by Alma Katsu
“Wait—I need you, Jonathan. To help me.” As angry as Jonathan was, he saw that I was upset and put his things aside to listen to me. I poured out the story, sure that I sounded like a madwoman because I hadn’t the time to think of a way to tell him without seeming delusional or paranoid. And inwardly I cringed, because now he would see me for what I was; capable of cunning evil, able to condemn someone to terrible suffering—still the same girl who had sent Sophia to kill herself, cruel and unyielding as steel, even after everything I myself had been through. Surely, Jonathan would denounce me. I expected him to walk out on me, that I would lose him forever.
When I’d told him the entire tale, of how Adair had planned to extinguish his soul and usurp his body, I held my breath, waiting for Jonathan to dismiss me or lash out, for him to call me a madwoman, waiting for the swing of the cape and the slam of the door. But he didn’t.
He took my hand and I felt a bond between us that I hadn’t known in a while. “You saved me, Lanny. Again,” he said, his voice cracking.
Upon seeing Adair on the floor, still as the dead, Jonathan recoiled momentarily, but then he joined me in binding Adair as securely as we could. We tied the monster’s hands behind his back, bound his ankles together, and gagged him with a soft cloth. However, when Jonathan went to lash the knots at Adair’s wrists to his feet, bowing our prisoner backward in a position of utter vulnerability, I recalled the inhuman harness. The feeling of helplessness came crushing down upon me and I could not do the same to Adair, even though he was my tormentor. Who knew how long he might remain bound like that, before he was found and freed? It seemed too cruel a punishment, even for him.
We then wrapped Adair in his favorite sable blanket, a solitary comfort. I slipped out first so Jonathan, if he ran into one of the others and was questioned, could pass off the bundle in his arms as me. And we planned to meet in the cellar to see my plan to its end.
I rushed ahead, taking the servants’ staircase to the cellar. As I waited at the foot of the stairs, resting against the cold stone wall, I worried for Jonathan. I’d let him take all the risk of spiriting Adair out of the room. Though the others had withdrawn, shell-shocked by Uzra’s death and the confusion of Adair’s departure, it was by no means assured that Jonathan would not cross paths with one of them. He could easily be spied by a servant as well, and one glimpse could undo our plan. I waited tensely until Jonathan appeared with the limp form in his arms. “Did anyone see you?” I asked, to which he shook his head.
I led him through the twisting labyrinth to the very lowest level of the cellar, to the cavelike room where the wine was stored. Here, the cellar was most like a castle’s dungeon, sequestered from the rest of the basement rooms, thickly lined with earth and stone to keep the temperature constant for the wine. I’d found a niche in the very back, a tiny windowless cell cut into the mansion’s massive stone foundation. It appeared to be an unfinished extension of the wine room, with bricks and wood lying about. Yesterday’s deliveries of bricks and stone were piled on the floor along with a bucket of mortar draped with a moistened cloth, nearly dry now. Jonathan looked at the supplies and then at me, surmising instantly the intent of the materials, and then dumped Adair’s body on the damp dirt floor. Without a word, he stripped off his frock coat and rolled up his sleeves.
I kept Jonathan company as he closed up the small gap that served as the opening to the cell. First brick, then row upon row of stone to make the opening disappear into the deep-set wall. Jonathan set about his task silently, settling the stones into place with taps of the trowel’s handle, drawing on work he had done in childhood, while I kept watch on Adair’s dark form, a mere lump of shadow on the cell’s floor.
At the hour when Adair had been scheduled to leave, I crept upstairs and sent the livery on its way, telling the driver that the travelers had changed their minds, but wanted the baggage sent ahead to their lodgings as planned. Then I mentioned casually to Edgar that the master had departed on his trip a little ahead of schedule in order to avoid fanfare, wanting to slip away. Adair’s and Jonathan’s empty rooms seemingly verified what I’d said, and Edgar merely shrugged and went about his duties and would, I suspected, tell the others if asked.
Jonathan continued to work, pausing whenever we heard any movement that sounded like it was coming our way. For the most part, it was exceedingly quiet this deep underground and we heard few stirrings from the occupied floors, but it was unlikely that we would, with storage rooms situated between the first floor and the wine cellar. Still, I was nervous, sure that the others might come looking for me. And I wanted this horrible act behind me. The man in the cell is a monster, I kept telling myself to ease my mounting guilt. He is not the man I knew.
“Hurry, please,” I murmured from my perch on an old cask.
“There’s nothing to be done for it, Lanny,” Jonathan said over his shoulder, never breaking his rhythm. “Your poisons—”
“Not mine, surely! Not mine alone,” I cried, jumping off the cask in agitation.
“The poison will wear off, eventually. The knots may loosen and the gag come undone, but this wall must not fail. It must be as strong as we can make it.”
“Very well,” I said, wringing my hands as I paced. I knew that the potion couldn’t kill him, even if it had been poison, but hoped that it might make him sleep forever or have caused damage to his brain, so he’d never be aware of what had happened to him. Because he was not a magical being, not a demon or an angel; he could not make the knots untie themselves or fly through walls like a ghost any more than I could. Which meant that eventually he would wake in the dark and not be able to take the gag from his mouth, not be able to scream for help, and who knew how long he might remain there, buried alive.
I waited a moment on our side of the fresh stone wall to see if I felt the familiar electric arc of Adair’s presence, but I did not. It was gone. Perhaps it was gone only because Adair was so deeply sedated. Maybe I’d feel him again when he regained consciousness—and what torture that might be, to feel his agony alive in me day after day and not be able to do anything about it. I cannot tell you how many nights I’ve thought about what I did to Adair, and there have been times when I almost think I would undo what I did to him, if it were possible. But at that time, I could not let myself think about it. It was too late for pity or remorse.
Jonathan slipped out that evening while the others were away at one of their usual pastimes. I had a taste of the struggles that were to come with Jonathan when, once he had stepped outside, he turned to me and asked, “We can return to St. Andrew now, can’t we?”
I drew in a breath. “St. Andrew is the last place we can go because there, of all places, we will be most quickly discovered. We’ll never grow old, never fall ill. All those people you’d return for, they’ll come to look at you with horror. They’ll come to fear you. Is that what you want? How would we explain ourselves? We can’t, and Pastor Gilbert will have us tried as witches for sure.”
His expression clouded over as he listened, but he said nothing. “We need to disappear. We must go where no one knows us and we must be prepared to leave at any time. You must trust me, Jonathan. You must rely on me. We have only each other, now.” He made no argument but kissed my cheek, and started toward the public house where we planned to meet the following day.
The next morning, I told the others that I was leaving to join Adair and Jonathan in Philadelphia. When Tilde raised an eyebrow suspiciously, I used Adair’s own words on her, explaining that he had no patience with their accusatory glances for what he’d done to Uzra and that while they might not be able to forgive him, I had. Then I went to see Pinnerly for the list of the accounts that had been set up in Jonathan’s name. While the lawyer was reluctant to hand Adair’s private papers over to me, a session of no more than ten minutes on my knees in his back room was sufficient to get him to change his mind, and what was ten more minutes of harlotry in exchange for a secure financial future? Jonathan would forgive me, I was
sure, and in any case, Jonathan would never know.
The others said nothing outright against me but were clearly skeptical and wary, and gathered in corners and on dark landings to whisper among themselves. Eventually, though, they drifted off to their rooms or about other business, clearing the way for me to creep down to the study. Jonathan and I needed money to flee, at least until we could gain access to the funds that Adair himself had set aside—for his own future use, of course.
To my surprise, Alejandro sat slumped over the table, his head in his hands. He watched indifferently, however, as I socked money from Adair’s cash box into a pouch; it would be only natural that I might carry more funds to Adair to use for his trip. But Alejandro cocked his head in curiosity when I pulled the framed charcoal drawing of Jonathan down from the wall. It was the one item I couldn’t bear to leave behind. I pried the backing from the frame and, with a piece of tissue over the drawing and a chamois beneath it, I rolled the picture into a tight cylinder and tied it with a red silk cord.
“Why are you taking the drawing?” he asked.
“There’s a painter in Philadelphia; Adair plans to introduce him to Jonathan. Jonathan will never agree to sit for his portrait again, and Adair knows it, so he wants the artist to create a painting from the sketch. It seems like a lot of bother, I agree, but you know how Adair is, once he’s decided on something …,” I said blithely.
“He’s never done anything like this,” Alejandro said, abandoning his questioning with the despair of one accepting the inevitable. “It’s very—unexpected. It is very strange. I’m at a loss to know what to do next.”
“All things come to an end,” I remarked before slipping out of the study nonchalantly.
I waited in the carriage as servants brought down my trunks, securing them to the back. Then the carriage pulled away with a lurch, and I slipped into the Boston traffic, disappearing completely into the crowds.
PART IV
FORTY-SIX
QUEBEC CITY, PRESENT DAY
They sit at the table in the hotel room, Luke and Lanny, a coffee service of elegant white porcelain spread before them with a plate of croissants, untouched. Four packs of cigarettes, ordered along with the rest of the room service, rest in a silver bowl.
Luke takes another sip of coffee, heavy with cream. Last night was rough, with the drinking and smoking pot, and while the fatigue shows on his face, Lanny’s visage reveals nothing except pert, soft, smooth skin. And sadness.
“I suppose you’ve tried to learn about this spell,” Luke says at some length. His question brings a bemused sparkle to Lanny’s face.
“Of course I did. It’s not easy to find an alchemist, a real one. Every town I went to, I looked for the dark ones, you know, people with a dark inclination. And they are in every town, some out in the open, some driven underground.” She shakes her head. “In Zurich, I found a shop on a narrow back street just off the main thoroughfare. It sold rare artifacts, ancient skulls with inscriptions chiseled into the bone, scripts bound in human skin and filled with words no longer understood. I thought if anyone would know the necromancer’s true art, it would be the people who owned this shop, who put their lives into tracking down arcane magic. But they only knew rumor. It came to nothing.
“It wasn’t until this century, about fifty years ago, that I finally heard something with the slightest ring of truth to it. It was in Rome, at a dinner party. I met a professor, a historian. His specialty was the Renaissance, but his personal avocation was alchemy. When I asked if he’d heard of a potion to confer immortality, he explained that a true alchemist wouldn’t need a potion for immortality because the real purpose of alchemy was to transform the man, to bring him into a higher state of being. Like the supposed quest to turn base metal into gold; he said that was an allegory, that they sought to turn base man into a purer being.” She slides her cup away an inch or two, the saucer pushing a minute wake ahead of it in the white damask. “I was frustrated, as you can imagine. But then he went on to say that he had heard of a rare potion with a similar effect to what I’d described. It was supposed to turn an object into an alchemist’s—well, familiar is the best term, I think. To bring an inanimate object to life, like a golem, to make it the alchemist’s servant. The potion could reanimate the dead, bring them back to life, too.
“This professor assumed the spirit that filled the dead person or the object came from the demon world,” she says, crackling with self-loathing. “A demon meant to do someone’s bidding. That was all I could bear to hear. I haven’t gone looking for explanations since then.”
They sit quietly and watch the traffic a dozen flights below them. The morning sun is starting to break through clouds, setting the cutlery and silver bowl on fire. Everything is white and silver and glass, clean and sterile, and everything they have been talking about—darkness, death—seems a million miles away.
Luke picks up a cigarette, rolls it between two fingers before putting it aside, unlit. “So you left Adair walled in the mansion. Did you ever go back to see if he got out?”
“I worried about him escaping, of course,” she says, nodding almost imperceptibly. “The feeling, our connection, was gone, though. I had nothing to go on. I went back once, twice—I was afraid of what I’d find, you know—to see if the house was still standing. It was. For the longest time it was used as a home. I’d circle the block, trying to feel Adair’s presence. Nothing. Then one time I went back and saw that it had been made into a funeral home, if you can believe it. The neighborhood had fallen on hard times … I could picture the rooms where they’d work on the bodies, in the basement, steps away from where Adair was entombed. The uncertainty was too much …” Lanny tamps out the spent cigarette in her hand and immediately lights another. “So I had my lawyer contact the funeral home with an offer to buy it. As I said, there was a recession; it was a better price than the owners hoped to see in their lifetime … They accepted.
“As soon as they moved out, I went in by myself. It was hard to imagine as the house I had known, so much had been changed. The part of the cellar under the front stairs had been updated. Cement floor, furnace, and hot water heaters. But the back half had been left alone. No electricity ran back there. It was left dark and damp.
“I went to the spot where—we’d put Adair. You couldn’t tell where the original wall left off and where the part Jonathan built began. It had all aged together by then. Still, no feeling from behind the stone. No presence. I didn’t know what to think. I was almost tempted—almost—to have the wall torn down. It’s like that perverse voice in your head that tells you to jump off the balcony when you get too close to the edge.” She smiles ruefully. “I didn’t, of course. As a matter of fact, I had the wall reinforced with rebar and cement. Had to be careful; I didn’t want the wall to be damaged during the construction. It’s sealed good and tight now. I sleep much better.” But she doesn’t sleep well; Luke has learned this much in the short time they’ve been together.
He needs to lead her away from the place he has left her, the dark cellar with the man she condemned. Luke reaches across the table and takes her hand. “Your story … it’s not finished yet, is it? So you and Jonathan left Adair’s house together—what happened next?”
Lanny seems to ignore the question for a moment, studying the nub of the cigarette in her hand. “We remained together for a few more years. At first, we stayed together because it was, ostensibly, the best thing to do. We could look out for each other, watch each other’s back, as it were. Those were adventurous times. We traveled constantly because we had to, because we didn’t know how to survive. We learned to create new identities for ourselves, how to become anonymous—though it was hard for Jonathan not to attract attention. People were always drawn to his great beauty. But then it became more and more apparent that we remained together because it was what I wanted. An ersatz marriage, only without intimacy. We were like an old couple in a loveless pact, and I’d forced Jonathan into the role of the philandering h
usband.”
“He didn’t have to stray,” Luke objects.
“It was in his nature. And the women who were interested in him—it was relentless.” She knocks ash into the saucer they are using for an ashtray. “We were both miserable. It got to the point where it was painful to be in each other’s presence; we had wronged each other so, and said hurtful things to each other. Sometimes I hated him and wished he would just go. I knew he would have to be the one to leave because I would never have the strength to leave him.
“Then one day, I woke up to find a note on the pillow beside me.” She smiles ironically, as though used to watching her pain from a distance. “He wrote, ‘Forgive me. This is for the best. Promise me you won’t come looking for me. If I change my mind, I will find you. Please honor my wish. Your dearest, J.’”
She pauses, crushing the cigarette in the saucer. Her expression is stark and faintly amused as she stares out the tall windows. “He finally found the courage to go. It was as if he’d read my mind. Of course, his leaving was agony. I wanted to die, sure that I would never see him again. But we go on, don’t we? Anyway, I had no choice, but it helps to pretend that you do.”
Luke remembers how it feels to be exhausted by tension, recalls those days when he and Tricia couldn’t stand to be in the same room. When he’d sit in the dark and try to imagine how it would feel if they split up, the peace that would come over him. There was no question that she’d be the one to leave—he couldn’t be expected to walk away from his children or his childhood home—but when his family had left and it was just him in the farmhouse, it wasn’t like being alone at all. It was as though something had been violently taken away from him, as though a piece of him had been amputated.
He gives her a moment to fold up her pain and tuck it back in its place. “But it wasn’t over, was it? Obviously, you saw each other again.”
