Lessons After Dark

by Isabel Cooper

  “No,” said Gareth. He could only hope his voice sounded normal. “She seemed quite all right to me.”

  Rosemary Talbot hadn’t called at Englefield any time in the last few days.

  Two days ago, Fitzpatrick and Waite had opened a door. Olivia had closed it, but had she closed it in time?

  ***

  Gareth had hoped either Olivia or Simon would dismiss his theory: nothing else could possibly have come through when the boys had summoned Balam. Ludicrous idea. Only a layman could have believed him. He would have welcomed mockery.

  Instead, Simon swore, and Olivia sighed. “Rosemary had much the same look that the roses did,” she said. “Drained. Used, I would say.”

  She’d been silent on the way back to Englefield, and so had Gareth. Not all of it had to do with awkwardness or even thought. Gareth hadn’t wanted to speak about the situation until they were within whatever protection the house could provide, and he thought Olivia had felt the same. The windows in the village had looked far too much like eyes.

  “Will she recover?” Simon asked.

  “I thought so,” said Gareth, “but—”

  Olivia nodded. “I think what went into the roses was the most destructive and least-thinking part of the demon. Besides, animals are more resilient than plants, by and large. A grown woman certainly has more reserves than a bunch of cut roses. But whatever happened could have seriously damaged her, I think, if Gareth hadn’t been there.”

  “Ah,” said Gareth. The compliment was disconcerting. The urge to straighten his shoulders and grin was more so. He cleared his throat. “So there’s something out there that’s…possessing people?”

  “It sounds that way,” said Simon, and his hands clenched on the bedclothes. “At the worst time possible, no less, which was doubtless its intent, since it failed to take over my mind.”

  “Why didn’t it attempt to control someone in the house, then?” Olivia asked. “There were plenty of people around.”

  “The wards,” said Simon. “They would have expelled it rather forcefully, almost as soon as it entered. If it had possessed me, since I belong to the house, it could have got back in. If it had killed me, the wards would have collapsed, and it would have had access to any number of things I would imagine demons enjoy.”

  “And now it’s…somewhere in the village,” said Gareth. “Someone in the village.”

  “Possibly,” said Olivia. “We don’t know what kind of demon it is or how long it can survive this world without some sort of body. But you’re probably right,” she admitted with a sigh, “and I don’t see any more pleasant alternative.” She looked questioningly at Simon, who shook his head. “Then there we are. I wish to God someone knew where Rosemary went this morning. Somewhere close enough to see us coming, I’d think, but that doesn’t rule out very much.”

  “No,” said Simon. “Not when we don’t know the sort of hosts it can use. I’ll read up. Not much else I can do right now, is there?”

  “No,” Gareth said firmly and without letting any sympathy slip into his voice.

  “You do have a degree, I suppose. Mrs. Brightmore, your help with research would be valuable, but I’ll also need you to reinforce the house’s protections. This incident’s rather enlightened me on that score. Both of you, keep a close eye on the students. For the next few days, I don’t think anyone from the house should go to the village without one of you, or Joan, accompanying them. And all of you should be wary. Don’t let anyone touch you, since it seems that’s how this thing switches bodies.”

  “And the people in the village?” Olivia asked.

  Simon grimaced. “We can’t do anything for them just now. Not until we know more. The demon hasn’t made any direct physical threats, so far. We’ll have to hope that continues.”

  Across the room, Olivia nodded once. Her lips were thin, her eyes shadowed, and Gareth suspected he didn’t look much better himself.

  “We’re under siege,” he said. “Aren’t we?”

  Chapter 33

  Siege.

  Olivia hadn’t thought of the word until Gareth said it. There were advantages, of a sort, to being in the company of military men. Precise terms for particular situations, for instance. Comfort was not among those advantages.

  She prepared her classes, emphasizing methods of defense: words and symbols, plants and stones, and the warning signs that something was amiss. After consulting with Joan, she also told her students why they couldn’t go down to the village and why they should be wary of anyone, stranger or not, who came to the house.

  They listened, still and staring and, for almost the first time since Olivia had come to Englefield, silent. The look in Elizabeth’s eyes and the schoolboy bravery on Michael’s face squeezed her heart.

  If it had been safe to send any of them home, the Grenvilles probably would have done it. At the very least, they’d have sent Michael and Elizabeth away. Englefield was warded, while their homes were not, and their coaches and trains certainly wouldn’t be. So they stayed, and lessons went on.

  Sometimes there was nothing to do. Olivia knew that. In London she’d met women with fading black eyes, who’d asked her silly questions because they hadn’t wanted to put the real ones into words. She’d met a ghost far too young for the life she’d led, let alone for her death, and a man who’d been robbed on the way home to his wife and left to bleed in the street. And Tommy had coughed his life away in the rooms she’d never quite been able to get clean.

  She’d made peace, of a sort, with having no power over some things.

  Having power, she was learning, was no holiday either.

  The village loomed up on one side, out of all proportion to its actual size, and the forest on the other. Trapped between them, Englefield—and Olivia—could only wait.

  After the first day passed without incident, she started to relax. It probably wasn’t wise, but she couldn’t help it. The body could take only so much of being on edge. The mind and soul could handle still less. It was either put the demon out of her mind for a few minutes of her time, or go insane and be of no use to anyone if it did show up.

  Rosemary Talbot was recovering, Gareth said. Nobody else in the village had been acting too odd when he’d checked. Perhaps the demon had put itself into a tree stump or a rock accidentally, thinking such things were terribly powerful beings in this world.

  Olivia didn’t have much hope.

  All the same, she let the students leave the house on the second day. They weren’t to go down the main road to the village, they weren’t to talk to any strangers, and they all seemed nervous enough to obey her commands.

  Besides, she came with them.

  The gardens in November presented a bleak prospect, all hedges and bare dirt, but there was space enough there for the students to take some exercise, and Olivia could see if anyone approached from the road. She’d expected it to be a pleasant interlude where everyone could get some fresh air.

  She hadn’t expected to see Gareth sitting on one of the benches.

  “I hope we’re not disturbing you,” she said as he rose to greet her.

  “No, not at all.” The students were wandering off, splitting into their own groups. “If you could use another pair of eyes—”

  “Gladly,” said Olivia, taking a seat. “The road’s clear enough, and I can’t imagine anyone coming over the fields without being very obvious, but the fewer chances we take, the better.”

  “Have you or Simon discovered anything?”

  “Not very much. It’s surprising how few books actually talk much about demons, or at least about how they act when they’re loose in this world. We do have a formula for exorcism”

  “Will that be helpful?” Gareth sat down, carefully maintaining a proper distance from her. “It already moves between bodies, doesn’t it?”

  “Forcing it out is different. The magician has some power over the creature, then. Mr. Grenville says he’s done it before.”

  “Has he? I didn’t k
now that, but there’s probably a great deal about him I don’t know.”

  Olivia glanced toward the students. William and Charlotte were talking by the ornamental fountain, while Arthur was telling some story to the younger two children. So far, there was nothing sinister happening.

  “I think nobody knows a great deal about anyone,” she said absently. “We don’t excel at understanding.”

  “No,” said Gareth, and a shadow crossed his face. “Purposeful obfuscation’s more our line. As a species, I mean, though I don’t know if any others are better.”

  “Animals, perhaps. I’d have to ask Charlotte. I think they’re simpler. Perhaps that helps. Or perhaps they’re no better than we are, and they simply have less to understand.”

  The wind blew Gareth’s hair across his forehead. Olivia watched and wished she didn’t want to. “Do the dead?” he asked abruptly, “understand people better?”

  “Not the ones who are still here, most of the time,” said Olivia. “A few, like Brother Jonathan, have a purpose, and they’re more…whole. More like living people. Otherwise, the ones who stay are generally more confused than the living. Upset too. It’s one of the reasons situations could get violent, though I never was around any attempts at murder before.”

  “Thank God,” Gareth said with heat Olivia hadn’t expected to hear. “How violent?” he asked quickly.

  “Mostly just flying china. Sometimes the dead weren’t even responsible. People who had talents of their own would come to séances, and if those people weren’t entirely happy, or sane, things could get out of hand. I learned to cope.”

  “It sounds like a hard lesson,” Gareth said.

  “Oh, it was.” Another look toward the students showed that Charlotte had joined the group near Arthur, and William was off on his own, studying one of the bushes. Everything seemed innocent enough. “I’m amazed I lived through the first time, really. The spirit was a child, and so…you can understand why it’d be upset. I talked to it, and that worked. Thank God. I didn’t realize how lucky I was until later. I didn’t realize what could have happened.”

  Gareth gestured toward the students. “Something like what they called up?”

  “Probably worse,” Olivia said. “They had the sense to set up a circle. They made some attempt to protect themselves and the school. I didn’t even take it that seriously. I’d just got the book to—” She stopped for a second and cleared her throat. “Because I thought it would be convincing.”

  Without surprise, she watched Gareth’s face close up. “Ah,” he said, and then, “You…”

  She didn’t need this.

  Arthur and William were talking now. They were quiet, but William’s face was…sulky, perhaps. Olivia couldn’t quite identify the expression, and it didn’t matter.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” she said and got to her feet, “I’d better make sure everything’s going well.”

  “Of course,” Gareth said and let her go.

  Olivia didn’t look back. She didn’t want to see relief on his face.

  Chapter 34

  These days, Gareth’s nightmares weren’t even that bad. Everything still went wrong, everyone still died, and Gareth still stood and watched or sometimes tried to help with hands as large and clumsy as bricks. No part of it was pleasant. But he’d grown used to the dreams, familiar enough that a part of his mind recognized them and knew what was going to happen. He couldn’t quite keep himself apart from the horror, but there were worse things.

  Waking up was one of them.

  His dark room was perfectly still, utterly calm. There were no enemy soldiers here or the ravening demons that had started to keep company with them in Gareth’s sleeping mind. Nothing had happened.

  That was the problem. In his dreams, everything had already gone merrily to hell. Waking to find that nothing had, Gareth inevitably ended up staring into the darkness and thinking about all the ways it could. Every time, there seemed to be more. Englefield was quite an education that way.

  Not entirely fair. The threats had always been there, though Gareth hadn’t always lived a few feet away from impulsive youths with the power to call them up, and the lessons at Englefield were making the world a better-defended place, or they would.

  Fine, high-sounding sentiments. None of them stopped some hateful part of Gareth’s mind from exploring all the possibilities he’d never known about before: crawling things with too many legs, power that could warp a man’s body, hellfire, lightning…

  This time was worse than usual. He knew the darkness around him was empty, yet still it seemed to have grown eyes.

  Familiar by now with the treachery of his mind, Gareth knew he wouldn’t be able to stop counting the possible disasters. Not lying idle, anyhow. He rose, donned his dressing gown, and slipped quietly out of his room.

  Darkness and stillness held the house firmly. If there was a light anywhere, Gareth didn’t see it, but he was decent at moving in the darkness, as a general rule, and quite good at it now, at least on the path from his room to the kitchens. He didn’t walk particularly silently, but he managed well enough, not bumping into any tables or knocking over vases. In the kitchen, Nellie, the cook, had left out the usual late supper, complete with wine. One of the few favors Gareth had brought himself to ask of the servants. He’d have to give them a bit extra for that at Christmas, and that was coming soon enough. Unnervingly soon. Had he really been at Englefield four months?

  Had it been only four months?

  Time, Simon had said one evening at university, went strangely in other worlds and for beings from those places. At times, Gareth thought it moved quite strangely enough for mortal men in the normal world.

  He poured himself a glass of wine, sliced some bread then looked down at the knife. The blade shone in the dying firelight. Steel, not silver. Not cold iron either. Modern steel contained too many other metals, and Olivia had said that iron didn’t always work anyway. Kitchen knives weren’t much good against creatures in the darkness, unless they were the kind of things any sharp edge could hurt.

  The demon roamed beyond the walls of Englefield. Simon had said so. And knives would hurt only whatever poor bastard it was using as a host.

  Not that Gareth would have been much use even with Excalibur. Perhaps especially with Excalibur. The Royal Medical Society had never really covered sword fighting.

  He broke the bread in half, took a bite, chewed, and swallowed mechanically. Around him, the kitchen kept its quiet. There were faint sounds from the dying fire, quiet creakings from the walls as the house settled, and that was all. He might have been the only person left alive.

  Gareth took a large sip of the wine.

  Quiet had never bothered him before. He’d also never spent so much time considering potential weapons. Absurd. He’d been to war.

  But it had been…he couldn’t say an ordinary war. He didn’t know that there were ordinary wars. But Egypt had been a war of flesh and blood, gunpowder and steel. When the latter met the former, the results had been horrific and all too often on his hands, but Gareth had known what to do and done it. The strangest thing he’d regularly encountered had been his power. His doubts and failures had been, for the most part, those of any man.

  Now the walls didn’t seem solid enough, and the shadows were too solid. In the daytime, he could tell himself Simon and Olivia had warded the place well. He didn’t see Simon’s face gone green and half-dead, and he didn’t imagine Olivia’s in the same condition or an alien soul looking out of her eyes…

  He fought back the urge to break something or to shout. Anything to end the silence.

  Gareth finished the wine and made himself eat the rest of the bread, though he realized about halfway through he wasn’t particularly hungry. It didn’t matter. He’d made himself eat often enough in Egypt. The body was a machine: the machine required fuel. Black moods were not a factor.

  The food calmed him a little, as he’d known it would, anchored his body a little more solidly to
the present time and place. It wasn’t quite enough, nor was a single glass of wine, but there were habits Gareth did not want to risk acquiring. He’d seen them enough before, in other men.

  Prayer, strong drink, or bad women.

  He tried to put the voice out of his head. There had been no decision this time, no moment of failure. He had to adapt. That was all.

  Besides, he’d tried praying on other nights. Like the food, it had calmed him only a little, and the other two recommendations weren’t available. Rather, there were bottles of drink in the library, which Gareth would almost certainly make noise reaching, and there might have been one woman in the village who’d be amenable to coin. There usually was. Her hypothetical existence did him no good at all in his current state.

  He thought of Olivia then, remembered her astride him, half-naked, flushed, panting. She’d responded far more thoroughly to his passion than the few other women he’d been with. Natural enough, perhaps, given the choices available to an army surgeon abroad. And he was certain her reactions had been genuine. If nothing else, Gareth didn’t think she’d have given him the satisfaction of knowing he’d pleased her if the pleasure hadn’t overwhelmed her control.

  Not the first few times.

  The tension at his groin, admittedly, did distract Gareth from his previous lines of thought. It also left him sitting alone at a kitchen table, hot and hard and unable to do anything about it.

  Bed would help. Gareth stood up. He’d go back to bed, bring himself what release he could manage, and hope some physical relaxation and the wine would send him back to sleep, and that afterward, his thoughts wouldn’t turn back along either of their previous courses.

  Sometimes it actually worked.

  He left the fire banked behind him and the kitchen dim, but even so, he had to pause a little way up the staircase and let his eyes get used to the full darkness again. Now, in mid-November, all the drapes were drawn at night. Perhaps an atom of moonlight might have gotten through, had the night not been cloudy. As it was, even waiting helped him only so much.