Eterna and Omega

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  “Dark forces are afoot,” Andre stated, stepping into the room.

  “You don’t say,” Bishop said, folding his arms. His black satin brocade frock coat sleeves sliding together offered a hiss of fabric to punctuate his statement.

  Andre held up his hands in a supplicant gesture. “I haven’t been the right kind of help. I’d like to be so now. I watched my brother for a very long time. I know something about it, and about what resulted. Let me help you recreate what will be useful.”

  Bishop, Clara, and Franklin exchanged looks. Bishop nodded. “All right.” He waved Andre over to the table where everything was laid out.

  Louis remained at the threshold. While Clara was fairly certain Andre was aware of his dead twin, and she could see Louis clearly, if Bishop had noticed the ghost, this time he did not make it obvious, and as she doubted Franklin had any idea, she did not call attention to him, though she could feel his ghostly gaze upon her, hot despite the chill he carried.

  “Are we missing anything?” Bishop asked Andre as he perused the documents.

  “That’s the final draft here, for New York’s Ward. At least for lower Manhattan. He thought the upper island might need something more tailored to their community. He went through several iterations.”

  “Have any samples been made up and stored anywhere?” Clara asked.

  Andre shook his head. Out of the corner of her eye, Clara could see that Louis did, too.

  “How can we test a protective Ward without inviting danger in again?” She paused, trying not to look at Louis’s spectral form, which was staring at her lovingly. “But how can we see this is actually a Ward?”

  “I’ve been musing about that, Clara,” Louis said. “I’ll discuss it with you.”

  Clara offered a slight nod of acknowledgment. Bishop’s gaze flickered warily to the spirit, but the senator said nothing.

  “Louis and I will scout for an appropriate testing site. And here…” He moved to Franklin’s desk, which was far neater than Clara’s nest, took pencil to an open notepad, and began to write. “I communicated with Lord Black via this telegraph connection. I don’t know that what happened in that house of horrors had anything to do with England. England just wanted immortality; that was their sole focus. This darker ilk, I doubt you, or they, knew what they were bargaining for, what this might stir up.”

  He finished writing the information. Bishop nodded. “We’ll wire our contact there, who will in turn offer us a read on Black and his department. Thank you.”

  “I’m staying in Louis’s old rooms at Union Square. I avail myself to your instructions and orders.”

  “By whose directive?” Clara asked. That he had lied and spied for England was known, that he still looked after his own interests first and foremost was best to assume.

  Andre pierced Clara with his hazel gaze. It looked so similar to Louis in facial structure, but never had she seen such pain on Louis’s dear face, not even as a spirit.

  “Grief, my friends,” he murmured. “By the directive of grief.”

  Clara just nodded and looked away. While she understood the grief, she did not wish to share in the empathy. Andre had made her uncomfortable enough impersonating Louis at first in trying to take advantage of the situation, and now he was living in his apartment … That place where she and Louis had shared as lively inspiration as they had passion. She wanted to be left alone while her stomach lurched.

  “Good day,” Andre offered.

  “I will see you out, Mr. Dupris,” Franklin said with an edge to his tone. “We’ve new security protocols going in and out of the building since we were all abducted.”

  “I noticed. Thank you.”

  The living men left but Louis remained, hovering outside the door, clasping phantom hands toward her. Clara dropped her gaze for a moment, and when she looked up, he was gone, without even a good-bye. Spirits could not be relied upon for courtesies.

  Clara stared at her desk strewn with talismans, symbols of faiths and signifiers of deep mystical wisdom, its drawers full of papers, interviews, investigations, endless iterations of questions, not answers. She pressed a hand to the carved talismanic bird she wore below her chemise, against her skin, a token from Louis before his death. There was a hollowness inside her, below the pressure of that artful stone.

  “I should have more to show for a life’s work, Rupert,” Clara said softly to the silver-haired senator.

  He smiled gently. “My restless friend. Never satisfied, even when you’ve outpaced so many. What can we do but try, life after life, in hopes we may walk a bit taller in the next? Do you think heaven asks for a full report of each accomplishment achieved? If the angels see you doing your very best, dare we live in hope they might buffer you with a wing or a steadying hand, should you stumble? You’re not expected to be a god. Relax and leave that to God.” He picked up a file from her desk, brandishing it. “And keep looking for His presence in the least likely of places.”

  Clara smiled. “If there’s paperwork in heaven, at least I can hope to be employed.”

  “Will you never learn the meaning of rest, my dear?” Bishop laughed. “Even when you’ve gone on to that ‘sweet by and by’?”

  Clara blinked up at the senator. “What has any meaning if it hasn’t been worked for, earned, even in heaven? If I stop moving, how do I know where I’m going?”

  Bishop chuckled again. “You are your own law of physics, Clara. I pity the day that your perpetual motion fails you.”

  She levied a knowing smile at her dear companion. “If it ever does, do send those angels you referenced, I may need a supported step.”

  He smiled. “Come, Clara, we have the list of ingredients for New York’s Ward. Shall we attempt it? Or do you have a better idea?”

  “You made a good ward of me,” she said, enjoying the play upon the word. He grinned. She rose in a rustle of doubled skirts, smoothing out the layers and stays that always shifted and rearranged themselves when she moved; modern fashion was meant for women who did very little.

  She went to a closet across the room, and from its dark interior pulled out a black leather doctor’s bag, something they had procured from their last attempt at recreating Eterna research in Salem.

  “Yes,” Clara said brightly, striding toward the senator, “let’s make a Ward.”

  They passed Franklin on the stairs and exchanged nods. Clara noticed that his eyes narrowed, clearly unhappy at being excluded from their mission. Though she and he had investigated many cases together, the spirit of the commission had always belonged to Clara and Bishop, who worked in special harmony, a music that had gotten admittedly more complicated through the years, but richer and more fascinating in tone and depth.

  At the front hall, Lavinia beamed at them, looking up from a book on basic taxidermy.

  “Miss Kent,” Bishop stated, passing along Andre’s wire instructions, “do send word to our Miss Bixby that, via this channel, she ought to invite Lord Black to diplomacy with our offices.”

  “That is wise, sir,” Lavinia said. “I agree that England is not our enemy. If what I’ve been sensing is true, it’s an old foe come back up from the depths, and we need allies, not spies.” She shared a pained look with Clara, as Vin, too, had been a target of malevolent magic at that time; their whole office haunted in their own way.

  “We’re off to scare up some protections,” Bishop assured the young woman. It was he who scouted her for employment after the torturous ordeal she survived made her ill fit for average society. Not that there ever had been anything average about Lavinia … or anyone in the office. Only a bastion of the odd could take on odds like these.

  Once they were past the armed guards just inside the front door, to whom Bishop and Clara both nodded, the two walked up Pearl Street and turned toward the historic Bowling Green, angling up Broadway. It was a pleasant day for a stroll, but their quicker pace portrayed the urgency of their task.

  “The ‘charged’ areas of the city are where we
start,” Bishop stated, rubbing his hands together in thought. “Where do you think to begin, Clara? We’ve a directive to find bone shards.”

  She gave it considerable thought. “Washington Square comes to mind first.”

  “I agree entirely,” Bishop said, flagging a hansom and helping Clara up into it as he mused aloud, “Washington Square. The parade ground over the hangman’s elm and potter’s field. Ironic that New York placed celebratory fixtures above so many bones.”

  “Isn’t that always the way?” Clara said, leaning back on the black leather cushion opposite him and bracing herself as they jostled up the artery of Manhattan. She stared out the carriage window for a while before breaking the silence.

  “Look at the development, Rupert, goodness, the congestion and new construction. No longer is New York the backwater of earlier times. The city is moving upward, onward. “Washington Square sits caught between the old city and the new.”

  Disembarking at the redbrick Federal-style row of fine homes—some occupied by authors, artists, and reactionaries of note—the two walked at a slow pace under the first sets of trees and onto a demarked path across a wide swath of grass and dirt, a less tended area.

  Clara took stock of the atmosphere, trying to ascertain the weight of bones beneath the surface as if trying to determine the shift in weather. “The air is volatile. Do you feel it?”

  “Volatility? No,” Bishop said, seeming to be tasting the breeze. “Creation, rather.”

  “It is an artistic enclave these days, is it not? This square?” She looked around her at the pleasant row houses that represented the first aims in sophisticated, side-by-side urban living.

  “I’ve wanted to move here,” Bishop replied.

  “We’ll have to move up eventually,” Clara said. “Downtown has become so very crowded. I do love Pearl Street, but we should have moved a decade ago.”

  There was something about a fresh start that appealed to Clara. But if she and Bishop continued to live together, especially since she was obviously of age and had been for quite some time … Was the course obvious? She shook her head; this was not the time to think about those kinds of decisions.

  They settled on a spot undergoing landscaping. Bishop scanned the ground with keen eyes that saw as much of another world as he did of this one. Clara did the same. They pointed to the same patch of earth simultaneously, as if their hands were dowsing rods and bones were water. Reaching into the doctor’s bag to procure the trowel she’d used in the recent burial and unearthing, she never anticipated getting so much morbid use out of a gardening tool.

  She poked at the earth surreptitiously. The occasional passerby remained undisturbed, as it merely looked like Clara had dropped something. Digging at a patch where soil had already been overturned midwork, she was able to sift bone shards out from the earth, as it had been only a couple of generations since the area had been used as a mass grave and executioner’s plot.

  Gathering as many vials of the shards as was easily attainable from shallow depths, Clara placed them in the doctor’s bag, relieved the senator from his position as scout and mesmerist and, with a nod, they moved on.

  The next items were divided between them to gather directly, though they accompanied one another on the errands as if they were the most normal and expected things of a day, like a trip to the post office or a merchant. Clara remarked upon this en route downtown once more.

  “Talismans and Wards, the idea of a localized magic, is so natural to us, obvious, even, but if this works as viable protection against vile shadow, who else will take to this so easily? We can’t be tasked to visit every city, to know its elements or what to gather. The continent is vast and the territories so very diverse…”

  Bishop interrupted her worried reverie with the kind of calm, positive assurance that made him not only the most pleasant of companions but also one of the most likable men in Congress. Not an easy feat, to be a well-regarded politician.

  “I’ve spent the entirety of my time as lawyer, congressman, and now senator taking stock of who my friends and allies really are. I’m well aware who is amenable to mysticism, spiritualism, and any discipline useful in a supernatural war.”

  “You’ve foreseen this? What happened to the researches, the dark magic behind the forces that snuffed out their lives?” Clara asked in a nearly accusatory manner, as if he should have perhaps stopped something long ago.

  “Of course not precisely, no, otherwise I’d have intervened. Clara, only a society that is as obsessed with death, mysterious sciences, and mistaken piety as we are could prompt such a backlash as what may be coming. The world has gone looking for answers across the veil by whatever means possible. What comes to answer those invitations often isn’t a polite dinner guest. You know that.

  “Why I stood by Eterna is that it is precisely our kind of people—the ones who know the differences between what to invite and what to banish—who should be asking the questions and discerning the invitations. You and I did not invite in what ended up killing the team. An unstable mind did. Plenty of other curious souls will submit similar calling cards out into the void. If this Ward can protect the ignorant as well as innocent, I’ve taken painstaking stock of whom I can go to with the solution we devise, so that it reaches amenable hands willing to act for the sensible good of all, not the sensational few.”

  His surety was a balm, but perhaps it was still the pangs of grief and guilt that could not settle Clara. It was good they were active, as tasks were the only things that could keep her calm.

  For a set of dollars direct from the Stock Exchange itself, Bishop took charge, as ladies were not allowed on the floor of the grand building, and Clara knew his powers could subtly allow for a souvenir without much notice and awaited him outside.

  As New York’s patron saint was currency, it was fitting for its magic to include bills in a protective Ward, as the city and its reigning powers had a habit of choosing money over human beings. Here, the golden calf could offer its populace some justice.

  Last, but perhaps most vital, water from the harbor, lifeblood of the city as it was. For this, Clara strolled down to an observation area at the Battery and hopped onto a small pier that docked a schooner meant to take ladies and schoolchildren on leisurely sails. It was at present unmanned, and Bishop’s mesmerism kept anyone curious from bothering the lady scooping harbor water into vials.

  “Now then,” Clara said, handing Bishop the doctor’s bag and taking his proffered arm as they angled back toward Pearl Street.

  Back at the Eterna offices, the guards were as silent as ever, Lavinia was buried in a new book about Egyptian funeral customs, and Franklin was out. Clara was glad to have the quiet upstairs, where she and the senator avoided placing things on her desk and opted for Fred Bixby’s generally empty one, as his was as fastidious and organized as Clara’s was chaotic.

  Assembly was particular, painstaking, and full of emotion. And they did it all without saying a word. The weight of their old souls meant sometimes silence was best.

  They used empty vials to mix the contents, and once Bishop had cut up the dollar bills into small pieces, they portioned out the contents of what they gathered into equal parts into the open tubes. Carefully parsing the ingredients, they made several combinations.

  It occurred to Clara that what they were about was hardly scientific. The process was subjective and sentimental. And therein lay its power. Those looking at material assets had it all wrong. Louis didn’t write “The Heart of the Matter” atop the page for nothing.

  For all Louis’s hope in making the reality of Eterna, that it might take his ancestor’s beliefs and codify them in the annals of history for the sake of a more rigorous system exchanging witches for doctors—this was still all so personal. How could one make the exceedingly personal into something scientific? She knew what the magic of home felt like. It would be different in any other space, sphere, or territory, and who was she to decide another area’s magic?

  In
New York, they stood upon the grand history of the burning over.

  In this century, everything had come into a stark contrast of progress and recidivism, of modernity outpacing human capacity to understand its momentum. The entirety of religion as the Western world knew it had fractured into myriad sects; warring parties or peaceable alliances, it was all a tangled, interwoven tapestry of faith and belief, of science and rumor, fashionable orders and obsession with secret knowledge. The desperate search to find answers to the age-old questions resurfacing every era.

  Despite the fraught confusion of her era, Clara liked to think she knew better, that out of myriad denominational and secular camps, considering her empirical understanding of centuries of past lives, she might create a magic of general good, as broad as possible, bringing Louis’s Warding system to life by cutting through noise and fear and working straightaway on heart and soul.

  She went to her desk and drew out a small box of matches in a decorative silver tin and struck one, ready to light each vial and set up the awaited reaction.

  Before they could complete the final step and burn the contents, waiting for the flash of otherworldly light that had accompanied their experimental Salem Ward, Franklin burst in to the offices with sobering news.

  He eyed the lit match in her hand before he spoke. “There’s been a fire uptown. It should be of interest to us,” Franklin explained directly to Clara, “as a site you investigated during the Stevens issues years past. It’s gone up in flames. The news from Centre Street depot says it was likely arson. I think we should look up that case—”

  Clara blew out the match, and she and the senator said the surname in unison.

  “Stevens. Of course,” she said, darting to her desk and rummaging under what seemed like a haphazard stack, but she knew right where to look and held up the file in question. The similarities to the Goldberg property, the carvings and invitation to evil, were too glaring a parallel to be coincidence.

  At the Stevens property, a chemical powder had been set to blow out into the city, rigged from within the building. This powder was a toxin that would make ordinary citizens mad, a diametrically inverting chemical agent that would turn the placid into the monstrous and make beasts of the benign for as long as the chemical remained in their system. The command was never released, thanks to a group of brave people, including Evelyn Northe-Stewart and Lavinia Kent, who had put a stop to it.