The Eterna Solution

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  He glanced furtively at Rose, who had unfolded her arms and was staring at him with a bit of pleased wonder at his unexpected display of emotion. Miss Knight breezed up to him and planted a kiss on his forehead.

  “You darling, you,” she cooed. His cheeks went scarlet and he moved to take his leave again.

  “I’ll be with the senator inside the Executive Mansion. Send word at the least inclination.” Then he was gone, for good this time.

  Evelyn loosed a chuckle when the mirrored door began to slowly close behind him and his flustered form caught a palm leaf to the face as he went out.

  * * *

  Spire met Bishop and Black on the Executive lawn at their appointed time; outside they could speak more freely.

  “The sergeant at the Capitol was very helpful,” Spire stated. “He said his men will look into anything odd around the electrical equipment, and will be on the lookout for Mr. Fordham, and what I could describe of the mysterious ‘Celeste.’ He was aware of the concerns in other cities, by which I am heartened.”

  Spire then conveyed the same objections to his fellows as he did in the Willard reception room.

  “For the record, after what we’ve seen and done together, I don’t like our team being divided in such a manner. Our strengths are varied and should be shared, and the pattern of late has been of dividing our team further and further.”

  “I agree, and we’ll reunite as soon as we’ve swept this entire building and I’ve finally gotten an answer about where the damn president went,” Bishop said.

  Spire remained uneasy.

  He’d begun to value the eccentricities of the team, though he’d never expected to. The Sensitives always managed to see the world in way he did not, a unique perspective that allowed him to build the strategy necessary in a war across a plane that he struggled to admit existed. Rose was his bridge between these worlds, and he was more grateful for her by the passing day; she understood her clairvoyant colleagues and Spire himself in equal measure.

  Ascending the steps of the grand manse of the president, they checked in with a stern-looking footman in fine black dress who insisted only Bishop was on the list. Mesmerism employed, Bishop soon led the trio through the many stately rooms, Bishop explaining that there had been a recent change in decor thanks to the innovative Tiffany studios.

  “Then how will we know if something is odd, out of place, or just ‘art’?” Spire asked, grimacing at a mosaic installation he deemed rather gaudy. Black chuckled. “I’m being rather serious.”

  Black laughed further. “I know you are, my good man, and I don’t know what to say. You’re right. How would we know?”

  “We’ll have to hope small black boxes and disembodied parts are not part of the Tiffany vision,” Bishop said mordantly.

  They were ascending a carpeted stair that led to the west wing, Senator Bishop trying to explain to his British cohorts the particulars of their governmental system—one that to Spire’s mind seemed terribly inefficient—when Lord Black paused at a vase of calla lilies and frowned.

  He swept back down to the wide stair landing, where a butler was directing the traffic of the distribution of hors d’oeuvres on the ground floor. Bishop followed a pace, Spire descending the stair enough to overhear.

  “My good man,” Black exclaimed to the butler. “I am very impressed with the new decor.”

  “It is very innovative indeed, glad you approve, sir,” the butler replied with a smile. “Can I help you with anything?”

  “I love the choice of flowers. Calla lilies, how stylish and modern. Are they always here or are these special for tonight?”

  “For tonight’s event, they were just brought in today.”

  “Thank you!” Black said, sweeping back to his associates.

  “Why do the flowers matter?” Spire said. “I confess I don’t share your particular expertise with or enthusiasm for plants.”

  “If the flowers were placed today, that’s far too soon for a calla lily to be fading,” Black said, inclining his head toward the middle blossom in the vase, which was yellowing and drooping.

  “So it is,” Bishop agreed.

  “Is he still watching me?” Black asked. “I want to examine the pedestal but not if we’re being watched.”

  “He is still looking in your direction. Somewhat dazzled, I’d say. I think you’ve an admirer,” Bishop murmured, waiting for the staff to find the nobleman less fascinating.

  “Damn. I wasn’t trying for that,” Black muttered. “Just information.”

  “You’re easy to like, milord,” Bishop said. “Are you sure you’re not a mesmerist?”

  “No, he’s just insufferably charming,” Spire stated matter-of-factly. “Insufferably.”

  “My dears, you are too kind,” Black said with a laugh.

  “It’s true,” the policeman continued with a scowl. “I’ve tried to stay angry with you and I’m angry I can’t stay angry with you.”

  Black laughed again, looking over his shoulder to see he still had the eye of the butler. “Well then, let’s see if I can use that to further advantage. You take your opportunity as I do.”

  Moving away from Bishop and Spire, Black floated toward a server carrying a tray of food near the butler, making an excited sound.

  As the staff watched Black, Spire took the moment to examine the console table. Bishop shifted the vase as Spire picked up the pedestal, lifted the lid, and made a face. Bishop leaned over to see a severed ear and Spire snapped the wooden box shut. They put the items back, turning to watch as Black engaged the butler further with some quiet words before returning with a porcelain plate with bits of meat and cheese on picks.

  “Lost my appetite,” Spire said as Black proffered the plate, gesturing to the pedestal.

  “Ah. Evidence for the Capitol Police, I take it?” Black asked. Spire nodded.

  “They need to sweep the place. I’d drop it in a fireplace, but the smell alone would end the soiree. I don’t know if you want that kind of attention, Senator,” Spire said.

  “I’d like to handle this as quietly as we can,” Bishop replied. “The country can’t lose faith in Washington so close after an assassination. We can’t be seen as too vulnerable.”

  Black gestured that they move into another room, pausing to bow his head briefly to the butler, who beamed a smile in return. “That’s Mr. Taylor,” Black explained of the butler. “When I asked if I could meet the president he said your commander in chief was found shuffling around one of the half-renovated halls in his dressing gown.” Black leaned in. “Raving about nightmares. They’re not letting anyone see him. He’s been taken to a private hospital.”

  Spire watched Bishop’s eyes widen as Black flashed a smile. “If I’ve learned anything from my dear Francis, it’s always ask the butler, he knows everything.”

  “I’m not sure he should casually tell British parliamentarians state secrets,” Bishop said with a bit of bemused horror, which only widened Black’s smile.

  “See? Insufferable,” Spire stated.

  “Well at least he’s … alive,” Bishop said quietly. “But it does mean that token under the lily isn’t the half of it. Arthur was never a man, from my knowing his New York politics, given to histrionics, which is why I took his telegram so seriously. It must have gotten worse.”

  “Mosley suggested that extensions like that box are connected to a source infinitely worse,” Spire murmured. “My bet is that source lies below the main floor.”

  “If that is the case, we’ve placed our good Blessing in danger then,” Bishop said as he instinctively moved away from several men who seemed about to corner him, but called over his shoulder with a wave of greeting.

  “Haven’t forgotten about your suggestion, Jim, the paperwork is on my desk, I’ll have an answer for you this week,” the senator called, then smiled and disappeared around the next corner, turning back toward the front entrance of the mansion. Spire kept up the pace as the senator continued urgently, “We shouldn’t
leave the reverend alone while Warding and sweeping, he’ll be outmanned.”

  The trio breezed past a throng of men hovering around a dark wooden bar where drinks were being served in the front foyer. A round-faced man with an incandescent smile sought Bishop out and it was clear this was someone he didn’t need to mesmerize away.

  “Representative Brown, my dear friend, this is Lord Black and Mr. Spire, helping us on our protective mission,” he said quietly. “We need to find our friend on the lower levels. This building has been tainted by dark forces. How many Wards are here?”

  The man’s face flushed with shame. “Only a few on the outside. I haven’t had luck gaining audience of late, and I don’t have your gifts, my friend.” He loosed a smile and spoke with furtive excitement. “But I do have a few in my pockets I plan to leave in strategic places.”

  “Wonderful,” Bishop replied. “While we’re belowstairs, if you might convince a few discreet, able-bodied officers to be on hand if we need them?”

  Brown nodded and hurried off.

  Spire peered closely at the wall near a copse of potted ferns, searching for a crack in the surface. Finding a hairline rectangle outline, he put his hand to the paneling, found the notch, and pulled; a door swung free. The help would need to come and go from every floor, and he knew from finer houses that such entrances and exits were to remain as hidden, out of the way, and close to invisible as the persons used to power a mansion. How the disregarded half lived.

  Spire went on ahead down the first few steps to a darkened landing and turned back to see that Black had followed but Bishop faced a few legislators staring at their unconventional exit. Bishop held up a shooing sort of hand. Spire assumed some mesmerism was in play and continued descending once Bishop had joined them, letting the door close behind him.

  Once their eyes adjusted to a dimmer light they descended a long and narrow set of stairs to discover a bustling underworld of activity where cooks and maids, butlers and footmen came and went along halls of arched, undecorated brick.

  “Anyone seen Mr. Blessing?” Bishop asked gamesomely as their company tried to stay clear of hors d’ oeuvres and drink trays coming and going, hoping not to sow concern or alarm. Polishing a silver plate, a ruddy-faced Irishman pointed down an unadorned hall dimly lit by a couple of plain gas sconces.

  They turned a few narrow corners, Spire feeling as though they’d nearly gone in circles, before they found their colleague.

  In the dim gaslight, the reverend was passing a dark hand along the whitewashed brick, as if seeking to draw information from it through touch. At the sound of footsteps in his tunnel, the reverend whirled to face the intruders; his look of fierce concentration softened into his characteristic ebullient smile at the sight of his friends.

  “What have you found upstairs?” the reverend asked.

  “An ear in a box,” Spire stated matter-of-factly. “You?”

  “Nothing tactile yet.” Blessing shook his lightly graying head. “But my heart is exceedingly heavy and led me to this area as if I were dragged. Please understand.” He paused, searching for words. “A place like this is fraught, for anyone who would have been killed or enslaved under the orders and decrees of this Masters house … haunted by injustices. I must try hard to separate my own emotional weight from the tenor of the air here. But we are here to do God’s work, cleansing the horror of the works of men,” the reverend concluded with a sigh.

  Listening, Spire saw for the first time just how herculean the man’s faith must be, for him to keep so hopeful and kind despite the breadth of injustice.

  “I remain ever in awe and appreciation of you, and will keep fighting our good fight,” Bishop said gently, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  As the group crowded into the narrow hall, Blessing took a step back to make room, passing a nondescript wooden door. Suddenly something shoved the clergyman away from the door, though no hand or body was visible. Thrust across the dim space, the reverend hit the bricks opposite with a thud, and Bishop was immediately at his side to right him.

  Spire dipped his hand in his breast pocket and gripped his pistol.

  “I don’t know if that was a warning or a threat,” Blessing said, shaking his arms. Spire felt a distinct chill pass through the moist air and over his warm face. “I can feel spirits, thick and agitated,” the reverend continued. “There is something dreadful behind that door.”

  Spire drew his pistol, then stepped silently forward and pressed his ear to the door. For a moment, all he could hear was his colleagues’ breathing, the symphony of activity back down the hall, and distant strains of hobnobbing above.

  Then, as if it were right at his ear, he heard a shuddering, aching, wrenching gasp. Terrified to the core, he transformed fear to action, as was his wont. He took a step back to gauge the distance; after one hearty kick the latch gave and the door swung open.

  All was darkness within; the dim gaslight of the corridor seemed not to penetrate beyond a pace or two.

  Spire struck a match as Blessing handed him an oil lantern from a hook in the hall. Once he lit the wick within the metal cage, the space came into view; it was about the size of a small ship’s cabin, its walls untreated brick as compared with the whitewashed hall outside.

  It was filled with a pyramid built of palm-sized black boxes. Just like the ones Spire had seen on the bridge, in Franklin Fordham’s town house, and just minutes ago upstairs.

  At the sight of this cumulative formation, Spire was filled with revulsion and a hot wave of anger. How could anyone take the time to do something so awful? It was the constant bane of his life’s work; he didn’t want to twist his mind in such a manner as to understand evil, but he wondered what it would have taken for something constructive to prevail instead of the dark impulses he saw created and re-created through the course of his cases. A fresh desire to obliterate these monuments of horror seized him with a righteous fury.

  Spire swung the lantern to and fro. There was no one inside. He stepped into the tiny space. In the hall, the smells of oil, of polish, and of food cooking had canceled out the miasma of decay. But in the room itself, that was almost overwhelming.

  Lord Black joined Spire, circling the pyramid with one hand over his nose; the other was pressed to his fine beige frock coat lest the hem fall against any part of the pyramid.

  A dark substance on the boxes glimmered in the lamplight. Spire leaned in and sniffed to get a better read. Dried blood. Apparently drizzled from top to bottom; the structure’s base lay in a pool of pitch-black tar, whose oil kept some of the blood freshly wet.

  Spire lifted the uppermost box. Two eyes—just eyes—stared back. Suspicions confirmed, he shut the box.

  “There is nothing but unrest here,” Blessing stated, “and it is at a precarious point. Any minute the spirits could set this all afire. With the tar…”

  “It could easily consume the building,” Spire declared. “We’ve not a moment to waste.”

  * * *

  The meal was pleasant enough, but the ladies found small talk difficult and so most of it was spent in silence. Afterward they listlessly entered the adjacent private parlor, where they were soon offered an array of desserts, teas and cordials, wheeled in on a cart covered with a white cloth, by a maid who entered with her head bowed in what was either extreme shyness or deference to higher classes taken to an extreme.

  Clara didn’t feel well. Lunch didn’t settle, but she didn’t complain out loud. Perhaps mint tea would soothe her.

  As the ladies took to the desserts and hot beverages, as much for the sake of having something to do as to assuage any lingering hunger, the maid stepped to close the room’s pocket doors and locked them—with herself on the inside.

  She lifted her platinum-haired head. When her gaze caught Clara’s, Clara’s already churning stomach plummeted. The intruder was beautiful, compelling, and familiar. Her deep-set, dark brown eyes, such a contrast from her pale hair, were not the eerily reflective blackened e
yes of the possessed, but their umber abyss spoke of an exhausted and embittered old soul. Even a light mourning veil across a theater couldn’t have masked an energy like this one. It was her.

  Instantly, Clara heard the distant, quiet whine of the polluted energies, and she was certain they were all in distinct danger. The woman spoke softly.

  “The poisons I added to your food will still your motor functions while we chart our next course, together.” She procured a golden pocket watch and glanced at it. “We’ve a schedule to maintain.”

  The women stared at their captor in amazement and horror. Clara noted that Miss Knight’s face was as impressed as it was offended. Evelyn’s gaze was a bit blurry, an expression Clara knew indicated the medium was trying to reach out to the spirit world.

  “We’ve seen you before,” Rose stated. “The picture demonstration in the theater. What is your role in the Society?”

  “I am its heir, I suppose,” the woman murmured.

  “The green fire of Liberty’s torch?” Rose pressed.

  “Kept you busy, didn’t it? That, and Columbia. All while my minions were hard at work elsewhere.” Her smile turned to ice. “This is no land of freedom. It’s a land of infinite prisons and I wanted to express an … artistic protest to Liberty’s lie.”

  “What is Moriel’s plan?” Clara demanded. “Celeste, is it? Or do you have some abominable title?”

  “Lady C, yes indeed, though I rather think of myself as Lady Macbeth to the world, urging it onward, born to kill while it fails at leading.”

  The woman smiled again, the expression a work of glamour, that of an old fae queen who invitingly led humans to ruin.

  “I’d like, while in the presence of ladies for whom I have the utmost respect—”

  “Poison and capture is hardly a mark of respect,” Evelyn spat, trying to lift her arm.

  “I’ve physically paused and detained you,” Celeste countered. “There’s a semantic difference.”

  “What do you want with us?” Rose asked. The toxin was slowing her speech. The numb, heavy weight down Clara’s arm extended to leaden fingertips.