Chapter 22

Some part of me knew I was unconscious as I saw the corridor.

It was the recurring corridor of my dreams. This time it was marked with light and shadowy threads. Thin sparkling vertical lines, thousands of them, each shaded differently. I’d seen this in a dream before with Jonathon, but this time I was on my own. The corridor went on indefinitely, but before I could explore I heard a whisper. Not a maddening cluster, but just one. One soft, kind, loving Whisper.

The Whisper, the one from my mother. This time I heard her clearly. She said, “Hold on.”

On each side of the hallway were open doors. Countless doors with windows onto the world, so many choices, thousands of diverging courses. Here a meadow with children running. There a battlefield. Here a family dinner. There a first kiss. Here a brawl. There a last breath. Deep darkness lay ahead of me and darkness lay behind me.

I watched the entities around me, dizzying flickering lines. Each thread was like a spirit or its own force of nature, weaving in and out around one another and pulsing at these doorways. Then at once they all converged on me, light and shadow.

“Hold on, I’m here,” I heard the Whisper say. I didn’t want to leave that voice. I didn’t want to leave her…

A deep breath of something sharp and pungent roused me with a coughing choke.

My eyes opened to see Jonathon before me, only this time he held a fancy bottle of ladies’ smelling salts beneath my nose, not some random hospital compound. I was in a boudoir I recognized: upstairs in Mrs. Northe’s home.

“Thank you,” I murmured and took stock of my body. “My arms hurt.” I glanced down at my blue blouse. No obvious damage, but my skin tingled strangely, my arms burning as if wounded under the surface. “What was that about?”

“I don’t know. Everything was finally quiet at the hospital, resolved, really, but then you heard chanting and blacked out. Maybe everything we’ve been through built up like a toxin in your body, all the magic and ritual. Since you’d been subjected to so much already, perhaps your body and consciousness was at a breaking point—”

I grimaced. “Maybe I wasn’t fully rid of it before throwing myself back in the center. That must be why a dream could wound me, why magic could reach up like a surging tide to drag me under.”

Jonathon kissed my forehead. “I’ll never let it take you.”

“Where are Reverend Blessing and Rachel? Mr. Smith?”

“Smith helped me bring you here, drove while I held you. Now he’s keeping watch on the house. Remind me to ask Mrs. Northe where on earth she picked him up. I still don’t know what to think about him.”

“Useful, though I think that’s why he’s around.”

“Blessing and Rachel have gone to place the ashes in consecrated ground. He mentioned visiting a rabbi friend of his as well. I imagine that will take up most of their day. How are you feeling?”

I nuzzled against him, kissing his cheek softly with a thankful prayer. He always reminded me of what was good and true in the world against such dark, draining magic. Surely not all magic was dark, though. Love was magic.

“Do you remember anything?” Jonathon asked. “You were murmuring, like chanting, but I couldn’t make any of it out.”

I told him about what I’d just seen, about Mother’s voice, about the entities that turned to swarm over me.

“As you fainted,” Jonathon said carefully. “I saw red and gold fire surround you, signs of the dark magic.”

I clutched at Jonathon’s lapels. “Could the demon still be active? How do you really kill a thing like that? And why am I in such pain if I’m not bleeding?” I asked, itching at my forearm. I spoke too soon.

My fingernail came away bloody, a dark splotch pooling upon the light blue linen.

“Oh, God,” I moaned. “Jonathon…what’s…”

“I can hazard a guess,” he said grimly. I knew it too. He tore my sleeves open.

Runes. So many of them. Carved into my arm lightly, on the surface but bloodier than before. It had happened to Jonathon during his curse, and now it was happening to me. And this, this wasn’t just a few characters. This was the whole message. It began with the same few runes but now took up both of my forearms. He dashed into the hall.

“Make it stop,” I cried, reaching out for him. From the bathroom I heard the rummaging of glass.

Make it stop. I saw those words, saw Rachel signing them to me, saw them emblazoned upon the desk, upon the downstairs sheet all in blood. It’s all we wanted, all of us drawn into this mad quest. Just stop…It was enough to drive someone mad ten times over.

Evil was inflicted upon me, manifest by forces I couldn’t see, forces that wanted to drag me to the depths rather than let me live in the light. I couldn’t even bat the tears from my eyes, too scared to bring the bloody markings closer to me. Jonathon was upon me again in the instant, mixing an ointment with a clear fluid on a ball of cotton.

“This will sting,” he said calmly, taking my arms and laving them with the swab. The pain of his tincture wasn’t any worse than the pain of the wounds, and I was so grateful for his touch, to have him taking care of me, that I didn’t mind.

He kissed my palms. “Come now, Natalie. What did we say to your nightmares? What do we say to devils?”

“I renounce thee,” I said. He said it with me.

The markings immediately began to recede. Jonathon turned over the swab that should have been bloody but wasn’t.

“Quick, Jonathon, write down the markings before they’re gone,” I insisted.

We were in a woman’s sphere, so the boudoir had a lush Turkish suite made surely for love letters, with cards and a fountain pen. Jonathon snatched up a paper and wrote out the sequence of the runic letters on one arm, then the other. Hardly a love note.

“I renounce thee,” I said again to the magic. My breath fell over the letters. With a shimmer of red light, the demons’ calling card, the markings, faded entirely as if I’d dreamed them up. I peered closer at my now smooth forearm. I glanced up at Jonathon sheepishly. “Tell me you saw them—”

He held up the paper of markings to prove it.

I threw my arms around him. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

“It is my greatest pleasure.” He eased me back onto the divan so he could gaze down at me, stroking my hair with one hand as I kept hold of the other and kissed it. “Care for tea or coffee?”

“Earl Grey, please,” I said. “You’ve made me a fan.” I drew him toward me, breathing him in. “It smells of you, and I cannot get enough…”

He leaned in, kissed me tenderly.

“Were you left alone to tend to me?” I breathed in his ear. “We’ve no chaperone.” I nibbled down his neck, loosening his cravat so that I might trail kisses lower. He moaned softly. “Someday we won’t have to steal moments like these—”

We were interrupted by a familiar cry from downstairs. “Will someone tell me where on earth my daughter has gone? Again?” came the exasperated cry of my father.

“Hello, Mr. Stewart,” I heard Mary say. “She’s here. She had a nasty fall. Lost consciousness. Lord Denbury is looking after her.”

“I’ll bet he is.”

“Oh, but he’s a doctor, sir.”

“Where’s Evelyn?”

“Gone to Chicago. On emergency. Her friend Florence—”

“Is ailing. Yes, I know. Oh, that’s a shame. I’d have gone with her,” he said quietly. He sounded lost. “May I see my daughter, please?”

“Have you woken our fair sleeping beauty, Prince Denbury?” Mary called at the top of the stair.

“Sleeping Beauty was awoken with a kiss,” I murmured and drew him down to give me one.

“Yes,” Jonathon called finally. “I think I’ve roused her.”

“I’ll say,” I teased.

“Naughty,” he whispered.

“It’s your fault,” I countered.

Looking up from the divan, I saw my father in the doorway, arms folded. “Well then, what was that about?”

“Did you say there was tea for us, Lord Denbury?” I asked, bouncing to my feet. “Hello, Father!” I kissed him on the cheek and descended to Mrs. Northe’s library.

“I see the good doctor took quite good care of her,” my father said wearily, as if he’d given up on us being found in “proper” conditions. He followed behind me, Jonathon in step behind him.

“I’d give my life for her, sir,” he replied.

“Oh, come now. Don’t be overdramatic,” my father said. “Natalie, what happened? You lost consciousness?”

“Do you want the truth or a lie?”

“The…truth,” Father responded, but clearly he wasn’t sure what he wanted.

“Lord Denbury, please sit with Father and tell him what happened today while I decipher what the demon carved on my arms.”

A sound of shock squeaked from my father’s mouth. “Maybe I don’t want to know,” he said as Jonathon led him into the parlor.

Most New York citizens of fair breeding sat in their parlors and talked about the weather or perhaps a play they might have seen or the new exhibits at our lovely Metropolitan or whether there would indeed be a subway system and whether they would do something about the noise and all the steam. Instead, we talk about omens and possessions as if they were sports teams. Poor Father, I’m sure he went green.

In the library, the volume of runes was lying out for me, as if Mrs. Northe had known I’d need it. I stared at the book and the correlating alphabet, then back at the note card with the message. Dread slithered in my stomach like a snake uncoiling to stalk prey. Roughly, the phantom carvings on my arm translated to: I am coming for you.

The book fell from my hands, and I tried not to faint. Twice in one day was already trying enough.

The demon wanted to make sure it was unmistakable. This was separate from the business with Preston and Rachel; this was an earlier vendetta. All the rest was a distraction, deadly for certain, but not as personal. This danger I had no idea how to fight. Was it in my mind, manifesting outward? To destroy it, did I have to destroy myself? I needed water. I needed to sit.

As I entered the parlor with this warning, Jonathon was explaining to my father. “I think it was a message,” he stated, trying to put meaning to what had taken me under. “A warning. The demon we bested might still attempt revenge. Natalie awoke with…markings on her arm. Like what was carved into the arms of the victims.”

I held up the note card, my shaky translation written below.

“‘I am coming for you,’” I said, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “That’s what my arms said.”

Father stood as if he couldn’t bear any more of this. I stared at him. Perhaps my face was haunted. Or calm. Or uncanny. Something about me made him sit again.

“Something’s still out there,” I stated. “And it’s angry with me.”

“Wire Evelyn. Get that priest back here,” Father choked. “I want you under constant guard.”

“The forces the Master’s Society called upon aren’t necessarily corporeal,” I said with a shrug. “Hard to know what to guard.”

“Why?” my father asked, trying to process. “Why do what that doctor did? And why this?” He gestured to me, to the ominous message. “Such devilish things. Unseen enemies that defy rational explanation.”

“The people who…attacked me,” Jonathon explained, “were interested in gaining power over me and my estate, yes, but also in the unnatural limits of what they could do. The darkest science is their aim. To what end we can’t say.”

There was a strained pause.

“This isn’t over for you.” Father stared at me in awe and pity. “What’s coming for you, Natalie?”

“A phantom that wants me to believe it has power over me. But we won’t let it win,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster.

My father stared at me. “You’re very brave.”

I blushed. “Well—”

And then Father turned to Jonathon, his eyes cold, and he surprised me with his vehemence: “And this is all your fault. If you care for her, Lord Denbury, you should leave her well enough alone. The magic began with you. Your curse. Your entrance into our lives has nearly cost my daughter hers.”

I moved to stand between them, my heart in my throat. My voice failed me. There was a terrible silence.

“I understand your concern, Mr. Stewart,” Jonathon said quietly, swallowing hard. “I’m not sure what I can say in my defense. If you think keeping my distance will help her…”

“No,” I mumbled. I couldn’t lose Jonathon. Not now. He was my light, my angel.

“You have to see it’s for the best,” Father said. “Perhaps some time away—”

“Father, you don’t understand,” I protested. “We’re wrapped up in this together.”

“And I will extricate you from it!” Father bellowed. “You have no more say in the matter, Natalie. You are not yet independent.”

Tears fell from my eyes. Jonathon stared at the floor.

Father took a deep breath, calming himself. “I’m not saying permanently, but there must be time away. Time to heal. Time for Lord Denbury to solve his own mess. Not you.”

“He’s right, Natalie,” Jonathon said with sad realization. “You’re too close. Everyone around me has suffered. I should never have drawn all of you in. The demon could be using you to gain his revenge on me, and I will not have you suffer any more. Surely you will be safer if I go.”

Jonathon turned and disappeared into Mr. Northe’s study before he could think twice, and my heart went with him, leaving me hollow inside.

Father took me home for dinner. I held back any further tears and didn’t say a word. It was like I had no voice again. He filled the silence nervously, talking about nothing in particular. More than once he mentioned “Evelyn” and her thoughts on the various exhibition possibilities.

I glared at him, rising. “You realize, Father, that if Lord Denbury hadn’t come into our lives, you’d never have become close to Evelyn Northe. So you’d best extricate yourself from her, too,” I said, turning on my heel, and I went to my room.

“I love you and I’m scared for you, Natalie,” he called after me. “I don’t know what to do.”

I slammed my door.

The last thing on earth I wanted to do was sleep. How could I rest if I wasn’t sure which was safer, reality or dreams? Now that I was entirely on my own.