by C. J. Archer
“It was in the country,” I said, recalling an earlier conversation I’d had with him. “But his body could have been moved afterward for safe-keeping.”
“Is there a basement to this house?” Celia asked Mrs. Stanley.
“Yes, but I can assure you there is no body in it.”
“I’ll look,” Louis said and ran out the door.
Mrs. Stanley sighed. “You could try the Society.”
“Of course!” George slapped his thigh. “I’ll drive to the hall now.”
“It would require utter seclusion,” Mrs. Stanton said. George paused mid-stride. “Leviticus could not risk it being found.”
“Hell. There’s nowhere particularly secluded at the hall. We have other storage rooms, though. Small warehouses really. Beaufort could be in one of those, but—”
“Then let’s go,” I said, rising.
He shook his head sadly. My heart plunged at the pained look on his face. “Emily, there’s so many, littered around the city. I don’t know where they all are. Nor do I have keys.”
“Price had keys. They must be here somewhere.” I looked to his body, but Mrs. Stanley got there first.
“I’ll search him,” she said, lovingly unbuttoning his bloodied waistcoat.
“But even if we find them, how will we find the warehouses?” George asked. “How will we search them all?”
“Em, it’s hopeless,” Jacob said. He still sat on the floor, embracing his knees.
I knelt beside him again. “We have to try, Jacob. I will not give up without a fight. Not when there is a chance.” I gritted my teeth and fought back the wave of hopelessness. “George, you must find out where the storage rooms are. Is there a member you can ask?”
He nodded. “Our second master. He lives not far from me.”
“Drive us to Lord Preston’s house on your way to the second master’s home, then send word there once you have some locations. We’ll split up and search them.”
“If you can convince Lord Preston to help.”
“We will.” I was utterly determined to make Jacob’s father believe us.
“But that will take so much time,” Mrs. White said.
“Then we have to hurry. Mrs. Stanley?”
She had finished checking Price’s pockets and was searching through the drawers of a desk. “Here!” she shouted, triumphant.
George took the keys off her. “Now, tell us the counter curse. Is it difficult?”
“Not very.” She launched into the words one of us would need to speak if—no, when—we found Jacob’s body. Unlike the counter curse that fixed the Waiting Area, this one was in English and was easy to remember.
“Let’s go,” George said when she’d finished.
I went to follow him, but Jacob caught my hand. “Wait.” He picked up my shawl from where it hung over the back of the sofa and gently wrapped it around my shoulders. “Take care.”
“You’re not coming?” I asked.
His eyes turned wild and glassy, as if he wasn’t quite seeing things in our realm, but in the Waiting Area and beyond. “I have a better way. Faster,” he said. Then he disappeared.
“Jacob!” I tipped my head back and searched the ceiling. George and Celia urged me to go with them, and so did Louis upon his return from the basement.
Precious seconds ticked by and Jacob didn’t return. I followed the others out while Mrs. White and Mrs. Stanley remained behind. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea leaving the two together but Mrs. White assured me she would be all right, and that she would notify the police about Price’s death.
We ran down the stairs and George rattled off instructions to his driver. He certainly heeded the “post-haste” part because the horses flew through the streets back to Belgrave Square.
The ball had ended. There were no coaches outside Lord and Lady Preston’s house, and no footmen either. Light shone from the upstairs windows. I ran to the front door, my sister and Louis behind me. George drove off to speak to the Society’s second master. I banged on the door and it seemed to take a lifetime for the butler to open it. He loomed large and looked decidedly unhappy about the intrusion, but when he saw my sister and I in our ball gowns, he resumed his professional demeanor. He must have thought we’d left something behind earlier.
“We need to see Lady Preston,” I said.
He bowed, but I didn’t have time for such niceties. I pushed past him and ran up the stairs.
“Miss! Miss!” he yelled.
“Lady Preston!” I shouted. “Adelaide! We need you. Jacob needs you.”
But it was Lord Preston who greeted me at the top of the grand staircase. With his thick, gray moustache and huge frame, he was as ferocious as an angry bear. But I would not back down. I couldn’t afford to. He had to listen to me.
“Jacob needs your help, my lord,” I said. “I know you don’t believe—”
“Enough!” he bellowed. “I have put up with this nonsense for too long.”
“Actually, you haven’t put up with anything. As I recall, you’ve been quite belligerent about it all.”
“You are a disrespectful, malicious, and base-born girl. I should never have let you into my house tonight. It was a mistake. Now leave.”
“Indeed it is enough,” said Louis. His voice was a low growl, his jaw rigid as he stood beside me. “I don’t care who you are, you will not speak to my daughter like that.”
“Who are you?”
“I just made that clear. I’m her father. Emily has come here seeking help for your son. You owe her a great debt, sir.”
“Owe? Her?” Lord Preston advanced down the steps, one at a time. “That is laughable. Get. Out. Now. All of you.”
I held up my hands, but Lord Preston ignored the placating gesture. He continued to advance down the steps with menacing slowness, his strong brow deeply scored by his frown. “I know this is a lot for you to take in,” I said, “but for just this once, set aside your beliefs. I know you’re hurt, and I don’t blame you for your anger toward me. But listen to me now, I beg you. If our plan doesn’t work, you will never see me again.”
“You’re right, I will never see you again,” he snarled. “Starting now. Polson! Remove them.”
“Please, my lord.” I glanced back at the butler. He looked uncertain as to the reaction he would receive from Louis. “If nothing happens after we find Jacob’s body—”
“His what?” Lord Preston took a stumbling step back up the stairs. “You know where his body is? Tell me. Tell me! Where is it? How do you know?” He was advancing again, faster, coming at me with those big paws outstretched as if he would wrap them around my throat and squeeze the answer out.
“Reginald?” Lady Preston said from the landing above. “Reginald, who—? Miss Chambers!”
“Lady Preston, there’s so much to tell you. Please, you must listen to us. There’s a chance we can save Jacob, but—”
“Where is his body?” Lord Preston shouted. He grasped my shoulders and shook me so hard my neck hurt.
Lady Preston gathered up the skirts of her ball gown and rushed down the stairs. “Reginald, let her go.”
Lord Preston didn’t heed his wife. Every shake grew more and more violent. Louis grabbed the lapels of the earl’s exquisitely tailored coat and punched him in the jaw. Lord Preston tripped on the steps and landed on his rear near his wife’s slippered feet. She gasped and knelt beside him.
Polson ran up the steps toward us, but Lady Preston ordered him to stop. “Fetch Adelaide. She’s in her room. Everything is all right here.” This last sentence was spoken to her husband who still sat on the step, his eyes unfocused, his shoulders stooped like an old man.
Polson glanced at Lord Preston then did his mistress’s bidding.
“What were you saying about saving my son, Miss Chambers?” Lady Preston asked me. “Were you able to save the Otherworld?”
“Yes, but this is something else. Something more.” I spoke quickly, the words spilling out like a waterfall.
“Jacob is alive. We need to find his body to bring him back.” At Lady Preston’s stunned silence, I shook my head. “It’s complicated. A curse was laid on him by the man who wanted to kill him, Frederick Seymour’s father, but it was the wrong curse. It didn’t kill him, just put him into a type of sleep where his spirit was separated from his body.”
“So he’s…alive?” She slipped to the side and I was afraid she might tumble down the staircase, but she simply sat heavily. Both she and her husband were as white as the marble steps.
“I’ll explain more later, but for now, time is running out. Jacob’s body is dying. We have to find it which means we’ll need to separate. We’ll also need your coaches, as many as you have. George will be back soon to tell us where to go.” She sat there, staring at me, her eyes unblinking, her mouth ajar.
Lord Preston looked equally perplexed. “My dear…could it be true?”
“I believe her,” Lady Preston said, sounding quite dazed. “And if you have any hope left, then you must too.”
“But how can I? It’s too…ridiculous.”
“Oh, Father,” Adelaide said from the landing above us. She too was still dressed in her ball gown, but her unbound hair fell around her shoulders. “Put aside your stubbornness for one moment and listen to your heart. I know you want to believe, so just do it. Please. If not for Jacob, then for Mother and me.”
He turned to look at her. “You think I wouldn’t do anything for your brother? That I would throw away any reasonable chance of finding him again out of stubbornness?”
“I don’t know what to think. Perhaps it’s more pride than stubbornness.” Her lower lip wobbled and her eyes swam with tears. “You and Jacob did not get along before his death, and since then it only seems you want revenge because you hate it that someone took something from you.”
He craned his neck to look up at her as she stopped on the step above him. “You think I care so little about him? About you?”
“You certainly don’t seem sad, only angry. The only other time I’ve seen you this angry was when you were fleeced out of a small fortune by that investor.”
“Don’t, Adelaide,” Lady Preston warned.
“No,” her husband said. “It’s all right.” He reached up a hand to his daughter but she ignored it, and he let it fall limply to his lap. “You’re right, my dear. I haven’t been the best father, either before Jacob’s death or after. I’ve been blinded by the search for him. It occupies me constantly, to the point where I don’t know what time of day it is anymore. I forget to eat, I can’t sleep. It consumes me.”
“And yet when the opportunity to communicate with him presents itself in the form of Miss Chambers, you refuse to believe her.”
“Adelaide, what you’re saying, what all of you are saying…it’s beyond belief. How can it be real? Give me solid facts and I will listen to what she has to say.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t, Father. You’re right. It defies logic. Yet Mother and I believe her nevertheless.”
“I can explain it,” Celia said. She gripped my arm and squeezed hard, a sign she wanted me to stay quiet. “There is a tribe of Africans where all the women can communicate with spirits.” She proceeded to tell him about my origins and how the ability to see spirits had been passed down the family line to me. Lord Preston did not interrupt. He seemed riveted. I suspect the history was something he respected. It was an explanation of sorts, and all the more real for being written down. “Emily did not wish to be a medium,” Celia said. “She doesn’t want the gift. Indeed, we are closing our little business immediately so she can resume a normal life.”
“Celia,” I said. “We can’t. We’ll have nothing to live on.”
She squeezed my arm harder. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow. For now, there are more urgent matters. Mr. Culvert will be back soon with directions. Lord Preston, please issue orders to your drivers to have all the coaches at your disposal ready. It’s likely we’ll need to separate. Once you’ve done that, return to the hall and I’ll tell you the counter curse.”
But he did not get up. Instead, it was Lady Preston who rose. She called for a footman as she ran down the stairs, her skirts raised immodestly high to avoid tripping. Adelaide gave her father a sour glare then swiped away her tears. She followed her mother.
“As you can see, this search is going to happen with or without you, my lord,” Celia said. “Having you join us will help, however it’s not necessary.”
He stared at the retreating back of his daughter. His drooping moustache twitched, but otherwise he didn’t move. He still looked bearish but not like a formidable one, but rather a poor, chained beast in a cage. Defeated. I felt sorry for him.
“Join us,” Louis urged him. “If we find your son’s body in time and the counter curse is issued, all will be well and you’ll come to believe us. If we don’t and nothing happens, then you’ve only wasted an hour of your evening and this will all be over. We’ll never bother you again, or your family.” He held out his hand.
Lord Preston bowed his head. I sighed. It was hopeless. The man could not set aside his stubbornness and pride, not even for an hour. Not even in the hope of seeing his son.
Louis lowered his arm. Lord Preston’s hand shot out and grabbed it. Louis hauled him to his feet and clapped him on the shoulder as if they were old friends.
Celia and I followed behind them, but I stopped short as Jacob appeared. He was considerably weaker, almost entirely transparent. I bit my lip to stop myself crying out at the shocking sight of him.
Then he suddenly disappeared. I waited. Celia did too, aware that I’d seen him. Louis and Lord Preston continued down the stairs.
Jacob did not return.
I began to shake uncontrollably. What if we were too late? What if that was his last attempt to see me? The tears rolled down my cheeks, silent but unrelenting. We were so close…to lose him now would be unbearable. Celia wrapped her arm around me and held me.
Jacob flared into existence again and I whimpered with relief. “Em,” he said in the whisper that must be all he could manage. “Em, sweet…”
I hugged him fiercely and kissed his lips, his throat, his cheek. He wasn’t gone. Not yet. There was still time.
“George will be here soon,” I assured him.
“Not…” He pressed the heel of his hand to his eye and faded in and out.
“Are you in pain?”
He shook his head but whether that was because he wasn’t in pain or he didn’t want to answer me, I couldn’t be sure. At the bottom of the steps, Louis and Lord Preston had stopped to look back at me. I expected angry words from Jacob’s father, but I received none. That was one powerful punch from Louis to finally knock some sense into his lordship.
“Got him,” Jacob said.
“What do you mean? Got who?”
“Administrators…you a favor…help find my…”
“They’re going to help us find your body? How?”
He shook his head again. “Not going to…have.”
“They have found your body?”
“…asked Price.”
“But he’s crossed over.”
“Administrators…access…” He shook his head and winced.
“Tell me later. Save your energy. So where is it? Where’s your body?”
“…storage…Society…Paddington Station.”
The front door burst open and crashed back on its hinges, quite a feat since it was solid wood. George waved a piece of paper in the air. “I have all the addresses of all the warehouses.”
“Good,” I said, charging down the steps. “Which one is near Paddington Station?”
George scanned the sheet. Adelaide hovered at his elbow, reading too. “Here it is,” he said, pointing halfway down the page. “Why?”
“According to Price, that’s where we’ll find Jacob’s body.” I ran outside, not caring who followed. I gave George’s driver directions and climbed into the carriage. George, Lady Prest
on, and Adelaide got in with me. As we drove off, another carriage pulled up and Celia, Louis, and Lord Preston set off in it.
Jacob had disappeared.
It seemed to take an age to get to Paddington, but it probably only took ten minutes. Moonlight cast an ethereal glow over the empty streets but kept the lanes in shadow. I felt like I was in another world. This quiet, sleeping London was not the city I recognized.
We piled out of the carriage before it had completely rolled to a stop in a small street behind the station. A large warehouse rose before us, all grand arches and high windows. I held the coach lamp as George unlocked the door. Inside was a long central corridor with several doors running along both sides. George unlocked the fifth one on the left and it swung open on creaking hinges. The smell of dust mixed with something bitter and putrid wafted out. I covered my mouth and nose, but the scent had already lodged in my throat and nostrils.
“We’ll split up,” George said, removing another lamp from a hook near the door. Adelaide clung to him and either Lady Preston didn’t notice or didn’t care. She and I peeled off to the right as George lit the other lamp and moved to the left with Adelaide. Outside, the rumble of wheels on cobblestones announced the arrival of the second coach.
“Found anything?” Celia asked as she entered behind me.
Lord Preston held his lamp up high. I did too. The yellow light cast a circle around us and we assessed the area of our search. The storeroom was quite small with no other doors that I could see except for the one we’d used. Several tables took up most of the space and a cupboard occupied one corner. There was hardly a spare square of table surface anywhere. Jars, boxes, caskets, and odd paraphernalia were crammed together or piled on top of each other. There were microscopes and sharp implements, brass syringes and pipes, tubes with colored liquids in them, scales for weighing, coils of rope and chains hanging from the ceiling beams. And that smell—it burned my nostrils.
Somewhere to our left, Adelaide squealed.
“What is it?” Lord Preston forged his way toward her.
“It’s all right,” came George’s voice. “She just saw something…unusual.”
“She’s not the only one,” Louis muttered. He bent down to inspect the contents of a large jar. By the light of my lamp, I could just make out the head of some creature inside it, not human but not like anything else I’d seen either. My stomach rolled. Celia made a gagging sound. Beside the jar was another with what appeared to be a four-legged duck covered in fur, not feathers.
