by C. J. Archer
“Emily.” Jacob shook his head but the action made him stumble. “Emily, you must go back.”
“No. Not yet. I need to say goodbye to you properly.”
“Emily…that wasn’t the counter curse. They tricked you.” He fell to his knees, clutching his head.
“Jacob!” I crouched beside him, my own head spinning, my stomach roiling. I wanted to be sick. “What have I done?”
He reached for me and held me close. “It’s not your fault. Emily…go. How…?”
I shook my head, but that triggered a sharp pain slicing above my right eye. I buried my face in his shoulder and tried to regain a sense of myself, tried to think. It was so hard. Shards of ice ripped through my mind, tearing my thoughts out by their roots. All except one: Mrs. Stanley had double-crossed me. That meant she and Price were in on it too. There was no one except Celia to force Mrs. White to bring me back to life, and she could not to do it alone.
I was going to die.
A sudden blast of wind whipped around us, raking my hair loose from its elegant arrangement, whipping at my skirt with violent howls. It was so strong and I suddenly felt so weak. I would be blown away. More spirits disappeared, their cries lost in the tempest.
Jacob held my face in his hands and I knew how much effort that simple action took. I could hardly move. My head was a riot of pain and my body exhausted as I battled to stay.
“No, Emily, please not you.” A single tear tracked down his cheek. “I don’t want this for you.”
“There’s nothing we can do. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not…your fault.” He kissed me. His lips were light as air but for the first time, I could actually taste him. I had never tasted anything so delicious, like honey and chocolate, but better. He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against mine. “You are my soul mate, Emily Chambers. I love you.”
“I love you too.” I had to shout it. The wind was so strong, trying to drag me in all directions, trying to break me apart and scatter my pieces. “Goodbye, Jacob.”
We held each other as the gale screamed and roared, blowing the last of the remaining spirits into nothingness. There was just Jacob and I, and we could not hold on for much longer. I closed my eyes and buried my face in his chest. His arms held me against him, but soon even they loosened. I opened my eyes and was shocked by how transparent he looked. But it was me who drifted away from him, not the other way round.
“Emily!” His voice was no more than a whistle of wind.
“Jacob!” I tried to scramble back to him but the force pulling me away was too strong. I was sucked into the bright whirlpool of light again, then everything went still, quiet. The wind stopped. There were no voices, no sounds. I couldn’t see anything except the light above but even that grew smaller until it was a mere speck.
Jacob. Where was Jacob? I tried to call his name but my voice didn’t work.
Then suddenly even the light was gone. Snuffed out like a candle. I was surrounded by deep, blackest dark.
Nothingness.
CHAPTER 12
“Emily. Emily, wake up,” Celia said. “Emily, can you hear me? Please, my precious girl, wake up.”
“Here, let me try.”
My body shook violently. It took me a moment to realize somebody else was doing the shaking. I opened my eyes, startling George who released me and stumbled backward.
“Emily!” Celia jerked me to a sitting position and threw her arms around me. “Be gentle,” said Mrs. White. She stood behind me, but I recognized her voice. “She’ll be weak for some time.”
“Did you do it?” George asked, urgent. “Emily, did you speak the curse?”
I closed my eyes and held myself very still. I couldn’t talk. If I did, I might break into pieces. I had delivered the curse that had destroyed the Otherworld. Destroyed Jacob. It was all so terribly, horribly wrong.
Someone in the corner of the room laughed. “You’re too late.” It was Price, but his laughter quickly ended. The sickening sound of bone smacking bone replaced it.
“Be quiet,” growled Louis. “Do not give me a reason to shoot you.”
Whimpering came from the same direction, out of my sight. It was a woman, not Price. Mrs. Stanley?
“Emily, you must answer me,” George said. His face and clothes were covered with mud, his hair a wild tangle. He’d been riding, I remembered. He’d gone to the gypsy camp with my father. “Did you deliver the curse?”
“I did.” My whisper raked down my throat like sharp nails. God, it hurt. Everything hurt. “Jacob…” I tried hard not to cry. I wanted Celia to comfort me, but she was suddenly not there anymore.
“We have to hurry,” said George. “Mrs. White, are you ready?” He removed his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt, throwing them on the floor in a heap. I expected Celia to protest that he should not appear in such a state in front of me, but she was actually helping him.
The world had gone mad in my absence.
“Sit,” Celia said, shoving him into a large armchair.
George was barely settled when Mrs. White jabbed him with the syringe. I watched, appalled, as his eyes closed slowly. Is that how I’d looked moments before? Like I was merely going to sleep?
“W…what’s going on?” I could hardly form the words. Hardly think. My mind was numb, my body aching. Every bone felt like it had been ground in a mill, every vein opened until I’d bled dry.
But worse than the aches was the memory of Jacob, fading to nothing. It would haunt me until the day I died. That day had almost been today, but I had enough presence of mind to realize Mrs. White had saved me and brought me back to life. My sister had succeeded after all, although she had not done it alone.
“Mrs. Stanley tricked you,” Mrs. White said to me. “She and Leviticus.”
“I know.” My voice sounded thick, hoarse. “I’m sorry, I thought it was you. But…George…?”
“We bought the counter curse from the Romany,” Louis said. “It didn’t cost us as much as we had expected. It seems they didn’t like the thought of the Otherworld not being there when they die either.”
I remembered what Mrs. Stanley had said, about her people respecting death and the afterlife. It seemed she did not respect it as much as her tribe, or perhaps something else was stronger than her beliefs.
I turned a little to see Louis watching Price, the pistol pointed at his chest as he sat like a statue, his face stony. Mrs. Stanley stood at Price’s side, her hand on her lover’s shoulder. She did not look at me, but Price’s cold gaze didn’t waver from mine. Louis was as muddy as George and looked just as exhausted, but he glanced back at me and smiled reassuringly, although it wasn’t reflected in his eyes. Worry had settled there. Worry and grim foreboding. I wished I could smile back to thank him for his efforts, but my heart was too sore. If George didn’t succeed, if it was too late to deliver the counter curse, I would never smile again.
“That should be long enough,” Louis said. “Bring him back.”
Mrs. White had been busy filling another syringe. She injected the clear liquid into George’s arm.
Nothing happened.
“He’s not coming back,” Mrs. White said, panic making her voice shrill. She tapped his cheeks but George’s head lolled to the side, lifeless.
Price snickered. “He can’t. The curse worked. It’s too late for him now. You did it, Miss Chambers. You destroyed your lover and sent your friend here to his own destruction. Congratulations.”
I turned my face into the sofa cushion. I was too exhausted and too heart-sore to cry. A great hole opened up in my chest and sucked all my energy into it. It felt like I was caving in on myself.
“He’s coming back!” cried Mrs. White.
“Mr. Culvert,” said Celia. “Mr. Culvert, can you hear me?”
He moaned. I turned to watch and held my breath. The air in the parlor grew dense as we waited for him to regain consciousness.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw something mo
ve so fast it was a mere blur. Louis shouted in alarm. Mrs. Stanley shouted too, but in a foreign tongue. She had the pistol, snatched from Louis’ hand while he was distracted. She pointed it at each of us, yet none of us, her hands shaking. She uttered something in Romany over and over, interspersed with the very English and very angry, “Stay back or I will shoot.”
My father didn’t heed her. He lunged.
She screamed.
The gun went off.
I screamed.
“Louis!” Celia cried. “No! No!” My sister raced to him and grabbed him from behind, spinning him around. “Louis!”
He wrapped an arm around her and she burst into tears. His other hand held the gun. It was pointed at Price. A dark stain bloomed on Price’s waistcoat.
“Leviticus!” Mrs. Stanley fell to her knees at his feet. “No!” She tried to cover his wound with her hands, tried to staunch the flow of blood. But it was no use. He was slipping away. “Save him! Do something. You!” she shouted at Mrs. White. “He is your husband, do something!”
Husband?
Price did not look at his lover as he died. He looked at me, an unreadable smile on his face. A moment later his spirit rose from the body and hovered near the ceiling.
“I wonder what awaits me,” his ghost said, looking up. “Did your friend succeed, I wonder?” He did not sound afraid but curious and quite pleased with himself.
“If he didn’t, you are going to become nothing,” I said. “And if he did, then you will go to hell. Either way, I wouldn’t want to be you right now.”
He swooped down and stood in front of me, too close. I pressed myself back into the cushions, but he didn’t try to hurt me. “It doesn’t matter. I got revenge for my Fred. Beaufort is dead. That’s all that really counts. The rest would have given me satisfaction, but I’ll settle for Beaufort watching you grow old from up there.” He drifted off then disappeared entirely. For a brief moment I thought about summoning him back to ask him questions, but I didn’t want to see him again. Good riddance.
Mrs. White touched Mrs. Stanley’s shoulder as the landlady stared at her hands, smeared with Price’s blood. “I’m so sorry,” Mrs. White said. “I truly am.”
I expected Mrs. Stanley to berate her, even curse her, but she did not. She surprised me by allowing herself to be comforted by the wife of her lover. I suddenly understood why she had set aside her gypsy beliefs to help him—love is powerful, and we are merely its mindless tools. She could no more stop loving Price than I could Jacob.
“Emily,” Celia said, crouching beside me. “Emily, are you all right?”
“Of course.” I sat up. “George?”
He waved weakly from his chair. “I did it, Em. I delivered the counter curse.”
I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt tight. He’d done it, but… “In time?”
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
We all looked to the ceiling, as if the Waiting Area was up above. Nothing happened. No spirits came.
Jacob…
“Tell me everything,” I said. “Talk. I need to be distracted.” At least until I knew for sure if Jacob was all right, or that he’d crossed over. I would not try to summon him. I dared not. Anyway, if the Waiting Area had survived, he may have crossed upon Price’s death. “Price killed Jacob, didn’t he?”
Mrs. Stanley emitted a single loud sob.
“He was my husband, Leviticus Seymour,” Mrs. White said. I still couldn’t think of her as Mrs. Seymour, married to that monster. It didn’t seem right somehow. “I stopped loving him long ago, and he me.” She watched Mrs. Stanley as she spoke, her arm still around the other woman’s shoulders. “I had moved out of our family home but remained in contact, for Fred’s sake. All contact ceased when Fred died. He killed himself.” She shifted her weight but remained on the floor. She did not cry, not even a single tear, but the faraway look on her face told me she had not put aside her son or his death, and probably never would.
“Because Jacob wouldn’t be his friend?” I asked. “I don’t understand. Did Frederick not have other friends? And if he didn’t and that is what pushed him over the edge, how is that Jacob’s fault? He cannot be held accountable.”
“I don’t,” she said. “At least, not anymore. At first I blamed him a little, but not now. Because, you see, it wasn’t Jacob Beaufort’s friendship he craved. It was his love.”
I blinked at her. My sister gasped. Even Mrs. Stanley stopped crying and stared at Mrs. White.
“You mean…he was in love with Jacob?” I asked. “A forbidden love?”
“Good lord,” George said quietly. “He loved men.”
“Not men,” Mrs. White said. “Man. One. Jacob Beaufort. He was obsessed, but neither Leviticus nor I knew it at the time. Not until after his death and we read his diary. It was all laid out in there. His private thoughts and desires, his attempts to get Mr. Beaufort to notice him, and his agony when he failed. Then his final desperate days when all he could think about was ending it all.”
“How sad,” Celia muttered. “How very, very sad.”
“You say you were angry only at first,” Louis said. “But your husband’s anger lingered, didn’t it?”
Her gaze slid to Price’s body. She showed no emotion whatsoever. “Leviticus continued to blame Jacob Beaufort. He wanted him to suffer the way Frederick had suffered. He took his life, but it wasn’t enough. He was still angry, so he decided to take his revenge out on those Mr. Beaufort loved. His family, then later, you, Miss Chambers.”
“The amulet?” Celia asked. “Did you sell it to me?”
“Not me.” Mrs. White nodded at Mrs. Stanley, who did not look up.
“The disguise was excellent,” Celia said. “Unfortunately.” She picked up George’s clothes and handed him his shirt.
“I didn’t know anything about Leviticus’s tactics until that night you came to the school and sent Mr. Blunt away. Indeed, I wasn’t sure of his involvement until the next day when he came looking for Blunt and we spoke. I hadn’t seen Leviticus for many months, since Fred’s death. He’d gone mad in that time.”
“He was not mad,” Mrs. Stanley said, moving away from the comforting arm of Mrs. White. “He felt things deeply. The loss of his son hurt him. I understood that hurt. I lost a son too.”
“I’m very sorry,” Mrs. White said, but Mrs. Stanley turned her face away. I felt a rush of sympathy for her. She’d lost a son and now her lover too.
“If you weren’t helping Price then, why help him now?” George asked. “Why do this to good, innocent people?”
“Innocents?” Mrs. White said. “You mean you and Miss Chambers.”
“And the orphan who died after you injected him.”
“That was a terrible tragedy.” Mrs. White shook her head and tears welled in her eyes.
“What happened after that night Blunt left the school?” I asked. “You decided to leave too, but why not tell anyone where you were going?”
“I was afraid of Leviticus, of what he might do. My attempt to hide from him was for naught, however. He found me again last week and asked me to…kill him and bring him back to life.” She screwed up her nose, as if the thought of what she’d done disgusted her. “He said he’d do it anyway and Mrs. Stanley here would bring him back. I couldn’t let that happen. She has no medical training, but I at least have some. He already had the poisons and antidotes. He got the ingredients from the Society’s storerooms but made the concoctions himself. He used to be a pharmacist. I believe he’d been experimenting for some time on rats.”
“Hell,” George said. “We do have medicines and poisons, for testing purposes. There are some members who believe they can cause hallucinations that bring one closer to experiencing supernatural phenomena, hysteria, that sort of thing. I had no idea they could be combined into such lethal substances, but I suspect others knew which is why these things are kept locked away. Price, as master, had a key. Damn.”
“It’s not your fault,” Mrs. White said
. “I didn’t know what Leviticus was doing until after his first two deaths. When I pressed him, he told me about the curse. I refused to do it a third time. I told him it would kill him, which it would have done. So he found that poor child and…” She sniffed. “When that failed, he coerced Mr. Blunt into doing it. He held back the opium, which he’d been supplying for some time, and forced him to be my…victim. I didn’t want to be party to it but Leviticus told me he’d kill Mr. Blunt if I did not help. When you interrupted us yesterday, Miss Chambers, I couldn’t tell you what was really happening. I had to pretend we were giving Mr. Blunt a cure for his addiction. Leviticus warned me that if I told anyone the truth, he would kill Mr. Blunt then me. I believed him.”
“Very wise,” I said.
“After you left, Mrs. Stanley and Leviticus realized you may not have fallen for the ruse, so he sent her to your house to pretend to be a turncoat and point the finger of guilt at me.”
“It worked,” I said.
“Almost,” George added, completely dressed once more although his tie was crooked. “Emily, I am so glad we didn’t believe her entirely.”
“A healthy dose of skepticism never hurt anyone,” Louis said.
I attempted a smile. “You would get along well with Lord Preston.”
“Leviticus was a good man,” mumbled Mrs. Stanley into her hands. “He was…lost. Angry.”
“It’s all so sad,” Celia said. “The loss of a child, or a loved one, can do terrible things to one’s mind.” She glanced at Louis. He rubbed a hand over his stubbly chin.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” George said, frowning. “Frederick died months ago, and Beaufort soon afterward, correct?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. White. Louis helped her to stand and guided her to sit on the sofa near my feet. He still held the pistol but kept it pointed away from everyone.
“Then why the long wait between then and now? The shape-shifting demon was summoned mere weeks ago. Why didn’t he begin his revenge sooner?”
“Because of me,” Mrs. Stanley said, lifting her tear-streaked face. “We met the day after his son died. I used to travel with a circus, telling fortunes. He came to me wanting answers and we became friends. I understood him, my situation being not too different from his. He was devastated, sick with unhappiness and disbelief and a burning rage. We just talked, and he was interested in my people and their beliefs concerning the dead. He came back the next day and said he’d read about gypsies and curses. He asked for a very specific curse, something that will destroy the spirit, not just the life. I knew he wanted to hurt the Beaufort boy, although I did not know his name then. It was clear on his face that he wanted revenge.”
