by Kat Ross
“What happened after the exorcism?” John asked.
“Lukins appeared to be normal again.”
“Do you think it’s authentic?”
“It’s impossible to say. The events occurred a hundred years ago.”
“Suggestion is a powerful thing,” I said. “An insane person could believe they’ve been cured so an exorcism might actually help them.”
“I don’t dispute it,” Father Bruno said mildly. “That’s why it’s virtually impossible to say for certain whether any of these possession cases have canonical merit.”
“Have you ever heard of a demon entering through a person’s eyes?” John asked.
“The eyes?” Father Bruno tapped a pencil on the edge of his desk. “Yes, I think there’s one reference. Hand me the Clavicula Salomonis, would you? Just behind you, fifth shelf down. The black cover.”
John obliged. Father Bruno leafed through the thin, yellowed pages.
“The concept of the Evil Eye goes back hundreds if not thousands of years, in nearly every culture,” he said. “That a mere glance, with malevolent intent, can inflict a curse. But I suppose that’s somewhat different. Let’s see… Eyes are frequently described as portals. Oculi quas fenestrae animi.”
“The eyes are the windows of the soul,” I said.
“Very good.” Father Bruno looked at me with approval, then continued his search. “Ah, here it is. A passage in one of the conjurations. Let their eyes be darkened when the master comes. Let them see not, lest the demons of the abyss seek them out. For demons are animals of darkness.” His finger slid a few inches down the page. “It seems to imply that demons can exit the body in this way as well. Either to depart at the bidding of an exorcist, or to take possession of another soul.”
“Have you ever seen this symbol before?” I handed him the scrap of paper I’d copied from Fred at The New York World.
Father Bruno studied the lines and angles. “It looks like it could be a diabolical signature.”
“What’s that?”
“The unique signature of a demon or similar spirit, designed to conceal their true name. They’re usually used to seal an infernal pact for things like eternal youth or power.”
“Would they be burned into a surface?”
“According to the books, they are signed in blood. But I suppose anything would do, as long as the signature itself is clear.” Father Bruno traced the symbol with his fingertip. “The Lesser Key of Solomon asserts that there are seventy-two demons, each with their own mark, collectively called the seal of the demons. Most look like this, combinations of circles and lines and inverted crosses.”
“How difficult would it be to find out about diabolical signatures?” I asked.
“Not very difficult, I imagine. They’re mentioned in a number of prominent works on the subject.”
“Have you ever run across someone who believed they were possessed?”
The priest smiled a little. “I think that describes the vast majority of cases. There is often an element of religious mania. It’s no coincidence, I think, that many of the victims have been nuns.” He hesitated. “I understand that the facts of your inquiry must remain confidential, but may I ask if the person involved is a member of the Church?”
“No,” I said. “But his upbringing could have been quite strict, perhaps with the threat of going to hell or being tormented by demons. We’re not sure.”
“I see.” Father Bruno shuffled his exam papers into a pile. “Tempus fugit. Is there anything else? My next class starts in five minutes.”
“I think that’s all,” I said, standing as John did the same. “Thanks very much for your time.”
“Say hello to Arthur next time you see him. Tell him I wish him luck with his detective novels!” Father Bruno laughed with genuine mirth. “Perhaps he’ll get rich and famous someday. As it says in Chapter Seven, Book Two of Samuel, The Lord sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts.” He chuckled again.
We were walking to the door when I did think of one last thing.
“Might someone give a grimoire like The Black Pullet to a person they wished to harm?” I asked. “If they truly believed it worked, and that it might summon a demon?”
The priest raised an eyebrow. “Are you asking whether such a book could be used as a murder weapon?”
“I suppose I’m asking if someone might think it could.”
His shrewd blue eyes met mine, and now they didn’t seem watery at all. “In my experience, Miss Pell, people can convince themselves of almost anything if they try hard enough.”
It took nearly two hours to retrace our journey back to Manhattan. The rain didn’t let up for a single minute, and neither did John, though I managed to mostly shut him out. If he’d harbored a single shred of doubt that we weren’t hunting a daemoniac before, our visit with Father Bruno had obliterated it. I, on the other hand, was more than ever certain that while this case involved Spiritualism, diabolical pacts and murders that seemed both senseless and evil, its solution would be entirely earthly.
John finally tired of pestering me, and we parted ways with a promise to meet at ten o’clock. That left me five full hours to get ready for the ball. My nerves grew jagged thinking about what might happen that night, so I decided to just let the case simmer on the back burner for a bit.
Instead, I holed up in my room and took out all the notebooks I had compiled on the Society for Psychical Research.
I’d been working on them since the S.P.R. was founded six years before. I had just turned eleven, and Uncle Arthur came for a visit. I was supposed to be in bed, but I’d gotten in the habit of spying on the grownups from the second-floor landing. I liked listening to them talk. Arthur was a big bear of a man, with hands like ham hocks and an enchanting Scottish brogue. He was a natural storyteller.
Anyway, the subject of the S.P.R. came up, and something about it sparked my interest immediately. It was both mysterious and logical, orthodox and radical. Their work sounded dangerous. But exciting too. In imitation of my sister, I started writing down every scrap of information I could discover about them. I soon realized that while the chapter in London sought to engage the public, publishing its results in a scholarly journal, the Americans kept a very low profile. When I had filled ten notebooks, I put them in a box.
I kept the box hidden at the back of my closet, thinking that would keep Myrtle from finding out. Ha-ha. When you have a sister like Myrtle, you can just give up the idea of having any secrets. She laughed and said she’d turned down a job offer from the S.P.R. because she didn’t like following other people’s rules. I don’t think she even meant to twist the knife, which somehow made it worse.
Once I’d stopped hating her, I vowed that I would work for them myself or die trying.
I knew the New York offices were downtown somewhere, but I’d never been able to find the exact address. Their president was a man named Benedict Wakefield. He seemed to be very rich, but exactly how and why was ambiguous. The only thing I knew for sure was that he was one of Edison’s key investors in the Pearl Street Station, the first electrical power plant in New York.
The American S.P.R. kept the identities of its agents strictly confidential. But I’d learned that it had two distinct and warring factions. The leader of the skeptics was a man named Harland Kaylock. He was thirty-seven, unmarried, and lived in one of the new French-style flats on West Fifty-Seventh Street. I’d followed him around town a couple of times, hoping he might lead me to the S.P.R. offices. He was very tall and thin, with sallow skin and a hooked nose. He dressed impeccably and never smiled, at least not that I saw. Mr. Kaylock’s training was as a professional magician. I watched his hands, and his fingers were so quick and nimble they made me think of a capuchin monkey I’d seen at the Central Park menagerie.
Mr. Kaylock’s arch-rival at the S.P.R. was Orpha Winter. She led the zealots and true believers, who saw the Society’s mission not as debunking the occult, but elevating it to a par with ot
her branches of natural science. I’d only seen her once, when we had both attended a lecture at Columbia by Frank Podmore, one of the authors of Phantasms of the Living, a sweeping study of psychic phenomena commissioned by the London S.P.R.
Orpha Winter sat in the front row of the hall. She had lush honey-blonde hair, which she wore in a complicated pile atop her head. Men stared at that hair, and I could see them wondering what it would look like unpinned and flowing down her back. She had tiny hands and feet, like a doll, and very red lips, and they were fixed in a small smile that never altered.
Mr. Winter was a banker, a stiff, prematurely grey fellow who rarely spoke and sat at his wife’s side like a mouse next to a lion. Afterwards, they were surrounded by a circle of admirers. She made a pretense of asking his opinion and leaning on his arm, but it was no secret who was the dominant personality in that marriage.
I heard that the battles between Orpha Winter and Harland Kaylock were the stuff of legends.
Uncle Arthur was a new member of the London chapter, so I assumed that he was communicating with his contacts there about the Rickard case. However, it was those two I’d have to impress if I wanted employment on this side of the Atlantic. I wasn’t sure it was even possible to make them both happy, but while my personal sympathies lay with Mr. Kaylock’s faction, Mrs. Winter was far too powerful to ignore.
I was just contemplating this problem yet again when Mrs. River knocked on the door.
“It’s eight o’clock, Harry!” she called. “You’d best start getting ready.”
I glanced through the window at the lengthening shadows on Tenth Street, astonished that so many hours had passed. Indeed, it was growing dark outside. I jumped up and returned the box to its place under my bed. Then I took a hot bath and washed my hair in a lemon juice concoction my mother swore by. When I emerged from the tub, I found a new dress waiting, a simple yet lovely silk gown of the deepest blue with short sleeves and a tight bodice.
“It matches your eyes, dear,” Mrs. Rivers said. “Go ahead, try it on.”
I hugged her and tried not to wince as she laced me in.
“Now for your hair,” Mrs. Rivers said. “Sit down, Harry, I have an idea.”
“This thing isn’t made for sitting,” I grumbled, shifting the voluminous skirts around until I managed to perch on the edge of my vanity bench.
I watched in the mirror as she expertly set a series of lacquered Japanese combs in my hair, concealing its short length. Then she slid a choker of sapphires around my neck. They felt cool against my skin in the stuffy room.
“Your mother won’t mind,” Mrs. Rivers said, dabbing faintly tinted beeswax on my lips to give them a pink gloss. “She means you to have her jewellery anyway. Now, Edward says tonight’s theme is ‘The Splendors of Nature.’ I thought you could go as The Night Sky.”
I stared at the exotic creature in the vanity. It didn’t look like me, but I supposed that was the point. It was as much a disguise as Connor’s castoff clothing. Let them all be lulled and think I was an empty-headed, frivolous thing.
I smiled evilly. Perhaps there would finally be an advantage to no one taking me seriously.
Connor let out a low whistle when he saw me. He would be coming along as our driver tonight, to keep an eye on things from the outside. Mrs. Rivers had scrubbed him cleaner than I’d ever seen before, and forced him into an outfit that he complained made him look like Little Lord Fauntleroy. I told him he should try getting laced into a corset sometime, if he wanted to know what sheer misery really felt like.
Sitting down was uncomfortable and eating out of the question, so I paced the front hall until my escorts arrived in the barouche at ten o’clock on the dot. John’s eyes bugged a little when I made my grand entrance down the staircase, but he recovered quickly and brushed his lips to my gloved hand.
“You look ravishing, Harry,” he murmured. “The other girls will be green with envy, and the men will curse my good fortune.”
John wore a conservative evening jacket with long tails and a starched white shirt. I could still detect faint bruising along his jaw from the fight in Hell’s Kitchen nearly a week ago, but it was mostly covered by his high collar.
Edward, on the other hand, had a reputation to live up to. As it was a costume ball, he enjoyed more latitude than usual in his evening attire, and he used every inch of it. I counted at least six shades of rose in his cravat, contrasted by tight violet pants and lilac stockings. His handkerchief was a peculiar shade of purple he identified as “byzantine,” and a pink carnation poked out of his lapel.
“I tried to convince Zenobia”—that was Edward’s little sister—”to come back from Newport, but she’s never been overly fond of the Kanes,” he said. “She refused even when I told her I planned to go as The First Blush of Sunrise!”
John made a sympathetic noise. “She’s certainly missing…something,” he said.
“Do you think I might make the papers?” Edward asked, brightening a little. “If they’re doing party portraits? Of course, black and white won’t do me justice, but still.”
“I’d say there’s a very good chance,” John replied with an admirably straight face.
Mrs. Rivers made a few minute adjustments to my hair and dress, pinched my cheeks for color, and declared me presentable, even to such a discriminating hostess as Temple Kane.
“Have her back by three, Mr. Weston!” she called down the steps as we climbed into the carriage.
“On my honor,” John called back with a salute.
Despite myself, I felt a flutter of excitement as we headed uptown. I’d never been inside the Kane mansion before, but I’d heard plenty of stories about it. Situated just above the stretch of Fifth Avenue that was becoming known as Millionaire’s Row, the Kanes rubbed elbows with such illustrious neighbors as the Astors and Vanderbilts. They were one of the first wealthy families to venture north of Fifty-Ninth Street (although others would soon follow suit), to what a quarter century before had been little more than a rutted dirt road cutting through a shantytown.
The Kane mansion faced Central Park, occupying most of the block between Sixty-Sixth and Sixty-Seventh Street. Designed by Stanford White, it was made of grey limestone and looked more like a museum than a private residence. All the windows were blazing with light as we joined the line of carriages pulled up in front.
“Ready for the lion’s den, Harry?” Edward asked, as a liveried footman in a powdered wig approached the barouche.
I surveyed the crowd of extravagantly attired men and women presenting their invitations at the front doors. One appeared to be wearing an actual taxidermied cat’s head as a hat.
“Oh, that’s just Puss,” Edward said, stroking the wispy fuzz of a new mustache he seemed very proud of.
“It’s still wearing a collar,” I said faintly.
Edward patted my shoulder. “Let’s go find the punch.”
“Sneak me some back, will ya?” Connor implored from the driver’s seat. “It’s thirsty work, sitting around watching rich people.”
“I promise to bring you a pastry,” I said, as John helped me down.
“How about the first dance?” he asked, fluttering his lashes.
I twined my arm in his and smiled. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.”
And so we drifted into the current of partygoers as it swept slowly but inexorably towards the Kanes’ ballroom, like a river to the sea.
14
“I’d forgotten what a fine dancer you are,” I said as John twirled me around the floor in an intricate mazurka, a dance they say was inspired by the Polish cavalry racing across the steppes of Central Europe. The tempo certainly was fast, and my cheeks were flushed by the time I spun to a stop and we started a more sedate waltz.
“True dancing can’t be taught,” he said absently, gazing over my shoulder. “It’s improvised in the moment. It comes from the chemistry of the dancers, the space between them.”
“Well, my toes th
ank you,” I said. “It’s terribly unfair that women must wear slippers at these things, while men are shod in tough leather soles. And the mazurka is especially treacherous. All those quick little stomps.”
“Ah well, I’ve been practicing in secret,” John laughed. He shook hair from his eyes and glanced meaningfully at my bodice. “I wouldn’t want to get shot for any missteps.”
Not much got past my best friend, I thought. “Is it that obvious?”
“Not really. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t seen you fooling with the…uh…placement just before we left.” His teasing expression sobered. “Are you expecting trouble tonight, Harry?”
I shook my head. “Just preparing for anything, I suppose. That’s one of Myrtle’s maxims. She likes to quote General Washington: ‘To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace’.”
“I suppose we are at war, at that. But is it with the Kanes?”
He glanced over at George Jr., who stood in the midst of a group of friends near the punchbowl. Like John, he had skipped a costume and wore traditional evening attire. He had blonde hair, slicked back, and an arrogant laugh that was already too loud. As I watched, he threw his head back and roared at some joke, a glass of champagne tipping precariously in one hand. Temple looked over sharply from across the ballroom. She didn’t seem pleased.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s a cad, but is he a killer? It strikes me as more than a little odd that he would ride the elevated in search of victims. The trains are dirty, crowded, infested with vermin. Why not just stalk them from a carriage? It’s more private, far fewer people would see his face, and it offers a quick escape route when the deed is done.”
John slid his hand into the small of my back and expertly pulled me close, then spun me away again. “You’re forgetting something, Harry. George likes slumming in downtown dives, like Billy McGlory’s Armory Hall on Hester Street. Rich boys pay to sit up in the balcony and watch the thugs brawling down below. I heard he got too drunk once and ended up getting hauled outside and robbed.” John grinned. “And left on the street without a stitch of clothing.”