With Fate Conspire (44 page)

Perhaps
was a thin word for Dead Rick to hang his hopes on—but it was better than he’d had yesterday, because at least he had the plates. “I’ll try to follow Aspell,” Dead Rick said, even though weariness dragged at him like lead.

Irrith immediately drew her gun, as if she expected him to find the sod as soon as they went outside. “I’ll come with you.”

Uncomfortable, he said, “You don’t ’ave to.”

“What are you going to do, yawn at him? He may be bleeding, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a threat.” The sprite’s lip drew up in a delicate snarl. “I didn’t trust him not to be a threat even when he was in prison for a hundred years. And it looks like I was right.”

Aspell wasn’t half the threat Nadrett was. But Dead Rick could tell there wasn’t much point in trying to convince Irrith of that. So long as she didn’t shoot their quarry on sight, he supposed it couldn’t hurt to let her come along. She was better company than Old Gadling or Gresh, at least.

In the end, though, it didn’t matter whether she came or not. There were no trails he could follow in the street above. The snaky bastard was gone, along with the ghost of Galen St. Clair.

Leckhampton House, Cambridge: August 12, 1884

“If you need me,” Eveleen Myers said in coolly polite tones, “I will be in my workshop.”

Contradictory impulses twisted Frederic Myers’s heart as his wife turned and swept down the corridor. He should stop her going; they should not leave matters as they were, angry and distant. But what could he say to mend that rift, when his mind kept drifting to another woman? Perhaps a few hours of work over her beloved photographs would calm her, and then they could talk. And in the meanwhile, he was guiltily glad of her absence, which would give him time to work on matters he could not share with her.

Had Louisa Kittering not come to possess his thoughts, he would not have hesitated to ask the Goodemeades and Mrs. Chase whether he could share the London Fairy Society—the true one—with his wife. Eveleen was not a psychical researcher herself, but the secret of the faeries’ presence would surely fascinate her. Yet now, with the two of them more estranged every passing day, he worried what she might do with that secret. Would she use it against him? Even betray the faeries’ trust?

Six months ago, he would have said no. But now his thoughts were so tangled, he could no longer tell what was sound judgment, and what merely the fearful whispers of his poor, overtaxed brain.

Work might settle Eveleen; it might settle him, too. Sighing, Myers went to his study.

He had promised the rest of the Society that he would draw up a plan for how they might introduce themselves to the larger world, if they chose to begin with the Society for Psychical Research. It was difficult, when he himself was so new to their world; he could scarcely be sure anything he might say to Sidgwick and the others would even be accurate. Where did faeries
come
from? How did the realm of Faerie itself relate to this world, and to Heaven and Hell? Was there any truth in Miss Harris’s theosophical speculation at the séance a few months ago, that a connection existed between the fae and the spirits of the dead? Fjothar, one of the faerie members of the Society, had given him three books written by their own scholars, describing the elements that made up their reality, but after reading through them all Myers still hardly understood it.

But he had promised, and he would try. The Goodemeades expected the fae had at most a few months before they must abandon London. Those who remained—in Rose House, or sheltering by other means—would wait until the exodus was complete, and then begin their emergence. It was the agreement they had formed with Hodge, the one they called Prince of the Stone. “By then, I won’t be in no condition to stop you anyway,” he’d said, with a gallows grin. Myers shuddered to think of what the fellow meant.

Safely closed away in his study, Myers searched for an empty notebook he could use to write up his plans. One he could hide from Eveleen.
I never used to hide things from her …
The thought slipped away, to be replaced by another.
Louisa came to a few Society meetings. I should ask if she might be permitted to join us for the private ones. I should very much like to share them with her.

There ought to be plenty of empty notebooks, but he could not find them.
I haven’t filled them already, have I?
Eveleen would know, but he did not want to ask her. Frowning, Myers rummaged around in drawers, on the shelves, wondering where they might have gone. Finally he came across one he might use; there was writing inside, but it could not have been anything important, for its cover was unlabeled, and the notebook lay at the bottom of a towering stack that must have lain untouched for years.

Paging through, looking for empty pages he might use, Myers caught a word slipping past.
Ectoplasm.
Now, where had he heard that before?

From Sidgwick, at that séance—the one with the physical manifestation, where Miss Harris had proposed her theosophical theory. Curious, Myers turned back until he found the word again. The page was filled with bits of Greek and Latin, combined into different possibilities; not just
ectoplasm
but also
teleplasm
and various other alternatives, all under a header reading
An Emanation of the Spirit,
which was underlined twice.

All of it in his own handwriting—but he had no recollection of writing it.

Curiosity deepened. Myers went back to the beginning of the notebook. The pages were undated, but a reference to a row he had with Edmund Gurney told him it must have been started in early 1879. Strangely, it began with speculations not far afield from those of Miss Harris: links between ghosts and faeries, jotted notes about legends from different parts of the country, and then other things written down as if they were the true story, though he’d marked no references for them.
Three kinds of apparitions,
he’d noted;
recent; recurrent; recalled.
The recent, this notebook claimed, were swept away by the faeries every All Hallows’ Eve, sent on to their eventual rest. Different kinds of fae could see them: fetches, skrikers, church grims, and more. Then musings on where exactly these spirits resided—the astral plane of the theosophists?—and how someone might not only call a ghost from that realm, but enter it physically. But he had abandoned that line of inquiry at the page headed
An Emanation of the Spirit,
and pursued instead the question of the gauzy substance that accompanied true physical manifestations.

Here he found the word
aether,
both underlined and circled.

Aether. Myers straightened up, staggering as his legs protested; he did not know how long he’d been crouched by that pile, but it hardly mattered. He unlocked a drawer in his desk and pulled out the books Fjothar had given him. Aether, according to
An Explanation of Alchemical Principles,
was the defining characteristic of faerie spaces; it was the fifth of their elements, after the classical four.

Fascinating material—and he did not remember writing a single word of it.

Nebulous dread tightened his throat. This was no mere absentmindedness; it was an entire branch of research he had undertaken—on the topic of faeries!—and yet he’d forgotten it completely. Were it not for Sidgwick’s comments at that séance, he might even believe these notes had come from someone else’s pen, and dismissed the similarity of handwriting as mere coincidence.

Eveleen would not like him going back to London so soon, but he had to ask the Goodemeades what this meant. Myers was accustomed to wondering if he was going mad—he feared he had for a short time, after Annie died—but this was unlike anything he’d felt before, a growing, clawing fear, as if someone had stolen part of his mind while he wasn’t looking. Eveleen could not help him with that. Everything he needed lay in London, and he could not endure the thought of delay.

Cromwell Road, South Kensington: August 13, 1884

Louisa began to suspect she had been rather too liberal in her use of charms upon Frederic Myers when he showed up at Cromwell Road, the day before the Kittering family was due to leave.

Or rather, two members of the Kittering family, and a selection of their servants. She had not the faintest intention of going with them. There had been entertainment in spurning every potential suitor Mrs. Kittering brought forward, but now those revels had ended; it would be the countryside after this, tedium without end, and that held no interest for Louisa. Her plan was to part company with them at the train station tomorrow, in such fashion as to ensure they didn’t notice her absence until they arrived in Bath. That would give her plenty of time in which to vanish for good.

What she would do after that, she had not decided; and then Frederic Myers showed up at her door.

Mr. Warren did not want to let him in; the argument echoed down the corridor and into the morning room where Louisa sat with her toast. She went out, saw Myers, and swept forward to intervene. Distracting the butler, she dragged Myers into the unoccupied dining room, where the chairs and table had already been covered with sheets against dust. “What are you doing?” she whispered, a seed of alarm taking shape beneath her delighted surprise at seeing him. “A married man cannot call upon an unmarried lady, Mr. Myers, not in such a manner—”

“Louisa,” he said, and she nearly jumped from her skin. A married man should
certainly
not call an unmarried lady by her given name—not in that tone of voice. “I have discovered the strangest thing—”

What had been a mere seed of alarm grew, within seconds, to become a strangling vine, cutting off her air. The problem of his affection for her paled into insignificance next to this: that Myers had discovered the gap in his memories, the ideas Nadrett had stolen from him.

How could she have forgotten it herself? She had known, ever since that séance back in April; and she had known then that she ought to stay away from Frederic Myers. But then she’d taken on this name, this life, and then …

Horror had drowned out the words coming from his mouth, until she heard him say “Goodemeades.” Louisa came back to herself with a jolt. “They have another society, you see,” he was telling her, the words tumbling over one another. “I should not tell you too much of it—I should ask their permission before I do—but I suspect they may know something of these ideas, and be able to help me—”

“You aren’t going to tell them!” she said, panic clutching her tight.

He blinked at her in confusion. “I am on my way there right now, only I had to stop and see you.”

Out in the entrance hall, she could hear Mrs. Kittering’s strident voice. Moving swiftly, Louisa wedged a chair under the dining room door so it would not open. Then she turned back to Myers, and took him by the arms.

She was no prophet, but she could see this future clearly enough. If he went to the Goodemeades and told them of the notebook, they would investigate, and that would draw Nadrett’s attention. He would not like anyone looking into his secrets. What he would do to the brownies, she couldn’t say—they had survived plenty of danger in the past—but the mortal man standing before her was all too fragile. Nadrett would either claim him once more … or dispose of him entirely.

And she could not let that happen.

The doorknob rattled, and Mrs. Kittering, thinking it locked, demanded the key from Mr. Warren. There was no time for subtlety, such as she had employed in the past—or thought she had; Louisa rose onto her toes and kissed Frederic Myers hard on the lips, willing him to
love her
.

As she loved him back.

Pulling back just far enough to look him in the eyes, she said, “Frederic, you must listen to me. What you have there is dangerous; you must not tell
anyone
of it. Do you understand? Your only safety lies in fleeing. We will go together, my love; I cannot be parted from you. Do not go to Islington, and do not go back to Cambridge; they will find you there. I will meet you in Hyde Park tonight, by the Serpentine, where we walked before. At midnight. We will hide until we can go away together, and find some place we can be happy. Please, my love, promise me—”

My love.
Words she had spoken many times, as Annie Marshall, as the countless other women she pretended to be, through the long ages of toying with humans. She had never meant them before. Fae did not love, not unless they chose to—not as humans did. Passion could not sweep them away; devotion could not creep into their hearts unnoticed. And so the new Louisa Kittering had told herself that what she felt for Frederic Myers was only a rebirth of her early fascination.

She had not realized that a changeling’s heart did not lie wholly under her control.

Now he loved her back, as fully as she did him. Frederic wrapped his arms about her and crushed her mouth to his own, kissing her with all the blind passion faerie enchantment could create, until Mr. Warren managed to force the door open, and they were dragged apart. Then there was shouting and crying, accusations and threats of arrest, and too many people for Louisa to charm into cooperative indifference—but they could not hold her, not if she was determined to get away. Tonight she would go to Frederic, and together they would find a way to escape Nadrett forever.

East End, London: August 14, 1884

Eliza soon discovered the Goodemeade sisters were the sort of well-meaning meddlers who couldn’t see two people in conflict without wanting to heal the breach. That was made quite clear by their all-too-innocent suggestion that she take Dead Rick with her to find Dónall Whelan.

She refused, of course. The man who was supposed to pass judgment on him, this Prince of theirs, hadn’t yet gotten around to doing so; he was busy with other matters, they said. Trying to save their Onyx Hall. Until he decided on a punishment, she was forbidden to take her own vengeance—she still didn’t know how they’d wheedled such a promise out of her. Given that, the last thing she wanted was to spend time in the skriker’s company.