From then on I went nowhere without my fiancé. I could explain this away because of the fiasco at the club with Paetus. My only separation was at night, when etiquette said we must sleep in separate houses, and when I was at ladies-only events such as playing bridge or morning tea. So it was natural that I took him to the waterfront.

Observing the bustling life for so many hours, I was a familiar sight to most of the watermen. They were still shocked to see me approach.

I did not just visit the passenger ships and steamboats. I had to make very sure that Theodore was not taken on by any sort of vessel.

I gave each man coin, described my nephew, and promised true riches to the man who could detain him. “He will have money and perhaps a man or two guarding him,” I told them. “Do not alarm him but grant him passage should he hire you. Find some excuse for delaying departure and send a man to me. I will pay you triple his fare,” I told them and gave each a card with my address.

I repeated the process for the stagecoach stations and the railway. The train was the most difficult, for I could pay no amount to ensure they delay departure. The trainmen were proud of their schedule and a change in times could cause a deadly series of events. I had to settle for paying the ticket men not to sell to thirteen-year-old boys matching Theodore’s specifics.

London had entirely too many inns to cover, in addition to the places offering rooms to young men of meager means. I had several letter-writing shops put out advertisements for scribes. Theodore might be looking for work since he no longer had my patronage, unless someone else, some other Incola, was banking him. After that, which took several days, there was nothing more my money could do.

Mr. Hall devised a way to search for hollow places behind the walls, so I explored my house for any hidden places that could hold records or journals. Though not as many as Julian had indicated, I found several secret passageways of which I had been unaware. These were sealed, especially the ones that had an entrance on the exterior of the house. There was one I left unobstructed.

As Julian stole the body in which I knew him, he had been unable to register all but the most severe sensations. Because of this, I had undergone training in the application and art of “exquisite pain.” Before my learning he had to be satisfied with beatings twice a year, delivered by the traveling Mistress. After she taught me, Julian and I invented ways to increase the sensations to a level enjoyable to a man as desensitized as he. Julian had converted one of our extra bedrooms into a torture chamber, complete with a birching pony and a St. Andrew’s Cross.

The secret passageway to this room showed some recent use, though I had not used it since before Julian’s death. I estimated we had found the “tenebrae” to which Paetus had referred. The walls of the room were covered in various devices with which I was intimately acquainted. To my surprise, they had been kept oiled and greased and cleaned. I thought I was the only one with a key to that room. I immediately commissioned a new mechanical metal door and punch-key lock, the kind I knew even I would have difficulty breaking down. I set the code to something only I knew and had the walls lined with steel. The windows, too, were covered and I had made a place of darkness indeed.

The other triumph of the day was a small compartment found in the nursery. There were a dozen journals hidden here. They were not dusty as I might expect but that could be due to the seal on the storage space. I relocated them to the library and found they were written in some sort of code. The name Archelaos Straton was etched into the cover of the oldest one. A modern codex, its pages were bound together on the side, but the pages appeared to be cut from a scroll and rearranged into book form.

When Leon arrived for dinner that evening, I showed the books to him. He found them mysterious and settled into reading them right away. I had to rudely interrupt when I could stand it no longer, asking, “Can you decipher the code?”

He looked at me over the tops of his spectacles. “They are not written in code, my love. This is merely the old style of writing Latin.”

“You can read it then?” Excited, I perched on the armrest next to him, having quickly become accustomed to the new nearness I could enjoy with Leon.

“It was used before my time but yes, I am familiar enough to comprehend.”

“You will have to read quickly because I cannot bear to wait. I must know who Archelaos Straton was.” I patted his shoulder and stood, looking to give him time and space to concentrate.

“I don’t have to read these to know that, Ramillia. I knew Archelaos Straton for years. You knew him as Julian Lawrence but that is the name of the body he inhabited for the longest period of time. For all I know, Archelaos Straton could simply be the name of the body previous to that one. I do not know how old the consciousness you think of as Julian actually is, or Paetus for that matter.” I collapsed in the settee across from him and he continued. “I grew up knowing that I was not only the second son to a wealthy Roman but a creature not entirely human, capable of living forever. I was the only one born to my father, though he had many children. It was not until I was a young man that I knew we could ride in the body of another, not until I met Archelaos and Sophus. Archelaos was a master at gathering men around him and Sophus, as his name would suggest, was clever and sly. Together they were hard to resist. I was their friend, but then they decided to take the bodies of Julian and Paetus, both of whom I had known to be noble and decent men. I begged them not to but they wouldn’t hear it. I have been building my army, biding my time, waiting for the moment to come when I can avenge the death, or complete subjugation, of Julian and Paetus by Archelaos and Sophus. You are the first body to ever be tempting enough to entice Archelaos from Julian’s.”

“I think I spoke to the ghost of Julian, the real Julian, last week.”

“You can speak to spirits?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

“No, not I. I was in attendance for a séance held by the Dowager Countess of Edgington.”

“You should know that those women posing as mediums are charlatans out for your money.” His voice tone neared that of reprimand. He waved away my concern in a way reminiscent of every other Victorian husband. It rankled.

“I thought so too,” I argued, “and looked to enjoy a morning of innocent fun but something overtook the woman’s body and spoke through her mouth. He warned me against Archelaos Straton.” That got his attention. He closed the book and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. No one else could possibly know that name, aside from Paetus and the people in this room. I insisted, “It had to be him.”

Leon agreed, intrigued. “What did he say, exactly?”

Sally had repeated it so many times that she easily quoted in its original tongue, “Archelaos Straton has always been a master of his army. You may have stolen the herd he shepherded using my body but he will quickly regain power. He is closer to his heart’s desire than he has ever been.”

“Incredible. A true medium—a conduit for spirits who have passed on. We simply must see this person again.” I understood his excitement. Speaking to the man who had carried Archelaos would have incalculable assets to our cause. Especially if what he said—that Archelaos was closer than ever to his heart’s desire—was true.

I considered that by his description, all Carriers were a form of medium. Maybe Madame Morvou was like me and had a way of masking her true nature and found a way to profit from her ability. “She was hesitant at first but I was able to convince her to come here tomorrow morning for a private session.”

“Wonderful. I will join you. Together we will figure this out. If it was the original Julian—he was my friend and may be more communicative with me around—he can help us. He might be in possession of information about Paetus’ or another Incola's weakness.”

 

Madame Morvou never showed Monday morning. Leon and I took matters into our own hands. Her card held her address and we had the means of travel. Though I had been free to travel the city after Julian and I had wed, I found myself in a completely unfamiliar part of town when the carriage stopped. It was an average neighborhood, filled with moderately comfortable families’ homes. With no inns, taverns, and marketplaces, no wonder it had escaped my attention.

As we climbed the stoop, we could see the front door was ajar, the latch shattered. A large boot print near the ruined knob bore witness that the door had been kicked open. Leon stepped around me, putting himself between my body and any danger. He called the guards to surround us and sent his two most trusted inside. Andrew came back out quickly.

“Whoever did this is gone, sir. Auley is checking upstairs but I think you are going to want to see this.” He looked over Leon’s shoulder at me. “The lady best wait in the carriage.”

We would be ruled by no man, especially not an employee. I gestured to Mr. Hall and he carried his inventions into the house. Lifting our chin arrogantly, Sally pushed around Leon and past Andrew.

The front rooms were closed up, the furniture and fixtures covered by cloth, the way the servants of my London home had treated it when I planned my extended absence. Madame Morvou may have never intended to keep our appointment. Other than that, nothing seemed amiss.

Mr. Hall began taking his readings, collecting samples for his catalog. Andrew led us down into the kitchen. It was oddly decorated for a room that would normally be stark and plain white. Tiny red dots covered the walls, and a thick rug of the same shade lay under the chair closest to us. Every kitchen I had ever seen was devoid of decoration but in a house such as this, meals would have been taken there so perhaps that was why it was so adorned.

A man slumped in that chair. Leon rushed to him.

Useless effort, Sally said to me. The man is clearly dead. The crimson rug was no rug. It and the spots that had landed on every surface of the kitchen were blood. Andrew watched me carefully, ready to catch me should I faint as I joined Leon.

Pewter handles protruded from the corpse’s torso, arms, and legs. A dishrag had been stuffed into his mouth with only a corner of the cloth visible. “Why would anyone do this?” I asked. “So many knives.”

I was grateful no one else heard Sally. Yeah, why not use one knife repeatedly? Leaving such a number of things that could be hawked must mean it was no burglary.

“Not knives.” Leon grabbed the handle of one and yanked. It came free of the body with a nauseating wet suction sound. Holding its gore-covered end out to me he said, “Someone stabbed this man with spoons.” Looking around, he located the holder block nearby, still laden with knives. The killer could have easily grabbed those instead but he’d chosen spoons. “They did it for effect. This man was tortured.”

Torture is usually a means to an end. With the victim’s mouth blocked, they could not have wanted information from him. Who were they trying to intimidate? I wondered. I rounded the table and nearly tripped over the obvious answer. Madame Morvou’s nude body lay mangled at my feet, her face frozen in terror with a mouth open that could no longer scream. The heavy large table had obstructed our view of her until I came to the far side.

She was tidy, with no spilled blood, and yet her death was measurably more horrific. Blood pooled just below the surface of her skin. The murderer had stripped her of her clothes and gripped each of her limbs on either side of the joints, twisting until the extremities faced the wrong direction. Handprints decorated her body, though none were as defined as the ones around her neck. He had choked the medium slowly, watching the life drain from her face. I placed my hand atop one macabre impression. It was not a match in size. “The killer was a man. Not too big, not too small.”

I grazed her jaw during my measurements. Madame Morvou’s mouth had been stretched open so forcefully that the hinge on either side shattered and yet the teeth were unscathed. Sally tried to imagine how such a thing could be accomplished. The jaw closed with a very strong muscle, so a hard utensil would have had to be used to pry them open that wide. That would have broken at least a few teeth. There was no sign that a weapon had been used anywhere on the body. “Not a man, a Carrier,” Sally declared. The person who could do this would have to be inhumanly strong.

A shot rang out, loud in the small space, and I looked up just in time to see Leon clutch his chest and collapse. I scarcely saw the intruder standing in the door when he turned the smoking barrel of his revolver on me. Andrew made quick work of whom I now recognized was one of Madame’s assistants. I couldn’t stop the bloodshed that followed. Leon was holding a bloody implement and I had my hand wrapped around his dead employer’s neck. He must have thought we were the murderers.

“My lady, we must make haste!” Auley shouted at me. He and Andrew guarded the doors while two of our men from outside carried Leon toward the front door. I knew he was right but I froze, my focus drawn to the table’s edge. The murderer had carved a message into the oak.

Your blood is mine. You belong to me.