“Freddie, there! Grab the rope.” He tries and misses, then tries again, and this time he has it! At once the enchanted thread coils itself firmly around his wrist. I close my eyes and offer a prayer to Hekate, begging for some of her great strength. Instantly I feel the power course through me, so that I am able to stand at the crater’s edge and haul Freddie up. Hand over hand, I reel the rope in. The demon has had to release Freddie to fight its attacker. I must work quickly. At last Freddie reaches the top and is able to grasp the edge with his hands. But the demon has not abandoned his prey yet. It lurches up through the choking air of the pit and grabs onto Freddie’s legs, pulling him down. Freddie yells and claws furiously at the wall of the crater. I redouble my efforts, but their combined weight is too much. I cannot hold on! Maygor’s Thread tightens itself protectively around my arm. If I do not pull Freddie up, I will go down with him. This time, there will be no escape. My feet skid across the surface of the sacred circle until I am inches from the hole. Then, just when I am certain all is lost, my three Cavaliers lay their ghostly hands on the rope, lending me their own ancient energy. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, we drag Freddie from the abyss. The second he is safe I leap up and whip the Silver Thread against the floor, shouting the command that will reseal the fissure, sending the demons back into the Darkness where they belong.
I am breathing like a runner, gulping good air at last. My muscles tremble from the exertion. Freddie scrambles up and backs away from me shaking his head, plainly scared beyond reason by what has just happened. By what he saw. By what he now knows to exist.
“Those things,” he gasps, “those terrible … creatures! Was that Hell, Lily? Was it? Was that where I was supposed to go? Where I am supposed to go?”
“No, Freddie, no, not there, not you…”
“Why not? How can you be certain? Those things … they wanted to take me … they thought I belonged there. Dear God, Lily, you have made me into a monster, and now the other monsters want me for their own!”
“No, Freddie, listen to me, it isn’t like that.”
“I have to get away!” He starts to dart about the chamber, and then rushes at the door, heaving at the great beam that bars it.
I hurry after him and put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugs me off and will not be stopped.
“Get away from me!” he screams. “Leave me alone! I have to get out. Have to get away!”
And before I can stop him he has wrenched the doors open and fled, out of the antechamber and up the stairs. I run after him, and I am amazed at how fast he is, how quickly he bounds up the stairs. By the time I emerge from the summer house I just catch a glimpse of him leaving the garden through the small door past the mews. I know I cannot catch him. I am weakened by my efforts in the chamber. Hekate lent me her strength when I needed it most, but it has ebbed away now, and my own, flimsy body is exhausted from the unnatural demands I have made upon it. Freddie, in contrast, seems supernaturally strong now. I quickly summon my Cavaliers and instruct them to go after him.
Find him, stay with him until I come. Do not leave his side.
Yes, mistress.
I know they will be able to do as I have asked. What I am less certain of is whether or not, when I find him, I will truly be able to help Freddie. I have raised him from the dead, the Elixir has done its work, but he must be tended, he must be looked after. The effects are only temporary and so the Elixir must be taken regularly. If he stays too long without the precious potion his spirit will start to fade, and his body, his poor, dear body, will slowly begin to rot.
19.
When Bram wakes up it is to find Gudrun sitting on the end of his bed, sifting through the many sketches that are strewn about the place.
“So,” she says without looking at him, “did you get to dance with your princess last night?”
Bram wearily props himself up on one elbow. His head throbs horribly and his eyes feel puffy and sore. He rubs his temples and yawns, tasting the fur on his tongue.
“What do you want, Gudrun?” His voice is croaky. He stretches his legs uncomfortably, dismayed to see how creased and crumpled Perry’s clothes are.
“Poor Artist,” says Gudrun, still studying the drawings. She shrugs. “Anyway, now you will see I am right.”
“Really? How so?”
“I told you a broken heart makes the best art.” She waves a handful of the sketches at him. “These are magnificent.”
He looks at them properly now, and even with his slightly blurred vision, he can see that she is right. They are the best he has ever done. He takes one from her gingerly and studies it more closely.
Lilith, how he loves the sound of her name in his head. My beautiful Lilith.
He goes to put the painting down on his bedside table and his gaze falls on two railway tickets. He snatches up the clock. It is twenty-five minutes to noon.
The train! My God, the train.
Leaping from the bed he grabs his valise from beneath it and dashes around the room snatching up what he can—a handful of underwear, one, two shirts, trousers, his shaving brush—he stuffs them into the suitcase and slams shut the lid, buckling it quickly.
“My goodness, Artist, you are in such a hurry,” says Gudrun, watching him with an irritatingly amused expression.
Bram ignores her. The events of the night before are fading. What matters now is today, meeting Lilith, getting out of London with her. Leaving the room without explanation or good-bye he races down the stairs and out of the house. He is groggy and uncoordinated, but the fresh spring air revives him.
She will be there. I know she will be there. And we will leave this stinking city and go somewhere quiet and peaceful, and I will tell her I love her and she will forgive me for being there last night, and everything will be wonderful.
St. Pancras station is abuzz with travelers, most of whom seem intent on getting in Bram’s way. He pushes through the crowds, abandoning manners in a desperate effort to get to platform three. By the time he arrives most passengers have already boarded the waiting train. He scans the faces milling about, searching for Lilith.
Might she have already boarded? No, she wouldn’t do that. I have the tickets. She would wait for me.
The platform empties as the last passengers step up into their chosen carriages and the guard walks briskly along slamming doors. Still there is no sign of Lilith. Bram begins to run, pointlessly up and down.
She will come. She must come.
The last door shuts with a loud clunk, the guard raises his flag and blows his whistle. The train gives an answering blast and, with the creaking and clanking of pistons and traction, begins to roll slowly forward. Steam billows back from the funnel as the engine gathers momentum. Bram stands, hopeless and bewildered, staring back along the empty platform until the tail end of the last carriage has chugged past him and disappeared out of view.
The energy born of eagerness and passion drains out of him, so that he sits forlornly on his suitcase, chin in hands. He upset her at the ball, he is certain of it now. He should never have gone. His presence there served only to underline the differences between them.
She has thought better of seeing me. She has seen the hopelessness of it all.
For a moment he is so certain of this he can see no other possible explanation. Travelers walk around him, barely giving him a second glance. Porters wheel luggage past. A small child is dragged by the hand, wailing, his mother’s heels clicking on the floor as she marches on. It seems to Bram the world is going on without him, that he is no longer properly a part of it. If, indeed, he has ever been. Then, hidden deep inside himself, he locates a small kernel of hope.
What if she has been unavoidably detained? What if she intended to meet me, wanted to, but was prevented from doing so?
He searches for possible reasons, for plausible explanations for her absence. There must, he has to convince himself, there must be some reason other than the unthinkable. Other than that she has thrown him over, and he will nev
er see her again.
Perhaps she is in difficulty of some sort? Could it be she has been visited by the Dark Spirit again? I know how terrible that vile creature’s strength is, what pain he can cause. She might need me, even now, and be unable to send word to me.
The ridiculousness of their situation suddenly fires a useful spark of anger in his belly. He stands up. What manner of world are they living in when one human being cannot contact another, contact someone who cares deeply for them, when they are in need? It is preposterous. If she needs him, he will go to her. He will go to her, and who cares what anyone else thinks or says? He springs up with renewed purpose, snatching up his valise, and makes his way hurriedly back through the throng and out of the station. He attempts to hail a cab, but there are none to be had, so instead he sets off at a loping trot for Fitzroy Square. It is not far, but his clothes are unsuitable for such exertion, his collar quickly chafes and his shoes soon start to rub, threatening blisters. He ignores such trifling discomforts and hurries on, so that by the time he reaches the railings of the square’s garden he is hot and a little breathless, and damp with perspiration.
The striking house that is Lilith’s family home looks so pristine and lovely in the early spring sunshine that Bram hesitates. He is suddenly acutely aware of his own appearance. He is still dressed in borrowed evening clothes, in which he has slept, and has had neither wash nor shave. He attempts to tame his hair with his hand, straightens his jacket. He is on the point of approaching the house when a car rounds the corner of the square at some speed and pulls up outside the front door of Number One. Bram hangs back. He recognizes Louis Harcourt as he leaps from the car and bounds up the steps. His knock on the door is quickly answered, and the viscount goes inside. In less than a minute he reappears, and Lilith is with him. She is dressed in a simple pale gray jacket and skirt with a darker matching hat and gloves. She seems to hesitate before getting into the car, looking up at Louis, her face full of anguish. And as she does so, he takes her in his arms and holds her in a warm, tender embrace. When he at last lets her go Bram clearly sees him wipe a tear from her cheek, before Lilith steps into the waiting car, Louis taking his place beside her, and they speed away.
Bram reels backward as if he has been struck. For a moment he thinks the Dark Spirit has come to assail him again, but no. He knows that the shock that has forced the breath from his body, the pain that constricts his heart, is the grief of heartbreak.
Gone. She has gone from me!
Suddenly, he sees everything in a different light, the perspective shifted, the truth he was blind to before now revealed. Lilith had not broken off her engagement with the viscount because she still loved him. She had danced with him so closely at the ball, the two of them clearly deeply attached to each other. She had left the ball without a word of explanation to Bram, and then failed to meet him at the station. And now, now he had witnessed their continuing affection.
And it is Harcourt she has chosen to leave with, not me.
He stands for a moment, confusion and hurt muddling his mind, the agony of his loss sweeping over him like a storm-built wave, so that he has to grasp the garden railings to steady himself. Only when he is certain his legs will carry him does he begin his journey back to Bloomsbury.
He arrives home to find the house empty. He wanders through the unusually quiet hallway, the absence of dog and bicycles suggesting Jane has taken the family to the park. Bram drifts into the deserted studio. He is numb now, the sharp pain he experienced earlier replaced by a dullness, an emptiness, a weighty sense of being utterly lost. He pulls his hat from his head and sits heavily on a lump of unworked stone. Somewhere in the garden a blackbird sings with inappropriate brightness. Bram’s dry mouth is aggravated by the dust that habitually fills the air in the studio. He coughs, spluttering, the sound echoing off the hard surfaces of the room.
Perry’s voice startles him. “You sound like a man in need of a drink,” he says, coming from the darkness of the hallway clutching a bottle and glasses. He pulls up a wooden stool and sits opposite Bram. “If you don’t mind my saying so,” he prattles on as he pours generous measures for both of them, “you look frightful. Here, this should pep you up.”
On any other day, Bram might have questioned the need for brandy, have questioned Perry’s readiness to produce it, have questioned there being any in the house. On any other day, he might have paused and thought at least of eating something, or of drinking water to steady his already twisted stomach. But not today. Today all he wants is something to ease his suffering. Something to blur the image he cannot shake from his head of Lilith being held close by Louis. Of Lilith going. He drains his glass and then holds it out to be refilled. Wordlessly, he downs the second measure.
“I say.” Perry laughs lightly. “Steady on.”
“Another,” Bram insists.
Perry watches him a moment longer and then asks, “Want to talk about it, old chap?”
Bram shrugs and shakes his head. “No. Yes. No! What is there to say?”
“Clearly something is amiss.”
“She’s gone, Perry. She’s made her decision, chosen the way her life is going to be, and it does not include me.”
“Ah.”
“Yes, ah.” He leans forward, elbows on knees, turning his drink around in his hands, staring at the silky liquid inside as if it might reveal some sort of answers, some sort of explanation, some sort of action he might take.
“I assume we are talking of the delectable Lilith?” Perry asks.
“I was a fool ever to think she would consider me. Seriously consider me.”
“I thought she was rather keen—”
“She’s chosen Louis,” he cuts in.
“I see. Pressure from her family, perhaps? Someone considered more … suitable?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Bram tells him.
Perry seems about to respond to this but says nothing, topping up their glasses instead.
Bram shakes his head. “You know, I don’t believe it is that … family pressure. She was prepared for disapproval from her mother, yes, and telling her fiancé … breaking off their engagement … of course it would be difficult. But, when we were together … being with her meant everything to me.”
“You love her.”
“Ha!” He gives a mirthless bark of a laugh. “That is such a small word for what I felt. What I feel. The truth is … enormous! The way she affects me, the way she consumes me so completely … To be with her, to love her, I have lost myself to her utterly, do you understand what I’m saying? Can you? Can anyone? Do I?” He runs a hand through his tangled hair.
“You don’t think you were mistaken?”
“No.”
“Or perhaps that you might … win her back?”
“We are not in a situation to play games,” he says, glancing at Perry. “There are … complicated things about our being together. If she has decided she cannot be with me, then … I will not change her mind.”
“So, what will you do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know! How can I know?” He stands up, draws back his hand, and hurls the glass against the wall. The resulting smash falls horribly short of the noise he was hoping for. It goes no way to expressing the mixture of rage and sadness that are now, fueled by the brandy, surging through him. “I must get away,” he says at last. “I cannot stay here. Cannot be in London, where she is, and be without her. I cannot.”
* * *
As the motor car speeds through the sunlit streets I glance at Louis. His profile, against the strong light, is visible only in silhouette, but even so I can detect the grim set of his mouth. He answered my cry for help and came at once, as of course he must, but he is deeply shocked by what I have done and unable to successfully mask that shock.
“How could you do it, Lilith?” His voice is scarcely more than a whisper. “How could you bring yourself to do it?”
I know that he is not simply asking me how I found it within
myself to undertake such a difficult piece of magic. He is questioning my loyalty to the coven. My integrity. As well he might. I have justified my actions to myself, but I will not as easily convince others that I did what I had to do.
The driver turns down Tottenham Court Road, slowing the speed of the vehicle so that we might better scour the pavements and the roads and the alleyways we pass in the hope of spying Freddie. My guardians were caught out by his incredible turn of speed. They reported back to me that, despite their best efforts and the considerable advantages they have moving about in spirit form, they were unable to keep up with him. I have even consulted the earl’s Goth, who has confirmed fleeting glimpses of him in various places but has been unable to pinpoint his whereabouts.
With each passing minute I begin to doubt the wisdom of what I have done. I do not doubt my motives: I wanted only to help my dear brother. And when I first saw the work of the Elixir! I was in a state of awe; how could anyone fail to be? To see the Great Secret brought into being before my eyes—the giving back of life to one who has had it taken—nothing could have prepared me for it. The reanimated Freddie who stood before me in the Great Chamber was not some ghoulish revenant, but Freddie restored. Living again. Moving, breathing, feeling, thinking, speaking as freely and with as much force as he had done before his heart had been stilled by the wretched poppy. Indeed, if what my captains recount of him since is accurate, his physical capabilities seem greatly improved. Magnified considerably, in fact.
The Midnight Witch Page 29
