The Eterna Solution

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  There was a muffled sound from down the hall, a shuddering cry and then silence. Lord Tantagenet breathed his last; she could feel his spirit leave, eager to get out of his poisoned body. She rose and looked in the mirror, touching her face; her eyes flashed as she felt the life force that had drained from him being usurped into her ravenous, insatiable aura.

  For a moment she was glad she did not see ghosts, for if she did she knew she’d be haunted forever—not by sentiment but by specters lingering in anger and betrayal. The funeral arrangements were already in place; the body would be taken in the morning.

  Then she would be free to unleash an enemy directly upon his foe, and keep them both busy while she engaged her next target. She’d leave New York with another spectacle to preoccupy itself with while she boosted all its power into her hands for her body to wield. Hopefully the clash of old enemies would leave them all dead. Good riddance, as her path to Washington needed to be clear.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  From a ceremony to a vaudevillian exhibit of unfolding new technologies. All the world was a stage indeed, every day a new trial. If there weren’t a true evil underpinning her city, Clara could have delighted in the occupations of her life. But her world was clutched in a vise grip. Recent events had Shakespeare close to mind.…

  We make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.

  As the line was sourced from All’s Well That Ends Well, she hoped she could live into that title.

  It was a glorious late autumnal day in the small, tree-lined confluence of Fifth Avenue and Broadway that created Madison Square Park—clearly a Halloween week if ever there was one. This was Clara’s favorite time of year, even if the perilously thin veil between mortal and spirit world was hazardous to her health.

  When she and Bishop reached the park, Evelyn Northe-Stewart, dressed in a saffron day dress of frothy layers, moved to Clara’s side, touched a satin-gloved hand to the embroidered roses adorning Clara’s long-sleeved bodice, and indicated the passersby around them.

  “Let’s have a listen in on the city’s sanity,” Evelyn said of the crowds. Clara nodded and the two took a silent stroll along a paved path around a copse of trees. Glancing up at Liberty’s torch, Clara saw nothing green but the touch of patina on the seams of copper. Between her Warding and Stevens’s chemistry, the partial statue remained free from perversion. They were, by each event, she hoped, closing doors the Summoned and their new mistress, the mysterious Celeste named in blood and confirmed by Rachel, would have preferred remain open.

  Clara listened closely to conversations of milling passersby, to gauge just how much the Society had managed to tear holes in the fabric of New York’s sense of safety, wondering how effective the supernatural terrorism of the downtown displays, the torch or Columbia’s shambling corpses had been.

  After enough time for empirical discernment, the two Sensitives returned to a waiting Bishop, tall and elegant in black top hat and tailcoat. Clara found herself blushing at the sight of the small white rose she had affixed to his lapel that morning, plucked from the bouquet he’d given her. Bishop noticed her blush and his piercing eyes of mercurial colors flashed. They had nearly fallen into a passionate kiss when she had bestowed the flower this morning, but the clock reminded them they would be late for the rendezvous and their ache was again prolonged.

  “Well, my dear senator,” Evelyn began, returning them to the moment, “I am heartened to discern that New York as a whole, sampling tidbits of conversations from all walks of life and background, is wary, but not on a precipice. It takes New Yorkers more than a few bouts of weirdness to be thrown. Clara, do you agree?”

  Clara turned her face toward the breeze to cool her suddenly enflamed cheeks. “I do.”

  “Our teams best keep it that way,” Bishop declared, and strode over to Spire and Franklin, Clara at his side.

  “I’m so sorry for missing the ceremony,” Franklin blurted. “I was ill. I’ve sent my regards to the happy couple, please don’t think me rude.”

  Clara shook her head in absolution of any slight. The dear heart still looked so tired, drawn, with dark circles under glassy eyes. She almost told him to go right back home again, as he clearly still needed rest, but as a woman with a condition she was adamant about not being dismissed and she wouldn’t visit low expectations on anyone, instead trusting him to tell her if he was beyond capacity.

  Lord Black had excused himself from today’s rounds to liaise with the British embassy about site-specific tree and flower planting around English holdings to act as additional Wards.

  Clara reached out her hand to run gloved fingers over the elegant, palm-like leaves of a nearby green locust, which signified affection from beyond the grave. This made her smile wistfully, thinking of city elders watching over the metropolis by way of these trees. She would suggest the city plant more locusts, invoking the affection, and thus, protection, of spirits who loved this city as their own. Lord Black had encouraged her to consider every living thing as bearing a message. She was listening.

  Bishop turned to the group and began. “We’ll be in the audience for today’s presentation. Fred and Effie are already backstage beside a friend, a rail operator. We, honestly, don’t know what to expect today. I hope you are all carrying Wards.”

  “And perhaps a concealed pistol,” Spire added. Patting his pockets.

  At this, Franklin gestured. Spire reached into an interior pocket and smoothly deposited a revolver tucked beneath his palm onto Franklin’s outstretched hand. Clara, knowing Spire wouldn’t have thought to bring a Ward, plucked a corked vial from her reticule and took the liberty of placing it in Spire’s front breast pocket, tucking it behind his rumpled linen pocket square. He grimaced a sort of thanks.

  “I received gifts from my doting Blakely!” Knight said of her beard of a spouse, necessary in a world that would not accept her preferences. She opened a small wooden case decorated with floral marquetry and pearl inlay to reveal several small steel guns with carved wooden handles. At the top of the box marched a row of odd ammunition: arrow-like bullets and suctions filled with powders and chemical agents.

  “The darling had it sent to the safe house. Filled with his inventions and compounds,” she said proudly. “Don’t worry, they’ve all been tested.”

  “Yes, some of them on me,” Spire retorted bitterly.

  Knight laughed gamesomely. “I’d not be near to one when it goes off. Good for cover, distraction and disorientation, not good to breathe in.”

  “I can assure you of that truth as well,” Spire added. Rose held back a chuckle.

  Arms surreptitiously distributed, the cluster of operatives began to stroll to the famous Park Theatre, which years ago had made its name and fortune downtown on Park Row. Now a grand affair nestled on Broadway between Twenty-first and Twenty-second Streets, all stately splendor, with flourished corners and Romanesque arches of the kind that matched the lavish shopping palaces and other theaters in this entertainment district, each attraction trying to keep up with the next in gilded glamor.

  As to be expected in a vaudeville format, there were several acts before the signature piece. There was a distinct timetable for this matinee performance and showcase, however, as another act was to take over the stage that night: the highly anticipated American debut of famed actress Mrs. Langtry.

  Bishop procured tickets and mesmerized the ushers so his assembled company could come and go from their seats without censure or alarm. He chose strategic seats, back from the orchestra pit so the mezzanine above shadowed them, and house right, near the aisle, offering a perfect view of the stage and the grand staircases between levels.

  The curtain closed over the stage was a lush red velvet bare of any design, great golden tassels catching the glow of the footlights trimmed low. A pianist on a raised dais in the orchestra pit was playing gamesome modern tunes and the occasional French art song as they took th
eir wooden seats upholstered with a similar red velvet.

  A top-hatted maestro of ceremonies in a red tailcoat stepped out onto the stage, and a gas-lamp spotlight shifted to him. He was heavily made up, and his black mustache was waxed to an impressive curl on either side.

  Welcoming everyone to the theater, he promised the audience a string of superlative adjectives scripted to excite an audience, but something about him seemed too nervous for Clara to feel anything but the same nerves. Not in empathy, but dread. That wasn’t stage fright. That man was generally frightened.

  He didn’t introduce himself and seemed eager to get back off the stage. He scurried off before scurrying back on again, the mezzanine spotlight operator doing a figure eight with the great glass that magnified the lantern behind it before the light landed again on the man’s sweaty face.

  He introduced the next “girls,” offered a few more hyperbolic statements about their bewitching beauty, and was off again.

  The curtain rose.

  Clara and Bishop stared with skepticism at the dancers, this all seeming a bit scandalous for Evelyn, to their left, who stared at the scantily clad ladies with a mixture of horror and pity.

  Above them, Rose and Spire were positioned in a clear mezzanine vantage point.

  Miss Knight, on the other hand, sitting to Clara’s right, was beaming. She leaned over to Clara once the song had ended and the audience was clapping and whistling for an encore.

  “Times like this, I miss the old days of touring with the Ciphers,” she said. “The thrill of a stage or a tent, there’s really nothing else like it.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Clara murmured.

  “But you can guess. You can remember, I’m sure…” For a moment Miss Knight stared deeply, startlingly, into her, and Clara almost felt like there had been a direct touch to her head, but Miss Knight’s hands never left her lap. “About two lives ago you were what, a singer, weren’t you?”

  Clara thought a moment and a piercing memory struck her. She saw this scene but in reverse, from onstage, staring out at powdered faces and feathered heads, the base of the wooden stage set with the most primitive of flame footlights, when women were first allowed in French theater. That particular, trailblazing life of drama and pain, snuffed out in a gale of bourbon and tuberculosis, had been overshadowed in her memories by the boldness of the next; the French sea captain. Even her own sense of her past lives minimized the presences of women. She didn’t need to be an additional part of that oppression.

  Snapping back to the moment, Clara stared at the beautiful woman, who did nothing but wink at her. Goodness, Knight was gifted indeed. Clara stared at the whole spectacle with a bit more understanding and respect.

  Bishop, his forearm continually brushing her elbow, seemed to be entirely unaware of the performance, instead examining the attendees and glancing at Clara frequently, to make sure nothing was affecting her adversely. Knight looked between them and rolled her eyes in exaggerated bemusement, as if their pining, impassioned awkwardness had now become a travesty.

  She glanced at a deliberately, ostentatiously prominent velvet-covered box above and to her right. Within, staring with a furrowed brow at the stage, Clara noticed a familiar face. She leaned over to Bishop.

  “Rupert,” she said, gesturing with an incline of her artfully coiffed head. “Look up. Isn’t that Mr. Edison?”

  He followed her gaze. “Why, yes it is.”

  Before they could muse further about Edison and his aims, a woman dressed head to toe in onyx beading over black satin that made her pale face look ghostly beneath a tulle mourning veil stepped out from the wings toward the footlights, a stack of folded papers in her hands.

  She gestured into the wings and indicated a spot center stage. Turning to look out at the audience, she held a stare for a long, uncomfortable moment before leaving the stage again, clutching the papers in both black-gloved hands.

  When Clara glanced at Rupert, his brow was furrowed in recognition; she knew that look when he pinpointed someone gifted. She had some of his mesmerism, perhaps, but something else altogether. Clara suddenly had a bitter taste in her mouth, as if the woman had created an alchemical shift in the air.

  It was a curious turn, as Clara could see no purpose in it, as if someone of import had merely wandered onstage, finding themselves suddenly in a play when they ought to have been holding a grieving court somewhere.

  The same nervous man from the beginning of the show stepped out again.

  “A thank-you to our anonymous benefactor for this performance,” he said, bowing in the direction of the woman in black.

  Clara turned to Bishop with a pointed look. “I’m not a betting woman but…”

  “The mysterious Celeste, perhaps?” he murmured. Clara and Bishop looked up at Rose and Spire, and the policeman was already on his feet, seemingly ready to charge down and enter backstage to arraign and question her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the man said. “Now for the moment you have all been awaiting. Monsieur Carre has brought his equipment from Paris to showcase something marvelous. Something that will change the world. As humans we are entranced by pictures, paintings, daguerreotypes, and now photographs. What if they moved? What if they quite truly came to life?”

  There was a murmur from the crowd.

  Clara and Bishop shared a familiar, wary look. They’d been to plenty of lavish stage performances put on by sham spiritualists who were talented magicians, but no mediums, taking advantage of the grieving and the lost. Tricks of light and sound through mirrors and curtains, levers rapping on tables, anything was possible and much of it was quite convincing, and many phantasmagorical images “moved” via tricks of light and perspective.

  Part of their job in the Eterna Commission, as gifted, true spiritualists, was to quietly shut down impostors and redirect their efforts to cue up a good magic trick, not the faux dead. The famed magician Houdini was championing this same cause, but with more passionate—and public—effect. Clara and Bishop couldn’t begrudge anyone trying to make a living, and some of these people actually had the beginnings of the gift. Eterna did not wish to ruin lives, whether those of the performers or audience.

  But did this event promise spirit or magic?

  This man didn’t bear the hallmarks of a charlatan spiritualist, and to Clara’s mind it shouldn’t have been this man speaking about it at all. The enigmatic woman should have presented and introduced the keynote innovative attraction.

  The gas lamps lighting the stage suddenly shifted and a curtain parted to reveal a wide white screen, darkness of the theatrical abyss on either side.

  The screen at the center of the stage began to glow. A golden frame was lowered via another rail.

  Something about the shift of light and the depth between screen and frame set Clara on edge and she couldn’t place why.

  An indistinct sound grew from the back of the stage, a loud whisper, a droning chant. To Clara’s ear, it broadened to a grating whine. From the spotlight operator’s mezzanine perch there came an image placed over that broad lantern.

  It was the image of a man in lavish, royal robes.

  Clara and Evelyn gasped in unison while the rest of the audience was silent. This man’s projected image meant nothing to them. Several people—including Miss Knight and Franklin—turned at the women’s audible reaction, wondering if they were seeing part of the trick the rest of the audience wasn’t yet aware of.

  Would it were that simple. Clara and her friends had reacted because they were staring at their enemy, a face they would never clear from their mind’s eye.

  Moriel.

  The projection was a portrait of Moriel in kingly robes.

  A portrait.

  With a shuffling, metallic clank, the image changed. Moriel in the same robed costume but with arms raised, triumphant, eyes wild and crown slightly askew. Another tick and a younger Moriel in a suit coat loomed before them. Then another, reaching toward the audience. Then another.


  The sequence of daguerreotypes repeated, faster and faster.

  With their jerking, unrelated movements, the six images looked like a horrific marionette, dancing and flailing. Clara turned to Rose in the mezzanine, and the war-weary friends shared a helpless look. Spire was gone.

  * * *

  There was nothing wrong to the outside eye, Rose thought, so the Bixbys could not be given the cue to stop the show. Nonetheless, something had to be done. The pictures of Moriel were undoubtedly a signal to whatever Master’s Society operatives still existed in this city.

  Rose thought to follow Spire out the exit, but then the tether to Clara made her stay; she had to keep an eye on her to help if a seizure was imminent. Needing to be on her level, she rose and made to descend the carpeted stair, and was stopped by a whole new, terrible movement.

  In that tense moment, a figure stepped through the image, making it three-dimensional and bringing it to life. There was now a shadow with Moriel’s face.…

  It moved forward.

  Rose clamped down on a scream, her tie to Clara allowing her to feel her soul sister doing the same. Before she could move or make a sound, a small flame whizzed out of the audience, toward the stage.

  Knight must have used one of her various projectiles. The image and then the screen vanished in a flash of flame and heavy smoke. Many in the crowd screamed as people ran for the exits.

  A great gust of unnatural wind swirled around the stage, kicking up embers. Parts of the curtain and baffles caught fire. Screams from the audience appeared to fan the flames. Another whizzing sound and a second arrow landed on the contraption that was still cycling the images, Knight’s aim impressive, a smoke rising up from around the wide glass, the operator darting away with a curse.

  “Where did Moriel go?” Rose gasped. “He could be anywhere.” She made for the orchestra level as Effie Bixby, dressed in a simple black cotton dress, spiral curls all back in a bun, appeared from an upper-mezzanine side door, having used a stagecraft passage to get herself to the upper levels, and examined the lantern and the device that was hooked over it, damaged as it was from Knight’s weaponry.