City of Ash

by Megan Chance

  There was a pause, then the decanter again, her approving “Much better.” Two drinks, undoubtedly heavily poured. Perhaps three. He said, “We shall need a table, won’t we? Will the dining room do?”

  “The dining room?” How calm she sounded. “I suppose it depends. Where did your wife spend most of her time?”

  “Her bedroom, I suppose—”

  “Not there,” she said quickly.

  “Well … here, I suppose. That pile of novels was hers. I believe she spent a great deal of time reading. She told me once that her isolation”—a little laugh—“drove her mad.”

  Another little irony. I wasn’t surprised he remembered it. No doubt it had fit perfectly in his plans. I dug my nails into the palm of my hand.

  Bea said, “Then we will hold the séance here. There’s only the two of us—that game table will suffice.”

  I heard the drag as he moved it. Night was falling, the blue-gray of twilight deepening. I heard the strike of a match, the hiss of a wick.

  “There’s no gas still,” he was saying. “The oil lamp is all—”

  “Do you have candles?” Bea asked. “I think the spirits prefer a calmer light.”

  I heard him moving, the setting of candlesticks on the tabletop—I knew just the ones. Large and ostentatious, red cameo glass. “Will these do?”

  “Perfectly. One will be enough.”

  She was ordering it carefully. Dim light, enough to disguise that I was indeed corporeal. The curtains at the windows overlooking the front yard were drawn, the oil lamp extinguished. For a moment, the room was plunged into darkness; that of the night outside seemed less. Then the soft light of the candle, very dim. I imagined it lit only the circle of them, that everything beyond was cast in shadows. I heard the drawing up of chairs, and I took a chance and peeked past the curtains to see the table at the other side of the room, Nathan’s back to me. Bea’s face looked strange in the candlelight, weirdly lit, shadows and gold and the reflection from the red glass of the candlestick. She had lowered her head and closed her eyes.

  I knew Heaven’s Awakening, of course. I had seen it at least twice in Chicago. But even though I knew this was only an elaborate fiction, Bea made me believe she was the medium. She grasped Nathan’s hands and bade him close his eyes.

  “Think only of her,” she told him. “Concentrate on your wife’s spirit. Call to her with your thoughts.”

  She let the silence grow in the room until it was almost unbearable. Five minutes, ten. There was no sound; the only clock I had in this room was well oiled, as Nathan was disturbed by little, repetitive noises. The clang of pots and pans did not reach from the kitchen. The maids had been schooled to soundlessness.

  Fifteen minutes, twenty. Nathan shifted restlessly and then stilled.

  Twenty-five. And then it seemed Bea’s whole body seemed to thrum. A subtle vibration—how she did it, I had no idea. Sebastian DeWitt had been right about her potential.

  She opened one eye, directing her gaze at me, and I shrank back into the curtains again, catching my breath, waiting.

  She said, “I feel something.”

  “What?” Nathan’s voice, too harsh.

  “Quiet. Is there a spirit here? Can you not feel how cold it’s grown? Spirit, if you be here, make yourself known.”

  I let a moment go past. Another. Then I rapped my knuckles against the wall.

  “My God!” Nathan’s voice squeaked.

  “We are calling the spirit of Geneva Langley,” Bea called, her voice eerily pitched, high and low at the same time, modulated like a song. “Are you that spirit?”

  I rapped again.

  “It’s her.” Nathan’s voice. Hushed, reverent.

  “If you be the spirit of Geneva Langley, can you show yourself to us?”

  I took a deep breath and stepped from behind the curtain. Nathan did not see me. His back was to me, of course, and he was peering about the room as if trying to pierce the shadows with his gaze. I saw her head come up, her glance sharpen.

  “She is come,” she whispered.

  Nathan twisted in his seat. He gasped when he saw me and tried to pull from her, but she anchored him with her hands. I didn’t move. I was close enough to the curtain that it brushed my back, close to the doors. I could be out them in a moment.

  “Do not go to her,” Bea ordered. “She’s a spirit, Nathan. Do you want her to flee?”

  “Ginny,” he said hoarsely. “Ginny, my God. Is it truly you?”

  I pitched my own voice low, far lower than my usual tone. I held it to a whisper. “Who else should I be?”

  “Ginny. My God. Dear God, where are you?”

  “In the spirit realm,” I said. “As you have known.”

  “You did die then. The fire—?”

  “Painful and punishing. Does that please you?”

  “No. Dear God, no. How could it?” He looked truly stricken, half shadow himself, his hair shimmering. The candlelight hid his excesses, the faint paunchiness of his jowls. He was handsome as he’d been when I’d first met him.

  “Tell me where you died, where I can find your body,” Nathan begged. “Is that what you want? Tell me, so I can lay you to rest.”

  “What do you want of us, spirit?” Bea asked. “Why have you come?”

  “Vengeance,” I said, dragging the word out, holding the sibilance, letting it slide through my teeth in a hiss, a serpent’s voice, pleased when it sounded as eerie as I meant it, and Nathan drew back, visibly distressed.

  “Vengeance?” he asked in a strangled voice. “For what?”

  “You know. And I shall not rest until I have it, my husband.”

  He looked back at Bea; I slipped behind the curtain again.

  “She’s gone,” Bea said. “She’s gone.”

  I had my hand on the door behind me.

  Nathan said, “For God’s sake, light the lamp!” I heard the shriek of the chair across the floor.

  I pushed. The door opened without a sound, and I stepped out, closing it again quickly and quietly, stepping into the shadows of the huge rhododendron just in time. I had not been there more than a breath before the curtains drew back; Nathan stared out the parlor doors into the darkness, his eyes black hollows in his face.

  I heard her cry out, “Nathan!” and he turned again and let the curtains fall into place, and I let out my breath in relief, letting all my tension from the last hour dissolve away. It had worked. Dear God, it had worked just as we’d planned. Once again, my blood seemed to race through my veins; I could not keep still. I wanted to laugh.

  Beatrice

  Nathan,” I said, relieved now that she was gone—what a clever girl she was, to have predicted him so well, to have gone before he could get at her—and when he turned to look at me with this wide-eyed, scared little-boy look, I said, “Well, do you believe she’s dead now?”

  “What did she mean? Vengeance—what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.” I sat back, sucking on my finger where, in my haste to light the lamp, I’d burned it. “You would know that better, I think. I couldn’t hazard a guess.”

  “She never said anything to you?”

  “About why she might want revenge on her husband?”

  He stopped pacing and stared at me, but not as if he saw me. I might as well have been the chair. “No, I suppose she wouldn’t have.”

  He went back to pacing. I watched him go to the wall, stop, and turn, like an actor with a bit of business he couldn’t lose. “Well, there must be something,” I said finally. “It seems odd that she would want vengeance badly enough to keep her spirit from resting, yet you don’t have any idea what she’s talking about.”

  He stopped at the wall, pressing his forehead against it. I’d never seen him so distraught, and I had to suppress a smile, because, you know, this had worked better than I’d dared to hope. When he finally looked at me, his eyes were bigger than I’d ever seen them, and bright with fear.

  “What do you think she’ll do?
”

  “I’m not an expert in spirits. Perhaps you should ask one of your friends. There must be a spiritualist among them.”

  “No!”

  His vehemence made me jump, and suddenly I didn’t want to be there any longer. “Perhaps I should go.”

  He was across the room before I took another step. He grabbed my arm hard. “No. Don’t leave me.”

  “Nathan, I’d rather not be around when the spirit decides to take her revenge. She doesn’t like me very well, if you remember.”

  “She won’t do it while you’re here,” he said, fingers tightening. “I’m certain of it.”

  I tried to pull away. “You’re frightening me.”

  He dropped his hand. “I’m sorry. I’m just … it’s been a difficult day. How the hell am I supposed to explain all this to Ginny’s father?”

  “Write him a letter.”

  “Too late. He’s on his way here. I received a telegram just before you arrived. He’ll be a few more days at most. Monday at the latest.”

  I tried to look uninterested, but my heart started pounding so loudly I was certain he could hear it.

  Nathan squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Christ … it would all be bearable if only I could sleep.”

  “Perhaps you should consult a doctor,” I suggested.

  He laughed shortly. “And tell him what? That I’m seeing my wife’s spirit? That I dream of her every night? No, I don’t think so. What I need is you.”

  “It seems to me that laudanum might serve you better.”

  He pulled me to him, kissing me the way he had outside the Phoenix, as if he couldn’t quite get enough, and there was nothing to do but kiss him back. And after that, he took me upstairs to his room, telling the servant waiting in the hall that he would have no more need of her tonight, and she looked at me as if she thought I were Ginny for just a moment before her expression cleared and went scandalized instead. Nathan didn’t seem to notice or care. He led me to a room down the hall from the one I’d been in before, and I was relieved that it wasn’t her bedroom again—of course it wasn’t. His wife’s spirit was swearing vengeance against him; Nathan wasn’t so stupid he would fuck his mistress on her bed.

  He opened the door to his room and stood back to let me go inside first, and it was just exactly as I might have imagined his bedroom to be. Heavy dark woods and deep blues, and it smelled like the citrus shaving soap he used, macassar and beeswax and leather, and he jerked me to that big bed, and I let him use me the way he wanted to, over and over again, because in spite of what he said about wanting me to exhaust him, it seemed as if he didn’t want to be exhausted, as if he were afraid of sleep. And when he finally did succumb to it, he twitched like one of those dead frogs the lyceum lecturers were always bringing around to illustrate the miracles of electricity. I heard him murmuring her name, and it didn’t sound as if he spoke it with love, or even liking.

  I didn’t bother to wake him but let him stew in it. I thought of the things he’d said about Ginny’s father coming here, and the fact that I’d just spent an hour or so in his bed when I wanted to be in someone else’s, and after that I couldn’t sleep—not that I would have been able to anyway, not with his tossing and turning—and it wasn’t yet dawn when I got up and dressed and left that house.

  It was a long walk to the tent city, and the birds were starting to wake, their twittering loud and urgent, as if they meant to warn one another of the day ahead, and my own footsteps grew heavy with dread. It wasn’t just because of what I’d learned about Ginny’s father, either, but the fact that every step took me closer to Sebastian’s tent, and now that the séance was over, I couldn’t keep from thinking about what I’d said to him yesterday, and the truth I didn’t want to look at.

  Because what I’d told him wasn’t a lie. I was in love with him. Stupid girl. I’d always somehow thought I was immune to love, as if it were some deadly disease a person ought to run from. Which it was, of course, because loving him meant I cared what he thought of me, and that was the most dangerous thing I knew. I did not want to cut off my own wings to have him. But I was feeling more and more as if that was what I should do, as if maybe the wings I had weren’t the ones worth having. And I was more afraid of that than anything.

  The only thing for it was to avoid him, at least until this whole thing with the Langleys was over—and how was I to do that when I also needed the newest scenes of Penelope Justis for the rest of the plan … well, there was a problem, wasn’t there?

  Unless you stop it all right now. Unless you abandon the plan. Because Ginny’s father was on his way, and I didn’t know what to do about him, or how we would go on with this when he was here. Monday at the latest. It was too little time to do what we needed. Given what I’d seen tonight, Nathan was on his way to where we wanted him to be. But how could we take him from nightmares to madness in only a few days?

  You can’t. Let it go, Bea. Let it all go. The company and the future I wanted. After all, I had the lead line now, didn’t I? Until someone new comes along to steal it away. And that was a real possibility, given that Lucius was as faithless as a serpent. Which meant I would have to keep on with Nathan—and that thought was so exhausting I could not bear to think it.

  And Ginny would have to return from the dead.

  So there it was, really, the real reason for not stopping. Because nothing had changed when it came to her situation. Nathan still wanted her in an asylum, and the fact that she’d been missing for days meant no one would disagree that she needed to be put there, even without taking into account her father, who wanted it as much as Nathan did. There was no way she would escape it. And however irritating she was, she didn’t deserve that. She deserved to be free from Nathan, free to tell her father to go to hell. I hated them both for what they’d done to her and what they planned to do. It was strange, you know, but the two of them got caught up in my head with every manager or actor who’d ever taken advantage of me, and her revenge felt like my own.

  But Monday. How would we do it by Monday?

  I didn’t know. I was too exhausted to think. When I finally reached Fort Spokane, I went to her tent instead of Sebastian’s. He would not be expecting me, given that he knew I was with Nathan, and that was a relief, one less thing to worry about. I pushed aside her tent flap, stepping inside. She was asleep; she didn’t even stir. I lay down on the ground cover next to her bedroll.

  The next thing I knew, I was waking to a whisper.

  “Bea?” Her voice in my ear. In my sleep, I’d rolled closer to her, and I felt her at my back, nestled against me as if she’d gone searching for warmth in the early hours as well. My nose was full of her—fire smoke and sweat and unwashed hair. I bit back a moan and rose to one elbow.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” I sat up, twisting to look over my shoulder at her, and for a moment it was almost as if I looked into a mirror. Blinking, bleary dark eyes, skin pale and smudged with dirt, dark hair falling around white shoulders, a grayed chemise. It was disorienting. I had to blink to make it go away, to make myself see her again, instead of myself.

  She said, “You’re not with Mr. DeWitt. Or Nathan.”

  “No flies on you,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Sebastian thinks I’m with Nathan. And Nathan’s too busy having nightmares to care where the hell I am. Terrible ones too, by the sound of it. Damn, I’m tired.”

  “Perhaps you should go back to sleep.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve got rehearsal.”

  “Let it wait.”

  “Lucius will fine me.”

  She laughed quietly; the sound was rough and deep. “What do you care for a two-dollar forfeit, Bea? You’ll have so much more before long.”

  “Will I?”

  Her amusement died in a quick frown. “Why do you say that? What happened last night after I was gone?”

  “Your father telegraphed him,” I said bluntly. “He’s on his way here. Nathan said he’d be here by Monday.”

 
“My father’s coming here?” She said the words so plaintively, in this wistful voice that was hard at the same time, as if she both wanted to see him and was afraid of it, which I supposed was probably true. “Dear God. Are you certain?”

  “Do you think Nathan would lie about it?”

  “No.” She shook her head, saying bitterly, “He wouldn’t lie. There’s no reason to. This changes everything.”

  I got to my feet and went to the lard pail in the corner, which held some tepid water. I knelt beside it and splashed my face, which felt good, but it didn’t ease my bone-deep weariness.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “It’s not enough time,” I told her, drying my face on my filthy skirt—and no doubt streaking it once again with the ashy dust that covered everything like a fine scrim. “And Much Ado opens on Monday as well. I’ll be too busy with the show.”

  “But we must. What did Mr. DeWitt say happens once the spirit appears in the séance?”

  I turned to look at her. “I don’t know. Yet.”

  “You said the spirit gains power, didn’t you? That once Barnabus called her up, she doesn’t go away.”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Then I won’t go away. I shall keep appearing to him. Where is he today?”

  I felt a little panic. “I don’t know. But you can’t do that, Ginny. Not without me, and I can’t be there. I’ve got rehearsal, and there’s Sebastian to manage as well.”

  “You manage him. You go to rehearsal. I’ll follow Nathan.”

  “It’s too dangerous. What if you’re seen?”

  “I hope to be.”

  “Not by Nathan, you fool,” I snapped. “By someone else?”

  “What else am I to do? We’ve only a few days. It’s hardly enough time.”

  “Damn it, Ginny, let me think—”

  “There’s no time to think.” She was kneeling on her bedroll, and now she leaned forward, imploring me with her bare arms, pale as any spirit’s. “I’ll go to the house. I’ll linger by the windows. He’ll never catch me.”

  “But the maids—”