“How could I let it rest?” Eleanor watched at her father in the low lamplight. “I don’t believe Mother is dead.”
“Eleanor.” Renshaw pushed away from the chessboard and rose from his chair. They were perhaps the worst words she could have said to him. She possessed a singular talent for being the fly in someone’s otherwise perfect soup.
Her father braced his hands against the windowsill and stared at the wet night. Beyond the reflections in the windowpane, Eleanor could see the lights of Paris gleam under the new coat of rain. Across the Seine, Eiffel’s Exposition tower stood as a smudge against the sky; the buildings of the Exposition were momentarily quiet and still. Their rooms overlooked the length of the Champs de Mars, a perfect witness to all Exposition activities, but tonight it could not occupy Eleanor’s mind the way it usually could. Mallory and the missing ring occupied her attention.
Agent Mallory would come back. Eleanor believed that as firmly as she believed her mother was not dead. Mallory was not the kind to let something rest; she had seen that in his eyes. He would return and ask Eleanor the thing he must ask. And she—she would say yes, despite the pain it would bring her father. Eleanor would help him recover the ring because she hoped it would lead to her mother. She had to know.
“Have you read my research then?” she asked when he said nothing more.
“Yes, and it’s better relegated to one of Mr. Verne’s fantastical novels if you ask me.” He didn’t turn from the window, but Eleanor could see his reflection: his creased forehead, the tears that shone behind his glasses. He drew them off and began to polish the lenses with the hem of his untucked, wrinkled shirt.
Eleanor felt all of eight years old and wanted to apologize. Her research had hurt him, as she had known it would. Still, she let the apology go unspoken, because it wouldn’t get them where they needed to go. If they didn’t solve this now, then when? “It’s why I never shared it with you. I knew it would hurt—”
“Not hurt,” he said as he again pushed his glasses back into place. He looked at Eleanor once and then back at Paris. “I’m angry and sad.”
A bad combination in a Folley, Eleanor knew all too well.
“You’ve shut yourself away from the rest of the world, Eleanor, and continue to dream of something impossible. Your mother is dead. I have prayed for you to accept this. How can you not? How can you cling to this fancy? I asked you to give this up years ago.”
“I tried.” Eleanor shuddered, feeling cold again as she recalled coming home from her journeys, unannounced and soaked to the bone with cold Dublin rain. The rain dripped to the stone floor, droplets leaving a trail behind her as she admitted her failure to learn anything new about her mother’s disappearance. As she’d traveled deeper into Egypt, into Israel, and Greece, Morocco, the path she had once so clearly seen dissolved like sugar under rain.
The longing to know, to understand, was reborn in Paris that spring, surrounded as Eleanor was by a wealth of information on Egypt and its peoples. The Louvre’s Department of Egyptian Antiquities brimmed with thousands of treasures, and she had spent hours studying, sketching. As wonderful as it was to see the crypt of Osiris or read the countless stèlae housed in the museum rooms, it was heart-wrenching that the items were no longer in Egypt. Even the Luxor obelisk in the Place de la Concord seemed to reach back toward Egypt, where it belonged with its sibling. Egypt ran like blood in her veins; she could taste it on her tongue even now. Agent Mallory sought to draw her into the past the way she believed her mother had been drawn. Men on mechanical beasts, ripping Dalila Folley from the quiet of an archaeological dig, perhaps wanting only the body they’d found, the rings the Lady possessed. There had been a glimmer against the horizon, like the waver of light on moving water, a shimmering heat mirage, and then— Nothing. Quiet, dust, her mother gone, her own blood in the sand. Eleanor could not refuse the opportunity to know the truth of that moment.
Eleanor crossed to her father, taking him by the shoulders to draw him from the window’s chill and back to his chair. She tucked his favorite wool blanket around his knees and offered him the tea again. He took the cup and sipped, looking a hundred years old, as fragile as any of the papyri in their small collection. His eyes were heavy with sorrow and regret and a dozen other emotions Eleanor did not want to name. She did not want to know how deeply she had hurt this man, but she could not help but see it in the vulnerable lines of his face.
She drew his glasses off and placed them on the untidy table. She pulled the blanket to his chin and dropped a kiss on his forehead while nudging the ottoman closer for his feet.
“Sleep and don’t worry,” she said.
“If Mallory comes back—”
“I’ll send him away.” It was a lie. As much as she wanted to honor her father’s wishes, Eleanor knew she could not send the agent away. Not if she were ever to understand her mother’s disappearance. Not if she meant to put the past firmly to rest. She turned the lamp down and squeezed her father’s hand before moving away.
“Eleanor?”
She looked back at him. He lifted his feet onto the ottoman and she wished she could not count the times he had slept in chairs rather than the single bed in his room. The bed, narrow and meant for one, was still too large for him, he said. Though he wished to deny it, his grip on Dalila Folley had not lessened these many years, either.
“Father?” she asked.
“Checkmate in two.”
CHAPTER TWO
Everyone carried secrets. Virgil Mallory knew this better than most. He was reluctant to pry Miss Folley from the comfortable world she knew, reluctant to expose her past when she appeared to set it behind her. Still, he would. If Hubert or anyone else thought to muck about in the past to change the future, he meant to prevent that.
He ducked as he stepped into the four-in-hand, fingers already ripping at his tie as the carriage moved into the streets, away from the Exposition Universelle and Eiffel’s god-awful tower. He had not worn a tie since Caroline’s memorial, but today, venturing into the much-loathed public, he felt it was best to look like what he was.
“What I am,” he muttered. “Agent. Only that.”
The tie unknotted with a whisper. He pulled the length of it loose and crumpled it between shaking hands. The beast inside him clawed to be let out, and Virgil closed his eyes, sinking into the cushioned bench. His fingers itched for the opium pipe, the one thing certain to quiet the creature within. No pipe was at hand, so he stroked the ring of silver around his right index finger, rubbing the worn skulls along its smooth circle, praying for calm. Viver disce, cognita mori. The words engraved on the band bade him to learn to live, yet remember death; he had difficulty with the former, though the latter came easily enough now.
By the time he reached the townhouse that Mistral used for its Paris offices, he was only somewhat more composed. Stepping into the building provided another measure of calm, as he preferred places he knew to those he did not. It was easier to control the beast when he knew he could control his surroundings. The Exposition Universelle had been a small horror with its countless people, machines, and glassed ceiling. The townhouse, with its walnut doors and carpeted stairways, was home as well as workplace; the building boasted meeting rooms, offices, and private residences. Virgil knew each and every room, each and every hall.
So too did he know Miss Baker, a fixture in the Paris office for as long as he could remember. She greeted him in the foyer as she always did and offered to take his coat.
“Are they waiting?”
Miss Baker nodded, and Virgil stepped past her with a muttered thank-you before taking the stairs by pairs. He heard conversation even before reaching the upper drawing room and let himself in without knocking. Half a dozen agents milled about the room. The director himself was distracted, which allowed Virgil to move, almost unseen, toward his usual high-backed chair beside his partner, Michael Auberon.
Auberon looked every inch the gentleman Virgil wished he himself were. His po
sture was straight, shoulders broad. His brown eyes conveyed only a sense of ease and confidence. His tie was impeccable, his waistcoat without wrinkle, a riot of gold vines and birds scattering over the indigo fabric. He appeared wholly comfortable in such attire—the collar not pulling too tight, another self not attempting to subdue the face he showed everyone.
“Don’t say it,” Virgil said as Auberon’s attention dropped to Virgil’s own loosened collar. Virgil placed the remains of the bow tie on the table before him.
Auberon, his skin as dark as the mahogany table they occupied, cleared his throat and studied the mangled fabric before he began to neatly fold it into thirds. His hands were steady, broad, and sure. “I did tell you,” he said in a low tone.
Virgil inclined his head, silently allowing that Auberon was right. He shouldn’t have attempted the tie. Later, in his own rooms, he would have to look in the mirror, would have to admit what it truly was, that Auberon was right when it came to Virgil no longer denying his true self. A wolf in gentleman’s clothing.
“Agent Mallory spent the morning with the Folleys at the Exposition,” Director Walden said.
Virgil sat a little straighter in his chair, as the other agents settled into their own and the meeting came somewhat to order.
“Has progress been made?”
“Mister Folley seems to understand the gravity of the matter,” Virgil said. Should the ancient portal be opened once more, the damage one might inflict upon the world was unknowable, and Mistral preferred to hedge all bets.
“And Miss Folley?” a fellow agent asked.
Virgil didn’t like the edge to the man’s voice. Virgil had no doubt Miss Folley understood the situation as well, if not better than, her father. It was rumored she had seen the portal, but he remained reluctant to admit to the committee that this was the case. Virgil held his silence.
“What if she doesn’t cooperate?” another agent asked.
“She will cooperate,” Virgil said and stood up from the table, the animal inside him lunging forward. He drew it back with an effort that left his hands shaking. What made it worse was that every man at the table knew what he struggled with.
He looked at the men gathered around the oval table with its small green lamps, each man a near reflection of the other with their black suits and perfectly knotted ties. Auberon alone might understand Virgil’s perspective—that of the outsider—being the only Negro in the room. Otherwise, Virgil felt as though he was, for the first time, not truly part of this group.
“There are no guarantees,” one of the men said.
“No, but she . . . ” Virgil’s voice trailed off. He didn’t feel he could explain to them what he sensed of Eleanor Folley, but he attempted to. “She is not a typical woman, gentlemen,” he said. “Read her file.” Not the way I read it, going to bed with it every night. Perhaps that’s why I feel protective of her. “She was raised in a non-traditional household, schooled in archaeology from a very young age by an Irish father and an Egyptian mother, in the field. She worked with Christian Hubert, of all people.” And, rumor also says, fiercely loved him. “She has a connection to this that none of us do. I believe she will come around.”
“You’ll meet with her again,” Director Walden said.
Virgil thought of Eleanor Folley, little more than a librarian at first glance with her dust-coated skirts, smudge of dirt on her cheek, nutmeg curls speared through with two pencils. A closer look revealed umber eyes that held both old hurt and lingering fears; a mouth that likely knew a curse or four, yet kept silent in deference to her father. Hard-worn boots beneath her skirts: dusty and not dainty or laced with ribbons. She smelled of Pear’s Soap, which made him hungry, and bore a faint scar along the bottom edge of her chin. He knew too much about her and yet nothing at all. The person he had come to know on paper had managed to surprise him in person.
What had she seen in tombs she raided with Hubert? What truths had they unearthed about the Lady’s ring? That information was most vital to Virgil, for with Eleanor’s knowledge, he might further his own understanding of Caroline’s activities in Egypt. Might understand if it were linked to the strange properties Director Walden had mentioned in association with the Lady. He absently touched his own ring.
“Virgil.”
Auberon’s gentle voice drew Virgil from his thoughts. He looked to his partner and then Walden. Even though it hadn’t been a question, Virgil answered the director. “I will meet with her again.” Even if it meant going back to the Exposition’s cacophony.
As soon as the words left Virgil’s mouth, the men around the table began to rise and disperse. The matter was now in Virgil’s hands, and while they would hold him accountable for the good or ill that followed, they wouldn’t harp too much at this stage.
Auberon lingered, and Virgil was grateful. Looking at Auberon was often like looking at himself, for they were such strange creatures to everyone else. A wolf and a Negro, loose in Paris. What was the world coming to?
The room emptied, leaving them amid the gloom of the afternoon, faces from the oil paintings on the walls barely swimming through the lamplight to look upon them. The building was old; Virgil could almost feel the years pressing down on him. Had Miss Folley felt the same inside a museum or tomb?
“I don’t envy you this,” Auberon said.
Virgil smoothed his hands over the wrinkled tie on the table. “I don’t envy her what’s to come. My part is small.” Small, but if it served to finally unite the various bits of information Virgil had collected over the years, important.
Auberon’s hand curled over Virgil’s shoulder and gave a firm squeeze. Confidence always flowed from those hands, and Virgil took comfort in it. Familiar.
“You only have to convince her that reclaiming what may have taken her mother’s life is a good thing,” Auberon said.
And that, Virgil thought, might be as simple as leaving his own wife’s death behind. Which was to say, not a simple thing at all.
Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire ~ December 1885
Fat, wet snowflakes swirled down from the night sky to land on Virgil’s face and hair. The wolf inside him wanted unleashing so that he could run in the snowstorm, but the agent he was wouldn’t allow it. He stared in dismay at the derailed train on the tracks below the low rise where he and his partner crouched. Come sunrise and God willing, he would be en route to Athens to drop the requested satchel into the hands of Gregale agents, and then rendezvous with his wife Caroline after too much time apart. But first, there was an intelligence satchel to retrieve, the world to save.
“This was unexpected,” Joel Abernach said.
Virgil looked to his partner and snorted. The German, who was untroubled by the snow or cold, had a way of understating everything. “Unexpected, but of use to us,” Virgil said.
He didn’t care that the royal train carried Russia’s tsar; their goal was a Crimean scientist and his satchel of research into the organs of the mind. Phrenology fascinated some, Virgil supposed, but he didn’t believe there were countless organs rolling about his skull. He divided his mind cleanly in two: man and beast.
Virgil looked toward the train. “Come on.” His breath fogged in the cold air, and the wolf inside relaxed as he finally slipped into motion and headed toward the train. The scent of spilled coal saturated the night air, sharp and oily, but Virgil became aware of another scent as they neared. There were freshly dead bodies inside the wreckage. The beast within him gave a sudden start.
There was enough activity within the wreck to cover their approach. Steam poured from the derailed train, over the rails, and provided good cover as well. The cries of the trapped and injured reached Virgil’s ears and he felt only a moment’s hesitation. He and Joel could assist the rescuers or center in on their assignment, the satchel. He preferred the latter, mostly to not muddy the waters; Russia was not their normal territory, and he had no desire to upset the balance of matters that didn’t wholly concern him. He gestured Joel to the lef
t, while he circled right.
His mind turned to Athens, to clear blue waters licking ivory sand, to sunlight, and to Caroline. The long absences were only one reason Virgil had been reluctant to marry. How could a marriage thrive when he was often on one side of the world and she the other? No spouse should have to endure such a thing. When both parties were Mistral agents, it only further complicated matters. Virgil saw more of his partner Joel than his wife, and while Joel was enjoyable to work with, he wasn’t the one Virgil had married. Wasn’t the one he wanted to come home to at the end of a mission.
Joel vanished into another train car ahead while Virgil paused at the rear, waving a hand to disperse a billow of steam. The caboose sat half on and half off the rails, black window blinds drawn. The metal door hung open, its latch broken from the impact of whatever the train had hit.
Virgil climbed onto the car. Metal creaked under his weight, the hiss of escaping steam from broken pipes mingling with the distant cries from the passengers-turned-rescuers.
It will get easier, Caroline was fond of telling him. Virgil wanted to believe her, wanted to believe that the separations would become a normal part of their routine, but in six years of marriage, nothing had changed. The time away from her didn’t feel normal, even if Caroline seemed to thrive with the mishmash of schedules. She adored their brief reunions and, after planning lavish dinners and hard lovemaking, would rest content in his arms. Her white-blond hair would spill loose from its usual bun, and she would smile a smile he so rarely saw but loved even so. He had no doubt Caroline would say that was why he loved it.
“If we had this every day,” she would say, stroking slim fingers down Virgil’s bare arm, “it wouldn’t be the same.”
And Virgil would think, no, it would be better. He kept his silence, because there was little point in arguing the same matter for the hundredth time.
Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure Page 3