“He has my letters,” Josie said. “He tells me where he finds them, and that’s how I know where to hide them.”
“If all this is true, it would indicate that future events can influence what is past. But I am afraid we cannot discount the possibility of telepathy.”
“I may never be able to prove it,” said Josie. “But I believe it. I know it.”
“Faith and science are as oil and water,” said the doctor, but he was smiling.
Emily cast a nervous glance over the doctor’s shoulder. Cassie had tired of petting the velvet sofa, and was now wandering around the lobby murmuring to Mrs. Gubbins as she pointed at pictures on the wall. “I do apologize, Doctor.” Emily took one last sip of her tea, rose from her chair and gathered her purse. “I think we had better be getting back to our schoolroom. Thank you very much for the tea, and for your kind and attentive ear.” Josie’s tutor laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll wait for you in the lobby, dear.”
The doctor drew a tin of Altoids out of his pocket and popped it open. “Peppermint?”
“No, thank you.”
He laid a mint on his round, red tongue. “I will tell you a thing I read in one of those magazines once. It was an odd little piece concerning the cadavers of blind men. Do you know what a cadaver is, Miss Clifford?”
“A corpse, sir.”
“Indeed. And do you know what an autopsy is?” Josie shook her head. “When a person dies, a doctor may study the remains if the cause of death is unknown or unclear. A still heart may yet have much to tell. The other organs too, of course. That is known as an autopsy. I go to the trouble of explaining this to you because the article concerned the posthumous study of blind men’s fingers. Can you guess what they found inside the blind men’s fingertips?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t, sir.”
Doctor Jennings leaned across the table. His breath smelled strongly of peppermint. “Gray matter,” he murmured, his eyes alight. “Brain cells. They thought with their fingers!”
“Marvelous,” she sighed.
He held up a warning finger. “Aha! No, Miss Clifford. It is not marvelous. It is science.” The doctor drew out his billfold and laid a dime on the table. “There is no such thing as magic. It is simply science we have yet to comprehend.”
It’s just technology. “And is that not a matter of faith, Dr. Jennings?”
A smile was his only answer. They rose from the table and went into the lobby, where Cassie grew suddenly bashful and hid in Emily’s skirts. Josie felt a twinge of desperation as the doctor opened his mouth to take his leave. “Dr. Jennings?”
The doctor seemed to understand, and stepped aside to hear her parting words. “Mother has discovered us,” she said in a low voice, darting glances here and there. (How she hoped she would not see Mabel a second time!) “I am so afraid my friend and I will never speak in privacy again. She—she wishes to use him.”
The doctor’s eyes narrowed, and again she caught a whiff of mint when he said, “I must say, that does not surprise me.” He regarded her with a frank look. “You are very like your mother, you know. And I do not mean that unkindly.” Then something else seemed to occur to him. “Have you kept records of these conversations?”
“Yes, of course, sir.”
“Very good. You have the makings of a psychical researcher! Now, if you’ll excuse me—I’m very sorry, but I must not miss the ten o’clock train.” He took a step forward again, and bowed. “Miss Clifford—Miss Jasper—Miss Cassandra,” he said, smiling to each of them. “I shall see you all on my next visit to Edwardstown.”
A Very Impertinent Young Man
20.
Lavinia Clifford had taken over the board, Alec understood that much, but had Josie been punished for it? Would they ever be allowed to speak again without her mother barging in and asking questions? The more he’d told her the more uneasy he’d felt. There wasn’t any point knowing that much about the future—unless, of course, she meant to use it somehow, and he wanted no part of that. There were no answers to be found in Josie’s letters. He’d already read the last of them.
The next morning his mother greeted him again with her we-need-to-talk face. “Your dad would like to see you this weekend.”
“Well, I don’t want to see him.”
“Please, Alec. You’re not going to see him for Christmas this year. It’s only fair.”
Alec gave her a look: don’t talk to me about “fair.”
“I know,” she sighed. “I know. But please try, okay? I told him we’d take the train into the city for the day, and I’ll do some shopping while you’re having lunch.”
“Can Danny come too?”
“Aw, sweets. I’m sure that would be fun, but I think your dad would prefer to talk to you one on one.”
That was the very last thing Alec preferred to do. “I don’t want to go unless Danny comes too.”
Mrs. Frost paused. “I’ll talk to your father and see what he says.”
* * *
His father had agreed—reluctantly—to Danny joining them for lunch, and they arrived at the Italian restaurant a few blocks off Times Square fifteen minutes early. “Be good,” his mother said. “Grand Central at six sharp, all right?”
“You aren’t going to wait with us?”
“I’m sorry, sweets,” she whispered in his ear. “It’ll be easier for us both if I don’t.”
When his father arrived, Alec saw why his mother hadn’t wanted to stay. Mr. Frost gave him an awkward hug, offered Danny an even more awkward handshake, then took the hand of the young woman standing next to him. She wore very high heels, red lipstick, and a fur coat, and Alec hated her immediately. “Alec, I’d like you to meet Ariana,” his father was saying.
“You didn’t tell me you were bringing someone.”
“Now don’t be rude, son. Can you please say hello to Ariana?”
No, Alec thought as he watched the frown deepen on his father’s face. No, I will not say hello to Ariana.
Alec’s feet carried him out the door, and he did not stop running ’til he’d rounded the corner onto Eighth Avenue. He wasn’t even aware of Danny running after him until the two of them fell against a plywood wall papered over with concert flyers, gasping for breath.
Danny began to laugh, softly at first, and then ever louder and more uproariously until people passing by began giving them concerned looks. “That was actually kind of awesome,” he said, still clutching his stomach. “You should have seen the looks on their faces!”
“I don’t care,” Alec said. His father hadn’t played fair, so why should he? There was another feeling, too, gently nosing its way up through the anger. He felt good. Captain of his own ship, as Josie might have put it. He threw up his hands, spun around and whooped. It was almost like he’d grown six inches since running out of that restaurant, like he knew beyond all doubt that he and Josie would be able to talk again.
Danny shot him an impish look. “So what do you wanna do now?”
Alec’s phone buzzed. It was his mom, and he knew why she was calling. “I couldn’t do it,” he said. “We’re going to have an adventure instead. See you at six, Mom. I love you!” He ended the call without letting her get a single word in. He knew he was in trouble, but there were almost six hours of perfect freedom between now and then.
They stopped for falafel on a street corner and ate it in Bryant Park, the walkways lined with temporary holiday shops selling soap made from volcanic ash and toys out of recycled milk bottles. The city presented itself to him very differently now that he no longer lived here: everything was as loud and as colorful as ever, everyone moving as quickly and impatiently as they always had, but it all passed around him rather than through him, like it used to. It helped that Danny had never lived in the city, and was delighted by everything and everyone they met. “If you were a time traveler spending a few
days in 2015,” he asked, “where would you hang out?”
Alec paused to reflect, as if this were a completely serious question. “I guess that would depend on whether the time traveler’s from the future or the past.”
Danny scoffed. “There aren’t any time travelers from the past!”
“How do you know? Maybe somebody invented time travel a long time ago and kept it a secret.”
“Yeah, like Leonardo da Vinci,” Danny said. “That dude invented everything.”
They decided that if Leonardo were vacationing at the tail end of 2015 he’d want to spend his first afternoon at the Wonder Lab—the Met, of course, was much too predictable—so they walked back uptown to 56th Street. Please, please, please, he found himself thinking as they watched a dozen life-sized robots sing “The Holly and the Ivy” with all the quirks and gestures of real people. Please let me have the chance to tell her all about this.
* * *
Christmas night Alec crept down to the reading room wearing his new headlamp and brought the talking board out of its hiding place. “Hello?” he whispered. The pointer sprung to life.
hello alec—
“Josie?”
it is i your friend of the none too recent past—
Alec hesitated. “Merry Christmas!” he said, with more enthusiasm than he felt. “Did you get any nice presents?”
what is the purpose of asking for things you dont need from a man who doesnt exist?—
Alec’s heart lurched. He’d known it wasn’t Josie, only he’d wanted too badly for it to be her. “You’re the one who talks to ghosts for a living!”
and you are a very impertinent boy alec frost—
His newfound courage abandoned him as quickly as it had arrived. How did she know his name?
they told me your name clever boy—the pointer spelled out—and i know where in my house you lay your head—
His pulse pounding in his eardrums, Alec dropped the glass pointer onto the carpet and froze, half convinced it would leap back onto the table. “You don’t scare me, Lavinia Clifford,” he declared to the empty room, but the words made him sound much braver than he felt.
The End of the World
21.
Josie was pulling on her stockings when Mrs. Pike came in with a tray full of their usual breakfast: two cups and a steaming teapot, and two plates of poached eggs, bacon, and toast. She set the tray on their school table and turned to leave. “Mrs. Clifford says you’re to have breakfast in the nursery.”
Cassie sat up in bed. “But why? We never eat in our room.”
“You’ll do as you’re told.” Mrs. Pike slammed the bedroom door behind her.
Cassie hopped out of bed, sat at the table, and began to butter her toast. “What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.” The door to Emily’s room was closed. Josie knocked softly. “Em? Are you there?” She turned the knob, and found it locked. At first she was merely confused by these irregular happenings. Now she was frightened.
It was too quiet downstairs. Usually at this time of the morning they could hear the housekeeper setting the table in the dining room, and Mrs. Clifford giving orders for luncheon and supper. Josie sat on the window seat, too anxious to look at her breakfast.
An old-fashioned hackney, the kind you could hire at the train station, pulled up to the curb behind an old black horse. Through the skeletal branches of the maple tree Josie watched the driver dismount and open the carriage door. Cassie came over and pressed her nose to the glass.
The front door opened and Merritt and Emily appeared, striding toward the carriage. Merritt carried her suitcase, his free hand locked on their tutor’s elbow.
Josie threw open the sash and stuck her head out into the chilly morning air. “Emily! Where are you going?”
Emily turned and lifted her head, but Josie got only a glimpse of her face before Merritt jerked her by the arm. Two young footmen appeared below the window, carrying a large steamer trunk between them.
The initials on the lid were done in gold leaf, and they glinted in the light as the trunk was conveyed swiftly to the hackney:
E.A.J.
The realization turned her stomach. “No!” Josie shouted. “No!” She threw open the bedroom door and raced down the stairs with Cass at her heels. Their mother was standing with Mrs. Pike in the hall, but Josie ignored them. She reached the threshold, but two pairs of hands restrained her with no semblance of gentleness.
Merritt handed the suitcase to the hackney driver, and Emily climbed into the cab. Mrs. Pike snatched at Cass with one hand, but the little girl was too quick. She ran down the walk—clad only in her nightdress!—how Josie could have laughed at that—and dodged Merritt in her pursuit of the carriage. He grabbed her arm, but she lunged forward and held out her free hand. Emily removed her glove to reach out and clasp it, then looked to Josie at the front door. She had seen that expression on her tutor before: it was a brave face, yet it concealed very little. “Goodbye, little one. I shall miss you more than words can say.”
Josie made another attempt to free herself, but her mother and Mrs. Pike renewed their grip. “Let go of me! Emily! No!”
The footmen fastened Emily’s luggage to the rack. Josie saw Merritt slip the driver his payment, despite Cassie still struggling against him. The man nodded to Merritt, and as the hackney pulled away Emily put her head out the window and held up a hand in final farewell. Cass began to cry, but Merritt did not release her until the cab was out of sight.
In all her life Josie had never felt such anger. It welled up from her gut like molten lava, her skin burned, and she felt her heart pounding against her face. Mrs. Pike let go of her arm, and she turned on her mother and scratched at the hand that still gripped her at the wrist. “I hate you!” Mrs. Clifford only smiled in her serenely maleficent way, and it made Josie loathe her all the more.
Merritt dragged Cassie back to the house by her elbow. She stumbled on a branch lying in the sidewalk, fell to her knees and stayed there, sobbing and sniffling as the blood from a scuffed knee seeped through her nightgown. Merritt looked down at her as if she were a wild animal lying wounded in the road. Josie ran down the steps and helped her sister to her feet.
“Come, come,” said their mother as they went grudgingly inside. “We have had quite enough melodrama for one day.”
The one good thing about the worst day of your life is that, by definition, all the days to follow are bound to be better; but that is not much comfort while you are in the thick of it.
Josie cleaned the blood from her sister’s knee and helped her change into a fresh nightgown. Soon after their retreat there had been a murmured conference at the nursery door, and their mother said to Mrs. Pike, “They’ll come out when they’re hungry enough.”
“I want Emily,” Cass sobbed, pounding her fist against the pillow. “I—want—Emily!”
They huddled together in Cassie’s bed and cried, and then they slept, and when they awoke they found the early afternoon was just as gloomy as the morning. They picked at their breakfast, drinking the cold over-steeped tea, and Josie read aloud from The Crimson Fairy Book. They wouldn’t leave the room that day. “We’ll never see her again, will we?” Cass asked.
“Don’t say that. Someday we’ll be all grown up, and we can do whatever we like, and then we’ll go to New York and find Emily and we’ll be happy.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” Josie said solemnly.
The girls lay there on the bed in silence for a minute or two, and Josie lifted her hand to smooth the hair out of her sister’s face. Then Cassie perked up and locked eyes with her doll, who was seated at the foot of the bed. Josie knew that look. “Are you listening to Mrs. Gubbins?”
Cassie nodded. “She says Mother is afraid.”
“Afraid? Of what?”
Cassie turned to the do
ll. “Afraid of what, Mrs. Gubbins?” She waited for the answer. “Afraid of the bad men. Not just the men who cut her with the knife and threw a brick through the window. Other people. Afraid of bad men putting on innocent faces and coming back to hurt her.”
“What do you mean, ‘putting on innocent faces’?”
Cass paused. “She sees knives where there are only fingers, and fangs where there are only teeth, and shadows where there is nothing to cast them.”
Josie stared at her, open mouthed. “Where . . . how . . . how ever did you think of such a thing, Cass?”
“I told you,” said Cass. “Mrs. Gubbins. She says we should take heart and be careful, because fear is catching.”
On the second day they came down to breakfast, betrayed by their growling stomachs. Once the meal was cleared Mrs. Clifford led Josie into the reading room and shut the doors. She took a seat at the table and eyed her daughter expectantly.
Josie folded her arms tightly across her chest. “Why did you do it?”
“Don’t be thick, Josephine. You know perfectly well why I dismissed her.”
“No, Mother, I don’t.”
“You’ve been keeping secrets. It’s a nasty habit, and Miss Jasper encouraged it.” Her mother laughed a hard little laugh. “The three of you and your petty conspiracies. You were always going about as if I didn’t know.”
“Was it because she took me to see Dr. Jennings?”
“That was the final straw, yes.”
“I only wanted to ask him what he thought of the talking board.”
“My dear, I don’t care if you discussed the price of beans in Timbuktu. I did not pay Miss Jasper to indulge your every whim, nor to encourage you to tell me falsehoods. Her conduct was thoroughly unladylike, and no reasonable person could argue the point.”
The Boy from Tomorrow Page 11