Jonathon pretended not to notice, as if everything was perfectly normal, if not boring. Whatever he had done to steel himself to such revelations was the most impressive thing I could imagine.

Brinkman was a statue at Moriel’s side. I wondered what was going through both of their minds. Whatever was carved, painted, and bled onto those floorboards was yet another spell to break, and I tried not to panic, as I only knew one countercurse, and that had to do with the poor prisoners on the wall who had, thankfully, remained in their painted positions.

“Before we get to our meal, let’s talk a little business, shall we, Majesty Moriel?” Jonathon posited. “Your plans. I need to know what all is unfolding both here and in New York. You’ve courted us here, to walk the earth, summoned by your dark dealings, lured by your promises. My kind seeks our utopia. I do hope you’re getting closer to providing it. I want to know how you’ll be doing so, beyond your various tenuous experiments that have suffered as many failures as successes.”

Moriel and Sansalme looked like beady-eyed vultures, staring at Jonathon with a strange, collective expression that shifted discomfortingly between starvation and caution. Moriel smiled again, revealing more of his jagged, yellowing teeth. Sansalme reached into the briefcase he’d set to the side of his chair and threw something heavy upon the table with a resounding thud. It was a ledger.

“Before we do that, Whitby,” Moriel replied in a singsong tone. “I’d like to summon more of your kind to the dinner table.” His eyes swept to Lavinia, then me. “Since you’ve provided such fare...” He checked his pocket-watch. “And Vincenzi should be here any moment to provide the lintel.”

I turned away so that he could not see my fear at being called “fare.” The blood offering was not enough, clearly. I did not wish to appear complicit, as that would be too convenient, but I would not let him have the pleasure of my discomfort. Lavinia did the same, and I could feel her eyes boring into me for strength like pulling water from a well.

Lintel, Moriel said. The top part of a door... That’s what the two carved and now bloodied lines were upon the wall. The sides of a door... No... I could feel my bruised and punctured hand begin to shake. We had to move forward, quicker, before they opened something to only God could know what...

Moriel gestured for Sansalme to bring the ledger forward, toward me.

“If God writes your name in the book of life,” Moriel began in a grand tone, curling his hand in a slow flourish, “so shall your names herein be written in the book of death. The power of the name is vast, as we know. And the more names rent asunder in our cause, the more powerful our book of death.”

The long, leather rectangular ledger was black, tipped in red. The lackey flipped it open and shoved it under my nose. The ledger bore names inked down one column.

                           

Lord and Lady Denbury

 

There was an underline beneath their name that carried over to the X like a smear.

 

Jonathon Whitby, Lord Denbury III

 

Another X crossed out Jonathon, as his soul was still presumed dead...

 

Mister Crenfall

Doctor Neuman

Doctor Preston

Doctor Stevens

The Winsome Family

 

The top three names were blotted with an X. Crenfall was useless. Preston was dead. Was Samuel, Doctor Neuman, Jonathon’s friend in Minnesota, dead too then? Likely presumed so. The last doctor, the one who had been working on the chemicals in New York, did not have his name crossed off. For now. The Winsomes I assumed were in the portraits, though I couldn’t be sure.

There was another host of names listed under “parts.” All the names were smeared. Parts. I swallowed back bile. Perhaps whatever corpse had been built in the Denbury cellars, these were the names of the poor souls who could never find rest, not while a part of their bodies were sewn up into such unnatural horror. Wondering where that corpse was threatened to undo any false calm I managed. I was frightened it would turn up at any moment, around any corner…

Each name in the book was written in a dark red substance that was surely blood. Whose, only the devil could know. But there was an X and several blank lines...

“Go on, write yourself down, girl,” Moriel said to me with a brilliant, nauseating smile. “Just...sign on the line...” Moriel looked toward the ornate screen for the servants to stand behind. “Come here, little Barty Winsome, come when I call you,” Moriel cooed.

The little Winsome boy, who looked like such a cherubic little gentleman in his portrait, such a contrast from the hollowed, sickly child before me, shuffled out from behind the staff screen and toward me. Moriel slid his ceremonial knife down the silk runner and with a preternatural motion, Barty stopped it.

I felt rough hands that were not those of a child fumble and pull at the bindings of the hand that hadn’t been “cut.”Fingers chafing and bruising me with clumsy force, a knife sliced through the fabric around my wrists. Once my right hand was free the possessed boy seized it, brought it around over the book, and punctured my index finger with the tip. I cried out. He forced my finger onto the line of the ledger. “Sign,” the boy said in a gravelly voice that was incongruous with his body. I made a feeble, wavy line that in my mind was not putting down my name but instead a scream. In my mind I declared, with that blood: I renounce thee...

There was a slight breeze in response, ruffling the pages of the book. Moriel sneered, as if my blood were in his power. I liked to think it was the direct opposite.

Curiosity seized me, and I rifled through the book before me. The child made a move to stop me, but the Majesty clucked his tongue.

“No, no, let her look...”

The page numbers were not in order but in that reverse of the golden ratio, and each page bore names and plans, some sketches, chemistry, and theory, all madness. The Society’s disparate wings of experimentation, horrible upon horrible. A deal of it matched the wretched sprawling scrawls upon the estate floor.

“Are our plans not beautiful, little girl?” the Majesty cooed, drinking in my disgusted expression. “We will rebuild the natural world with unnatural evolution. In doing so, restore natural order, with infernal lineage.”

I stared at the ugly man in horror. All of their work was in defiance of divine patterns, of the laws of life. The Society wished to rewrite the very building blocks of all that was good and beautiful upon this earth, withering the sacred, making heaven’s natural order unnatural chaos. The theorists and doctors of the day may argue that God could come down to numbers and mathematics. If that were true, then maybe so too could hell be summed up in equations. It was a mad book of possibility, but all of it was most certainly quantifiable.

There was a rustle of noise in the hall, and a figure appeared in the doorway of the dining room. One that caused my heart to tumble deep into my chest.

Margaret Hathorn stood framed by shadow in a lovely pale blue dress the color of a bright New York sky...

A hulking, awkward, bug-eyed man loomed behind her, surely the third “Majesty.” They all looked as though they were the worst of what blue-blooded inbreeding had done to elder generations. And then there was beautiful little Maggie among us, a jewel, a wide-eyed lost lamb offsetting such ugliness.

Maggie’s gaze swept the room blankly. As if she didn’t know any of us. Her gaze lingered on Jonathon. “Hello, Lord Denbury...” she said slowly, as if she were determining something. I doubted there was anything left of her mind, by the look of her.

I managed to hold back tears. If she would not acknowledge us, I could not act like we knew her. For all the Majesties knew, we were all strangers. That might play to our advantage. A flicker of confusion passed across Brinkman’s eyes, but it was soon lost again inside the walls of his cool facade.

Jonathon only stared at Maggie and offered one of the trademark leers the demon had been so good at, and he purred: “Hello, pretty...”

I could not hold back a revolted shudder at that. At those exact words the demon had once used upon me. Jonathon had heard and seen it all from his painted prison, and for a moment I feared that whatever magic was in this house was reverting him back into what his body had become... No... I had to trust him. Even though everything felt like it was sliding against us... There were officers in these very walls... We couldn’t lose, surely...

“Majesty Vincenzi,” Moriel said, gesturing to the lumbering,  black-and-gray-haired man with sallow olive skin. “How good of you to come.” Vincenzi moved forward to kiss Moriel’s hand before pulling out a seat for Maggie, two seats away from me, each of us spaced out around the table with a chair between us.

“Before you clutter this home with more of my ilk,” Jonathon demanded with a stern tone, “answer my questions.” In the end, the demons seemed quite sure that the humans who wished to use them, in fact, answered to them. The Majesties were playing with the most terrible kind of fire, one they couldn’t safely control. “Tell me your plans going forward, so that I may approve of them or set you on a new course.”

Moriel furrowed his thick, graying brows. “Why, we play for the hearts and minds of the nations that have turned from our power. We seek to take our magic right to the core. The very crux of the matter.” Moriel smiled eerily, his milky eyes lit. “You know, Whibty, this isn’t a casual association, our being in the Denbury estate today. We’re not just here because it’s a lovely property we got hold of. One could call my being here a vendetta. Though my perspective was one of a slow-burning flame rather than a constant war. I wanted to be sure that when I went after what I’d always wanted,  it would be unquestionably mine. When you resurrect the dead, they are unquestionably yours.”

Jonathon, in playing his part, bowed his head as if he understood. But I knew this was a new and unexpected wrinkle. Something flashed in his eyes. Perhaps his father was right and there had been something to be paranoid about after all, something in the Whitby past to be concerned about. Moriel gestured Brinkman over toward Jonathon.

“Mister Bank, do take up my knife there and use it to keep an eye on Whitby. I’m interested in putting his body to the test.” Moriel’s sick little smile curved his thin lips. He gestured to Sansalme to his right, who withdrew his dagger again and held it very obviously in front of Nathaniel. Perhaps our valiant gentlemen were not trusted as Society associates after all.

“Majesty Vincenzi,” Moriel said sweetly. “Did you bring my lady along as I bid you?”

“Of course, Your Highness,” Vincenzi replied in a thickly accented voice I assumed was Italian.

“Very good.”

Moriel reached again into his pocket, and this time withdrew a small silver bell. He rang it long and hard, a sharp, high-pitched ringing that went reverberate through the house.

“We’ve still one more guest to seat,” Moriel explained grandly, winking at Jonathon. There was a tense silence. Then a thud from the foyer. And another thud. And a scrape.

Footsteps.

Inelegant, clumsy footsteps. Outside in the hall, the gas lamps that lit the corridor were dimming. One by one. Shuffle by shuffle. Lumbering footstep by lumbering step...

Whatever was coming was taking all the light with it...

“Say hello to Mummy, Johnny...”

Oh, God. Horror of horrors.

Lady Denbury.

At the threshold.

She was the body. She was the amalgam of “parts.” She was the reanimate terror. The final, desecrating insult to the Denbury legacy…

A yellowed corpse with matted, dark hair that was tousled in what had once surely been a very lovely funereal coiffure now stood as the next parading terror at the dining room door. She was swathed in black robes synched by a golden belt, the flowing fabric hiding the somewhat disjointed and uneven height of her, as her body would have been pieced together from myriad bodies. This was done so that the unnatural creation would tether as many ghosts to the reanimate body as possible, one ghost per harvested body part, harnessing the most amount of life force possible to make the corpse active.

And then the corpse opened its mouth. Everything in the air screamed in response. This was just like it had been for us in Doctor Preston’s hospital before; the unnatural tie of spirits that powered the body, the tenor of the dark magic carved into dead flesh, made the very fabric of the air shriek in a pitch specifically designed to undo the sanity of anyone within earshot. As the unseen ghosts that made the room drastically chill by their presence were worked up into spiritual frenzy in the hellish siren wail, plates and silverware lifted off the fine linen upon which they’d been laid. The poltergeist phenomena of the attendant spirits was now made active. One reanimate form created myriad paranormal problems in its wake.

Lavinia and I winced, shrinking from the noise; Nathaniel clapped hands over his ears, unprepared for this turn. Brinkman closed his eyes and remained calm.

Jonathon stared in horror at the openmouthed creature that bore some slight resemblance to his face. This time, this was not something Jonathon could endure without reaction. He stood and pounded his fists upon the marble-topped table, causing all silverware airborne by spirits’ affectation to clatter back down onto the marble. “Enough!” he shouted.

Moriel rose and went to the standing, swaying corpse, taking its yellowed hands in his. “That’s enough, dear. You heard him.” The corpse shut its mouth and turned to Jonathon expectantly. It just stood there like a terrible statue as Jonathon’s knuckles went white when he clutched the back of his chair.

“You will not dishonor the late Lady Denbury so,” Jonathon growled. “It is an insult to this house!”

“Well played, Lord Denbury III,” Moriel laughed, applauding Jonathon. “You did originally have me convinced. You’ll have to tell me how you managed to get yourself out of the painting, I simply must know!” he said eagerly. “And also, what you did, then, to one of my demons! If he is not within you, whatever happened to him? He’d have wanted a new place to stay…”

Maggie piped up with a distant, airy voice. Amid the latest horror, I’d almost forgotten about her sitting a seat away from me. “The demon left Lord Denbury because he wanted to be with me. I kept him… I loved him! He became mine!” She swiveled her head to Moriel, her eyes glassy, her lips dry and cracked. I wondered if they’d sedated her with something, or if her mind had simply gone, all the work in Chicago for nothing.

“Ah, did he then?” Moriel asked Maggie gamesomely.

“He did!” she insisted.

“Then you do have your uses, little poppet.” Moriel laughed. “Delightful, all of this! What discoveries we make! Sansalme, make a note of all this in the book!” The second-in-command pulled out a fountain pen from his pocket and loomed over me, flipping to a blank ledger page and taking notes in deep, iron-red ink…

Maggie swiveled her head back and looked directly into my eyes. Something hardened there. She pursed her lips. She knew me. A fire flickered there. What was she up to...?

Majesty Moriel looked at the dead Lady Denbury and back to Jonathon with a sick smile. “I knew resurrecting Mumsy would put you to the true test, son. I assume your friend here and your baits, then, are plants.” Moriel leered at me, then Lavinia. “But good that you brought them. They’re pretty, they’ll do.” Then he whipped his gaze back to Maggie with an altogether darker intent. “Don’t you think, Miss Hathorn? You’re very pretty, you’ve done nicely thus far, to trap a demon for your very own?”

Maggie just nodded primly and regained that airy voice that did not sound inhabited as her own. “Thank you, Your Majesty. All for the greater purpose.”

“You see,” Moriel said to all of us. “You’ll all come around to Miss Hathorn’s way of thinking. You’ll see it is the only way.” He looked over his shoulder. “Isn’t that right, Mister Brinkman?” Brinkman nodded. I gritted my teeth.

“Do secure Mister Veil there,” Moriel instructed of Brinkman before turning to Jonathon. “It was good you tied up your girls, Denbury. Less we have to do.” Brinkman pulled a leather strap from his pocket and secured Nathaniel’s hands behind his back. Nathaniel started to struggle, but Moriel whipped out a second knife from another pocket, cautioning: “Careful, Mister Veil. I spend my spare hours testing throwing knives on peasant flesh. I doubt your redhead there would look improved with a blade jutting from her gullet, now would she? Let Mister Brinkman do his work.”

As Nathaniel quieted and Brinkman obeyed, I questioned the operative’s loyalty. I felt everything begin to spin out of control. We weren’t going to make it out alive. The fear I’d kept in check threatened to undo me. I tried to hold back tears, but one escaped.

The Majesty turned to the yellowed corpse hovering beside him and instructed: “Go and tie up your son, my love. I don’t want him getting rowdy, but I’d like him to see all this. If he’s a good boy, I might even deign to adopt him as my own. He should’ve been mine all along.”

Jonathon spit at the wretched man. If looks could kill, Jonathon’s expression would have ripped the Majesty limb from limb, slowly and agonizingly.

The hideous form of what was supposed to represent Lady Denbury lurched over and bound Jonathon’s hands behind the back of the beautifully carved chair. He would not look up at the thing as it tied him. I did not blame him. I stared at Jonathon, willing him strength and if he could read minds, telling him how much I loved him. Suddenly, for him, I felt invincible, despite these harrowing turns. God had to be on our side. Heaven had to be watching and waiting for us to make our move... For no one should be meant to endure such hell.

Once finished, the effigy of Lady Denbury shuffled back to stand against the wall, leaning against the marble of the mantel, slightly in shadow, as if it needed the corner to prop itself up. Its milky, cataract eyes were unfocused as it stood awaiting its next orders and purpose.

I wanted to look at Brinkman, to demand, with one glance alone, why he wasn’t saying or doing anything. Surely, this was all punishable to the death. The Majesties had damned themselves enough, hadn’t they? But no, our rule still stood. We hadn’t yet done the countercurse and that had to be done to restore the Winsome souls to their bodies, lest that hapless family be caught up in collateral damage. We had to limit the circumference of this ever-expanding circle of woe.

“Now, dinner! Sit and watch your betters eat,” Moriel said to the gathered company gleefully. “That’s how it should be. How it should always have been. Always should be!”

The family came in to serve the three Majesties dinner, moving in a daze, their possessed bodies less animate and more unwieldy than when the demon had overtaken Jonathon. Aprons were slung over their fine clothes that had begun to tear and fray. I found I couldn’t look at the two children. It was too painful. But I couldn’t look at the representation of Lady Denbury, either; she was too horrid. So I stared at my empty plate and prayed for our lives. I struggled to keep focused and not give over to panic and futility.

Food was laid before us. Not that I had any appetite. Not that we were free to eat. The laying out of food seemed symbolic, a representative trapping. The Majesties didn’t eat, either; they merely drank a dark wine—if even wine at all, something thick and pitch black like tar—in crystal goblets. I didn’t want to know what it was. It seemed too viscous and dark to be blood. It left a black stain upon their yellowing teeth. I imagined all this lavish food going uneaten spoke to the Majesty’s desire for wastefulness, greed, for lavish loss at the expense of others. I could see them just leaving this whole table to rot. But not while I had breath in my lungs would I be that passive.

I had been given a second chance at my voice. I was not about to lose that power now.

Bound or no, we all still had our voices. Leveling the countercurse would set things in motion as planned. We couldn’t have figured the equation changing so horridly with the corpse of Lady Denbury, but we couldn’t let that derail us. It was up to the rest of us to stay strong when Jonathon was doing everything in his power to maintain his sanity. He couldn’t look at the creature, either. I didn’t blame him. He’d never properly mourned. I longed for the moment he could and put all these nightmares at last to bed, with my help.

“The lintel, please, Vincenzi,” Moriel said, some of the dark substance dribbling down the side of his paunchy face.

Vincenzi leaned over toward Maggie, and I saw the flash of a silver knife and blood spurted onto the marble table as Maggie shrieked, her finger dripping scarlet in the instant. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it into the goblet before him. “You could have warned me,” she pouted to the large man. He sneered at her. She didn’t fight him as he clamped her hand tighter, swirling the blood in the glass. I had to remind myself she had somehow come here of her own volition.

The third Majesty rose with the last offering. With the bloody-tipped knife, he carved a horizontal line meeting the two vertical lines in a tall rectangle. He poured the contents of the glass across the line, scarlet blood dripping down the fine wallpaper in dark, garish streaks. I felt the ground tremble a bit. Vincenzi was murmuring to the wall like his counterpart had done. As I blinked my eyes, it seemed the wall itself rippled. Moriel and Sansalme took up murmuring too. Numbers, in a sequence. It was what Crenfall had been murmuring in his madhouse cell. The golden ratio, but the divine pattern uttered in reverse. It was writ on the floor in tar and blood and now murmured actively on their lips.

The first course was being cleared around us. Soon the possessed bodies of the wretched Winsome family would either be downstairs or hidden again. I tried to catch Jonathon’s eye. We couldn’t delay. We needed to level the countercurse now, while all four of them were in the room. Even though Jonathon hadn’t managed to lure out the Society plan for the recorder in the wings as Brinkman had demanded, if what that carving of the wall meant what I thought it might, we couldn’t afford a portal... Whatever was being called or loosed in this room... The police couldn’t arrest that... A mouth to hell…

But I couldn’t do the countercurse on my own, not with four souls and bodies to reunite. We all needed to do our part and all in one concerted effort. I kept trying to get Jonathon to look at me, but he was transfixed at what was becoming manifest behind Moriel.

A dark rectangular shadow opened up, like a door swinging open. Where there was a wall, there was now a corridor. Inside, just like the girding behind the walls of a home, was the framework between life and death. It was an awesome and terrible sight that was impossible to truly comprehend, even when staring into its abyss.

I recognized this from one of my dreams, a corridor between life and death, between forces for light and those for the dark. Wavering threads hovered inside, weaving and moving like a busy New York street. The fabric of the very universe was laid bare before us, something we shouldn’t be privy to, but as the Society was tampering with the very tapestry of the world and tearing at its threads, sticking wrenches into gears, the divine skeleton was visible beneath the flesh.

Five black, vaguely human forms peeled out from the ether and into our world, crossing the threshold with horrible murmurs rising in the air like the cresting of a storm. They were like shadows without bodies, and they whipped about the dining room like careening ghosts.

They were visible, black holes, obliterating chandelier light, firelight, and candlelight as they passed by it. Fomented misery, they made the air not only frigid, but bitter and malevolent. The taste of unadulterated evil. As Moriel laughed the forms flew faster, dizzying in their movement. These were what possessed bodies. These were the host demons. The sweat of panic dripped down my temples.

The corpse of Lady Denbury began to groan again; at any moment I expected another full-fledged wail. The silverware rattled and lifted, hovering a few inches above the table once more. I wished I could, through force of will, like I had seen spirits do once before, shift all the knives and forks and any pointed object. I wished I could drive everything straight into Moriel’s chest.

“Come, come,” Moriel cried to the shadowy forms. “I am here to give you life. Soon we’ll outnumber our enemies. Life by life, blood by blood. Come! Take...”

“Yes, come!” Maggie cried suddenly, pushing back her chair, rising to her feet. “Come unto me, demons! Fill me! All of you!” Maggie cried. “I want you...”

The shadows pacing the room suddenly turned as if dogs catching a scent.

“No...” I murmured, wresting in my chair. My words fumbled in my throat, my old disability threatening to halt my words as anxiety tended to do. “No...don’t…do that...”

“I want you,” Maggie continued. There was a horrific and unnatural shudder of her body as the shadows all pounced at once, disappearing into her. The Majesties gazed on with a sick, eroticized hunger.

“I want you”—a sudden, fierce fire leaped into her eyes as she retaliated with a scream—”to go to hell!”

From the pocket of the prim pinafore she’d worn, she withdrew a glass bottle with an ornate cross upon it, clear liquid inside.

I realized dimly she was not cursing us to hell. She meant the demons. The demons that had overtaken her. Or, maybe…that she had just entrapped…

Seizing the bottle of what I realized must be holy water—why else would there be the cross upon it?—she drank it down swiftly, emptying the whole bottle, choking but drinking still. Her face contorted in agony. She crumpled forward in a jerking movement. A wretched gurgle sounded in her throat.

“No!” Majesty Moriel cried, his look of ecstasy suddenly turning to rage. “Traitorous little bitch, what do you think you—”

Brinkman suddenly punched Moriel in the face, and he slumped face first into a bowl of pudding. As the other Majesties on either side rose to fight, Brinkman whipped two pistols from his pocket, one trained on either of the Majesties. My heart buoyed. The man was our side after all. Thank God. He waited long enough to prove it. No. Brinkman was smart, the souls weren’t yet back in the painting, and him playing their side had bought him more leverage, to be standing so close to the wretches, able to escape being bound like the rest of us.

Just as I swelled with hope, Maggie started screaming.

There was smoke curling up in wisps from her bodice. Something had ignited upon her, perhaps within her... I struggled with my bindings, lifting the chair up behind me, managing a heavy step nearer to Maggie, but she shoved my shoulder with preternatural strength and I nearly hit my head on one of the table’s sturdy candelabrum, a wisp of my hair catching in a candle flame.

It was a cross that burst into fire right at her sternum. A large crucifix had been hidden beneath her bodice, and it burned free of the layers, a solid metal pendant the size of my palm. As the cross ignited and sizzled her flesh so did it seem the demons burned within her, broiling from the holy water.

Jonathon jumped to his feet in the chaos. He hadn’t been tied to the chair, only bound with wrists behind his back. He turned his back to the table and lifted his wrists over the candles on his side of the table, burning his hands and his cuffs. I could smell these terrible separate stenches of burning flesh and fabric. But in doing so, he burned his bindings too. Brave man, he suffered melting flesh on the side of his palm but snapped his wrists free. He too bounded toward Maggie, but she tossed him off as if he were a rag doll and his body came perilously close to the still-open portal where forces hung suspended in this precarious battleground.

Jonathon reeled to regain his balance and rushed back over to me. As the side of his palm wept blood and peeling skin, he undid my bindings.

It was not only Maggie’s scream that filled the room but a magnified and horrible sound, many screams, burning from the inside out as the blessed liquid doused the demons within. Demons who were surely killing her from inside, as blood began pouring from her ears, dribbling from her lips, tears of blood rolling down her cheeks.

Her still-standing body went rigid, shuddering and shaking, the blood pouring faster. It was the most horrible sight I could have imagined. This was after having witnessed the sallow flesh of the dead come to life. But to see the living tortured so...

“Maggie!” I screamed amid the screams. She staggered to the side, to me, into my arms, and I sunk with her to the floor. I held her tight. And because I spoke now for someone else’s life, somehow my disability was no match for this fight. My tongue and speech were free.

“Maggie, listen, say with me, say to the devils,” I cried in a choking, desperate gasp, tears streaming from my eyes as the blood wept from hers. “I renounce thee... I renounce thee...” Her body shuddered and shook, her blood seeped all over my skirts and sleeves.

Margaret Hathorn looked up at me and smiled weakly, causing another river of blood to pour forth from her lips, and there was an aura of great white light about her, an angelic halo that took my breath away with heavenly beauty. She seemed as though she wanted to say something.

But then she died in my arms.

I screamed a wailing sob. I closed her eyelids immediately. Her dead, open stare would undo my mind. I held her close, her body and blood still warm.

But there was no time to mourn. For then, another cascade of events happened all at once. It was everything I could do to keep up.

The other two Majesties started up with the counting and the chanting again, which made the demonic threshold active, rippling open once more, but their incantation was stopped by Brinkman cocking the pistols. Nathaniel had managed somehow to wrestle one of the throwing knifes into his palm and was cutting loose his bindings and Lavinia’s in turn.

Jonathon picked up a pitcher of water and threw them at the portal, directly toward the lintel and sides, trying to wash away the blood and ash that had activated it. Nathaniel did the same with a second pitcher. Lavinia took up a tureen of soup and poured it over the floor, falling to her knees and scrubbing free all the terrible things that had made this room such a magnet for the demons. All this action against the portal caused the rectangle to flicker. The heavy dread of the room lifted slightly. A scale sliding more toward our victory.

But the corpse of Jonathon’s mother started screaming again. Items lifted off the table again and all of us winced, clapping our hands to our ears. I lunged for the terrible ledger book of the Master’s Society, searching for clues in its terrible pages. We had to calm the spirits tied to the effigy of Lady Denbury. The names of the “parts” had to be addressed and sent to rest.

I dimly heard running footsteps in the hall coming closer. Was it the police officers at last? But Brinkman hadn’t blown the whistle… Who else…

Yet more familiar faces ran into the room, one dark and one fair, both looking alarmed. Reverend Blessing and Mrs. Northe! Blessing dressed in his clerical suit and collar, Evelyn Northe in an elegant but unadorned riding habit.

Exactly where they’d come from, I couldn’t know. They likely had traveled as soon as they could. Mrs. Northe wielded a pistol, the reverend, a cross. My heart soared, but as Brinkman trained a gun toward them, Jonathon, Lavinia, and I all lurched forward and shouted some variant of:

“No, they’re on our side!”

Moriel, who had roused again from the punch, was aghast at the sight of the reverend’s dark skin, for he snorted: “Oh, and you dare bring a blackamoor into my sight to soil the very air around us? Your species really is—”

Another punch from Brinkman sent Moriel back into the pudding again, causing Blessing almost to smile, but his gaze was soon focused directly on the more pressing matter of the reanimate corpse, and he moved near it, knowing exactly what to do as he had done in Doctor Preston’s hospital wing. Mrs. Northe took a moment to consider the wavering, open portal but swept the room to meet our gazes first.

“My friends,” Mrs. Northe cried. “Are you all—” That’s when she saw that Maggie was in my arms. Alongside the siren-like wail of the reanimate body, she shrieked, falling to her knees at my side. I stared at her helplessly.

“She took them into her,” I cried. “Demons. From the portal. Five of them. We couldn’t stop her, we didn’t know—”

“It should have been me,” Mrs. Northe insisted, tears splashing onto Maggie’s scorched bodice. “It should always have been me, bearing the brunt, my poor girl, no, it should have been me—”

“Right before Maggie acted,” I explained, “she looked at me, with stern resolution, as if this was the only thing she could do.” I spoke as if somehow an explanation could ease the pain. It didn’t.

In the background I heard Blessing begin an exorcism rite to untie and set to rest the collective of unseen spirits that by our experience we knew were attached to the embodiment of Lady Denbury. The other two Majesties were laughing and taunting the black man, calling him derogatory names, the Society clearly based on the falsehood of racial superiority along specific bloodlines.

But Blessing was unruffled by the racist slurs. He remained focused on spiritual matters at hand. The Denbury body was one thing, but the retinue of spirits, they were further unwanted company. We could all feel the chill the ghosts carried in their wake.

“Reverend Blessing, the names of the dead are writ here,” I declared, sliding the ledger book across the dining room table toward him, fighting to be heard against the din of spiritual unrest.

He nodded and began addressing the spirits the Society used in their methods to power reanimate bodies. He called them by the names listed in the book. He bid them leave the dead flesh and promised that their remains would be put in sacred ground. The poltergeist effects the spirits were wreaking in the room began to settle a bit. Mrs. Northe echoed all of Blessings words, acting as his assisting minister in the exorcism rite, though she reiterated and enforced his scripture while still rooted to the ground near Maggie’s cooling body.

The two conscious Majesties started up with insidious chanting again, in a tongue indiscernible to me, and as they did, the open portal wavered, dark shadows drew closer to the threshold, as if another wave of monsters were about to seep over. Brinkman nodded at Nathaniel and spat in one of the Majesty’s faces. Sansalme just sneered up at him. Nathaniel moved to gag both the men on either side of the still unconscious Moriel.

“This is just the beginning,” Sansalme said in a slight accent I thought might be French. “You’ve really no idea.” He dabbed Brinkman’s spit out of his eye with a silk handkerchief.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll be telling us all about it in a court of law,” Brinkman growled.

“No…” Sansalme replied, seemingly unconcerned. This terrified me as much as the portal. What could threaten these wretches? I shook myself away from staring at them in disgust.

“We need to get the ‘help,’ the family, together,” I cried to Jonathon, to Mrs. Northe, to Nathaniel and Lavinia, who were still trying to repair and erase the various dark magic effects upon the room. “That’s the cue for the arrests!”

We had to settle the room, lest the police turn against the unwitting victims, as the officers could hardly be sure who or what was doing the damage. This was the type of horrific chaos the Society wished to wreak, where no one could effect change and keep faith, where no one knew who was friend or foe. Where everyone turned against one another. But the Society couldn’t know what a wonderful team we had among us.

I stared down at Maggie’s corpse. My despair would not help the dead woman in my arms who had been so brave. It was my turn to show that kind of strength and willingness of sacrifice. I had the knowledge to wield a countercurse, and I needed to wield it now. I shifted Maggie off my lap, and Mrs. Northe took her into her arms instead. Her blood had soaked through my dress, was all over my hands. I couldn’t worry about that.

I darted to the elaborate screen that traditionally hid the staff during the meal and closed off the door that led to the kitchen stairs. And there the family stood, dazed, just behind the wooden panels. Glassy eyed, they stood slightly swaying, waiting to be summoned. The sight of all four of them triggered my immediate shout as I dragged the children forward first. As soon as I moved, Jonathon was with me in the instant, following with the wife and Nathaniel with the husband.

“Ego transporto animus ren per ianua, Beelzebub the Devil!” I cried, and Jonathon echoed me.

The adults struggled against us, the demons within sensing that we were at war. Jonathon dodged a punch; I nearly had my hands bitten by the red-eyed children. Lavinia, Blessing, and Mrs. Northe all rushed to lend hands while still spouting scripture. The forces which sought to harm us recoiled. Together we took up the same shout, shoving the disoriented, confused bodies toward their respective paintings.

We said the countercurse again and again: ‘”sending the soul through the door…” This had been Jonathon and my puzzle to sort through together when we met. The words were roughly translated from Latin, but with an Egyptian word for “soul-door” put in for an extra complication, as the portrait frames were literally a door for the soul to be deposited into. It had been a hard-fought mystery to solve but the countercurse had worked for restoring Jonathon.

Jonathon, Nathaniel, and Lavinia, all of us took up the countercurse together, utilizing variants on the Devil, Satan, the damned, any possible name for what was supposed to be the penultimate of evil, the prince of darkness itself. We tried to encompass all that these foul energies wished to be, and in doing so, trap them by the title they aspired to. The power of the name, we’d learned, was one of the eldest powers of all, and it was one the Society seemed to take very seriously. We had our faith. They had theirs. And now we had to play ours against theirs with everything we had.

Mrs. Northe, seeing that we had the family well in hand, turned her attention to the wavering wall portal, staring at it with concern. She began murmuring another iteration of numbers, but this time, from what I could guess, it was a sequence in the proper golden ratio, as high as she could think of and starting back again at a low number. Reclaiming the divine patterns, wresting a semblance of peace from the grip of malevolence. The edges of the carved wall, now cleansed of the blood tokens, flickered back into becoming a wall once more.

I stayed focused on the shifting paintings and the struggling possessed bodies, though I wanted to see the look of surprise on the faces of the two conscious leaders. None of them could have possibly known we could directly reverse one of their most consistent magics. I deserved a self-congratulatory moment of pride, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off my targets.

Nathaniel rose to grab the little girl, even as a shot rang out. There was a scream and a clatter of a gun. One of the Majesties was clutching a bleeding forearm, blood all over the white tablecloth. It would seem Vincenzi had tried to fire a weapon, trying to take advantage of the chaos of wind, still-hovering objects, and the maddening whispers that summoning demons produced in the air, but Brinkman got to him before he could fire, a wisp of smoke floating up from Brinkman’s own pistol.

Vincenzi was too late. The countercurse worked its magic.

There was a crackle of fire, and a fresh new screaming in the air added to the ongoing wail of Lady Denbury’s ghostly retinue. In a huge, roaring pop, the paintings all came off their hinges and slid to the floor, leaving tracks of greasy, bloody paint along the wall as they descended; the canvasses were wet with indeterminate moisture. Trapped now in the frames leaning at odd angles against the wall were horrid forms, twisted and nearly gargoyle-like. Indistinct, demonic heads topped the fine clothes that were warped and dripping. Only the most ugly ephemera remained; an evil imprint, oily and greasy, a sheen of bloody perspiration bubbled up on sulfuric canvases.

So too did the bodies fall, slumping to the floor as if marionette strings had been cut. We knelt with the families as they began to rouse, terrified, but as Jonathon did, having some sense.

Brinkman took one look at the horrid exhibition against the wall and blew his whistle loud and several times, until the room crawled with officers. He instructed them to get the Winsome family to safety and explained in no uncertain terms who was friend and who was foe. The family was all too happy to exit the premises. The little girl threw her arms around me. The husband scooped up his son in his arms and seemed too ashamed to look at any of us who had helped him. The mother collected her daughter and murmured to me as an officer ushered her out: “I don’t understand, but thank you…”

Above the din of the police, Reverend Blessing continued the exorcism rite, and this seemed to give comfort to the pallid officers, coming into the scene with no idea what to expect, but seemingly glad for some kind of spiritual offset. If the officers were uncomfortable taking blessings from a man of color, they didn’t show it. I think they knew, seeing this scene, what was right to fear and who was a mere brother in humankind.

Blessing clutched the Society’s insidious ‘”book of death,’” and between scriptural declamations he continued to read off names within, bidding that the souls mauled by the claws of the Society find their deserved rest.

“Spirits who weep here, heed me,” Blessing bellowed into the foul air, his deep, rich voice captivating and compelling. “These men seek to gain power through methods of torturous unrest. Be their downfall by granting your own souls the peace God wants for you.”

There was still a wavering line where the portal had gaped wide. Mrs. Northe was facing it, her arms out, her body fierce and taut, proclaiming scripture at the portal to try to shut it at last. Wrestling against the closing of the door, a black form darted out from the portal and careened into the hall. A demon on the loose.

“No!” Jonathon cried and ran after the wretched thing in the instant.

“No!” I cried and ran after him. I didn’t think twice any more than he did. I just pursued.

Dimly, I realized the force was headed for the study, snuffing the lights out down the hall as it passed. Light by light, the vile force plunged our surroundings into darkness. We pursued it into the study where one gas-lamp chandelier remained dimly lit, casting the room into an eerie glow.

But the moment we both crossed the threshold, the door slammed shut behind us of its own accord and the gas lamp guttered into a pale, sickly blue pilot. Now it was just us in the dark. And a raw, untethered demon.

Jonathon went to the desk and turned a lamp, which illuminated for us that the black form stood in front of the window where beyond, the night was cool and dark, but the demon was blacker than the black night, its form not richly beautiful in night shadow, but empty and void of all life.

Jonathon and I stared at one another helplessly, and in the instant we both started crying scripture at its chasm-like form. Jonathon threw himself in front of me as the form floated closer. I struggled to put myself in front of him instead, but he kept me behind him. If such a thing inhabited Jonathon again, my mind would crack under the strain.

I withdrew the sharp scissor point from my bodice. But what a blade would do against an incorporeal force was laughable.

A wave of anger and despair washed over me, perhaps the effect the presence had upon us. Suddenly I wanted to shove Jonathon away from me. To be anywhere but near him. Ugly sounds gurgled in both of our throats. Snarling, animalistic noises. It would turn us against each other. In a locked room. While chaos still reigned in the rest of the house.

Down the hall I could hear that the wailing had resumed. This time, it had more voices.

The siren that was dead Lady Denbury had all the officers screaming too. It was, in the end, too much for us.

The spirits animating the corpse, the open portal, the lingering dark magic, all the amassed horrors the Society had brought upon this house, down into the floorboards and mortar, it was in the end too much for a few stalwart souls to close up and shut down. We needed an army of those as experienced as Blessing and Mrs. Northe. The rest of us were too beaten down, our reserves tapped by so many facets of this unexpected war. We’d fought a good fight. But now…

Our shoulders sagged as Jonathon and I both choked and shook. We were paralyzed by the dread and horror that was the core of the demonic presence. I felt a hand clamp around my neck. It wasn’t Jonathon’s. It was my own, the terrible force eating us inward, turning our own tired selves against us. We sunk to our knees, both of us gasping and snarling. I tried to rally, to reject the presence. A choking “I renounce thee...” afforded me one deep breath before the suffocating darkness threatened to overwhelm me once more.

I clutched the small scissors in my hand. Whispers careened around my ears. They urged me to drive the blade into my own flesh. To just give up. To let them in. To give them room. The point of the very sharp scissor point pierced my wrist, by my own doing. A drop of blood welled up. I remembered the runes that the magic had carved into my flesh, and I found myself making a line up my wrist, searing, burning pain sharpening every sensation.

“Natalie,” Jonathon choked. A tendril of black shadow sweeping out from the demon’s wake was wound around his neck, manifest evil taking shape and wielding violence.

I stared at the line of blood seeping from my wrist, my heart racing from the burning pain of it. I couldn’t give up like this. This incorporeal beast before me was just that: incorporeal. It needed to be shot down with a bullet of light, faith, hope, and determination.

I pulled upon everything that had brought me to this point in one final shrugging off. I thought of all the sacrifices, Maggie’s lovely, bloodstained face flashing before my eyes as if I were praying to a saint. She was a saint here today, and I was stronger than this. If she could take in five of the beasts, I could take on one. The worst wretches of the corporeal and incorporeal world always underestimated determined young women.

I remembered the cross that burned upon her, and with one even slice of the open scissor blade, I intersected the bleeding line up my wrist with another one, to make a cross. I lifted up my wrist, blood pooling in the lace at my cuffs. “I renounce thee!” I cried as the black silhouette of the demon advanced upon me, hovering.

I flung myself back, giving myself space from the beast as I plucked the cross I wore beneath my layers out into the open. It was a small, elegant cross my mother had given me after I’d gone through my confirmation classes at Immanuel Lutheran. I thought of Mother, of Father, of the beautiful fiancé before me, and suddenly I felt like Joan of Arc must have felt before going off to war, surrounded by saints.

But like Joan, I needed more armor. I looked around wildly for something else. I picked up the inkwell on Jonathon’s desk, and I plunged my finger into it, making the sign of the cross upon my forehead as if it were Ash Wednesday. From dust we were made and unto dust we would return. But not today.

“I renounce thee!” I shrieked again. Jonathon was trying to close the distance between us, and I fell to my knees before him, using the inkwell to paint a messy cross over his brow. “We renounce thee!” Our rejection caused a tremor in the room. Books rattled on their shelves. The expensive trinkets from around the world shuddered on the marble fireplace mantel. The window panes shivered.

Jonathon shook his head, as if tossing off a terrible dream. He narrowed his eyes at the hesitating, pulsing dark form. “Upon the graves of our beloved mothers,” Jonathon bellowed, “we renounce thee!”

A sudden burst of light had us blinking and wincing, and suddenly between us and the horrid, silhouetted form of congealed evil, floated the bright white forms of two beautiful women. Angels called down to the fight. I recognized one of the angels as my own. And the second one looked a great deal more like Jonathon than that thing wailing down the hall did.

“You leave our children alone,” the spirit of my mother said to the vacuous silhouette in a venomous tone. “This is the end. Your kind has failed. You cannot win against such wondrous love as this.” She turned her beaming, beautiful face upon us, and tears of amazement rolled down my cheeks.

“Did you hear that?” said the second spirit, a beautiful woman in a lavish gown, in a vicious hiss In the name of God the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Ghost. In the name of all the saints, the host of angels, and everything that is holy, get out of my house!” shrieked the spirit of Lady Denbury.

Lady Denbury was not tied to that body in the dining room at all but instead tied to her beloved son. Her spirit was resilient and made new again in the fight. The bright, transparent form of Lady Denbury lifted an elegant hand into the air and sharply backhanded the inelegant, tar-black form before her, and it splintered into a spattering mess, wet ashes upon the fine rug, nothing but ugly residue.

Jonathon seized me and stepped back so that none of the demonic muck could land upon me, all the while staring up at the ghost of the mother he’d never had time to grieve. The two ghostly women looked down at their embracing children.

“Don’t go, Mother,” Jonathon gasped, his tears flowing as freely as mine. “I never got to say good-bye, I—”

“I love you too, my darling, perfect boy,” Lady Denbury said with a dazzling smile. “And you needn’t say good-bye. I’ll always be with you.”

“I am so sorry, Mum,” Jonathon said in gasping breaths. “I should’ve done more, I should’ve saved you—” He tried to reach out and touch her, hold her.

“You’ve done everything you can,” Lady Denbury replied. “Look at all you’ve done. You’ve done more than you even know, my darling. I am so proud of you.”

“Both of you,” my mother added. “Don’t they make a perfect couple, Lady Denbury?”

“Indeed. She’s Lady Denbury now.” Jonathon’s mother smiled at me. “And I couldn’t rest happier.”

“Be well, darlings,” my mother said as she and her friend in heaven began to fade. “We’re never far, we live within you, and in any darknesses, we are with you. Never forget. Live in the light.”

“I love you,” both Jonathon and I blurted to our mothers simultaneously before they faded entirely. We swayed on our feet, breathing heavily. The study door swung open again of its own accord. There was no more screaming anywhere. Just the murmur of activity. Of cleanup. Of a battlefield victorious.

Somewhere I could hear Moriel raving as he was being led away, leveling threats and decrying the undeserving underclass. There was another loud smacking thud, and I suspected Brinkman had knocked him out again. It was admirable Brinkman hadn’t killed Moriel, really. I’m sure the government would have given him leave to do so; however, whatever secret Moriel held had something to do with someone Brinkman loved. Human beings could do amazing, nearly inhuman things for love. This was something the Society seemed keen on subverting though they seemed unable to understand it. It was not something they could overpower. That was their ultimate hubris.

I heard Mrs. Northe calling for us.

“In here,” I called into the hall with the last of my energy, allowing Jonathon to gather me up into his arms, sinking with me again onto the floor, our backs against his beautiful bookcase.

We were bloody and drenched in sweat, ink, and water, our clothes torn and besmirched. Bruised, battered, alive. Grieving. Joyous. Relieved. Exhausted. Alive. Jonathon tore his black silk cravat and made a bandage for my wrist.

Suddenly there were shouts and screams once more. Did I rejoice too soon? I smelled smoke. And burning flesh.

The dining room was on fire.

Brinkman popped a sweaty, smeared face into the study, standing wide-eyed at the threshold. “The corpse. The corpse of Lady Denbury… It...”

“Went up in flames,” I finished. “The spirits will have their revenge. Let them combust the body. It’s part of resolution…”

“My men are instituting a bucket brigade from your rear well, Lord Denbury,” Brinkman said. “We’ll do what we can to save the building. You’ve a haven at a safe distance, yes? We should evacuate you and your friends from the estate at last.”

Jonathon nodded. “Up the earthen corridor behind the library. A cottage.”

“Go on then, quickly.” Brinkman shooed all of us into the hall and toward the library. I saw my four friends going on ahead, with Reverend Blessing carrying Maggie’s corpse in his strong arms. The sight made tears spring forth again. Nathaniel and Lavinia directed them toward the library, and they disappeared into the next rooms.

“Do hurry,” Brinkman insisted. “After all we’ve been through, I’d hate for a lowly fire to take you down. I’ll join you once I see to it the men are at work with the well.”

“Thank you, Mister Brinkman, for everything,” Jonathon called. Brinkman batted a hand in the air and ran off.

Jonathon Whitby, Lord Denbury, III, paused in the middle of his corridor, watching flames licking out into the hall from Rosecrest’s lovely dining room. Jonathon stared at the flames of destruction. “Sometimes,” he murmured in a haunted, sad voice that was elder than his years, “some things are best left to burn.”

He grabbed me by the arm, and we darted toward safety.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

Jonathon and I jogged up the earthen corridor, coughing. The increasing smoke would present a problem indeed if we didn’t keep moving.

My whole body ached as we finally climbed the stairs into the cottage. The rest of our compatriots had all found places to collapse ahead of us, draped on the edges of the bed or leaning bent against fine furniture that our sooty, bloody, bedraggled forms looked so at odds with.

Someone had opened the front door to the night, to the forest. Everything outside was still, save for the night sounds of insects and birds. So quiet. Peaceful. We did not turn on more than the one lamp at the entrance. We did not want to see the sharp details of what the night had done to any of us. What it had taken from us.

Jonathon brought a wet towel moistened from an outside water basin over to me and washed the inked cross from my forehead and then his own.

Reverend Blessing had laid out Maggie’s body upon the bay window where the moonlight upon her face made her lovely face even lovelier and turned the garish pools of blood all over her dress into grayscale. Mrs. Northe had Maggie’s head in her lap, at work in the moonlight, removing the blood from her face, neck, arms, and hands with silken kerchiefs.

I knelt upon the divan, and Jonathon drew close. As he sat I collapsed onto his lap, resting my head in his gentle hands that were shaking so hard. But he stroked my hair anyway. Wherever we landed, we wept. Silently. For a long time.

Finally, Mrs. Northe stirred, gesturing Reverend Blessing over to her side. “Reverend, I’d like to pray with you here, over my niece, if you would be so kind.” I’d never heard her speech so gentle, so tired, so grieved.

I rose and moved with him; kneeling before the bay window bier, we prayed over her, said thanks for her, her bravery, and sacrifice. We asked for forgiveness of all of our sins that led to her death, Mrs. Northe having a most difficult time with the guilt of it.

I simply took Evelyn’s hand, and she held it. I was well aware it could have easily been me upon those cushions with hands folded over my still breast. I might have done the same, trying to buy us time, but I’d never have thought to do what she did, not so boldly. With great sadness I realized she probably hadn’t gotten my letter. I was a fool not to have sent it sooner.

Death brings such guilt to the living, illuminating all the things undone and unsaid. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve such a death. And yet we didn’t deserve such a sacrifice. But if she hadn’t done what she did, likely casualties would have been higher. She may have had no choice.

I wondered what had happened in Chicago right before she left. I wondered if she had dreams like I did. She’d shared with me, once, that the demon had visited her dreams. What if she knew it was all as inevitable as I had known? Somehow that gave me comfort, as her actions seemed far too calculated to have been inspiration in the moment.

Mrs. Northe had promised there would be death. But even the most clairvoyant, if too close to the truth, couldn’t see it. Not precisely.

“I should have known, I should have seen. It should have been me.” Those words she kept repeating numbly in different variations. I shook my head at her.

“That does no good, Evelyn,” Blessing murmured. “Accept the facts as they lie. As you live, give thanks for her life. Pray for her undying soul, that will be rewarded in heaven for such selfless acts.”

Mrs. Northe nodded and just kept stroking Maggie’s hair. That was a comfort, the idea of her reward. I hoped in heaven, for Maggie, there would be lots of balls and pretty dresses and exquisite company, that she’d have no need for gossip or intrigue, merely be loved and cherished by heavenly hosts until I’d see her again in some future day and thank her soul myself. I moved back to rest in Jonathon’s arms.

After some time, Brinkman banged upon the iron door from the other side, making us all jump. He called out to us to let him in.

“Most of the wing was saved,” Brinkman said as he entered, mopping a sweaty brow. “Thank goodness for stone frames between wings. But you’ll need a new dining room, Lord Denbury. I’m off to Scotland Yard, friends,” Brinkman said, crossing the cottage in a few stern strides. “I’ll fill out the reports and keep your further involvement to a minimum. I’ll push for an immediate trial.”

“Shouldn’t you rest, Mister Brinkman?” I asked.

“Not until I have my satisfaction,” he said gravely. “Those wicked bastards have my son. My child. My only joy in this goddamn world. I’d rip out all their throats with my bare hands if I thought I could still find him without their knowledge.”

There was a terrible silence in the room at this still unfinished business.

“Let us know how we can help,” Mrs. Northe said gently.

“Thank you,” Brinkman said, burying his pain. He glanced at Maggie’s body. “I take it you knew her. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“We’ll be praying for your son,” I offered. Brinkman managed a slight smile.

“Thank you. Ladies, you were very brave. I doubt the men hidden in those walls waiting for the signal could’ve done all you did. If it were up to me, I’d have the queen award you a medal, but I doubt we’ll be allowed to talk much about this, if any of it, ever again,” he said with bitterness. “I’ll follow up with Knowles about the properties to make sure any lands and assets seized by the Society are returned to proper owners. This is your estate. You’ve a grateful family who have been ferried off to the station that would like to return Rosecrest to you.”

Jonathon nodded. Brinkman bowed slightly and stormed off. I heard a cry urging on a fast horse. Hoofbeats pounded off and faded into silence. For poor Brinkman, this was just one ongoing nightmare. Suddenly I felt very lucky. I had my joy in this room with me. Maggie’s body notwithstanding.

I glanced from Mrs. Northe to Jonathon, to the tall form across the room of Reverend Blessing, dark skin gleaming in the moonlight as he remained in prayerful watch over Maggie’s eternal rest, to the brave entwined couple of Nathaniel and Lavinia who had risen to the ultimate challenge. Lavinia was already fast asleep on Nathaniel’s shoulder.

I had everyone I needed right here, except Father. Mother lived on in my heart, having always shown herself when I needed her most. Love was like that, taking the form of angels when faced with devils.

As the cottage had neither amenities nor staff, it was not a place we could weather the night. The appetite we’d all lost during the battle returned with painful awareness. But we couldn’t be seen like we were. Nathaniel gently roused Lavinia, and we each did as best we could to put ourselves together. We hid our bloodstained clothes under cloaks and rode into Greenwich proper in Nathaniel’s fine carriage. All of us were able to fit as Lavinia chose to ride up above with Nathaniel driving. At the back of the carriage, laid out upon clean boards and swathed in thick layers of black fabric, Margaret Hathorn’s corpse made the journey back with us.

We went to the nearest inn, a modest establishment, and took over a shadowed corner of the public rooms and ate everything they could lay out for us. Something about the looks on our faces did not invite any comment. It was late, after all. And we were a bedraggled, strange set of compatriots that thankfully no one took exception to. Surely we looked as haunted and as at the precipice of death as we felt.

The gentlemen took turns driving back to London, all of us dozing in and out. That night, in Jonathon’s flat, the whole motley crew remained gathered. None of us could bear to be alone or separated because our collective trauma made us stronger.

I cried myself nearly sick. Nothing else would do. The anguish I felt was only matched by a wave of hatred for myself, guilt threatening to drag me under into a mental state that I wondered if I could recover from after the progressive stages of grief. I’d been stronger when I had been trying to soothe Mrs. Northe. Now that reality was truly setting in, I was coming undone.

Someone dying in your arms is something no one can prepare you for.

It is the most terrible thing in the world.

It is the most incredible thing in the world.

Because never are you so aware of your own fragility, of that precarious moment between life and death. One moment here. The next, gone. A fleeting, breathless moment gives over to no breath ever again.

It was eerie, it didn’t feel real, it felt like a thousand knives in my heart and in my eyes, replaying her final moment. Her fine, amazing, brave, incredible final moments. Here I thought I was brave and she was weak. I was a fool, and she was a savior.

I threw up everything that was in my stomach and cried every tear that could be cried and still they came. Jonathon  just continued to bring me water and hold me tighter. But he couldn’t hold this away. Sometimes we cried together, for my tears granted permission for his.

Seeing his reanimate mother had to have been one of the worst possible sights a person could ever see. The fact he retained his sanity was a miracle. I was grateful I’d encountered my dead mother again as a ghost, a beautiful spirit helping me from the beyond. Poor Jonathon had been first confronted with his mother’s desecration, and I would do anything to have taken that sight away. At least her spirit had won out and helped us, managing to redeem that dreadful blasphemy into a transcendent truth.

Our pain was so severe and so specific, we just held on to each other, knowing we were all we had, companions who had been through every level of personal hell, together, miraculously still alive to speak of it. Though I wondered if we’d ever speak of it again. I wanted to forget everything but the feel of his arms holding me as the sensation made life bearable.

Jonathon just held me until it was inappropriate for him to be in the same room with me any longer. It was only a mere hour or so before dawn. Lavinia and Nathaniel were curled up somewhere, recovering on their own time and terms.

At some point sleep claimed me until I was roused by something bright and cold hovering at the foot of the guest room bed.

Maggie floated before me.

I couldn’t be sure if it was real or a dream, but I was very glad to see her spirit, in whatever way it wished to see me.

“Hello, my friend,” I whispered. The tears came again. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Me?” Maggie scoffed. “The friend that almost had you killed back in New York? Of course you did. You do. This was my penance, Natalie.”

“No, Maggie—”

“It was, Natalie. It was foretold. Your mother has been very kind to me. She’s been showing me the ways of this place, this in-between area where I’m still watching the world but above it. The Angel Walk, she calls it, as she fancies herself your guardian angel.”

“She is,” I stammered through my tears.

“There are two walks,” Maggie’s ghost said excitedly. “The angels walk a path. And so do the devils. That’s the path the Society was trying to carve open. From here you can see where things have come and where things may go. One life to the next, one body, one soul to the next… So many possibilities.” Her voice was filled with a beautiful wonderment. “When you and I meet again someday, I’d like to think we will be better friends.”

“We will be,” I said through renewed tears. She was staring at me with such calm, such care, such love, the sort of warmth I always imagined an angel or Jesus might look upon me with, a look that knew of terrible suffering, temptation, and pain but chose to stare lovingly instead. “I promise you. If whatever or whoever I am is too blind to see the woman you’re capable of being, shake me out of it.”

“I think you’ll know, next time,” Maggie said. “If there’s such a thing as past lives, well, we will have learned in the next one.”

“We are imperfect creatures down here, Maggie. I’m sure things look so much different up there.”

“Perspective.” She said, bobbing slightly in the air. “Don’t lose yours. There may be storms yet ahead, who knows. You have people who need you.”

“We all needed you.”

Her grayscale form smiled. “It was nice to be needed for once.”

“You were never not needed, we—”

Maggie held up a ghostly hand to shut me up. “Stay safe, Natalie Stewart. Take care of that lord of yours.”

“I promise I will. If you can visit again... I hope you will.”

Maggie shrugged. “I don’t know... I’ve a lot of exploring to do.”

“Evelyn will want to see you. Your aunt is devastated.”

“In time.” Maggie shrugged. “When she’s ready, she’ll see me. We see what we need to see when we can best handle it, whether it feels like it or not. I’ve a letter for you, back in New York. It will explain everything.”

“Thank you.” I reached out to the chill air before me. “Truly. I owe you so much more than that, but—”

“You’re welcome,” Maggie said, waving a ghostly hand as if it were nothing. When it had been everything. “Truly.” And she vanished.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

It was only when Mrs. Northe handed me a ticket for the steamer in the morning—leaving in a mere few hours—that my future flashed before my eyes.

What about Jonathon? Would he come with us? He had left early in the morning, saying he’d return, but what was our plan? Was I to live at Rosecrest? Could we face it? What about Father? I’d agreed to marry Jonathon, I was at his command, no longer Father’s... But I wasn’t sure I could just up and leave New York behind. I reeled.

I had assumed we’d live in Manhattan, but it was stupid of me to make such assumptions. I wanted to cry all over again. I couldn’t ask Jonathon to leave his homeland any more than I wanted to leave mine. I liked London, and Rosecrest was beautiful, but wouldn’t it be too haunted? This London flat of the family was plenty, lovely, really. With the Denbury resources, I could visit home often... I felt torn, raw. I wanted to look forward to our wedding, our home, our life, but I could hardly move, think, feel...

Mrs. Northe was watching me, likely making clairvoyant notes about my mood, but she said nothing. I noted the dark circles under her eyes, and I wondered if she too had wept the night through. I debated about telling her about Maggie’s spirit, but Jonathon interrupted us before I opened my mouth. Nathaniel and Lavinia were standing close behind him.

“Three o clock?” he asked Mrs. Northe, coming close to kiss me upon the head. She nodded.

“Will you be seeing me off or coming with me?” I asked quietly, trying not to let the desperation I felt edge into my tone.

The idea of taking another trip without him, the idea of being parted as we’d been several times during our ordeals was too much for me to bear at present. Yet I had to allow for him to deal with whatever business he had to arrange and manage. But for my part, I could not leave my father in such an emotional lurch as I had left him. I owed him my return and reassurances of my love.

Jonathon wound his arms around me as he sat next to me on the divan. “New York has captured my heart, because New York’s prettiest, bravest girl has agreed to become my lady. Wherever we can remain furthest from the dark magic, there is where we should be. Though I would be anywhere. Provided I am at your side.”

“So New York?” I asked hopefully. “With seasonal trips to London, of course,” I added.

“A home in Greenwich, New York, to match mine in England. Rosecrest must remain in the Denbury name, and its wing shall be rebuilt, but I can’t bear beginning our life and family there...” He shuddered. “Too haunted.”

I nodded and kissed him my agreement, all my worries fading into excitement for our future.

The steamer trip was pleasant and blessedly uneventful. And very quiet. None of us dared speak much. None dared try to encapsulate what had happened. The scope and depth was too vast to digest, too overwrought and unbelievable, even for those of us who had experienced the Society’s madnesses before. The fact that none of us had been carted away to England’s infamous Bedlam was as impressive as coming out of it alive.

For most of the journey, we sat on the main deck, in a line of reclining chairs, and watched the water. A line of fine funereal clothes one after the other, our deck chair procession afforded us quiet and space from other passengers. The unchanging expanse of water allowed our tired bodies and minds to rest whenever rest claimed us. Otherwise we exchanged fond looks, held hands, and let tears come as they would.

I couldn’t shake the knowledge that Maggie was there with us too, down below in the cargo hold. Her body crossing the great ocean with us. I hoped the great beyond was treating her beautifully. I was grateful Mrs. Northe took the lead on the transfer of her body once we docked in New York, Lavinia stepping up to assist. Those kinds of logistics I simply couldn’t face.

We collectively returned to Mrs. Northe’s home and fell into respective tasks. Our group reverie was broken by the crazed bustle of the city that intruded upon contemplation. Lavinia and Nathaniel went their separate ways, needing to check in with various friends and family members who were nearly hysterical about their disappearances.

I knew my duty at hand was to reach out to Father, but I wanted Mrs. Northe’s advice and protection as I was unsure what sort of anger I might be facing. Jonathon kissed me softly before going off to first open a New York bank account and then talk to a broker about a home. He wanted to keep busy.

I was left alone for a moment in the parlor while Mrs. Northe checked in with her staff about the goings-on during her absence. I took a long, deep breath and tried to stop myself from pacing a hole in her parlor carpeting.

“Keep yourself together, Natalie,” I demanded. “It’s over. It’s all over, and you have to let go or you won’t actually have won...”

My eyes fell upon a letter that the maid had left sitting out at Mrs. Northe’s writing desk. It was in familiar handwriting. It was addressed to her and to me. And the moment I saw it, tears sprang to my eyes.

I found Mrs. Northe midconversation with one of her newer staff. The look on my face had her immediately escorting me by the elbow back to the parlor.

I lifted up the note in a shaking hand. I saw Mrs. Northe swallow hard. We sunk together onto the golden velvet settee, and I opened Margaret Hathorn’s last letter.

 

Dear Natalie and Aunt Evelyn,

By the time you read this, I am likely dead. Writing that phrase has finally driven home to me the reality of what is about to occur. I can’t say exactly what will happen or how it will. All I know is that I am slated, scheduled, and prophesied to die.

I wish I knew how to prepare for this inevitability. Karen has envisioned it, in two different ways. I have dreamed of it with a sort of surety. Auntie, you’d call it prophecy. And it was very clear, from Karen’s visions and from my own dreams, that I could either be tortured by the Society and used as a sacrificial lamb, or I could try to take down the devil with me.

I was never very brave, you both know that, but I was always curious. Look at me, talking about myself in the past tense already. Perhaps that’s for the best. I do hope you’ll make sure I’m wearing an exquisite dress when I am laid out for mourning. And you’d both better mourn bitterly. If I can, I’ll be watching. I don’t exactly know how much control I’ll have over being a ghost. Haunting you might be terribly fun.

Karen has been giving me laudanum so that I can sleep, as I’ve been having such fits, and I must say the effects are most pleasant. I can understand how so many women of our station are a little too fond of the stuff. It manages to deaden the abject panic that facing death creates in a girl.

Dear, dead Amelia—who I now know for certain was Karen’s lover (ghosts don’t care much about keeping proper secrets. Still, scandal! But the scriptures say judge not so I’d best not be judging before I’ll soon be judged)—has come to visit. Amelia is what you’d call my spirit guide. She promises she’ll be with me when the event happens and will help ease any discomfort, fear, and pain. She’ll help me let go.

There’s a great deal of bloodletting and various violations if the Society is left to kill me. I think, if our plan of holy water does the trick and I take the initiative, the pain will be less. At least, that’s what I fear the most. Pain.

Here I thought I’d fear a season without suitors. A poorly made dress. A betrothal to a hideous old man I hated. Unjust gossip. Being thrown from society—well, I’ve already faced that fear. After dreaming of a bloody, gruesome death night after night, suddenly millinery and couture all seem very faint and somewhat laughable.

What you mustn’t do is blame yourself. I know you will. I can’t know if anything would have been different. We can’t know that. All I know is that something is about to come to a head in England, and I am supposed to be there for it. As part of the grand finale. The Society craves a coming out party, a debutante ball. I would like to make sure it is instead their final curtain call.

I knew what I’d been doing wasn’t right. Now I’ll pay for it. Magic has consequences. Courting evil can’t be undone. But, I confess, it was delicious at first. You know I always did love a good delicious secret, a hint of scandal, something seductive and grand. The demon and the vein-like net of its powers certainly knew that. What an easy fly I was for that web. I’m embarrassed. I’d crave a good old, normal deflowering by a handsome stable boy over all this shame and guilt.

At first I didn’t understand what I was dealing with. I knew I’d gotten in too deep, that I was under the influence of dark magic too far to ever be truly free of it. I let it nearly take my life and that of Natalie. I don’t remember much about that; all of it feels like a terrible, distant dream. Being in Chicago has helped me regain perspective, and I no longer see through such veiled eyes. It was smart of you, Auntie, to send me away from the hazy fog and into clearer skies.

What I had once exoticized and romanticized I now abhor, thanks to Karen and ghostly Amelia’s efforts. They have withheld nothing from me in terms of spiritual realms and gifts. I see now just how backward the Society is from anything useful and fair in the world. An enemy to all things holy, they are the direct inversion of corporeal and spiritual progress.

Amelia promises me I’ll walk with the angels for my sacrifice, lifted up as we send demons to their depths. When you read this, and I hope you both remain alive to pray for my spirit, for you’ll know how it all turned out. Spare fond thoughts for me.

None of us can be exactly sure if a past life will return into a new life, but at least I’ll have done right by this body, in the end, after having done wrong. I hope I return female. I know we don’t have the rights and the votes that you want us to have, Auntie, but think of all the beautiful dresses... ‘That’ll be the hardest thing to leave behind. Maybe God will be very kind and bring me back as landed aristocracy! That’s only fair…

Be well. Live well. Every day, be sure to steer clear of that which dragged me under and which will be the death of me no matter what I do.

With love, prayerfully and sincerely,

Maggie

 

I looked at Mrs. Northe, and we just watched each other’s tears roll down our faces for a moment before I managed to choke out a few words. “She...did. She visited,” I finally murmured. “Her spirit.”

Before Mrs. Northe could answer, my father was shown in to the parlor. My face went red. I ran to him and threw my arms around him. My head hurt violently from all the crying.

“I’m so sorry,” I gasped. “I’ll never disappear again.”

“I don’t understand it,” Father replied, clutching me tightly. “But your mother came to me and said it had to be done, that you had to go to England and face the enemy. I always trusted her. And I see so much of her in you. And thank God you’re alive for me to see that.”

I pulled back and lifted up my finger to show Father the ring. “Before we saved each other’s life, again, we got engaged! He’s a good man, Jonathon. Please don’t let any of this damage your opinion of him.”

Father smiled weakly. “I don’t really think I have a choice about accepting him into our life. But at least he’s an honest man. A haunted, but honest, man.”

“The haunting is over, Gareth,” Mrs. Northe assured. “Terrible tolls were paid. But the haunting is over. Justice is being served. There’s still mess to clean, but Lord Denbury’s part in all of it, and thusly Natalie’s, has come to a blessed conclusion. And he truly loves your daughter. That is abundantly clear.”

Father breathed a sigh of relief as Mrs. Northe continued. “Now please, Gareth, I insist you stay for dinner.” She turned to me with a sparkle in her weary eyes, her body straightening to fully inhabit the beautiful blue dress she wore. “Finally, that engagement supper I’ve been wanting to throw you!”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

We had the loveliest dinner we’d perhaps ever had. Mrs. Northe sent word to Lavinia and Nathaniel, Reverend Blessing too, even the enigmatic Senator Bishop. Everyone was in a festive mood, so glad to have a fine dinner in a lavish setting without fear of demonic arrival and bloodletting between courses.

A huge weight collectively lifted from our shoulders. Maggie’s letter had given both Mrs. Northe and me a much-needed closure and perspective to our grief and guilt. The weekend would bring Maggie’s funeral. In the meantime, there was life to live and love to celebrate. When Jonathon returned to the Northe townhouse to tell me he’d found some lovely options of townhouses and flats for us to consider and warmly greeting my father as if he were greeting his own, I refused to let go of his hand.

Mrs. Northe opened the finest champagnes and toasted to us many times. The bubbles went delightedly to my head. We talked about utterly meaningless things. Senator Bishop told a few scandalous jokes that Reverend Blessing laughed the loudest at.

Not one of us said one word about blood, magic, death, or demons, and I couldn’t have been more delighted.

At one point, having eaten so much rich delicious food and imbibed a bit too much champagne, I laid my head on Jonathon’s shoulder. When I woke up, I was terribly disoriented. I was again in Mrs. Northe’s guest room. My father was asleep in a chair. When I sat up, a ray of sunlight hit me directly on my aching forehead. I woke Father with my subsequent groan.

“It isn’t that I didn’t want to bring you home,” my father rushed to explain as he rubbed his eyes, “and I wasn’t about to leave you here, but Mrs. Northe said the dark magic...”

“Carries traces with it. Yes. We’ll have to slough all of it off, day by day, prayer by prayer,” I murmured. Father fetched me a glass of water, and I downed it eagerly.

“I have to go to work. Will you be all right? Jonathon is out on business again, he wanted me to tell you. Evidently he’s buying you things,” he said with a slight grin.

“I promise I’ll be all right,” I said, rising to throw my arms around him. Smoothing the dinner gown I’d borrowed from Mrs. Northe—I would have to do some shopping to believably be seen in the world as Lady Denbury—I escorted Father down and out the door.

Mrs. Northe was sitting in the parlor in a saffron day gown, smiling at me.

“Champagne,” I said, making a face, rubbing my temple.

“The drug of the angels.” She chuckled. “I bet you slept soundly, though, did you not?”

“Indeed. No dreams. No nightmares. Since I’ve been so vividly living the nightmares, thankfully none have come to collect their tolls for a little while.”

“Go on back upstairs and pick something else out of the guest room boudoir. I cannot be seen with you if you’re in an evening gown before noon.”

I smiled and did what I was told. At some point Mrs. Northe must have had a few dresses tailored for me, because she was too tall for me to fit into them naturally. I glanced down at the hems that had been taken up, and my heart swelled at how amazingly I had been provided for by this worthy second mother who did so many things without any acclaim or fanfare, just quiet, subtle, thorough, thoughtful care.

Just as I put the final clasp on a lovely green tea gown that stirringly evoked the emerald of my eyes, there was a knock at the downstairs door, and as I descended to the parlor, I heard a brief discussion with the maid who answered and then soon came into the parlor, bobbing to us as she did so.

“A Sergeant Patt to see you, ma’am. Shall I send him in or would you prefer to see him another day? He was rather insistent. And very contrite…”

Mrs. Northe pursed her lips. “Oh, is he? Well. Send him in.”

After a moment, in walked a tall, burly, mustachioed man with thinning blonde hair who didn’t fit well into his tweed suit. He looked at Mrs. Northe and blushed.

“I’ve an apology to make, Mrs. Northe. And a request.” The man then turned to me, noticing I was in the room. He cocked his head a bit, as if trying to place me. “I don’t suppose you’re a Miss Natalie Stewart, are you?’

“For the moment, I am,” I replied. “I’ll be married soon. Why do you ask?”

“Well, my sincere congratulations.” He cleared his throat. “I have something that belongs to you, miss.” He looked up again at Mrs. Northe. “I don’t suppose you’d have a moment to come to the station?”

“Why?” Mrs. Northe said coolly. “Have you finally taken initiative upon my advice?”

“I’ve seen some mighty strange things these days,” Patt said wearily. “Things I never thought I’d believe. Things I can’t believe.”

“And yet, we wake up the very next day needing to live a life we can make sense of, do we not, Mister Patt?” Mrs. Northe said gently, smiling, rising and gesturing for me to do the same.

“That we do, madame. That we do.” Somehow that simple platitude seemed to mean a lot to him, as if he was forgiven his doubt, and he seemed grateful for Mrs. Northe’s gentleness in the face of having being ignored.

“To your precinct, sergeant?” she said brightly.

“If you don’t mind. And then, also if you don’t mind, there’s something else I’d like you to see.”

A few blocks walk, we moved in silence, as the sergeant’s awkwardness around women was rather painful, and there wasn’t any small talk to fix that. I assumed this was heightened by the fact he didn’t seem to like apologizing to women, either. I had to keep myself from grinning. Mrs. Northe had gone to the police, was not believed, and now, the truth would out, unbelievable as it was.

We first went up the stoop to the precinct front door, but he gestured next door, where there were a few men in police uniforms blocking the entrance of a simple Federal-style building and speaking in frightened, hushed tones.

“That’s next,” Patt said. But first he led us into a modest office with a deal of file cabinets, chairs, and a few ceramic mugs that had been left on worn desks. The mug nearest me had dark fluid of indiscernible contents. Likely crude coffee. Perhaps dashed with alcohol.

Patt withdrew sets of deeds from a wooden file cabinet. He handed them to Mrs. Northe.

“These are the addresses you suggested,” he stated. “All along Park Avenue, down to Grand Central depot. Every one of them belonging to a company. I assume you recognize the seal.”

I saw the red and gold crest of dragons, the seal of the Master’s Society. But only now did I truly see the great irony of the crest.

I had thought upon first glance that the dragon’s tails were entwined in a show of strength. But upon a closer look, I noticed the sharp point of each dragon’s tail was piercing the other in the heart. It was, simply, a crest of powerful beings killing one another. It was a hopeless crest. Somehow in hopelessness Moriel saw power. And in that moment, all I could do was pity him, even after all he’d put us through. For I simply couldn’t understand the lack of conscience, of empathy, of humanity. The vacant and cruel look in his eyes was indeed the most horrible thing, even despite all the bloodshed and victims. I couldn’t bear the idea of such an unconscionable look spreading. I would rest better at night once that pit of despair had been executed so that such an example could never more be set.

Patt then reached into a drawer and pulled out something thick that was covered by a yellow file folder. He plucked a leather-bound journal out of the folder, a few pieces of paper bordering the book. A book I knew quite well indeed. I bit my lip.

“I believe this belongs to you, Miss Stewart.”

He handed me my diary; the pages that had chronicled the whole of meeting Jonathon, falling in love with him, and saving his life. Pages that spoke of befriending Maggie and her first descent into the madness she so bravely sacrificed herself to make up for.

Tears came to my eyes as I took it and held it close. “Thank you.”

“I’d like to show you one of the addresses, right out the door,” Patt said, gesturing us out again. “My men found relatively the same thing in each of the apartments or offices along the avenue.” The tone of his voice indicated he was still shaken by what he’d seen. “How…large is this ‘Society’ network, do you believe?” he asked quietly.

“We have no idea,” Mrs. Northe replied. “Lord Denbury and his associates tried to trap as many of the leaders in England as possible, but that was only three. They are in custody and will be awaiting trial. Those I spoke with there hope to flush out as many conspirators as possible. They do have operatives here, clearly, to do something of this scale, though I think all the financing began in England.”

“There are international ties,” I added. “At least, I know one of the “Majesties” was foreign, possibly Italian. Another French. Old, forgotten aristocratic lines.”

“The financing has its fingers here, too, to have pulled off these kinds of buried leads and various payoffs,” Patt stated. “And those frequenting Wall Street have increasingly big pockets, our recent depression notwithstanding. The rich still seem to stay rich even in decline. We will be keeping an eye on any connections.”

“Good,” Mrs. Northe replied. “Very good.”

“Are there any other operative names you can give us from your experiences?” he asked, taking out a notebook to write down anything she mentioned.

“Doctor Preston was killed by his own reanimate creation,” Mrs. Northe began, speaking nonchalantly. “Mister Crenfall, the original broker of the Denbury portrait, lost his mind. Though an eye should be kept on him as it was his numerics that gave us these addresses. The mentally ill still have plenty to offer the world in information and perspective. And then, of course, there are the demon-possessed lackeys and servants. They’ve a certain look about them. Glassy and animal-like around the eyes. Their movement is often a bit stilted.”

“Right,” he said, writing down words haltingly in the pad, as if trying to make that seem like a normal detail of a normal case.

“If I see any, I’ll be sure to alert you,” Mrs. Northe assured. “Though I do think we’ve struck to the heart of the matter. If you have further concerns, as I am hoping our personal involvement in these matters is at a blessed end”—she included me in her gaze, and I nodded agreement—”please contact Senator Bishop. The senator has a…particular investment in investigating any sorts of occurrence that is…out of the ordinary.”

“Indeed, I’ve already spoken with him. His clerk, oh, pardon me, his…Chief Inspector”—he said that with a grimace, as if the word didn’t quite fit, almost as if it were blasphemous—”Miss Templeton is already down the block, seeing for herself.”

Ah, yes, of course. A chief most certainly couldn’t be female. Were the police actually employing women? I’d heard of a matron in one of the precincts; that was a sensation in and of itself. Women had always served in one way or another, but to be at the head of anything was unprecedented indeed. Exciting. It must be a very special branch.

“Oh, good.” Mrs. Northe beamed. “I’ve not seen nearly enough of Clara these days.”

“You two know each—of course you’d know each other...” Patt grumbled.

Sergeant Patt led us up the nearby stairs of what appeared to be—or have been—a law office. He waved the uniformed patrolmen at the door to the side of the landing.

“More ladies?” one officer murmured to another at the door. “What does the sarge think he’s doing? Ladies shouldn’t be exposed to this sort of devilry.”

Mrs. Northe turned and smiled, making the officer blush under his cap for having been overheard. “But when we are exposed to such horrors, as the devil plagues men and women alike and equally, it’s then up to us to help prevent it from spreading. Don’t shelter us, officers. Listen to us. Respect our knowledge and expertise, which is why we are here. If you did so without judgment, your force would be far better informed.”

They simply bowed their head, and I held back a smile of triumph as we entered the building. My smile soon was wiped from my face as I beheld the devil’s laboratory.

One of the large rugs was pulled back to reveal a sprawling mess of symbols and quotes painted upon the floor in a dark, brownish-red, thick substance. Blood. Some in thick tar. There were the familiar runes as used to carve into the flesh of possessed bodies and of the reanimate dead. There were the numbers in their reversed golden ratio. There were quotes from arcane black lore that did not sound like books anyone, lady or gentleman, should read. Symbols of all faiths were inverted and turned on their side, shifted, askew, repurposed for the inverse of love and guidance, instead fostering misery and misleading woe.

It was all very similar to the floorboards of the Rosecrest dining room. This was the ground work for a portal to one of the ‘”devils’ walks’” the Society opened in Rosecrest.

What I didn’t see at first, due to the pocket doors having been closed in the entryway, was perhaps the most actively alarming thing of all. The evidence of an all-out strategic attack…

The sergeant returned us to the front of the building, to a main office with a lovely bay window which was closed, facing the busy Park Avenue. By the window was a device that looked like a propeller, attached to a bellows that was then fitted to a steam pipe that went to another area of the building. Before the propeller was set a metal trough filled with dark red powder. The chemical horror. What the Society so sickly called “The Cure.”

Next to the device stood an elegant woman, older than me but younger than Mrs. Northe, in a matching linen jacket and dress trimmed in elaborate black detailing, a white lace blouse with a large cameo at her throat and full skirt; the full ensemble of dark green accented bright, nearly yellow eyes framed with dark blonde curls kept neatly beneath a green felt hat with a bit of a black veil. She was scribbling with a golden fountain pen into a notebook cupped in her palm.

“Miss Templeton,” Patt said quietly. She looked up, and her pretty face lit. She greeted Mrs. Northe with a dazzling smile and kisses on both cheeks.

“Hello, Evelyn, it’s so good to see you! Though I wish under better circumstances. Rupert told me you were instrumental in bringing this “Society” to the attention of the authorities. Thank you. I know the city will never appreciate you as it should, but I always do.” She turned to me. “And you are, young lady?”

“Miss Natalie Stewart,” I replied. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Templeton. I’ve met Senator Bishop at dinner. He seems very wise and kind.”

Her golden eyes sparkled. “Oh, yes. He is. And oh, yes, I’ve heard of you.”

I furrowed my brow. “I’m not sure if I should be flattered or worried.”

Miss Templeton winked at me.

“Scenes just like this, ladies,” Patt interrupted, irritated by ladies’ niceties, “were found at all the addresses I shared with you. Similar disturbing things scrawled on the floors and walls with only God knows what as paint. Generally a body starting to stink somewhere under the floorboards. Don’t know if the bodies were sacrifices or just someone in the way at the time, we’re trying to determine the links. Maybe they were storing them for that…reanimation you were talking about. Hell if I know.” He grimaced and gestured to the contraption before us. “And all of the properties were fitted with a device poised to blow that powder out unto the New York City streets.”

“You’d have had endless riots on your hands,” Mrs. Northe said in a horrified murmur. “Any further holdings must be brought to light, though I do fear what’s already fled underground. I am glad to hear you put Stevens in custody. If you hadn’t? I have a feeling these fans would have started to blow and you’d have a volatile mess. All the way downtown.”

“The city in chaos,” Patt agreed, his round face ashen. “So I suppose that’s what the Society wanted?”

Mrs. Northe nodded. “And in that chaos, gain assets, seize properties, make new disciples, and begin to influence leaders. That’s my belief, though someone would have to ask the devils directly for confirmation.”

“That seems to follow,” I murmured. Miss Templeton said nothing but scribbled with impressive speed, all without taking her eyes off us.

“I’m not sure who was poised to give the order to strike,” Patt said. “But thank goodness no one did.”

“Possibly Stevens, possibly the “Majesty” in England. I wonder if we’ll ever know the time frame they targeted. Do be careful disposing of that, sergeant,” Mrs. Northe said, gesturing to the powder.

“Oh, we will.” Patt assured. “Already had to subdue and sedate several officers who first came in contact with it. Then I remembered the articles.” His round face flushed red again. “And I remembered what you said to me. And I’m sorry for not having taken it more seriously, sooner,” Patt said quietly, looking at me in the apology and then back toward the interior of the office, bewildered. “I just don’t understand how people could be so elaborately diabolical.”

“Some people, a few. Not sane ones,” Mrs. Northe reassured the sergeant. “Unhinged creatures urged on by the negative spirits of all that is horrific about humankind. Demons aren’t corporeal unless imbued with the power to affect human will and conscience. The Master’s Society tried to harness raw evil, congealed it, and sent it unto the world. Those working for them were simply under the influence. And not powerful enough to shirk off the yoke.” Mrs. Northe spoke so eloquently and sensibly she made everything, even the most trying theories, make sense.

Patt furrowed his brow, having difficulty accepting something so vague, so gray in the areas of good and evil, so diffuse. However, to his credit he did not argue.

“Cleaning crews are painstakingly taking care of every site. Is there anything you think we might be missing?” Patt asked, genuinely asking for advice. Miss Templeton seemed just as interested in the recommendation.

“An exorcist. And a medium,” Mrs. Northe replied brightly. “The most important part of the cleaning is all the things you can’t see with average sight.” At this, Patt looked very worried. Mrs. Northe smiled. “Never fear, sergeant, I’ll send our friends to you. Reverend Blessing and Miss Horowitz. Now the reverend is a black man, and the medium is a Jewish woman. Both of them are the finest at their trade that I have ever met. So if you or any of your men give them any trouble or various intolerant slurs, I assure you you’ll find trouble again on your doorstep—”

“Understood, Mrs. Northe. I will see to it he is denied nothing and escorted by my finest and most trustworthy.”

“That better be a sound promise. We live in uncomfortably intolerant times, Sergeant Patt.”

“And I’d rather not promote intolerance further, Mrs. Northe, truly,” Patt said with weary earnestness. I remembered some of Father’s scholarly friends discussing the fight for being considered human that most Irish immigrants had faced when arriving upon New York shores. Maybe the cruelty of human bigotry was something he could understand. The ruddy-faced sergeant shook his head. “An exorcist. And a medium. Heaven help us.”

“Heaven most certainly did,” I replied, beaming at the mention of Blessing and my dear friend Rachel who I would be so thrilled to see again, after she’d lent her aid in Chicago. Though I’d not be coming along on any of this reported cleanup. My time with all this was at its blessed end.

“Do keep me apprised, sergeant,” Mrs. Northe said. “And I appreciate your showing us this. The Society has put us all through quite the trial. None so much as our brave Miss Stewart here. If you’re going to finally deign to thank me, she deserves far more thanks than I.”

The sergeant bowed to me. “I can’t say I believe everything I read, Miss Stewart, not at all, but I do believe you must be a very brave young woman, and that’s to be commended.”

I blushed, clutching my diary tighter under my arm, wondering just how many persons had read all my kissing bits. I’d written rather rhapsodically about Jonathon and our first explorations of passions. I hadn’t had time to redact them before the diary had found its way into Father’s hands...

“I’d love to interview you, Miss Stewart, about all you’ve been through,” Miss Templeton said quietly. “I truly value your insight. It would be such a gift.”

I nodded. Something about the woman made me want to trust and confide in her. She was like a younger Mrs. Northe, and I liked the idea of having elegant, elder friends.

“After she becomes Lady Denbury, Clara,” Mrs. Northe said with a chuckle. “Let the poor girl and her poor lord alone for a bit.”

Miss Templeton beamed. “But of course.”

“Dinner, soon, Clara. I don’t know where you’ve been keeping yourself of late, but you’d better not forget about us. Rupert’s just not the same when you’re not around. You know I hate it when grown men pout.”

Another engaging sparkle flashed like a flare of flame across her catlike eyes, and she nodded with a prim smile. “Dinner soon, Evelyn. I promise.”

The sergeant walked us out and scowled at his men. No one made any further comments to us. He thanked us again and returned to his precinct offices, darting up the stoop at a clip amusing for his large comportment. I’m quite sure he was glad to be rid of us, even though he was grateful for the information provided. I didn’t blame him. This was bitter medicine to swallow. I knew that better than anyone.

Mrs. Northe and I decided to walk a route through Central Park upon our return. The day was gorgeous; the people strolling under parasols and in top hats were marvelous, the light through the dappled trees that grew taller and fuller every year was resplendent, the park ever a work in progress, represented promise and life. It was the perfect contrast to the sobering threat of the Society we’d bested.

There was a look on Mrs. Northe’s face that didn’t really match with the situation we’d left behind. It was engaged, almost playful. “What?” I asked.

“Miss Templeton. She’s hiding something. She’s good at hiding from minds like mine,” Mrs. Northe said, tapping her temple. “Maybe a lover. Hmm. That would be interesting. I wonder how Rupert will take that.”

“The senator?”

“Yes. I’ve always wondered about them. She’s old enough for emancipation, no longer his ward, exactly, though he’s pledged his life to her it would seem. Yet she hasn’t gone out and gotten a husband…” She stopped short, blushing. “Forgive me, Natalie. I must not gossip. It is unchristian to do so. However, gossiping about people I care for is infinitely more amenable to my mind than all the troubles and grief…”

I knew Maggie would’ve loved the gossip. We were likely thinking the same thing but didn’t dare mention her name. Instead, I turned the tables on Mrs. Northe and dared use a name I’d not yet felt comfortable using. But it was well past time.

“So. Evelyn. Tell me. Are you and Father...”

“We are. We will. Provided you are comfortable. We want to see you through your wedding first.”

“I’m comfortable,” I agreed.

“You called me Evelyn.” She beamed. “That’s a start.”

I tucked my arm in hers and squeezed tight. “I love you,” I murmured. She took my hand and clutched it in both of hers, tucking it toward her heart. I felt a tear splash onto the back of it.

“And I you. From the moment I first met you, I wanted you as my daughter. I knew it had to be. I...I saw this moment. Right here. Walking through the park, my long-lost daughter and me, on a perfect New York afternoon...” She turned away to dab her eyes with a handkerchief. I thought my heart would burst.

“I am the luckiest girl in the whole of this great city,” I murmured. I looked up at the beautiful blue sky and thanked all the forces of light that had gotten me this far by stubborn faith and more blessings than I knew what to do with.

We took the longer route back, arm in arm, me and my mentor and second mother, a bond that had saved my life. I’d like to think I’d saved hers too. At least her heart.

Lavinia came over for tea, sweeping into the Northe parlor in something just as black and dramatic as usual. Something about our earlier bout of gossip and talk of love and lovers made me bold, and so I asked:

“When is Nathaniel going to stop running from the obvious and marry you?”

Lavinia shrugged wistfully. “I’ve no idea. I can’t force him. He is his own beast. A wild creature that will only stop pacing when he wishes. I know he loves me. But I’m not sure what that means to him.”

“With your parents still having cut you off...what will you do?”

“I’ve found work for her,” Mrs. Northe said with a smile.

“Via Senator Bishop,” Lavinia continued excitedly. “He’s associated with an office that quietly looks into paranormal goings-on in the city. They’re selective and very secretive. Evidently they had only men as doorkeepers at their office for quite some time. But they all kept falling for the woman in charge, the senator’s ward—”

“Miss Templeton? I just met her.”

“Indeed,” Mrs. Northe added. “It would seem the senator finally got tired of intimidating all the gentlemen doorkeepers, so Lavinia will be a great addition to their little cadre.”

“Especially considering the experiences we’ve had,” Lavinia added. “If you’d like work, I’m sure he’d like to talk to you, although the idea of ‘Lady Denbury’ taking a job doesn’t sound quite right,” she said with a wink and a smile.

“Miss Templeton did seem quite interested in talking to me,” I replied. “But I’d prefer not to work in any field we barely survived... After all we’ve been through, I’m surprised you’d want anything to do with anything paranormal.”

She smiled. “Has your time with our club, Her Majesty’s Association of Melancholy Bastards, taught you nothing? We court this sort of intrigue!” She laughed. “No, truly, think about it, my friend. My name is Lavinia. A Shakespearean character who, in Titus Andronicus, was raped, her tongue cut out, and her hands cut off. No matter that it was a “family name,” I made it my mission in my life that I would not let my name damn me. That I would live loudly and fully. That I would live as dramatically as I please, with no men making decisions for me that I would not make on my own as best I could. To take a job, a position, for a secret office? Something empowering and fascinating? Why, it takes that Shakespearean tragedy and makes it something glorious.”

“Well played, Miss Kent.” Mrs. Northe applauded.

“Indeed, I think it’s lovely, Lavinia. While I go off to be a titled lady,” I said with a grin, “we’ll all have the best of adventures together. Safely away from any demons, haunted paintings, or reanimate corpses.”

“Huzzah to that, my lady. No more of that indeed,” came a familiar British accent lilting off lips I longed to kiss. Jonathon swept into the room with a bouquet of red roses for me. “Come, come, Lady Denbury, shall we house hunt? It’s my favorite kind of quarry, lavish lodgings that can’t run away from my title. Fit for a very pretty girl who can’t run from it, either.”

“As if she’d ever want to,” I murmured, lifting my face so that he’d bend over the settee to kiss me. He did. I jumped to my feet, sliding my arm in his, holding the roses very princess-like in the crook of my other arm. “If you’ll excuse us, ladies...”

Lavinia and Evelyn grinned, shooing us to the door.

As Jonathon and I descended onto Fifth Avenue, the bustle and swarm of New York before us, I had never felt so vibrant. So full of all the possibilities I could make manifest. The life and family I would lead and create. Mother’s causes I would soon take up. All the art I would buy for Father’s beloved Metropolitan Museum. The clinics I would help Jonathon open.

For all that the “Majesties” had wanted to take from society, we would do all the more to lift it up and serve the world with love. With the second chances we’d been given. With the lives we were lucky enough to still live.

I stared out at my beloved city and promised I would live to the fullest all that our infinite blessings dictated. For all that my beloved Jonathon and I had seen of tragedy, of darkness, of the double life of solid and shade, we were all the better equipped to shine, throughout this life and unto the paths that angels would tread.

Epilogue

 

From the Desk of Miss Clara Templeton

Internal Director, Eterna Commission, established 1865

Notes:

Senator Bishop gave me the case of Lord Denbury and Miss Natalie Stewart and the various issues that befell them for consideration.

Though I am not sure what it may have to do with issues of immortality that the Eterna Commission has been charged with examining, I find everything about the Master’s Society to be fascinating. Harrowing, but fascinating. I do not envy all those two young lovers underwent.

I spent quite some time in the sergeant’s office, examining the deeds in the sequence as the inimitable Evelyn suggested. Her clairvoyance never ceases to impress me, and I confess I am envious of the gift.

I believe my office could benefit from similar experiences of the teamwork displayed by the friends drawn into the Society’s sinister web. Though I doubt Miss Stewart or her lord would wish what they lived through upon anyone.

The police, when it comes to many spiritual or inexplicable matters, seem more than happy to let women handle them. While the paranormal does not favor a gender, I do find that more women of this gilded age of ours remain open-minded about the inexplicable, and perhaps in some ways that may make us more vulnerable. We are, after all, the founders and purveyors of Spiritualism.

It was all very personal, in the end, this Mister Moriel’s targeting of the Denbury family. To reanimate the corpse of the woman who rejected him? How tasteless. But wars are waged over trivial matters.

People live and die over personal matters, not global ones.

And that’s perhaps why Miss Stewart and Lord Denbury won, in the end. They too made it personal. Faith is personal. Resilience is personal. And the pasts, the energies, the ghosts and the angels we carry with us. Those are very personal indeed.

I have asked to interview Miss Stewart—once she’s Lady Denbury—and glean from her a specialized wisdom this sort of trauma creates. I’ve been considered gifted for so long, I need to be challenged, else I’ll become a bore to myself.

I need to make everything personal. That’s the only way forward in all that I seek.

I have enclosed a letter from Lady Denbury responding to my request for a further interview, along with a package that I am humbled to have received. And I’m certainly up for this challenge.

 

Dear Miss Templeton,

I received your request for an interview along with the gift of the silver platter Senator Bishop sent as a wedding present. It’s lovely and very generous of you both.

I have just returned from honeymooning in Paris, which was transcendently romantic. If you’ve never been, I insist everyone should go there with someone they love.

I’d rather not, at the moment, talk about what I’ve been through. Jonathon and I are determined to live our lives out from those dread shadows. We were so relieved to hear, just as we began moving into our Greenwich Village townhouse, that the wretch Moriel has been sentenced to death. The Society operatives have been rounded up and may face the same. Their radical madness is ended at last.

I wish we had received confirmation from Mr. Brinkman that his son has been returned to him. However, as he is a government operative, I am sure the man’s details will forever be withheld from us. I must content myself with the surety that they are reunited. However, I would encourage persons in such an office as yours to keep vigilant.

Since I have refused an interview, I will grant you something more comprehensive, in the interest of making sure no one ever has to go through the sorts of things we have gone through. I have enclosed my diary for your perusal. These pages detail my first encounters with Societal magic and what we did to save my husband’s soul.

However, as you are a lady, I ask you, please skip past all the kissing bits. And please return it to me as soon as you’re finished. I never intended for the diary to become a novel for others to read, but it would seem it has become one. Let it be a lesson to keep faith and believe in love above all else.

Sincerely,

Natalie Stewart Whitby, Lady Denbury

The End

OF THE MAGIC MOST FOUL SAGA

 

More of Clara Templeton, Senator Bishop,

Mister Brinkman, and British Counterparts,

featuring appearances from Magic Most Foul

and Strangely Beautiful characters, in:

 

THE ETERNA FILES

Summer 2014 from Tor / Macmillan

 

&

 

The award-winning, nationally bestselling, acclaimed

STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL SAGA:

New, revised editions, coming 2014 from Tor / Macmillan

 

Read more:

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Acknowledgments

 

Thanks to Marcos and to the Hieber family for unconditional support of me and my work. Thanks to the readers who donated to the serialization of this project along the way, I cannot thank you enough for helping to sustain the venture. Thank you Perseus and Draco LePage for sharing my work so constantly and generously, that’s only one of the ways in which you are Angels, Treasures and Family. Thank you to my fabulous editor Haleigh Rucinski for coming on board with this whole madness and being such a help and a dear along the way, I couldn’t have done this without you. Thank you to my critique partner Cassandra Johnstone for fielding some of this half-cooked madness. With wine. Thank you Stephen Segal for the amazing cover and your services, you are a hero. Thank you to Melissa Singer, my upcoming Tor editor, for encouraging me to serialize this novel, it’s been an amazing and fulfilling experiment and I cannot wait for our next adventures.

To my readers, you are why I do this. To God and the Angels, I promise to do my best in your honour.