The Weeping Lore (Witte & Co. Investigations Book 1) (10 page)

She turned her head, breathed out a line of smoke and freezing breath, and smirked when she caught Cian’s eye.

So. He was still there. Shuffling along, the big brute. He had a frown on his face a mile wide. Irene waved the cigarette. Cian’s frown deepened.

A few blocks later, Harry let them into a modest brick building and led them up a flight of stairs. On the third floor, they left the stairwell, waited for Harry to unlock a door, and entered a warm, dark room that smelled of wood polish. Gaslights flickered to life a moment later. It was a small parlor, with a sofa and a pair of upholstered chairs. A few tasteful paintings—river landscapes, and one that might have been of a lake, or perhaps the sea—hung around the room, and books lined a pair of shelves. Everything bore the stamp of good money and good breeding.

“Please sit down,” Harry said. “I’ll get us something.”

Pearl and Irene took the sofa, while Freddy sat in one of the chairs. Cian lingered near the door with a face like a thundercloud. Irene didn’t bother looking at him, although she could tell he was trying to meet her eyes.

He had said her judgment was in question. Irene squeezed the butt of the cigarette in her fingers and wished she had her hands around Cian’s neck instead.

“This is a lovely apartment,” Irene said to Pearl. “You’ll have to tell me where you found those paintings.”

A faint smile creased Pearl’s mouth. “I don’t live here. This is Harry’s apartment.”

Irene felt a surge of something. Satisfaction? Triumph? She leaned back into the sofa, studying the room anew.

“He has excellent taste.”

“He does indeed,” Pearl said. Her tone was neutral, but her eyes—her eyes were the eyes of a woman in love. “Harry is excellent at everything he sets his hand to.”

“Truly?” Irene asked. “Freddy—it is Freddy, isn’t it?”

“I prefer Friedrich, miss.”

“Friedrich, how do you know Harry?”

The old Hun rotated thin shoulders. “We met several years ago. I was investigating a cult operating in a village northeast of here. At the time, it was part of my research. You may have heard of some of my books, perhaps?
Parting the Golden Branches
, or
The Cup and the Spear in Norse Fertility Rites
?”

Irene shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“Of course,” Friedrich said. “Of course.”

“Freddy is a renowned scholar,” Pearl said. “His work is often cited with Frazer and Malinowski.”

Irene nodded and made a polite sound of appreciation, but the names meant nothing to her. Friedrich, on the other hand, stiffened in his chair. His wrinkled cheeks reddened. “Frazer,” he said. “Malinowski. Blind, self-congratulatory fools. Both of them. Their acclaim is based on an admittedly impressive accumulation of data. But where is the spark? Where are the Muses in their work? Where is the passion, or the madness?”

“Madness?” Cian said. He still lurked by the door.

“At its roots, all great intellectual work is tied to madness,” Friedrich said. “To see something no one else has seen before—to see all the new angles and hidden sides of the world—that is true genius.”

Cian grunted.

Friedrich gave Cian a long, dark look and then set about pulling off his coat. Pearl gave Irene a slow wink.

Irene smiled in spite of herself.

Harry returned with a tray loaded with cheese and bread and slices of roast beef. He set the tray down, said, “Bon appétit,” and disappeared again. A moment later he came with a second tray, a steaming kettle, several mugs, and a bottle of whiskey.

“For my Irish friend,” he said, lifting the bottle and gesturing in Cian’s direction. “This is an Old Bushmills, straight from your motherland.”

Cian stayed by the door. His face could have broken rocks.

Irene helped herself to a sandwich and did nothing to hide her general satisfaction.

Eventually, though, Harry’s persistent good cheer won Cian over, and he joined them—although not graciously. When they’d all eaten, and the men had relaxed with their drinks, Irene felt warm from head to toe, exhilarated, and floating in a cloud of happy exhaustion.

“What in the world was all of that?” Irene asked. “Tonight, I mean. How did you know where we were? And what we saw—that woman in the church, those men who attacked us—was it real?”

Her words dispersed the fragments of warmth and good cheer. Friedrich hunkered into his chair, his thin face filled with new wrinkles, and Pearl played with her long, dark hair. Only Harry seemed unmoved. He propped that very handsome face on one hand and studied Irene for a moment.

“It was real. Can you believe that?”

Before Irene could answer, Cian slammed his glass down and said, “Now hold on. That girl was scared to death tonight. We both were. I’m not afraid to say that. I’ve been to war, and I’ve been in a lot of rough places, but nothing came close to this. But frightened or not, I know what I was dealing with: bootleggers and mick gangs, no matter what kind of tricks they have. If you start telling this girl all those things were real, you’re liable to rattle her for good.”

The silence lasted a moment. And then Irene said, “I am not a girl. And I don’t need you to talk for me.”

Cian’s cheeks blazed.

“I believe you,” Irene said. “That woman, she was a ghost? Who was she?”

Harry nodded. “She was a ghost. Her name—”

“This is madness,” Cian said. He got to his feet. “I’m thankful for your help, but I won’t sit here and listen to lies, and I won’t let you shake Irene up. Come on, Irene. Let’s go.”

“It’s true,” Pearl said. She looked up and met Cian’s gaze and repeated, “It’s true. All of it.”

“Come on, Irene,” Cian said.

“No. I’m staying.”

For a moment, she thought he would drag her from the apartment, but instead he just snorted and started for the door. “My thanks again,” he said and slammed the door behind him.

Pearl reached over and patted Irene’s shoulder, and Irene let out a laugh that, even to her, sounded brittle. “I scarcely know him,” Irene said. “I—” She paused, fumbled. “I scarcely know him at all.”

“How did you meet?” Pearl asked.

“The truth,” Harry said. “I’m sorry, Miss Lovell, but we need to know why they were after you.”

And that, of course, meant she had to go all the way back to the beginning. When she had finished, the three exchanged glances, and Pearl said, “We didn’t know it was Seamus, but it fits the pattern.”

“And the Prohibition agent?” Harry said. He ran a hand through his hair and poured himself another finger of whiskey.

“I think I have it,” Pearl said. “Give me a bit more time.”

“What? What do you have?” Irene asked.

It was Harry who responded. “For weeks now—”

“Months,” interrupted Friedrich.

“Months,” Harry said, “we’ve known that someone was trafficking in cult objects. Primarily Indian, although there were pieces from all over Europe and even a few from the Levant. At first, small things—trinkets and rings, statuettes, prayer mats. Then, more valuable items, like rare books, sacrificial implements, vessels. We couldn’t trace any of our thefts to the usual suspects, so we assumed it was someone new.”

“Seamus,” Pearl said, picking up the thread. “We knew it was someone who had hands all over the city, but we didn’t know who. Tonight, we heard that a group of Children was trying to intercept the delivery of an ancient artifact that had recently arrived in St. Louis. That’s how we found you—we were tracking the Children, and they led us to you.”

“But why?” Irene said. “What do I have—” She stopped. “The delivery.”

“So it seems,” Pearl said. “Although why Seamus would entrust this artifact to your father remains a mystery, unless you can provide some answers.”

Irene shook her head. “Why would Seamus even want these things?”

“We have no idea. Such artifacts are dangerous on their own, but they have no true power unless they’re in the hands of someone who has delved deeply into cultic practices. If Seamus had been dabbling in cultic magic, I think we would have noticed him before now.”

“Dangerous?” Irene said. “How? Murder and the like? Human sacrifice?”

Friedrich snorted, but his features softened when Irene looked at him. “My apologies. It’s just that so often, people assume that cultists are nothing more than simpletons, deluded rustics, perhaps the weak-blooded dregs of centuries of intermarrying. When people hear of satanic worship, of dark magic, they think of witchcraft in distant forest glades, or in the teepees of savages. They don’t realize that there is a great difference between the poor fools who light candles on the Black Sabbath and the Children.”

For a moment, Irene didn’t know how to respond. Then she laughed. “You’re not serious, though? Dark magic and secret cults? You don’t really believe all this.”

“You already said you believed in what you saw tonight,” Harry said.

“Yes, and I do. Those men, I know there was something strange about them. I saw what they did. And the spiders, of course. But those things can be explained. They aren’t—they aren’t—”

“I think we’ve reached the end of this conversation,” Harry said.

Friedrich, however, leaned forward in his chair and said, “You make a grave mistake, miss, to say that those things were men. They are no more men than a statue, or an automaton, or one of Henry Ford’s contraptions. They are the product of sorcery, clay given breath and life, and they are the work of the Children.”

“What are these children?” Irene asked.

“That’s enough, Freddy,” Harry said.

“The Children of the Therkenstrind,” Friedrich said. “That is what they call themselves. That is how they were known to the Angles, for long dark centuries, when the light of Christ was nothing more than a candle on a sea of endless night.”

“Enough, Freddy,” Harry said. “I said enough.”

“No,” Irene said. “I want to hear more.”

Harry stood, fetched his coat and hers, and shook his head. “You don’t need to know more.” A smile flickered on his face. “You wouldn’t sleep a wink if you did. It’s better for all this way. You go home, go about your life, and don’t look back on tonight if you can help it.” With another, more confident smile, he held up her coat.

Irene slid her arms into the coat, buttoned it up, and said, “Thank you for everything.”

“I’ll see you home,” Harry said. “Now that your companion has left you.”

“He was not my companion,” Irene said. She offered Harry a chilly smile, squeezed Pearl’s fingers, and retreated from Friedrich with a quick nod before the Hun could kiss her hand again. Then she moved to the door. When Harry joined her, she shook her head.

“Not necessary, Mr. Witte. I’ve seen myself home on later and colder nights than this.”

“I insist, Miss Lovell.”

He hailed a cab, and they rode together in silence to her house. Irene watched the patches of lamplight pass over the lumpy upholstery of the cab, over the fine wool of Harry’s trousers, over his face. There were secrets in that face. Many secrets.

Not the least of which, as far as Irene was concerned, was Pearl.

When they pulled up in front of Irene’s house, Harry got out and held the door for Irene. When she had freed herself from the cab, she extended her hand, and Harry took it for a heartbeat.

“Be safe, Miss Lovell. It was a pleasure meeting you, but I doubt we’ll see each other again.”

“My thanks again, Henry. If I find out anything about Papa—”

He was already shaking his head. “Just let it go, Miss Lovell. Better for everyone.”

Then he got back in the cab, and the car pulled away, leaving Irene standing at the end of the frosted drive. She took mincing steps across the ice, let herself in at the kitchen door, and sat for a moment in the darkness at the cold hearth. The space felt different—larger, emptier—and the copper pots hanging above the stove were dull-eyed mourners. Irene sat there for a long time, waiting for something besides the blunted ache in her chest, thinking of Sally.

And eventually she grew tired, and her feet had thawed, and she went upstairs. The suitcase still sat on the bed, its zippered teeth glinting in the ambient light, and a hat box sat on the chair.

Paris.

Irene shoved the suitcase from the bed, spilling clothes across the floor. She kicked off her shoes, dumped her coat on the chair, crawled into bed.

Sleep waited like a cliff at the edge of the sea. She came close once or twice, daring herself to make the leap, and then at last she was sailing, and flying, and falling.

On the way down, she thought about a red-headed man, and a wooden box, and the emptied suitcase.

Paris.

Something new—something different—had crawled inside Cian’s mouth during the night. This wasn’t the familiar, trampled-and-rotten-cat taste of a too many passes of Danny Bancroft’s moonshine. It wasn’t even the acidic after-burn of fresh vomit. It was cold and dry as an iron file and made his tongue taste like snakeskin.

Later, when his eyes were open and he’d had a cup of coffee, he’d know it was fear.

But for the moment, Cian hadn’t had a cup of coffee—or, for that matter, a drop of booze. What he had was that taste in his mouth, and a pain in the back of his neck, and two feet like blocks of ice. The smell of wood-smoke drifted past him, becoming clearer as he woke, and then voices percolating through the miasma of sleep. Not angry voices. Not shouting, or the sounds of chase. Normal, everyday voices. Voices of cabbage and salted pork and linens needing washing. Kerry Patch voices.