A sharp rap at the door woke Annie from sleep—thick and gauzy, full of rain and the mutations of memory into dream: emerald fields of clover slashed through with city streets; the ocean crashing against the cliffs of Ballintoy; the ocean baring white fangs; the ocean stretching out white arms; the ocean calling, crying, the voices trapped inside it—
She blinked and rubbed her eyes. She couldn’t imagine she’d been asleep very long; it felt as though she’d just peeled off her uniform and crawled into her narrow bunk. Her body felt small and bare in her thin nightgown. In the dark, she heard Violet moan across the room. Whoever was outside the door had awakened both of them.
She opened the door to see Alexander Littlejohn, Chief Steward Latimer’s second, leaning in the doorway. He was in charge of the night shift, overseeing the small team that readied the ship for the following day, straightening deck chairs and polishing handrails, restocking supply stations, emptying ash cans and spittoons. Littlejohn squeezed his hat in his hands, apparently more than a little apprehensive knocking on stewardesses’ doors in the middle of the night.
“I’m sorry to be waking you, Miss Hebbley, but the call bell in the service room’s gone off for you.” Annie and Violet exchanged a look: it was highly unusual for passengers to ring for their stewards after a certain hour, and if they did, usually one of Mr. Littlejohn’s team answered.
“Which cabin?” Annie asked as she reached for her shoes.
“It’s Mrs. Astor.”
That wasn’t her room at all. Littlejohn had made a mistake. “Well, then you want Violet.”
Littlejohn sighed. “I know that, Miss Hebbley, but why do you think I’ve come down here? Mrs. Astor asked specifically for you. You know they’re friends of Ismay?” He was referring to J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, aboard for the Titanic’s maiden voyage. “What Mrs. Astor wants, Mrs. Astor gets.”
Annie hurried down the passageway in just her nightgown and a light overcoat. The ship was so very dark at night, the flicker of the hall lights dancing in and out of her vision. Urgency coursed through her. The last time she’d been called to help the Astors was the night of their servant boy’s death.
She felt for the brooch but remembered it was in the pocket of her work apron. She felt unmoored without it, somehow.
What reason could Madeleine Astor have to ask for her? And the look on Violet’s face . . . Clearly, she suspected Annie was trying to steal one of her passengers, hoping for generous tips at the end of the trip, no doubt. It didn’t matter that Annie swore this wasn’t the case and that she barely knew Maddie Astor. She couldn’t erase that hurt look from Violet’s face.
Mrs. Astor was already wearing a fur-trimmed coat when Annie arrived. There was also a shawl over her shoulders and her shoes buttoned on her feet, lace-trimmed cuffs of her nightgown peeking out from her sleeves. Otherwise, the stateroom looked normal for this hour, dark and still, with the husband and Airedale, Kitty, probably fast asleep in the next room. “I’ve got insomnia.” She gestured to her belly, which Annie knew was full with child, though underneath the heavy, tentlike coat she wore, you couldn’t quite tell. “I need to take a stroll, and I want you to escort me,” she said.
Why me? Annie wanted to ask. Why not one of your servants or your husband or even Violet? This whole episode was strange, very strange indeed. Stranger still was the way Madeleine’s eyes seemed so distant, as if she were sleepwalking . . . which reminded Annie that she herself had sleepwalked only last night . . . which gave her the brief flash of worry that she might be dreaming all of this. Perhaps she was simply sleepwalking again? Could it be that none of this was real?
It certainly didn’t feel real. At this hour of the night, with dark dreams still hugging the edges of her thoughts, Annie could swear she could feel the sway of the boat beneath her more sharply, could feel the way they were suspended above depths and depths of seawater merely by the hubris of man’s progress, of invention. There was no sensible reason that a ship of this size should float. She had no understanding of physics, and could not fathom how it was possible.
But that was modern life: full of impossibilities.
And if life was a series of impossibilities . . . Annie shivered. It meant anything was possible, that you could be haunted or pursued, or succumb to madness at any given moment. All or none of those things might be true.
Maddie’s hand on Annie’s arm was light but firm, and Annie couldn’t help but feel that they weren’t just casually wandering the halls, that this was more than just a relaxed midnight meander.
Was Maddie leading her somewhere?
“I wonder, is something in particular bothering you?” Annie asked. She tried to reassure herself—her nerves were unjustified. This poor girl, actually younger than Annie but married and with child, was probably just lonely. Maybe she was distraught over the death of the boy, Teddy. He was closer to her age than her own husband, after all.
“It’s the pregnancy, I’m afraid. I’m too uncomfortable to sleep. Warm milk doesn’t help, reading doesn’t help . . . the only thing that helps is to take a long walk. My mind is . . . Have you ever read Shakespeare, Miss Hebbley?”
Annie felt the question like a pinprick through her clothing. It stung. Girls like Annie did not read Shakespeare. They were lucky to be able to read at all.
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, never mind that, but there’s this line in Macbeth—oops.” She put her hands over her mouth. “You’re not supposed to say the name of the play out loud, Jack told me it’s bad luck, not that I’m superstitious. Anyway, there’s this line I love,” she whispered as they turned a corner into another vacant alleyway.
“Yes?” Annie was, quite honestly, mystified by everything Maddie was saying.
“O, full of scorpions is my mind. Isn’t it just perfect? To describe those restless thoughts we have at night?”
The image was disturbing. Though Annie had never seen a scorpion, she knew what they were. “Yes, Mrs. Astor,” she said, even though she didn’t agree—just the thought of a heap of venomous creatures writhing and twisting and crawling over themselves made her skin prickle.
“Please call me Maddie,” the girl replied. More of that American familiarity, like it fooled anyone. They were not equals.
Behind a door came the faint sound of a man snoring. Such an odd sound, gentle and rough at the same time. Familiar and yet disquieting. Angry and yet reassuring. It reminded Annie of her father, a terrible snorer who could be heard throughout the house. A tyrant who could make his wife and children cower with a few snarled words.
Walking with Maddie on this night was like being a fairy, a sprite, or an elf, drifting noiselessly through a house after everyone has gone to sleep. Looking for a child or a gold coin to steal. Or maybe it was most like being a ghost, trapped on another plane, held captive apart from the living.
She looked for numbers posted over the doors as they passed, but it all muddied together. She couldn’t place them. Where were they? Maddie had said she wanted Annie to accompany her so she wouldn’t get lost, but she’d insisted on leading and Annie was now so mixed up that she wasn’t sure she’d find their way back.
“Now tell me, Miss Hebbley, where do you come from? That’s not a British accent I hear.”
Do not allow yourself to become overfamiliar with the passengers. “I come from a little village in Ireland. You wouldn’t know it.”
“You’re probably right, seeing as how I’ve not been to Ireland. What about the ordeal of pregnancy? Do we share that in common? Do you have children?”
For reasons she couldn’t recognize, the question bothered her, caused a swirling chill in her gut. “No, ma’am,” she answered slowly. “I mean, Maddie. There is no child. . . .”
“And no husband, either?” she pried. “Or . . . sweetheart?”
“No, Maddie,” Annie answered, the cold swirl becoming colder still, ice crystalizing in her chest.
“Yes, I supposed not.”
“What do you mean?” Annie asked quietly.
“Oh, just . . . there is something very . . . untouched about you.”
“Untouched?” she asked, but she knew what the heiress meant.
“Innocent. Childlike.”
She felt sick. The Lord favors good girls, Annie.
“But surely,” Madeleine went on, “you’ve got interests, have you not, Miss Hebbley? Hobbies? Practices?”
“Practices?”
“Beliefs, you know. Do you believe in spirits, for instance?”
They were in a deserted back stairwell.
“We ought to turn around now, I should think,” Annie said quietly. “Surely you don’t want to have to go up and down so many steps. It can’t be good for you.”
“Oh, to the contrary, let’s explore,” Maddie said, with a strange determination. Like she was pretending to be delighted but in fact had led Annie here with purpose. But that was impossible, wasn’t it?
Or was all of life one great impossibility?
Once again, Annie was beginning to feel that she didn’t know what was true anymore and what was not. She didn’t feel safe—that much she knew.
Slowly, they descended the stairs, which led them farther into the darkness of the ship.
“I have been meaning to ask you about something,” Maddie said suddenly.
Here it was, then, the reason she had asked for Annie tonight. Annie held still, waiting.
“When you came into Mr. Stead’s room two nights ago, to . . . to ask for a doctor. What did you . . . well, I only mean to know what you saw. I wanted to explain to you what we were all doing there.”
Annie already knew what they’d been doing. She’d helped garner the supplies for Stead. But she listened anyway.
“We were having a séance. To call forth spirits. It was mostly for a lark—someone had said they’d heard a voice calling to them over the water, that sort of thing. But then, you appeared, and then Teddy . . .”
“I’m very sorry for what happened, Mrs. Astor. It must have been terrible for you,” Annie said cautiously.
Maddie clutched Annie’s arm more tightly. “Yes, well, it isn’t just that. I think there’s something dangerous here. Something onboard that means us all harm. Can you not sometimes feel that?”
She wanted to balk, to tell Maddie her worries were foolish and unfounded.
But Annie herself had been saying, just this morning, to Mr. Stead himself, that she believed the same thing.
Could it merely be coincidence?
“I don’t deny . . .” she answered slowly, trying to think of what Mr. Latimer would consider an appropriate response. “I don’t deny that sometimes on a ship this size, one can feel very . . . vulnerable.”
“And very trapped, too, don’t you think? None of us could escape, were something terrible to occur among us.”
Annie was feeling trapped, now especially.
“We should probably get you back to bed,” she said softly.
Maddie brought them to an abrupt halt. “Ooh, look,” she said.
They were standing, Annie realized, just near the doors to the pool. It was closed at this hour, of course, but the doors had round portholes that glowed a wavering green-blue from the lights surrounding the pool. It had an otherworldly feeling.
“Come on,” Maddie whispered, pushing on one of the doors. It gave. Annie knew the doors to the common rooms were rarely locked. The library, the smoking rooms and game rooms, even the children’s playroom: Nothing was kept off-limits to the passengers. The first-class passengers, that is.
“Let’s go in. It’s good for the pregnancy,” Maddie said as she pushed her way in.
“I don’t think we should,” Annie said, but it was obvious Maddie did not intend to listen to her.
She followed the socialite into the empty room. It was cavernous. The white-tiled walls glowed eerily in the dark. The light bounced off the gently sloshing water and played randomly on the ceiling, making it seem as though something alive was in there with them, a beast waiting for them in the shadows.
Maddie unbuttoned her heavy coat and let it fall onto a chair. Then she pulled her nightgown—voluminous, sheer, and undoubtedly made of the finest imported fabrics, delicate as gossamer—over her head. The richest woman in the world stood in front of Annie in her pantaloons and a French silk camisole.
Annie had no choice but to get down on her knees and help her off with her shoes.
After she’d undressed, Annie took off her own coat and slid into the water first, sucking her breath at the cold. The water was supposed to be heated but it was still cool and not at all what she expected at this hour. She helped Maddie down the steps and into the water, wondering all the while why this woman was doing this. She didn’t seem to be enjoying it. She gritted her teeth as she lowered herself, inch by inch, into the water.
“So, tell me about your upbringing,” Maddie said through slightly chattering teeth.
Why was she going on like this, asking personal questions? It was wearying. “There’s nothing to tell,” Annie said, holding Maddie’s elbow to steady her as she took baby steps along the slippery marble floor. “I’m an ordinary country girl, like hundreds of other Irish girls.”
Maddie gave her an enigmatic smile. “I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure there are many interesting things about you. I want to know the real Annie Hebbley.”
“I don’t know what you mean, ma’am.” This was starting to go beyond merely annoying; Annie was starting to get frightened. It was as though there was something wrong with the woman . . . well, girl. Despite the fine, fancy clothes and the swollen belly, Maddie Astor was little more than a girl. Even Annie could see that. “Please don’t ask me about my past anymore, Mrs. Astor. I don’t like to think about the past.”
“How can you say that?” Maddie scoffed. “The past is who we are. It’s where we come from.” She waded in deeper. Once again, Annie had no choice but to follow.
Easy for a rich girl to say that. Her past was full of rosy memories, no doubt. Nothing to make her cry, nothing to make her wish she’d never been born.
Annie could feel her lips going blue and her flesh all goose pimply. The water was now mid-chest level.
“Feeling sleepy yet, ma’am? Perhaps it’s time to get you back to your stateroom—”
But the young woman stopped abruptly where she stood. “I brought you here for a reason, Miss Hebbley. There is something I simply have to know the answer to.” The hand on Annie’s arm became suddenly fierce, stronger than Anne would’ve imagined. She was holding Annie now by the upper arm as though she thought Annie would run away.
Why would Annie run away? These people were her charges. . . .
“And that reason is to find out if you are who you say you are.”
It was a strange accusation, one that sent a dagger of fear through Annie’s heart. She shuddered from the cold, from the feeling that she didn’t know what to answer. Didn’t, sometimes, even know who she really was. Her past wasn’t just painful, it was a haze. Her future, too. She was caught in a kind of time cloud, she existed only in the moment, in this strange passage between lands.
Who am I? she thought as she stared at Maddie’s mouth, which was twisted into a kind of fearful pinch. She wasn’t looking at Annie but staring at the water. Like Stead and his scrying bowl, as though the future could be divined there.
Maddie Astor tugged Annie’s arm. “Look, Annie. You don’t have a reflection.”
Annie peered at the water. It was dark in the pool room. There was no light to see anything, let alone their reflections.
“Why don’t you have a reflection? Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about—”
The water around them was broken by their movements, circle upon circle of rippling away from them.
“Oh, Annie,” Maddie whispered softly. “I’m so sorry.”
And then she was pushing—pushing so hard. Shoving Annie’s head below the surface of the water.
Annie was so shocked she bucked, uncertain what was even happening. But as Maddie’s hands grew only fiercer, more determined, Annie saw that what was happening was very purposeful.
Madeleine Astor was trying to drown her.
She had her hands in Annie’s hair and was holding on tightly as she held her under the water. Because she’d been pushed under before she knew what was going on, Annie’s mouth, her eyes, her nose filled instantly. Her eyes stung from salt the stewards put into the water.
She tried to free herself, but Maddie was strong for her size. The hands on top of Annie’s head held her in place no matter how much she thrashed. Too, Annie had enough presence of mind to be afraid of hurting the pregnant woman or—God forbid—doing something that ended up harming the baby.
Seconds passed in agony. She choked on water. Her chest started to burn.
Something heavy—the fur coat, she thought dimly—came down like a weight over her, and though the pool wasn’t deep, Annie struggled, shoved down toward the tiled floor.
She had to breathe or—
This was really happening. She was thrashing but slowly losing the will to fight it.
In some ways, it would be a relief to die. The thought startled her—Where had it come from? Annie was tired of fighting. Tired of running. Tired of trying to forget everything that had been done to her.
The Lord favors good girls, Annie.
Would He even have her?
The bubbles in her wake, as she thrashed, seemed to lift her. Seemed to want to carry her away.
Take me, she thought.
And then, a twin thought, coming from inside her but not—from the water itself . . .
No. You’re not done yet.
She heard the words as clearly as she’d heard anything in her life.
You’re not done yet.
She had heard that voice before.
In those frantic seconds, fighting the force pushing down on her, fighting the urge to suck in more water, to breathe, it came to her: that day on the beach when she was a wee girl, scampering along the rocks. The pretty lady with the long, dark hair waiting for her lover, the lover who would never come. The queer shimmer of her legs, like opalescent fish scales. Annie heard the voice again, with its background note of loneliness, her longing for her Innocents.
You’re not done yet.
She was transported out of the water, bursting through the surface of the pool like she was lifted up by a giant hand. Shooting up, the force knocking Maddie Astor off her feet, plunging her under.
Sputtering, Annie made her way to the edge and pulled herself out. Crawled, coughing and purging up pool water. Cold, sodden clothing weighing her down, pinning her to the tiled floor. Hands pressed into the tile surrounding the treacherous pool as though she could hold herself there by fingertips alone. Grateful for the floor beneath her. Sucking in great gulps of air, sweet air as water coursed down her face in rivulets.
Maddie fell to the ground next to her on her knees, a sodden Madonna. She was shaking. “Annie, forgive me! I don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry, I only thought—”
Annie recoiled from her instinctively. “Don’t touch me—”
Maddie lifted her hands in surrender. “Don’t you see? It’s the only way to be absolutely sure. That’s what they say. You didn’t have a reflection, Annie. That’s how I knew something was wrong. I thought—I thought you were possessed.”
“What?” Annie spat.
Maddie was, oddly, crying now. “I wasn’t going to drown you, Annie. I was only trying to drive the spirit out. . . .”
That’s right; she had almost died. Annie looked at the pool, surface still tossing from their struggle, white shimmers winking at her.
“There’s an evil spirit following me. I was convinced—convinced”—Maddie took a deep breath—“that it was inside you. That it had possessed you. I was trying to protect my baby. That’s why I did it, don’t you see? A mother will do anything to protect her children, surely you understand that. . . .”
Annie clambered to her feet, nearly tripping over her sodden nightgown. She refused to look at Maddie Astor. The only thing she wanted was to get away from the madwoman as quickly as possible.
“The medium said that everyone I love will die. You must believe me.” Maddie padded after her a few steps, clutching her bare, wet arms against the cold. “Teddy was like a little brother to me. He was all I had! I couldn’t lose my baby, too. You see that, don’t you? You won’t tell Jack—Mr. Astor—what happened, will you? He would be so upset. I don’t know what he might do. The newspapers, they print so many awful things about us. . . . You must promise not to go to the newspapers with this. I’ll pay you—”
Maddie Astor’s voice thinned away to nothing as Annie jogged down the alleyway, coat over one arm, shoes dangling from the other hand, a thin trail of water marking her path.
Maddie Astor was safe this time, though she didn’t know it. The crazy rich woman didn’t understand that Annie would never go to the newspapers. You don’t go to the papers when you’re running away from your own demons.
And besides, there was something so plaintive, so pathetic, in Maddie’s thin, pleading voice, that Annie almost, almost, felt the pang of sadness and desperation in it as if it were her own.