Quicksilver

by Amanda Quick

  “What now?” she demanded.

  Nick cleared his throat. “The reason Owen has never married is because he has yet to find the right woman.”

  Charlotte blinked and then smiled. “What a charmingly romantic notion.”

  “I’m not certain Sweetwaters can be called charmingly romantic,” Nick said. “But we take marriage very seriously. You could say it’s in the blood. A Sweetwater always knows when he finds the right woman.”

  Charlotte stopped smiling and narrowed her eyes. “How very convenient.”

  “Actually it can be very inconvenient,” Nick said. “It isn’t always easy to find the right woman. To tell you the truth, the family was starting to become concerned about Owen.”

  “Why?” Virginia asked.

  Tony shifted uneasily. “We think he has started nightwalking. It’s not a good sign.”

  “I don’t understand,” Virginia said. “What do you mean by nightwalking?”

  Once again Nick, Tony and Matt exchanged looks. This time she knew she would not get any answers.

  “It’s hard to explain,” Nick mumbled.

  Charlotte fixed him with a glare. “What does a Sweetwater man do if he doesn’t find the right woman? Does he content himself with a string of mistresses?”

  Nick was looking ever more uncomfortable. Matt and Tony had evidently concluded they were out of their depth. They lurched toward the door.

  “I think I need a cup of Mrs. Crofton’s excellent coffee,” Tony said.

  “And perhaps another muffin,” Matt added.

  They went through the door and disappeared out into the hall.

  An acute silence settled on the bedroom.

  Charlotte peered at Nick. “Exactly how does a Sweetwater know when the right woman comes along?”

  Nick blew out a deep sigh. “My father says it is a side effect of our talent. Something to do with our hunter’s intuition.”

  Virginia looked at him. “But not necessarily something to do with love?”

  The hunter in Nick must have sensed a trap. He glanced toward the door, as if longing to escape the room as Matt and Tony had done. But manfully he turned back.

  “‘Love’ is a rather mushy word,” he said weakly. “Hard to define, don’t you think?”

  Charlotte glared at him. “Not at all. One knows love when one experiences it. Isn’t that right, Ginny?”

  “Quite right,” Virginia agreed. “We may never encounter true love, but that does not mean that women such as Charlotte and myself won’t know it if we do run into it. Right, Charlotte?”

  “Absolutely,” Charlotte said.

  Nick scowled. “But what will you do if you never discover what you believe to be true love?”

  “Until then there is always Dr. Spinner’s treatment for female hysteria,” Virginia said.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Sometime later Virginia found herself alone with Owen in the bedroom. His temperature and the overheated energy of his aura were rapidly returning to normal.

  She released his hand. Rising to her feet, she crossed the room to the chest of drawers. The velvet sack containing the mirror was on top of the dresser. When she picked it up a ghostly frisson of glasslight shivered across her senses.

  She opened the sack and took out the mirror. The silver-and-gold handle was unnaturally warm in her hand. She carried the mirror to the window and examined the back of it. Strange crystals glittered ominously in the moonlight. An intricate Baroque design had been worked into the metal. It was too dark to make out the alchemical markings, but she could feel them with her fingertips. Small lightning flashes of power crackled through her.

  Glasslight, a lot of it, was held in stasis in the mirror. All that was required to release the energy, she thought, was will and talent. It was a true paranormal weapon, one that was activated by the human mind, not by a clockwork mechanism.

  Slowly, drawn by a compulsion that went far deeper than mere curiosity, she turned the mirror over to look at the glass. In the deep shadows of the bedroom she could not see her own reflection, but with her senses heightened she could perceive the energy that shifted in the surface of the artifact. It was as if she gazed into a pool of mercury. The Quicksilver Mirror seethed with the forces locked deep inside.

  Dread and fascination consumed her. She looked deeper. Terrible afterimages appeared and disappeared like moving photographs trapped in the strange glass. She caught fleeting glimpses of the dead and the dying.

  She saw fire as well, hot flames of silver and gold. The scorching, dazzling flames crashed and cascaded in the depths of the mirror. Her senses sang in response to the wild energy, urging her to unleash the forces in the glass.

  She knew then with her glass-reader’s intuition that any strong talent could use the mirror to blind or even kill. For a person with psychical abilities, the artifact was the equivalent of a gun. But someone endowed with a very special kind of talent could do much more with the device. She could set free the full power locked in the looking glass.

  Someone with her kind of talent.

  But what would one do with the strange energy that burned in the Quicksilver Mirror, she wondered. Then she thought about the weak energy that the killer had infused into the mirrors on Ratford’s and Hackett’s dressing tables and in the looking glasses on the walls of the terrible chamber beneath the Hollister mansion. Again the question arose in her mind. Why would anyone try to lock power into a looking glass?

  From out of nowhere she recalled something her mother had said a long time ago: Power is power, whether it is normal or paranormal. It is always potentially dangerous, and there will always be those who seek to manipulate it for their own ends.

  “Virginia.”

  Owen spoke in his sleep, uttering her name in a raw, rasping voice that shattered the spell of the mirror.

  She closed down her senses. The mirror darkened to an opaque gray. She inserted the artifact into the sack with shaking fingers and tied the cord.

  Setting the sack on top of the chest of drawers, she went back to the bed and gripped Owen’s hand. His fingers tightened around hers, but he did not awaken.

  She contemplated the moonlit night on the other side of the window and thought about what she had seen in the Quicksilver Mirror.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  At ten minutes to five in the morning, Virginia sensed the subtle but distinct change in Owen’s energy that told her he had surfaced completely from the depths. His breathing was relaxed, and his pulse was calm and steady. He was still asleep, but now his sleep felt entirely normal.

  She released his hand.

  “Virginia,” he muttered. He did not open his eyes.

  “I’m here,” she said gently. “All is well. Go back to sleep.”

  He stirred, turned on his side and did as she instructed.

  After a while she let herself out of the room and walked down the hall. She knew that Charlotte was asleep in the bedroom at the far end. She thought she heard Mrs. Crofton in the kitchen.

  When she reached the foot of the stairs Matt spoke softly out of the shadows.

  “Is Uncle Owen all right, Miss Dean?”

  “He’s quite well but still asleep. Where are Tony and Nick?”

  “Tony’s watching the back of the house. Uncle Nick is asleep in the parlor. Mrs. Crofton is in the kitchen. She came down a few minutes ago. Said she wanted to get an early start on breakfast because there were so many of us to feed.”

  Virginia winced. “It is very decent of her to make breakfast for all of us before she gives notice.”

  “She didn’t say anything about handing in her notice. Are you still certain that Uncle Owen will awaken with all of his senses?”

  “Quite certain.”

  “That is very good news, indeed,” Matt said. “We weren’t looking forward to dealing with him if that turned out not to be the case.”

  Matt’s obvious relief made her pause. “I understand your concern about the possible loss of his talent. It wou
ld be deeply disturbing for any strong sensitive to wake up and discover that his para-senses were blind. But what do you mean when you say that you weren’t looking forward to dealing with him?”

  Nick spoke from the shadowed door of the parlor. “You’ve said enough, Matt.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said quickly. “Sorry. I keep forgetting that Miss Dean isn’t family yet.”

  And that was all she was going to get out of him for now, Virginia realized. She turned toward Nick. “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning,” Nick said. He rubbed his jaw, testing his morning beard. “All is well upstairs, I take it?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Nick said. He lowered his hand and looked at her with an intent expression. “The Sweetwaters owe you. We always pay our debts.”

  “This is ridiculous,” she said, losing patience. “No one owes me a thing. For the last time, Mr. Sweetwater would have recovered on his own.”

  “Perhaps,” Nick said. “Perhaps not.”

  “I give up,” she said. “I’ll see you both at breakfast.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Matt said meekly.

  “Right, then,” Nick said. “Breakfast. Sounds like an excellent notion.”

  Virginia went down the hall to the kitchen, mentally bracing herself for the next challenge of what was shaping up to be a difficult morning. The smell of hot coffee greeted her. She swept into the room, electing to go for a straightforward approach. There was no longer any point in pretending that hers would ever be a respectable household.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Crofton,” she said.

  “Good morning, ma’am.” Mrs. Crofton took a large frying pan down off a wall hook and set it on the stove. “Young Matt and Tony have been awake all night and are no doubt famished. I have a hunch the rest of your guests will wake up soon. What with one thing and another, I decided it would be best to plan an early breakfast. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “I think I’ve had enough for a while,” Virginia said. “I drank so much during the night that I doubt that I will sleep for a week.”

  “Some peppermint tea, then?”

  “That sounds very good, thank you.”

  Mrs. Crofton disappeared into the pantry. “Mr. Sweetwater has recovered, I take it?”

  “Yes, but he’s still asleep. I expect he’ll be down for breakfast.”

  “Very good.” Mrs. Crofton reappeared with a small canister in one hand. She opened the container and ladled the herbal tea into a pot.

  Virginia sat down on one of the long benches at the large wooden table. “Mrs. Crofton, I realize that the goings-on in this household, especially of late, are not at all what you are accustomed to.”

  “No, ma’am.” Mrs. Crofton picked up the steaming kettle and filled the teapot. “This household is most unusual in a number of ways. Certainly not like any I’ve worked in previously.”

  “I know that you have been obliged to tolerate certain activities that you find unseemly and no doubt offensive to your high standards.”

  “I admit that I was somewhat unsettled by the notion of working for a psychical practitioner at first.” Mrs. Crofton set the kettle aside and carried the pot to the table. “I was very sure that you were a fraud. But I soon changed my mind.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mrs. Crofton put the teapot on the table and plucked a mug from a rack. She put the mug in front of Virginia. “I know now that you do, indeed, have a true talent. I also know that while some might call it a gift, it is also a burden. I’ve seen how the bad readings affect your nerves. I know that you suffer from poor sleep and nightmares after you’ve read the mirrors and seen things that no decent person should see.”

  “Yes, well, as I said, this is not a normal sort of household. I do understand that in the past few days it has become even more bizarre. Last night was no doubt too much for you. Under the circumstances, I cannot blame you if you wish to give notice. Never fear, I will provide you with a good character reference.”

  Mrs. Crofton drew herself up proudly. “Are you dismissing me, ma’am?”

  “What? Good Lord, no. I just assumed that in view of the odd activities around here of late, you would want to seek a position in a more respectable household.”

  “I went into service in a respectable household as a maid of all work at the age of twelve, Miss Dean. In that first post I was obliged to fight off the drunken attentions of the eldest son of the household. The lady of the house discovered us just as the young man was about to rape me. She blamed me and turned me off without a character.”

  Virginia frowned. “That was so unfair.”

  “It happens all the time. But I was fortunate. I landed on my feet in another respectable household. The husband took no interest in me. He seduced the poor governess instead. Got her pregnant. Needless to say she was let go. We heard later that she drowned herself in the river.”

  Virginia sighed. “She was certainly not the first young woman to take that path when she found herself in desperate circumstances.”

  “No, she was not. Since that post, I have worked in a number of other respectable households. In all but two of them, the husbands kept mistresses on the side. The sons frequented brothels and gaming halls. The women of the house were obsessed with jewelry, fine clothes, parties and their lovers.”

  “I see.”

  “The last post I held before I came here was with an elderly widow. I thought it was the perfect position. But toward the end she neglected to pay her staff. She was somewhat senile. Her family ignored her. I was the one who sat by her bedside when she died. She did not make provision for any of the servants in her will, and the family turned off all of us without a penny or a character. As a result, by the time I arrived on your doorstep, I was desperate.”

  “I understand,” Virginia said. “You did not have a choice when it came to employers. But you do now, don’t you? I’m assuming that the letter that you received from the Billings Agency the other day is an offer of employment in a more refined household.”

  “In her note, Mrs. Billings advised me that there was a position available in the household of Lord and Lady Ainsley. Mrs. Billings thought it might suit me.”

  “Lord and Lady Ainsley move in the very best circles. It sounds like an excellent position.”

  “I sent a note back to Mrs. Billings informing her that I was not interested.”

  Virginia put her mug down with enough force to create a sharp clink. “You did what?”

  “This household is an extraordinary one in many ways, Miss Dean, but it is considerably more decent and, yes, more respectable than the majority of the other households in which I have worked. Furthermore, I find it interesting.”

  Virginia stared at her, dumbfounded. “Interesting?”

  Mrs. Crofton wiped her hands on her apron. “I know very well what is going on around here, ma’am.”

  Virginia smiled ruefully. “One cannot conceal secrets from a good housekeeper.”

  “That’s true. I know that you and Mr. Sweetwater are hunting a vicious killer, one who preys on women in your line of work. I also know that Mr. Sweetwater was very nearly murdered last night.”

  “That’s true.”

  “It seems to me, Miss Dean, that you could use some professional assistance.”

  “From the police, do you mean? The thing is, we are investigating murders that were committed by paranormal means. There is no hard evidence to give to the police.”

  “I was not talking about assistance from the police. I was referring to myself.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There is something in this case that goes back to the Hollister household, does it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was a large, wealthy household. There would have been staff.”

  “Yes,” Virginia said, “but from what I observed, Lord and Lady Hollister employed remarkably few people for a house that size. What employees they did have
all seem to have disappeared.”

  “Even if the Hollister staff was small, there would have been a housekeeper.”

  “Yes, there was. She let me in the day I went to the mansion.”

  “The world of those engaged in service in high-ranking households is a small one, ma’am. I spent my entire career in it until I came here. I might be able to find the Hollister housekeeper for you.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  He awakened from the dark dream to the pale light of a drizzly dawn and a deep awareness of Virginia’s strong, invigorating energy. He opened his eyes and looked up at the unfamiliar ceiling. He was lying on a bed, but he was quite certain it was not his own.

  “It’s about time you woke up,” Virginia said. “Your relations downstairs have been very anxious.”

  He turned his head on the pillow and saw her in the doorway of the bedroom. She was dressed in a plain housedress. Her hair was neatly pinned into a simple knot at the back of her head. She had a mug of coffee in her hand.

  “Virginia,” he said. He sat up and started to push back the covers. He stopped when he realized he was nude to the waist. He glanced down and saw that he was wearing only his drawers. He yanked the covers back up over his hips and surveyed the decidedly feminine curtains, wallpaper and dressing table. “This is your bedroom.”

  “Yes, it is. It was much closer than your own, so we brought you here. It seemed more convenient.” She carried the mug into the room, set it down on the bedside table and gave him a bright smile. “How are you feeling?”

  He pondered that briefly. “I think I feel all right.” Cautiously he heightened his talent. Relief flooded through him when he realized that his psychical senses were as strong as ever. “Yes. I’m fine.”

  “Good,” she said. “Mrs. Crofton is preparing breakfast for all of us. I suggest you wash up, dress and join us.”

  He looked around. “Where are the rest of my clothes?”

  “Tony discarded them. He went to your house early this morning to fetch some clean clothes for you. There was just too much blood.”