by Amber Benson
Chapter Sixteen
Now John stood in the silence and gazed past the tellers’ windows at the heavy iron door of the vault.
Which hung open.
Excellent, Haversham thought. It’s time to teach William Swift a lesson.
Quietly, the soles of his shoes making only the softest scuff, he crossed the floor, moved between desks, and went around the last of the tellers’ windows. From there he could see the doors that led to rear offices and the stairs that went up to the management suite, where William no doubt maintained his own office. There was honor and dignity in such a life, but it seemed so strange to Haversham that one of the Protectors of Albion should be something so mundane as a banker.
From inside the vault there came a loud sneeze.
Haversham smiled. Either that was the one place William’s cleanliness had not reached, and there was dust, or whoever was inside had caught a summer cold. He heard a man’s voice curse softly, then the hitching breath of someone trying hard not to sneeze again, before yet another explosion emitted from within.
Without a sound, Haversham slipped around the door and stepped into the vault.
A slender man with thin blond hair and delicate features stood by the table at the center of the vault. He had pulled out several metal safe-deposit boxes, had opened one of them, and was examining its contents. In his right hand he held a gold necklace strung with rubies, and he played it over his fingers almost sensually. The man hadn’t noticed John’s entrance, and now Haversham put his hands into his pockets and leaned against the metal frame of the vault door.
“Why do I get the idea that doesn’t belong to you?”
The man spun, necklace clutched in his hands as though it were a weapon. His eyes were frantic, and he shook his head.
“Who the hell are you?”
Haversham smiled. “A concerned citizen. ” He nodded, still casual. “Now, are you going to put that back and come along like a good boy, or is there going to be rough stuff?”
The man was young— perhaps William’s age or even younger— and he had a cherubic quality. When he narrowed his eyes and his lips turned up into a sneer, though, that appeal disappeared.
“You’re no peeler,” the fellow said accusingly. He slipped the ruby necklace into his pocket. “Which means you’re a trespasser. While I, sir, am assistant to the manager of this bank. My name is Harold Ramsey, and from where I stand, it looks as though I have found the thief who has been plaguing this fine institution. ”
Haversham tightened his hands into fists in his pockets. He smiled humorlessly, and gritted his teeth as he shook his head.
“Oh, you’re a clever little bastard, aren’t you,” he said. “William already believes I’m the thief. You’d likely have no trouble convincing him. And here I was doing him a service. See, I care a great deal for his sister. So I decided to do her brother a favor. I thought if I watched the bank at night, captured the thief, he’d see he’s misjudged me. ”
Ramsey started to laugh. “Well, you’re well and truly fucked then, aren’t you?”
“You’d think,” Haversham said, not moving. “You’ll pin the crimes on me. No one will question you. After all, I haven’t a shred of proof that it was you and not me who was trespassing here tonight. No evidence at all.
“Except, of course, for your confession,” John added.
“What are you on about? You haven’t any confession from me. ”
Haversham grinned. It was a dark and ugly expression, and it unsettled his opponents. He knew, because he’d seen its effect on other men.
“No. I haven’t. ” He took his fists out of his pockets and started walking toward Harold Ramsey. John Haversham knew a bit of magic, but he wouldn’t need it for this. “But I will have one, and very soon. ”
Fear blossomed in Ramsey’s eyes. That was good. He had already lost.
Caught off guard by Philippe Mandeville’s challenge, William spent long moments staring at the sorcerer. He had never been very good at riddles. That had always been Tamara’s forte. His sister would have solved the puzzle immediately, he felt certain. Had he the freedom to translocate to Cornwall and pose the question to her, he might return with the answer. Then he could lay hands on this mysterious book of Mandeville’s, and go home to exorcise Oblis from his father’s withering body.
But if he dared depart, he knew he would never get the book, that seemed certain, and Horatio’s life— or afterlife— would be forfeit.
Mandeville adjusted his weight in the delicate birch chair, watching William intently all the while, his pale eyes flickering with curiosity.
“Have you an answer then?” the sorcerer drawled, his vowels long and trilling. He tilted his head, and a wolfish grin slowly spread across his face.
He thinks he’s got me, William thought angrily. He bloody well thinks I’m too stupid to answer the riddle.
William scowled, his brain working rapidly to find the correct answer. The architect in him began to examine the riddle from all angles. Riddles weren’t simply questions, but constructions, after all. They were built to be analyzed, unlocked, deconstructed.
What is the weight of my own soul?
What sort of question was that? The soul couldn’t be weighed, for it was intangible. No scale could measure its mass or substance.
Then again, there was more than one sort of scale. Perhaps the weight Mandeville referred to was the gravity of a soul, the seriousness of the spirit of a man.
Or, perhaps he referred to the moral weight, or the burden of a man’s sins.
Damn it! There are too many permutations!
“Come now, Mr. Swift,” Mandeville prodded, “surely you wouldn’t prefer a contest of spellcraft to one of wordplay. How much more intellectually stimulating this is!”
“A few more moments, please. I’m close,” William said quickly, his mind going completely blank. “I just about have a handle on it. ”
Wordplay.
Was there a clue there? He thought there must be.
Words. Riddles often were about deciphering the hidden meaning in the words themselves, rather than in the trick of the question. So what wordplay existed here? The weight of a soul.
Weight.
Weight? Or, perhaps, wait.
William smiled. “The wait of my soul, sir, or its duration, is eternity. ”
Mandeville clapped softly, almost mockingly. “Well done, young man. And now the rest? The weight of my soul?”
He’d been so pleased with his solution that William had forgotten all about the second half of the riddle. Clearly it indicated that Mandeville judged his soul of a different weight— or wait— from William’s. If Mandeville’s soul did not have eternity, then what was its duration? How long would it linger? Even if the man had damned himself with his dark magics, his soul would still last for eternity in Hell.
William frowned.
“Well?”
All right, get a hold of yourself, Will. No time like the present to figure this thing out!
His mind raced, blotting out all lines of thought but this one. Yet no solution presented itself.
Panic set in. If he could not answer, he might well win a sorcerous battle with Mandeville, but Horatio’s spirit might be destroyed, or remain trapped for eternity.
William glanced at Horatio’s portrait, his heart heavy.
If he didn’t get this right he was damning not just Horatio but himself, as well, to imprisonment for eternity. The wait of his soul.
His gaze flicked over the faces in Mandeville’s daguerreotypes; wide, terrified eyes scattered among angry, defiant ones. They all shared one thing, though suffering. To be trapped in their pur
gatory— the very thought made William’s blood run cold.
Then something caught William’s eye, startling him. The image of Horatio had been frozen before, but now the tiny figure of the admiral’s ghost moved! He waved his arm wildly. William’s astonishment lasted a mere instant, as he recalled the motion he had seen in the portrait he had studied when first entering the room. At the time he’d thought it an illusion or trick of the light. Now he knew it was nothing of the sort. Instead, it was the darkest of magics.
William started to step toward the rows of pictures, but Horatio immediately waved him away.
From the corner of his eye, William saw Mandeville rising from his birch chair, and moving toward him. A terrible finality fell upon William. The riddle seemed opaque. He would not solve it.
This could end only one way.
Startling even himself, he flung out his right hand, muttering a hex he had mastered only recently. A flash of blue light sparked at the tips of his fingers and shot out at his host.
“Desino!”
The power of the spell burned the air around William as it arced across the ether, enveloping Mandeville, trapping him inside its mass. William wasted not a moment. He grabbed Horatio’s portrait off the wall, and a tiny voice issued from the image of the ghost.
“Drop the frame!”
As though it had burned his fingers, he let the portrait fall. The picture crashed to the floor, smashing the frame into pieces. From within the enchanted sphere where William had trapped him, Mandeville roared his fury and struggled against the magic of Albion. In a moment he would be free.
From the shattered portrait rose a cloudy gray figure, coalescing into the ghost of Admiral Nelson. Horatio churned across the room, not taking a moment before he began to pick up several more of the ensorcelled images, shattering them in order to release the souls that were imprisoned within.
“The portraits, William!” Horatio said, his voice high and tight.
Behind them, Mandeville let out a howl of rage as he tore at his magical bindings.
William wasted not a moment. He tore one shelf of framed images from the wall and crushed them underfoot even as he swept his arm across another shelf. All of the pressure and frustration he kept within him came out in a rampage of destruction. With a cry of rage he shattered a daguerreotype with his fist and then began to strip more from the walls. His father, imprisoned within his own flesh by the demon Oblis. The bank, preyed upon by some mysterious, malicious thief. Sophia, so desperate to have every piece of him, never understanding that it was his dearest wish as well, but one he could never grant.
Chest heaving with exertion and fury, William stepped back to observe the wreckage of Mandeville’s collection of captive souls. One corner still contained several shelves that he had not yet touched.
Mandeville shouted at him, cursing his soul to Hell, cursing his mother and his mother’s mother, all the way back to Eve.
William summoned into his right hand a churning sphere of pure, primal magical force, and he hurled it into that corner. The room shook with thunder and that section of wall collapsed, shelves and frames broken into splinters and shards.
Many of the imprisoned, upon being released, simply faded away. Others lingered longer, and William wondered if the speed of their recovery from Mandeville’s spell depended upon the length of time they had been bound by it. Whatever the case, their souls were finally free to pass into the spirit world, and beyond.
One daguerreotype remained, hanging on the wall.
William’s hand closed around the last portrait. He hurled it to the floor and it cracked into several pieces. A strange buzz filled the air, so shrill that William covered his ears with his hands.
“Mandeville!” Horatio called, his voice nearly drowned out by the horrible buzz. William followed Horatio’s gaze but Mandeville was no longer there.
Abruptly the buzz ceased, and William was able to hear normally again. He and Horatio stared at the place where Mandeville had been, his body bound up in William’s spell, but now there was nothing there, not even the chair.
“Where did he go?” William asked, his voice forlorn, almost hollow.
After this, there was no way he was ever going to procure that book. He had been a fool to think he could just waltz into Philippe Mandeville’s home and secure the grimoire without greater preparation. But he’d been so intent and so desperate that he had not taken the time to formulate a real plan. He couldn’t even figure out a damned riddle, one upon which his father’s fate ultimately hinged.
William slumped against a shelf laden with books, his pulse racing and his temples throbbing. He couldn’t bear to look at Horatio, he was so disappointed.
The light touch of a hand upon his shoulder startled him. He raised an arm to defend himself, thinking Mandeville had returned to destroy him. Instead he found Antoinette beside him. She gently caressed his arm, a gleam in her eye that hadn’t been there before.
“Antoinette?” William began slowly. “But I I thought you were ”
Her coquettish smile roused something in him. He felt his cheeks flush as she continued to stroke his arm, and he forced himself to glance away.
“I saw your portrait,” Horatio said to Antoinette.
She nodded, but did not immediately speak. Then the ghost moved nearer, studying her suspiciously. “When did he capture your soul?”
“I have been his prisoner for as long as I can remember,” she said softly, at last letting her hand drop away. William felt both relief and disappointment as she stepped back and scowled at the shattered frames on the floor. “When we were attacked in the bayou I abandoned you. I was his to command, so long as he had my soul. He compelled me to come here, to hide and await his pleasure. ”
Kindness soothed her features again as she glanced at William. “But when you freed me— ”
“Your own father,” Horatio said, looking down at the object in Antoinette’s hand.
It was a daguerreotype. And William could guess the subject of the portrait.
Antoinette smiled at him. “He had to keep me in his thrall. I’m a Mandeville, after all. There’s power in our family. You had him off balance and I— well, I had surprise on my side, didn’t I? Once you freed me ”
She lifted the daguerreotype so William and Horatio could see the image of the man who was trapped there.
“He’s an evil thing, but he won’t be doin’ much harm to anyone from now on. ” There was a note of defiance that grew in her tone as she spoke. Her dark eyes were almost black in the half-light, rage held in check by reality. “I’ll keep him locked up till he’s ready to come out again and play nice. ”
By the look on her face, William did not think Philippe Mandeville would ever taste freedom again. He stared at Antoinette as he began to understand how long she must have been planning the events that had unfolded here.
“This was you wanted this to happen,” he said.
Antoinette stared hard at him. “Are you suggestin’ I drew you here all the way from England?”
His thoughts whirled. That would be too much to believe, but was it possible she had let whispers grow and rumors spread about the power of her father’s grimoire, waiting for the day when a sorcerer would attempt to steal it, one with enough power to defeat him and release her from his influence? Oh, yes. More than possible.
How long had Antoinette been her father’s prisoner, planning her moment to usurp him, studying his methods, his magic? William thought about how powerful she must be, and the idea unsettled him deeply.
“And the book? Does it even exist, or was it only bait all along?” he asked.
Antoinette smiled. Then she turned and placed the portrait inside a niche in the wall. William blinked
, and the portrait and niche disappeared, the plaster becoming smooth and unblemished.
“I don’t understand,” William said. “The others— your father trapped their souls, but you’ve taken him physically. He’s trapped in there completely?”
A dark look crossed her face. “Sometimes he wanted more than to just capture souls. I guess that just wasn’t hell enough for the people he decided to punish, like my mother. She’ll rest easier now. ”
Antoinette stepped out of the room a moment and when she returned to them she carried a large leather pouch, which she placed in William’s hands with an arched eyebrow and a playful grin.
“This is what you came for. ”
Inside the pouch, William found a book.
The book.
“I don’t know how to thank you— ” he began, but she put a honey-colored finger to his lips.
“Shush now, or I’ll change my mind. ”
William nodded. Antoinette leaned forward, her mouth brushing softly against the stubble on his cheek.
“Better get on now, William Swift, or I might be tempted to keep you here myself,” she whispered, her breath hot against his ear.
“Thank you,” William stammered, taking a step back from her. He too understood that his attraction to her could be as destructive as untamed fire. And that if she really wanted to keep him here, she might well be able to do it.
“Shall we return to Ludlow House then, Horatio?”
The ghost nodded, his translucent form already starting to fade.
“Antoinette,” William said, as he began the translocation spell. “The rest of the riddle. What was the answer?”
She smiled up at him, her gaze unreadable.
“Philippe Mandeville made a deal with the devil himself a long time past,” she replied. “The old monster’s soul had no weight, nor wait, ’cause he didn’t carry it anymore. He’d given it up, bartered for it. My father no longer had a soul. ”
FOR SEVERAL LONG HEARTBEATS, William hurtled through a gauzy gray nothing, a weird limbo space that tugged at him as though he was pushing through a viscous membrane. The sensation of motion fled, and his stomach lurched. He nearly stumbled as it ceased, and then he blinked, the world coming back into focus around him.
A changed world.
The dank, shadowy peril of the Louisiana bayou had vanished. Instead, he stood just inside the front door of Ludlow House.
“Thank the Lord,” he whispered. “I do so love translocation. ”
The air shimmered beside him and Horatio’s ghost appeared.
“Home at last,” the specter said. “It does a heart good. ”
William took a deep breath, nodding. “Indeed it does, my friend. I’m grateful for your help, but if you’ll excuse me, I feel as though I haven’t bathed since birth. ”
Horatio appraised him grimly. “You do look a fright. ”
“I’m certain I don’t smell any better than I look,” William replied. Indeed, the stink of the swamp was still on him, and the smell of death, and there was a film of filth covering him that he was sure would take a vigorous scrub.
The ghost drifted along beside him as he headed for the stairs.
“Right, then, young master Swift. I shall be only a shout away, should you need me. But if I do say so, you ought to surrender to the siren song of sleep, and rest for as many hours as its embrace will hold you. ”
William paused at the bottom of the steps, grinning as he turned to Horatio. “A good fight always brings out the dramatic in you, Horatio. ”
The specter inclined his head in a strange sort of bow. His form wavered, becoming less substantial, so that he was little more than a whisper of an image on the air.
“As it has ever done,” Horatio said. “Sleep well, William. ”
“Thank you, Horatio. For everything. ”
Then the ghost was gone, and the air in the house was still and quiet. William wondered if anyone else was awake.
He gripped the banister and started up. As his foot touched the third step, there came a rap at the front door.
He knitted his brows as he glanced back down. No voices came from outside, and the very stillness was unnerving.
What time is it? he wondered. The switch back from Louisiana had made him lose track entirely. Seems awfully late for visitors.
It was a safe bet that Martha and the other staff members who maintained their quarters in Ludlow House would be asleep by now. Nigel was likely prowling around somewhere, unless it was his turn to watch over Father. William grimaced in discomfort at the thought of answering the knock in his present condition, but curiosity overcame the embarrassment of his appearance and he went down to the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open.
Upon the doorstep stood Stephen Roberts, the rugged-faced peeler who had been investigating the thefts at Swift’s of London, and with him was John Haversham. The latter wore an expression of amusement and self-satisfaction that immediately set William’s teeth on edge.
“Good evening, Mr. Swift,” Roberts began, obviously taking note of William’s appearance but choosing not to comment. “Sorry to disturb you at this hour, sir, but I thought you might wish to know right away that your thief has had another go at the bank tonight, but he won’t be trying it again. He’s caught, sir, thanks to— ”
“Excellent,” William said. “Well done, Roberts. My thanks. ”
Then he turned his gaze upon Haversham, unable to stop the sneer that touched his features.
“And as for you, sir. I confess I had begun to believe I was wrong about you. No matter what my feelings might be about your intentions toward Tamara, I’d hoped that as a gentleman and a member of the Algernon Club, you could be trusted. But now I see that my instincts were correct after all. ”
A storm of anger swept across Haversham’s face. He put his hands in his pockets, as if by doing so he could prevent himself from physically attacking William.
Only at that point did William notice that Haversham was entirely unfettered. A frown of confusion creased his brow.
Then he saw the way Roberts shifted in embarrassment.
The peeler stroked his gray mustache.
“Sorry, Mr. Swift. Bit of a misunderstanding, it seems. Mr. Haversham isn’t the thief, sir. In fact, it’s him what caught the scoundrel. ”
William closed his eyes tightly and reached up to squeeze the bridge of his nose. He wondered how bad he actually smelled, felt the grime on his face, and then dropped his hand.
He opened his eyes.
“John, I’m sorry. My other duties have occupied me all of this very long day and night, and exhaustion has prompted me to behave unforgivably. ”
Haversham arched an eyebrow, nostrils flaring. “You won’t get any argument from me. ”
Taking a deep breath, William turned to Roberts. “But you’ve got the thief in custody now? In chains, I hope. ”
“Yes, sir. And I’m sorry to say, you know him. ”
William froze. “Know him? Who is it, then?”
“Your own man, Mr. Swift. Harold Ramsey. Your assistant, if I understand it correctly. ”