by Jerico Lenk
My mother.
The world spun. Blood, and witchcraft, and a madman, and my mother crying in the mirror, and her whisper like she spoke to me right through the back of my head.
“I never meant to die, darling … I didn’t want to die.”
My heart broke. She reached out of the mirror, pulling herself to climb through the glass as if through a window, and instinctively I climbed through it beside her, hurrying the other way as my ears rang and a pressure clamped down on my temples hard enough to crush my head on my shoulders—
I jerked awake with a choking gasp, alone in a cold, bleak attic.
Blearily, I squinted around. A black cloth draped over the only window, smothering any light but for the hot dancing glow of scattered candles. Scratches and grime marred the woodwork; glimmering spider webs laced the stovepipe in the corner.
All at once I noticed the multitude of mirrors hiding in the shadows, leaning propped against the walls like some crop of mythical stones.
And I saw myself in them, in the fiery swell of candlelight, bound to a rigid-backed armchair of dusty velvet—shivering and disheveled. No gown, thank God. No jacket either. My mouth and toes were numb from the cold. What was that on my face? Dried blood. From my nose? My lip was split, sore. My arms … first set of sleeves rolled up, flannel undershirt sleeves cut along the sides to reveal my bare forearms beneath. Bruises there. My neck ached. My shoulders ached. I strained to wiggle my fingers, shake the pins and needles from my hands. I didn’t mean for it to, but a frantic whine rattled weakly in my throat as I realised how securely tied my hands were, rope burning my wrists at the arms of the chair. From the magnificent baroque phonograph cabinet across the room tumbled that eerie music from my dream, gently muffled by a scarf in the horn.
Dorland stood near the phonograph, blending into the shadows.
I reared back as much as one could whilst tied to a chair, panic sluicing through me like a cold wind.
Officer Dorland, in all his deranged glory, on his hand that blasted cameo ring glinting in the candlelight. And I hated everything to know we’d been right.
“Good morning,” he crooned. Despite his prim smile, his eyes were skittish. “Or should I say good evening?”
I drew a slow, shuddering breath. And then suddenly, the horror in me pitched violently to rage.
“You killed my mother!” I howled. “I saw her! You manipulated her, you unconscionable wretch—you killed my mother like you killed your wife and daughter!”
Dorland’s lashes fluttered rapidly and his smile curdled, only to return full force. “I’m sorry?”
“Mary Ann told me!” My voice cracked in my dry throat. “About the experiments the Cross refused to permit you. I know what you’ve done, Dorland. You killed Miss Hughling, Miss Maude, Lady Diana Burke. My mother, your own wife and daughter, stealing their lives—”
“Please,” Dorland parried with a repulsive chuckle. “They were worth nothing more than their paltry contribution to science, anyway.” He squinted down at me in deep disfavour; he knew I was not bluffing. I’d found him out. Me, Westwood’s charity case, newest runt on Clement’s team of rejects. Margot’s child.
Thinly, he said, “How did you … where did you see Mary Ann?”
“She came with my room,” I gritted out, charged with a hostile sort of instinct. “It’s where she died. Remember? Surely you did not fail to recognise that when you dropped by.”
He turned to dig in the big trunk that sat just beside the phonograph. Christ, was it the same trunk Marius had had? Was that … how he’d transported me here, wherever we were?
Dorland had gathered all his monstrous composure again, smiling that awful, convoluted smile as he straightened up. In his hands was a twine-bound stack of cabinet cards, which with his grossly long fingers he began to untie and display for me, one by one.
These were no regular cabinet cards, but a series of small, mounted photographs of dark and gruesome scenes … All his victims.
I turned away instantly, sickened. Dorland took me by the chin and forced me to observe each and every one.
“I hope to catch photographic evidence of the soul’s electricity at the time of death,” he droned in my ear, as if I didn’t wrestle to escape his grip. He was mesmerised by his own project, remorseless, and completely apathetic to my dismay. “Dispersing, leaving the body behind … ah, see! Something cloudy in this one, strange orbs of light in these images.”
Miss Weiss, her blood an eruption on the pavement. Miss Maude on the stoop of Miss Ophie’s. Miss Hughling hanging. Lady Diana limp like a doll, arms flayed like a fish at market. Other unfamiliar young women, whom we hadn’t encountered on investigation, all of them in those awful, devilish summoning circles. Mary Ann in her bed. My bed. Dark, bloody bile staining her mouth. Her chin. Her little nightgown. The big, plaintive eyes I knew, but lifeless here, and …
“Get that away from me!” I squeezed my eyes shut, choking on a panicked sob of breath. “Take it away, Dorland, please!”
He meant to kill me.
Clement and Cain hadn’t a clue where I was—when or where I’d met with the monster, or what had happened, and Dorland revealed everything to me because he meant to kill me, didn’t he? For his deluded studies. Perhaps just for revenge.
“I’m certain,” Dorland wheezed, sounding disappointed for some reason, “you wonder how I managed it all. A few good friends in all the proper places, meticulous research and report-building … and your mother’s jinxes were rather powerful for a novice witch, Will.” He shuffled through the cabinet cards. “Look there, do you see this one? The spectator’s feet in the upper right-hand corner? Your mother’s feet. Look at those lovely shoes. And—ah, there, those lovely shoes once more.”
I closed my eyes again with a shocked, stuttering breath. It was my mother, bloody and limp in one of Dorland’s ritualistic circles, in the shrine room as I’d seen before I’d woken. Hovering over her like glow-worms were a few tiny orbs of light. I couldn’t look. I wouldn’t look.
“Why did you do it?” I said through my teeth, tears finally bleeding hot through my lashes. I was livid in the sickest of ways. “Why did you kill her when she was of such use to you?”
“Use!” Dorland laughed. “You endearing thing, she was a witch and nothing more. She used me for practice, and a good standing in the right corner of the world. Thus, I thought she’d return the favour and allow me to use her … imagine! The strength of her blood! The death of a witch! But she left no ghost. Thankfully, I know more now than I did then.”
He bound the little cards again and tossed them to the floor, then crouched down before me with a covetous grip on both my knees. The cameo ring dug into my thigh.
“Now I have you, Margot’s own flesh and blood,” he whispered. “And if I have my way with you, too … oh, can you imagine the bond that tragedy might forge between the electricity of your soul and the corporeal world? Like a strike of lightning, charring the earth! What a haunt you shall be, such a talented young medium.”
“Clairvoyant,” I spat, wiggling my knees to shake his hands. It was futile.
“Even better!” Dorland’s eyes danced. “Will you be an intelligent specter? Or will your forlorn little soul reduce you to a violent, angry enigma?”
Gain his confidence …
My eyes widened. “Wait,” I blurted.
He squinted up at me, impatient.
I swallowed hard, the words sticking chalky to the roof of my mouth. My racing heart made it difficult to breathe. “I apologise, Dorland,” I finally croaked. “I was just … shocked to learn all that about my mother. I never knew. That’s all. Please forgive my childish lack of control over my emotions. I’ll grow into it. But the thing is, you’re right.”
He measured me with those beady eyes. “In regards to?”
“Your theories,” I urged. “I’ve thought it since we bottled Jude. You’re right about—about the type of haunt corresponding directly to the means of death an
d it’s shamefully unfair to deny you scientific license. You, a man with such solid enterprise, when the Black Cross declares itself a place of learning? How does one learn if not through study?”
His watery eyes stayed fixed on me in shy shock as I bargained, “I won’t tell a soul what I know. We shall work together. Why do you believe I am so interested in my mother’s past? I want to … ”
My breath caught on my lower lip for a moment, trapping the words.
“ … I want to be like her!” I finished in a breathless whisper, eyes wide and cold. “No, I want to be better than her. Your apprentice. I’ll even push for the Cross to reconsider its outlook on your theories. I shall get Westwood to bend. Please, Dorland, just untie me.”
And then I would run and not stop until I reached the bloody Yard.
Dorland’s hands shifted on my legs as if he’d move away. I’d convinced him. I waited, heart pounding.
But suddenly his fingers tightened again like talons and his turtle chin quivered as he roared, “DAMN THE BLACK CROSS!” Spittle flew from his lower lip. His voice boomed around the closed-up room. “Damn the Black Cross, it won’t change! They won’t listen to you, you fool. That’s why I’ve done it all on my own from the start. The Black Cross today is a sniveling, pathetic carnival act, folklorists and useless scholars, damn the Black Cross!”
His hands shot to my throat and instinctively I just held my breath anyway, clutching at the armchair under my bound wrists.
To die, then and there, and be with my mother forever in the in-between … that was my place. I’d failed Clement. I should have listened to Cain about meeting with Dorland. I’d never see either of them again. I would die before Daphne died. Zelda would never know what happened to me. Nor my father, who had wanted to protect me from all this, and …
And I didn’t want to die.
Punishment for my mother’s wickedness was not for me to suffer. I was not her. I was Will Winchester, Spectral Files Scouting Inspector, and I refused to be anything else. Not a sacrifice. Not a victim.
Dorland’s greedy fingers fell back to my knees and inched up my legs. My heart dropped. Of course. Fitting of a man as wicked as he. Or perhaps I just looked so much like my mother to him. Well, didn’t he gamble well with me? Newly furious tears stung the backs of my eyes; the coppery taste of panic rose on my tongue. Horrified he’d find my other secret. Burning with shame to wonder if he already had. I hadn’t any idea how long I’d dreamed. Perhaps I could kick him, somewhere vulnerable. Except I was still bound; I could not run even if I managed to deter him momentarily. Bastard. Bastard!
“Dorland!”
Dorland and I both looked to the door as, with a scrape and a shuffle, Clement burst in off the stairs—armed with a fighting knife, it looked like, his grip on which he quickly flipped, ready to use it.
Cain came up behind him with a dark composure all too reminiscent of his conduit possession at Miss Ophie’s.
Clement’s eyes flashed. “Officer Dorland,” he hissed, “kindly remove yourself from Winchester’s person, won’t you?”
I was a perfect mess of feelings, all in disarray, but my confidence resurrected just to see them as I sputtered, “My God, it’s about time, you two!”
Right. Cain had sent for Dorland’s address. He’d been suspicious, and Clement had wanted to meet again after I spoke with Dorland. Perhaps they’d called at my room and Mary Ann told them. But how had they gotten in? Dorland and I had heard nothing for our heated exchange, the music …
Not important. Dorland had gravely misjudged a few things, one being that the three of us were alike in a very key way—our impervious nerve.
“Kingsley, Clement,” Dorland greeted, standing to his full height. His forced smile gave a little dissatisfied twitch as he cleared his throat, adjusted his sleeves. Clearly, he was thrown off and hurrying to reevaluate. “You’ve joined us at a very inopportune moment. I wasn’t expecting any visitors tonight. I’m embarrassed to say I’m not prepared. I don’t even have tea made up to offer you.”
Clement started forth, but halted abruptly with another scuff against the floor and endless reflections scattering in all the mirrors as Dorland snatched a revolver from an interior pocket and shoved it right to Clement’s temple.
I froze—as did my soul.
“Now, this is just extraordinarily ill-advised,” Dorland said, thin but deliberate. “First you come into my home unannounced, disrupting my personal affairs, in which you now wish to involve yourself unwelcome? Greatly discourteous, Inspector Clement!”
“You’re mad, Dorland,” Clement growled. His knuckles were sharp and white where he clutched his fighting knife. But he … was also shaking. It alarmed me to see him so panicked, a flurry of failure and fright darkening his face. And it was my fault.
From the attic doorway, Cain said coolly, “Will doesn’t exactly fit your modus operandi, Dorland. Let him go.”
“My modus operandi?” Dorland chuckled with that same ugly, false smile and a little shake of the head. “Quite the contrary; Will is a prime assistant. Witch’s blood!”
Cain reached into his pocket. I saw it the same as Dorland did and I choked on a strangled little sound of despair as he spun to point his revolver Cain’s way instead.
But there was the clatter and click of another weapon being readied—and this time it came from Cain himself, from a curious little derringer he’d pulled swiftly from its hiding place at his waist. He held it near his hip as the American sharpshooters did, aimed for Dorland, with a lofty lack of fear that did not exactly put me more at ease.
The attic nook suddenly felt much smaller. Dorland traded a glance of sad surprise with me over his shoulder, as if to wonder together how Cain and Clement dared impose upon our pleasurable little time.
“Well … now, if it is not too presumptuous,” Dorland said in that grating, monotonous voice of his, turtle throat quivering and mouth smacking in thought, “I would love to know how you managed to uncover all this in the first place. I’m honestly amazed.”
“You were sloppy.” I spoke with the husk of my usual voice, frayed and weak from shouting, as I met Dorland’s eyes in the mirror behind Cain. “Your good luck charm, you imbecile. Your grandmother’s pink cameo ring. What kind of murderer dons such an indicative detail? Amateurs, of course.”
The smile clung to Dorland’s mouth as he glared at me.
“The Yard awaits you outside, Dorland,” Clement said through grinding teeth, hazel eyes bright with resolve in the hot light of all the candles. Impatiently or nervously or both, he rolled his knife over and over in his palm.
They didn’t have Scotland Yard. I knew them well. They’d come to my rescue reckless and stupid, just the two of them.
“You have a choice, sir,” Clement went on. “You come peacefully and confess, or … ”
“Or what?” Dorland’s brows arced gently. His gaze slid to Cain. “This would all be over if you’d just shoot, Kingsley. Or are you the only one of your clan who lacks the conviction to kill?”
My eyes veered to Cain, brow knotting. He either didn’t notice, or ignored me. But what was that supposed to mean?
“Tell me, children,” Dorland said. “How did this climactic moment play out in your minds? Heroically, perhaps? Unfortunately, none of you shall leave this house alive, and as always I will have no trouble concealing your disappearances.”
Cain cleared his throat. The glow of candlelight spun gold in his bad eye; the ominous feel of his steady stare thickened as he said, “Dorland, you may have me.”
“You may have me,” Cain said again, “if it is witch’s blood you want.”
The friction in the attic tightened as we all looked to him in confusion.
“What are you doing?” Clement demanded.
“Cain—?” I sputtered, but his name ended in a series of choked gasps; Dorland grabbed a fistful of my hair to hold me in place as he jammed his revolver to my head. I clenched my teeth, blinking rapidly against the tears
that sprang up from the hair-pulling.
“I’m sorry?” Dorland hummed.
“You desire Will for your experiments, don’t you?” Cain wore a menacing fortitude, his voice low and daring. “Take me, and let Will go. I believe it’s a fair enough trade. We’ve both got witch’s blood, after all. You’ve read the file on my family, have you not?”
Dorland’s beady eyes narrowed. “Yes … yes,” he said after a moment. “I’ve read the file.”
Witch’s blood?
“You think the disappearance of Lord Kingsley, Earl of Brackham, will be so easily ignored?” Clement laughed as he edged towards Dorland, clutching his fighting knife. Dorland pressed the gun harder to my temple. Clement fell still.
“Fair trade,” Dorland said as if Clement were not even there. “A Kingsley soul! Will, please forgive me, but now I’m disinclined to any other compromise. Kingsley, shall we shake on it?”
Slowly, Cain lowered the derringer.
“Cain,” Clement husked.
He passed the pocket gun to Clement and, with an honourable and solemn look of resignation, he moved forward close enough to put his hand on my shoulder.
“On your word, then,” he whispered meekly, like he knew Dorland would be titillated if he sounded so, so afraid of him. “Let Will go, and … you’ve got me.”
Dorland did not hesitate. He set the revolver down and hurried to unknot the rope from my wrists. My arms tingled numb and cold with the release of pressure.
“Leave this place, you two,” Cain said with a smile. “And on your way out, take the bloody scarf from the horn over there, won’t you? I can’t hear the music.”
Impatiently, Dorland pulled me up by the elbow from the chair. Cain pushed me aside; I stumbled, knees weak and stiff, clutching my sore wrists to my chest. Clement wound one arm about my middle before I lost footing, depositing me out of his way as, slowly, holding Dorland’s eyes as Dorland held his, he moved across the candlelit room and plucked the scarf from the phonograph.
