the pursuit of art. Ah, what a poet’s soul I’d come from. The emotions that had been so thick and violent within me now made me want to do nothing but weep. I had to hold myself together.

  And I had to do right by my father. I couldn’t just disappear to England, even if I did manage to escape from under Mrs. Northe’s watch and board the next steamer. I owed him more than that. But he’d never let me go. And yet I had to go. Would it come down to choosing which of the men in my life was more important? The man who raised me or the man I hoped I’d someday marry? That wasn’t fair, was it, to have to choose?

  I looked up at her pleadingly, and that was no ploy, it was simply how I felt. “I have to do something. I can’t just lie here... Surely there’s something to do, to stop the evil creeping in...” I trailed off, remembering what else Jonathon had said. “The numbers. The numbered sequence. I think he might have meant that sequence that Crenfall was repeating. It’s important. Very. I truly think lives hang upon us knowing what it refers to.”

  The look on her face proved she was taking this as deathly seriously as I was, altered state or no.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Yes,” Mrs. Northe agreed to my prompt. “Yes, we do need to think about those numbers. About any and all connections we can draw. Let’s apply our thoughts to the paperwork I’ve managed to get hold of in the past few days.”

  “Paperwork?”

  She smiled craftily, rising from my bedside and going toward the door. “It’s good to know people in clerks’ offices. For the devil is often in the details, my dear.” She disappeared into another upstairs room and returned a few moments later with a few brown folders with papers inside.

  “It would seem,” she began, taking a seat beside me once more, “the Master’s Society has been making major investments in New York City, by all kinds of means. Some overhanded, most under.” She held up a stack of deeds, receipts, and a ledger. The top papers were stamped with the distinct gold and red dragon-flanked crest. “These transfers of assets, and general encroachment, have been happening within the past few years. A great deal of the property is centered around Grand Central Depot. If you recall, that poor madman Crenfall was on about the ‘grand and the central.’ When Lord Denbury and I were out examining various suspected Master’s Society properties before he disappeared, we concluded there must be a hub of something that will either be built or will occur around that area.”

  “I hope it’s enough to take to authorities to examine? What can people like us do about mere property? Will anyone believe the underhanded aims of the Society enough to, what, what would we even suggest, raid these premises?”

  “I’m not sure if the truth of the Society will be believed, if my dealings with the New York City Police Department are any indication. They don’t take kindly to the idea of the paranormal. Well, they’re not particularly hostile, they just don’t believe—”

  “At their own risk,” I grumbled, and Mrs. Northe scowled.

  “Well, yes, but you tell that to the sergeant who still has your diary in custody.”

  I felt my face go hot again. I’d truly like to get that back… There were so many personal details that just should not be public record…

  “I’ve been discussing all this with Lavinia, to see if she has any insights,” Mrs. Northe mused, gazing out the small window that presented a tiny sliver of a courtyard between her property and the townhouse beside. “Somewhere, between all of us, we’ll figure out the chink in the demonic armor. She needs to feel empowered by what has happened around her, and not a victim. What happened here in my house, with all of the Association present, to that poor fellow George, and then to you, it dealt Miss Kent a bit of a regressive blow. ‘She’s not been seen out of her room much. I think she still feels this is somehow all her fault.”

  I sighed angrily, trying to move. “It isn’t, none of this is anyone’s fault but the fault of evil—”

  “She’ll appreciate hearing those reassurances from you, and I encourage you to tell her that.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to let me up?” I said, shaking at my bindings.

  “Ah.” Mrs. Northe flushed, embarrassed. “Yes. I’m sorry. You do seem to be behaving yourself, so I suppose it’s time…”

  I looked up at her, trying to honestly remember the extent of the madness I’d glimpsed, those indistinct hours that were taken from me. It was all so hazy. But I’d never forget feeling so horribly compromised. Having a distant sense of faculty and having control taken away from you was, as Lavinia had said, the most horrible cruelty. “Was I really that awful?”

  “I’m sure you could have been worse, the effects could have been worse. You could be like that poor George and still be comatose.” Mrs. Northe sat upon the edge of the bed, leaning over to undo the bindings upon my wrists.

  As I turned them and winced, rolling them in an aching stretch once released, Mrs. Northe picked up a minty salve from the bedside table. With a generous dab of the cream, she gently rubbed and treated the raw skin, mothering me as she continued. “The toxin is not to be trusted nor believed. Turns lambs into lions. Thank goodness it managed to stay contained within my house and we cleaned up the residue without much damage, else I’d not have had a house left.”

  Mrs. Northe helped me up to a seated position against the headboard, and I groaned, all my muscles aching and on fire from the lying down without being able to turn and all the struggling I must have done. The way she tended to me, I lost all the resentment about being bound up; she’d done it for my safety and for that of everyone around me. She had such a maternal way about her, and part of me wanted to ask about children, what she really thought about not having any, even though she sort of had surrogates in me, in Miss Kent, in Maggie...

  Maggie... I hadn’t told Mrs. Northe about the letter. There wasn’t anything in it that was particularly private or damning; it was mostly just Maggie being her usual self, but it was worth mentioning the fact that I read her as still hovering on the edge of vulnerability and needing all the prayers and support she could get. She was precarious, and while I felt I should write back, I wasn’t entirely sure what I should say. I was precarious too. Hardly confident. False reassurances from my sickbed would be of no use, the ailing counseling the ailing...

  “What is it now?” Mrs. Northe asked, looking at my expression, which must have been telling. That, or her extraordinary depths of perception would have allowed her to feel the shift within me as much as see it.

  “In all the madness,” I began with a sigh, “I forgot to tell you a letter arrived from Maggie. While you’re looking at paperwork, you might as well read it. I would like to know if you think, as I do, that she still has a ways to go until we would call her recovered... The letter is on your writing desk in the parlor if you’d like to take a look.”

  Mrs. Northe nodded. “I will.” She exited to collect it and any other extraneous evidence.

  The desire I had to help Maggie, wayward as she’d been, was nothing compared to the wave of panic that again crested inside me when I thought about Jonathon, out there on his own.

  Mrs. Northe would not let me go anywhere, without a fight. My father… Well, of course in his mind anything remotely questionable, much less outright dangerous, wasn’t an option. But I would go one way or another. Better to ask forgiveness later than permission now, especially when I knew the answer would be a resounding no... The hesitant forgiveness given from others would be nothing compared to the lack of any I’d ever give myself if I lost Jonathon. If the worst came to pass and I didn’t try to find him… I was not worthy of the divine intervention I had earned thus far.

  Not to say I was infallible, invincible, immortal. I was, most certainly, mortal. And here I was, ready to tempt every fate I’d yet encountered. How reckless. How necessary.

  I simply had to go... It was inevitable, truly, and I’d learned that there was a certain magnetism to inevitable thing
s. Once I knew something had to be done, it simply had to be so.

  Whenever I could be assured that the sequence Jonathon warned me about would lead to one mystery solved, he himself would be my next case. I just had to figure out how a young woman traveled across the Atlantic unaccompanied... I’d have to put on the suit again, pretend. And I’d also have to steal some money... I wondered how much a steamer ticket to England would cost me...

  Lavinia Kent interrupted my musing machinations with a desperate cry, wild-haired and wide-eyed at the door.

  “Nathaniel’s gone! Utterly gone! It isn’t one of his tricks, he has vanished.”

  I stared at the lovely red-haired young woman, framed in the doorway, clad in a black velvet robe that was somewhere between a dressing gown and a priest’s habit. She appeared like a fraught archetype that one of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s painters might have dreamed up, perhaps a rendition of her own ominous name utilized in one of Shakespeare’s most gruesome tragedies. But since I’d had plenty of experience with cursed paintings, I’d take Lavinia’s three dimensions over canvas any day, though the reality of her panic and worry cut straight to the bone, her passionate heart exposed for all to see.

  “And do you have any idea where your dear Mister Veil may have gone to?” Mrs. Northe replied, rising to her feet and going to the door, keeping utterly calm in the face of Lavinia’s panic. “It seems we’ve a rash of handsome Englishmen disappearing out from under our noses.”

  “No,” Lavinia fumed. She began pacing in the hall, like a nervous raven, black fabric swirling as she stalked. “I do not. But I have my suspicions. I believe he has returned to England. He said he wanted to help Jonathon. He was looking all over for him yesterday. So I assume he’s at least part way across the pond.”

  My heart seized with many emotions, firstly hope and pride that Jonathon had such good and loyal friends to rally around and help him. But I simultaneously seized up in pain, for I was not there, not a part of the chase, not immediately following after. After all, I had as much of a claim to him as a friend had... I was his love... I wanted to be his wife... Why the hell was I still in New York when my heart traveled across the Atlantic? My whole body ached to run out the door and down to the piers right that very moment...