Catspell

by Colleen Shannon

  She rapped the door knocker, louder, and finally steps approached. The door was flung open. A rat-faced man stood there, his ugly features emphasized by his flamboyant crimson pantaloons and green velvet vest over a beaded shirt. He put his hands together and gave an obsequious bow. “May I help you?”

  His accent was odd. He had dark hair and dark skin and had the look of the Middle East about him. His shoes even curled at the tips like Aladdin’s slippers.

  “I wish to see Madame Aurora,” Arielle said, pulling the circled ad from her reticule. “I’m here to inquire about engaging her services.”

  “Excellent, excellent. Please, come into the parlor and I will tell her you are here.”

  He led them into a lush parlor totally at odds with the derelict exterior. The room was filled with expensive furniture of eastern influence. Griffin winged tables, plush round divans, and an enameled, embossed demitasse set on a table inlaid with Moorish designs of moons and stars.

  Seth set her packages down and looked about, his mouth quirking. “All we need is the Turkish water pipe and a belly dancer.”

  “At your request, I can supply both,” came a heavily accented voice from the door.

  They both turned toward the door. What Madame Aurora lacked in breeding, she made up in bulk. She was an enormous woman whose size was emphasized by the diaphanous garments she wore. She had rings on every finger, rings that sparkled with the pure fire only precious stones emit. Her eyes, buried in rolls of fat, were still piercing and observant, of a brown so black they looked like onyx and sparkled equally.

  Her calling made her prosperous, obviously. Hopefully it also meant she was genuine in her ability to commune with the spirit world. Arielle cleared her throat, wondering why she felt so nervous. She was here more or less upon invitation. “M-Madame Aurora, I w-wish to discuss with you the possibility of a s-seance.”

  Arielle felt Seth’s immediate wariness. His hand, still on her arm, jerked slightly, and his body went stiff. He frowned down at her as if to dissuade her, but his disapproval only made her more determined.

  She continued, “I’m having dreams, strange and tormenting, of my mother and of other, ah, figures who call to me and try to get me to join them.”

  “Join them my dear? Where?” Madame Aurora waved a chubby hand toward a divan. Seth sat down, patting the seat beside him, but Arielle chose a round ottoman instead. She was not certain why she felt such a fierce need to do this on her own, but at the moment she didn’t question the reason; she only yielded to the impulse. “Somewhere where night and day are owned by feline creatures. One is good, the other evil, but I cannot tell which is which. I can see them, but they are masked as lions.”

  Seth had gone perfectly still now as he listened.

  Attuned to him, even with her back turned, Arielle sensed that for some reason her nocturnal visions were of supreme interest to him. Why, she could not fathom, but that too would have to wait for later pondering. She rushed to finish, her heart pounding so hard she could scarcely hear her own husky voice. “And always, my mother is there, trying to talk to me, to warn me, to show me the truth and the light. But I cannot hear her. I want you to help me hear her.” Arielle pulled the ten pounds from her purse and offered them.

  Madame Aurora rose and set her great bulk down on the generous ottoman next to Arielle, adroitly pocketing the fee in one voluminous pocket of her pantaloon. “Poor child. Sometimes the veil between this world and the beyond has to be torn before it can be opened. Are you of strength enough to hear this truth? Your mother may not be the one calling to you after all. Perhaps it is someone else. Someone you know and are meant to follow, though you do not know it yet.”

  Those gleaming dark eyes glimmered in Seth’s direction but were as quickly back upon Arielle’s troubled face. The woman gently tucked a loose tendril of hair behind Arielle’s ear. “I accept. When do you wish to engage me?”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  Madame Aurora went to a desk and removed what appeared to be a map. But when she spread it out, Arielle saw, even from her sitting position, that it was a guide to the constellations, more of a work of art with gilt engraving and lovely blue and purple stars and yellow moons. Each calendar month showed the phases of the moon and the positions of the stars.

  “Hmmm…Jupiter rising and Mercury in retrograde. Not a propitious time.”

  “Please. I cannot wait much longer.” Arielle’s eyes filled with tears. “She needs my help. I can feel her calling to me. Every night.”

  Sighing, Madame Aurora put back the guide. “As you wish. But I cannot promise you will like what you hear.”

  Arielle rose, her nervousness gone, her doubts washed away by a cascade of relief. “Thank you, thank you!” She gave the woman her address, they settled on a time of nine o’ clock, and then she and Seth were at the door.

  As the manservant ushered them out, Seth pointed at a picture of Cleopatra holding an ankh, the Egyptian symbol for eternal life. “Lovely portrait, that.” Arielle turned to look.

  Indeed, the picture was titled, “Cleopatra, eternal ruler of Egypt, goddess of the underworld.” Arielle moved closer to study it, feeling a chill slither down her spine like a snake.

  The goddess had shiny dark hair, deep blue eyes and a certain tilt to her chin that was very familiar to Arielle. She saw it whenever she looked into a mirror.

  While she was occupied staring at the painting, Seth put a hand in his pocket and then he dropped a gold coin in Madame Aurora’s hand. Black eyes met golden, both showing varying degrees of satisfaction, and then Seth took Arielle’s arm and escorted her outside.

  As he walked her back to the apothecary, through the shop to her coachman, he was silent, seeming somewhat somber as he gave the coachman the packages. While the servant loaded them in back, Seth said quietly, out of the man’s earshot, “I will be there by eight thirty to help you prepare.”

  “No, it will be difficult enough to convince my father to allow me to do this without…without…”

  “A rake present? Rake I might be, but I have one sterling quality in such matters your father lacks.” He brushed that vagrant tendril back behind her ear, his touch sending a shiver of pleasure through her from her scalp to her toes. “I believe in the spirit world. If your mother is trying to contact you, please let me be there to help you hear her.”

  Arielle’s eyes darkened as she looked up at this man. Even as her instincts warned he was not to be trusted, that there was a reason those golden eyes seemed so familiar, she found herself nodding permission. “I shall be honored to have your assistance.”

  Seth bowed his shining dark head to kiss her hand. She longed so to brush that thick hair away. He had, after all, already breached the rules of polite society by touching her cheek and hair. But Arielle was never overly troubled by society’s niceties. Far more troubling was her instinctive knowledge that too much contact with this man, whether physical or emotional, would exact a toll on her she was only beginning to understand. He was not safe for women of good character, but it was not his rakehell reputation she feared.

  When he lifted up again, his smiling golden eyes flickered some distance behind her. The smile vanished instantly, replaced by a hatred so complete and vicious that she was shocked. She blinked and turned to look, seeing only a tall man with golden hair striding rapidly away.

  When she looked back at Seth, he was smiling again. “Until tomorrow.”

  As he stepped back and waved, Arielle lowered the curtain so she wouldn’t have to see him being swallowed up in the crowded streets. Without the distraction of his presence, she knew that, despite his powerful physical charisma, it was his inner life that drew her so strongly. They were alike, in more ways than she could bear to count. They were both solitary creatures, drawn to nature and the spice of the unknown. They were both passionate and sensual in the best sense of the word: they enjoyed anything that heightened the five senses, whether a superb souffle or silken sheets.

  She a
lready felt a strange bond with him and she’d met the man only twice. It was thus dangerous both to her health and her state of mind to have him at the seance, for she would be at her most vulnerable.

  But somehow, she knew she had no choice. Somehow, she knew he was meant to be there. Even if she denied him, he would find a way.

  Destiny was tugging at her heels, as surely as Jupiter was rising and Mercury was in retrograde. And as surely, she also knew that Seth’s blond counterpart, the gentler kinder Luke, would also be there.

  She only hoped that Madame Aurora truly could not only call up the spirit world, but help her navigate its treacherous waters. Somewhere in those misty dreams lay the truth that would comfort her mother’s troubled soul rest and illuminate her own dark wandering between two worlds, resident of neither.

  No matter the danger, she had to learn that truth, for only it could set Isis free.

  Comforted for the first time in weeks, she leaned her head back against the squabs and closed her eyes, sleep drifting over her like a peaceful blanket.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The minute she was out of sight, Seth hurried through the crowd, using his cane to brush people aside, but by the time he reached the shadowy entrance beneath a porte cochere where he’d seen Luke spying on them, his erstwhile brother was gone.

  Had Luke been close enough to hear his conversation with Arielle? Did he know of the seance?

  It was not in Seth’s interest–hell, it was not in Arielle’s best interests–for Luke to be there, too. Luke didn’t just want Arielle for his mate. He wanted to own her, to take her feminine power and turn it back upon her in subjugation. And if her mother were indeed trying to contact her, Arielle would be in thrall and unable to defend her far weaker psychic abilities from Luke’s onslaught. Seth’s hand tightened on the lion head of his cane.

  No matter what, he had to be certain Luke was barred from attending, in whatever form he favored. While it had been a bit over a year since the change came upon them both, they’d chosen far different paths to transformation, taking their inherent skills and characteristics as boys into the feline world with them. Just as they’d been as brothers, Seth was direct, demanding and persuasive with the sheer power of his personality. Smaller, gentler Luke, with his angelic looks and rotten heart, was guile incarnate. Seth believed that he had not yet perfected the art of the lion, which was Seth’s own second skin now, though Luke’s ability to astral project and turn into mist was stronger than Seth’s.

  Remembering his younger brother as he’d been when they were growing up, rambling about the countryside in Devon where their father was a minor baron and their mother a student of history and psychic phenomena, for an instant, Seth felt a tinge of sadness at what he knew he’d ultimately have to do to win Arielle for his own.

  But he had no choice but to kill or be killed. Only one Mihos could survive.

  For all his laughing demeanor, inside Luke Simball was as amoral and pitiless as the cats he favored, a lethal predator upon young women. If he succeeded in seducing Arielle to his dark ways, Arielle could well end up like one of the young women Luke toyed with and cast aside.

  As Seth crossed the street, the front page of one of the more strident London dailies drifted by on a gust of wind, plastering itself to a window. The garish headline ran: “Fourth Body Found at the Earl of Darby’s Estate!!!” And in smaller print, the caption continued: “Is there a new Jack the Ripper afoot? Attractive young females of Straitened Circumstances are Dying in the Most Horrid Ways…unknown peer of the realm recruits World Famous Detective Miss Shelly Holmes to protect his daughter. Scotland Yard is mum.”

  Staring out the carriage window at the parkland moving past, ‘world famous detective Shelly Holmes’ felt rather small and defensive, like a sparrow in fact, under the eagle eyes of Ethan Perot. Since she saw him in the salon this morning, she’d felt a difference in him. He’d always been intent upon her, as if she riled his deepest curiosities, but now she felt that acute analytical ability focused with razor accuracy.

  What had set him off? Shelly was mystified, and since she was very seldom mystified, all the more uncomfortable for it.

  When they stopped in a copse of trees not far from the dirt road that bisected the Earl’s small parkland, Ethan leaped out first and held the door for her, unctuous as a butler. “Careful of your step, Miss Holmes.”

  Pretending not to see his offered arm, she leaped down the two carriage steps in a bound, glad she’d defied convention this morning by wearing her breeches. She’d intended to ride, not analyze dead bodies. However, as was her wont, she held her inner turmoil private with the ease of long practice. There had seldom been a confidante in the world of Shelly Holmes. And the fact that this lord of the long nose obviously aspired to that role made her all the more determined to keep him at arm’s length.

  Thus, the moment she stepped down and smelled that ghastly, but all too familiar smell, Shelly took care to keep her expression objective. She would not have Ethan Perot, or even her employer, know how much she hated the mingled odors of decaying flesh and the last defecation of a body cleansing itself as if in preparation for its final journey. No matter how many murders she probed, she never got used to this stench that betold, in this case, the final terror and passing of a life too young.

  What a terrible waste.

  Only when they grew close enough to see a pitiably small hump of what appeared to be ripped fabric and piled leaves did the two lords remove their kerchiefs and cover their noses. Appalled, Shelly came to an abrupt stop. She’d expected the gory condition of the body, but not the egregiously destructive condition of its surroundings--and of any clues the perpetrator might have left.

  Innumerable boot prints had tromped the decaying leaves into the mud. The young woman’s body had been turned over, for the copious blood staining everything around it was absent from the patch of earth next to her. The scene had obviously been well visited by the game keeper, numerous lackeys, perhaps even the constable, who had already alerted Scotland Yard, based on the morning papers.

  “Why was I not alerted immediately?” Shelly demanded, glaring at the earl.

  He removed the kerchief from his nose to retort, “I was not informed myself until this morning. My household is run with order and this…this…”

  “Desecration?” Ethan supplied helpfully, his tone nasal as he kept his kerchief over his nose.

  “Precisely. My estate manager thought it best to keep it quiet until we knew more, but an overeager stable lad told a neighboring estate’s head hostler, and he told–”

  “I quite understand.” With supreme effort, Shelly managed not to add a tart, ‘They’d rather give you the illusion of order than deal with your temper tantrums.’ She held Ethan and the earl back with a commanding look and an out held arm. “Stop here. I need to examine the manner of death before this area is disturbed even more.”

  Silent upon the heavy detritus, Shelly adroitly managed to step into the earlier boot prints as she circled the body, seeking clues. Blood was everywhere, blackened now and drawing flies. It spattered the leaves in a ten foot half circle around the still form, the marks close together and resembling a star burst farthest from the body, then fainter closer to where the poor girl lay.

  Shelly had seen such marks before. Indeed, made them herself many times, albeit only in animals. Shelly pulled a small notebook from her pocket and began to write, but Ethan held up a larger notebook.

  “Please, dear lady, allow me.” He poised a pencil above his notebook.

  When she eyed him doubtfully, he said, “It will make you more efficient and me of more use. We both are working to the same end: saving Arielle.”

  Since Shelly could hardly argue with that encomium, especially with her employer nodding his approval, she grudgingly agreed and continued her examination. Examining the odd star burst pattern of blood sprayed in a half circle on the adjacent trees, she said judiciously, “At least one artery was severed, likely two, and this
person was very young and very healthy.”

  Ethan merely wrote, unsurprised, but Rupert expostulated, “How in the name of heaven could you possibly know that? You have not looked at the body yet.”

  Shelly continued her examination, not even glancing at him. “Only a severed artery expels its contents violently enough to leave such a pattern. At roughly waist height and head height for a young woman of small stature, by the looks of it, it was probably the carotid artery of the neck and the femoral artery of the upper thigh that were punctured. The extreme distance--” Shelly stepped off ten feet, “–of the spray marks were made by very young, healthy arteries. According to the latest medical theories, various procedures such as severing damaged limbs have indicated that the aged usually have arteries that move blood sluggishly, though modern science does not yet know why.”

  Rupert Blaylock, Earl of Darby, was for once in his life, speechless.

  Ethan was not. “Bravo, dear lady.”

  Shelly said through her teeth, “The next time you call me dear lady, especially at such an inopportune time, I shall…I shall do you an injury.”

  “How intriguing. Can I infer which body part you most want to turn your attention to?” He looked at her, eyes twinkling, above his poised pencil. “Just so I’m at my best, you understand, should you decide to subject me to the same exhaustive examination.”

  This time, for her sanity, Shelly pretended deafness and concentrated on her task. Very carefully, stepping into the many footprints of the earlier ‘investigators,’ Shelly approached the body. She knelt and gently turned the remains back over, as if in death she could offer the poor creature the kindness she should have had in life. The head flopped unnaturally as she turned the corpse, falling sideways like a rag doll.

  The earl gagged and turned away, but her acute senses heard Ethan scribbling as she intoned, “Female. Blond. Nineteen to mid twenties, I should say. No taller than five feet.” Shelly’s voice got stronger as her anger grew. She checked the nails. “Broken fingernails encrusted with blood. She fought back.”