“Let me see.”
Peregrine hefted the metal ball, rolling it between his palms. He pressed the invisible spring twice and the top opened to reveal the raised globe within. A small smile spread across his lips, his eyes running from the device to Immanuel’s face. Immanuel resisted the urge to flinch beneath his penetrating gaze. What Peregrine was grinning at, he hadn’t the slightest idea, but Immanuel knew it couldn’t be good. Cocking his head, Peregrine carefully closed the lid and forced it into Immanuel’s hand.
“It’s yours.”
“No, it isn’t. It must have fallen in the pot by accident. Surely the owner must be looking for it.”
The botanist stared at the device as he replied, “Sometimes things look for us. My advice is to keep it. You may need it.”
“But I—”
“Trust me,” Nichols whispered, trapping Immanuel’s hand over the orb with his own. He straightened and laughed. “You had better get back to work, Mr. Winter, or you will be here all night.”
Chapter Ten
Superstition and Fear
Immanuel quietly shut the door behind him. Guilt weighed heavily in his stomach as he caught the time on the grandfather clock in the hall. Even though he had sent a message home with an errand boy warning Adam he would be working through dinner, he hadn’t expected to be this late. The house sat silent with the curtains drawn against any nighttime passersby. Fear welled in Immanuel’s chest. His heart quickened, setting his body on edge as if waiting for the next thunderclap.
“Adam? Adam, are you home?” he called, hoping his voice didn’t betray the panic tightening his throat.
“I’m right here.”
Immanuel turned toward the voice. Taking a step into the parlor, he found Adam lying across the length of the sofa with a novel propped against the pillow. A silent sigh escaped his lips. What had he thought happened? Immanuel swallowed hard and perched on the edge of the cushion, his back pressed against Adam’s hip. As Adam closed The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and turned over, Immanuel slumped against his chest. Adam’s arms wrapped around him, pulling him closer. For the first time all day, Immanuel let out a full breath.
“What kept you? I thought I was going to have to send Scotland Yard to find you.”
“Gala work. I was helping Peregrine Nichols, and somehow, I ended up being saddled with most of the work.”
“I told you to stay out of it,” Adam murmured into the back of Immanuel’s head.
Immanuel shivered against the brush of breath fluttering his hair. “If it wasn’t this, then it would be something else. At least it’s plants and not tarantulas.”
Closing his eyes, Immanuel could feel the slow, steady drum of Adam’s heart against his back, but could Adam feel his racing? That moment of panic when he thought Adam had disappeared refused to abate. All he wanted was to curl up in Adam’s arms after a long day, but his muscles stood poised to move and his eyes snapped open with every creak or honk on the other side of the panes.
He licked his lips. He already knew the answer as he asked, “Adam, are you angry that I stayed late?”
The couch shifted behind him as Adam sat up. He furrowed his henna brows, his eyes coming to rest on Immanuel’s pouted mouth and fitful gaze. “Of course not, I was just worried. I found your letter when I got home, and I hoped you would be home before dinner grew cold, but…” He shrugged. “Employers don’t care who is waiting for you.”
Immanuel nodded. He hadn’t meant to stay so late. By the time he finished typing the last card at the secretary’s desk, he found that the trolleys had finished running for the night. Passing an underground station, he stood with his hand on the rail and his eyes locked on its cavernous mouth. It would get him to Baker Street far faster than walking, but he couldn’t do it. In the shadows shifting below, he could see Lord Rose in his devil mask glaring up at him. The fetid stink of the train station was too close. Walls rose around him, and for a moment, all hope of returning home fled. Metal claws sunk into his throat, tightening until he could scarcely breathe.
“Oh, I nearly forgot. A package came for you.” When Immanuel merely stared up at him, Adam added, “It has German writing on it.”
He blinked, the stupor leaving him as he rolled off the sofa and darted into the hallway. “Why didn’t you say so?”
Adam smiled to himself as he followed his companion. By the time he reached his side, Immanuel had pulled off the twine and paper and was shaking the tight lid off the striped hatbox. Adam frowned thoughtfully as he watched Immanuel toss the lid aside and pull out a letter. Craning his neck, he could see that the box contained everything but a hat. Cradled in tissue paper were photographs, books, a new set of pastels, letters, and jars of what he could only imagine were jam. No wonder the box weighed so much when the postman hefted it into his arms. He looked up to find Immanuel chewing his lip with a nervous grin as he read the note.
“Who is it from?”
“My family,” Immanuel replied, his smile widening. “Mutter, Vader, Johanna, even Onkel Theodor. They all wrote a little.”
Adam couldn’t imagine Immanuel with a family. He rarely spoke of them or what he left behind in Germany. The entire time he had known him, they had been a faraway entity, a hypothetical mother whose face Adam only saw as a pale, blonde blur. He couldn’t imagine his father or sister. He couldn’t even imagine a time when Immanuel only spoke German. He certainly couldn’t picture the face of the boy who got Immanuel exiled from his homeland. When Adam thought of the moment that sent Immanuel to England, he could see only his own face at sixteen. For Immanuel, the lines of past and present never crossed. He was in constant motion, hurtling forward toward the future and pulling Adam along with him.
As his bichrome eyes swept over each line, Immanuel seemed happier than he had been since they met. A barb of envy stabbed at Adam’s gut. Everyone in that letter knew Immanuel before Lord Rose had gotten him. Even if he hadn’t known him then, Adam knew there were two Immanuels. The innocent was gone, but whether he had died in Germany the day the police came knocking or at Lord Rose’s hand, he didn’t know. Maybe if he knew him then, things would have turned out differently, or maybe Immanuel never would have needed him.
“What does it say?”
“Here,” he said, thrusting the letter into Adam’s chest as he reached for the photographs with his other hand.
“It’s in German.”
“Oh. My apologies. Sometimes I forget.” Immanuel pulled it from Adam’s hand and placed it on the hall table. “The usual letter. They miss me. They wrote about what’s going on at home. They’re very happy to hear that we are living together, and my mother wanted me to thank you for taking me in. I’m certain she would like you if you met.”
“So she knows we’re—”
Immanuel slowly flipped through the stack of cardboard-backed photographs. “I didn’t say it outright, but she knows. I’m sure after seeing Johannes and Theordor, she knows what to look for. Do you want to see a picture of my family?”
Adam stepped closer and took the picture from Immanuel’s hand. Staring up at him were three pale faces. His mother appeared to be the picture of maternal love. Her face and form were rounded and soft, and something in her eyes reminded him of Immanuel. He couldn’t be certain if the shape was the same, but they shared a brightness that made him think they shared the same intelligence. When he turned his attention to Immanuel’s father, the breath caught in his throat. They were nearly identical, twins separated by three decades. His figure had spread a little with age, yet their faces and necks and hands were all the same. Adam scratched his wrist. This would be the man he awoke with thirty years from now if the world didn’t interfere. If…
“You look just like your father,” Adam managed to say between tight swallows.
Flipping through the stack of pictures of the German countryside and Berlin, Immanuel turned away from his companion. “Do you really think so?”
Adam replied, but Immanuel couldn’t hear him.
At the bottom of the stack behind a picture of his sister was his face staring back at him. His eyes flickered toward the hall mirror behind him, but he quickly looked away from the crack running from his eyebrow to his cheek. He chewed on his lip as he slipped the photograph under the package out of sight. He couldn’t let Adam see it.
“Here’s a picture of Johanna,” he said, feigning indifference as he passed the next picture to Adam. Averting his gaze, Immanuel picked through the box for something to take his mind off the young man wearing his face.
“Your sister is quite pretty.”
“She’s all right.”
At the bottom of the crate, Immanuel found a small velvet pouch. Pulling the knot from the string, he dumped the contents into his palm to reveal two irregular balls of amber and a slip of paper. Written in purple ink were brief instructions in his mother’s hand. Put on either side of the doorway for good luck. Holding the glistening stones close to his eye, Immanuel peered inside. Broken bits of fern leaves and the disarticulated wings of insects hung suspended in the saffron amber, but as he turned the stones, he could barely discern a scratchy manmade shape. Someone, probably his mother, had carved a rune into each precious stone. While the symbols marred their natural beauty, the inscribed amber felt at home in the space between his fingers and palms. He rolled them between his fingers, wishing he could keep them in his pockets. Leaving Adam with the rest of the photographs, he carefully tucked the first bit of amber against the doorframe, out of sight.
“What are those?”
Immanuel froze as he placed the second one on the other side. How could he explain it without making his mother sound odd? “They’re— they’re a housewarming gift from my mother. It’s a tradition in our family to give stones like this when someone gets a new house. One is for protection and one is for luck.”
“Oh. That was very thoughtful of her.” Adam reached into the box and withdrew four volumes that had been lovingly wrapped in scarves and socks. “Well, that explains why it weighed so much.”
Peeling away the colorful yarn, Adam laid the books across the hall table. The first three were bound in leather with vertebrae bedecked in gold and silver letters. While he couldn’t understand the German titles, he could make out the names Charles Darwin, August Weismann, and Ernst Haeckel. He flipped through them, catching glimpses of sketched birds and creatures beside walls of text.
“Science books?”
Immanuel nodded as he reached his side. Lovingly running his fingers over the familiar edges, he said, “All on evolution. And look, none involve seals or walruses.”
“What about this one?”
Adam turned to the last book. Unlike the others, it was slim with a soft vellum cover. There were no words written across the front to indicate who had written it or what it was about, but as he flipped through it, he found that the inside was handwritten. Text darkened the pages, stretching in crooked, irregular rows across the parchment only broken by the occasional drawing. Most were circles filled with shapes and minute scribbles of ink, discernable to only the writer himself. As Adam went to peruse the opening page, Immanuel clamped it shut.
“I don’t know why my mother would send me one of Grandfather’s diaries. It must have been a mistake. I will send it back to her tomorrow. Oh, look, Johanna packed some of her elderberry wine, and I think this is cheese. Would you take it into the kitchen and pour us a glass?” Immanuel said as he pulled the book from Adam’s hand and replaced it with a bottle and tin.
“That sounds lovely. Just don’t spoil your dinner.”
When Adam winked and disappeared into the kitchen, Immanuel released a tense breath. He glanced toward the kitchen, making certain that Adam was occupied, before darting into the living room. Lifting the couch cushion, he tucked his photograph into the notebook and shoved it as far back as he could.
Adam could never see it. If he did, he would never think of his companion the same way, and Immanuel wasn’t going to let that happen.
***
Immanuel stared at the ceiling, listening to the gentle sigh of Adam’s breath at his side. Carefully slipping out from under his companion’s lax grip, he grabbed his dressing gown from the hook. At the door he paused, casting a glance at Adam’s sleeping form. He wanted nothing more than to climb under the sheets and rest his head on Adam’s henna-dusted chest. In his mind, he would close his eyes, lulled by the steady drum of his heart, and he would wake with the alarm’s ring, feeling… He couldn’t quite remember what a full night’s sleep felt like. Perhaps he wouldn’t worry so much and he certainly wouldn’t be climbing down the steps at all hours, venturing into rooms meant to serve diurnal creatures.
As Immanuel passed, he checked that the front door and windows were still locked. Without flipping on the lights, he fished under the sofa’s cushion until his fingers brushed against the frayed suede of the notebook. Pulling it out, he scooted into the kitchen out of sight from the street or the stairs. He lit the lamp in the middle of the table and settled in beside it. Shadows danced in the far corners of the kitchen, reflecting off the metal of the range and the wavered glass of the backdoor. Immanuel’s pulse quickened, but he couldn’t give into those thoughts. He couldn’t go upstairs and hide yet.
Turning the leather journal over, the pages of tight, smudgy script fell open to reveal the cardboard-backed photograph. There was no point in ignoring it. Immanuel pulled it out and held it to the light. His eyes locked onto the boy’s, which stared back at him from the paper with a smile-crinkled gaze, half a moment from a laugh. Immanuel’s hand edged toward the glass globe of the lamp. It would be so easy to destroy him once and for all, to be rid of his mocking smile and clear blue eyes. He raised the lid, inching the corner toward the dancing flame, but he kept trailing to the old Immanuel’s face. His hand shook as he held it out. He couldn’t do it. He was innocent. The boy posing for the picture had no idea what would happen to him. How could his younger self have known that a few stolen kisses would send his world crashing down around him? The boy thought the picture would mark his graduation and his transition to a university, a last boyhood portrait before he spent his days in deep study. The boy still had hope. He looked off past the camera to the world laid out before him. There was no hatred or fear in his world. The tragedy of Onkel Johannes’s imprisonment was a twist of fate that would never happen to him. He would never worry that his love would bring out the worst in others, that it would send him into exile, that he would end up at the mercy of a madman. The boy had no idea that his bones would be broken and his body and face would be marred to where he no longer saw himself in the mirror. Why had no one warned him?
Immanuel shut his eyes against the tears threatening to escape. How could he be free for months yet still see his prison cell rising around him each time he entered an elevator? Why did he jump at every sound or feel reality slipping from his grip the moment a museum patron exhaled a puff of tobacco in his direction? It had been months, months, but it never stopped. It never got better. Shaking his head, Immanuel squeezed his lids and placed the card against the back cover of the journal. Adam would never see it; that he would make sure of. If he knew there had once been an undamaged Immanuel, he would surely want him instead, and there couldn’t be two of them grieving for a lost boy.
Blinking the fog from his damaged eye, he turned his attention to the strange journal. What was his mother thinking to send it alongside his evolution books? He had told Adam it had been his grandfather’s, but honestly, he had no idea who wrote it. While the pages had been bound within one cover, they varied in size, jutting from the edge of the notebook like crooked teeth. He flipped through the pages, watching the handwriting grow and shrink as he progressed. As rapidly as one hand appeared, another replaced it on different paper. Turning the book on its side, he could see where the pages changed where each new author spoke. The creator had disarticulated other books centuries ago and rebound them in a new spine, but why? What was so important that it had to be condensed to a
portable volume?
He opened the cover expecting to find a title page only to meet a wall of tight text. Parts were in an archaic German while the rest was written in Latin. Immanuel scanned the first page, his light brows furrowing as the author dove into why certain mediums didn’t work to create the desired reaction. For a moment, Immanuel thought it might have been a science book after all, but when he turned the page, he found a series of concentric circles littered with minute hooked figures. Immanuel knew what it was: alchemy. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. It was ridiculous that his mother kept reminding him of their family’s sordid past. Alchemists to scientists wasn’t something to be proud of. No one bragged about having an alchemist in the family. It was embarrassing and— Immanuel’s hand trailed to the chain and vial hanging around his neck. Giving the chain a gentle tug, he pulled it from his shirt. In the wavering flames of the lamp, the gold and silver leaves appeared to flutter. Engraved in the top of the stopper in Latin were the words “Miscē cum Cruor.” Mix with blood. With a gentle twist, the lid came off and the sweet smell of the eternal forget-me-nots within wafted out. Whatever his ancestors had bottled all those years ago had worked. It had revitalized the pressed flowers and it had brought him and Emmeline Jardine back to life. After years of shaking off his mother’s superstitions, her strangely colored rocks, her amulets, and her whispered chants, he wondered if she had been right. If his mother sent him the book, he had to believe there was a reason. He turned back to the first page and began to read.
Time passed slowly as he struggled to decipher the arcane words in his presumed ancestor’s deplorable handwriting. At the third tolling of the grandfather clock, the idea finally clicked. The circles and lines drawn in the upper corner of the page were merely a way to convey meaning, to instruct the material how to bend to the person’s will. Immanuel’s thoughts turned to hours spent next to bubbling chemistry sets, waiting for migraine-inducing solutions to drip into something worthy of turning in to his professor. It didn’t take much to ruin a reaction. Perhaps alchemy had been nothing more than science mixed with superstition. His eyes trailed to the note below circle of symbols once more.
Dead Magic Page 9