Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart

by Hieber, Leanna Renee

  “Art,” Mrs. Northe replied. “Not your future. Not yet. The boy’s going to be nervous. He’s got a lot on his mind. I know you’re lovesick, but don’t rush things. Especially not while he’s functioning as our double agent.”

  My stomach twisted at the idea of him beholden to the Society indefinitely. “Don’t encourage him to get any more involved than he has to,” I cautioned. “I don’t want him to be a pawn. Not any of us. Not me, not Jonathon, not Rachel.”

  We all had become Society pawns in one way or another with Mrs. Northe outside of it all, watching, invested, but not directly involved. Yet still moving us like chess pieces. Something about my tone had Mrs. Northe stare directly at me.

  “Of course. You don’t think you’re some sort of game to me, do you?”

  “Just…make sure we don’t become one.”

  I sat with my tea and she sat with her letters for a while before Jonathon and my father came through the open pocket doors, smelling of pipe tobacco and a trace of bourbon, all finer, richer, and more subtle scents than what the professors and academics brought into my father’s modest study.

  “Say good night, Natalie,” Father said. “I daresay we’ll all see each other soon.” Jonathon caught my hand and kissed it. He then turned and shook my father’s hand again vigorously. “Your family, Mr. Stewart, has my loyalty, and your museum has my patronage. Thank you for your friendship,” he stated. He bowed, and I watched him disappear up Mrs. Northe’s grand staircase to the guest rooms. Father turned away looking pleased. Jonathon had given me a wink and a kiss upon the air when no one was looking.

  Mrs. Northe had her driver take us round to our home. Father didn’t say much, other than, “He’s a good man, Denbury. Smart. Did you know he opened a clinic in London with his friends? That’s good. A sense of civil service. I like that. Your mother would like that…I just worry about all the darkness. The spells. The madness that man brought upon you.”

  “It wasn’t—”

  “His fault, I know. But I can’t possibly give your hand until I know you’re well and truly safe.”

  And with that, the comfortable silence that had so dominated our house since Helen Stewart’s death when I was four again descended. But at least the ice has been broken, however uneasily.

  Chapter 19

  When a carriage arrived the next morning after my father left for the museum, with instructions to bring me to Mrs. Northe, I was surprised to find Maggie waiting for me. Mrs. Northe sat across her parlor looking tired and irritated.

  “Natalie, I’m sorry. I must be off to Chicago by the next train. My friend is dying, and I must see her alive once more. But Margaret simply will not believe that we’re not hiding something from her. There’s nothing magical about that man, Margaret.”

  “That man is Lord Denbury. Stop pretending he isn’t. I’ve memorized that face. I was at the museum late the night Natalie was there, and the next day his portrait was—” She stopped herself from saying something else and instead said: “Gone. You think you know what happened, but you don’t. It isn’t fair. I did the rituals. I brought him to life. Why are you hiding him from me?” She turned to me, anguished. “Why do you steal everything from me, Natalie? You steal my aunt. You steal my beau. Why?”

  My mouth dropped open in shocked and indignant amazement.

  “Is that what this is? You think you brought him to life?” Mrs. Northe asked.

  I clenched my fists, wanting more than anything to tell her the truth: That I had been chosen to cross worlds to save him. I risked my life on chance, deduction, and faith. That I pursued clues into dangerous New York neighborhoods where people had died, that I had been wounded and stared down devils. That I reversed the deadly curse. But what would she know of any of that? How would that help?

  Just then, a confident stride could be heard down the entrance hall and Jonathon’s handsome face came around the corner. He saw us three ladies, perched and tense. I hadn’t even bothered to take a seat.

  His jovial expression turned sheepish. “Oh, hello. Forgive me, ladies. Good morning. Hello, Miss Stewart. Hello, Miss…Hathorn…”

  He seemed awfully nervous when he looked at Maggie.

  “Hello, Jonathon,” she said, biting her lip and blushing like a schoolgirl, dropping his familiar name when I’m sure there had been no permission granted to use it.

  He went white as a sheet. Recovering, he looked first at Mrs. Northe and then at me. “Right. I’ll be…in the study if anyone needs me.”

  I wanted to run after him, to ask about his behavior. But just then, there was a cry from upstairs. Rachel.

  As I ran upstairs, I could hear Mrs. Northe showing Maggie the door. “Margaret. Please go. You’ve caused enough headaches this morning.”

  “Mother will hear of this. How you deny me—”

  “Please do sic your mother on me,” Mrs. Northe replied wearily. “I’d prefer that to your endless refusal to see me for anything other than what I can do for you.”

  Rachel was convulsing upon her bed. I took up her thin body in my arms, touching her face, seeing if I could rouse her.

  Eerily she shot up, and a sound came out of her mouth that sounded like a name. Her shaking hands signed a phrase.

  “My name is Elsa. Please tell my love to let me go,” she signed. “All the spirits. All must be let go.”

  I sat back as if shoved back in alarm. “Mrs. Northe,” I called. She was at the door.

  “What is it?”

  “Samuel’s comatose fiancée! Elsa. I think she’s dead. Or otherwise she’s communicating from her comatose state into Rachel. But whatever Preston is doing for the sake of Laura, it must be happening in St. Paul, too. It’s Samuel. We have to help him. I don’t know what to do. What do we do? We can’t do anything from here!” I was losing the battle against panic.

  “I will see my friend in Chicago, gather help, and take a train to Dr. Neumann. I will set that girl to rest. I will take care of it. But you must gather Reverend Blessing and find Preston’s work, together, with Rachel. You must set the spirits to rest that are plaguing her. Take that basement by force if you have to.”

  “By force? But none of us—”

  “I told Mr. Smith you may need his assistance. He’s in the carriage house.”

  Mr. Smith. Bodyguard, driver, intelligence officer, hired hand, a man of many eerie talents and no words. He was someone you wanted on your side, not the enemy’s. Thankfully, he seemed ever loyal to Mrs. Northe.

  “I knew I’d have to put you in charge, Natalie. I don’t want to leave you, but if I don’t go to my friend, it could be catastrophic. I can’t explain why, just trust me. I’ll be more help there than I will be here. I wouldn’t go if I didn’t think you all could handle yourselves. There’s no time to waste. We don’t know what’s about to wake up in that hospital, and Rachel can’t sustain the trauma much longer. Be well.” She kissed me on the forehead, then Rachel, and was out the door. “Say good-bye to Jonathon for me. I’m already late for the train.”

  I moved to walk out the door. Instead, Rachel grabbed me by the hand and sat up.

  “End it.” She signed. “Make it stop.”

  “We’re going to,” I promised, and I tried to ease her back upon the bed. She refused, sitting stiffly, eyes wide like an animal being hunted.

  Wearied and scared, I went to find Jonathon.

  He was not alone in the den. Maggie hadn’t gone out after all. Instead, she was atop him. Pinning him, really, her knee upon the arm of the leather chair where he sat pressed back, his hands like claws on the armrests.

  She was kissing him. Was he kissing her back? The sound of the door didn’t disrupt them, but whatever sound came out of my mouth did. I tried to recover speech. “I…beg your pardon!”

  Jonathon pushed Maggie aside, jumping out of the chair as if it were a tub of scalding water. “Natalie, she just threw herself at me.”

  Maggie whirled to me and back to him. “Why should you excuse yourself to her? W
hy won’t you recognize me for who I am? After all I’ve done for you and what we’ve shared?”

  I folded my arms. My voice wouldn’t work. I could feel perspiration on my upper lip. I felt nauseous. Truly? Now was the time for my speech to flee? When I was an injured, shamed party, discovering my beloved kissing another? What did she mean?

  “We’ve shared nothing, Natalie,” Jonathon said. “Last night she sneaked behind the house to the little garden, using a pebble to strike my window. I was hoping it was you—”

  “No, don’t you understand?” Maggie asked with that same earnest, wounded confusion. “We needed privacy, a balcony scene like Romeo and Juliet, to consecrate the rite. Why do you continue to deny me?”

  I stared at her, just as confused. She’d lost her mind. Jonathon was alluring and charming, no doubt, but his effect upon women wasn’t insanity.

  “Taking off your cloak to reveal yourself, Miss Hathorn,” Jonathon said, exasperated, “in far less clothes than was proper, is hardly the way to introduce yourself to a man, unless you’re a—”

  “Are you about to impugn my honor, Lord Denbury?” Maggie murmured through clenched teeth.

  “No more than you’ve done yourself. Stop this game. I don’t understand it.”

  Tears suddenly poured down Maggie’s face. “You ungrateful wretch. This is the thanks I receive for saving you? This is how I’m repaid for bringing you out of the painting?” Her agony made her voice tremble.

  “Wait a minute.” Jonathon shook his head, reacting with the same incredulity that Mrs. Northe had a moment prior. “You think you…saved me?”

  “Yes!” Maggie said, similarly exasperated. “I’ve done nothing but say incantations, pray to you, and dream of you. I’ve done so much. Haven’t you seen any of it?”

  “No…” Jonathon said, looking at her blankly. “We’re truly at a loss here, Miss Hathorn.”

  “Maggie,” I said, “if this is about the markings on the floor of the Metropolitan—”

  “No, it’s more than that!” She waved a hand, batting me away. “Far more! Stop interfering, Natalie. This is between Jonathon and me.”

  “No, actually, it isn’t,” Jonathon said slowly, gently, as if he were talking to a child. “You must be mistaken. I was…never in a painting at all. My death was a ruse. It’s a very long story, Miss Hathorn. I’m sorry for anything that you’ve been misled to believe.”

  She shook her head, and the tears continued. “No…No, you’re mine. They promised you’d be mine.”

  “Who?” I asked, feeling dread creep up my spine.

  “None of your business,” Maggie said, turning away. “You won’t understand, Natalie.”

  “Try me,” I hissed.

  “Stop! For once this isn’t about you!” she cried, burying her face in a handkerchief a moment before she looked up again, staring at Jonathon like a wounded animal bearing its fangs. “You’re lying, Lord Denbury, and I’ll find a way to prove it. Lying and ungrateful!”

  Storming out the door, she slammed it behind her with a great wooden thud.

  Jonathon turned to me, eyes wide. “That girl is stark, raving mad. Please believe me. She threw herself at me, and for a moment, I was honestly too shocked to move.”

  I stared at him, wanting to believe him. Yet I had walked in on him not shoving her away, but kissing her. True, she had pinned him beneath her, but still…

  “Please, Natalie. What happened to her? I saw a flash of red and gold crackle around her. Perhaps somehow, with her being around the painting, residual magic is on her as well. And she, hardly as strong as you, is more easily affected.”

  It seemed as plausible an explanation as any for her odd behavior. “I don’t know. But let’s be very clear,” I said, taking his hand and leading him to the door. “I’m the only one allowed to kiss you.”

  “That’s bloody right you are,” he breathed, wrapping his arm around me.

  “Come, we don’t have time for this. Rachel just told us something very important.”

  “Is that girl gone, Mary?” Jonathon asked in the hall. “Please God, tell me she’s gone.”

  “In a huff, that’s for sure,” Mary said, wearier by the moment. “Mrs. Northe is gone too. She sends her love, Lord Denbury.”

  “Gone?” Jonathon cried. “She can’t leave. This place is a madhouse.” I ushered him into the entrance hall. “Why on earth would she leave at such a critical—”

  “Because her friend is dying. Her friend with important information. You know I don’t question Mrs. Northe’s important information. And she’s also going, Jonathon, because of Elsa,” I replied. He stilled.

  “What?”

  “Rachel has been receiving information from spirits, all in a jumbled rush. She’s been quite knocked out by it. She just woke with a message from Elsa, either transmitted through her comatose state or because she’s dead and her spirit has a message. Something’s wrong in St. Paul. Elsa is begging to be let go, as are all the spirits Preston has been asking Rachel to collect. And Mrs. Northe has dire business in Chicago.”

  “We’ve got to get to Samuel.”

  “She promises to go farther west to take care of Samuel. You know that woman has more resources than she’d ever let on. It’s up to us to take care of Preston.”

  Jonathon ran a hand over his face. “Good God.” He entered the parlor, looked at me, then greeted Rachel. “Do you ever get the feeling we’ve become the grim reaper’s clerks?” he asked.

  Rachel nodded. “All the time,” she signed.

  Something overtook Rachel again. She swooned on the divan. Jonathon placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. I shook Rachel gently, as I had before.

  “What are they saying?” I asked calmly, squeezing Rachel’s hands, clutching her by the arms, and forcing her to look at me.

  “So many tears,” she signed, tears falling down her own cheeks, which had again gone gray pale. “They’re calling. For me. All of them. They don’t understand. They’re not alive, so how could it be alive?”

  “What’s she saying?” Jonathon asked quietly. I translated.

  “What’s…it?” he asked as if he really didn’t want to know.

  Nearly as quickly as she had fainted, Rachel jumped to her feet with a gasping breath. It was dizzying, the shift between her receiving information and then coming out of an alarming-looking trance to an utter, sharp lucidity.

  “I must go,” she signed. “Whatever is in the basement, I must end it. Today is the day it will wake. It must not wake. It must not live.”

  As I translated, Jonathon and I shuddered but straightened ourselves.

  “Yes. But we’re going with you,” I said as she looked up at me.

  “You don’t have to,” she signed, and I grabbed her hands.

  “Yes. We do,” I insisted. “The Master’s Society used Preston and you, and has hurt all of us.”

  “Come, let’s get to the root of their dirty business,” Jonathon stated, putting on his black wide-brimmed hat by the door. A hunting hat. Fitting. I saw a small flash of light shimmer over him, as it did when he came to my aid or affected positive change. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one who saw the truth of a good soul in ways beyond the body alone.

  “Mrs. Northe left me in charge,” I said sheepishly, wondering if Jonathon would chafe at this. “So…”

  “So, lead on, captain.” Jonathon saluted me with a grin.

  I let out a kept breath and put my hands firmly together in a gesture of strength, but really it was to keep them from shaking. Since I didn’t have the luxury of time to question being leader, my mind went to the same state I’d been in while pursuing clues to save Jonathon’s life. There were simply things to be done. There was only time for action. It was actually far better than the anxiety of waiting.

  “First off,” I stated, “we alert Mr. Smith.”

  “And he is?”

  “A man I wouldn’t want to cross. At our service, courtesy of Mrs. Northe. He’s in the carriage house
awaiting our orders.” I turned to Rachel. “Are you sure you’re ready? Strong enough?”

  “If we don’t do something soon, they will kill me,” she signed.

  “We won’t let them kill you,” I assured her.

  “We promise,” Jonathon added.

  The three of us strode to the carriage house where I found a lean, tall man in a pinstriped suit and a bowler, with a scar on one cheek that sloped slightly upward from the dark stubble of his chin. He was brushing one of Mrs. Northe’s mares.

  “Mr. Smith.”

  He set down his brush, came forward, and tipped his hat. I introduced Jonathon and Rachel. He tipped his hat again. “The German Hospital on Seventy-Seventh Street,” I said. “There’s a doctor named Preston and a guard of his, a large, pale Brit who will likely prove more powerful than he seems. They’ll try to keep us from entering the basement. There’s something down there I doubt any of us want to see, but we have no choice. We must get into that basement and stop whatever is being done there.”

  Mr. Smith, who had yet to say a word, nodded, went to a case, and opened it. He pulled out a long-barreled pistol and slid it into a holster under his jacket, while palming another gun, a pocket-sized pistol with a pearl handle. This he handed to Jonathon along with some bullets. Smith’s raised eyebrows asked the question of whether Jonathon knew how to use it. Jonathon took the bullets, loaded the gun, set the safety, and put the pistol in his breast pocket.

  It was amazing how much could be said by action alone.

  “We have to see one more person,” I said. “We’ll meet you there. Perhaps you can examine the premises?”

  Smith nodded and was off down the street.

  “One more?” Jonathon queried.

  “I’m bringing Reverend Blessing with us.”

  “And who’s that?” Jonathon asked.

  “An exorcist.”

  “Ah, of course.”

  Chapter 20

  A smile crossed the reverend’s face when he saw me at the door, and he examined Jonathon and Rachel. “Hello, Miss Stewart. To what do I owe this sudden honor, and what’s all this company you’ve brought with you?”