Nero's Fiddle (18 page)

“Bugger,” she muttered, and dropped the wormwood-infected timber over the side.

At the top of the stairs she struck off left, to Helene’s suite. She studied the dark paintings on the landing and lining the corridor as she walked past. Helene liked to use her ancestors’ portraits for target practice and many sported bullet holes in the foreheads, testament to the countess’ excellent aim.

Cara considered having a portrait of her father hung in the Soho house so she could kill two birds with one stone. Or more accurately, shoot the two sources of pain in her life with one bullet.

She stopped at the painting closest to the double doors to the master bedroom.

“That’s new.” A cross bolt jutted from the bridge of the man’s nose. “What did you do, I wonder?” she asked the executed man.

She pushed open the dark doors and stepped into oppressive heat. Summer or winter, Helene kept the drapes tightly closed and the fire stoked, trying to sweat the demons from her mind.

The countess reclined on the bed, sinking into a mound of decorative pillows. The four pillars of the bed were made from tree trunks, their branches spread outward holding the flimsy curtains. Helene resided in a forest bower, like a mad fairy queen. Minnow gave a happy bark and shot off the bed. Today, he wore deep blue taffeta.

Cara bent down and scratched the little pug’s ears. “Hey boy.” She reached into a pocket she pulled out a piece of beef jerky and slipped it to the mutt. His curly tail wagged and he disappeared under the bed with his treat.

“I see you have a crossbow.” Cara drew back the leaf-embroidered organza and twisted the swag of curtain around an end post. She sat on the bed and searched Helene’s face, wondering how lucid her friend was today and where she hid the crossbow and bolts.

“I got it special for Henry. He’s been taunting me at night and won’t let me sleep.” Deep blue circles ringed the woman’s eyes, red seeped into the irises and echoed the rot eating through her brain. “He says he knows things, important things, and teases me that I cannot guess.”

“Would you like me to move him?”
When did this become my life?
she pondered. Pouring drinks in Texas was far simpler, although to be fair, that life involved just as many bullet holes.

“Oh no, don’t move him, then he would talk to the others. No, I need him close, so he doesn’t rally them against me. He will, you know.” She lurched forward and grabbed Cara’s arm, pulling her closer. Her once beautiful eyes locked on Cara’s face, but her mind remained miles away. “You believe me, don’t you? You won’t let him overthrow me with his whisperings? I only have you and my little canary on my side. No one else believes that they come to me at night, invading my mind with their constant chatter.”

She remembered Nate’s comment about Helene’s gypsy blood and their fabled ability to see through the veil of death. She wondered if the syphilis drove her mad, or her inability to sleep with the ghosts crowding around her bed.

She took Helene’s too-thin hand in her own and gave a soft squeeze. “I’ll not let Henry plot against you.”

Helene gave a sigh. “I hold them back you know, on the other side. My mother taught me how.”

“You tell me what you want me to do and together we will thwart him.”

“Yes, yes, if we work together we can silence the screaming. Then I can sleep.” She fell back on the pillows and a cloud of dust rose up around her and danced on the heavy air.

The fire crackled, munching came from under the bed, and Helene’s eyes stayed closed. Cara chewed her lip; she needed to pick her friend’s brain but today looked like there was little to poke through. She chewed a nail while wondering how to nudge the conversation in a more rational direction.

“You have a question, ask it now.” The voice much stronger, clearer.

“
Suetonius’ Secrets
has some pages removed. Unfortunately, they happen to be the very pages I need, about an artifact that generates fire.”

“Fire.” The syllable whispered over Helene’s lips. Her eyes flung open and she sat bolt upright. The red receded from her eyes and sanity paid a fleeting visit. Their time together often followed this pattern. Cara would tempt lucidity forth with a bait of tantalising clues and questions. Helene would give her cryptic responses and then sink back into the darkness within her.

Saloon girl, much simpler job than this caper.

Cara pulled the volume from her satchel and held the book open. “Look.” She pointed to the tiny fragment of shorn paper. “Someone cropped the pages out.”

Helene’s fingers wrapped around hers and she dropped her head so close to the book she seemed to be gazing at the individual fibres in the rough paper.

“Malachi,” she breathed over the pages as though uttering a word of power to resurrect the lost text.

“Who is he?” Please don’t let it be a painting or someone who died years ago.

A smile spread over the countess’ face. “You have been there before. He owns the little bookstore that you once visited and then he sent you to me.”

“Do you think he removed the pages?”

“Doubtful. Malachi would never harm a book. But he once borrowed my edition to transcribe it for a collector. If he has touched a page, he remembers the text. He absorbs the words through his skin. He will know what you are missing.”

Cara remembered the ancient store with its equally aged owner. He set her after
Magyck of the Gods
, the volume that became her guidebook to the strange artifacts.

Helene’s fingers tightened around her hand. Meeting her gaze, Cara watched the madness slink back into her friend’s eyes. She wished she had known the young Helene, the one full of life and vitality and not the shell that remained.

“Make sure my little birdie finds happiness. He has dwelt too long in the darkness with me, he needs a creature of light.”

Cara placed the fragile hand over the sunken chest. “I’ll try and find somebody willing to take the grumpy bugger on, I promise.”
God knows who though, Amy has the patience of a saint and she can’t stand him.

A smile touched Helene’s face. “Angelique promises to help, she knows who will heal his heart.” She slumped back against the pillows and within moments, heavy snoring filled the air.

“Fantastic, on top of everything else I have to find a woman who comes with a ghostly endorsement.”

Cara stoked the fire and placed the guard close to the bricks, making sure no wayward spark would escape while Helene slumbered. Minnow appeared from under the bed, dragging the strip of jerky, and plonked himself in front of the heat. He turned large brown eyes to Cara. Checking Helene slept, she reached down and removed the taffeta dress from the dog.

He gave himself a shake and returned to the treat.

She stroked his wrinkled head. “Look after her, little one.”

Leaving the bedroom, she confronted Henry. He appeared to be from the seventeenth century with his enormous wig of powdered ringlets and a painted heart on one cheek. A cold light in his eyes belied the dandy image and a chill shot down Cara’s body.

“What do I do with you, Mr Conspirator?” she addressed the painting. An idea came to her mind and with a suppressed giggle she headed downstairs to the library, to find the supplies she needed.

Rummaging around in the desk, she found glue and a roll of crepe. Borrowing a knife from Brick, she sliced off two short strips of fabric and took her supplies back up the stairs. A few minutes work and she stepped back to survey the results. Henry now had his mouth bound shut with bandage, stopping him from muttering a word and disturbing Helene’s sleep.

“That’s Henry silenced. Time to tackle the rest of my tasks for today.”

That afternoon, Cara stood on the doorstep in Broadwick Street Soho and pulled a key on a chain from her battered satchel. She unlocked the door and pushed it open. She peered in as though expecting an ambush. She kept putting this day off but McToon wanted to know if anything could be done to make the house not so much habitable as more hospitable.

She resisted the urge to cross herself as she stepped over the threshold and into the empty entranceway. Brick crowded behind her and shut the door. Gloom enveloped them.

Bugger. I’ll have to turn on a light.

She reached out a hand, took a breath and activated the switch. The barest tingle of surplus charge ran back through her fingers. The bulb above flickered a few times before deciding to go and cast its yellow light.

“House is mellowing,” she muttered, trying to decide where to start.

Brick laughed. “It’s a house, what do you think it will do?”

She faced him. “It extracts a blood toll from the occupants. I spilled a fair amount on the floorboards, women died in the basement and the only tenant I found managed to slit a wrist slicing bread because the house played with the lights.”

She waited for a smart reply. Proving how smart he was, Brick didn’t have one. He did touch the knife on his arm as though checking it remained safe in its sheath.

“So what exactly are we looking for?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “But something is here.”

He cast around the half empty house. “How can you be so sure?”

“Have you ever stood outside during a thunderstorm? Before the rain, when the sky turns black, thunder booms from above and lightning arcs through the clouds. The air becomes charged and it skates over your skin. These objects we seek give me the same response when I am near one.” She pulled back the sleeve of her jacket and showed the goose bumps on her arm. “That’s how I know something is here.”

“Where do you want to start then?”

She placed a hand on the newel post. “Upstairs. You can wait in the parlour, there is something I have to do alone first.”

He raised an eyebrow and gave her a hard stare.

“I don’t plan to jump out a window.” She gave a weak smile.

“All right.” He tapped a pocket in his jacket. “I’ve got a book, take all the time you need.” He crossed to the front room.

Cara trod the stairs with a heavy heart and headed down the hall to her mother’s suite. An interconnecting door led to her father’s more masculine rooms. This softly feminine room was painted in palest cream and yellow with hints of rose and green. A few pieces remained untouched; the white washed bed and matching dresser. A cream cane chaise in front of the window.

The decoration and furniture were all Cara had of her mother. Bella laboured and died in this room. She never paced the floor to walk her newborn daughter to sleep. Never brushed Cara’s hair while she sat at the dresser. She never curled up and watched her mother dress for an evening out.

“Were you happy here?” she whispered to her phantom mother. “Or did you seek happiness with another?” A vain hope perhaps, but Skittles set her mind in motion. Once she gave the idea life, she couldn’t let it go until she knew one way or the other. If her mother kept a diary surely it would be hidden in her room. Or had her father found it years ago?

She examined the dresser, pulled out all the drawers and checked for hidden compartments. Next, she gave the bed frame the same thorough going over. Nothing. In the walls? She ran her fingertips over the walls and skirting looking for joins or cracks. After an hour, she admitted defeat and returned downstairs.

“Any luck?” Brick asked, looking up from his book.

She shook her head. “It was silly really, I thought my mother might have left something hidden in her room.”

He slid his book back into a pocket. “Want to look for whatever else might not be here?”

She laughed. “Sounds stupid when you say it like that, but yes. I just want to wander around slow, see what tingles.”

They spent the next couple of hours walking from room to room. Two rooms made the hair on the back of Cara’s neck stand up. The basement and the library.

“Do you think something is hidden in the walls or floors?” Brick asked.

She chewed her lip. “No, I think the blood soaked into the floor is giving me the shivers.” Except the house toyed with her long before she spilled her blood in the library or her father hid Nefertiti’s Heart in the basement. What was she missing?