Chapter Nine

The cloying scent of incense hung in the air like a reproach. Stead would never get the smell out of his rooms tonight, but that disturbed him far less than the sight, just now, of that small boy askew on the floor of the Astors’ bedroom, where he must have no doubt sneaked to play. His eyes had been open, until the physician bent down to gently close the boy’s lids.

A seizure, the physician had determined, after hearing the accounts of the servants who’d witnessed it.

Stead pushed the porthole out as far as it would go. The air against his face was chilly and damp. Wisps of fog floated above the black water, looking like clouds. The clouds of heaven and a cold, brackish hell.

He turned his back on the porthole. The séance had been unsettling. He snatched the bread off the table and threw it out the porthole. He lost sight of it in the mist but was sure it had fallen into the ocean.

With any luck, the wraith would follow it down.

The electric lights filled his room with a bright yellow glow. He normally detested electric lights but was glad for them now.

He stood at the table and deliberately unfocused his eyes. He had seen enough tonight and would see no more. What had happened at the table? He had no doubt that it was supernatural—he had been attending séances for fifteen years, had seen bald fakery as well as the unexplainable—but struggled to make sense of what had transpired tonight. These smart society people had ridiculed him at dinner, but at the first sign of disturbance, to whom do they run? To him, of course. Then they wanted his help. Or at any rate, the young (far too young) Madeleine Astor had wanted it, and what Madeleine Astor wanted, she got.

As he cleared the table, he thought of calling for the Hebbley girl, the stewardess, for help—or perhaps just to distract him from the weight of this silence—but he could barely stand to be in her presence. That was the real reason he’d asked about getting a different steward for his cabin.

Though he could hardly admit it to himself, the girl reminded him of Eliza.

Which was ridiculous. He hadn’t seen Eliza Armstrong since The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon had come out in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885. She had been thirteen then, which meant she would be forty today.

Besides, Eliza and this Anne Hebbley looked nothing alike. And yet there was something about the stewardess that unsettled him. Made him feel sad and . . . guilty. Terribly guilty.

A guilt he was unable to escape. He thought he’d made his peace with that. Had served three months at Coldbath Prison for what was, he insisted to this day, an honest miscalculation. But apparently that was not enough.

Was the presence that had visited him this evening . . . Eliza?

That would mean she was dead. But the private investigator’s report had said otherwise. And it had to be right. Stead had staked everything on seeing her again, one last time. In America.

He pushed the idea away.

Besides, what possible connection would there have been between Eliza and the Astors’ servant boy?

No, what had happened to the boy was something else.

Guggenheim’s physician tried to argue it had been a fit of epilepsy following a delirium that had perhaps set in much earlier in the day, but Stead knew better.

A seizure was one of the most common signs.

There was no doubt in Stead’s mind: a demon was lurking on board this ship. While they’d all been distracted here in Stead’s room, attempting to reach out to the spirit, it had evaded them, had found the boy alone, lured him somewhere private, then swirled its ghostly fingers into the boy’s chest—had wound its way up until it was choking the child from the inside.

The boy had died, as if it had been fated to be so.

And the spirit was still among them—a spirit who wanted something badly, though it was still anyone’s guess what that could be.