by Kat Ross
I glanced at the heavy, gilded mirror on the wall. A vacant chair sat in the middle of the room.
My pulse leapt as footsteps rang in the hall. I spun around and John walked through the door with the real James Moran at his heels, rubbing his eyes as if he’d just woken from a deep sleep. I turned back to the room and its jumble of furniture. This time, the chair was truly empty.
Moran took one look at my face and knew. “It was here, wasn’t it?”
I nodded, my heart still pounding.
“Inside the house.” His voice was eerily calm. “That’s the first time it’s come inside. Did it speak to you?”
I shook my head.
“Let’s get out of this room,” John said sensibly. “There’s more we have to tell you.”
We went down to the drawing room and John ordered the maid to light a fire in the hearth. He poured three stiff whiskeys from the sideboard and handed them out. I guessed he was trying to soften Moran up before he broke the news about his aunt.
“I was napping in the spare room with the door locked,” Moran muttered. “It seemed . . . safer. Are you sure Mother will be all right?”
“She took too much laudanum,” John said. “Or it was given to her. Thank God she emptied her stomach. She’ll be fine with a little—”
“Wait.” The word cracked like a whip. “What do you mean, or it was given to her?”
John and I looked at each other. He murmured something almost inaudible that sounded like, “Here we go.”
I cleared my throat. “We found Klara Schmidt.”
“What?”
“She’s in a home uptown for the aged and infirm. She told us some things, but you have to promise not to—”
“What did Klara say?” The words came out low and measured and hard as frozen ground. His black gaze bored into me with unnerving intensity. I was very glad John was there with me.
Well, she said your father was a monster.
She said you killed him with a clean shot between the eyes. An execution, she called it.
She said your mother was a drug addict who was cuckolded by your aunt.
And she said that same aunt coerced her into finding a black witch to kill you in the worst way she could conceive of.
“Well?” Moran demanded. “Tell me!”
In the end, I opted for the short answer.
“It’s Emma,” I said simply.
The glass slipped from his hand and rolled across the carpet. Moran stood and walked to the mantel, turning his back to us. I could hear him breathing hard through his nose. “Are you sure?”
“Beyond any doubt.”
He didn’t ask why. Some part of him must have suspected, but he didn’t want to face the truth – that his father had managed to destroy the family even beyond the grave.
“Do you know where she went?” I asked.
Moran shook his head, a tiny gesture. He stood very straight, his hands loose at his sides. I looked at the neatly clipped hair at the nape of his neck and thought of Emma stroking him there in a mockery of a lover’s caress the last time I stood in this drawing room.
For a long moment, Moran said nothing. I almost wished he would erupt and get it over with. The arctic chill radiating from him was worse.
“There’s a woman named Hannah Ferber,” John said. “Klara said she’s a witch. She either summoned the doppelgänger or told Emma how to do it.” He paused. “She lives down in Little Germany.”
Moran’s head whipped around. “Dutchtown?”
That was what the Irish immigrants of the Five Points called it. “We need to bring in the Night Squad,” John said.
“No,” he growled. “I’ll handle it myself.”
I sighed at his mulishness. “Moran—”
“It’s my life. If you send in the bloody cavalry, she’ll clam up or disappear.” He gave a wild laugh. “Don’t you see, I have nothing left to lose.” Moran stabbed a finger at me. “It came inside the damned house.” An evil light entered his eyes. “Give me the address. I’ll deal with her.”
“And if we refuse?”
“Then our deal is off,” he said harshly. “Either you still work for me or you don’t. It’s time to choose!”
“At least let us come with you,” I said. “We’re trained to deal with such things.”
“And we don’t want you killing the woman outright,” John muttered under his breath.
Moran gave a brusque nod and strode away, bellowing for the maid. Minutes later, he bundled a disoriented Tamsin and the serving girl into a hansom cab, instructing the driver to take them to the Fifth Avenue Hotel at Madison Square.
“Check her into a suite,” he ordered the white-faced maid. “I’ll see you have some bodyguards to watch the door.”
We trailed Moran to the stables, where a tousle-haired boy with missing front teeth sat on a bale of hay gnawing at an apple core. He leapt to his feet when he saw the master of the house.
“Where’s the groom?” Moran demanded. “I need the carriage hitched up.”
“Miss Emma gave him the night off,” the boy squeaked.
A dull flush darkened Moran’s hollow cheeks. “Can you manage it alone?”
The boy squared his shoulders and tossed the apple core aside. “Yes, sir.”
“Then do it. And I’ll need to you carry messages for me when you’re done.”
The lad hopped to it. We stepped out of the stables and waited in the immaculately tended garden behind the house. Moran regarded us with a wary expression.
“I fired you,” he said. “Why didn’t you let it go?”
“I had to find out the truth,” I replied simply.
“You’re just like her,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair.
I guessed he meant Myrtle. “Listen, it doesn’t matter now. Klara Schmidt needs protection. Emma might go after her. Can you send some of your boys to watch the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females? It’s on Amsterdam Avenue and Ninety-First Street.”
He nodded. “What do you know about black witches?”
I looked at John. That would be his jurisdiction.
“I’m far from an expert,” he said, “but practitioners of the left-hand path, meaning sorcery for evil purposes, are cunning and powerful. They’re accustomed to persecution and protect themselves with charms and amulets. I’m not familiar with German witchcraft per se, but I imagine it’s similar to the rest of Europe. The accusations might be a tad bit overblown: infanticide, cannibalism, pacts with the Devil—”
“Get to the point. Is there any way to protect ourselves?”
“I was just coming to that,” John replied with a hint of coolness. “Garlic, salt, anything made of iron. All are used to ward off spells, especially the evil eye.” He squinted. “I don’t suppose you have a wolf’s head lying about? Or a live rooster?”
Moran stared at him.
“No?” John said blandly. “We’ll stick with a salt cellar and some cloves of garlic then.”
Moran looked at the house. I could see he didn’t want to go back in there.
“Wait with him,” I told John. “I’ll look in the kitchen for supplies.”
I glanced into the stable. The boy was hitching the second horse to its harness. It stamped and snorted and he soothed it with a gentle hand.
“What if Emma returns while we’re out?” John asked.
Moran gave a terrible smile. “I hope she does,” he said. “I’d like very much to have a chat with her.”
14
Moran drove like a maniac, racing the horses down Broadway as fast as the rush hour traffic allowed.
It thickened as we passed through the classier parts of the Tenderloin, where electric lights lit up the theater marquees and well-heeled crowds queued in front of the box offices. I thought for a minute of Danny Cherney and his mud man — almost with nostalgia. They seemed positively innocent compared to Hannah Ferber and her dark spellcraft.
“What else do you know about witches?” I as
ked John, chewing on a fingernail.
“First off, there’s different sorts,” he replied, tipping his Homburg back on his head. “Good ones and bad ones.” He paused. “I’d say it’s a safe bet this is a bad one.” Another pause. “Very bad.”
I fingered the bulb of garlic in my right pocket. The left sagged with an iron horseshoe we’d found in the stable.
“Can she hex us? Or whatever the terminology is?”
“I imagine so. Potions and formulas, animal sacrifice — those are the most common ways to work magic, but any witch worth her salt can cast an evil eye without even touching you.”
We passed the hubbub of Union Square and Moran turned east, following the Bowery south into Little Germany. Beer halls and oyster saloons dotted the streets, along with factories and workshops, sporting clubs, schools and churches, all with signs in German.
Pushcarts crammed the narrow sidewalks under brightly colored awnings. The larger avenues teemed with men in suspenders and women wearing scarves over their hair. Moran was forced to slow his pace, winding through the clogged streets, and I took the opportunity to lean forward to the driver’s bench.
“What do you plan to do when we find her?” I asked him.
“Whatever Emma paid, I’ll triple it,” he replied. “If she refuses, I’ll explain the alternative. She’ll lose everything and everyone that’s dear to her, down to the last squalling infant.”
We passed Tomkins Square Park, the patch of green denoting the neighborhood’s heart, and the elegant brougham drew curious stares.
“It might be unwise to threaten her,” I pointed out.
“That’s why I’ll offer her the money first,” he responded impassively.
I leaned back against the padded seat. If it came down to it, I intended to grab John and run as fast as I could. My loyalty ended at doing battle with a black witch.
The brougham turned south along Avenue A, where men staggered under the weight of piecemeal garments waiting to be stitched by women and children bent over sewing machines in tiny bedroom workshops. Younger kids rolled up their pants to horse around in a gushing fire hydrant. I smelled the heavenly aromas of the knish parlors, those purveyors of hot, flaky pastry filled with kasha, potato and sauerkraut.
At Cherry Hill, home to General Washington during his first term as president, the respectable old houses of the Knickerbockers had been sliced up into slum dwellings, with heaps of brick shards handily placed to be used as missiles against the police. The neighborhood’s particular specialty was robbing sailors, who were knocked flat with a quarter’s worth of chloral hydrate.
The address we sought was near the East River in a rough area at the far fringes of the Seventh Ward. Heaps of refuse lined the unpaved streets and the air stank of coal smoke and human waste. The reason for this became clear when we were nearly doused by the contents of a chamber pot someone tossed out an upper-story window with a desultory yell of warning. Moran shook a fist at the offender but didn’t slow his pace.
He seemed familiar with the tangle of unmarked alleys along the waterfront, guiding the horses between sagging wooden structures where families lived jammed together in cold-water flats, past unpainted board fences and dirt yards with women washing clothes in barrels. Yet most lacked even that basic amenity because the space in the middle of the block was occupied by more houses – the darkest, gloomiest, most airless places of all, offering even cheaper lodgings than the ramshackle buildings facing the street.
By some stroke of luck, the one we wanted had a faded number painted on the front door. Sixty-two Division Street.
Moran stopped the carriage and whistled at a group of barefoot boys who were playing a game of tipcat with a little piece of wood, cracking it with sticks so it would go spinning into the air. They eyed us with open hostility, but something in Moran’s face seemed to command a response. The boldest, dirtiest-looking one sauntered over, a lad with bright blonde hair and a swagger he must have copied from the older toughs in the neighborhood.
Moran pulled him aside and spoke softly in his ear. I watched the boy’s expression turn from animosity to fear and then awe. He bobbed his head and actually gave a little salute, then beckoned over the rest of his gang. They ringed the carriage like the honor guard for a Roman emperor.
I regarded the building we were about to enter with more than a little trepidation. It was six stories of red brick – the tallest on the block – but had a flimsy, crumbling look, with years of grime moldering in the crevices and broken windows mended with blankets and scraps of wood. I sensed eyes watching us from behind the boarded-up façade.
John and I hopped out and took a look around. The few souls who had been about fled at the sight of us, leaving the street deserted except for the boys watching Moran’s carriage. When the sun chose that moment to sink behind thick soot-colored clouds, the building assumed such a sinister aspect I quailed at the thought of entering.
“What if it’s a whole coven?” I whispered to John.
He drew a deep breath. “Then we run for our lives and hope they’re satisfied with Moran.”
“I’m glad we’re in agreement.”
I squared my shoulders as Moran approached. Despite his threats, he looked nervous, too.
“Are you coming inside?” he asked.
I nodded, though I wanted to emphatically shake my head. I noticed that Moran’s pockets were bulging. He must have brought his cosh and brass knuckles and God only knew what else, for all the good it would do us.
“If she’s a real witch, why does she live in such a dreadful place?” I wondered as we approached the front door.
“Maybe she likes it,” John said. “You never can tell with witches. It’s all upside-down and backwards.”
The front door might have had a lock at some point, but it had been broken so many times the knob was missing completely. One hard kick from Moran’s boot and it swung open with a squealing, prolonged creak that instantly made me think of a rusty coffin lid.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, raising a sleeve to cover his nose.
The smell inside the ground-floor hall continued the graveyard motif. It was damp and cold and ripe with so many layers of rotten I could hardly distinguish them all.
“Klara said she lives on the top floor,” I said. “Number fourteen.”
We made for the staircase, whose risers were sticky with nameless grunge. I got the impression of doors cracking at the sound of strange voices, then quietly closing again. A single boarded up window on the street end of the first landing provided the only illumination and even that faded once we had reached the third floor. I screamed as a rat the size of a French poodle scurried across my boot.
“You know, the sewers aren’t so bad, after all,” I whispered into the darkness.
John gave a low laugh, but I could hear the edge in his voice. Somewhere above us a baby was wailing, on and on. It was a pathetic, heart-wrenching sound and my attempt at black humor felt callous. Human beings lived in this place. Children.
Moran walked in the lead. When we reached the next landing, I heard the rasp of a match and a wavering flame appeared. He held it up and I saw the number thirteen scrawled across a door in red paint.
A chill swept over me. The air felt charged with a strange electricity, just like the day we sought shelter at the Boathouse. “Be careful,” I said.
He gave a taut nod. We climbed the last flight of stairs. When we reached the top, the baby abruptly stopped crying. Considering how flimsy the walls were, I thought we would hear voices, smell food cooking and smoke from the stoves, but it was deathly silent.
Moran hissed as the match burned down to his fingers. A brief interlude of darkness followed, and then another tiny flame appeared. Two of the doors had thick boards nailed across their width, but the last, at the far end, sat an inch ajar. It had no number.
“Take this.” Moran passed me the box of matches. He slipped a weighted sap from his pocket, holding it down by his side, and pressed h
imself against the wall next to the door. He nodded at John.
“Hannah Ferber?” John called softly.
No one answered. He pushed the door with his palm and it swung silently open. I lit a match and held up the flame. The room beyond was bare.
“Hello?” he tried again. “Is anyone here?”
We waited for a long minute, ears straining for any sound, but the place had an undeniably deserted feel. John shook his head and Moran stalked inside, his eyes flicking through the shadows. Dusk had fallen outside. I moved to the grime-streaked window facing the street and glanced down. The boys still watched the carriage six stories below. One of them was petting the horse’s nose.
John and Moran headed deeper into the flat. The match was starting to burn my fingers so I dropped it and lit another. The next room had no window, only a narrow airshaft. I saw a coal stove that vented into the shaft and a heap of malodorous rags. The stench was worse in that second, lightless room.
“She’s gone,” Moran muttered with a vile oath. “Either Klara lied or this witch knew we were coming. Maybe Klara tipped her off.”
In the flickering light, I saw cracked walls, the plaster streaked with black mold, although the floor was surprisingly clean as if someone had tried to make the place habitable. The only dust was in the corners, where furniture must have stood.
“But she didn’t just flee,” I said. “Not if she took all her furniture. And it can’t have been too long ago if they haven’t let it to new tenants yet.”
“We should question the neighbors,” John said. “They might know where she’s gone. At the very least they can confirm that Hannah Ferber lived here.”
Moran slipped the sap into his pocket. “If she’s gone, I intend to go visit Klara Schmidt myself,” he said with a deep scowl. “If that old woman thinks she can play games with me—” He kicked the pile of rags in frustration and yelled as it rose up, a howling, wild-eyed scarecrow with a knife in its hand. I lurched back and dropped the match. It guttered out and total darkness descended except for a faint gleam from the airshaft.
I heard the sounds of a struggle, grunts and scuffles and the dark outlines of men grappling. I gripped the iron horseshoe in my pocket in case I needed to brain someone. A gaunt figure shoved past, knocking me to the floor. John’s broad shoulders were silhouetted in the doorway for an instant and then he dashed into the hall and down the stairs.