Cold Stone and Ivy (56 page)

IT WAS QUITE
dark by the time they chugged up to the small church. There were no lights inside, and Ivy felt her heart sink. It was Sebastien’s church after all. There would be no one to light candles or scrawl Latin on the walls in chalk and blood.

She stepped out of the wild little steamcar and turned immediately to the sisters. Fanny was following her out, Franny beginning to climb down from the dick, so she stopped them in their tracks.

“No, my dear, dear friends,” she began. “This is something I must do alone.”

The sisters stared at her.

“Alone?” asked Fanny. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

“Is that wise?”

“With the graves, the night . . .”

“The ghosts . . .”

“And how will you get to Lasingstoke, dear heart? Will you walk?”

“Will you run?”

“I know these roads. I know these trails. Besides, I stole this from my father.”

And she reached into her small bag, pulling out a foot-long aluminium device. She twisted the gears, and immediately, a beam of light burst forth.

“What the devil is that?” shrieked Fanny, shrinking back from the light.

“A pocket torch,” yelped Franny. “I’ve heard of them!”

“Yes, indeed,” said Ivy. “It’s a wondrous new invention. All the bobbies have them.”

“Hmph,” sniffed Fanny. “It may be wondrous for a bobbie in Whitechapel or a foolhardy girl criminologist in Lancashire, but for good normal folk, I can’t say there’d be much of a use.”

“No use?” asked Franny.

“None whatsoever. I can see simply no future in pocket torches, I’m afraid. And a Helmsly-Wimpoll woman is never wrong about such things.”

Ivy smiled. “It doesn’t matter. After the last few months, I can honestly say there is very little I fear here at Lasingstoke.”

“Save the Scourge.”

“He’s a Scourge.”

“Yes, well, there is that.” She took a deep breath, gazed off to the distant lights of the Hall. “My brother is still there, so I think Rupert will be civil. But if not . . .”

She turned back to them. “If not, you both are witness to the fact that I was going to confront Rupert St. John of most terrible crimes. The police will be certain to believe you both.”

As expected, Fanny arched one brow. “Indeed, I fear our experience has proven otherwise.”

“Nasty peelers,” grumbled Franny.

“And poor Mary Jane! She has received such terrible treatment that her husband has left her, yet again!”

“Wait? What is that?” asked Ivy. “Mary Jane is married?”

“Well . . .
you
know . . .”

“You
know . . .”

Ivy frowned, for in fact, she didn’t know. It didn’t matter. She had a single purpose tonight, a single reason for being here in Lancashire in the first place, that being the dreaded conversation with Rupert St. John. She looked over her shoulder. That, and the grave.

“Very well,” sniffed Fanny. “If you are most certain . . .”

“Most certain . . .”

“I am most certain. I still have my things at the Hall. And I believe Castlewaite will be kind enough to bring me back to Milling when I am ready.” She could see the sisters’ concern, their knit brows, their setting jaws. “Besides, we have a dress to find in Chester, don’t we?”

That did it.

“Oh my, the dress!” Fanny brightened. “We shall have
such
a time finding that dress!”

“Such
a time!”

Fanny sniffed. “Very well, dearest. We shall take our leave. But if you do not return by tomorrow, we shall be forced to consider more desperate measures.”

“Much more desperate.”

“I would hope for no less.”

And with that, the sisters packed up into the four-wheeled steamcar and barreled off down the road to Over Milling.

Ivy stood for a long while, watching them go, before turning back to the little church, a freshly dug grave, and the forbidden house called Seventh.

Of the Women of Seventh, the Men of Second,
and a Killer Revealed

AS SHE MADE
her way through the grass, the beam from the torch swept over the graves in the dark. Some had frail wooden crosses, others smooth stones set into the earth. There were a few headstones as well with names carved into the plinth, but for the most part, all were simple and very plain. There was none of the pomp and pageantry that was common in London cemeteries now. The “Culture of Mourning” was currently all the rage in London. In London, death was a hobby, a philosophy, a way of life, and it was not uncommon to see widows dress in black for years, if not the rest of their lives. Victoria had set that trend at twenty-seven years and counting.

Her breath caught in her throat when she spied the newest stone. It was unadorned save for a name and a horseshoe engraved in the plinth. No dates of birth nor death, and it seemed to conspire to make her feel very sad. The grass was wet, the earth damp, but she knelt anyway, touched the soil with her fingers, breathed in the sweet scent of twilight and November pines and old, cold stone.

She would miss him terribly when she began to feel again. Not yet, however, and she wondered at that, wondered if the stirring of taste and touch, sight and sound, would bring with it raw and painful sensations, or rather a clean slate and altered perspectives. She had no clue. She had always been the sort of girl to get on with it, chin up, bully through. Unlike her mother, she had never truly experienced loss. No wonder her father feared it so.

She frowned and glanced around the little graveyard. Everything was neat, everything normal. The church, the trees, the cold night sky. But something was wrong; she could feel it in her bones. Something amiss, undone, simply “off,” in this little cemetery by the church. She took a moment to study the scene, and it occurred to her to set her mind more to what was missing than what was there. She rose to her feet, took a deep breath, looked back again. She couldn’t see it. Or perhaps it wasn’t there.

At some point, she would need to admit she was not a Girl Criminologist, no matter how hard she tried.

With a sigh, she turned back, saw the lights of Lasingstoke in the distance, and felt an odd warmth at the memories. She remembered Cookie and Castlewaite and dear sweet Lottie. She remembered the library and the piano, the warm fireplaces and the cold stone, the photochromes and paintings of fine men, finer horses, and the great many happy, laughing dogs.

Suddenly, she knew.

She lifted her chin and turned back to the grave, seeing as clear as day the missing element that would have completed the charade. It was an easy oversight, and she felt a rush of pride that she had caught it. She set off, making her way through the headstones and wooden crosses and crunching under the dark canopy of trees still dripping with rain. Her torch cut swaths in the darkness, allowing her to find the path, and after a while searching, it bounced off stone and she knew she had found the Seventh House of Lasingstoke.

The windows were boarded up and a chain roped across the door, but she strode up to the dark door, darker even than the night sky. She pounded on it with her fist, once, twice, three times.

“Sebastien! Sebastien, open this door! I know you are not dead, and I know you are in there! Open this door now!”

A cold wind picked up, plucking leaves and debris from the forest floor and whipping her hair and skirt against the door. She pounded again, undeterred.

“I’m not going away, Sebastien, so I suggest you open up!”

The winds began to moan now, and for the first time, she felt fear stir in her chest. This was Seventh, after all. All manner of terrible things might be inside. She glanced around at the trees, bending and creaking like skeleton hands, the crosses in the distant graveyard rattling free of the earth, and suddenly there was a thump from within the house. She whirled, casting the torch upward. The wall thumped again and one of the boards burst free from its nails, swinging a moment against the stone before sailing towards her like a shield. She ducked as it shattered on the path where she had been standing. The winds threatened and moaned.

“You will hear me, Sebastien. Whether you are inside here or at Lasingstoke Hall, you will hear me and you will come! I know it! Your women will wake you and call you here! So just come now, dammit! Just come for me!”

The winds were threatening to push her off her feet, and now the boards covering the picture windows began to rattle as they fought against the nails holding them in place. She yelped as, one by one, they flew from their moorings, whipping through the air like cannonballs from an ironclad.

The winds were deafening now, and her bowler was snatched from her head and sent up into the branches of the trees.

“I’ll not leave!” she shouted. “I don’t believe it for a second, Sebastien! You are not as dead as you would like me to think! I know you are not. Your women don’t scare—”

There was a clink of metal, and she glanced down sharply, as the chain that locked the door had somehow wrapped itself around her wrist. It burned her skin with cold.

She tried to pry it free with her fingers, to no avail. She tugged at it, pulled with all her might, but it would not be moved. Finally, she struck the chains with the pocket torch, hoping to weaken the links, but she succeeded only in snapping the torch in two. Instantly, she was plunged into the shadows cast by the trees and the house and the pale moon. The chain drew tight, the iron links digging into her flesh, and suddenly, the wind died into silence like the drawing of a deep breath.

The door thumped once, as did her heart.

“ . . . Sebastien . . . ?”

The door thumped again, this time on its hinges, and she could hear a terrible, grating sound, like nails on slate. The paint was peeling long jagged ribbons into the wood, like the claws of a giant cat. In fact, she could see slices tearing both paint and wood from around all the hinges now, and the door thumped yet again, as if trying to shake itself loose from its moorings. It occurred to her that if the women of Seventh could almost kill her brother, a simple doorframe would not likely stand in their way.

And now she had to admit that she didn’t know which was more frightening—falling into the clutches of the women of Seventh, or the thought that the Mad Lord might not in fact be alive to stop them.

The wind picked up again, and she pulled as hard as she could to free herself from the chains at her wrist, but something brushed against her ankle. She looked down to see the figure of a hand pressing out of the door. It was long and misshapen, pushing out the door as if it were an oaken glove. It was the most unnatural thing she had ever seen—more unnatural than a levitating man, a clockwork doctor, or a face rent by ghostly claws, and she found a scream building in her throat.

She moved her legs as far from the door as possible, but she was constrained by the chains at her wrist, and now a second hand pushed from the surface of the door towards her face, reaching like a demon for her throat. The first hand caught her ankle, and she fell to the step, kicking and thrashing as the horrible fingers wrapped around her boot and began to drag her inward. Her scream was stifled by the winds, the whipping trees, the howling from within the house, and she wondered if they planned to drag her through the wood and into the house. She would surely never leave if they did that.

She turned her face away, as far away as she could, as now the fingers of the second hand brushed the softness of her cheek, reaching for her flesh, reaching . . .

She closed her eyes and whispered a prayer.

Movement all around her, the rush of fur and fang and heavy breathing, and then the squeal of a horse over the roar of the winds.

“Sedate vestras iras,”
shouted a voice from above.
“Dimittite hand mulierem. Ea non est inimica tuarum.”

She opened her eyes as the rushing of winds and chains and fingers and doors quieted and leaves dropped to the dark floor of the forest.

And with the thud of boots on hard ground, a figure swung off the horse and loomed over her, leaning forward and placing palms against the door. Strange light flashed across the wood and up into the night sky.

“Habete pacem, mulieres spiritales.”

It was as if the house called Seventh released a deep breath. The chains at her wrist fell away, the reaching hands sank back into the wood, and the door laid flat against the walls, leaving her trembling on the step. Dogs whimpered all around her, nuzzling her with their noses, and she slipped her fingers into their wet fur.

“Conabo durior,”
he said, sighing, and he turned to lean back against the door. “
Habete pacem.”

And all was quiet in the forest, save for the whimpering of the dogs.

She looked up at the face silhouetted in the pale moonlight, the locket swinging around his neck.

“Hello Sebastien,” she said in a small voice. “I knew you would come.”