by Erin Lindsey
Essex. The man responsible for all of it—the murders, Thomas and Clara’s kidnapping, the shades running loose all over New York. My finger twitched on the trigger of my Colt.
“Mock if you like, Wiltshire, but those things are as likely to kill you as the rest of us.”
“Perhaps, but I console myself with the notion that they’ll get you first. There would be such poetic justice in it, don’t you agree?”
“Justice.” Essex gave a derisive snort.
“Of course, forgive me. A man like you wouldn’t believe in justice, would he?”
“If by a man like me you mean a realist, then no. The world doesn’t work that way.”
“So the world can be damned, is that it?” Thomas had seen Matilda, which would have alerted him to our presence. Now he was trying to distract his captor.
“Good Lord, Wiltshire, are you always this dramatic? You make it sound as if I’m some sort of anarchist. I’m simply willing to do whatever is necessary to get back on my feet, like any good businessman.”
“Don’t give me that. Barber’s chicanery is barely two weeks old. You and the Crowes have been at this for nearly a month.”
“Barber’s thieving left me little choice but to seek remedy where I may. But you’re right, I recognized the business potential of this venture long ago.”
“Business potential.” Thomas’s voice dripped with scorn.
“Have you even stopped to consider the commercial value of what lies beyond that portal? Loved ones, lost secrets, curiosities beyond our wildest imaginations…”
“Deadly spirits, immortal beings…”
“No great enterprise comes without sacrifice. How many men have died building the railroads?”
“Forgive me, but I don’t see the analogy.”
Essex tsked. “I can see I’m wasting my time. Just get back to work and maybe you’ll come out of this alive.”
Now it was Thomas’s turn to snort. “You must think I’m a fool.”
Cautiously, I dared another peek around the chair. It was just the three of us in the study. Matilda had succeeded in luring the other two guards away; Mr. Burrows and the others were presumably dealing with them right now. But that didn’t make things easy. They were on the far side of the room, and Essex had a gun. I could take a shot at him, but what if I missed? If I could just get a little closer …
“If I thought you were a fool, Wiltshire, you wouldn’t be here. Then again, perhaps you’re not as clever as I was led to believe. What the deuce is taking so long, anyway?”
“This cipher is inordinately complex,” Thomas said, sounding genuinely irritated. “If you’re in such a hurry, why not simply consult the folio’s rightful owner?”
“Drake?” Essex laughed humorlessly. “Do you have any idea what that man is capable of?”
“I’ve recently become acquainted with his abilities, yes.”
“Then you understand perfectly well why he isn’t an option. Believe me, if I saw a more expedient means of translating these manuscripts, I wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. But I need a competent cryptologist familiar with magic, and I’m afraid those don’t grow on trees. Moreover, as you can see, my need has grown rather urgent of late. If we don’t get this spell under control … Well, it’s like an industrial leak, isn’t it? All these shades running rampant—positively toxic. So in a way, we’re both on the same side, at least for now.”
“In a way,” Thomas said dryly, and I heard a rustle of pages as he went back to work.
My time was up. I’d have to take my chances with the gun. Mouthing a silent prayer, I eased back the hammer.
Whether God heard me or not I couldn’t say, but just then a crash sounded in the hallway. Essex turned at the sound, and I saw my chance. Uncoiling from my crouch, I fired.
But the Colt .45 was too much gun for me. The bullet went well wide, splintering the wainscoting behind Essex. He whirled and fired back, but he wasn’t much of a shot either; a picture frame cartwheeled off the table beside me. I squeezed off another round, two-handed this time, and managed at least to graze his arm. Essex howled and staggered for the door, and before I could cock the hammer again, he fled.
I dove back out into the hallway—and found myself face-to-face with a new threat, a man barreling toward me with a murderous expression. Except it wasn’t a man, because each step he took sent a glitter of frost radiating out from his footfalls.
A shade. Not our shade.
I took a shot at him—which was perfectly pointless and nearly cost poor Mr. Smith his life. The medium scrambled for cover, while the shade didn’t even break stride. I stumbled back, gun still leveled uselessly at the spirit. My heart clutched like an icy fist, and not just from fear; I could feel the fragment humming to life inside me. My muscles seized, knees locking beneath me, and I hit the floor hard. The shade was nearly on top of me now, reaching for me with blue-black hands …
The shade went rigid. In the same instant, a wooden pole pierced him like a spear, passing through his body and clattering to the floor behind me. The shade vanished like smoke in the wind. Behind him, Thomas straightened from his throw.
My heart started pumping again, but I could still feel the fragment burning inside me. I grabbed the flask of special tea in my breast pocket and drank greedily, and the icy burn subsided.
“Rose.” Thomas helped me to stand, and without thinking, I threw my arms around him. He returned the embrace warmly. “I knew you’d come,” he murmured, his voice honey in my ear. “Are you all right?”
“No time for that!” Mr. Smith waved frantically at the far end of the hall. “The way is clear, but who knows for how long? This house is teeming with shades!”
“The folios,” Thomas said. “We don’t dare leave them behind…” He ducked back into the study.
“Where are the others?” I asked the medium.
“Leading our hosts on a merry chase. There were more of Essex’s men just in there, playing billiards, so Burrows and Henny split up and led them in opposite directions. That’s when the shades started showing up. I managed to convince the first one to leave me alone, but this fellow”—he gestured at the wooden pole Thomas had thrown—“was too far gone.”
“In that case, we’d better take this.” I started to retrieve the ash pole—and then thought better of it, remembering what had happened when I’d touched Thomas’s walking stick. “On second thought…”
Thomas reappeared, a leather satchel slung over his shoulder. “Clara?” he asked, stooping to retrieve the ash pole.
“Outside, I hope, with the Wangs.”
“As should we be,” Mr. Smith said. “This way!”
We made it as far as the staircase before running into one of Essex’s men. He raised his gun, but Thomas was quicker, cracking the wooden pole over the man’s wrist and forcing him to drop his weapon. They struggled. Then Henny Weber burst through a door on the landing and bowled straight into the man, shoving him bodily into the wall. She pinned him there just long enough to tuck a little vial into his breast pocket and slam her palm into his chest, breaking the glass.
“I’m sorry, young man,” she said, laying a hand against the wall behind him, “but we don’t have time for this.” And as the rest of us watched in astonishment, the man tumbled backward through the wall as if it weren’t even there, only to have Henny snatch her hand away and return the wall to a solid state, trapping the man within.
“Er,” said Thomas, “I beg your pardon, but who—?”
But we didn’t have time for introductions either, so I grabbed his hand and we took the rest of the stairs two at a time.
We’d nearly made it to the front door when I heard the click of a revolver being cocked. Three of Essex’s men materialized from the shadows, guns leveled at us. “I’ll take that,” one of them said, snatching the Colt from my hands; I recognized the bearded man from that morning. “Where’s Essex?” he demanded.
“Fled,” I told him, “like the coward he is.�
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“That’s a lie.”
“It’s not, actually,” Thomas said. “Feel free to search the house, though you ought to be careful. There are a fair few angry spirits about.”
The roughs exchanged looks. “That’s it,” said one. “I’m through.”
“And me,” said another. “Not getting paid near enough for this shite.”
“Fine,” said the bearded man, “we’ll go. But this lot have seen our faces, so we take care of ’em first.”
“Right.” And suddenly there was a revolver against Thomas’s head, the hammer clicking back, but before I could even cry out, the bearded man batted the gun away.
“Not here, eejit.” He gestured at the narrow hallway. “Want his brains all over you? We’ll do it outside.”
They marched us out into the cold night and forced us to our knees. Henny had tears in her eyes, and Mr. Smith’s lips moved, as though in prayer. As for Thomas, he met my gaze and held it as if trying to transmit some silent message, though what it was, I couldn’t say.
I lifted my gaze to the moon, cold and bright between the clouds. It looked changed to me somehow, as though I were seeing it through new eyes. For a few days, everything had been different. Even in that moment, kneeling in the wet grass with a gun pointed at my head, I knew that for a gift. Heavenly Father, I prayed, please watch over Mam …
A crackle sounded from the trees. I felt a pang of fear, thinking it must be Clara and the Wangs. Then Matilda Meyer erupted from the pines, hands outstretched, face twisted in wrath. The roughs whirled. Guns went off. Thomas spun on the grass, sweeping one man’s legs out from under him and diving for his gun. But before he could reach it the bearded man cracked a wooden pole over the back of his head, dropping him like a sack of flour.
Things happened even faster after that.
Henny made a grab for her pack but met the same fate as Thomas, taking a hard blow across her shoulders and slumping to the ground. The bearded man swung at Matilda, forcing her to leap back even as another rough came around to flank her. I scrabbled in the grass for something, anything, to use as a weapon, but I couldn’t even find a rock on that well-tended lawn. All I could do was look on helplessly as Matilda was surrounded. Then Mr. Smith got to his feet, pointed at the roughs, and said, “Them,” and a figure stepped out of the shadows and grabbed one of the roughs by the scruff of the neck. For half a heartbeat, I wondered who the newcomer was; then a throb of cold pulsed through my body, and I understood.
The rough couldn’t even scream. His whole body went rigid, face contorting in a rictus of terror. The shade held on to him for a moment more, until Mr. Smith said, “That’s enough, I think,” and the spirit let go, watching dispassionately as the rough crumpled to the ground.
Another shadowy figure emerged from the trees, and another. The shades formed a ring around us but didn’t attack. They seemed to be taking orders from Mr. Smith.
Mediums, it turns out, can be quite handy in a fight. Provided you’re surrounded by dead people, of course.
I’m not sure the East River Gang fully understood what was going on. They didn’t know Mr. Smith, after all, or what he was capable of. But they certainly knew a mob of shades when they saw one, and they panicked. Most of them scattered, but a few started attacking blindly, including the bearded man. He lunged at Matilda, sweeping the ash pole through her middle as if she were made of smoke. An instant later she vanished—and I started screaming.
I fell to my knees, clutching the sides of my head in torment. The fragment was resonating so powerfully that I could actually hear it, a high-pitched whine fit to shatter my skull. There was movement all around me, friend and foe shouting and running, and suddenly Mr. Wang was at my side, but I knew instinctively that no amount of special tea would save me this time.
“They’re getting away!” someone cried.
“Let them!”
Faces and voices blurred together; it was all I could do to make out words.
“What’s happening? What’s wrong with her?” Clara—that voice I would know anywhere.
“The fragment. When the ash touched Matilda … My God, it must be tearing her up inside!”
Not tearing. Nothing so crude as that. This was searing, incandescent agony. It was just as Thomas had said: a hot knife, and any moment now it would slide into my heart. I knew because I could feel exactly where it was, its precise shape and size, as if it were being branded onto my insides.
Mr. Wang pressed a flask of tea into my hands but there was no time; I had the strength for one thought and one alone. “Clara.” It came out as little more than a sob. “Clara, I need your help.”
She fell to her knees in front of me. “What can I do? Tell me what to do, Rose!”
I forced the words out in tortured gasps. “I need … you … to stab me.”
She reeled back in shock.
“With that.” I gestured at an ash pole lying in the grass.
“What do you mean, stab you?” She threw a terrified look at the others. “What does she mean?”
“I think I understand,” Mei said. “If the wood touches the fragment inside her, it may banish it.”
“No…” Thomas’s voice, distant and groggy. He struggled to sit, one hand clamped against the back of his head. “Don’t. Too dangerous…”
I started to argue, but another stab of pain turned my words into a scream. No time. There’s no time …
I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Mr. Wang grabbed the ash pole and smashed it over the garden wall, shattering it. He took one of the pieces and carved off a few hasty chunks with a pocketknife, then thrust the makeshift dagger at Clara. She took it with a numb expression.
“It’s here.” I clutched at my chest. “Right here, up against my heart. It burns…”
Tears streamed down Clara’s face. “I’m not a doctor.”
“You studied. You know where to do it.”
“I’ll kill you! I’ll puncture a lung, or tear a hole in your chest cavity, or…”
Henny gave a little cry. “I can help with that! I can seal the wound! It’s my specialty, sealing things.”
Clara shook her head, staring at the wooden knife in her hand. “I can’t. Rose, I can’t…”
I wanted to reassure her, to tell her I had faith in her, but I could only grind my teeth against the screams.
“No choice!” Mr. Wang gripped her shoulder urgently. “If you do not, she dies!”
Clara tore my dress open. Cold fingers flitted over my bare skin, and she started whispering to herself. “Heart, lungs, liver…” Laying her hand against my left breast, she started measuring finger widths. “One, two…”
She pressed the tip of the wooden blade against my chest. Then she froze, shoulders heaving with panic.
“Clara, please.”
She pushed. I screamed until I could scream no more, and everything went black.
CHAPTER 30
AFTERMATH—A SHARPE SET OF QUESTIONS—THE PLAN
The first few seconds after I woke were profoundly disorienting. I was in a strange bed, yet the room was somehow familiar. Gradually, it dawned on me that I was in a guest room in the house on Fifth Avenue, but I couldn’t quite recall which one. My mind felt sluggish, and as for my body … I couldn’t feel the fragment anymore, but in its place was a throbbing pain, and when I stirred I felt the tug of a bandage on my chest.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t put you in your own bed, but the doctor needed space to work.”
The sound of that well-loved voice lifted the fog, at least partially. “Mr. Wiltshire?”
“Thomas,” he said, appearing at my bedside. “Remember?”
“I don’t, actually. I mean, I remember that part, but … How did I get here?”
“In a carriage. You were unconscious but stable, thanks to Clara and Mrs. Weber.”
“Is everyone—”
“Whole and accounted for, among our friends at least. Essex escaped.” A flicker of anger crossed Thomas’s face
. “That reckoning will have to wait for another day, it seems.” He helped me to sit and poured a strong-smelling drink from a teapot at my bedside table. “From Wang. It will help you recuperate.”
I’d had more than enough special tea for one lifetime, but it seemed rude to refuse, so I took a few swallows. Thomas sank into a chair at my bedside, watching me through asymmetrical pupils. I must have had the same strangely unbalanced look. We all must have. Battle scars, I thought, though thankfully not permanent ones. “The fragment?”
“Gone.” Thomas’s mouth curved just short of a smile, and there was a warm, glassy look in his eye that I couldn’t quite read. “Banished back to the otherworld, along with the rest of Matilda Meyer. Not only did you save yourself, you managed to make an important scientific discovery in the bargain, one that could help save lives in future. You truly are the most resourceful person I’ve ever met.”
That was one word for it. Reckless was another. Or mad. “Poor Clara, she must be furious with me.”
“I’m sure she isn’t.”
He didn’t know Clara like I did. Still, her wrath was a small price to pay for having my death sentence lifted. “I had no choice. The way the fragment was resonating…” I shuddered at the memory. “What exactly happened?”
“I wish I could tell you, but in truth we’re not sure. There’s so much we don’t yet understand about such things. As nearly as I can work out, when Mrs. Meyer was banished back to the otherworld, it was like a fishing line going taut, dragging at the fragment embedded in your flesh. I can’t imagine the pain you must have experienced.”
No, you can’t. I was suddenly eager to change the subject. “What about you—are you all right? You took quite a blow.”
He raised a hand to the back of his head, wincing. “I’ve been better, but the doctor says I needn’t be concerned.”
“And the portal?”
“There is work yet to do on that front, I’m afraid. Mrs. Weber is confident that her alkahest will work, but we still have no idea how we’re to place it at the site of the breach. As for the ribbon of light, we can’t dispel it until we understand its nature, which means we must first crack the cipher used in the manuscripts.”
