The Fire in the Glass

by Jacquelyn Benson

  Between the vision and the moment the events it foretold came to pass in the world, something had changed. The context had shifted, turning a nightmarish end into the slimmest possibility of hope.

  Because of Lily.

  Because of the choice she made and the chances she took to achieve it.

  What if changing the future was never the point?

  It was the question Robert Ash had posed to her in the middle of Tottenham Court Road.

  She thought of the painting upstairs, the powerful images drawn through the gift of a woman who had died years before she was born—of doors and keys and infinite possibilities.

  Lily didn’t know what her purpose was meant to be, but perhaps—just possibly—she was starting to guess.

  “Miss Albright!” Cairncross called, spying her in the doorway. “I see you have been riding. And a lovely afternoon for it.”

  “Hello, Mr. Cairncross. Is Mr. Ash in?”

  “He’s off humming to himself,” Estelle said, waving her hand dismissively.

  “Meditating. In the sanctuary,” Cairncross corrected. “You may wait here with us, if you like, though I’m sure he would not mind if you joined him.”

  “Thank you.”

  She left, another burst of cheerful laughter following her out.

  At the end of the hall, she paused to pull off her boots, setting them down next to a pair of worn but well-polished brogues on the mat by the door. Then she slipped through the dark curtain into the quiet stillness of the sanctuary.

  Silence blanketed the dimly-lit space. The air was cool, smelling of old wood and fresh water.

  Ash, clad in a dark suit, sat in the center of the floor, legs crossed, his hands resting gracefully on his knees.

  Lily lowered herself to the ground beside him, folding her body into a similar position.

  She waited.

  Her pulse was pounding. It was hard to remain still, to simply sit there while Ash continued to meditate.

  She resisted the urge to twitch or tap her finger, ordering her body to submit to the notion of staying quiet for a few minutes.

  The stillness settled around her. Her breath deepened, instinctively trying to take in more of that fresh, cool air. Something inside of her shifted, the racing of both her thoughts and her heart beginning to settle.

  The cause of her restlessness rose to the surface, revealed itself.

  She was afraid.

  She had no rational reason to be. Ash had already answered the question she wanted to ask him, weeks ago. Yet so much had changed since then. So much more was riding on what he said—the shape her life would take from this moment on.

  Exposed, the fear lost some of its edge. It became another facet of the room, no more threatening than the wooden beams or the water running through the channel in the floor.

  Her leg tingled, starting to cramp. She resisted for a few moments, then finally grimaced and, as slowly as possible, unfolded it and stretched it out in front of her.

  “How have you been, Miss Albright?” Ash asked.

  From anyone else, it would have been just a common courtesy, demanding a rote response. Not with Ash. Lily knew the inquiry was genuine and invited the truth in response.

  “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Do not be surprised if it comes back to you, in bad dreams or a feeling of panic that comes over you when you have no reason to expect it. You have been through an extraordinary trial. It takes time for both your body and your mind to recover from such an experience.”

  He spoke with a clear, simple certainty, and Lily found herself wondering if he’d won that knowledge himself, the hard way.

  Her thoughts fell back to the vision, to the conversation she’d had with Evangeline Ash as she stood, painting, in the attic of this house.

  That exchange had not been a vision of the future, nor an echo of the past, but something else—something she suspected had nothing to do with her own power, but had been born instead in something she didn’t understand and perhaps never would.

  Should she tell him? She considered it, aware of Ash’s presence beside her.

  No. She suspected that wound was still raw, no matter that it was thirty years old. He didn’t need her reopening it. Besides, the message had been for her and it had been received.

  That was why she was here.

  “May I ask you something?”

  “Please,” Ash invited calmly.

  “When I came here before, you made an offer. You said you would help me learn more about what I am. What I can do. What that means. Does that offer still stand?”

  “Yes, Miss Albright,” he replied. “It stands.”

  She took a deep breath, an attempt to let the calming atmosphere of the room settle the rapid fluttering of her nerves.

  “Then I accept.”

  The words were ordinary, but she felt their weight, the significance of the commitment they entailed.

  Once, that had seemed impossible, even terrifying. Now it was as clear as anything in her life had ever been. She would learn. It would be hard, full of challenges and frustrations—but she would do it, because do to otherwise would be to deny who she was. She was done with that, forever.

  She thought of everything she had done in those last weeks—the visions, the powers that had manifested in the house on the heath. They were faded now, only the faintest echo of what they had been. It didn’t matter. Lily knew there was more where that came from, things she couldn’t even guess at yet. It would take work to get there—a great deal of work, but she would come to know all of it eventually. The thought was both terrifying and exhilarating.

  “When do we start?”

  Ash considered. “Tomorrow morning. Six o’clock.”

  Lily laughed.

  “Six o’clock? Do I need to be presentable?”

  “Not in the least.”

  She hesitated, trying to think of the right thing to say. All that came to mind was the most obvious phrase. She just hoped he understood quite how much it meant.

  “Thank you.”

  “You are very welcome, Miss Albright,” he replied.

  Outside the sanctuary, she tugged on her boots, then stopped, letting out a long breath.

  She had done it, taken the first step. It felt far bigger than a few words exchanged in a dark, quiet room. Her senses tingled with excitement, her adrenaline flowing. She felt like she should be running or shouting something from a rooftop.

  A clatter sounded from the far end of the hall, followed by the mingling of quick voices. Lily followed the sound down the stairs to the kitchen and stepped inside.

  It was warm, the windows fogged with steam from the stove. The air smelled sweet and savory, of steamed rice and ginger.

  Mrs. Wu clanged pans in the sink, running the tap. A man with graying hair sat at the table, a pouch of gardener’s tools tied to his waist. He sipped a cup of tea, a plate of biscuits and a newspaper covered in foreign characters resting in front of him.

  Sam approached the stove, plucking the lid from one of the pots simmering there. The housekeeper snapped at him in Chinese, tapping his hand with a wooden spoon.

  The man at the table cut in with a quiet remark in the same tongue and Sam looked over to see Lily standing in the doorway.

  He nodded toward the pot.

  “She’s got lotus seed buns in there. I can take one out without losing all the steam, Nai Nai,” he promised Mrs. Wu.

  “Three more minutes,” Mrs. Wu retorted.

  “Have you met my father?” Sam said, moving to the table. “Ba, this is Miss Albright.”

  “Very pleased to meet you,” the gardener said in slow, even English, turning the page of his newspaper.

  “Come on, this way.” Sam pulled Lily through a narrow door into the pantry.

  He hopped onto a stool and pulled a package wrapped in waxed paper from the top shelf. He unfolded the paper to reveal a box neatly-packed with some strange confection.

  He plucked one from inside a
nd tossed it into his mouth, then offered the box to Lily.

  “Sugar melon. They’re delicious.”

  “I’m sure they are.” She paused, then pushed forward. “Sam . . . there’s something I want to ask you.”

  “You’re wondering about the ravens?”

  He asked it as casually as he had offered the candy, sucking a stray bit of sugar from his finger.

  She felt as though the shadow of a dark wing passed over the room.

  “So it’s true. That’s how you knew where to find me.”

  He popped another treat into his mouth, then shuffled the neat rows in the box to hide the missing pieces. He re-wrapped it and tucked it back onto the shelf.

  “I’d just nipped out for a smoke when that big blighter came up on me—he waited till I had the match in my hand to start croaking. Near burned myself. Can’t say how it might’ve gone had he turned up any later. His lordship was ready to take down Hartwell’s door, pull off the gloves and start reading everything in the house, with me and Cairncross set to beat off the peelers when they came to carry him off. Which would’ve gone swimmingly, I’m sure.” He crossed his legs, leaning back against a shelf packed with jars of pickles, and looked away. “To be fair, I wasn’t that far behind him.”

  His admission of concern tugged at something deep in her chest, as did his revelation about Strangford’s state while she was missing.

  “Thank you.”

  He shrugged.

  “Anyway, you needn’t worry about it. The ravens, I mean. You’re all settled there.”

  She felt a chill.

  “You mean they don’t want me to pay?”

  “Oh, no. Never that. But it’s usually just one eye they ask for. You gave them four.”

  She thought of Northcote’s scream as the gutter ripped away and he plunged to the ground.

  The scrape of Hartwell’s body against the snow as he slid across the slates . . . and before that, an officer sliding to the ground with a nail through his skull.

  Three men sent to their deaths by her hand.

  Each time, she had acted to save herself from the same fate or something even worse. She knew that to be true and yet the thought of those satisfied ravens set ice into her bones.

  Sam pulled off his cap, scratching the back of his neck.

  “They’re happy enough with how it all came out. Said to let them know if you wanted to work with them again.”

  “I see.” She reached out, setting her hand on his arm. “Thank you. For being there to hear them.”

  He shrugged.

  “Weren’t nothing.”

  “It was quite a bit more than that,” she countered quietly.

  She moved to the door. Sam’s voice stopped her.

  “He’s out in the garden. If you were wondering.”

  Tension quickened inside of her, set her pulse fluttering. She looked back.

  “Who would that be?” she asked, keeping her tone carefully even.

  “Who’d you think?” he retorted, plucking an apple from a basket, tossing it into the air and neatly catching it.

  She stopped in the hallway. To one side lay the front door and beyond it, her Triumph and the short ride back to March Place.

  On the other side, set into the wall behind her, was the narrow wooden portal that opened into the garden.

  She took a deep breath, then turned and opened the garden door.

  It was late. The sun was beginning to sink, the garden painted with a mix of long shadows and splashes of deep, golden light. The shrubs and trees that had been blanked in winter stillness a few weeks before were now budding, sending up bright green tufts of new leaves. White and purple crocuses decorated the lawn, mingling with the verdant shoots of daffodils and red-tipped tulips.

  There was a chill in the air, the last lingering bite of the season.

  Strangford sat around the corner of a tall privet hedge. His hair looked longer, as though it had grown in the week since Lily had last seen him. It brushed at the collar of his dark wool coat.

  His gloves were folded neatly beside him and his bare fingers brushed over the soft, barely-budded leaves of an elegant Japanese maple.

  He spoke without looking up.

  “Sometimes I just need to feel something other than the inside of my gloves.”

  “Something safe?” Lily offered, crossing the lawn to stand by the bench.

  He paused, his hand going still.

  “Nothing’s entirely safe.”

  She sat down beside him.

  “What do they feel like?”

  He considered. A soft distance settled into his expression, the look she now recognized meant that his mind had gone somewhere else, running down his arm and through his fingertips into whatever he was touching.

  “Fresh. A little surprised. As though they never expected to be here.” His mouth twitched, a quick hint of a smile breaking through, and she was struck, deeply and undeniably, by how much she had come to love him.

  There was so much she had yet to know about him. After only a few weeks, how could there not be? It didn’t matter. She loved him—loved his kindness and his vulnerability, his loyalty and that remarkable sense of joy that stubbornly refused to give up, even in the face of unimaginable horror.

  She had come so close to losing him. The pain of that was still sharp, tied up in the memory of what it had felt like to watch the roof of that burning warehouse come down. Even now, in the peace and calm of the garden, she could still see the raw red scar on his cheek, a visible reminder of how near he had come to death, and it set her pulse racing.

  She didn’t care anymore what the world thought, or of the artificial boundaries set by the vast difference in the circumstances of their birth. Running from her mother’s history had only ever been an excuse, a way of keeping herself safe. But Strangford was right. Nothing was ever really safe. If she waited for safety before reaching out for the chance of joy, she would be waiting forever.

  Yet so much had changed.

  It’s usually just one eye they ask for. You gave them four.

  She stood, moving away, crossing to the budding branches of a dogwood tree.

  “I’m sorry. That I didn’t come sooner. I just . . .” The words failed her, leaving her throat dry.

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  She brushed her own fingers over the newly sprouting leaves. They were soft, kissed with the fading warmth of the sun.

  “I never had a chance to tell you. When you fell back in the warehouse . . . how glad I am that you got out. That you left before . . .”

  Behind her, he stood.

  “Is that what you thought? That I left?”

  She turned to face him.

  “You must have. I saw that roof come down. Nothing could have survived inside that. Nothing.”

  He looked down at the bare skin of his hands.

  “It was the oddest feeling. I’d taken the gloves off. They were wet. I was afraid they’d slip on the ladder as I was climbing. And there was this . . . humming. In the wood. The bones of the building crying out before they gave way. I felt it and I just . . . let go. Fell back down into the water and then swam as far as I could before I came back up for air. I made it all the way back out into the dock. Looked up and saw what had happened and . . . Damn it, Lily, I couldn’t know if you had managed to get out, or if you were still inside, and there was nothing I could do but float out there and watch. Have you any idea what that feels like?”

  “Yes.”

  He raised his head and met her gaze, only a brief stretch of green, rich garden separating them. Swallows fluttered through the branches overhead, the quick twitter of their calls dancing through the stillness of the falling afternoon. It was still and peaceful, and yet Lily felt the tension stretched between them so thick and real it seemed to vibrate in the air.

  “Lily . . .” he began.

  She cut him off.

  “No. Please—let me say this before I get too frightened and bury it al
l again. I have made a great many mistakes over the last few weeks—over my life—but the ones tearing me apart are those I made with you. I am sorry that I pushed you away. That I locked you out of this and threw you all those pale excuses when you had the gall to ask why. Because the real answer is that I was terrified of how much you were coming to mean to me, and the only thing I have ever known to do when someone gets close to me is to run away. But I will not run from this any longer. Whatever it is—whatever it leads to—I am done running from it.”

  She stopped, letting the echo of those quickly-falling words fade. Her heart pounded as though it really were preparing her to turn and bolt out of the garden, just run out into the street and keep going.

  But she didn’t run. She stayed and let the fear pound through her, refusing to grant it control.

  “It can’t be easy,” he warned, his own voice less than perfectly steady. “What kind of relationship can thrive with one side always knowing more than they should?”

  “Not a level playing field,” Lily said quietly, echoing the words he’d used back on that wind-swept clearing and feeling the quick pain of them strike through her.

  He stepped forward, closing the distance between them.

  “Not a level playing field,” he confirmed. “But God help me, Lily, I want you anyway.” He caught himself, reining in some powerful impulse. The tension simmered in him and Lily felt it echoed in her own body, a sparking, wild thing.

  “It is damnably selfish of me,” he continued, his voice hoarse, moving closer. “And if you choose to leave this garden right now, I will never think less of you for it.”

  “What I think . . .” Lily said slowly, meeting his gaze, “is that you should touch me.”

  The tension snapped. He raised a hand, fingers trembling, and—after drawing in a quick, full breath—brushed it across her cheek.

  The sensation of it singed, electric, across her skin, setting her whole body tingling with awareness. His fingers slid into her hair, the fullness of his palm coming to rest against the bare skin of her neck.

  “Oh . . .” he breathed, his pupils dilating, gaze shifting inward.

  And then he laughed, an explosion of pure delight. Lily felt it echoing inside of her, spilling out into the light of the garden.