The Double Life of Incorporate Things (Magic Most Foul)

by Hieber, Leanna

  Mrs. Northe was eyeing me, and I had to keep my calm, for she was gauging me, and I had to keep in her good graces. There would be no going anywhere if she suspected me...

  I spoke very gently in my most reasonable tone. “Do you happen to know if Jonathon told Nathaniel he was leaving for England? Because he didn’t give me any clue—”

  “No,” Lavinia replied, stopping her pacing to come into the room and speak with me. “He said he was hoping he’d have seen Jonathon but was struck by a memory of the persons who targeted the Denbury clan to begin with, a night he still feels guilty about. And I’m sorry to be so rude and think only of myself and my heart... But are you...feeling better, Miss Stewart?”

  “Do call me Natalie, I insist, and yes, I am, thank you. Thank you for helping keep order in the house, I understand it was...difficult. I am sorry for—”

  “You apologize for nothing. It was I who brought this whole terror upon us—”

  “The Society targeted you, you couldn’t have known—”

  Lavinia’s bright eyes flashed darkly. “I should not have let anything in,” she moaned. Shame made her cheeks burn nearly the color of her hair. “I should not have given a substance faith that I didn’t have in myself. I should not have allowed my Association, my treasured comrades, think, for even one moment, that there was a shortcut to their health when we’ve all taken such great and measured strides together.” She clasped her graceful hands together. Her every move was theatrical, whether she knew it or not, and yet all of it entirely sincere. “Proven medicine for ailments is one thing. Risks like what I undertook? No. I hope one day I’ll forgive myself, but today is not that day. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to write some letters of inquiry on Nathaniel’s behalf.” She bowed her dark red head and disappeared.

  Mrs. Northe was about to open her mouth and comment on the situation when the doorbell rang and the door was opened unto my father, who was shown upstairs, and soon after, the maids rushed about to make sure all of us had tea in nearly the blink of an eye. None would look at me. Surely they were frightened. And yet they remained in this house. Mrs. Northe created that kind of unbreakable loyalty.

  “I... I’m so relieved you’re recovered,” was all my father could manage, coming into the room. I struggled to stand for the first time in what had evidently been a few days, wincing from the aches, but it felt so good to be upright.

  When my father looked at me, he still blanched, as if he were staring at a ghost. Mrs. Northe had been through enough séances and exorcisms, it would seem, to not have been phased by the toxin’s effects upon me; she treated me no differently, and for that I was grateful.

  But for my father, though the inexplicable things that had followed Jonathon and then, by default, me, become commonplace, they could never be fully understood, never fully accepted. And yet, despite this, he cared enough for me and for Mrs. Northe, for this family of fate, to try his best to stare it all fully in the face even though I knew how utterly terrified he was. I wondered if he heard my mother’s whisper, ever, in his mind, and if it steeled his gentle heart that was so full of love it sufficed for strength. I’d like to think he did.

  We stared at each other for a long moment, as if summing one another up. My heart twisted in anguish for what I knew I had to do, break his heart all over again and disappear once more. He might never forgive me. I had to take that risk. And looking at the kind, distinguished face of a man who simply wanted to love me, for me to be happy without threat... It nearly made me ill, sick, and enraged all over again. What right did any evil force have to try to sunder something so lovely as the persons I had in my life?

  I thought I was going to finally go home with Father. I hadn’t had the heart to ask precisely how long I’d actually been Mrs. Northe’s crazed invalid...but he stopped me as I started gathering whatever of my things sitting around the vanity had been brought from home during the interlude.

  “Natalie, not that I don’t want you home, but perhaps one more day under this roof? To truly make sure you’re...yourself again? I just...” And he looked at Mrs. Northe with a mixture of fear and wonder. “I feel you’re safer around Evelyn than you would be around me. She can...protect you better than I could. She knows... I was helpless. I suppose your Jonathon knows too... I just...wouldn’t... I don’t know what to do...”

  He was the same man who desperately wanted the best for me despite his own personal cost. When faced with my disability, when I stopped speaking after Mother died, he sent me away from home to the finest school that the country offered so that someone more skilled could help me. I only just now understood, looking into those eyes that seized my heart with the force of their love, that cleaving me from him for my own good was the hardest thing he ever had to do. He’d lost his wife, and here his daughter kept needing expert care that he could not provide. And yet he did not let his pride withhold what I needed. What trust in grace. What wondrous love.

  I moved to my poor, overwhelmed father, and embraced him. Hard. “Go home and rest, Father, you look like you haven’t slept in days.”

  “I haven’t,” he admitted.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve gotten this far, haven’t I?” I said, offering him a smile that he returned.

  “By the grace of God,” he murmured, kissing me on the head and slipping quietly back down the stairs. Mrs. Northe escorted him to the door, and I heard him thank her gently in the downstairs foyer. “I’m sorry for all the trouble, Evelyn,” he added.

  “You’re quite welcome, Gareth,” I heard her reply. “And no trouble was had. But if there had been, your family would be worth it.”

  There was a long moment before I heard the front door close. I actively did not think about what that long silence might have meant.

  Mrs. Northe did not come back upstairs. Perhaps she was pondering the same things I was, how beautiful and rare it was that a loving gentleman left the women he cared most for in the world to their own devices. Not because he was not interested, or thought himself above the goings-on. But because he trusted us. Despite all we’d both done in direct opposition to what would have engendered trust. Surely, the late Helen Stewart was somewhere helping our family cope... Or, maybe, my father didn’t need any help at all, he was just very gifted at letting people do what they did best and caring for them as they did so.

  I was left alone. I found I didn’t like that fact, as I felt as though I might jump out of my skin, impatient and restless. So, as with anything I didn’t like, I sought a remedy for my state. I poked my head into the hall. Down the lavishly papered and plush-carpeted hall, Lavinia’s door was open. I padded down to its frame and left one rap upon the dark wood.

  At the sound, she looked up from a small Turkish suite where she sat writing by the lavender light of a gas lamp with a purple glass shade. It make her look oddly spectral, slightly ghastly. I was sure she’d like the effect, provided it was in her control. It was clear the Association appreciated theatrical morbidity but wasn’t fond of violence or actual threat. They sought to make light of death, not actively court it. That’s where the Society had misjudged them.

  Lavinia gestured me in and rose to close the door behind us.

  “So,” she murmured. “We’re in a similar boat, are we not?” As she emphasized the word boat, I wondered if Lavinia was, in fact, thinking exactly what I was thinking.

  “I’ll never be let out of here at this point, I fear,” I replied. “Mrs. Northe knows me too well. But I have to escape. I have to get on a steamer, and I have to get to London. To Greenwich, to his estate, wherever he is... The trouble is,” I said, wringing my hands, feeling helplessness rise inside me like the raging tides so recently had, “I don’t know the first thing about England, or international travel.”

  “Well. Good thing I’m British, then, isn’t it?” she replied. “I’ll take you to England, Natalie. I have to follow the man I love. As do you. And I feel much better about it not undertaking it alone. Everything happens for a reason, so the
y say, and one cannot fight the types of battles we’ve been chosen to fight on our own.” I stared at her. Her lovely face, one I’d seen so often scared and nervous, was stalwart and resolute. I wondered if I’d looked the same way when I’d made the dangerous decisions I had in protecting Jonathon in any number of ways. Do not stand between a resolute lady and her love, that’s for certain.

  I nodded, squeezing her hand. “Yes. All of this, yes, Lavinia, thank you. And I hope to leave as soon as possible—”

  “Tonight. I’ve packed a bag, I’ve secured money. I knew my parents were tiring of me long before they cast me off, so I’ve gathered and saved a considerable amount, and I’ve been clever about it, lest I lose it all to one unscrupulous thief on the boat.”

  I stared at her, impressed. “Your parents were wrong to cast you out merely for company you keep. I think the Association is wonderful, creative, and true to themselves, and there’s nothing inherently broken about any of you. It’s the world that needs assimilation when the individual needs only one’s self. I am glad that if I’ve been subjected to the hells I’ve been subjected to, that it’s been alongside fairly spectacular company.”

  She beamed. “There’s an early-morning steamer, but we’ll be seen by house staff in the morning, so we’ll leave tonight, at midnight, prevail upon a friend of mine who lives not terribly far from the Cunard offices, wait out the midnight hours, and tomorrow morning, we begin. It takes too many days to cross the Atlantic to waste a single one more. Go to your guest room and gather what little useful you can. We’ll have to procure other items in transit.” She moved to the large mahogany wardrobe across the room, opened it, and handed me a hat box. It wasn’t luggage, but it would have to do.

  I nodded at her and moved quietly into the hall. I remembered what had felt best when anything frightening had been placed in my path, and that was to move around it. To act. Paralysis would kill me. The only thing to fend off any recurrence of the madness that had overtaken me was to again stare the demons down, one by one. The Master’s Society and all its misguided experiments preyed on a mixture of fear and chaos leading to conditions for domination. I had to hope the demons and their agency hadn’t factored in the spirited rebellion of those they crossed. But it did make us marked targets.

  I hoped that night I could dream, to pluck details from Jonathon’s innermost mind, wherein I would also see, surely, clues to my own doom. I had to believe those warnings could be avoided. If some increasingly slippery part of this ungodly puzzle would come for me regardless, I might as well meet it in battle...

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lavinia and I had agreed upon a time. We had packed what we could.

  In each of our respective rooms, the bedclothes molded under the covers of each bed looked convincingly like a sleeping body.

  We thought we were very clever.

  We met in the hall at the appointed time, using the soft chime of the grandfather clock at the end of our corridor to mask the sound of the opening doors, the jostle of bags and the hatbox that served to carry far more than a hat, and our careful tread. Sneaking down the staircase as the bell continued to softly toll, we were painfully aware of every creak and slight murmur of the house, wincing at any and every sound.

  We reached the downstairs landing. I could feel the tension thick in the air as we turned to each other. This was it. The point of no return. We were going forth unto an unknown world, an uncertain destiny, a future from which there might not be any coming back… And yet neither of us felt we had any other option. That was what the demons had done, propelled us forward on a terrible course that we could not begin to fathom the end of.

  And then there was a movement from the shadows, blocking our path.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” Mrs. Northe scowled, turning the gas-lamp key of a front door sconce and throwing us into illumination.

  So much for clever.

  She placed one arm on either side of the doorframe to block us; the lavish bell sleeves of her thick satin dressing gown trimmed in fine lace spread and unfurled like formidable wings.

  Lavinia shrank back, her shoulders falling, and she stammered in an effort to defend us, though her tone was one of distinct guilt. “Mrs. Northe, forgive me, you misunderstand—”

  “No, she doesn’t misunderstand,” I murmured gently, ruefully. “She knows exactly what’s going on. Clairvoyance, and all…” I set down the hatbox before I went to her. I took one of her hands in mine, moved by the fierce quality upon her face, the face of a mother protecting her brood from leaving the safety of a den to run directly toward predators. “What? What is it that you see that has you so concerned when you know that avoiding the inevitable does us no good?”

  “Death,” she choked.

  I swallowed hard. “Death if I go, or death if I stay?”

  “I...don’t know,” she said, looking at me helplessly. A helpless Mrs. Northe was one of the more terrifying things I’d encountered. Lavinia just looked from one of us to the other worriedly.

  “I can’t take the risk of staying behind,” I said finally.

  “How can I bear the risk of letting you go? I can’t let you. When I went Chicago to help my Amelia pass onto the next plane, she warned me that death lay ahead. I can’t allow you to doom yourself—”

  “But the doom will find me if I am marked for it, you know that. It will find a way, but so will I. You know me—”

  She closed her eyes as if the threat that next came out of her mouth was as intolerable to her as it was to me. “I could have you sent to an asylum—”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” I said.

  “I’d dare anything to protect you—”

  “You have.” I fought to keep my words gentle. “You always have protected me. You always will. Just...let us choose our paths.”

  “Your father will—”

  “Never know, because you’ll make up something brilliantly creative—”

  “Natalie, I sense death,” she cried. “You’re not prepared—”

  “Do you see my death? Or simply death?”

  “Not precisely, no, I can’t forsee a specific fate, but danger and death is a certainty, I cannot risk you—”

  I sighed heavily. Lavinia was ashen pale at my side and yet still resolute. “I’ve faced death awake, I’ve faced it dreaming. I don’t like the idea, but I’ve a strong notion it will come for me regardless. I’d just rather it not be expecting me.”

  There was a very long time where Evelyn Northe and I simply stared at each other.

  “You realize you’re the bravest girl I’ve ever known,” she said finally. I felt tears threaten to sting my eyes, but I fought them back.

  “I learned bravery from the mother who pushed me out of the way of a carriage and was run down instead. I learned bravery from a stepmother who doesn’t flinch at dark magic.”

  Mrs. Northe blinked a moment. Then she realized that “stepmother” meant her, and it was then her turn to blink back tears.

  But the moment of deep sentiment was short lived. Mrs. Northe’s expressive hazel eyes rolled back entirely, and her tall, slight form began to shake uncontrollably. A voice came from her that was not entirely her own, it was singsong and eerie. “They’ve gone to the house, and it is ashes…ashes…”

  “What…what’s going on…” Lavinia said, looking at Mrs. Northe and then to me, terrified.

  “I think… She’s channeling something,” I said slowly. “I hope it’s a spirit…”

  “Let’s go,” Lavinia said and stormed to the door, blowing past our suddenly incapacitated hostess. “Natalie, come on. This is our chance—”

  “But we can’t leave her—”

  Lavinia rushed back into the base of the landing to emphatically ring the maid’s bell, picked up my hatbox from where I’d dropped it and shoved it at me, grabbed my hand, hoisting her satchel over her shoulder, and we flew out the door.

  `Out the front door, I heard Mrs. Northe cry out: “Beware…all ye who journey there...
”

  It was hardly the parting words I wanted to hear. I wanted benedictions, not warnings. But then came a telling, shrieking addition.

  “Heed the sequence,” Mrs. Northe cried, from whatever forces were utilizing her. “The order. The book.”

  And that, I knew, was a clue. This was too chilling of a note to leave my mentor and spiritual warrior upon, but as Lavinia was physically dragging me away, I’d take whatever help I could get.

  I paused outside just a moment, to see if there was anything else to be gleaned, but the maids had descended about her then; I heard fussing, and I could see the grouped shadow inside the beveled glass of the door. I was confident she’d be taken care of. Hopefully her staff would call Blessing, or maybe that senator, one of her powerful friends—if she didn’t come to after some time entranced.

  At least the spirits were trying to help us.

  At least I hoped it was the spirits speaking through her and not something else…

  Chapter Seventeen

  What happened to get me onto this steamer was an elaborate process that I undertook without pausing for reflection or consideration. Lavinia and I agreed to banish sentiment and second-guessing, like discarding excess ballast from a ship, in order to make ourselves light, efficient, dynamic, and quick. Uninterrupted by fears or beset by counterproductive worry.

  She had planned this out on her own, and I was not a hindrance to that plan. Rather, I think my presence emboldened her. Having spent a life without speaking, I was quite used to doing things on my own, and where Lavinia faltered, I stepped up with confidence. Where I was out of my league in the business and details of international travel, Lavinia filled the breach.

  We passed the few hours until the next boat out with one of Lavinia’s Association friends down near Pearl Street, a convenient walk from Cunard offices for the tickets. From there, it was a brief jaunt to the pier and then out on the first express steamer possible. I kept looking around for Mrs. Northe, or my father, fully expecting either of them to try to intercept us there—it wasn’t like steamers to England kept their schedules private.