by Jess Faraday
Still, it paid to be cautious.
“Bell, book, and candle, if you please, Madame,” she said, without looking away. “And take your son with you.”
The widow Bernard didn’t question why a police inspector was asking for a priest’s tools. She simply seemed happy to be dismissed. Normally, that would have been the point. Familiar-sounding objects and rites comforted the superstitious and kept them out of the way. In the past, people had been more comfortable thinking there was a demoniac in their midst—an evil they already believed in and could understand—than hearing about uncontrolled spiritual energies erupting from unsuspecting individuals. But with the waves of religious hysteria traveling through the areas recently, would that continue to be the case?
“Hello,” Corbeau called. The man’s head jerked toward her. His upper lip curled, and he let out a low, rumbling snarl like a dog. Corbeau sucked in her breath and straightened. “That’s enough. You can stop now.”
He did. She let out a long, tense breath. Six times out of seven, an outburst of spiritual energies could be halted simply by informing the perpetrator the energies were part of him. But first, one had to command the subject’s attention—not an easy thing when the subject was using his mind to toss the place. Corbeau took a step forward. The tin cup flew out of its orbit and whizzed toward her face. Corbeau lifted her truncheon the second before the cup hit her forehead. It glanced harmlessly off the baton and floated back toward the edge of the room.
“This isn’t what you think it is,” she said, raising her voice above the feral noises vibrating in the walls and floorboards. “You’re not under attack by the Evil One or anyone else, though it probably feels like it.” A chamber pot hurtled toward her. Corbeau ducked, and it crashed against the doorjamb, spattering the walls with dark urine. A candle end flew at her next, then a shoe. “I can help you if you let me. But you have to stop throwing things.”
The man cocked his head. The animal noises stopped. Corbeau felt some of the tension in her shoulders release. Was it really going to be this easy? The last two incidents hadn’t been. She had gone through all the standard steps, and when those hadn’t worked, she’d sprinkled some holy water, recited a few prayers in Latin, and given the perpetrators a couple of the white pills from her bag. She’d left them both asleep in their beds, not knowing whether she’d actually solved anything.
But no one had summoned her back.
“That’s right,” she continued. She wiped one palm on her coat and crept closer. “You’re doing this. And if you want me to help, you have to control yourself. What’s your name?”
The man’s breathing quickened. His eyes rolled back in his head and he began to shiver. Just like the others, and unlike anything she’d encountered with the Bureau. Yet there was something familiar about these incidents. Something about them echoed long-ago memories Corbeau had worked hard to forget. Memories from a different time, a different life, when she had gone by another name and Sûreté agent Elise Corbeau had yet to come into existence.
She shook her head. Impossible, she scolded herself. That was nearly a decade in the past, and she’d covered her tracks twice over.
Corbeau swallowed again. The baton was slippery in her hand. She fingered open the buckles of the bag at her waist. If this was an outburst of latent spiritual energies, the procedures Vidocq had taught them should suffice. All the same, she slipped her hand inside, unstoppered the bottle of holy water, and wet her fingers just in case. Keeping the truncheon between the man and herself, she touched a wet fingertip to the middle of his forehead and two others above his eyebrows. His skin was hot and damp, but he didn’t jerk away from the holy water. No demon, then, she noted with relief. His eyes closed and the trembling decreased. She let out a long breath.
“What’s your name?” she asked again.
“Lambert. Armand Lambert.”
“Monsieur Lambert, I’m Detective Inspector Elise Corbeau. You’re experiencing a spiritual disturbance of your own making. It’s frightening, but you can control it. Do you understand?” She coaxed a pill from the pillbox in her bag. “Here. Take this.” He placed it on the back of his tongue and swallowed. “Breathe deeply. Don’t open your eyes until I tell you to.”
Lambert squeezed his eyes shut tighter and drew a shaking breath. Corbeau removed her hand from his forehead and collected her thoughts. From her experience, this sort of outburst was most common in highly strung adolescent girls. But the two recent cases had been adults: one man and one woman. The incidents had also taken place in the slums of the Montagne Ste. Geneviève, just a brisk walk from this very building.
She could remember similar disturbances clustering in a single area only one other time. The disturbances had had nothing to do with demons. Rather, they had been caused by greed—people’s greed to develop supernatural talents they did not necessarily possess, and the greed of Moreau the Alchemist for their money. By the time the Sûreté founder Vidocq had kicked down her laboratory door, her concoctions had driven many to the madhouse or the grave. Guilt and panic crept up her throat once more. She pushed them down.
This was different. It had to be. She had destroyed her laboratory, her store of ingredients, and her notes. At Vidocq’s side, she had dismantled the networks of people who had distributed her potions and tinctures; every last one was in prison or dead. And when her debt to society had been paid in full, Vidocq had erased all traces of Moreau the Alchemist, and Elise Corbeau, Agent of the Sûreté, had been born.
That was over with. Done. These new incidents could not possibly be related.
This was not her fault.
She returned her attention to the young man in the center of the room. He had released some of the tension in his shoulders and was starting to shiver.
Like the other victims, Armand Lambert was an adult. He spoke in a city dweller’s clipped staccato; he hadn’t come in from the country to work the factories like his neighbors had. His hands were smooth and unstained, and his tidy brown curls suggested he was used to keeping himself well groomed. A servant, perhaps. A clerk or shop assistant. No longer employed, judging by the three-day stubble on his chin. Like the other victims, his possessions were minimal. Corbeau opened the wardrobe. He was wearing his only set of clothing.
Like the other victims, Armand Lambert was running from something.
“How are you feeling now, Mr. Lambert?” Corbeau asked. Lambert blinked and opened his eyes. He looked better, more in control. He was breathing easier. Unlike with the last two victims, she might actually get some information out of him. One by one, his possessions began to drop out of their orbits, falling harmlessly on the bed, the chair, and the floor. “Has this happened before?” Lambert nodded. Corbeau felt a pang of sympathy. It must have been terrifying for him. Had he thought himself haunted? “Some people think that everyone has untapped spiritual powers—powers that are only waiting for something to trigger them. Have you experienced any sort of major upset in your life recently? The death of a loved one, for example?”
Lambert shook his head. Corbeau frowned. Spiritual energies rarely erupted without provocation, in her experience. It would have been comforting to believe that this was one of those rare occasions, but that left the other two, which had not only occurred within the same geographical area, but within the same week.
Corbeau handed him the shirt from the wardrobe, and he meekly shrugged it over his shoulders. He looked up at her as if to say something, but before he could, footsteps thundered up the stairs. Madame Bernard and Joseph, Corbeau guessed from the familiar sound of their footfall. But they weren’t alone.
“Inspector—” Madame Bernard said, bursting into the room. A man rushed in on her heels—a tall, angular man with fiery eyes and an important manner. He wore an expensive coat and boots, and his white collar peeked out from beneath his pointed chin.
“I thought you said you didn’t call for a priest!” Corbeau cried.
“The Lord summoned me.”
The
priest was younger than Corbeau and looked eager to prove himself. To whom, she wondered. And how had he known to come? Corbeau’s heart raced. If this got back to the chief inspector, she’d be out on her ear without a hearing. The priest didn’t look like the sort who would suffer an interloper. His nails were clean, his robes crisp, and he was cracking his knuckles in anticipation of a fight. With the devil or with her, it wouldn’t matter.
“It was thoughtful of Him,” Corbeau said carefully, “but unnecessary. Monsieur Lambert was having a nightmare, nothing more.” She breathed a sigh of relief that all signs of the extraordinary had dissipated. In the doorway, one-footed Joseph smirked. She turned to the widow Bernard. “You can tell the others that it’s safe to return. Monsieur Lambert has finished throwing his things around.”
Lambert looked sheepish. The priest looked irate. Corbeau glanced around the room again. She might have solved Lambert’s problem—for now—but it wouldn’t be the last incident—not until she figured out what was triggering them. And now that the Church was involved, she would have to find a way to work around both it and the new chief inspector. Another set of footsteps coming up the stairs shook her from her thoughts. When Vautrin himself entered the room, her heart sank.
“I came as quickly as I could, Father.”
Unlike the priest, the new chief inspector had seen his share of action. It showed on his weathered face and in the hard layer of muscles that lay under the softer layer he had acquired as growing administrative duties had overtaken street-level police work. His dark eyes were cruel, and, more often than not, he appeared as if he’d just stepped in something unpleasant.
“Why?” Corbeau asked. A mistake, but she couldn’t help herself. Vautrin had closed down the Bureau of Supernatural Investigations, saying that such incidents were the purview of the Church, not the police. And yet here he was. With the priest.
The chief inspector looked around, his eyes narrowing as they fixed on her. Another set of footsteps reached the landing, and a third man joined them—young, inexperienced, and pressing his thin frame against the wall as if it would keep any ghosts from seeing him. One of Vautrin’s new hires, then. At most, a month’s experience on the streets, and less than none dealing with the supernatural. The three men edged her out of the way, surrounded Lambert, and began some sort of inspection.
“Chief Inspector, you have no—”
Vautrin turned to her, his voice a sharp-edged knife. “I didn’t expect to see you here, Madame.” He refused to call her Inspector. He had refused from the moment they had been introduced. The Bureau of Supernatural Investigations had offended Vautrin’s religious sensibilities. The presence of a female agent offended him on all levels. The prefect might not have allowed Vautrin to dismiss Corbeau outright, but Vautrin was doing his level best to make her wish that he had. “You have no business here,” Vautrin said. “The Bureau no longer exists, and you’ve been relieved of your investigative duties.”
“The owner of the property requested my presence,” said Corbeau.
Madame Bernard straightened, lifted her chin, and fixed Vautrin with a defiant gaze.
“That very well may be. But demonic possession is a matter for the Church.”
“There are no demons here,” Corbeau said, as Vautrin’s man laid hold of Lambert and shoved him up against the wall. Getting nowhere with Vautrin, she approached the priest. “He didn’t react to holy water, and—” She turned back to Vautrin. “Even if there were a demon, Chief Inspector, you said yourself that the Sûreté has no business—”
Anger flashed in Vautrin’s deep-set eyes. His square jaw clenched and he drew a sharp breath. “His Majesty desires the police to take a greater role in guarding public morality, and I intend to follow through on this desire, whether Claude Javert agrees or not.” He spat out the name as if it tasted foul.
Corbeau’s ears pricked up. Claude Javert, the prefect of police, had come to his position straight from the Jesuits. Well known for his efficiency and uncompromising logic, Javert and the zealot Vautrin should see eye to eye on His Majesty’s moral crusade. Could it be that they did not? Corbeau wanted to ask, but the dangerous light in Vautrin’s face warned her off. “How does a nightmare violate public morality?” she asked instead.
He glared at her for a moment longer, then turned to the priest. “Well, Father, what’s your opinion?”
“Mmm?”
The priest gave a grunt and a nod. Vautrin’s man unbuttoned Lambert’s shirt. The sedative she had given him was beginning to take effect. He looked at the priest, confused, as the priest lifted his arm. Something glittered near the thatch of dark hair beneath the arm—something metal, something golden—that appeared to be part of the skin itself.
“What on Earth—” Corbeau began to say.
“The devil’s mark,” said the priest, shoving Lambert’s arm away in disgust.
“That’s rubbish! There’s metal under there, grafted right into the skin.” Corbeau stepped forward, but without warning, Vautrin sprang at her, pushing her back with the strength of a runaway draft horse. They slammed into the wall, Vautrin pinning her to the wall by her neck with his truncheon. “Let go of him!” she cried again.
“You have no authority here, Madame,” he hissed, his thin lips just inches from her chin.
“By your own definition, neither do you.”
“God’s authority is behind me.”
“Then why didn’t He tell you about the other two incidents?”
Vautrin’s face paled. Corbeau felt a rush of triumph. He hadn’t known about Bertrand and Fournier. And, from the way his lips were pursing themselves bloodless, she could see that he desperately wanted to have known. He probably considered it his sacred duty. His hands tightened around the ends of the baton, making it tremble on her windpipe. It was clear how badly he wanted to push it all the way to the wall.
“What now, Chief Inspector?” The young officer’s question probably saved Corbeau’s life. Vautrin turned. The truncheon eased away from Corbeau’s throat, but he stayed in front of her, blocking her way.
“Take him down to the wagon.”
“But—” Corbeau said
Vautrin’s face whipped back toward her, and he slammed the baton up below her chin. Grasping Lambert by the arms, the priest and the young officer moved him forward. Lambert stumbled, his limbs now clumsy and leaden from the sedative. A different kind of guilt balled up in Corbeau’s stomach. She might not have caused Lambert’s outburst with her clumsy medicine, but she had enabled Vautrin and the priest to take him away without a fight. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something glint in the lamplight on the floor near the bed.
“You may have friends in high places, Madame,” Vautrin growled so low that she was the only one who could hear him, “but breathe a word of this to anyone, and I’ll slit your throat myself.”
He gave the baton a final push before tucking it back into his belt and pulling his coat around him. Madame Bernard held Joseph close as Vautrin swept out of the room after the priest. When their footsteps had safely reached the bottom of the stairs, Corbeau slumped against the wall, rubbing her throat.
“Inspector?” Joseph asked after a moment.
“There,” she said hoarsely. “By the foot of the bed. Made of glass. Bring it here.”
Pulling free of his mother, Joseph crossed the room and retrieved the object, a small phial. Corbeau turned it over in her fingers. A drop of clear liquid slid from one end to the other. She sniffed at the opening, jerking back at the sudden onslaught of familiar scents: valerian, mugwort, poppy, and a few other things she couldn’t identify. It was a strange combination—not one that a ghetto healer would think to put together.
But something an alchemist would.
“What is it, Inspector?” Madame Bernard asked.
Corbeau’s heart pounded. Her cheeks went hot, and as she turned to this woman to whom her debt would never be extinguished, the weight of her guilt was a crushing band around her chest.
Another alchemist was working the streets of Paris, and it appeared they were building on her work—work she thought she’d destroyed all evidence of nearly a decade before.
“Inspector?”
It couldn’t be. She sniffed the phial again, but she had made no mistake. On the night of her arrest those many years ago, Corbeau had consigned her books and notes to the fire. She had taken a chair to her distillery. Nothing remained of her past, and those who remembered her as the Alchemist were few, far between, and not available for consultation.
And yet someone was producing her elixirs again. Or attempting to. And Vidocq was long gone.
“Excuse me, Madame,” Corbeau muttered.
She stuffed the phial into her coat pocket, brushing past Madame Bernard and her son in her rush for the stairs. Outside on the street, she forced herself to draw deep, steadying breaths of the freezing night air.
Chapter Three
Corbeau pushed through the dispersing crowd, the bottle clenched tightly in her hand. The hard November wind whipped at her hems. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets as rain pelted her cheeks. People were going to die. Go mad and die. She might not have compounded the new formulae herself, but whoever had, was using her work as a foundation. Worse than that, Vautrin had his nasty fingers in it already.
And then there was the Church.
A crack of thunder shook the air. Lightning lit the street like daylight before plunging it back into darkness.
“Detective!” A woman’s voice cut through the storm. The gossipmongers were the only ones who called her Detective anymore—those low, skulking creatures always sniffing around for a tidbit to sell to the newspapers. It figured they would find her when the only information she had would incriminate her. She kept walking. “Detective!”