I reached out to touch her hand, but she snatched it away. “No, Ava, I don’t want to steal your memories. But will you do me one favor?”
I nodded.
“Will you come to the woods and talk of Etta sometimes? Don’t worry if you don’t see me—I’ll hear you. It will make me feel I belong to something, the way you belong with your friends.”
I began to tell her that I wasn’t so sure I belonged anywhere, but she held up her hand to stop me. “You do belong, Ava. I can feel it. Will you promise to come to the woods and talk to me?”
“I will,” I agreed, wishing I could touch her or offer her some comfort.
“Thank you,” she said with a sigh that already sounded like wind moving through trees. “Now go back. I’m only going to watch a moment longer before I leave.”
I left her standing in the shadows and went to join the warm circle in the parlor. Would I, too, be an outcast once I became a full-fledged Darkling? The circle, though, had become heated rather than warm.
“It’s no use,” Ruth was arguing. “I can’t stay. Madame LeFevre told me that if I ever ran away they would find Etta and take her instead.”
“They made you think that through hypnotism,” Miss Sharp said. “It was how they controlled you.”
“That may be, but I know it even now when you’ve broken my trance.”
“She’s right,” Omar said. “She’s no longer under their control. They used her love for her sister as a means to control her, but there’s no reason to believe the threat isn’t real. Once a man—or woman—is taken over by the shadows, they have no conscience. They are capable of unspeakable atrocities.” The grimness of his face suggested he had seen some of those horrors.
“Then we’ll hide Etta,” Sam Greenfeder said. “I’ve done it before with witnesses. We can get police protection.”
“Because that worked so well for Herman Rosenthal,” Kid Marvel said sarcastically. Just last month a man named Herman Rosenthal had been gunned down because he had agreed to testify that Police Lieutenant Charles Becker was extorting protection money from gangsters. The case was in all the papers.
“Then we won’t use the police,” Miss Sharp said. “The Order will clean out the Hellgate Club.”
“Yeah, like the ding-dongs care what happens to a bunch of street girls and madges,” Kid Marvel said, sneering.
Miss Sharp bristled. “They certainly will take an interest in a club run by the Shadow Master.”
“Some of them girls they’ve taken ain’t exactly human,” Kid Marvel said. “Your ding-dongs’ll blunder in and round ’em all up together and kill the madges, but the humbug will be long gone before youse bell ringers set foot on the doorstep. They’ll just set up shop somewhere else.”
“I’m afraid he has a point,” Mr. Bellows conceded, looking sheepishly at Miss Sharp. “I did a year on Underworld Operations for the Order and I’m afraid we were less than, er, effective.”
“All’s your informants got dead,” Kid Marvel remarked.
Ruth turned pale and squeezed Etta’s hand.
“We can’t just leave those girls at the Hellgate Club after—” I’d been about to say “after what I saw in Molly’s dying moments,” but of course I couldn’t say that without revealing I was a Darkling. “After what we know about what goes on there.”
“But that’s just it,” Omar said. “We don’t really know what’s going on there. If the Order, or even my associates, storm in to rescue those girls, the shadows will just hunt them down again—and their families.”
“That’s why I must go back,” Ruth said, letting go of Etta’s hand and standing up.
“No!”
The voice came from outside the circle. We all turned. The changeling stood in the doorway, her shawl fallen from her face. Ruth gasped as she recognized her own features. The changeling was staring back at her.
“Ruth is right,” she said. “The Shadow Master will stop at nothing to fulfill his threat. If Ruth is discovered missing from the Hellgate Club they’ll come for Etta. They’ll track her down wherever you hide her and take her as a replacement for her sister.”
Miss Corey spoke up, her eyes fastened on the changeling. “She’s only saying that so Ruth will go back to the Hellgate Club and she can continue living Ruth’s life.”
“No,” the changeling said, staring back at Miss Corey. “I’m saying it so you’ll all see what must be done. Isn’t it obvious? I’ll go back to the Hellgate Club in Ruth’s place.”
Of course we all argued with her, Miss Sharp most vehemently.
“We can’t possibly let you do it. It would be like . . . well . . .” She looked nervously at me and Helen.
“Acting as her procurer?” Nathan suggested. “Or as they say in the streets—”
“Actually,” Ruth said, glancing at Nathan and blushing. “That’s not what we were there for. We were supposed to talk to the men and make them feel special. Madame LeFevre said most of them just wanted someone to listen to them. That their wives didn’t care about what they did all day and that we should ask them questions.”
“What sort of questions?” Sam Greenfeder asked.
“Oh, about how their day was, what was new at their office, had they made any interesting investments if they were stock traders, or how a certain trial was going if they were judges—”
“Judges!” Sam repeated, the tips of his ears quivering with indignation. The idea that a judge might even visit a place like the Hellgate Club—let alone discuss his cases there—clearly made him livid.
“Do you know which judges?” he barked. “And which cases?”
Ruth shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. Etta moved protectively in front of her and clutched her hand.
“I can’t remember. After the men left, Madame LeFevre would come in and ask me to tell her everything we had talked about. After, it was like I had emptied it all out of my brain. I’d feel drained”—she choked back a sob—“like a tin of beans that’s been scraped and tossed on the garbage heap.”
“Those scoundrels!” Agnes cried. “To use poor innocent girls like that!”
“They were used,” Omar said. “They were compelled with an eidetic spell so that they would recall everything they heard but forget it once they relayed the information.”
“So they’re using the girls to collect information from powerful men,” Mr. Bellows said. “But to what end? What are they up to?”
“The pishaca is gathering his forces,” Omar said. “I have heard from others like myself that they have been approached by shadow creatures and induced to take sides with them against the Order.”
“Well, I certainly hope they refused!” Mr. Bellows said. “Surely your friends know how evil the tenebrae are.”
“My friends,” Omar replied, looking down from his great height at Mr. Bellows, “have suffered at the hands of your Order. My dear friend Zao Shen watched his people become addicted to opium brought to his country by your Order. My Irish friends taught your Order the magic of the little people, but when they asked your Order for help during the Great Hunger, they were told the Order could ‘not interfere.’ My Voudon friend Shango was sold into slavery—”
“Now wait just a minute,” Miss Corey interjected. “We of the Order were abolitionists. We fought to free the slaves.”
Omar bowed his head to Miss Sharp. “That is true, my lady. Many of you have done good in this world, but not enough good. Yes, you were abolitionists, but are there any Negro students or teachers at Blythewood? Or even any of the Jewish faith?” He bowed to Etta and Ruth.
I mentally searched through the rolls of Blythewood, but Helen got there before me.
“Madame Musette has that funny little whatsit on her doorframe.”
“A mezuzah,” Omar said. “Yes, Irena Musette is Jewish. And you’ll notice that she’s never been invited
to teach at the school. As you can see, the Order makes use of madges, but keeps us on the sidelines—or worse.”
“Yeah, at least the ding-dongs don’t hunt you down and kill you like they do to my folk,” Kid Marvel said. “They call us freaks. Could you blame my kind if we joined the other side? Not that I’d go over to the shades. And I tells my crew to stay away, but they don’t all listen.”
“I, too, have certainly urged my associates to resist the persuasion of the tenebrae,” Omar said, “but they offer powerful inducements, and where those fail they make threats that are difficult for even the most valiant to resist. A small group of us have banded together to resist the tenebrae and protect our own kind, but we do not have the resources of the Order.”
“Well, then,” began Miss Sharp, “we’ll go to the Council and tell them of this threat—”
“What threat?” Mr. Bellows asked. “All we have is the word of one girl who’s been mesmerized and whose memories have been tampered with. Without more information the Council will just as likely think that the Hellgate Club is run by fairies.”
“If only Ruth could remember more details,” Miss Corey lamented.
“I could.”
We all turned to the changeling. Her eyes burned fiercely. She no longer looked like she was fading into the woodwork. “Changelings can’t be hypnotized or enspelled. And we remember everything. If I take Ruth’s place I’ll be protecting Etta and I can report back to you what I learn at the Hellgate Club.”
“It would be very dangerous,” Miss Sharp said.
“I want to do it,” the changeling said, gazing fondly at the two sisters. “For Etta and for Ruth. At least then when I fade back into the Blythe Wood I’ll know I had purpose in this life. I’ll know I was part of something.”
“But if the changeling takes Ruth’s place,” Helen asked, “where will the real Ruth go?”
“Ruth can stay at my aunts’ house in Rhinebeck,” Miss Sharp said. “And Etta . . .” She held out her hand to Etta. “Etta has powers that need to be trained. No matter what you all think of the Order, they are good at that. She’ll apply to Blythewood. We don’t have to tell Dame Beckwith or the Council about the Hellgate Club until we know more. We’ll just say we discovered Etta’s powers on a home visit to her tenement. And if they object on account of her religion I personally will resign from my post at Blythewood.”
“As will I!” Miss Corey said.
Miss Sharp beamed at her friend and then looked at Etta. “What do you say, Etta?”
Etta looked uncertainly at me. “Will you be there, Avaleh?”
I hesitated. For the first time I realized I’d been considering not going back to Blythewood in the fall—and all I’d just learned about the Order didn’t encourage me. I was one of the “freaks” that Kid Marvel said the Order killed. How long could I keep that secret?
But here was Etta looking up at me trustingly. True, she could go stay at Violet House with her sister, but then what? Back to working at sweatshops? Keeping what she saw a secret her whole life? Blythewood would train her to use her powers and give her a chance to make something of herself, and she’d be safe there until we found out what van Drood was up to at the Hellgate Club. I owed it to the girls there—all the girls like Ruth and Molly—to stay put at Blythewood until I found a way to help them.
“Yes,” I told Etta, “I’ll be there with you.”
11
“ARE WE REALLY getting on this big train, Avaleh? I’ve never been on one before.”
I gaped open-mouthed at Etta as porters and passengers bumped into us on the crowded platform. Over the last two weeks, Etta had surprised us all. First, she had passed her entrance exams with flying colors. Although she had been pulled out of school at an early age to go to work in the factories, she had spent all her free time at the Seward Park library reading books and teaching herself Latin, which she claimed was much easier than Hebrew. Then she surprised us even more by asking if there would be any strange creatures at Blythewood, like Mr. O’Malley at the tavern, who had pointed ears and cloven hoofs, or Mrs. Golub from across the way, who had sharp teeth and a bone leg.
“The girl’s a fianais,” Miss Corey had declared one afternoon while we were prepping Etta for her exams.
“Yes,” Miss Sharp concurred. Then she had explained to me. “It means a witness. A fianais can recognize the true nature of any being no matter how they are disguised. Let me guess,” she said gently to Etta, “you only started seeing these creatures recently, say, when you started your monthly courses.”
Etta blushed and nodded.
“A fianais comes into her ability at puberty. That’s how you knew Ruth had been replaced by a changeling,” she said, turning back to Etta. “And yes, you will encounter other creatures like Mr. O’Malley, whom I suspect is a cluricaune, and Mrs. Golub, who is most likely a Baba Yaga—”
“Vi!” Miss Corey cried. “She’s not supposed to know all that until the initiation!”
“I don’t think we can keep it from her any longer, Lillian. She sees we’re keeping secrets from her, and it’s just making her more nervous.”
So Miss Sharp had explained that there was a portal to Faerie in the Blythe Wood and that creatures from there sometimes strayed out—fearsome creatures such as trolls, goblins, and ice giants, but also the benign lampsprites and mischievous boggles (although Miss Sharp and Miss Corey had a heated argument about how benign boggles were).
“The Council will be sure to let Etta into Blythewood,” Miss Sharp said when she was done. “A fianais is invaluable to the Order. We haven’t had one in ages. Who knows what creatures have infiltrated our own ranks?”
I recalled what Omar and Kid Marvel had said about fairies and other magical beings hiding in plain sight in the city—madges. And I also remembered Omar’s story of how the Order exploited his magical abilities and those of others like him. Were we doing the right thing taking Etta to Blythewood? She looked worried—but not, as it turned out, for herself.
“What will you do with them once you find them?” she asked, her eyes avoiding mine.
“Destroy them, of course,” Miss Corey said briskly, slapping her notebook shut.
“Kill them?” Etta asked. “But what if they’re harmless? Mrs. Golub is certainly up to no good, but Mr. O’Malley wouldn’t harm anyone.”
“If Mr. O’Malley really hasn’t harmed anyone, he’d only be banished back to the Blythe Wood and Faerie,” Miss Sharp said more gently. “We’ve learned that some of the creatures of Faerie—like the lampsprites—are genuinely harmless. We’re changing our ways at Blythewood. You needn’t worry, Etta; you won’t be asked to bring harm to any creature that isn’t a danger.”
“Good,” Etta said. “I would never expose someone with a good heart to harm just because they were a little bit . . . different.” I suspected she knew what I was, but we never spoke of it, and I believed that she would never tell anyone what I was. But sooner or later I would have to tell someone at Blythewood before they discovered my secret. Hopefully, the Order would choose merely to banish me rather than kill me.
In the meantime, I owed it to Etta to stay at Blythewood until she was settled and out of danger. I think she clung to me because I’d come from the same place as her—the crowded tenements, the sweatshops, the Triangle factory. I remembered how afraid I’d been last year that the Blythewood girls would disdain me if they knew of my lowly origins. How silly that fear seemed now that I had a much bigger secret lurking beneath my tightly laced corset!
But I also remembered that I’d been as shocked by the trappings of genteel life—the clothes, the manners, the big houses—as by the revelation that there was magic in the world. So when Etta looked more amazed at the size of the train we were boarding than the fact we were on our way to a school that taught magic, I replied, “Yes! And look, here’s Helen. She’s not used to taking the train either.�
�� That was clear from the number of bags Helen was struggling with. Last year Helen had been driven to school in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, but of course she couldn’t afford that now.
“I’ll help her with her luggage while you get us seats on the left side so you can see the river,” I told Etta. “It’s a lovely view!”
Reassured by my enthusiasm, Etta eagerly dashed into the car, dodging around a group of girls standing in the doorway. I stepped forward to unburden Helen of a large portmanteau and a hatbox.
“I thought you were going to miss the train,” I said. “What happened?”
“That ridiculous cab driver made such a fuss about my luggage. The man actually had the gall to suggest I might not need so many clothes. Can you imagine? Paulson would never have dared to comment on my wardrobe!”
If someone had reined in Helen’s and her mother’s clothing allowance, I thought, perhaps they wouldn’t have had to let their chauffeur go. To Helen I only said, “Well, I’m glad you made it. Etta’s very nervous and I think we need to do everything we can to reassure her—” At just that moment I heard Etta’s clear, sharp voice calling our names from inside the train.
“Avaleh! Helena! Come quickly, I’ve got us seats on the river side!”
“I told you the left side was the most desirable,” one of the girls blocking the doorway drawled in a Southern accent as we tried to edge around her. “My cousin Georgiana said that if we must take the train we ought to sit on the left. Now that child”—she glanced disdainfully at Etta, her pale blue eyes lingering on her plain homespun skirt and scuffed shoes—“has gone and taken the last seat on the river side, and she’s not even a Blythewood girl.”
“Why don’t you think she’s a Blythewood girl?” I asked as I attempted to duck under the wide brims of the girls’ hats. They were all covered with feathers; the one belonging to the Southern girl sported an entire dead pheasant. She turned on me, still blocking our way, and replied, “Why, she’s far too young, bless her little heart.”
Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) Page 9