The Eterna Solution

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  The last station before a ferry after which another train would screech its way into the heart of Manhattan and bring its mass to steaming rest at the great depot had been a quaint little platform in eastern New Jersey. Celeste took advantage of the pause in her journey to briefly disembark, wandering out along the platform with a small black box in hand. She eventually found a place for it; stepping down onto the tracks, where a screen of smoke and steam obscured her, she left the seemingly harmless token at a track change.

  Her soul-binding tokens, placed beneath arches, at intersections, at track changes, at booster stations, at turbines and dynamos, held the divinatory quality of forks in a road. If each side of an intersection represents a decision, movement of any kind—turning, continuing in the same direction, or even reversing course—makes the choice. She would collect those decisions and allow the mass to power her future, part by dead part.

  That was how she’d gotten here. Shifting in bed, arms still upraised to feel the prickling jolts of the industries that were offering her every other beat of their unnatural hearts, she rejoiced that eventually she wouldn’t even need this female assemblage of carbon the world considered a second-class body; she would float above it all, a spirit supreme.

  * * *

  Sleeplessness was now the new rule of law.

  Perhaps, Clara thought, it was a consequence of feeling and hearing the lines, perhaps because what they’d fought in England still wafted over the earth, in one form or another, when she’d hoped every last Summoned had been banished on the bloodied stones of the Embankment. Of this she was as sure as instinct and portent could be; it was not mere imagination.

  What, then, would be the point of what they hoped to do in New York? Would there ever be a final nail driven in this particular coffin? Could there be? Might a systemic evil gain enough momentum from the magnitude of its own near-impossible virulence, springing up from the grave in cycles like a penny-dreadful vampyr, to become immune to all of folklore’s remedies?

  She had to trust in the city, the power of the local magic, to strike back, as it had done in London. Yet she feared that her work ultimately made little difference. Did she make any ghost’s afterlife any better with her work? Was the spirit world as a whole moving toward peace?

  The practical and localized magic Clara and her companions wrought—did it do right by the living and the dead? She could no longer ask her late, beloved Louis this question, certain as she was that his call to the world was trained now upon his beloved New Orleans, so she would have to ask Evelyn Northe-Stewart. Perhaps Evelyn would be willing to hold a séance to ask Lady Denbury, and others in the spirit world that had helped them, what more the living could do to help those who had crossed over, who had so many times come to the aid of humanity.

  If she was feeling ill at ease, did that mean the Summoned had returned to float again over the cable? Marlowe had made sure their path wouldn’t cross over it directly, but she was up on her feet and half-dressed again, because if they had come back and no one else was awake to fight them …

  Trying to be as quiet as she could, as there was no sense in sounding an alarm until the threat was assessed, she rushed up and out to the rail and looked out in the direction of the line.

  There was a floating lightless body again, as unnatural as it was unnerving. One. Perhaps two; it was hard to tell in the dark night and the movement of the water.

  Closing her eyes, Clara felt for the ley line behind her, as if she were reaching back and drawing out a sword of light.… The hum filled her, a sense of peace soothed her, and when she opened her eyes again the demon, or whatever trick of the water and night that had made the demons appear, was gone. The Wards tucked into inconspicuous places glowed from their nooks and crannies, her surge recharging them a moment. Clouds fled from the moon and suddenly the water danced with diamonds. She smiled and clenched her fists in pride.

  It wouldn’t always be this easy, and she had only sensed and seen one Summoned, but having a new spiritual weapon at her disposal, one that had yet to put her into epileptic danger, was the most exciting development ever.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see Miss Knight approach, her elaborate crimson kimono replaced with a far more somber aubergine taffeta that swished as she walked.

  “Trouble sleeping; a psychic bane,” Knight murmured, turning her focus far out into the deep, toward the fading glow of the horizon line. Neither broke silence for the sake of nicety.

  In Clara’s experience, when two clairvoyants spoke after a long quiet, one tended to pick up on what the other one was thinking; this did not disprove it.

  “Thank goodness the water and the horizon line are clear,” Knight said. “We’ve done good work, thanks to you.”

  “Thanks to us all.”

  “I wish I could simply take comfort in our talents as enough. But I fear we may not be enough, strong and unique as we are,” Knight murmured. “What if there is no end to the plague of demons, Miss Templeton?” Miss Knight placed her long fingers on the rail and gripped it. “I’ve been having visions. Terrible things. A war in the ground. I cannot tell if I am awake or asleep, but I see the future, decades from now. The whole world is at arms. Is destruction mankind’s foremost instinct and nature? There are beautiful women on this boat and normally that would be enough to assuage my romantic heart; that there are at the very least lovely creatures walking this earth that I may daydream about. But beauty is not enough for nights such as these.”

  Clara did not turn to her newfound colleague, as she couldn’t bear to see what Knight saw if she were to look into her eyes. The empathy from one Sensitive to another would have to be enough. The gifted were often as alienated from another soul as they were drawn to one another, beings magnetized trying to wrest apart for safety.

  “If the Master’s Society’s demonic, soul-splitting, and resurrectionist terrors can’t be thoroughly squelched and driven out from under every rock under which those practices have lain hidden, we won’t have a next century,” Clara replied after some consideration. “I’m worried about protecting the here and now. That’s why I’m awake right now, I wanted to pray to the Wards and keep them vibrant.”

  “Will what we fight not always regroup?” Knight asked. “Is this not the most exhausting of prospects?”

  “Humans will always have the capacity for evil and terror. All I hope is to keep the demons out of the mix. Humans, I can’t answer for. I won’t.”

  “I may have to borrow some of your fortitude. I’d once prided myself on it.” The medium sighed dramatically. “I’m getting vulnerable in my old age!”

  At that, Clara snorted, as the woman couldn’t be much older than her, and while by society’s standards the both of them should have been married off by thirty, they were hardly elderly, and certainly didn’t live by society’s rules. Clara didn’t find “spinster” an insult. It was, for so many, a freedom to live for oneself.

  “You know, Miss Templeton,” Knight began, still staring out at the water. The breeze buoyed loose strands of her black hair, creating a wispy Medusa. “You have become the cornerstone of this entire foundation. You hold us all up.”

  “Clara, please,” she replied earnestly. “As for my conviction, it waxes and wanes. Tonight I felt myself waning, but I can’t afford to be a crescent right now, I must be full, and so I pull on forces far greater than myself. I have a feeling New York will not be so simple an equation.” Clara sighed. “So much about my land defies redemption. How can we effectively Ward the inherently flawed and harmful?”

  “England is much the same, with its flag piercing any patch of land it seizes, thinking it knows better than the places and people it destabilizes,” Knight replied. “I’m sure our grieving Mrs. Wilson could regale us with complicated feelings about what and who she considers home and country, as could Zhavia about his escape from pogroms to English safety, and our compatriots of blended race who have to navigate their circles carefully at home and abroad.


  “As for me, I’ve fought hard to be solvent, to have certain freedoms. And yet I have to hide who I am, hide behind Mr. Blakely as a beard. And Lord Black; more privileged than us all and yet he cannot be open about the man he adores. I resent the heavy hand of imperial interests, I feel too keenly, see too much, as do you with concerns of westward expansion and stolen native lands. But the Society’s vision is no alternative to the horrors citizens have wrought on both our shores, foreign and domestic.”

  “It is not, and we are its antitheses. Now and no matter the future to come,” Clara declared, looking out at the moon, choosing to remain at full.

  Miss Knight took to reclining in a deck chair while Clara couldn’t seem to tear herself away from the railing. It was the old sea captain in her.

  After a long while had passed, she turned back to find Miss Knight gone, the moon lower, and an entire loss of sense of time. Despite the moon’s rounds, where it was in the sky seemed like another place and hemisphere; even the constellations seemed askew, and the sound of the sea lapping against steel sounded far away. There was a zap from the shadows behind her. Something very specific, that sound.

  Clara turned away from the railing when something caught her eye to the side of one of the great white stacks periodically venting great gouts of steam: the figure of a man peeking around the impressive cylinder. She remembered when she’d first seen those eyes, sparking in the shadows, unnerving and unnatural. It had been on Pearl Street in Manhattan, shortly after the street had been electrified. The streetlamps and the interior lights of the homes along the street flickered whenever this particular small, unassuming, yet terrifying young man stood below the orbs.

  Mr. “Jack” Mosley, who had taken the name of his dead brother and the name of England’s first lit street as his own. Wielder of electricity, grand leveler of Moriel’s Vieuxhelles estate, and the greatest aid in cutting the Society to the quick. Mosley was the one among their number who was the most unpredictable. How he worked, Clara could not fathom.

  Dressed in a brown frock coat and matching waistcoat too large for his thin frame, he stared at Clara. His mousy brown hair was wind-tossed and his thin mustache traced an uneven line over a pressed mouth that frowned in concentration. The sight of him filled her with as much fear as fascination; he could harness electricity the way a rancher might a lasso or a driver a whip.

  Mosley was, so far as she could tell from his work against Moriel, an ally, though driven by a desire for vengeance rather than justice. He was also the reason for one of the Omega department’s casualties: Voltage from Mosley’s hands had leaped through a wire and electrocuted Reginald Wilson from across a park. It had not been intentional murder but the man had still died, leaving his wife grief-stricken and his friends heartsick.

  Yes, this was a man to be feared and kept at a distance.

  What was he doing on board? He was an Englishman.… Perhaps New York City had become his home and he was simply returning after being removed to London by Moriel’s people. Perhaps he knew something none of Eterna nor Omega were aware of—something about what lay ahead.

  She couldn’t just stand there and stare at him as much as he could her. She had to speak or move; she couldn’t pretend she didn’t notice him any more than she had when he’d raised the hairs on her arms by his very presence on the street where she lived.

  A nod. That was all she could manage.

  He returned the gesture, then spoke. Though they were many feet apart and she should not have been able to hear him at that distance, over the noise of the sea, his voice came to her clearly.

  “I’ve been waiting for a moment alone with you,” he stated in a way that Clara wasn’t sure how to take. “I can’t bear to be around all the people in the daytime,” he continued, rubbing his temple. “It’s very noisy—all the power lines, the cable lines, the passengers and their chatter, so much humming. But you’re at the center of your merged departments, all orbits around you so it’s been impossible to reach you.”

  “Well, you have my ear now, Mr. Mosley,” she said carefully.

  “It’s good you’re learning how to differentiate between the feel of natural lines and man-made. I’m glad your guardian angel came to help. I was watching.”

  Clara stared at him, horrified by the idea of someone noting her every move. Perhaps her sentiment was made manifest in her expression, as the small, awkward man blushed in shame and stammered an explanation. “She makes a distinct sound, that woman, a specific note I never heard before. I had to see the source. I hear energy signatures like music, you see.”

  “That’s … very unique,” Clara replied, and forced a smile.

  “With so many devils we need a few angels,” Mosley continued, “to help us take care of unfinished business. So many frayed wires … A live, frayed wire is very dangerous, Miss Templeton,” he said ominously. “Be an angel and keep listening for beautiful notes. Not sour, rotten ones. You are a natural. That’s the key to turning the tide for good; picking the signal out of the noise.” A moment later he vanished behind the stack as it belched a fresh channel of steam into the air, obscuring the view. When the white cloud dissolved, she was alone again on the deck.

  Why make himself known solely to her? While he made her uneasy, she didn’t get the impression that he thought of her as prey; she felt as though he sensed something of a kindred spirit in her.

  That was, in a way, more terrifying than the ability to carry and disseminate a charge. She couldn’t do what Mosley did, but what did he think her capable of?

  “Be worthy of the squall,” she murmured to herself, a line directly from the visitor’s mouth. It was one bad forecast after another and she hoped she could get a bit of rest to weather the next downpour.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  The bulk of the voyage was spent bolstering one another’s spirits, telling stories, toasting each other with pints or cordials, and Clara tried to enjoy every minute of it, relishing the bonds of chosen family as sacred food for the soul.

  Andre Dupris and Effie Bixby, encouraging others to join them on their deck laps, shared their love of French poetry, and the importance of Frederick Douglass, and took the time to explain to their compatriots the infuriating complications of existing in two separate cultures as people who could “pass.”

  Knight and Evelyn played clairvoyant guessing games with the company, nothing that revealed anything too personal, but Clara assisted when she felt so inclined. Lord Black gossiped about members of Parliament and Bishop about Congress, and the senator indulged his mesmerism only in so much as to procure them an occasional extra bottle of wine for their table.

  Even Harold Spire told a few unexpected jokes and regaled his compatriots with sordid and outrageous tales of his London beat. While his distaste for the supernatural remained, he did seem to care for his fellows, and no one could doubt his devotion to seeing justice served.

  Only Lord Denbury kept himself apart, for the sake of his fragile health, carefully tended by Lord Black and his mother-in-law by way of marriage, Evelyn.

  The ongoing ache between Clara and Rupert was as distinctive to her tongue as the sea spray and as deep in her body as an old wound. Countless times they would open their mouths to say something to one another, yet didn’t speak, unsure. For all their mature talents, they were timid children in this new realm of intimacy.

  When the time came for everyone to see to their bags and packing out, Miss Knight whispered in Clara’s ear, “Good heavens, dear girl, just kiss him already, I can no longer bear your pining minds!”

  The striking psychic walked away, teal taffeta swishing in her wake, leaving Clara’s cheeks to turn scarlet in private. Perhaps she was correct. Bishop has always given Clara time, space, and autonomy. It was wonderful, all this freedom, but might it mean that she needed to be forward, to act, to grant him explicit permission …

  She sought out Rupert’s cabin once she’d seen to her things. Perhaps he sensed her nearness, for he opened the
door just as she was about to knock. Sensitives; taking the surprise out of everything.

  Taking her arm, Senator Bishop led her into the cozy space. His eyes were full of heat. The wall between them, constructed from decorum and shy awkwardness, was coming down brick by brick, revealing an ever-burning hearth. Clara longed to warm her hands in the gently growing fire of their more intimate companionship.

  He stared at her for a long time before reaching toward her face. Two fingertips edged around a braided tress of her hair, then traced down the side of her ear, causing her a shiver of delight, before grazing her cheek. His mesmeric gaze was fastened on her, those powerful eyes that shifted between shades of blue, green, and hazel depending on the surroundings and emotions.

  “I’m simply … so glad of you, my Clara,” he murmured. “So glad.”

  He seemed to take a delight in “my.” She tried out the concept. “As am I, my Rupert.…”

  He beamed, sculpted lips curving into the most inviting of expressions.

  As they balanced, transfixed, in an endless pause, there came the loud blast of the ship’s horn and the echoing call to disembark. At the reverberate sound, Bishop seemed to remember himself, turning away to grab a leather case. She seized his shoulder to turn him back, wishing to relish the moment full of aching promise and seal it with a physical gesture.

  “There will be time for us, for everything we want,” he promised in a delectable whisper, and bent to deposit a kiss upon the hollow of her throat, then her cheek, then her eyebrow, each evoking a little hitch of breath from her. His lips landed last on her ear, where he murmured, “We’ve been patient this long and I will not rush anything…”