When the guards brought her out, Rose gasped. She appeared at least two decades older than when she had attacked them. Not only did she crave the powers she wielded, but they kept her young and beautiful. A refreshed chill slid down her spine. The queen could never get word of this, as it was evidence of gains in immortality … the whole reason their departments had been founded in the first place.
She glanced at Spire, and his wide eyes confirmed that he, too, was shocked.
“Not a word of it,” he murmured, proving that his thoughts went exactly where hers had gone.
Spire opened the compartment and gestured that the guards who had kept her in holding should take their quarry into the train car. They hesitated. Sighing, he flashed his badge. “I have been granted authority of this charge by Sergeant Walczek.”
“Who do you work for, Scotland Yard?” the officer asked.
“Something like that,” Spire replied. “Her Majesty’s government, and on behalf of the honorable Senator Bishop and the great state of New York.”
“Mind telling me what these two have to do with it?” he said, gesturing to Rose and Knight.
“They are my operatives,” Spire said indignantly.
The officer looked at the women in surprise and shook his head. “England,” he muttered, and the prisoner was taken into the car.
“America,” Knight countered with equal disdain as she climbed inside.
The company and their quarry took seats on the benches within. Lady C was beginning to rouse. Knight had supplied another length of cloth to gag her, lest she try silver-tongued charms or incantations to demons.
Spire set the woman roughly on her feet and shoved her to an open bench inside the compartment. Knight maneuvered to face her, leaning forward suddenly as Celeste opened her eyes with a cry.
“Bradley Volpe, Edmund Cornyn, Mitchell Bannen,” Knight ground out through clenched teeth. “There!”
Withdrawing an embroidered silk handkerchief from her sleeve, she dabbed at her upper lip and then her temples, taking measured breaths. After a few minutes, Spire and Rose watching her, she straightened and spoke matter-of-factly.
“Her primary accomplices, at the Edison plant and beyond,” she explained. “I’ve been trying to extract them from her mind for an hour.”
“You’re certain,” Spire said questioningly. Knight offered a somewhat deadly glare and he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “That is an incredibly useful skill,” he murmured.
“I can’t always manage it,” Knight admitted. “It’s why I don’t volunteer the ability. I never know if I will succeed and I don’t offer false hope unless I’m being paid to do exactly that. However, she’s been digging into my head since she cornered us, and that helped create the channel.”
Lady C narrowed her eyes.
“We met Volpe at the Edison plant and planned to arrest him,” Spire said. “Thank you for the rest, Miss Knight.”
“You know,” Rose began, “I doubt a simple holding cell is sufficient for this creature. She has mesmerism, enchantments, clairvoyance, and Lord knows what else in her arsenal.”
“I can sense what she fears,” Knight declared. “So I know how we can Ward the cell to mute her gifts. Do you want to know something else that’s rather wonderful about this psychic wrestling we’ve been doing?” Knight continued.
“Do tell,” Spire replied with a grim smile.
“Near or far, I can always keep track of her. I’ll always know where she is. I’ll always be able to sniff her out, and now I have leverage to push back.”
“Useful indeed,” Spire said eagerly.
“This, too, will help,” Knight said, reaching around to the back of her neck to unclasp a thin golden chain that had been hidden below the seemingly endless ruffles of blue silk. A small, golden, heart-shaped locket dangled from the long chain, which Knight leaned forward to place around the lady’s neck. At this intrusion the woman growled at Knight, who countered with a similar sound.
Rose was suddenly very glad Knight was on their side. She could be terrifying if pressed.
“That locket was a gift from my childhood best friend, the first girl I ever loved. I knew I could never have her, she was promised to a baronet and married off too young, but I’ve always remembered that stolen kiss I took from her one stormy night just before her wedding. And I’ve never loved another as I love her.
“Now you will wear my misery and regret. I’m done carrying them around—but I’ll always know where they are.”
Knight leaned forward, taking a shaking breath, her voice tremulous as she continued. “I could have so easily become like you … full of hate and desperate vanity, misunderstood and without recourse, feeling more kinship with demons than humans in this prison of a world that thinks so little of us. I understand you, Celeste,” Knight murmured. “And I thank you. For reminding me why I did not choose your path.”
Lady C leaned forward with another growl, and Knight was physically shoved back by her powers.
With a cry, Knight lowered her head and hissed. In a countering blow, Lady C flew back against the metal wall so hard that she again slumped into unconsciousness.
Spire gaped at her.
“I’ll be in the powder room,” Knight declared, then rose and swept off in a whirl of silk.
Watching her go, Rose felt newfound awe for her friend. Her theatricality was a weapon, and those who thought her a fraud did so at their peril; when Knight was serious, she was deadly so.
Glancing back at the rumpled form across the car, Rose dreaded what terrible things would be said of “womankind” on public record, depending on how the trial would proceed. But one thing at a time, one life at a time.
Rose pondered the scope of what they’d seen and done these past harrowing months, from public displays and parades of wild sacrilege in the streets and parks of New York and London to a celestial fight over the skies of Washington to this more intimate turn, where a lone set of paranormally augmented people fought for an upper hand while modernity barreled along on swift rails to unknown futures.
* * *
The rest of the team settled into their private car.
“I can sense that woman,” Clara said quietly to Bishop. “Would you please help shield me?”
He nodded, breathing in and lifting psychic shields. It felt as if dressing screens made of light were erected all around her. She thanked him with a careful embrace as he helped her to a sofa and made sure that water and coffee were at her fingertips on a small table beside her.
Lord Black arranged flowers, kissing each bouquet and quietly thanking the blooms for their service. He surrounded Clara with them as if she were a living monument. At her feet he set two small pots of ivy, denoting fealty and unwavering strength. Verdant powers aside, the compartment smelled heavenly.
Evelyn sat on a velvet-lined fainting couch with an open notebook of paper, writing letters to clairvoyant colleagues across the continent, sharing her experiences in hopes the information would help them better help cities, townships, and native nations.
“Don’t let my quietude during this journey worry you, friends,” Clara said to her companions. “But I must go inward in order to Ward out.”
“I love you, Clara,” Bishop said boldly. At that, not even the wound at her head hurt; she was too full of contentment, staring into his warm, glimmering eyes.
“I love you, Rupert. And I always have,” she replied before closing her eyes and folding her hands over the bouquet Lord Black set in her lap: a collection of multiflora roses, hazel, and reeds that together meant “Heavens be with you, grace and peace.”
Even the blooms trembled with life force, and Clara suddenly understood why Black kissed and thanked them. When attuned, everything had a vibration, and everything was in a harmonic conversation, it just took a keen ear and a deft touch.
She turned inwardly to her lives, asking their help, their senses to layer on top of hers, for everything she had known and lived through and
to come to a vibrant fruition. The ley line felt thankfully not far off from the rails. She would not have to pull at a great distance.
Once the train took a slight jog along another set of rails, Clara could feel that these had been tainted; there was the grating note in the distance. If she were to open her eyes, she might see floating silhouette demons floating over the darkening countryside like plumes of toxic smoke. But she did not. Instead, she let the warmth from the ley line subsume her.
The harmony of the ley lines sound reverberated, like an organ note deep within Clara. She mused upon, relished, and savored that note, letting it be the echo emanating from her heartbeat, breath, and every thought.
If the grating note of co-opted rails grew loud, Clara put out a hand and drew her fingers together, isolating a string or snuffing a candle. At times there was a crackling hiss, and she knew that was the assistance of Mosley, neutralizing the black boxes set along the course, snapping out the spiritual interference with an electrical blast from the other side of the train.
Clara felt time bend like a young green branch in a warm spring wind. Deep within this sightless dance of sound and sensation, she felt as though she floated, winged and weightless in a great night sky. Any number of esoteric sects might be ecstatic at the prospect of such a transcendental state.
It wasn’t until the conductor shouted “New York!” that she had any sense of time or place. The whole journey had been taken in one meditative leap. She opened her eyes and saw the arches and girded trestles of Grand Central Depot beyond, stirring to the sensation of Bishop’s lips upon her temple.
“Brilliantly done, my dear, you lit up the whole line.”
“I just let nature sing,” she replied.
“If only we all would,” he murmured.
* * *
It was an unspoken agreement that everyone would stay at Mrs. Northe-Stewart’s home that night and gather themselves. Clara and Bishop had no safe residence, and soon the English contingent would return home; New York could not keep them indefinitely.
After a lavish meal, Northe-Stewart having clearly wired ahead to her staff to prepare something fit for royalty, the ladies retired to the parlor and the men to the den. Knight was exhausted; her mental battle with the villain had given her a fever. Evelyn was tending her on both a physical and psychic level.
This left the soul sisters to themselves.
Rose approached a reclining Clara with tears in her eyes.
“I don’t want to leave you. But I can’t stay,” Rose said.
Clara allowed her own tears to fall, grasping her hand. “We were born an ocean apart for a reason. We’re forever bonded, but we’ve different shores to guard.”
“Are our battles over?” Rose asked hopefully. “What do you sense?”
“The specific threat of the Society, I believe, is now neutralized. And we have strategies to keep its fangs from growing again. But aside from the paranormal, there are terrible, normal, human failings ahead of us all.”
Clara took a deep breath and spoke heavily.
“There will be a war, in the next century. We’ll be older then, but still sooner than we’d hope. Miss Knight, Evelyn, and even I now sense it.” She shook her head. “But here and now, my dear, your task is to make sure that this wretched door we’ve closed is as sealed and as solid as the best bit of masonry ever assembled.”
“Yes. Of course,” Rose promised.
“Meetings twice a year,” Clara demanded. “At least. Besides, I’ve got to come to your wedding.”
“My what?! I’m…” Rose trailed off, her cheeks heating with a blush. “We’re not…”
Clara tapped her temple. “You will be. Sorry, I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but if you two don’t marry, then two of my favorite people, not to mention two of the best-suited people I’ve seen if ever there were, would miss the best companionship two humans could offer. You and I are soul sisters. You and he are soul mates.”
Rose bit her lip, trying to restrain a gleeful grin. He was such a good man, and incalculably dear to her.
“You don’t need to hide happiness from me, dear,” Clara murmured, leaning in. “We need it. Let it shine. It helps the magic. It boosts the Wards we must keep lit. I always thought the idea that love was ‘magic’ was just stuff and nonsense, but, in a way, the romantic poets had a point.”
“And you?” Rose asked. “When shall I attend the wedding of a magnificent senator and his most precious treasure?”
“We’ll get around to it, I’m sure. Likely before the new house. We’re thinking of relocating to Greenwich Village rather than returning to Pearl…” She shuddered, and Rose understood that it would be a while before she felt entirely settled. Once a bastion was overtaken, nowhere felt safe for a while.
“We have to keep the compass held fast across the ocean. It will keep the ley lines clear. Are you up to that, the kind of energy that requires?” Clara asked.
“Absolutely.”
“If you ever aren’t, just tell me, we’ll come up with a solution, a surrogate, those who can take over for us when our bodies eventually fail and we’ll return as new family once more. Although to be perfectly honest I am very ready for an extended holiday. I could use a few centuries off after this body’s day is done,” Clara said with a weary laugh.
“I don’t blame you. When I see all your lives expand, it’s exhausting even to look at.”
“I hope I’ve a period of relative peace and quiet ahead of me. The same for you.”
“We’ll see. Depends on what the queen demands of Har—Mr. Spire and me.”
Clara snorted. “You can call him Harold around me, Rose. Don’t hide familiarity any more than you should hide that smile of yours. Why is it working women are so pressured to be so stoic all the time? That isn’t fair.”
“Add it to the list of double standards, my dear,” Rose laughed.
“Let’s get some rest,” Clara said. “And dream of a hopeful future.”
* * *
Arriving back in England, Rose took in the port at Southampton with an overwhelming sense of relief. The familiarity of English sky and water, the drama of cliffs and seascapes; she now began to understand Clara’s sense of tether, of the lines, and of the gravity of being. She was the other side of the great bridge. The hand at the end of the telegraph wire interpreting the taps on the machine that carried spirit messages from an ocean away.
She considered whether or not the sense of closure was realistic or a trapping she was putting on for comfort, a blanket against a draft. No. The closure stood, even upon careful examination. Even as she took to the London-bound rails with Spire, Black, and Knight, the ponderous silences between them were comfortable, not laden with the weight of countless worries left unaddressed.
Rose was sure none were naive enough to think that there would never be a flare of supernatural pique, but hopefully London’s secretive spectral patrol, the elusive one Lord Black was always on about, would take care of it and they’d never really know.
The Omega department had opened her eyes to how much eluded the traditional senses’ capacity to comprehend. There was vastly more beyond the slightly parted veil through which she now saw, but she had no desire to explore further.
There would always be work to do to ensure that Omega did not become something it dare not try to be and to ensure that certain questions, while asked, would remain bereft of answers that would only prove to unravel the world.
The returning team was met at King’s Cross station by the recent widow Mrs. Wilson, dressed in a black dress and head scarf, and Mr. Blakely in his favorite aquamarine coat, heartily glad to see their fellows returned safely home. Rose now understood what soldiers must feel for their comrades when relieved from front lines.
Their reunion was full of long embraces, words of comfort and necessity on pressing matters before the team separated to attend to manners and expectations, with assurances they’d return to Lord Black’s house for a sumptuous dinner tha
t night.
* * *
Lingering a moment before traveling to the Black estate, Rose and Spire stood on Westminster Bridge under the shadow of the great clock tower and stared out over the bustling Thames. Neither of them being the sort that insisted upon hats, their bare heads were buffeted by a distinct breeze. Rose didn’t bother to try to pin back loose brown locks that blew against her cheeks.
Spire seemed very intent on the river traffic, glancing alternately between the ships and the clock tower.
A movement up the bridge, crossing from the south to the north bank, caught Rose’s eye. A group of six distinct individuals, men and women from different classes by the look of their attire, strode up the bridge toward Parliament, on a mission. A large raven flew above them as if a part of their coterie.
If Rose wasn’t mistaken, the air before them shimmered, strangely, the look the air took on if there were ghosts present.…
This must be that group that Lord Black was always on about, London’s hidden ghost patrol.… There was a particular woman at the fore who caught Rose’s eye. The raven squawked loudly, as if confirming she was right in noticing them.
At her side strode a striking man all in black, but it was the woman who held Rose’s attention. She was severe and compelling, with brown hair in a tight bun and steel-bright eyes fiercely set before her, gloved hands wafting the air as if shooing something unwanted toward the river.
The woman must have sensed her, for she snapped her head in Rose’s direction. Perhaps there was a gaze of mutual understanding or recognition; Rose couldn’t be sure. Something passed between them and the woman put a finger to her lips, bidding Rose keep her secret. There was no way Rose could do anything but. She knew then that she and her team weren’t the only ones guarding London.
Spire saw none of this; he was fixated on a small schooner that didn’t seem to be taking its proper time downstream and instead drifted too close to Parliament’s base, and he narrowed his gaze as if the craft were suspect, glancing up at the clock in turn before the craft picked up its drift and disappeared below their bridge, and Spire relaxed.
The Eterna Solution Page 28
