The Eterna Solution

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  “There’s something else,” Effie said, producing a telegraph from her pocket.

  Clara read the typed slip of paper on Western Union stationery.

  BEAUTIFUL EFFIE, IF NY CAN SPARE YOU, NEW ORLEANS NEEDS YOU. YOU AND FRED CAN COMPLETE OUR COMPASS AS WE FIGHT FOR THE SOUL OF THE CRESCENT … IT IS DIRE. SOON, IF YOU CAN.

  Nodding, Clara looked up with a steeled smile. “Of course,” she murmured, squeezing Effie’s hands in hers. “Go, with our blessing and love, both of you. There are enough of us here. I know London and New York have been hard on you. I hope New Orleans will be kinder.”

  “I think it will be … better,” Effie murmured.

  “Give those dear twins my best,” Clara said, fighting back tears at the thought of Andre and Louis and all that had passed between them.

  “I will,” she promised, embracing Clara. “Stay sharp as ever. Let Bishop take care of you when you need it, and you him. We all need taking care of sometimes. Give that man my love and thank him for all he’s done for my family.”

  “I shall. Let us know of anything New York can do to help.”

  Clara then turned to the assembled company, beginning with a rallying tone that to her own ear sounded entirely false and hollow. But perhaps in the acting of it she could be convinced. “Friends?”

  Everyone gathered around her diligently. Knight and Lord Black came further into the room from the parlor entrance, Black in his usual bright whites and blues, Knight in an ornately embroidered Turkish ensemble fit for the theater, her expression all empathy for Clara’s state.

  “It would seem there’s more grim work for the day,” she announced. “No rest for the weary. Not everyone need accompany me, but while I’m not completely at my best, this new matter cannot wait until morning.”

  “Whatever you need, Miss Templeton,” Spire offered. She could have sworn she had insisted he call her Clara, but at the moment, formality was its own comfort.

  “We must examine Mr. Fordham’s residence in Brooklyn, accessible by ferry from the Fulton landing. Once across the river, it’s a short walk. We’d best go now.”

  “But before we do,” Clara continued, “we must wish our Effie well. She and her brother have been called to New Orleans by Andre Dupris to be a spiritual compass in their efforts. The call has been urgent, and we are selfish if we keep them from noble tasks southward.”

  No one fought this, and everyone was quick to offer Effie embraces, well-wishes. Evelyn pressed money into her hands, and the young woman caught between worlds was further caught off guard by the outpouring of love and appreciation for her hard work.

  Lord Black gave her the names of British embassy contacts in the city and Miss Knight moved forward to murmur something in her ear, to which the woman flushed. Whether it was clairvoyant prophecy or a flirtation, Clara would never know, and she was too much a lady to ask.

  The valuable Eterna operative left their company with simply a quiet thanks, tears in her warm eyes, lingering last on Clara, offering a complicated gaze for a complicated life, and exited. Clara managed to hold back her own tears, for fear of what she’d find at Franklin’s home was sobering and chilling a prospect enough to keep them at bay.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  It was true that not everything had gone to plan during the moving-picture presentation and after, Celeste had to admit. However, she chose to count a few joys.

  Waking the next morning, she was thrilled to wander a blessedly empty house in her robe. Lord Tantagenet’s body had been taken away and done solemn ceremony with the day prior, all of his money in her account presently, and the freedom that society afforded a widow was hers.

  Having been married she’d done her societal duty, having lost a husband she was afforded space and room, not expected to entertain suitors unless she wanted to, and no one would seize the money—as if only death could pry open men’s permission for a woman to have her own. All remained still, of course, in his name, but as titles came with open doors, she did not mind the name, now freed from the tedious man who bore it.

  As a hungry child who came from nothing, scrabbled and fought tooth and nail to have anything, respect most of all, she would do what she could to keep it.

  Her workers had gone on ahead of her to prepare the next ritual site, and she would join them promptly. All would move forward. Once she tied up a loose end.

  She hadn’t expected to be chased by Moriel’s shadow, the old king now given over purely to demonic force. It had been her hope that he’d pounce directly on the coterie of troublesome folks that had been the end of him and who stood in her way. Instead, the petty thing, he went after her. Again. She knew it was him. She knew his taste and the air was full of it: bitter, earthy smoke, blood and tar.

  When he tore past the police officer chasing her out, bowling the man over in the process, she thought for a moment that the demon shade would gain on her, tear her into pulp as they did any servant deemed a betrayer. The shadow only stopped when she used the arcane Latin words she’d heard Moriel use against shadows before. Words he didn’t know she’d listened in on in the early days of his prison sentence, words he never guessed he would be subject to. Listening women. More infernal that all those scribbling ones Hawthorne complained about.

  The summoning code, those dear old letters, served their purpose. Having used them to bring the shadow forth into the theater was a closure of sorts. They’d been placed with deliberation, and they were picked up with the same consideration. Those government operatives couldn’t help themselves; of course they’d try to crack the code. A trap too easy to lay for them. She felt the corridors of the darker realm widening, like a surging tide. Her foes had been overcome. How many died in an attack, she couldn’t tell.

  Having stretched out her hands over the map to Collect vitality last night at the witching hour, she had felt the push and pull between the forces she wielded and that which her foes were trying to wrangle.

  She’d gotten their scent at the performance, a read on their potency. If she tried hard, she could feel them darting about now, proving not all of them succumbed. They were out of their depth but damn if they weren’t full of pluck. She had to admire the enemy teams but surmised they were more lucky than truly gifted.

  They managed to stumble onto the right ways to fight the malevolent nature of Society magic by sheer instinct and happy coincidence, despite being constrained by cultural expectations of decorum.

  That Celeste chose to champion the unnatural was not a judgment on the natural world, it was a matter of expediency. She could control the unnatural. She was in awe of the natural world, the organic flow of the Earth’s cosmic energy. That these elder energies seemed to favor the fools who opposed her was an insult. So she gave herself more and more to the unnatural, a force that welcomed her gifts with open arms, and soon she would be entwined fully with the converse of all that was ley. Her body would become the dark line; the ultimate autonomy.

  But she couldn’t trust her loose ends. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be unwitting prey twice. It was time to put the old king away for good.

  Moriel was a liability and she couldn’t risk another incident. So she would call him forth for the last time and secure his permanent fate. As a final outrage, the cage she’d had built for his essence was constructed from iron, a plain, pedestrian material he hated. The box was filled with salt and her own blood, and marked with every symbol of cherished faith, kept whole, all represented in small silver tokens.

  She didn’t need the letters to draw him forth now that she had the diadem a corrupted police officer had sent her from the site of burning Vieuxhelles, the night Moriel’s castle lay in ruin.

  She held it up, Lady Macbeth holding up the crown, and began what of the Summoned ritual she knew by heart.

  Moriel came quickly at her call—too quickly, perhaps. Celeste was fairly certain he was not en route to do her bidding, but to do away with her. Rip her apart. She was prepared for that.

&n
bsp; His Summoned shadow slid through the opening created by Lady Tantagenet’s incantations and her blood. Then, as if magnetized, the shadow drifted toward the blackened gold of the diadem in her hand, smeared with her blood. As so much of Moriel’s magic was drenched in blood, hers slathered on the crown declared it as her own.

  As the dark shadow dove, Celeste threw the talisman into the fireplace, into the hot iron box atop a glowing hardwood log. The shadow lunged after the diadem, coiling into the box, the lid slamming shut on it, salt spilling everywhere, the whole and unsoiled talismans of every faith Moriel had ever corrupted rattling as the box shook in protest.

  What Moriel’s essence couldn’t have known was that the seal of his trap, hidden just under the lip of the container, was the small blade Moriel had run between her ribs when he’d grown too leery of her psychic and mesmeric powers, now the tool of her revenge.

  The weapon used to kill her would be what held him prisoner. It had been doused in holy water and it was now a symbol of her superior power. It was now the barrier between his shadow and her soul.

  Flinging out both her hands, she pulled on every rail track and electrical wire she’d ever fouled, the force of energy the same as any speeding train. A roaring sound crested in her ears; unbearable heat poured off her body as rivulets of sweat dripped off her brow.

  The box melted slightly at the corners, the padlock edging into the metal, fusing. Dropping her arms, she stumbled forward, never yet having exerted that much of herself or the lines she was tying herself to. But the effect was thrilling and useful.

  She lifted the glowing iron box out of the flames with a pair of fireplace tongs, setting it to cool on the tile of the fireplace.

  Sitting in a brocade armchair, she stared at the box, feeling the heat wafting off it, and smiled. Leaning forward, she spoke to it as if it were the old friend it contained.

  “It is always personal,” she murmured to the box. “You made it personal, many times, and you never grew more powerful for your pettiness, Beau. I could use all your betrayals to my advantage. Did you really think I would die so quietly, put up no fight, not haunt you to the day one of us died and beyond?” She chuckled.

  “I am ready to look beyond attaining power. Instead I will become it. Live beyond flesh’s boundaries. If my sins were to finally catch up to me, I’ll have gathered enough power to alchemically shift them, the avalanche will fall upon my shoulders, and I will be Atlas holding up a world of ill will, bloodshed, and avarice. I’ll be strong enough to weather any reckoning, and even consume it, allow the sword of justice to be smelted inside me. I will remain standing and live.”

  Once the box had cooled enough to handle, she lashed it closed with a metal vise and padlock, tucking the container under her arm and walking casually out the door. A hired carriage awaited her, with her traveling case already lashed to the rear.

  On the way to the train station, she asked the driver to circle Washington Square Park while she “ran an errand.” When she’d last passed the park, a few days earlier, she’d noticed construction taking place at one corner. Now, dressed in a riding skirt, Celeste walked to an open corner.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said to the workmen who stared up at the black-clad woman with open mouths. “Allow me to pay some respects.” At this last word, she lifted her veil, feeling heat surge in her body as she gave a psychic shove.

  Mumbling, the men standing on street level turned away and the two on planks six feet below street level all dispersed, climbing up and shambling away like the reanimate. She took their place, climbing down a workman’s ladder, holding the box under her arm and her layered black skirts in her hands.

  Just under the street level lay an open chasm. Celeste moved bones to create a pit and left Moriel’s spirit box within a pile of unnamed bones, hiding it within ignominy, abandoning him with the remains of the poor and the forgotten, the unnamed victims of plagues and injustices. The unfortunates. The common criminal. It was the greatest insult to someone who had prided himself as “the best” of men.

  As she climbed back to the surface, she heard, echoing through the earth, a long, muffled, bellowing scream, the veritable definition of fear and defeat. Throwing back her head, unable to hold back joyful amusement, she loosed a howl of retribution that made the scar from Moriel’s betrayal ache. It was worth the pain to hear that sound, to know she had bested him at last. She would hold his cry close as a lullaby for as long as her mortal coil clung to this earth.

  But enough of that, Celeste chided herself, returning to her carriage. She had no time to indulge in the classic trope of the villain luxuriating in victory. She had a train to catch, and power to Collect along the rails, augmented as so many of them were with her befouling stamp. Her work was almost ready to be unveiled in Washington, her pinnacle nearly complete.

  She would Collect her opposition, too, and fold them in with her, gaining their powers either when she broke them open or when the demons snuffed them out under her watch.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  Franklin’s family town house in Brooklyn Heights, a fine neighborhood that stared across the East River at the rising edifices of Manhattan with cool disdain, was a redbrick mansion in the Federal style, a simple, sturdy edifice that spoke of his family’s long history in the city.

  “Are we breaking in?” Spire asked, hanging back to address Clara, who was moving as fast as seizure-sore and uncooperative legs would allow as the cluster of operatives walked up the wide lane.

  “No,” she replied, drawing the fur-lined cloak Evelyn provided tighter over her aching arms. “The Eterna offices have spare keys for all our homes. Not one to mistake odd behavior or sound a false alarm, Effie procured the set from the office when Franklin was acting odd and handed them to me.”

  “Odd how?” Spire asked as they strode across the cobblestone under oval-globed streetlamps with tall flames, their somber faces alternately in glow and shadow, an eerie cycle.

  “Distracted, gloomy, tired,” Clara said. “I knew he was suffering from deeper melancholy than usual but I assumed that was because of the grimness of our work of late. I should have paid better attention.”

  “You were in England,” Spire countered, “and returned to constant preoccupation.”

  “You are too kind, Mr. Spire. I doubt you’d afford yourself the same courtesy were our positions reversed.”

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t,” Spire replied. “Still, I don’t coddle, and I don’t give women a handicap. I merely state the facts of your circumstances. We can’t play counsel to everyone.”

  Clara smiled at him, her expression, she hoped, conveying her growing appreciation for this consummately sensible man. They stopped outside the town house.

  “My senses perceive a sour taste,” she said.

  Evelyn Northe-Stewart agreed. “Yes, something is terribly off.” Without asking, Evelyn plucked the key from Clara’s hand, strode up to the door, and unlocked it, volunteering herself for the first psychic blow to protect the compromised Clara.

  When the door opened in an unsettling creak to a dim hall beyond, Evelyn set her jaw. Clara felt it next; the wave of overwhelming despair that hit Sensitives like the stench of decay.

  Spire was the first to step past Evelyn and into the house, pistol drawn, oblivious to the psychic miasma. Clara followed, pausing to turn the gas knob near the door and bring light to the interior of the house from the multiple, white, glass-globed sconces on the walls of the long front hall and along the stairs to the second and third floors. The rest of the group filed in behind them, then Evelyn closed the door and locked it.

  “Franklin?” Clara called carefully. Nothing. “Franklin. It’s Clara, I just want to talk with you, I’m worried about you, my friend.…”

  Nothing.

  “No one is here,” Knight verified. “Nothing but sadness.”

  “It is most unlike Franklin to leave the place so cluttered,” Clara stated as she stepped carefully through th
e entrance hall, noticing boots and hats strewn about in the hall. “He despises clutter—it causes him great unease. Tidying up makes him feel safer.”

  “Does he live here alone?” Spire asked.

  “Unfortunately yes,” Clara replied. “His parents are dead and his brother never returned from the Civil War. I’ve never thought it was a good idea for him to remain here, like an additional haunt, but he feels it is his duty.”

  The disorder of the entrance hall continued in the study and parlor that flanked it. In the parlor, books were tossed about haphazardly, lying on the furniture and the floor, looking as if they had been catapulted out of the study, where bookshelves stood empty.

  Across the hall was his study, overrun by what appeared to be kindling, brush, and weeds, but which turned out on further examination to be bouquets tied with twine; bundles of herbs, flowers, ferns, and such.

  Clara stepped into the study, her compatriots following.

  “While the place is admittedly messy,” Spire began carefully, “I see no signs of any particular scuffle or struggle.”

  “There wasn’t one,” Miss Knight stated, keeping to the threshold. “Death is here, but not murder.” Evelyn, who was keeping close to Clara, flanking her with Rose on the other side, nodded, affirming the assessment with a grimace. Knight winced. “However … I sense some items of concern upstairs, Mr. Spire.”

  Spire wasted no time in brushing past Knight to ascend the stairs and she moved quickly to accompany him.

  Lord Black examined all the dried plants around the study with meticulous care, touching, sniffing, and holding leaves up to the light.

  Clara moved forward, to where Effie had instructed she pay close attention, Franklin’s desk—a prized possession that Clara knew had been handed down within his family for generations. She looked down at the polished oak surface and her heart stopped.

  A simple message was scratched across the wooden surface, probably created with the penknife lying nearby: