June 14

If I did dream of him last night, I do not remember it. And I would be hard pressed to forget anything about him. So one quiet night among my many troubled ones. Perhaps there is hope for my subconscious and its travels. Though one could hardly blame me for wishing to travel to Denbury. The problem is all the other things I seem to bring along.

I’ve a day at home, blessedly, a day I shall fill with words of yesterday’s happenings again, from where I left off…Pardon the crumbs in the spine, dear diary. Bessie brought me scones since I’ve been spending most of my free moments bent over my desk writing. She made some sort of comment that Jane Austen didn’t die of starvation so I’d best not either.

I did go back to Denbury immediately to hear from his lips what he’d written in the account that had been destroyed in my transition between the painting and reality. He caught me again, per custom (clearly my favorite part of this odd routine), and brought me up to meet his gaze.

“Hello again, fair lady. Do you come with news?”

I shook my head. “Sadly, no. Your papers turned to dust,” I said, closing my eyes and allowing myself a moment to relish the sound of my speech in my ears and the feeling of it in my mouth. I opened my eyes again and added, “It seems my spirit is the only thing that can pass through this portal. Nothing more.”

He shrugged. “I’d rather have access to your spirit than to all the papers in the world.”

If left to its own devices, this world would encourage me only to stare into his eyes, to reach for his hands, and to lose all sense of urgency to the desire that was increasingly difficult for us to ignore. I blushed at his kind words but sobered at a thought I didn’t bother to hide.

“Here, I’m your only tie to reality. But in the outside world, I doubt we’d be so bold. I’m a middle-class mute. Hardly the sort of girl you’d notice, let alone be allowed to notice.”

He looked as if I’d slapped him. “That isn’t true,” he protested. “And you’re not mute any longer,” he said proudly, as if he could claim some personal triumph.

“Out there, I am still,” I said sadly.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said, looking at the floor, kicking the edge of the rug, and adding defiantly, “But I’d still notice you.”

My heart leaped. But I had to stay on task. Attempting to ignore the seductive charms of this world, I spoke as crisply as I could: “I need to know everything about what happened. I’m told that this doorway is the stuff of spirits, not objects. I’m sorry the papers were destroyed. You’ll have to tell me.”

“You couldn’t have known. Though I did hope to spare telling you of these horrors personally. Somehow reading them lessens their effect.”

“I don’t know,” I replied with a little laugh. “I’ve been keeping a diary, and writing about these mad events seems as vivid as living them.”

A partial smile tugged at his mouth. “Perhaps you’re a better writer than I.”

“There’s no withholding now,” I replied plainly, bracing myself. “Tell me.”

He breathed deeply. This time, to preoccupy himself, he began to sort his desk, which I noticed had become rather cluttered with papers, doodles, pen scratches, and random measurement devices. I wondered if some were medical equipment that he happened to have kept lying about.

“As I said, it was something of ritual and witchcraft,” he began. “I can scarcely remember the face he wore before taking mine, though his presence was potent, his accent was French, and his manner was odd. As, of course, were his eyes. While I was trapped with my hands bound behind me, he painted, working furiously. Sometimes he would pause to ask questions. The questions were too personal: about my family, about whether or not I planned to take a wife—”

“Do you?” I blurted.

He eyed me, a smile playing at one corner of his mouth before he returned to an open drawer. “For your information, I do not have a girl at the ready.” Any amusement faded. “The fiend asked why not and then began to rhapsodize on the beauty that is woman, but he talked too much of servitude, dominion, and pleasure for my taste. I got the distinct impression that I was in the company of a hedonist.”

“But surely you’re promised?” I asked, curiosity besting tact. “Aren’t all landed young men eagerly positioned for politics and money?”

“You, too, with such personal questions?”

I blushed. “I am asking merely for investigative reasons, not personal ones.” (That was an outright lie.) “I assure you I am no hedonist,” I added. (That’s not a lie.)

“I hadn’t yet found a girl I fancied,” he replied, his British accent never more charming. “And I had determined that I would marry for love, not for wealth or convenience. My class has done the latter for generations, and it’s an abominable practice.”

I had to bite my lip to force myself not to ask what type of girl he fancied. He dropped a pen, which fell from the side of the desk and rolled on the wooden floor until it hit the edge of the rug. I moved to pick it up and hand it to him, bending as gracefully as my corset would allow.

Our fingers brushed together, and the surge that flooded through me rattled up and down my spine. For propriety’s sake, I should always have been wearing gloves while visiting him. Yet I’d taken off my gloves upon first entering the painting and doing so had become habit. I couldn’t imagine touching the painting—or him—differently.

He continued his grim account. “The fiend said humanity is a vessel for great and terrible things. He spoke of the body he inhabited as a marvelous vessel for art. There was business about my name. He kept calling me John. When I asked him about this, he sneered. ‘What’s in a name?’ he quoted Shakespeare with an odd laugh, while mixing powders and liquid like a mad chemist. His body moved like a marionette’s, as if his body and the mind that controlled it were not agreeing.”

“Perhaps the devil possessed that artist before overtaking you?” I asked.

“At the time I thought he was merely a mad French artist. Nothing against artists, but they do perceive the world in such peculiar ways. Wonderful ways, but perhaps terrible ways too. He put this around my neck,” Denbury said, then fished beneath the layers of his cravat to pluck out a curious talisman inscribed with yet more markings, entirely different from the runes. “I’ve tried to remove it, but, as you’ve seen, things tend to burn me when I fight back.”

If I guessed correctly, thinking back to travelogues I’d read in the school library, the markings were hieroglyphs. From Egypt. “Any idea what it means?” I asked.

Denbury shook his head, hid the pendant beneath his cravat with a grimace, and went to a drawer, where he resumed fiddling. I thought of asking if I could help, but the business seemed to calm him. Helping would just have been an excuse to stand closer to him.

“More talk of vessels when he placed it around my neck,” he continued. “He painted swiftly, pausing only to feed me soup and water, saying I’d do him no good if my vessel was dead. Once the painting was complete, I was struck by the likeness despite myself. Granted, it didn’t reflect my bound hands or horrified face. Once the final strokes were in place, the true terror began.

“He gagged me so I would stop cursing him. Babbling nonsensical things and citing gods, the forty martyrs of England, and ancient prophecies, he made my head spin. He traced a circle of powder on the floor, inside it a five-pointed star, and dribbled what I thought at first was scarlet paint. But from its copper scent, it was blood. Wax and other powders were involved, some that he rubbed against the painting frame, some that he rubbed against my skin.”

“Perhaps that’s where the smell of sulfur came from. Some compound?” I suggested.

“Perhaps. He chanted in languages I strained to hear, some unintelligible, some phrases in Latin. I understood ‘door,’ ‘soul,’ ‘through,’ ‘blood,’ and ‘sever’ or ‘split.’ He placed the painting directly behind me and removed the truss to which I’d been lashed. My body had no will to overcome him, to move. I must have been drugged with a paralytic. He came close enough for me to truly gauge his features, which were gaunt. He was an average man but for his eyes. His eyes were inhuman. Blood moistened the corners as he blinked.”

We both shuddered, both having seen those canine eyes.

“His foul breath said a phrase in Latin that I dare not repeat, but it translates to something like ‘I send the soulren through the door…’ The middle word I couldn’t recognize. I knew the Latin ‘soul’ as animus but it was conjugated incorrectly. I felt as if these words had struck me and saw myself parting from my own body. It was agonizing, as if I was literally being torn in two. Light crackled around me. The artist crumpled and fell. At this, I roused with hope of victory, but it was not to be.”

Denbury had stopped fussing. He was sitting in his chair, leaning in to me, and I had drawn close enough to perch on the side of the desk. Despite the heat of each other, only the chill of the account remained.

“Out of that man’s body came a dreadful shadow, black like a silhouette, and I fell onto the Persian rugs painted into this reality. I looked at where my shell still stood, separated across this frame, and saw it overtaken by a dark cloud. I heard a wet and terrible sound. Everything felt on fire, with red and orange light erupting across my eyes. Then silence. A drape was cast over the canvas, and I became as you see before you.”

Denbury sighed, exhausted by reliving the memories. He eased forward, his broad shoulders falling. “And that’s the lot of it. I’ve no sense of time. I’ve read as many of these books as will open, and those I’d already read ten times before.” He stared at me, rallying. “A man’s library should always be well used, don’t you think, Miss Stewart?”

I nodded, trying to smile after such a dread tale.

“So!” He pounded his fist on his desk with a flash in his bright eyes. “What do you think of my tale? Terrified?” he asked with a resigned, cold tone I didn’t like at all. I suppressed a shudder. This man was still a stranger. His events had perhaps changed him from the noble man with good intentions, and his soul might be as threatened as his body. All the more reason to get him out before nothing noble was left to save.

“Terrifying indeed,” I replied quietly, rising and putting a few paces between us. “But full of clues.” I had information to relay and work that then had to be done. But he was a doctor. Surely he knew this was no reasonable disease. “I must go and relay the information to Mrs. Northe.”

“I’ll see you again,” he said, part plea, part demand. In that moment I saw him as the lonely young man whose family had all been lost. My heart ached.

“You shall,” I replied quietly. Before I could promise anything more, I slipped out again and back into the exhibition room, woozy as I came into myself, pressing my hand to the boning of my corset to test my solidity and keep myself upright.

Mrs. Northe was at my arm. I nodded to her that I was all right. “Welcome back, my dear,” she said. “Did he tell you the terrible narrative?”

“The stuff of nightmares,” I signed. “And I should know. If I were you, I’d have a stiff drink on hand when I tell it.”

She nodded gravely and cupped my cheek. “You’re a very brave girl, Natalie Stewart.”

I wasn’t sure about bravery, but if Mrs. Northe said so, I’d believe her.

Later…

(I hardly even know the hours or the dates anymore. My life is one odd waking, walking dream.)

Mrs. Northe, Father, and I ate together that night as planned. Maggie too. I braced myself and tried my best to smile and act as if nothing remotely uncomfortable had passed between the two of us. To my delight, we embraced like sisters and she seemed just as happy to ignore that I’d stormed off the last time we met. She kept up her usual chatter about beautiful dresses and beautiful people, and I smiled and nodded.

But she watched my every interaction with Mrs. Northe like a hawk. While Maggie remained ever cordial, I wondered if she felt supplanted and didn’t like it. But Mrs. Northe had said I was meant for things that Maggie was not. Who was I to argue? It wasn’t as if I understood why.

Still, I wanted to remain Maggie’s friend. I liked her better with just the two of us together, not with the others. So, when she pulled me into the parlor before she was demanded again at home, I was eager for whatever she wished to share.

“I dreamed of him,” Maggie confessed, splaying herself on the settee and running her hands over the fine plum taffeta of her dinner dress. She looked up at me, and her eyes were wide with excitement. “Of Denbury, I mean.” She bit her lip, as if waiting for a response. I raised my eyebrows, gesturing for her to continue.

“The other girls have absolutely forbidden me to talk about him anymore because they think me…well, mad, to be so fixated on a man who doesn’t exist. But they’ve no imagination! I’m sure he’s alive somewhere and his suicide is just some sort of mystery that needs solving. Do you think I’m mad, Natalie?”

I shook my head vigorously. Maggie smiled, relieved.

She was right. It was exactly as she assumed, and so much worse. But could I tell her that? Who would seem more mad, her and her dreaming of him, or me with what I’d experienced?

Instead I plucked out my notebook, sharing her smile and partly confessing the truth. “I’ve dreamed of him too,” I wrote.

“Have you? I bet it was wonderful,” she breathed, and launched into her recitation. As she first spoke, the thought occurred to me: Could Maggie also share a dream with Denbury’s mind? If he was in that peculiar state, couldn’t more than one mind have access to him? That familiar flash of jealousy flooded my body, and I forced it down. It soon became clear that we had not dreamed of the same Denbury.

“He was…shadowy,” she described. “I was taken by the hand and led down a dim corridor somewhere, I don’t know, perhaps a New York alley. It was like he was stealing me away somewhere illicit. Oh, Natalie, promise you won’t say a word. Dreamy scandal is what it is!”

I gestured to my mouth and gave her a look.

Maggie screwed up her face, apologetic. “Oh. I’m so sorry, Natalie. Of course you can’t say a word. I just…forget.”

“I promise not to sign or write a word of it either,” I wrote, smiling to absolve her of her momentary guilt. She grinned, and all was well again. (Of course, the only reason anyone could forget that I don’t talk is if the person never paused for a moment to allow actual conversation. But that’s beside the point.)

Maggie continued: “He had his…hands on me, and he was murmuring in my ear. I’m not sure what language it was, but it was…seductive. He drew back enough under the gaslight for me to see his eyes shining and his face hungry. Hungry for me. He clutched my arms tightly, and I could feel his nails on my skin as he pulled me close. I faded then, a swoon into darkness, and that was all I could recall.” She shuddered in delight.

I shuddered too, but for another reason. That sounded like the demon, not Denbury.

“What do you think, Natalie?”

My pencil was on the paper immediately. “Wouldn’t he be more of a gentleman about it?” I wrote. And then regretted it. Maggie’s face fell, and the color on her cheeks heightened as if I’d shamed her.

“He didn’t take too much advantage, Natalie. Goodness. Can’t a girl dream of touches?”

I nodded. Of course a girl could. I’d be quite the hypocrite otherwise. I scribbled an apology. Maggie stiffed.

“Well then, what did you dream?”

“I was having a nightmare,” I wrote. “And he was there. He banished the horror like a guardian angel.”

I decided to leave out the part about our near-kiss, which, in my opinion, had been infinitely more pleasant than the exchange Maggie had described. There was no need to turn this into a rivalry. But perhaps I had somehow already failed at this.

“Maggie? Natalie?” Mrs. Northe called.

Maggie didn’t look at me again as we rose and wandered out of the parlor, an uneasiness having settled about us again. I suppose I’m not very good at the friendship process. I hadn’t made lasting connections at school. It is hard when all manners of issues and disabilities have brought a group of people together.

Considering the blind, the deaf, and the truly mute, rather than my selective condition, we were in separate sensory worlds. You’d think our disabilities would have made us closer. But not if, at heart, some of us are just lone wolves. Lone wolves who are very particular about things and have strong opinions, who are passionate and perhaps unconventional. While we may want a bosom friend, we don’t always know how best to relate to one.

And yet, how could things with Denbury then feel so easy?

Perhaps because, on some level, I wasn’t registering him as real. Anything can happen in a dream world. I could be my best self, nightmares aside. I could talk. I could be pretty, smart, and witty. The idea of interacting with Denbury in this quiet, “real” world of mine was suddenly as awkward a prospect as the picnic with the girls had turned out to be. But at the end of it all, I didn’t live in that world. I lived in this one. And I had to help him make his way home to it.

Father again was all too happy to relax with reading, fine liquor, and tobacco, and he took to the den as if it were his own. It was then that Mrs. Northe ushered Maggie toward the door. Maggie was quick to protest.

“But why do I have to go home if Natalie gets to stay?” she whined.

“Because her father is, thank God, hard at work finishing my late husband’s stash of horrid cigars. They were too damn expensive for me to throw out in good conscience. Not to mention that your mother scolds me if you’re here past nine. She thinks I’m experimenting on you as a medium.”

“But I’d love that!” Maggie cried.

“And that’s why your mother hates you coming here, except for the fact that she’d like to make sure I remember your family when I die!” Mrs. Northe retorted. “Bill will see you home. The carriage awaits.” She gestured toward her footman standing down the stoop and kissed Maggie on the head. Maggie looked at me, forlorn, and I offered her a genuine look of sadness. I did want to be her friend. But there would always be secrets between us. Nothing could change that now.

“Now, then!” Mrs. Northe stated brightly once Maggie was gone. She took me by the arm and led me into her library, where she filled a small glass of cordial for us both and lifted her glass. I did the same.

“To the mysteries of the universe.” She lifted her glass, and we clinked the fine crystal.

“I’ve been thinking about the murder in the Five Points,” she began. “I believe it’s the beginning of some ritual. The intruder to my home might not have been trying to steal Denbury at all, perhaps merely to haunt him, as you yourself saw at the Art Association. The demon will likely haunt his likeness again, provided he’s not interrupted. I believe these…things are creatures of habit. That is the way with many psychopaths and followers of the foul and vicious. If we could spy upon Denbury’s possessor, we could follow him, having heard his plan, and learn of him. The trick would be how to spy on the creature without it suspecting it may be followed.”

And that was when I began to entertain a whole new brave and foolish notion. But first: “Tell me of the runes, and then I’ll tell you his ‘spell,’” I prompted, using a mixture of signing and writing out words.

“I’ve done the translating already.” Mrs. Northe plucked two books and a piece of paper from her table. “Very modern, this demon. Likes to think he’s an intellectual, playing at culture. It’s not a spell. It translates roughly to a poem. I recognized it as Baudelaire. I’ve the first edition here. But the carvings on the painting have one word missing, in the last line. Here’s the poem in its entirety. It’s from his Flowers of Evil. A troublesome work. Some critics adore it, but many think it as silly as it seems. The poem is aptly titled ‘The Possessed.’”

I shivered as she set the books and paper in my lap. I looked first at the runic alphabet as translated into our common alphabet and then at a manuscript in French. An odd combination, I thought, but then again, it wasn’t as though this all made a great deal of sense.

LE POSSÉDÉ

Le soleil s’est couvert d’un crêpe. Comme lui,

Ô Lune de ma vie! Emmitoufle-toi d’ombre

Dors ou fume à ton gré; sois muette, sois sombre,

Et plonge tout entière au gouffre de l’Ennui;

Je t’aime ainsi! Pourtant, si tu veux aujourd’hui,

Comme un astre éclipsé qui sort de la pénombre,

Te pavaner aux lieux que la Folie encombre.

C’est bien! Charmant poignard, jaillis de ton étui!

Allume ta prunelle à la flamme des lustres!

Allume le désir dans les regards des rustres!

Tout de toi m’est plaisir, morbide ou pétulant;

Sois ce que tu voudras, nuit noire, rouge aurore;

Il n’est pas une fibre en tout mon corps tremblant

Qui ne crie: Ô mon cher Belzébuth, je t’adore!

—Charles Baudelaire

Mrs. Northe presented me with another paper. “I’ve done my own translation, with a few liberties, perhaps, but the gist remains.”

THE POSSESSED

The sun in crepe has shrouded his fire.

Moon of my life! Partly shade yourself as he.

Sleep or smoke. Be quiet and be dark,

In the abyss of dullness drown whole;

I love you this way! However, should you care,

Like a brilliant star from eclipse emerging,

To flirt with folly where crowds yet surge—

Gleam, pretty blade, from sheath and stab!

Light your eyes from glass chandeliers!

Illuminate lust-filled looks of louts who pass!

Morbid or petulant, I thrill before you;

Be what you will, black night or red dawn;

No thread of my body drawn tight,

But cries: “Beloved——I adore you!”

Mrs. Northe continued: “There’s a blank space where the word in question should be in the English translation. That was the word missing. As you see in the original French poem, that word is Belzébuth—translated, it is Beelzebub…a name for the Devil.”

I stared up at Mrs. Northe, gulping. She concentrated on the poems.

Her subsequent scoffing response amused me. “Really, I’d thought love poems to the Devil would be too low and messy for high magic like this, too dramatic and silly. I’m surprised.”

That made me think of something Denbury had said, and I wrote out his exact phrasing for her: “Artists perceive the world in such peculiar ways. Wonderful ways, but perhaps terrible ways too.” Mrs. Northe nodded, squinting in thought.

“Why do this?” I signed, gesturing at all the runes. Copying out the poem seemed a lot of trouble to go to only to omit the most important part, the dedication.

Mrs. Northe paced the room shaking her head. “Tell me everything else.” We paused as tea was brought in for us, and I took it gratefully, the hot liquid such a comfort. Perhaps my body would get used to shaking; this grim business would likely chill me to the bone for some time to come. “Natalie, tell me everything,” Mrs. Northe demanded gently. “Everything he told you.”

I stared at her, allowing the fear that I felt to register on my face and in my eyes.

She placed her hand on mine, and her expression calmed any doubts. “No matter how mad you fear it sounds.” She was, as I had to be, a true believer in the impossible.

I signed and wrote Denbury’s story as best I could: Crenfall, the den, the French painter, the odd tangents as he worked. We had plenty of shudders between us in the retelling.

Mrs. Northe asked about the mechanics of Denbury’s world, and I attempted to sign explanation: that time passed differently and that his basic human needs were suspended. Outside, my body stood frozen while lifetimes could have passed for us within that dream state, and while in his company, there was neither hunger nor thirst.

“Your spirits exist together there, your minds and souls. Your identities, then, are tactile to each other.”

I thrilled at the idea that our spirits coexisted on some otherworldly plane, but I dared add, “We share my dreams. When I visited him today, he knew I’d been there. He was with me in my terrible nightmare all along.”

“Oh? Why, that’s magnificent!” she exclaimed, ignoring my shudder. “It simply goes to prove that minds and spirits have ways to move about the world and that movement is not limited only to the body. It’s a theory I rarely see in practice, but something that proves useful in dealings like these. There is being awake, being asleep, and then…sometimes there’s another type of existence entirely.”

I moved to ask her more about that, but she demanded the particulars of the ritual itself.

I tried to describe the vile act of possession that had cast Denbury’s better self into a painted prison. Mrs. Northe was astute about every detail: the business about the name “John,” the powders, the liquid, the blood, and the symbols.

She took a deep breath. “All spell components,” Mrs. Northe declared. “Oh, Natalie, this is magic most foul. I daresay even Shakespeare’s witches couldn’t have dreamed this up.”

Tapping a pen to a notebook, she suddenly drew a symbol. “That circle around the room that Denbury described, with the star inside, I wonder if it was this…” Her drawing was of a five-pointed star with two of the points facing upward.

I raised my eyebrows in query.

“A pentagram,” she explained. “A symbol of protection and goodwill when it’s drawn or worn with a single point upward.” She turned the paper to make it just so. “But inverted…” She turned the symbol on its end again with the two points upraised like horns. “It’s often taken to mean homage to the Devil.”

I shuddered and yet I couldn’t hold back an admiring smile. “You’re not a spiritualist. You’re a scholar,” I signed.

She looked at me. “A woman should be as educated as humanly possible about anything that interests her. And while I’m not interested in black forms of magic, I am interested in dispelling, discrediting, and fighting them at all costs.” Mrs. Northe did not linger on this thought. “What else?”

I described how Denbury was bound and trapped and told her about the final Latin words, with the word within that didn’t quite match up.

“That’s the crux of the spell,” Mrs. Northe murmured. “That’s the sending part of it.”

Oh, and I’d nearly forgotten. There were so many overwhelming aspects to retain. His arm. I lifted my sleeve, showing her what I had copied of it onto my arm with his pen, and then I replicated it on paper, filling in the lines I’d left blank. “This was on his arm,” I explained, “sizzled into his flesh during the original rite and refreshed during the murder.”

Mrs. Northe considered the runes and checked them against her books. “John. The markings mean ‘John.’ I wonder if those markings on that poor beheaded girl’s wrist mean, similarly, ‘Barbara.’”

This struck me, and I stared at Mrs. Northe in terror. “It must. My dream.” I fumbled to sign. “The corpse with ‘Barbara’ carved on the arm…remember, I foresaw it.”

“Yes, Natalie. And how awful to receive such omens. But it reinforces that you’re entwined in Denbury’s fate. What else?”

I signed about the sparks and light Denbury saw around the demon, as if particular colors were refracted from a prism and seen at times of struggle or when he tested his prison walls, and how he saw my halo colors as opposite.

Mrs. Northe sat back in her finely upholstered chair. “This is powerful stuff indeed,” she said finally. Her brow furrowed. “Are you baptized, child?”

I stared at her. “Who wouldn’t be?” I signed.

“One cannot and should not make assumptions. Otherwise I’d do a different blessing. But a blessing you need, child. I don’t like this one bit.” She gestured at the marks on my arm. “I don’t want these dark things to linger on you any more than they have already.” She eyed me. “Be sure to go to church on Sunday. We need all the blessings we can get. Ritual to combat ritual.”

She took a small vial of clear liquid from a shelf, uncorked it, dabbed a bit on her finger, and marked my forehead with a cross in oil. She laid her hands on my head and murmured a familiar blessing. After noting the marks, she used the same oil and her handkerchief to rub the ink from my arm, while offering another blessing. The marks smeared black and ugly, the ink stubborn.

I went on to mention Denbury’s necklace, the talisman the demon had put around his neck, describing and transferring the symbols onto paper for her perusal. I was correct that they were hieroglyphs.

“A cartouche of sorts,” Mrs. Northe murmured. She went to another bookshelf and plucked another fine volume, musing as she flipped through pages. “Dear Lord, add Egyptian gods into the mix now too? What a mess. A cartouche is a set of hieroglyphs, similar to what we think of as a monogram. But this cartouche, I believe, means vessel.”

She put the book down and returned to sit with our notes, saying, “The fiend spoke of vessels, so it would follow…” I could practically hear Mrs. Northe’s mind reeling at great speed. She continued. “Remind me, I must check the nameplate of the painting attached to the frame.” I nodded. “Baptized you may be, but do you consider yourself a Christian, Natalie?” she asked.

This was not a question I expected. Just as I had assumed everyone was baptized, I’d never considered myself otherwise. I nodded. “Lutheran,” I clarified for her, writing in my little notebook.

“Indeed, as I am Episcopalian,” she replied. “Therefore—” She stopped short as she noticed my expression. She set her jaw.

“As I have said, Natalie, spiritualism does not preclude my Christianity. Would you tell any of my Quaker colleagues that they do not believe the Bible? They’d give you a calm, thorough argument and they’d win. We must here abandon prejudices. The methods to solve these riddles may not be found in our faith at all, but in others or in dark things with which we have no business.

“That’s what frightens me most, all this borrowing. ‘I am a jealous God,’ says scripture. Every religion has a jealous god, in some way. Poor Denbury is in a pit of jealous gods, each offended that their separate parts should be so oddly and disrespectfully thrown together. That’s quite a mess of energies that I’d rather not be in the middle of.”

I sat utterly overwhelmed. Mrs. Northe seemed worried but not defeated. Perhaps forces were at work to bring us good parties together, a ragtag battalion against the darkness. I liked to think so. I didn’t think God would care about which denominations we were, as long as we were unified in rejecting any works of a devil.

Mrs. Northe was still musing aloud.

“We need to see what factors emerge consistently in the crimes. But letting more women die just for the sake of empirical evidence won’t do. We don’t have the luxury to wait and see. We are dealing with separation of body and soul. Then the imprisonment of the soul and the possession of a body. Identity and the transfer of it. We know who we are because of our soul and consciousness. Our soul is who we are, not what we are. Who Denbury is remains in the painting. The what of Denbury—the mortal stuffs, the shell of his body, and all the animal that remains—walks the streets of New York City freely. Now, how to bring those two parties back together?”

“The body isn’t afraid to be near the soul,” I signed. “It haunts the painting.”

Mrs. Northe nodded. “So the trick will be in the reversal. To reverse the curse when the two are face-to-face. And for that, we need every word that was spoken. We’ll put it together with the runes. Tell me again, those dread words…write down the spell.”

I wrote out the words Denbury had spoken to me.

Mrs. Northe shook her head. “Maddening.” She too stumbled over the word that Denbury himself couldn’t make out. Soulren was not a word. “I imagine we must know every word of this spell for it to hold any power. The actor must understand every phrase of Shakespeare to make his soliloquy clear and the poet every word of her prose. The priest must understand the words of scripture to be able to give his blessing, and so must those who wield spells comprehend every word. Thus, any empty word would render a spell meaningless.”

She ruminated on the details, pausing to write down key words. After pondering a long while, she looked up.

“Should we mention this to your father?” Mrs. Northe asked quietly. I shook my head. “Why, because he will not believe?”

“He would not want to,” I countered. Having never fully recovered from Mother’s death, he was more sensitive than he would ever let on. This would do his heart no good. “What about Maggie?”

“Not a word of it. She’s too flighty for such grave things. She wouldn’t understand.”

I thought about it a moment and nodded. Truly, jealousy aside, if I’d been the one drawn into Lord Denbury’s danger, then his company was to be my reward and mine alone.

Mrs. Northe reached forward and squeezed my hand. The warmth of her touch made me realize my own chilled extremities. “Good work in gathering evidence, Natalie, very good. But I fear you’ll have to do far more.”

I nodded, feeling like I’d aged a year in a few days.

And as I’ve been in this room for more hours than I dare count, I’m off to kneel before the altar at Immanuel. I prefer the space when it’s quiet and I’m left alone to my prayers without the kind but pitying looks of the congregants.

Afterward I’ll make a pilgrimage to my beloved Central Park. I’ll clear my mind and bolster my heart with natural beauty by sitting at the feet of my sacred Angel of the Waters as she rises above the Bethesda Terrace. Hers is my favorite visage of those the city has to offer. It can’t hurt to be near angels in times like this.