Immortal Muse

by Stephen Leigh

  “No!” Emily pulled her hand from the pocket, ignoring the pain. She brought her arm back and threw the flask. It landed several feet away from Nicolas, near the foot of one of the vats, breaking into several pieces. She could see the dark powder spilled on the floor.

  Nicolas chuckled, glancing back at the flask. “A poor throw,” he said. “Really, I thought better of you …”

  He stopped as Emily spoke a single Arabic word: “Nahr!” A small flame bloomed in the palm of her hand, and she threw that as she’d thrown the flask: as Nicolas dropped the razor, as he started his own counter spell. The flame hissed in the air and touched the powder on the floor.

  The flash blinded her, the concussion made her scream again. As Emily blinked, as she forced herself from the floor, she heard the groan of the metal supports around the vat, heard the ping-ping-ping as rivets shot away from the over-stressed iron bands. Then, in a moment that seemed to stretch impossibly, the slats pushed outward, the entire floor groaning as the vat collapsed, as the heavy weight of the thousands of gallons of porter it contained struck the vats alongside it, and they too collapsed like a line of bone stick tiles on a gaming table. Nicolas, nearest to the first vat, was overwhelmed in a foaming brown flood, his arms upraised. The building shook and seemed to shriek as if mortally wounded as the remaining vats went with the first. A wave of seething porter engulfed them all, the floor collapsing underneath them, the flood bearing Emily away. She fought for air, her mouth and nose full of the stench of beer. In the torrent, she glimpsed Catherine, still bound to her chair, and she reached for her, caught the chair with a hand and managed to hold on as the new, raging river battered them. They struck something—one of the shelves from the lower room?—and she very nearly lost consciousness again. Emily was shouting, but she couldn’t hear her voice against the sound of the flood …

  … She glimpsed light; she gulped air, then went under again. Rocks (cobblestones? Were they in the street?) tore at her dress and skin. Catherine’s chair hit something hard, breaking off one of its legs. The world rushed by them, or they were hurled through it, bouncing and rebounding from buildings and carriages, battered and beaten. Emily felt her right arm strike a metal pole, heard the snap of bone, and she screamed, taking in a mouthful of beer. She couldn’t breathe, could no longer hold onto Catherine or the chair …

  … But the tumult was passing, depositing her broken and gasping on the street two blocks away from the brewery, the street still running with an ankle-deep stream of beer. The world slowly came back into focus: she could hear people screaming and shouting all around her, and the shrilling of police whistles. The street reeked of porter; it pooled in the cobbles, potholes, and gutters of the street. Several of the houses nearby looked to have been destroyed; one of them was afire despite the flood; in the light of the flames, she could see bodies on the street around them: limp and drowned. People were dragging themselves from the rubble. She could see the chair and Catherine, across the street. Emily forced herself to stand, to limp over to her. “Catherine?” She thought for a moment that the woman wasn’t breathing, then Catherine’s eyes opened and she took in a deep, gasping gulp of air before throwing up an immense quantity of beer. Emily tore at the remnants of the woman’s bonds with her good hand. She helped Catherine up: her clothing ruined, drenched, her hair plastered to her face, the wound inflicted by Nicolas’ razor still gaping and flowing red, but already starting to close.

  “Alive …” Catherine gasped. “Is it … ?”

  “Yes,” Emily told her. “Without the potion he gave you, you’d be dead.”

  Catherine looked around wildly. “Polidori?”

  “Doubtless alive, also,” Emily told her. “Somewhere.”

  The streets were beginning to fill with the denizens of St. Giles, some of them with pots and pans in hand to scoop up the pools of porter in the street. She saw police arriving as well. “Come on,” she told Catherine. “We should leave here while we can …”

  *

  The carriage rocked and swayed as it made its way from the flooded St. Giles district. Emily stayed next to Catherine, her arm around the woman, who alternately sobbed and sighed. She kept looking at her hands, turning them in front of her in the dim light of the carriage’s lamp. Emily knew what she was marveling at: the smoothness and elasticity of the skin, the strength that had returned to fingers once stiff with swollen joints. She touched her face with those smooth hands also, as if in disbelief.

  “Am I … ?” she asked Emily as the carriage turned onto Tottenham Court Road.

  “Yes,” Emily told her. “The elixir that Nic …” She pressed her lips together. “… Mr. Polidori gave you restored your youth.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ve taken a similar potion,” Emily admitted.

  Catherine’s face turned toward Emily. Her eyes searched Emily’s face. “How old are you?”

  “Older than you could imagine,” Emily told her. “Centuries. But …” She bit her upper lip, then said the words. “Catherine, you won’t live as long. I’m sorry. Polidori’s potion, what he gave you, is flawed. Incomplete. One day …” Emily stopped. She remembered her mice: youthful one day, then their age exploding back onto them suddenly, their bodies writhing in agony as they aged and died in minutes. That was Catherine’s fate also.

  Unless …

  Outside, she heard the carriage driver call to his horse, heard a newsboy’s cry as he sold his papers on a corner. The carriage swayed as they turned left; the sound of the wheels changed underneath them. She took Catherine’s hands in her own. “Catherine, the elixir you took removed the burden of your years from you, and it will hold them back—but only for a time. One day, all those years will come rushing back, and many more besides.” She told her then about her failed experiments and the mice. She told her about her own potion, how it had worked when the other had failed, though she didn’t tell her why. Catherine’s eyes widened with the tale.

  “How long?” she asked. “How long will I live?”

  “I don’t know,” Emily answered, hoping that Catherine couldn’t hear the lie in her voice. Not long. A few years, a decade. Maybe as short as a few months. “No one can know.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Why would he give me this elixir?”

  “The potion—either one of them—changes you in other ways, Catherine. It gets into your mind, makes you need things. Polidori—he needs pain. He feeds on torment and anguish; it nourishes him. The thought of your eventual agony pleases him, and knowing that he has hurt me by hurting you …” Emily shrugged. “I’m afraid that pleases him most of all.”

  Catherine pulled her hands away from Emily; she released them reluctantly. “What about you?” Catherine asked. “He said the two of you were alike. What do you feed on?”

  “The soul-heart,” Emily breathed. “I need creativity, in all its forms. I was doomed to be a muse. A daemon.”

  Catherine sunk back into the corner of the carriage as it jounced and turned again. Her hands were pressed against her sodden blouse, over her heart. “And me?”

  Emily shrugged. “I don’t know what it’s done to you. But you’ll know. Soon enough.”

  “So I’m going to become a monster like Polidori? And I’m going to die a horrible death as well?”

  “Am I a monster, Catherine?” Emily asked, but Catherine only shook her head without answering. “And as for the other problem,” Emily continued, “there may be a solution for that. You could take my elixir. The true one.”

  She saw Catherine’s face as the woman grasped for this small hope. “That would save me?”

  Emily shook her head. “Save you? No. It will change you just as certainly as the other one has; worse, I can’t honestly tell you what will happen to you, since I don’t know anyone who’s taken the potion twice, nor have I made such an experiment myself. You’d be stepping into unknown territory. But it might mean that you’ll live. Even possibly forever, if that’s what you want.”

  Cather
ine blinked. She stared. She cowered against the wall of the carriage.

  “I’ll send the elixir to you,” Emily told her. “You can choose what you wish to do.”

  She didn’t seem to hear that or understand it. “Polidori—he’ll come after me again. He’ll hurt me the way he hurt you.”

  Emily started to pat Catherine’s hand, but she drew back, placing her hand at her side where Emily couldn’t reach it. “No, he won’t,” she told him. “He won’t because I’m leaving London, Catherine. I’m going elsewhere, taking another name, becoming another person. It’s me he truly wants, not you. When I’m gone, he’ll leave also.”

  Emily wasn’t certain she was telling Catherine the truth. She didn’t know that Nicolas would indeed leave the Blakes in peace after she left. He might still try to hurt them, figuring that the news would in turn upset her. But she didn’t know that. In her mind, there was a good chance that “Emily’s” disappearance would give them a respite from Nicolas’ machinations, and in any case, her saying that would at least give the Blakes hope that the terror was over.

  She would have to hope herself that it was the truth.

  The carriage lurched, and they heard the driver call “Whoa now!” to his horse, then the driver opened the flap at the top of the carriage. “23 Hercules Road,” he called down to them. Emily looked out. The door to the Blake house was open; she could see William outlined against the lamplight inside, peering out. “You should go,” Emily told Catherine. “He’s waiting for you.”

  “What am I going to tell William?” The question was a mere breath, nearly inaudible.

  “Tell him that the angels have touched you,” Emily told her. “He’ll believe that.”

  “Emily …”

  “Go on,” Emily told her. “Don’t make him wait.”

  Catherine nodded. She reached over and opened the door of the carriage and stepped out. She ran toward the house without looking back.

  Emily would return to her own rooms and pack. She would leave London that same evening, but not before she sent a small package to the Blake house.

  She never knew whether Catherine used it or not.

  7:

  TERPSICHORE

  Camille Kenny

  Today

  GINA PALENTO, her detective’s badge draped over the breast pocket of her suit, was waiting for them as Camille and David walked out of the Customs area at LaGuardia. Camille saw the woman detach herself from a wall and stride toward them as she and David started to roll their luggage toward the escalator to the public transportation area. “Miss Kenny,” she called out, stopping several paces away from them. To their right, Camille saw a man in a dark suit station himself near the head of the escalator: Palento’s partner, she was certain, cutting off any possible escape. “Did you have a good time in Mexico?”

  Camille glanced at David. “Give me a minute,” she said. “Watch the luggage.” She went over to Palento, who favored her with a slight smile as she approached. “Now, it could be that we just took the long way home, via Paris,” she said to the detective.

  “Uh-huh. And I’m just here picking up my Aunt Sally. But I’m not worried about why you went to France instead of Mexico, like you told me and your friends. You gave Bob Walters ten thousand dollars a few days before he was killed. Why?”

  “Have you caught his killer yet? Or Helen’s?”

  Gina shook her head. “Uh-uh. That isn’t how this works. I ask the questions; you give me answers. Ten thousand dollars? That’s a lot of money—especially for someone who doesn’t seem to actually have a job.”

  Palento was staring at her, the woman’s gaze unblinking and hard, and Camille struggled not to show the thrill of fear she felt. I should have never allowed myself to become involved with David. It’s happening again. I’m going to have to become someone else before all the lies fall apart completely, and when I do that, I’ll lose David, too.

  She glanced over to David, tried to give him a smile as if her conversation with Palento was entirely casual. “I have a trust fund, Detective,” Camille answered. “That’s how we could afford to go to France. We told everyone—including you, and I’m sorry about that—we were going to Mexico because I didn’t want my stalker to be able to follow us. And as for the ten thousand, which also came out of that same trust fund—Mr. Walters said he needed the money to get some information. I had the sense that what he was going to do wasn’t exactly legal.”

  “Must be a big trust fund.” Palento continued to stare and Camille forced herself to lock eyes with the woman. After a few breaths, Palento seemed to shrug. “All right, play it that way if you want, Ms. Kenny. For what it’s worth, here’s what I think. I’ve seen the pictures you gave Bob, and I know Bob believed Dr. Pierce was your stalker. Bob kept excellent, if rather cryptic, notes about what he was doing with all his clients. For your information, he paid nearly all of that ten thousand to someone else. When we talked to that guy and leaned on him a bit, we found out that he’d hacked into Helen’s ISP and her computer, and then into Beth Israel’s ISP and specifically Pierce’s computer. That’s what Bob was going to tell you, anyway. Strange coincidence, isn’t it, that both you and Pierce are now bound up in the same two separate cases?”

  “I didn’t kill Mr. Walters, and I didn’t kill Helen, either. I wasn’t responsible for either of those two murders.”

  A shrug. “Maybe not. I’ll grant you even probably not. But I also think you know Dr. Pierce better than you’ve told either me or Bob—I took your advice and looked into his background, and Pierce isn’t the guy’s name, and I’ll bet he’s not actually a doctor, either. So what is his name, Ms. Kenny?”

  Camille shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t know. He’s used lots of names in the time I’ve known him—that’s why I wanted Mr. Walters’ help finding him. You’ve found and arrested him?” she asked hopefully, but saw the answer in Palento’s face immediately.

  “We’ll arrest him when we find him,” she answered, and that told Camille that Nicolas had most likely shed the Pierce identity and gone underground again. But he was still here in New York. She was certain of that. Now that he’d found her, now that he had flushed her out, he wouldn’t leave. Not yet.

  “Do you think Pierce killed both Mr. Walters and Helen? Do you think Helen’s murder wasn’t just a robbery?”

  That netted Camille another shrug from Palento. “I’d say that we’re questioning whether the robbery was meant to cover up something else. What do you think, Ms. Kenny? You were talking to Pierce at Mrs. Treadway’s visitation. Was he your stalker or not? And what was he talking to you about?” Palento tilted her head as she looked at Camille. Her stare never wavered; the radiance of her soul-heart was as cold and steady as her gaze.

  “Yes, he’s my stalker,” Camille told her. “When you heard us talking, I was telling him to stay away from me. As to whether he’s Mr. Walters’ murderer or if he had anything to do with Helen’s death … Yes, I think he’s involved.” Palento’s eyes narrowed at that, and Camille hurried to add: “I just don’t know why.” Liar. Look at how she’s looking at you. She knows you’re holding back the truth.

  “You might not, but we’ll know. Soon. I promise you that,” Palento said, then her gaze flicked away from Camille toward David. “Your boyfriend’s looking anxious,” she said. “I suppose he wants to get home.”

  “I do, too,” Camille said. “We’re both tired and jet-lagged.”

  The detective lifted her chin: half a nod. “Yeah, I hate long flights myself. Go home, take a shower. I hope you don’t have any more trips planned?”

  Camille shook her head.

  “Good,” Palento said. “I’d advise you to keep it that way for the time being. Have a good day, Ms. Kenny.” The detective gave David a wave and Camille a final nod, and walked away. Camille watched her leave, the man at the escalator hurrying over to join her. She heard David approach from behind her.

  “Isn’t that the detective who’s handling Helen’s case? What
’d she want?”

  “It wasn’t about Helen,” Camille answered. “It was about my stalker. She thinks …” Camille hesitated, not certain she wanted to say it. He’ll know eventually; you’ll have to tell him anyway. “She thinks that Pierce was also my stalker.”

  “Pierce?” For a moment, he just gaped at her. She felt the tendrils of his soul-heart pulse, lifting from her momentarily before embracing her again. “That’s just too weird, Camille.”

  “That’s what Detective Palento thinks also. And I don’t blame her.” She took David’s arm. “I’m too tired to think about the whole mess right now,” she said. “Let’s go home. I need to rescue poor Mercedes from Verdette at least.”

  *

  As Camille walked into Annie’s, she heard a loud and plaintive yowl: Verdette, in her carrier, which was sitting on the tabletop in the nearest booth, with Mercedes alongside it. Camille waved to Mercedes and slid into the booth. Camille set down her handbag on the tabletop next to Verdette’s carrier; it made a muffled but heavy noise. Mercedes glanced at the purse as Camille slide onto the bench seat across from her. “Jesus, what’ve you got in there? A brick?”

  Verdette yowled again, and pawed at the wires of the cage’s door. Camille stroked the paw, which was withdrawn and replaced by Verdette’s muzzle. The cat’s raspy tongue scraped at Camille’s fingers. “Thanks for taking care of her while we were gone. I really appreciate it. Did she behave for you?”

  Mercedes laughed and held out her hands to Camille, palms down. Camille could see scratch marks on both, and she grimaced. “I’m sorry. She’s really a one-person cat. I really appreciate you looking after her.”

  “That’s what friends do.” Mercedes pulled her hands back.

  “That may be, but lunch is definitely on me, and more.” She noticed that there was coffee in front of Mercedes, and an iced tea near the carrier. “Have you ordered yet?”