Above our heads, at regular intervals upon a patterned grid affixed to the rafters, points of blue-white light popped into existence.
I stared, awed into silence. Each flicker gained strength, until I realized they were not brightening as a gaslamp might but curling and twisting as ink does through water.
In a few moments, each of the lights revealed themselves to be show globes, glowing with an alchemical radiance that caused the shadows below them to flee.
“Brilliant, no?” My mother’s laughter was musical—and hauntingly familiar. A shiver coursed down my spine. I clenched my teeth, tamping an unreasonable seed of panic into silence.
Under the light, I expected her own radiance to dim, but it did not. As though her ghostly luminescence created a shield around her, the light from the globes clashed and forced a corona that made her look more like an angel than any ephemeral ghost.
She drifted into the laboratory proper, allowing me the opportunity to study that what the incandescence revealed.
The laboratory was not a myth, after all.
I could not imagine what part of the house might hide this vast secret. The floors were stone, as were the walls, yet heavy tapestries adorned the latter as though to combat the dank chill within. They were nearly all gray with dust; nothing a through beating wouldn’t mend. Shelves lined parts of the wall, adorned with various implements in no certain order I could distinguish—a great quantity of bowls, crucibles, mortar and pestle, retorts and beakers. Some still had contents within, though long since dried and evaporated to a thick stain.
Books filled others, tomes my fingers itched to seize.
Examination tables lay arranged just so, with larger crucibles of a more recent make than the Hessian bowl I’d seen in my mother’s portrait. Three sat upon a low worktable, each connected by a pipe that would transfer heat from the furnace hulking just behind them.
Various other apparatuses made themselves known by their uses outside alchemy, familiar to me through the simpler sciences. The sand bath was cold to the touch, as expected, but were it hot, the sand would evenly heat contents within the unit, rather than rely upon sometimes unreliable convection. This would allow for a safer and more even chemical reaction with less stirring needed.
I saw racks of tubes and the twisted retorts, used for gaseous material, and more implements I did not recognize.
It was, in short, an unkempt alchemical paradise—and a scientist’s haven, really, for many of the tools I did know were also used in common laboratories of the enlightened thinker.
My mother waited in the center of the laboratory. A large gap had been cleared, and I thought it odd until she raised a hand to halt me in my tracks.
She pointed down. “That is a barrier you will be wise to avoid crossing, even casually.”
I looked down where she pointed, then raised my eyebrows when I saw the circles carved into the stone floor. They were gouged so deep that no amount of wear would ever truly smooth it out. The circles were large enough to stand within with room to spare, each line rimmed with symbols I did not recognize.
The three circles intersected each other, creating a rather more complex pattern than it seemed at first glance.
“What is it for?” I asked, frowning at the lines.
“Less than the original creator had hoped,” came her cryptic reply, “but possibly useful to our purposes. You remember the importance of Trina?”
“The crossroads,” I said, and in so doing, a sickly feeling stole into my stomach. “This seems rather more occult than alchemical.”
“Sweet girl,” my mother chided gently. “Whether ’tis occult or alchemy or science, does it truly matter what one calls it if the results are the same?”
My gaze turned to her, my eyes wide as a version of Ashmore’s lecture came back to me in her melodious voice.
“Remember,” she continued as she drifted around the circle with great care, “the third Trump is what?”
“Caeles-Isis.” A beat, and the connection slotted into place. “Divine, and often illustrated by Isis of Egypt.”
“Exactly so,” my mother said. “Divinity is as much a part of alchemical potency as reason or a dab hand at maths. Ergo, never discount that what only seems to be fanciful imaginings. Come quick, now, we’ve less time than I’d like and I worry about your longevity should I vanish too soon.”
“My longevity?” I skirted the circle, my skin prickling as I neared too close to the symbols. I did not imagine that anything might actually come of the design, but I wondered if the intent had been to meddle with the affairs of death and immortality.
Both Trina and Caeles-Isis revolved around the concepts of the moon, the Underworld or Ghostworld, and in Isis’ case, resurrection of her betrayed husband, the god Osiris.
It was better to not die at all in the pursuit of perfection, but I imagined that resurrection might be a step up from the finality of death.
While I could imagine a great deal, the nature of the experiments attempted in this laboratory before its abandonment worried me.
Josephine came at last to stand beside a bookshelf and a table cluttered with dusty tomes, many left open to gather grime. The pages had all yellowed, and some were so thick as to be older parchments bound much later in time.
“You are how old, now?” she asked.
I approached, wrapping my arms about myself to ward out the cold that seized me. “Almost one and twenty,” I told her.
“You haven’t much time, then.”
“For what?” I asked, bewildered.
My mother floated closer, until her radiance blocked out that of the lights overhead. Her eyes filled my sight, glistening and brilliant in shades of green. “The illness that claimed me, and my father before that, is not a disease of the body.”
I stared at her as cold flitted against my skin. It crept along my body, as though seeking a way inside.
I shuddered. “I don’t understand.”
“’Tis a trap,” she said softly. “A means by which Oliver Ashmore may sustain the longevity of his life. He feeds upon us, don’t you see?” She cupped my cheek, and the burn of the frozen touch seared through my confusion. “You will be next to fall to him, just as soon as you have unlocked the power of the Trumps.”
I gasped, and the breath that came from my lips turned to white mist. “No,” was all I could manage. My throat ached with the cold.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and in her eyes I read grief. “I’m so very sorry. I had always hoped that you might lead a life free of such a burden, but ’tis not to be. Ashmore tricks us all by unlocking the secrets of the cosmos for us. When we are strong enough to wield them, we are ripe for his taking.”
My mouth fell open.
Her hand fell away. “When you are ready,” she continued, “he paints a portrait. Every generation, he has painted us. Me, my father, my grandfather, my great grand-mother.” Her skirts shuddered, though she did not move. They spilled in a soundless ripple of light and nothing. “I was so close to learning what alchemical sorcery he concocted to do it, but he painted my portrait and I was lost.”
“No,” I croaked, my eyes burning as much from the wide-eyed stare I levied upon her as the lingering ice clinging to the cheek she’d caressed. I clasped my own shaking palm over the cold flesh. “Death from a painting? It’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible,” my mother assured me, and sighed deeply. “I’m sorry, my love. All that I tell you is true. Once we are painted, we are consumed. Over a hundred years has he extended his life this way.”
A hundred years and more. I recalled the paintings in storage; the sameness to each of them I attributed to a family of painters, or a master and apprentice.
I had never thought it would be one master for all.
The ground fell from beneath my feet. I swayed, spots gathering across my vision.
No. No, it couldn’t be. He’d cared for me. He’d taught me so much.
It was thanks to him I
was free of the Menagerie’s dark games, thanks to him I had not ended my life. I owed him my sobriety, from which I had learned what it was to accomplish something under my own power.
Was it all for nothing?
The table shook as I leaned heavily against it, my lungs seizing from the cold I desperately tried to inhale. I couldn’t breathe.
“Cherry,” my mother crooned. “Sweet girl, don’t give up hope now. There is a solution.”
The ragged wound of betrayal carved deep. I had let him into my bed. I’d all but demanded his attentions.
How he must have laughed at me.
My mother stepped back, but the air did not lose its chill. I wasn’t certain that I’d ever be warm again.
What was it that led the men I trusted to betray me? To abandon me?
No matter how I looked at it, no matter how deeply I might search, only one common variable existed between them—me.
Was it something I did? Something about me that led them all to leave me behind?
“Cherry,” my mother said, her tone insistent. “Look at me, sweeting.” When I did, her luminescent hand fluttered over her breast in manner similar to an overwrought matron. Again, her eyes shone with unshed tears. “I thought to continue my father’s work to cure this disease. Oliver distracted me. He stole my heart and seduced his way into my bed—”
I made a sound I was not sure made it past the vise in my chest. Denial—and raw anger. My knees shook. Clutching the edge of the table, I bent over it until I could breathe around the pain centered in my belly.
An icy draft over my back suggested my mother attempted to comfort me.
“By the time I understood what he had done, it was too late,” she said softly. “I was already caught in the web he’d woven. He took my life without causing death, sealing my anima as he had done my father before me, and all those of direct line before him.”
Anima. That was a word that came up frequently in my mother’s journal. It was that what the alchemists called the soul, or the spirit.
My mother claimed that each painting housed a spirit.
Was that why those I found in storage looked more like cadavers than living beings?
I cleared my throat harshly. “How?” I looked up at her. “Did my father know you were ill when you married?”
She nodded so sadly, my heart fractured for her. “’Tis a slow, often secretive decline. When I married your father, it had already taken root.” Her mouth tightened. “It cannot kill too quickly, you see. Oliver must guarantee a child to continue the line. All so that he can continue his unnatural life.”
I closed my eyes, covering my face with one hand while I braced my sagging weight with the other. “I didn’t know.” It meant nothing that I said it. My ignorance did not salve my hurt, would not ease my pride.
I wished it would.
“My love, all is not lost for you.” I looked up at that, my jaw clenched so hard I felt the pain echo in my head. My mother’s gaze was steady. “I clung to this world with all my strength until you were old enough, and I believe this is that time. Will you end this circle of death?”
That she asked was simple courtesy, and I knew enough of us both to recognize it. I had no choice in the matter. Of course, I would.
I stood with effort. It hurt, somewhere deep inside my heart where I’d learned to trust Ashmore and all he’d done for me, but I did straighten. I would not cower.
“What must I do?”
She pointed to a book, whose cover was stained a red similar to that of polished cherry wood. No dust clung to it, though the edges were blackened and scorched. The red ribbon tucked between the worn pages was frayed at the end. “There is a formula in here. Follow it, Cherry. Save yourself where all of us failed before you.” Her voice took on a tonal quality eerily similar to the wail I’d heard in the wind. Her fingers started to shimmer, color leaching from the edges of the mirage she presented.
I reached out, my heart in my throat. “Mother, wait! I’ve never composed an alchemical formula, how will I—”
When my hands passed through her shoulders, it was as if I’d dipped them into a frozen river. I cried out, pain and frigid shock forcing me to snatch my hands back to my chest.
Josephine St. Croix melded away slowly, until her beautiful smile and the light of her green eyes was all that remained. “I’m counting on you, my sweet girl,” she whispered, hauntingly melodic. “Break the cycle. Help me.”
Silence filled the laboratory as the last of her words faded into nothing. She was gone. With no fanfare, no shimmer of aether, nothing. Only my throbbing fingers, which were tinged blue at the very tips when I set them down upon the book she’d shown me.
I stared sightlessly at the strewn worktable, my hands shaking.
She was gone. I’d never been so close to my mother until this surreal moment, and she was gone. The hurt this forced inside my bruised and battered heart brought fresh tears to my eyes. They trickled loose before I could force them away, and I scrubbed hard at my cheeks.
I was alone; I was always alone—and even as I came to recognize this, I steeled myself, forcing my shoulders to align. Dream as I might, imagine another world as I did, I could not change what was true and what was not.
My mother’s spirit was locked in this house. All my fears embroiled in tattered walls and all my mocking recollections of penny dreadfuls now must be put aside. I had faced a ghost, and she needed my help. I could do nothing else for my mother—I could not save my Mad St. Croix from his own lunatic humors, I could not retain the inheritance that she had contributed to. These failures were in the past.
I huffed out a breath, wiped my arm under my nose, and said quietly, “Allez, hop, Oliver Ashmore.” My version of beware.
Ashmore had said he did not know my mother. He’d told me so.
I’d trusted him.
To learn that he’d seduced my mother infuriated me; to think that I’d walked so easily into his web. Had he charmed his way into my grandfather’s good graces? Had he been earnest and helpful, sincere?
His stern expression when he taught me of the Trumps, his approval when I turned in my assignments, all collided into a twisted, tangled knot of anger and wretched betrayal within me.
Mad St. Croix.
Teddy.
Hawke.
Ashmore.
Whether friend or lover, mentor or even father, each had turned me away. Each had betrayed my trust.
Was I the singular reason that no man could bear to love me? Was it something I provoked simply by existing?
My knees buckled.
I collapsed to the cold stone floor, clinging to the edge of the table as I sobbed out the bloody remnants of my pride, and all that was left of the illusions I’d harbored.
Who was I to be loved for myself?
Absolutely nobody at all.
Chapter Nineteen
The laboratory boasted two exits. I chose one at random, finding myself in a narrow hall so dark that I stumbled blindly through it. My footsteps caused the floor beneath to creak, stirring up echoes ahead of and behind me.
My shins barked against something hard and unyielding, earning a fresh batch of tears—all pain, regardless of whether it stemmed from my bruised legs or my heart.
Of all the cruelties to be so revealed, I was not so strong that I could swallow betrayal as though it were nothing. I was tired of it, fatigued by the thread I now recognized through every facet of my life. The faint sensation of accomplishment I had thought to be so brilliant now seemed only a laughable memory.
I was no saint, I had never been the good girl to knit and smile and say nothing, but I did not deserve this. I had never truly trusted Compton, certainly not Hawke, but Teddy and Ashmore had always been part of my life from the moment I came to London. Our camaraderie had been so easy; had I actually been in a frame of mind to appreciate him, I imagined that Ashmore and I might have become boon companions much earlier than I thought we did.
Perhaps it was no
t their fault at all, but mine. When had I become such a poor judge of character?
Fumbling at the panel blocking my way, I found a small knob in the center. The door it affixed to rattled once, then opened when I turned the bit in my hand.
Light blinded me. I fell out of the wardrobe I found myself within, stumbled over the raised platform that gave the portico the appearance of a simple armoire, and fell to my knees heavily outside it.
The door swung wide in my wake.
Groaning with the aches and pains I’d earned on my unexpected jaunt, battling the oppression of exhaustion, I turned over, resting upon my elbow so that I could look back at the polished wooden armoire.
The corridor behind it looked out of place, covered in grime and dark enough that I shuddered to think of all the cobwebs I must have passed through. The frame of the armoire was clean and polished to a soft gleam.
I swept my hands over my face and hair, disengaging tangled silver threads. None carried a spider, which I appreciated.
It seemed one of the two passages led to Ashmore’s chosen study. The fire crackled happily, brightening and warming the room around me. In the orange glow, stains clung to my wrapper, dirtied the hem I lifted as I dragged myself to my feet.
Fatigue adhered to my mind, turned my limbs leaden. I staggered to the armoire, closed the case and stepped back with a weary sound. It looked like nothing more than a collected bit of furniture, the type that might hold treasures of interest.
I never thought it would hide a secret passage.
How many wormed through this house? I wondered if it was at all like the Menagerie, whose structures all claimed staff corridors for use by servants and those who must go unseen.
Did Ashmore know?
Could I assume he didn’t?
I was tired. Every part of me ached, and I no longer could distinguish the pain of overexerted limbs, joints grating in fatigued sockets or even the dull throb in my head from the heartache of it all.
Slowly, feeling all of my twenty years as though each was an anvil upon me, I trudged to the study door.
Tempered: Book Four of The St. Croix Chronicles Page 24