The Eterna Files

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  But Minnie couldn’t have known to fetch Zhavia in particular. Miss Knight must have sensed something and sent him.

  Her eyelids refused to lift and Rose again cursed her body for not being cooperative. But she realized what she didn’t want to see when she opened them: Spire staring down at her harshly.

  Her voice was raspy but worked. She croaked her question: “Who’s there…?”

  “Vasily Zhavia, Miss Everhart,” came the thickly accented reply. “Can you open your eyes?” He followed this request with a long, softly murmured string of words in Russian. Rose assumed that he was declaiming the muscles needed to raise an eyelid. Zhavia’s uncanny habit, which had garnered him his nickname of “Bones,” remained off-putting; Rose rolled her eyes in their sockets, but the lids remained as heavy as lead.

  The doctor repeated his Russian phrases and somehow, Rose felt her muscles begin to respond to her wishes. Maybe his mutterings weren’t merely a list of bones and muscles but some kind of spell, willing her to move.

  Slowly, like drawing back a thick curtain, Rose opened her eyes. Zhavia bent over her. His long black beard, his robelike coat, and his hawklike black eyes marked him as something magical. Perhaps her supposition that he cast some sort of spell wasn’t entirely far off. Of course, Omega couldn’t have a normal doctor. Only a wizard would do.

  “I need … office.” Rose struggled to speak more quickly. “To go. To office. Spire.”

  “Spire? You want to see Mr. Spire?”

  “No!” she choked. “Don’t want … him to see.”

  “Ah, yes, you don’t want him to see you like this lest he think you a weak and inconsequential woman, not suited to the work. Of course. Well, he won’t see you then. But you cannot go anywhere. Not like this.” Grateful she was understood, she smiled at him. He leaned close. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Ever since … incident. I’ve been … off. Seeing things, shadows.” She shuddered uncontrollably and the act hurt.

  “What happened before you called for help?”

  “Bad dreams. Hurt wrist. Couldn’t move.”

  Zhavia’s attention focused sharply. He picked up her arm and hand and turned them gently revealing the delicate tracery of blood vessels on her inner wrist. Her hand sagged limply in his. The puncture marks remained, though drastically faded.

  The doctor’s prominent brow furrowed. His dark eyes widened, then narrowed. Rose was in no way reassured by the expression on his face.

  “That’s odd,” he murmured. “Changes my initial assessment.”

  “Which was?”

  “Vampirism.”

  Bloody hell.

  “No.” Rose tried to shake her head. “Don’t exist.”

  Zhavia wrinkled his nose. “Bah! Of course they do. Not in the sense you may think. Not in nightmares or stories to scare children. But creatures that drain people? Oh, certainly.

  “At first, I thought, that perhaps you had a particularly”—Zhavia struggled for the right word—“fond mentalist. Draining you too much. Easily remedied.

  “But this is different. Especially with the marks. And your weakness. Abnormal.”

  The idea that anything related to this could be normal was disturbing enough. Before she could ask what to do next, he set her arm back onto the bed.

  “Must think.”

  He sat thinking for a very long time. So long that Rose nearly drifted off to sleep, her anxiety drowned by her body’s overwhelming apathy.

  Suddenly he shot to his feet, shouting; “Demons!”

  “What?” Rose started.

  “Mmm … But the point of entry. Of contact. No … perhaps … Mmm…”

  Zhavia furrowed his brow and sat down again. This time his silence continued until Rose’s eyes closed. If there were further exclamations, they did not rouse her.

  When she opened her eyes again, she knew time had passed; the light had tracked farther down her wall. And someone different was nearby. Spire. Her cheeks went red.

  “Hello, sir, this is not how I wish to be seen.” She managed to shift into a sitting position against the pillows.

  “I wouldn’t wish to be either,” he replied. “But I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  Rose debated a moment about what to say. She surreptitiously glanced at her wrist and saw that it was not bandaged. In fact, it looked healed entirely, but the color of her skin was slightly off where the marks had been. She realized that something had been painted over the wounds. A cosmetic. Like stage paint. Zhavia was trying to mitigate how it might appear. Bless that strange wizard.

  “I wish I could offer you a suitable explanation, sir,” she replied at long last.

  “What is Zhavia’s prognosis? I couldn’t get a thing out of him.” Rose quirked an eyebrow in question and was rewarded with a tiny smile from Spire. “He was in the parlor with your cousin when I arrived. He was speaking to her in Russian and she was responding in numbers.”

  Rose nearly laughed at that, with what breath she could muster. Communication. What a strangely compelling human need.

  What had Zhavia said before she slipped into darkness? Demons. It would seem demons were on the table, but were possibly ruled out due to some issue with “point of entry,” whatever that meant. Spire might send Zhavia packing on the spot if Rose said any such thing so she chose her words carefully.

  “He isn’t sure,” Rose replied. “Did he say anything to you?”

  “Just that something sought you out. Something that wanted you to know it was there.”

  And that’s when Rose realized, with the sort of sinking knowledge that brings with it an impossible dread, that the wound on her wrist wasn’t an odd dream, an insect bite, or any other far more welcoming and plausible explanation.

  It was a warning.

  “Mr. Spire,” Rose murmured. “I’d like to come to the office with you.”

  “I’m not sure you’re in any condition to do so. Zhavia said you shouldn’t be out of bed. Mr. Wilson seems to have had less of an … exposure to whatever knocked him cold, he is recovered. But it would appear you’re going to have to take greater care.”

  Rose looked away, clenching her fists. “I hate this.” Her cheeks grew warm as she tried to impress upon him the importance of her words. “You must understand, Mr. Spire. Work gives my life meaning. Work is, truly, what I live for.”

  Spire nodded but no feelings showed upon his face. “I respect that, Miss Everhart. I feel exactly the same way.” He paused for a moment. “We received full details on the interrogation of the Americans.”

  “I insist on being present for the reading, Mr. Spire,” Rose insisted.

  “Oh, I daresay you’ll be the only one able to decipher them. I’ll come with a carriage in the morning. In the meantime, rest well.”

  “I will,” she said. “Thank you, Mr. Spire.”

  She prayed she would not be worse off in the morning from whatever plagued her.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  So as not to be caught in a lie after her Columbia venture, Clara sought out Lavinia, who was very glad to see her. Sensing that Lavinia needed the company, as her infamous fiancé was in New Jersey giving a performance of his flamboyantly Gothic show, Clara invited her friend over for dinner. Though she was not much in a mood to entertain anyone, her heart heavy and conflicted, the distraction of a female friend might do her a bit of good.

  When they exited the trolley car a few blocks from Pearl Street, the gas lamps were beginning to be lit, The electrical lights, however, were misbehaving.

  Sparks flew everywhere. If there was anything electrical, be it wiring or lighting, residential or commercial, anything along Pearl Street, including Edison’s dynamos, was sparking like some sort of firecracker.

  “Now what does one suppose this is all about?” Lavinia breathed.

  “Haven’t the slightest,” Clara whispered in turn.

  People were running along the street; flapping frock coats, lifted petticoats, hats
askew. A fire had started in a building not far from the Eterna office. Part of Clara wouldn’t mind seeing the Eterna office burn, but even as she thought that, a rush of nostalgia for the building proved once again that her mind and heart often existed at odds.

  Thankfully the raucous clang of a fireman’s bell meant that a brigade had been alerted. There was a great deal of money in lower Manhattan and capital had to be preserved. If they were farther uptown, she’d be far less confident of the survival of the block. Her and Bishop’s town house, farther down and across the street, was in no danger.

  In the midst of the chaos Clara saw a young man in a brown suit, standing still, arms out as if embracing something invisible. His gaze was fixed on Clara. Unsettled, she was reminded of the intense gaze of the man she’d seen below the guttering streetlight. Surely, this was the same person—he had the same build, the same wild hair.…

  A carriage with a tank and hose barreled around the corner, startling Clara and Lavinia both. The two women stepped back into the shadows.

  After a long moment of silence, Clara replied, “Thank you for being strong, my friend. After everything we’ve been through in the past week, I hope you know how much I value you. The city is full of strange dangers, and it seems we’re bearing witness to so many.”

  “I’d die without adventure, even if adventure kills me.” Lavinia chuckled.

  Leaving the crowds on Pearl Street behind, Clara took Lavinia on a shadowed route home, entering the town house through the back door. The housekeeper was nowhere to be seen. Clara knew the woman was prone to worry; perhaps the fireman’s bell had drawn her out into the street or sent her into a dead faint.

  In either case, Clara prepared a light supper for herself and her guest. They ate in the parlor, watching the bustle on the street. Eventually the senator arrived home, tense, storming in, but the moment he saw the ladies in his gaslit parlor, he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Seeing the chaos out there nearly gave me a heart attack. I’m so glad you’re here. It would seem there’s a problem with the electric. Dangerous stuff, that.”

  “Don’t worry for us, Mr. Bishop,” Lavinia said brightly. “We’re survivors.”

  “That you are,” he said with a smile.

  “When do we lose you to Washington again, sir?” Lavinia asked.

  “At the end of the week,” he replied. Clara stared at her tea. Lavinia made a pouting sound. “I’ve an appointment with the British embassy, as I plan to make them look rather bad to their own kind. I want there to be some kind of resolution after what we suffered.” He peered at Clara in the dim light. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said as convincingly as she could. “It’s only that I … don’t know where anything stands.”

  Not Eterna and what it represented, not her heart, not her work, not her losses … Nothing …

  Bishop only nodded and ascended to his study.

  She didn’t want to lose Rupert to D.C. and yet with him here, could she truly put everything to rest as she desired?

  When the hour grew late, when the senator was in his study and Lavinia had been sent home in a cab, Clara retreated to the privacy of her own room. There she opened the metal box and began to go through the papers. Some were other examples of localized, city-based magics; others were indecipherable chemical notations and equations. There was an illustration of a ceremonial dagger being used to cut into organic compounds so that the blessed energy of life could burst forth.

  At the bottom of the pile lay a daguerreotype of a young girl, marked Eliza Smith, age nine.

  Of course Smith might have wanted to preserve something so innocent and lovely.…

  A whisper in her mind began to taunt, to second-guess. Or perhaps that vision was speaking to her …

  “You’ll fade. Lost. Unknown. Unnoticed.”

  What was the desire for immortality but that very fear? And yet, did Clara not know, more than most, how powerfully the spirit lived on?

  “No one will ever know,” the shadows murmured. “No one will care if you die, so why not take up the mantle and reject death?”

  Unflinching, Clara looked deeply into the shadows of temptation and replied: “The world cannot recognize, quantify, or assess the whole of me, nor can it ignore me. I am all the lives I have lived. I shall outlive my own life. I blaze, an eternal torch. The burn you see upon the interior of your eyes when you close them is my aura. It does not fade, even after this body has decomposed. I do not need immortality when my spirit has always lived it.”

  With a derisive snicker that seemed somehow to lack confidence, the presence retreated.

  Clara went to sleep, her moral center undeterred by the dark lure of her own brainchild.

  Having renounced the tempter, she woke the next morning more rested than she’d perhaps ever been. She looked in the mirror and felt strong, determined, much more than the lost soul that she’d glimpsed right after Louis’s death, a mad Ophelia in the glass.

  “While I have the flame of life in this body, for this time,” she said to herself and to the heavens, “I shall burn.”

  The following morning, Franklin sketched on a wide pad of paper at the office. He showed her the picture: a man’s head, neck, and shoulders. His coat collar was flipped up and the sketch showed what appeared to be tools stuck into it.

  “When I put my hand to the exterior of Goldberg’s building,” Franklin explained, “I saw an operative pick the lock. Beneath his collar was an amazing array. In his coat—genius! This is what he looked like.” He turned the page to reveal a second image: a handsome, dark-haired man with distinctive features. “I put my hand down on a table in the laboratory room and saw him scraping residue off everything, putting it into glass containers. Must be Brinkman or Bankman.”

  Clara nodded. “England’s operatives, it seems, want to determine the properties of what went wrong. They must think it will help them correct the problems within their own research. We need to be on the offensive, Franklin. Why don’t we have spies in London doing the same as Brinkman and his lackeys did to us?”

  Lavinia brought up the morning paper. Pearl Street’s electrical explosion had made the front page, in a bylined story. Clara and Franklin examined the article, which referred to a “voltage aberration” and cast doubt and blame upon the whole of electricity. Something didn’t make sense to Clara: the incident had occurred outside of Edison’s edifice, but the level of the surge simply didn’t add up; it was like a conductor of dynamo levels was out there on the street, uncontained. Meaning something else had caused it, an external force.

  “An external force,” Clara breathed. “Like what happened to our team. An external force in that house.”

  Edison’s firm claimed the incident was evidence of sabotage, another twist in the ongoing “war of the currents” between Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse; a nasty affair involving patents, theft, lies, explosions, electrocutions, one-upmanship, vast sums of money, and more than a bit of genius. And most certainly sabotage.

  Clara remembered the face of the man she’d now seen twice: when the lights flickered, and again the previous night, close to the conflagration on Pearl Street.

  Sabotage.

  Whatever malevolence was let into the Goldberg house, it was sabotage.

  The abduction and directives from Louis had derailed her, but she would talk to those who were involved in the similar case from a few years ago. If she recalled correctly, one of the chief culprits involved in the parallel case had been mysteriously acquitted and sent to … London.

  She plucked the file again to see if memory served her and sure enough: a chemist named Stevens, acquitted and somehow extricated. Last known address was in the East End of London.

  “Damn you, England,” Clara muttered, staring out her window onto Pearl Street. “If you want to go to hell, don’t take us with you. We threw you out long ago and we’ll do so again. What you’re doing to us won’t go unanswered. But you’ll not get anywhere with our material.
I’ll see to that myself.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  Seated in her parlor, Rose was writing down the details of her dream about the woman she dubbed “Justice” when Spire was announced by Minnie’s unceremonious cataloguing. Rose closed her notebook and set down her pen.

  “Ready for the office today, Miss Everhart?” Spire asked at the parlor threshold.

  “Absolutely, Mr. Spire, thank you for coming for me,” she replied, though her confidence was a lie. She felt drained, like something had latched on to her and was sucking the life out of her.

  Harold Spire gave her a brief smile before installing her in the hackney and climbing in after her.

  As their journey began, the tree-bordered avenue of Hyde Park was suddenly transformed into a long row of tall evergreens; the light of day was replaced by the dark of deep night. Ahead, a vast house, reminiscent of Austen’s Northanger Abbey, stood atop a hill overlooking howling moors. The moon was bright and the terrain was oddly luminous.

  Between each tree at the side of the road floated a black, human silhouette. Rose’s blood ran cold. When she looked again toward the vast structure, she saw something that hadn’t been there a moment earlier.

  A figure in flames stood in the portico.

  Rose blinked and was again in Hyde Park with the buildings of London on either side. She was glad she hadn’t screamed like in her fiery nightmare. But this was not a dream. She was most definitely awake.

  So. Dreams were becoming visions. Well, that was a new development. Or, perhaps, whatever had started happening to her during the ruined handoff was also rotting her mind.

  She sat silently and gave no sign of what had occurred. Beside her, Spire seemed oblivious; he continued to watch the endless flow of energy and persons that were hallmarks of London.

  At the office, Rose greeted her associates with a little curtsey and was welcomed with the usual niceties. Tea was served. Then Rose was handed a stack of documents that had safely arrived from America on a later boat, in accordance with Spire’s orders.