by Kim Foster
The moment of our death.”
—Emily Dickinson, “Witchcraft has not a pedigree”
I tell the driver to stop the carriage just down the street from the doctor’s address in Mayfair. I’m not sure why—I’m afraid the doctor will refuse to see me, perhaps, or that he will be in too much of a hurry to leave.
In spite of the rain, I climb from the carriage and approach on foot. The elegant townhouses make a graceful curve, bordered by manicured hedges and black iron gates. My insides twist as I consider the possibility of finally receiving answers. The possibility of a cure.
Then I notice a carriage parked in front of number 38, and I walk closer, frowning.
And register what’s odd. There’s no driver.
I step toward the door. It’s slightly ajar.
Something is definitely not right. I should leave, return to headquarters. But what if the doctor is in trouble? And … what about the cure?
A window on an upper floor glows and I can make out shadows moving within. Somebody is in there. Two other windows on that level are dark. The far one will be my destination.
After glancing over my shoulder, I slip around the side of the house. The rain has dwindled to a drizzle. Using a trellis for footholds, I climb swiftly to the second-story window and pry it open. Aristos flows through me as I crawl into the darkened room. Once inside, I pause, listening. I hear nothing, but I know people are here, so why is there no sound?
A canopy bed looms before me. An odd scent of geraniums hovers in the air. I creep through the hushed darkness, my feet sinking into plush carpeting as I scan for clues in the richly furnished bedroom. There’s a large family portrait—the doctor and his family, no doubt. Dr. Middlesex is a distinguished-looking man with a trim, dark beard. Out in the corridor, my heart thrums as I approach the lit room. A wedge of watery light slices into the corridor.
As I reach the doorway, I peer inside; a man standing in the center of the room drags a six-inch blade across the doctor’s throat.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“It was but for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?”
—Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Blood gushes from the slash, pouring over the doctor’s traveling cloak and onto the silk carpet. The doctor is a stranger to me—but he looks exactly like the figure in the portrait.
In contrast, the man who just slit the doctor’s throat is anything but a stranger. And this is the fact that causes me to freeze in horror, even more than the blood streaming from the doctor’s neck:
Humphrey Neville. The Intelligence Master. My ally. My friend.
The room narrows, the walls closing in. I grasp onto a thought: I need to get out of here.
I turn, but my way is blocked by the Huntsman woman from the carriage—the Black Spider. I’m trapped.
She silently backs me into the room, a hint of a smile curling her lip. I’m doing frantic calculations, trying to plot an escape but also trying to make sense of what I’ve just witnessed.
“Miss Cole,” says Neville evenly, “I hadn’t pegged you to be so … punctual. To the end, always surprising.”
His use of the phrase “to the end” turns my blood cold. I swivel to face him. “What are you doing, Neville?” I choke out, positioning myself so I have a view of both Neville and the Black Widow. So I can see their hands. “How could you?” My eyes wildly swing back to the dead body on the floor.
“The doctor?” Annoyance spasms over his face. “It’s unfortunate you happened to choose this method of entry. Things would have been much easier for you had you simply arrived in a carriage and knocked on the front door.”
Neville sounds exactly the same as he always has. The effect is chilling.
I flick my eyes around the room, looking for another means of escape. There is nothing. The window is too far away, and tightly closed. There’s a small table, a few vases scattered about, and a chaise longue with silk cushions. An elegant room for a horrific conversation.
“He could have helped us,” I say, voice ragged. “He might have had the cure.”
“Cure?” Neville laughs, an eerie sound, given the sight of blood covering his gloved hands. “Miss Cole, there is no cure. He would have told you that.” Neville inclines his head toward the dead doctor. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? My dear, there is no cure, because being Morgana is simply who we are. It’s not something that can be changed.”
“What—what do you mean?”
His eyes flash. He’s enjoying this. “I mean that until philosophers are kings … cities will never have rest from their evils.”
Plato again. Like Dexter quoted in Tianjin House.
“The truth is, we have a unique history,” Neville says. “Our ancestors escaped the disaster.”
“What disaster?”
“You’ve heard the stories. The great flood. Surely an educated girl like you has read the classics?”
Plato. The flood. The legends …
It all clicks into place. My eyes lock on his. “Are you talking about … Atlantis?”
“There was only one part Plato got wrong in his account. Not everyone from Atlantis perished. Before the city disappeared below the water, some escaped—our ancestors, yours and mine. Some called us demigods, but that’s not accurate.”
“How is that possible?” I say, my voice small. “It can’t be.”
“You know it’s the truth. You can feel it in your bones.”
“The Morgana—” I begin.
“The Morgana,” he cuts in, “is the ancient name for the descendants of Atlantis. Morgana means ‘from the sea.’ Perhaps this looks familiar?” He removes his cloak pin and I stare at it. It’s the same as the one that fell from the Huntsmen on the bridge in Oxford. “This is the symbol of Atlantis, an ancient mark full of power.”
My balance feels suddenly off and my vision is growing fuzzy on the edges.
“And now, Miss Cole, you have a choice before you—the choice I intended to present you with here, tonight, away from Hawksmoor’s poisonous influence. You can join me or you can perish with the others who refuse to see the truth, those who stand in our way.”
I can barely form words. “Join you—”
“What we can do, it will soon be clear to everyone.”
The Black Spider takes a step closer to me. Her voice sends icy needles down my spine. “For generations the Morgana have been forced to hide away, secretly, doing covert work, hiding our abilities. But we should be out in the open. Taking positions of power. Not scurrying around in dark corners.”
I look between her and Neville. “You can’t just take over.”
“Of course I can’t. That would be absurd. I’d need to have a plan formed over many years and meticulously scrutinized, wouldn’t I?”
I stare at him. “You already have one.”
He glances at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room. “It won’t be long now.”
“The Jubilee?”
He smiles at me, perversely pleased. “The beautiful thing is that people are absurdly predictable, including their fascination with elaborate celebrations. The pomp. The circumstance. Too bad today’s celebration will forever be marked as a day of tragedy.”
“Are you going to kill them? All those innocent people?”
His face darkens. “Who says they are innocents?”
“You don’t have to do this, Neville.”
He looks at me with pity. “Such naïveté. It’s almost sweet.”
“How are you going to do it?”
He smiles again. “It’s really quite brilliant, actually. If I do say so myself.” But he says nothing more. Of course he doesn’t. He’s not stupid, not about to tell me all his secrets just because I’ve asked.
Who did he mean when he mentioned the others, standing in his way?
Hawksmoor. It must be. And the other Elders, t
oo. Maybe even the other agents and Candidates. I have no idea how far Neville’s madness extends. I glance at the Black Spider. Fear grips me as I wonder, for the first time: where are the rest of the Huntsmen?
A desperate urge takes hold. I have to get back to headquarters. All those months of careful planning for the Jubilee, all of the agents’ work … it’s all compromised now. It was little more than playing into Neville’s plans right from the beginning.
Neville takes a step closer to me. “One last chance to change your mind. It’s such a shame. It would be nice to have such a powerful Morgana on our side.”
I glance between him and Black Spider. “What on earth are you going on about?”
He gazes at his fingernails, unhurried. “Your family is from Greece. Direct descendants. Which means you have the full expression of gifts. Mental and physical gifts.”
I smile with satisfaction. At last, something he is wrong about. “No, I don’t. I only have physical abilities, Aristos. My brother is a Sophos.”
He looks at me with something that resembles pity. I have the feeling I have walked into a snare.
His next words ribbon out slowly, deliberately. “What brother?”
A warning tugs at the back of my mind, but I have no idea what would make him say this. He knows about my family, I’m sure he does. “You know full well what brother. His name is Nate.”
Neville sighs and plucks a bit of lint from his jacket. “Felicity, I’m afraid … your brother has been nothing more than a trick of the mind, something you’ve imagined. The Sophos ability—it’s within you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Think hard, Felicity. You did have a brother—once. But he was just a baby. He died when your mother did. Cut down by a mob that feared people like us.”
I open my mouth to protest. But I hesitate.
“Of course, Hawksmoor knew your mind had created an imaginary brother to cope. He used his own Sophos ability to manipulate you into joining the Academy. But make no mistake, Felicity. Nate is dead.”
Neville is lying. I reach out to prove him wrong. I reach for my brother …
But Nate is not there. I try again, shutting out Neville’s words. You have no brother.
At once, my carefully constructed imaginings fall away, and I know it’s the truth. I can feel my brother slipping away, feel the connection to the cottage on the sea dissolving, becoming unreal, sliding through my fingers. Everything unspools inside me.
I remember then: the market square when my father and I returned home that day, years ago. Not just the bloodied body of my mother, but also the tiny, broken body of a baby at her feet….
I gasp. A sharp, shooting pain goes through my chest. I have no brother.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
“Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.”
—Emily Dickinson, “My life closed twice before its close”
I feel weak, like a stiff breeze could blow me away. Disintegrate me like a pillar of sand. I forget what I have to fight for. My brother is gone.
I will never speak to Nate again. Never see him again … How is that possible?
My vision clears slightly and I become aware of my surroundings again, standing in the doctor’s parlor between Neville and the Black Spider, the two people I’ll now have to fight if I want to live.
But I have no strength, no will. And then, the Black Spider comes at me with terrifying speed.
A crystalline thought cracks through: I’m not ready to die. I focus on the reasons why I must stay alive. I grasp for Aristos … but there’s nothing there. The shock of the truth about Nate, I think dully.
The Black Spider slams into me, smashing me to the ground. A blade in her hand glints in the gaslight. The next heartbeat will be my last.
A gossamer thread of Aristos floats into my mind. I grab for it. Time slows—the high-pitched buzzing of a housefly in the corner of the room becomes a low rumbling roar.
Her knife arcs downward like it’s moving through molasses, and I roll away just in time. The blade slashes my sleeve. The fog in my mind clears and I grab more firmly onto the power. My feet kick the Black Spider backward. I spring to standing but she quickly recovers and she, too, is up again in no time.
I grapple for one of the vases and smash it into her face. As it explodes into shards, she collapses back. She might be unconscious for only a few seconds, but that’s the best chance I’m going to get. Without hesitation, I lunge for the door and fly toward the staircase. Neville’s footsteps are right behind me. Halfway down the curving stairs, he grabs my cloak. It rips away, but I keep going.
An enormous chandelier hangs from the foyer ceiling. I vault over the smooth banister and grab one of the elaborate arms. The chandelier swings wildly and gives a lurch as it loosens from its fixture in the plaster ceiling. I release my grip and drop down, landing in a shower of crystal fragments. My feet slip on the marble, but I catch my balance in time to see Neville surging down the staircase, the blade he used to kill the doctor clutched tightly in his hand.
I lunge for the front door, grasp the brass doorknob …
“You’re not going anywhere,” Neville snarls.
Then, something unusual happens. I hear a thought in my head—no, more of an idea. A feeling of warmth toward Neville. He’s not so bad after all. He’s certainly not a monster. Why would I have ever thought that?
I find myself wondering why I’ve been fighting in the first place. Frowning, I look down at my hand on the doorknob. I don’t have anywhere to go—why would I be leaving?
I turn back to face Neville as he strolls across the foyer. Humphrey Neville is my friend. He has always looked out for me. He’ll know what to do. I take a step toward him.
Then, there’s a great crack and shudder from above, and the remains of the chandelier come crashing to the floor. Neville barely jumps back in time to avoid being crushed.
I blink, staring at Neville.
Evil. Trickster. He was wielding Sophos on me.
Clutching Aristos as firmly as I can, I fling open the front door and throw myself through it. Legs and lungs burning, I run with every ounce of strength I possess. I know I’m moving impossibly fast to anyone who happens to be watching from their glazed windows, but masking my powers is the least of my concerns.
I hazard a glance over my shoulder. Neville shouldn’t be able to catch me on foot—he doesn’t possess Aristos, as far as I know. Although it’s suddenly apparent to me that I know so little. The drizzle has turned to fog. Mayfair’s darkened streets are empty, save for two carriages and an omnibus rumbling along the cobblestone. Neville is thankfully nowhere to be seen. I race through the shadowy streets, my feet splashing through puddles, gaining speed with every step.
I keep running, and don’t stop.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
“She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro’ the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried
The Lady of Shalott.”
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott”
I’m huddled in the darkness, an empty shell. The partially complete skeleton of Tower Bridge rises up above me, steel girders and cables groaning in the winds. It rained off and on as I ran here from Mayfair, though I barely noticed the weather. My only aim has been to get as far away from Dr. Middlesex’s house—and Humphrey Neville—as possible.
It is twilight. Under heavy clouds, the wine-dark Thames flows its perpetual path, deep and swift. A faint whiff of fish and salt and rust rises from a nearby barge. I need to decide what to do next, but I can hardly think.
Nate is dead. Actually, it’s worse than that. He was never alive—not really. Not th
e seven-year-old boy I knew. He was nothing more than a product of my imagination, a figment of my twisted brain.
I can’t even begin to dissect what Neville said about the origins of the Morgana. Atlantis? It’s absurd. It doesn’t feel real. But the loss of Nate is entirely real, sharp and cold as a razor.
The chill of the rain and the wind from the river seeps into my bones, but I don’t care. I want to climb the scaffolding of this bridge and scream into the night. All of that effort searching for a cure, all my hopes and plan to save my brother. My stupid, naive plan … it was all pointless.
There is nothing keeping me here. No cure. Nothing for me to search for. I can leave London, run from this nightmare. On the river, barges and steamboats glide under the partially constructed bridge, heading out to sea. I could stow away, wake up somewhere different, start anew. There’s no reason to stay.
But that isn’t quite true.
There’s everyone attending the Royal Jubilee. The royalty, the nobility, the leaders from across Europe. Everyone who isn’t Morgana. They will soon be dead, too.
And the other Morgana. Charlie, Isherwood, Hawksmoor … and Julian. Everyone from the Academy. They are in grave danger. If they aren’t already dead. My stomach twists as I think of Julian. I picture his face. His incredible, heart-crushing smile that I will never see again.
I don’t know how Neville plans to execute his plan. But I do know one thing: I am the only person who knows he has one. And I may be the only person who can stop him.
But what am I meant to do? I’m just a flower girl from the streets, an immigrant’s daughter from the slums. For a long time, I stare up at the skeleton bridge and the sky above it, a velveteen curtain, embroidered with sequins.
I know what I must do. The truth is, I’m not simply a flower girl from the streets. Not any longer. I’ve become so much more.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“You must suffer me to go my own dark way.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
I have to save Julian and Hawksmoor and all the others. But even though I’ve made the decision, I have no idea how to put thought into action. The odds are impossible. Me against the entire Huntsman organization. I’ll likely fail, but it won’t be because I did not try.