The Taker (54 page)

T
he next morning, the household was consumed with preparations for Adair’s trip. He had spent the morning picking out the clothing he would take with him and then sent the servants to pack for him and load the rented livery. Jonathan had shut himself up in his room, where he was also supposedly packing for the trip, but I sensed that he couldn’t bring himself to go and that a fight loomed.

I hid in the pantry with the cook’s mortar and methodically ground the phosphorus into dust. As I laid out the things I needed, I was as nervous as I had ever been, sure that Adair would pick up on my emotions and be forewarned. In truth, I didn’t know the extent of his powers, if they could truly be called powers. I’d made it this far, though, and had no choice but to gamble with my life and Jonathan’s by going the rest of the way.

The house by then was still and it might have been my imagination, but seemed to be tense with unspoken emotions: abandonment, resentment, lingering anger with Adair for what he’d done to Uzra,
uncertainty about what lay ahead for all of us. Carrying a tray with the doctored wine, I went past the shut bedroom doors to Adair’s room, which had been quiet for the hour since the servants had carted the trunks away. I knocked once and, not waiting for an answer, pushed the door back and slipped inside.

Adair sat in a chair he’d pulled close to the fire, which was unusual in itself as he usually reclined on a bower of cushions. Maybe he sat more formally because he was fully dressed for travel, that is to say, like a proper gentleman of the time and not bare chested as was his habit. He sat stiffly in the armchair in breeches and boots, a waistcoat and high-collared shirt, bound at the neck with a silk cravat, his frock coat hanging over the back of a second chair. His suit was made of dark gray wool with very little embroidery or trim, far more sedate than his usual attire. He wore no periwig, but had brushed his hair back and had it tied trimly. His expression was of sadness, as though he was forced to go on this trip under pressure and that it was not of his own design. He lifted his hand and it was then I noticed the hookah set up next to him, and that the room smelled of sweet opium smoke of the strongest variety. He drew on the mouthpiece, cheeks sucked in, his eyes half closed.

I put the tray on a table near the door and crouched on the floor next to him, gently lacing my fingers into the stray curls on his forehead, brushing them away. “I thought we might spend a minute together before you go. I’ve brought something to drink.”

He slowly opened his eyes. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been meaning to explain about this trip to you. You’re probably wondering why I’m going with Jonathan and not you.” I quashed the urge to tell him I already knew, but waited for him to go on. “I know you can hardly bear to be separated from Jonathan, but I’ll take him away from you for only a few days,” he said mockingly. “Jonathan will return, but I am going to do some traveling on my own. I may be gone for a while … I feel the need to be by myself. This need comes over me from time to time … to be alone with my thoughts and my memories.”

“How can you leave me like this? Won’t you miss me?” I asked, trying to sound coquettish.

He nodded. “Yes, I shall, but it can’t be helped. That’s why Jonathan is coming with me, so I can explain a few things to him. He will run the household while I am gone. He told me of his duties running his family’s business and keeping his neighbors’ debts from bankrupting the town; managing one household’s accounts should be easy for him. I’ve had all the money transferred to his name. He will be the one with the authority; you and the others will have no choice but to follow his orders.”

It almost sounded plausible and I wondered, for a second, if I had misjudged the situation. But I knew Adair far too well to believe that things were as simple as he made them out to be. “Let me get you a drink,” I said, rising to my feet.

I’d selected a heavy brandy, strong enough to mask the taste of the phosphorus. Down in the pantry, I’d carefully poured the powder into the bottle with a paper sleeve, added most of a small bottle of laudanum, corked the mouth, and swished the liquid around gently. The powder had released a few white sparks into the air as I handled it, and I prayed that it would not make itself apparent by sparkling with the residue glowing faintly in the bottom of Adair’s glass.

As I poured the concoction now for Adair, I noticed on the dresser a few things laid out, presumably for the trip. There was a scroll of paper tied with a piece of ribbon, the paper old and rough, and I was sure it came from the collection bound between wooden covers in the hidden room. Next to it was a snuffbox and a small flacon, similar to the sort used for perfume, holding about an ounce of a brackish brown liquid.

“Here.” I handed a full goblet to Adair. I’d poured a glass for myself, though I had no intention of drinking the entire amount. Just a sip to convince him that nothing was amiss. He seemed heavily sotted by the opium, though I knew the opium alone didn’t have the strength to put him to sleep.

I resumed my place near his feet and looked up with what I hoped could be taken for adoration and concern. “You’ve been upset for days now. It’s because of the trouble with Uzra. Don’t protest; it’s only right that you’re upset by what happened, you’d kept her with you for hundreds of years. She
had
to mean something to you.” He sighed and let me help him to the mouthpiece again; yes, he was eager for distraction. He seemed ill, slow moving and bloated. Perhaps he was suffering for having killed the odalisque, or perhaps he was afraid of abandoning this body for the next; it had been a long time since he’d done it last, after all. Maybe it was painful to go through. Maybe he was afraid of the consequences for another bad deed, added to the long list of sins he’d already committed, a list for which he would be held accountable someday.

After a couple more puffs, he regarded me through slitted eyes. “Are you afraid of me?”

“For killing Uzra? You have your reasons. It’s not for me to question. That’s how it is here. You are the master.”

He closed his eyes and resettled his head against the high back of the chair. “You have always been the most reasonable one, Lanore. They are impossible to live with, the others. Accusing me with their eyes. They’re cold, they hide from me. I should kill the lot of them and start over.” By the tone of his voice I could tell it wasn’t an idle threat; once upon a time he’d done that very thing to another group of his minions. Wiped them out in a fury. For having a life that would supposedly last an eternity, it was a precarious existence.

I had to keep from shaking as I continued to stroke his forehead. “What had she done to deserve her punishment? Do you want to tell me?”

He pushed my hand aside and sucked again on the mouthpiece. I fetched the bottle and poured another glass for him. I let him stroke my face clumsily with his murdering hands and continued to soothe his conscience with insincere assurances that he was within his rights to have killed the odalisque.

At one point, he took my hand from his temple and began stroking my wrist, tracing my veins. “How would you like to take Uzra’s place?” he asked, a bit anxiously.

The notion rattled me, but I tried not to let him see. “Me? I don’t deserve you … I’m not beautiful like Uzra. I could never give you what she gave you.”

“You can give me something she would not. She never gave in to me, never. She despised me every day we were together. From you I sense … we have had happy moments together, haven’t we? I would almost say there were times you loved me.” He put his mouth to my wrist, his fire to my pulse. “I would make it easier for you to love me, if you agree. You would be mine alone. I wouldn’t share you with anybody. What do you say?”

He continued to pet my wrist while I tried to think of a response that would not sound false. Eventually, he answered for me. “It’s Jonathan, isn’t it. I can feel it in your heart. You want to be available for Jonathan, if he should want you. I want you, and you want Jonathan. Well … there may yet be a way to make this work, Lanore. There may be a way to get us both what we want.” It seemed a confession to all I suspected, and the very idea made my blood freeze.

Adair’s keen ability to select damaged souls would be his undoing. You see, he had chosen me well. He had picked me from the masses, known I was the sort of person who, without hesitation, could pour drink after poisonous drink for a man who had just professed love for her. Who knows, perhaps if I had been by myself, if only my future were at stake, I might have chosen differently. But Adair had made Jonathan part of his design. Maybe Adair thought I would be happy, that I was shallow enough to love him and stay with him as long as I had Jonathan’s beautiful shell to admire. But Adair’s murderous self would be behind my beloved’s familiar face and would echo in his every word, and at the thought of that, what else could I do?

He dropped my arm, let the hookah slide from his hand. Adair was slowing, a windup toy that had spent its spring. I could wait no
longer. For what I was prepared to do to the man, I had to know. I had to be absolutely certain. I leaned very close to ask, “You are the physic, aren’t you? The man you told me about?”

He seemed to need a moment to make sense of my words but then didn’t react angrily at all. Instead, a slow smile spread over his lips. “So clever, my Lanore. You have always been the cleverest one, I saw that right away. You were the only one who could tell when I was lying … You found the elixir. You found the seal, too … oh yes, I knew. I smelled a trace of you on the velvet … In all the time I have been alive, you are the first to solve my puzzle, to correctly read the clues. You found me out—as I knew you would.”

He was barely lucid and didn’t seem to know I was there. I leaned over him now, my hands grasping him by the lapels of his waistcoat, and had to give him a shake to get his attention. “Adair, tell me—what do you plan to do with Jonathan? You’re going to take possession of his body, aren’t you? That’s what you did to your peasant boy, the boy who was your servant, and now you’re going to take Jonathan. That is your plan?”

His eyes popped open and that chilling gaze of his settled on me, nearly breaking my composure. “If this were possible … if such a thing were to happen … you would hate me, Lanore, would you not? And yet I would be no different from the man you have known, the man for whom you have felt affection. You have loved me, Lanore. I have felt it.”

“That’s true,” I said to him, to assure him.

“You would have me still and you would have Jonathan, too. But without his indecisiveness. Without his carelessness for your feelings, without the hurt and selfishness and regret. I would love you, Lanore, and you would be certain of my feelings. That is something you cannot have with Jonathan. That is something you will never get from him.” His words jolted me because I knew them to be true. As it turned out, his words were also prophetic; it was like a curse Adair placed on me, dooming me to unhappiness forever.

“I know I shan’t. And yet …,” I murmured, still stroking his face, trying to gauge his wakefulness. It didn’t seem that a body could ingest so much poison and remain conscious.

“And yet, it’s Jonathan I choose,” I said, finally.

At those words, Adair’s glazed eyes lit up with only the faintest spark of recognition deep within them, recognition of what I’d just said. Recognition that something terrible was happening to him, that he was unable to move. His body was shutting down, even though he fought it, struggling in his chair like a stroke victim, spastic and tremulous, drool starting to drip from the corners of his mouth in bubbled threads. I leaped to my feet and stood back, avoiding his hands as they jabbed the air for me—and failed, then froze, then went limp. He grew still suddenly, still as death and gray as clouded water, and tumbled out of the chair onto the floor.

It was time for the final step. Everything had been laid in place earlier, but I couldn’t do this part alone. I needed Jonathan. I sprang out of the room and ran down the hall to Jonathan’s chamber, bursting in without knocking. He was pacing, but seemed prepared to go out, cloak over his arm and hat in hand.

“Jonathan,” I gasped, pressing the door closed, blocking his way.

“Where have you been?” he asked, an angry edge to his voice. “I looked for you but couldn’t find you … I waited, hoping you would come to me, until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I am going to tell him I have no intention of traveling with him. I’m going to tell him that I am breaking with him and then I’m going to leave.”

“Wait—I need you, Jonathan. To help me.” As angry as Jonathan was, he saw that I was upset and put his things aside to listen to me. I poured out the story, sure that I sounded like a madwoman because I hadn’t the time to think of a way to tell him without seeming delusional or paranoid. And inwardly I cringed, because now he would see me for what I was; capable of cunning evil, able to condemn someone to terrible suffering—still the same girl who had sent Sophia to kill herself, cruel and unyielding as steel, even after everything I myself
had been through. Surely, Jonathan would denounce me. I expected him to walk out on me, that I would lose him forever.

When I’d told him the entire tale, of how Adair had planned to extinguish his soul and usurp his body, I held my breath, waiting for Jonathan to dismiss me or lash out, for him to call me a madwoman, waiting for the swing of the cape and the slam of the door. But he didn’t.

He took my hand and I felt a bond between us that I hadn’t known in a while. “You saved me, Lanny. Again,” he said, his voice cracking.

Upon seeing Adair on the floor, still as the dead, Jonathan recoiled momentarily, but then he joined me in binding Adair as securely as we could. We tied the monster’s hands behind his back, bound his ankles together, and gagged him with a soft cloth. However, when Jonathan went to lash the knots at Adair’s wrists to his feet, bowing our prisoner backward in a position of utter vulnerability, I recalled the inhuman harness. The feeling of helplessness came crushing down upon me and I could not do the same to Adair, even though he was my tormentor. Who knew how long he might remain bound like that, before he was found and freed? It seemed too cruel a punishment, even for him.