Floats the Dark Shadow

by Yves Fey

  Hot tears pricked Theo’s eyes. What if Averill could not escape the clutches of absinthe? He did not heed her warnings, or Casimir’s. As for his parents—“Oh.”

  “Oh, what?” Carmine asked immediately.

  “I do know someone who might be as terrible as that Devil.” How could she have forgotten for an instant? “My evil unc…” Theo bit back the word.

  Carmine gave her a knowing look. Her friend had certainly untangled the polite sham knitted over Theo’s parentage. “Urbain Charron is my guardian’s brother. He’s a horrible, domineering man. I even think of him as evil Urbain.”

  “What does he do that is so evil?” Moina asked.

  “He’s a doctor. He treats women, though I can’t understand how any woman could trust him. Fine ladies consult him at his office, but he also performs surgeries at the asylum. He cuts out their wombs to make them more docile. And he does hideous experiments on animals. Vivisection.” Theo’s stomach lurched at the thought of their torment.

  “That is truly evil,” Moina agreed. “Yet it took long for you to think of him. He does not have you in thrall.”

  “No.” But he did seem to have Averill in thrall.

  “Might it be anyone else?” Carmine asked. “Even someone you do not know well but have glimpsed?”

  Vipèrine came into Theo’s mind like a fairy tale villain, evil eyes glittering above his fantastical blue beard. That reminded her of Gilles de Rais, of Averill and Casimir whispering his words as if it were a game. Gilles de Rais—there was true evil. But he was long dead. She shrugged. “Let me see the next card.”

  “Your future.” Carmine placed another card opposite the first, making a V with the Devil at the bottom. She turned it over and frowned. “The Moon.”

  Theo glared at the new image, disliking it on sight. High in its center, the profile face of a quarter moon was drawn within a full round. Its pearly whiteness was the only brightness and was hypnotic. The thickly clouded sky and the barren grey land below were glum and dismal. Two forbidding stone towers glowered in the background. In the center of the landscape, a wolf and a dog howled up at the hovering moon. They crouched on either side of a murky pool, where a black scorpion crawled out of the polluted water.

  “Truth is hidden within illusion and deception,” Carmine told her. “I think this weaves together with The Devil. The Moon can be the card of the inspired genius, but it can also be the card of the lunatic, the drug addict—the tortured soul.”

  “Beware when crossing the landscape of The Moon,” Moina warned. “You may feel trapped within a nightmare. Yet night’s darkness promises a new dawn.”

  Carmine laid two more above the others. “These are your choices—paths you might follow. They may be what you hope for or what you fear, but each is linked to the cards beneath. When Theo nodded, she turned one over. “The Page of Cups, reversed.”

  Theo saw a charming and elegant young man in a medieval tunic. Rich, vibrant, the colors evoked the glow of satin, the lushness of velvet. One hand was at his hip, a rose dangling from his fingers. The other held a jeweled goblet.

  Carmine began, “The Page is a romantic soul. Imaginative, poetic, even visionary….”

  Averill. Hope and fear wove together inside Theo, pulled taut.

  Carmine hesitated, perhaps reading Theo’s face. Moina spoke softly. “This card is ill-aspected. Water follows fire, an element hostile to it. This person is beset by turbulence and troubles, perhaps even violence.”

  Carmine nodded. “His visions disturb his peace of mind. His imagination lures him to unwise, even destructive actions.”

  It may not be Averill, Theo thought. It could be Jules, or even Casimir. It did not remind her of Paul, but he also was a poet. “Well, at least the Page is not the Devil.”

  “You cannot be sure of that,” Carmine chastised. “The Page, however charming, may be consumed by some inner blackness. He is entwined with you and, one way or another, you are both entwined with The Devil.”

  Theo thought of Averill drinking his absinthe in search of oblivion, wandering at dawn in the cemetery and finding not solace but murder. He said the police suspected him because he found the body—a devilish sort of mess. She felt like snarling. “Show me the other choice.”

  Carmine turned over a knight in black armor charging on a white horse, his sword upraised. Storm clouds roiled, blown by winds that whipped back his cape and the plume of his helmet, and bent the distant trees. Theo remembered seeing that card before, when Carmine first displayed the deck. It had not been in Mélanie’s layout, but because she’d seen it before, it seemed unusually resonant.

  “The Knight of Swords.” Carmine sounded intrigued. “Your temperament, and possibly your beliefs, will clash with his. He possesses strong intuitions but suppresses them to serve his will. He will not share his thoughts easily, his emotions even less so.”

  “Ally or enemy, he acts with total conviction—and he can be ruthless,” Moina said.

  “That sounds like Paul. He’s always sure he’s right. But ruthless?” Theo frowned. Paul did wield his ideas like a sword, but Theo thought much of it was to shield his emotional uncertainty.

  “Perhaps he is linked somehow to The Devil,” Carmine suggested.

  “Perhaps?” Theo snapped. “Everything is perhaps.”

  Carmine gave a little apologetic shrug, but her lips curved in a catlike smile. Touching the card she continued, “Or perhaps you will become allies and go into battle together.”

  Unbidden, Theo remembered Inspecteur Devaux—easy enough to imagine him a knight pursuing evil, sword at the ready. But he had no real place in her life. She watched as Carmine placed the sixth card face down at the top, forming a rough circle. “This is the outcome.”

  The card she turned over was Death.

  There was a terrible silence, but Theo’s heart thundered furiously. “Of course, the Death card need not mean physical death.”

  Carmine’s face went sickly pale to hear her old reassurance thrown back at her, but Moina’s calm voice was firm. “That is the truth.”

  Theo was shaking with rage. “Maybe I’ll be luckier than Mélanie.”

  “Oh, Theo!” Carmine said, and started crying. Theo could not cry. Anger was the only thing holding off terror.

  “Theo, you are facing a great battle, against a great enemy,” Moina said quietly. “You will meet Death, on the physical plane or the spiritual. You must prepare yourself.”

  Theo was too furious to speak.

  “Do you want another card, Theo?” Moina urged. “To clarify what is here?”

  Theo did want that. She wanted almost every single card clarified. She wanted them nailed to the people they were supposed to be, to identify them. But she was afraid that more cards would only bring more layers of mystery, more terror. She did not want to see the Tower shattering. She did not want to see more Staves that were fire or Swords that threatened to cut her to bits and pieces.

  In the hallway, the front door opened and closed. For an instant, they all froze. “My husband’s errand should have taken much longer. I am sorry.” Moina rose at once and went to meet him. Their voices were hushed. Theo expected the husband would be polite and leave them to themselves. Instead he came and stood in the doorway to their alcove, almost posing. He was a slender man with military bearing. His eyes glittered in a gaunt face and his whole being radiated intense energy. He looked at Theo and Carmine in turn, demanding their attention with his very silence. When he had it, he crossed to the table and stared at the cards.

  Theo tensed with anger. It felt an invasion to have this stranger studying her Tarot, guessing at her secrets. Fighting the impulse to turn them face down, she curled her hands into fists.

  Seeing the movement, MacGregor Mathers gazed into her eyes. “From what I can see, you will need every ally you can muster.”

  Theo gave him a thin smile. “For that, I will have to know my friends from my enemies.”

  “Yes.” He nodded toward the ca
rds. “That will certainly be a problem.”

  The intimacy was shattered. Moina asked if Theo had any other questions, but her focus was on her husband. Theo shook her head. Carmine gathered the Tarot cards back into their protective silk. After the obligatory courtesies, they departed. Theo begged off any further discussion and made her way home alone.

  Chapter Twenty

  Cold nothingness now clasps my flesh

  ~ Paul Verlaine

  “YES, FIRED.” Cochefert glared at the morgue attendants. His cold voice increased the chill of the modern, refrigerated autopsy room. “If anyone sells so much as a scrap of this body, you’ll be tossed on the dung heap.”

  Michel noted the attendant who looked away uneasily and knew Cochefert did too.

  The chief waited for the man to meet his gaze again, then laid his hand tenderly on the unknown girl’s shoulder. “This child’s body has been violated enough. Remember what I’ve said—all of you,” he added, looking around once more. “Now, get back to work.”

  The attendants glanced at Cochefert uneasily. No doubt some had work to attend to here, but none wanted to remain under his critical eye. After they filed out, Michel turned to him. “It’s been a decade since anyone’s been caught,” he said, though the morbid trafficking was probably just more secretive.

  “It is usually the killers whose bits and pieces people beg for, but victims’ remains are popular, too,” Cochefert muttered. “I’ll have no ghouls like Godinet working here.”

  Michel nodded. Godinet had been the best-known body thief because of the Pranzini scandal, but he had just carried on the morgue tradition. Many unclaimed corpses were used for medical experiments. Godinet had been assigned to strip skin for study. Tattoos he’d saved for his own collection, but he had made a tidy profit selling off what he stole from the autopsies. Medical students had begged him for breasts to be made into tobacco pouches. Cops and journalists alike had hunted macabre memorabilia—an ear, a finger, enough skin to cover a book. Women came too, lusting after the most intimate parts of a killer.

  Pranzini was guillotined after a gory triple murder with a machete. He’d chopped through the necks of a courtesan, her maid, and her little girl. After the execution, Godinet had many requests for pieces of the notorious killer and gave a detective a section of Pranzini’s very white skin. The man took his prize to a leather worker and ordered it made into three chic card cases, each lined with blue satin. Two were given as presents to high-ranking police officers. They had not been pleased to receive the grotesque gifts but did nothing. The scandal broke because the detective stupidly told the oblivious leather worker that his material was not, after all, a peculiar sort of pigskin. The leather worker went to the press, and soon several heads were ready to roll. The press, the public, the church were in an uproar over the sacrilege. Godinet claimed there was nothing holy about refuse lying around on the morgue floor. His defenders said the church shouldn’t kick up a stink unless it was ready to give up its saintly bits of bone. That caused even more outcry. Finally it was decided not to punish the very men who had captured the killer. Only the morgue assistant was dismissed. Godinet died soon after. No one seemed to know just how.

  “Our evidence is scant, but I’ve shown it to our juge d’instruction,” Cochefert said. “He is appalled. I believe he will be most helpful.”

  That meant he would keep his nose out of the investigation, at least until they made an arrest, and that he would promptly provide any warrants needed to ensure it. “I will keep him apprised of any crisis,” Michel assured his boss.

  “Once we have an inculpé, he may order a mise au secret for this case.”

  Michel nodded. If so, they could hold the accused indefinitely while the juge d’instruction examined the evidence and independently questioned the prisoner and witnesses. It would give the police more time to build their case. Lately there had been talk of judicial reform due to abuses—beatings, bribery, even starvation. Once again the liberal faction had suggested that the accused should have a lawyer present during interrogation by the juge d’instruction, not just at trial. Disgusted as Michel was at the mistreatment that sometimes occurred, he doubted the reforms would much affect police interrogation. Looking at the little girl on the granite slab, Michel knew this case could easily tempt him to abuse her murderer. To Cochefert, he said, “First we must capture our killer.”

  “I’ve informed the newspapers that we will display her, starting tomorrow.” Cochefert contemplated their victim mournfully. “It’s been almost a week and no one has claimed her.”

  Michel ignored the disgust curdling in his gut. The morgue offered free street theatre for the masses. The bourgeoisie could titillate themselves with death while pretending shock at the degenerate behavior of the poor. Michel detested the policy of showing unidentified bodies, but it had proven effective in the past. “We will need extra guards to control the crowds.”

  The chief looked more glum than usual. “Hoards of women will descend to weep over a pretty child like this.”

  “And men, for more perverse indulgences than tears.”

  Cochefert’s shoulders heaved in a bearish shudder. “It will be a circus.”

  “If possible, we should put a watch on the body for the duration. I’m convinced whoever killed her will want to see her again.” Michel paused, his certainty increasing. “He posed her in the cemetery like an obscene sculpture. People will be flocking to view his work. He will want to see their reactions.”

  Cochefert nodded. “You’ve kept men at the cemetery?”

  “Charron came twice. Most of the other Revenants have been at one time or another.” Michel was glad Theodora Faraday had kept away.

  “Charron returned?”

  “Suspicious,” Michel acknowledged. “We also have a witness to his presence that morning.”

  “What witness?

  “We asked the gendarmes on patrol to question the local carriage drivers in case they saw something suspicious. Since a child was involved, they’ve been more cooperative than usual. Three came forward with sightings. One turned out to be a father recapturing a runaway girl, the second a parent taking a sick boy to the doctor.”

  “And the third?”

  “A fiacre driver passing the cemetery around dawn on the morning of the murder saw a young man of Charron’s description lurking about.” The driver, a cocky fellow, had obviously enjoyed having a part in the unfolding drama of the crime. “But that does not place our suspect there earlier than he said, or in bloodstained garments.”

  Cochefert twisted his moustache and frowned. “Wasn’t there an earlier verification?”

  “Yes. A waiter saw Charron at the Cabaret du Néant.”

  “Why did he remember him?”

  Michel repressed a sigh. “The waiter has read his poems and is smitten.”

  Cochefert rolled his eyes. “Not as questionable as his mother swearing he was tucked between the sheets….”

  “It is not an alibi, only a verification of his story.”

  Cochefert nodded morosely. “Whoever our killer is, he must feel invulnerable.”

  Michel agreed. “We have one advantage. He does not suspect we know the murders are linked.”

  “Anyone might draw a black cross.” Cochefert played devil’s advocate, though Michel was certain he agreed.

  “Religious symbols are common graffiti, but the cross was freshly done. And there are the wing-like smudges. I’ve gone back to where Denis was abducted. The cross I found there has the same wings, so my men are reinvestigating the neighborhoods of the other kidnappings.”

  “And?”

  “And we’ve found another. Only one so far, but we will broaden the area. To keep this clue secret, we have not asked if anyone saw such a mark.”

  Cochefert toyed with his mustache, musing. “The first cross was at the site of the kidnapping. Here it is where the body was found. The only body that was found.”

  “I know. Yet I am sure they are part of the sa
me puzzle.”

  “Do you think he is now displaying the bodies because he feels safe?”

  “Perhaps he grows bolder. It does seem odd when he has taken so many.” He lifted a hand when Cochefert readied himself to argue again. “I’m certain some of the others are his.”

  “Then he is mocking us.”

  Michel frowned, an idea stirring. “We’ve considered another possibility. There might be two killers.”

  “A shared madness? It would not be the first time.”

  “Perhaps one wants secrecy….”

  Cochefert picked up the thread instantly. “…and the other wants to shock.”

  “If they are at odds, there will be trouble,” Michel finished. Was Vipèrine sacrificing children to the devil in hopes of gaining some unholy power? Did two Revenants share a lust for blood, cloaked behind aesthetic mysticism? Was Averill Charron controlled by his vivisectionist father? A doctor who tortured animals for what passed as scientific curiosity might want to escalate to more challenging prey.

  Cochefert smiled. “With a little luck, they will slit each other’s throats.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When I came hither I slipped in blood, which is an evil omen; and I heard, I am sure I heard in the air a beating of wings, a beating of giant wings.

  ~ Oscar Wilde

  BROODING, Theo watched Averill pour absinthe into the bottom of the wine glass, a layer of liquid peridot. Next he balanced the flat, perforated silver spoon across the top of the glass. He set a sugar cube atop the spoon, then took the carafe of chilled water and drizzled it over the sugar. Slowly, the chartreuse liqueur underwent its metamorphosis into a pale, opalescent green.

  Theo wanted to sweep away the paraphernalia cluttering the table and pour the evil green liquor on the pavement. But that would be pointless. She did not even know if absinthe was the Devil she should fear. Or if Averill was the Page of Cups….