by Erin Lindsey
“Always good to have a necromancer about,” Mr. Smith said, which is a phrase you don’t hear often.
We piled into an oversized carriage and headed uptown.
“How are Mrs. Meyer’s spirits?” Thomas asked as we rattled our way up Fifth Avenue.
“Low,” Mr. Smith admitted. “She’s awfully tired of being banished back to the portal, poor thing. Are you going to be able to help her, Wiltshire? She deserves her rest.”
“I promised to try. We’ll have to help all of them, I suppose, or banish them, if they’re too far gone.”
“Condemning a human soul to an eternity of agonized wandering is not lightly done,” Mr. Jackson put in. “I hope we’ll consider that a last resort.”
“Agreed,” said Mr. Sharpe, “but we’ll need to do whatever is necessary. Grace is counting on the Agency to resolve this matter as quickly as possible.”
Grace? My mouth fell open a little. “The mayor knows about all this?”
“Why, of course. For a while there, things were looking quite grim, weren’t they? I expect I’d have had the president himself shouting down the telephone if things hadn’t turned a corner when they did.”
The mayor knows. The president knows. Not for the first time, I felt as if the whole world had been sharing a secret at my expense.
It was nearly dark by the time we reached our destination: the same modest cluster of graying piers where I’d posed as a reporter from Harper’s and interviewed Peter Arbridge. A mere four days ago, yet it might as well have been a lifetime.
“We can watch from here,” Thomas said, gesturing at the end of the pier.
Mr. Sharpe gazed out over the river with a frown. “Where exactly is it? Will we be able to see around Ward’s Island?”
Henny giggled, as if the question were ridiculous. “You will see, don’t worry.”
I started to ask a question of my own, but the words were stolen from my lips. A familiar shiver rippled through my body, and I went rigid with terror. “She’s here,” I whispered. “Thomas, I can still feel her.”
Matilda Meyer appeared under the moonlight.
“That shouldn’t be.” Thomas gripped my shoulders; I saw my own fear reflected in his eyes. “Are you in pain? Is the fragment still—”
“Wiltshire, please.” Mr. Jackson steered him aside. “May I?” When I nodded, he tugged off his glove, unfastened the top buttons of my overcoat, and rested the flat of his hand against my chest. “The fragment is gone,” he declared after a moment. “All of it.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding.
“You’re certain?” Thomas demanded.
“I’m certain. What Miss Gallagher experienced was merely an aftereffect of her ordeal. It has passed already, has it not?”
Merely didn’t feel like quite the right word, but the rest was true enough; I nodded.
“I’ve heard of this before,” Mr. Smith said. “On the rare occasions when someone survives a fragment, it is possible that they will forever more be sensitive to the presence of shades. Not unlike myself, actually.”
More battle scars, I thought. Only this one was permanent.
Thomas seemed to have a similar thought, judging from the look of quiet regret in his eyes. “Does it hurt?” he murmured, taking my shoulders again.
“Not really. It’s not like before. I don’t know how to describe it. Like a chill, or a tuning fork being struck.”
“You’re certain you’re all right?”
“I’m certain.”
He stayed where he was, hands on my shoulders, pale eyes locked on mine, and for a few heartbeats it felt as if we were the only two people on the pier. But of course we weren’t, and gradually I realized that everyone was staring at us, even Matilda Meyer.
There is nothing quite like the gray stare of a dead woman to throw cold water on your romantic moment, let me tell you.
Matilda’s lips moved. “No,” Mr. Smith said, “I’m afraid she still can’t hear you. But if you’ve something to say, I would be happy to relate it.”
The shade advanced on me, fingers knotted anxiously before her.
“Rose,” the medium said, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, for everything. Mr. Smith told me what happened after I was banished, how you nearly … I would never have been able to forgive myself.”
For the first time, I was able to look her straight in the eye when I answered. “You have nothing to apologize for. It wasn’t your fault. And it’s over now.” But no, I realized, that wasn’t quite true—it wasn’t over for Matilda. She was still a shade. Still a mother terrified for her children. “When this is done I’ll help Mr. Wiltshire in any way I can. Whatever it takes, I promise.”
She bowed her head briefly, and when she looked up again, there was a tear working its way down her cheek. That’s how I learned that the dead can still weep.
“All right,” Mr. Sharpe interrupted, “this is all very touching, but we’d better get on with it. I imagine it will take some time for Mrs. Meyer to reach the site of the breach.”
Mr. Smith nodded. “The current will have no effect on Mrs. Meyer herself, but it will drag at the pouches she’s carrying.” To Matilda, he added, “This will greatly test our lessons, my dear. Are you sure you can manage?”
By way of answer, Matilda picked up a bit of rope lying on the pier and bound it about her waist. Not only did she successfully manipulate the knot, the makeshift belt hung about her hips as though she were an ordinary, perfectly solid woman.
“An apt pupil,” Mr. Smith said, beaming proudly.
Henny deposited her satchel on the pier. “There is a waterproof oilskin in the bag. One flask is in there, the other in a separate pouch, here. When you reach the site of the breach, all you have to do is put both flasks in the oilskin pouch and smash them.”
“She won’t be harmed?” Mr. Smith asked.
The witch shook her head. “She is not a physical being, so the alkahest will have no effect on her. But once the portal is sealed, if she is banished once again, she will not be able to return without the help of a necromancer.”
“Well then,” said Mr. Smith, “I suppose I’ll have to help her stay out of trouble until Wiltshire finds a way to make her whole.”
Matilda stood over the satchel, staring at it with a look of fierce concentration. She picked it up, hefted it a few times, and shouldered it. Then she turned and walked off the end of the pier, plunging into the water without so much as a splash. A thin sheet of ice bristled over the surface, only to break apart in the current.
“Well,” said Thomas, “that’s that, I suppose. Let’s hope this works.”
“It will work,” Henny said.
“In the meantime…” Mr. Jackson started emptying the contents of his doctor’s bag. Nothing fancy to look at—I’d seen more exotic items on the shelves at Wang’s General Store—but he manipulated them gingerly, as though any one of them might explode if it wasn’t handled just so.
Henny hovered over him, curious. “Is that sawdust?”
“Mmm. Ash.”
“And incense paste. Very interesting…”
Between their two kneeling bodies, the rest of us couldn’t see much. There was a hiss and a flare of light, not unlike a match being struck, and a moment later the warlock unfolded himself from his crouch and declared, “It’s done.”
“That’s it?” Frankly, I was a little disappointed. “Just like that, the ribbon of light…?”
“Dispelled.” Mr. Jackson smiled. “What were you expecting, Miss Gallagher? Thunderclouds, perhaps? Lightning crackling from my fingertips?”
“Oh, don’t make fun,” Henny said. “She’s new at this.”
“Forgive me, you’re right, of course. Actually, I sometimes wish my art were a bit showier, but most necromancy is invisible, at least to mortal eyes. I can assure you that what I just did looked rather more impressive to any shades nearby.”
“And I can assure you,” Henny said, tottering back up the pier, “in
a while you will wish that alchemy was a little less showy.”
Thomas winced. “Exactly how much attention will we be drawing to ourselves this evening?”
“A lot,” said the witch.
As it turned out, that was something of an understatement, because about three hours later New York was treated to a spectacle the likes of which it probably hadn’t witnessed since the ancient days of the fae.
* * *
At first it looked like the ebbing of the tide: a modest, if rapid, receding of the water. But as the river drew away from the shore, I felt a rumble beneath my feet like the tremor of a distant earthquake. And then the pier bucked beneath us, pitching the lot of us to the boards, and a wall of water erupted into the sky. It hung there for a split second, dark and shivering, before collapsing with a roar, soaking us in mist.
All of us sat frozen in various poses of disarray.
“Well,” said Thomas, “you were certainly right about a show.”
“That wasn’t the show.” Pointing a plump finger, Henny said, “There is the show.”
Another wall rose up out of the water, but this time it was made of light: a great undulating sheet in every color of the rainbow, indigo and green and deep cobalt blue. It reached as high as the stars, as wide as the span of Hell Gate itself, spreading over New York City like the wings of an angel.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
CHAPTER 32
THE OFFICIAL STORY—A COLD CASE—THE JADE ROSE—NEW RESPONSIBILITIES
“Aurora borealis? You have got to be kidding me!” I stared incredulously at the page, but the words failed to rearrange themselves under my glare; the article continued stubbornly to insist that the undulating wall of light over the East River had been a particularly dazzling display of the Northern Lights. In New York City.
Mr. Burrows laughed, turning over a page of the Herald. “God bless the papers. Like a pack of starved dogs, aren’t they? They’ll gobble up any scrap of garbage you feed them.”
Thomas frowned into his morning tea. “I’m not sure I can share your delight in that, Burrows. We’ll come to rue it one day, I think.”
“Maybe, but for now it’s deucedly handy. You can set the sky afire with magic before the whole of New York, but a few calls from F. Winston Sharpe, and voilà.” Mr. Burrows turned his paper around, brandishing the headline across the breakfast table. “Aurora borealis.”
“And a nighttime explosion courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers,” I added, “which the fine gentlemen at The New York World report as if it had no connection whatsoever to the mysterious appearance of the Northern Lights a matter of seconds later, in exactly the same spot.” I shook my head in disgust. “To think I actually wanted to be one of them.”
“An army engineer?” Mr. Burrows inquired idly, sipping his coffee.
“A reporter, obviously.”
“You’d make a very capable one,” Thomas said, thumbing a page of the Times.
“Thank you, I think.”
Clara poked her head into the dining room. “Sorry to disturb, but there’s a policeman at the door.”
Thomas sighed. “I suppose it was too much to hope that we might actually have some peace and quiet this morning.”
Mr. Burrows glanced up from his paper. “Good morning, Clara. Does Wiltshire have you answering the door as well as baking these delectable scones? Where’s Mrs. Sellers?”
“Ah,” said Thomas, “didn’t I tell you? Mrs. Sellers resigned yesterday.”
“Resigned?” Mr. Burrows raised his eyebrows. “Oh, dear.”
“Yes, I’m afraid the past two weeks have been a bit much for her. She had a hard enough time coping with Rose’s new role in the household, but Clara getting in on the fun was more than she could take.”
“More than a lot of us could take,” Clara muttered.
“And so,” Thomas went on, “speaking of new roles, Clara will be taking on greater responsibilities from now on.”
I glanced at her in surprise. “You didn’t tell me that.”
She shrugged. “I could use the pay rise.”
“To put toward nursing school, perhaps,” Thomas said, keeping his gaze trained carefully on his paper.
Clara clucked her tongue impatiently. “That’s enough of that, now. Advice is one thing, but now you’re just being pushy. I said I’d think about it and I will. Let that be the end of it.”
“Fair enough.” Thomas rose and buttoned his jacket. “Rose, you’re welcome to stay and finish your breakfast, but I suspect the police officer at my door is a mutual friend.”
“No, I’ll come. Excuse us, Mr. Burrows.”
“Not at all. Have you finished with the World?”
As Thomas predicted, the copper at the door was Sergeant Chapman, looking even more bedraggled than the last time we’d seen him. “Wiltshire. Miss Gallagher.”
“Good morning, Sergeant. Would you care to come inside?”
The detective shook his head. “Got a busy morning. Just thought you might like to know that your friend from the East River Gang pulled through, barely.”
I offered a silent prayer of thanks. I hadn’t much cared for the notion that I’d killed a man, whatever sort of person he might have been.
“Seems almost losing his leg made him reconsider his position with the man upstairs, so he was feeling talkative yesterday. Gave up his boss and everything. Fella by the name of Danforth Essex—you know him?” His tone was casual, but I’d spent enough time around Sergeant Chapman to recognize a pointed question when I heard one.
So had Thomas, apparently. “Yes, Sergeant, we know him, and yes, we’d already worked out that he was our mysterious Mr. S. Or rather, Miss Gallagher had.”
Chapman grunted. “Gave us an address, too. Turns out it matches the location of a shoot-out three nights ago, up in Astorbilt country. Know anything about that?”
Thomas sighed. “Would you like to take our statements now or later?”
“That’s what I thought.” Chapman sucked a tooth, regarding us both as if we were badly behaved children. “The statements’ll have to wait, though. I’m headed for the Tombs. They got Essex locked up down there.”
“In a jail cell?” I actually clapped my hands in delight. “Where did they find him?”
“He didn’t get far after the shoot-out. Neighbors spotted him lurking in the woods and called the police. He spent the past two nights in the Tombs, but our friends down in the Sixth only saw fit to inform me this morning. Hopefully his memory’s no worse for wear, ’cause I got more than a few questions.”
“I have a few questions for him myself, Sergeant, if you don’t mind,” Thomas said.
“Don’t see why not, once we’re done with him. I’ll be bringing your friend Roberts in, too.”
“Sensible, though I doubt you’ll get much from him. Roberts was just a bystander in all this.”
“Anyways,” Chapman said, “I’ll let you know when I’m ready for that statement. Meantime, I looked into that thing you asked about.” Taking out his ledger, he read, “Mrs. Matilda Meyer, forty-five, body discovered floating in Long Island Sound on January 2, 1884, by the lighthouse keeper on North Brother Island. Coroner initially suspected foul play but changed his mind. Ruled an accident, case closed.”
“The coroner was right the first time, I’m afraid,” Thomas said.
“You got evidence of that?”
“Not at present, but I intend to get it.”
“Two years later?” Chapman grunted. “Good luck to you.”
“Yes, thank you, Sergeant,” Thomas said tartly. “What else can you tell me?”
Thomas copied down the rest of the information, and we sent the good sergeant on his way with a promise that we’d head down to the Tombs later to give our statements.
“Perhaps it would be a good time for you to stop by your mother’s,” Thomas said when Chapman had gone.
I sighed inwardly. I’d put it off for as long as I could, but I’d h
ave to face Mam eventually. I still wasn’t sure how much I ought to tell her. Part of me wanted to confess everything, to curl up in my mother’s arms and have her comfort me like a little girl. But I didn’t know where to begin, and anyway, I wasn’t sure her delicate health could take it.
As though reading my thoughts, Thomas said, “She’s your mother, Rose. Whatever you decide, she’ll love you all the same.”
Which of course was true, but that didn’t make the decision any easier.
I helped Clara clear up breakfast, and she changed the bandage over my scar, applying some fresh ointment that made it feel a little better. “Ain’t that somethin’,” she marveled, running a finger gingerly over the wound. “You’d think it was weeks old already. Who needs stitches when you got magic?”
“I don’t know about that. I’d take your stitches any day.”
She eyed me askance. “Don’t you polish my shoes, girl. I’m still mad at you.”
“You have every right to be. I’m sorry you got dragged into all this.”
“And what about you? Now that you’ve seen what all comes of adventure, you still got the taste for it?”
I thought about that for a long moment before answering. “I don’t know about adventure, but I’m not sorry I learned about this”—I gestured vaguely around us—“other world. The real world, I guess I should say.”
“Magic, ghosts, special powers…” Clara shook her head. “Next thing you know he’ll be telling us the Easter Bunny is real.”
We finished tidying up, and on my way out Clara handed me a paper bag soaked through with butter spots. “Are these—?” I peered inside and found a treasure trove of leftover scones.
“No sense letting ’em get hard.”
“Mam will love these! But are you sure—?”
“New leftover policy,” Clara said, smug as a cat licking cream off its whiskers. “Courtesy of the new lady in charge.”
I grinned back at her. Loath as I was to go back to being Rose the Maid, answering to Clara instead of Mrs. Sellers took some of the sting out of it.
Later that morning, Thomas and I headed down to Five Points. There was a nasty bite to the air, and I found myself wondering if Mam had enough coal to heat the flat. Funny, isn’t it, how quickly things settle back into the mundane? The night before, I’d been huddled on a pier on the East River watching magical lights shimmer in the sky, and now here I was worrying about coal and iron stoves. Life goes on, I suppose.
