The Weeping Lore (Witte & Co. Investigations Book 1) (46 page)

“Mind your own business,” Irene told her.

Cian had been worried. Worried about her. And frightened. And because he was a man, with half the brains of a bedpost, instead of just saying he’d been worried, he got angry and huffed and puffed. For half a second, Irene had been frightened too, and so she’d pushed him right back.

The Irene in the mirror had a look that said,
I told you so
.

Irene walked away from the dressing table. She was afraid she’d give herself a black eye if she stayed there a moment longer.

But walking to the other side of the room and fumbling with her cigarette case did nothing to help. She lit a cigarette, drew deeply, and breathed out a thin line of smoke. The cigarette didn’t help either.

Because of that kiss. That damned kiss. She could still feel it. Hotter than a cigarette. Smoother than smoke.

Damn Cian and damn that kiss.

After another pull on the cigarette, Irene ground the tip out in an ashtray. Then she started getting dressed. One of her more conservative dresses: purple, with a high neck, paneled with rose and maroon. Her stockings, her black heels, the little white hat with purple trim. Her clutch. Her coat.

At the door, though, she stopped. They had lost the box and, more importantly, the mask. Again. All this madness had started with the mask. But what happened when they found it?

That was the real question.

Harry would destroy it, given half a chance. As would Pearl, or even Cian. All they could think about was the threat that the mask represented: inbred priests calling up a forgotten god. But what would happen to Cian if the mask were destroyed?

Irene needed that box. She needed it so she could look her father in the eye and be free. Finally free. Did Harry care about that? Did Pearl? Perhaps, a little. But they had other concerns. They wouldn’t sacrifice the mask for her.

All of which meant that Irene had to find the mask first.

She left the hotel and hailed a cab. At the Old Cathedral, she paid the man extra to wait for her and hurried across the frozen pavement. Behind the cathedral’s pillars, the massive double doors were closed. Irene hammered on the wood, but the doors were so thick that she couldn’t hear a sound.

“Marie-Thérèse,” she called.

The wind snatched the word away. Irene clapped a hand to her hat to keep the wind from taking that too.

When Irene had come here the last time, Marie-Thérèse had been gone, and there had been signs of a struggle. The spirit had been driven away, Harry had said. Driven away by something powerful. The same person that had summoned the snowstorm to trap Irene? The same one who had called up that creature to hunt her? Patrick had said it had to be someone powerful. Harry had implied as much.

The cathedral, though, offered no answers, and Irene’s legs were freezing. She hurried back to the cab and climbed into the back.

“Late to be out,” the cabbie said. “What’s your husband thinking?”

“I don’t have a husband,” Irene said. “And I can do my own thinking, thank you very much.”

“It isn’t decent,” the man grumbled. “Ought to be at home in bed.”

Irene opened her mouth to respond and then paused.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s a fine idea. Take me home.”

Instead of the Majestic, though, she gave the cabbie her father’s address. Who better to ask about the box and the mask? The box had, after all, been delivered to her house. Her father had been expecting it. He had been terrified when it disappeared and yet had refused to tell the police about it. He had denied its existence, until Irene had revealed that the box was lost. And then—

Through the thick coat, Irene probed the still-healing bruises.

And then he had been angry.

She checked the revolver in her pocket. It was a small thing. Like her. But it had enough kick to stop a man.

Even her father.

The cabbie took her around back. Irene paid him from her dwindling reserves of cash and climbed out. She let herself into the kitchen. The smell of hot oil still clung to the stone and copper, but it was old now, faded. The house was dark and silent. It was late, later than Irene had realized. Her parents would be asleep.

In the stillness, Irene followed the darkened hallways, relying on long years of familiarity to navigate creaking boards and unseen steps and the endless series of decorative tables and lamps and vases that were her mother’s sentinels. When she rounded the next corner, though, Irene paused. The lights were on in her father’s study.

She found the revolver, closed her eyes, and counted to ten. Ten deep breaths.

In the darkness, she could practically smell Cian. Could taste his lips on hers.

That damned kiss.

She needed the box. So she walked to the study door and knocked and pushed it open.

Her father sat in his shirtsleeves, his necktie hanging lying limp like a noose in the moments before execution. Coarse, gray stubble covered his cheeks and neck, and his eyes had fallen to the back of his head. He had one hand over his mouth, like an overgrown child holding back a scream, and in the other hand he held a pistol. When he saw Irene, he hesitated. The pistol wavered, as though dragged by a river current, and then dropped.

George Lovell covered his face and wept.

Irene hurried forward, dropped to one knee, and put her hands on the sides of her father’s head. He shook with each sob.

“Father,” Irene said. “It’s ok, Father.” She pulled his head against her.

He cried for a moment more, and then he pulled her arms away and drew back. “Irene, please forgive me. You must—please, you must—tell me you have it. Tell me you know where it is.” He gripped her arms.

Irene winced and tried to pull free. “Father, you’re hurting me. Let go.”

He dropped her like a hot coal, stood, and knocked his chair back. “I’m sorry. Irene. Please.”

Irene stood as well, massaging the red marks of his fingers, and moved to stand by the door. She put her hand in her pocket. The silver handle of the revolver was cool and solid.

“I don’t know where it is,” Irene said. “The Children have it, Father.”

His breathing sharpened. “What? Impossible, Irene.”

“I saw it, Father. They have it.”

“I’m telling you, Irene. We don’t have it.”

The words lingered in the air with the smell of pipe smoke and leather.

“You’re helping them,” Irene said.

“I’m not going to stand here and explain myself to my daughter.” He stood up straighter, pulling at his collar, his face reddening by the second. “What I’ve done, I’ve done for my family, Irene. For you. You should remember that and be grateful.”

“Those things—those spiders, the golems—that was you.”

“Don’t be foolish. I’ve done everything I could to keep you out of harm, but you insisted on running around with Harry Witte and his troop of fools. If you’d listened to me for once in your life—”

“You know Harry.”

“I know who he is, Irene. Now. Where is the mask? Who has it?”

“The Children,” Irene said. She had forgotten about the revolver. She had almost forgotten how to stand. “I saw the spiders take it.”

“Impossible,” her father said. He yanked at his collar again, and this time the collar popped off. He held it for a moment, staring at it, like Columbus spotting land, and then tossed it on the desk. “Impossible.”

Irene barely heard him. He had known. He had known about Harry, about the mask, about the spiders and the golems. He had known they were real. He had never told her. He had known about the Children.

He was one of the Children.

Not some poor man tricked into helping them. Not a patsy, not an innocent. He was one of them.

George Lovell had moved to the fireplace. The hearth was cold, but he looked into the ashes, one hand smoothing wrinkles from his forehead. He might as well have been a stranger, some grizzled man who had broken into their home seeking a bit of warmth. Irene’s finger trembled against the revolver’s trigger. One shot. One loud, explosive shot, and the stranger would be gone.

“Why did you come here?” her father said. “What do you want?”

“Help,” Irene said. “I thought you could help me.” She swallowed a giggle at the ridiculousness of it and bit the inside of her cheek.

Father gave a disgusted shake of his head. “You can’t take a damn thing seriously. Fine, Irene. We’ll help each other. What do you need?”

“The box. I thought you might know how to find it. Who might have it.”

“Well I don’t,” he said. “But—” He paused and took a step toward her.

Irene’s hand tightened on the revolver. One shot. A shot loud enough to knock her life down like a house of cards. That’s all it would take.

But she didn’t fire.

George Lovell never noticed. He was still talking. “I think I have a way to find the box. Come with me.”

He pushed past her and started towards the back of the house. Irene followed him. She stumbled over a step in the darkness. She collided with a small stand and sent its porcelain vase and silk flowers to the floor. The crack ran through the house. The sound snapped something in Irene’s head. The sound of a continent shifting.

“God, Irene,” Father said. “You’d think you’d never been here before. Your mother loved that vase.” But he kept walking.

He led her into the cellar. Irene followed down the rough stone steps. The air was chillier here, and she was glad of her coat. A single electric bulb—Father was still having the new lights installed throughout the rest of the house—sizzled to life and illuminated the large underground room. A few wine racks took up one corner, while rows of shelving filled with food—potatoes and onions and wilted cabbage, flour and sugar and butter, and on and on—filled the rest of the cellar.

“Damn,” George Lovell said. “Wait here a moment, Irene. I’ve forgot something.”

She leaned against one of the shelves. The late hour had finally caught her. Father trotted up the steps. It took a moment for her to realize what was wrong. And by then, it was too late.

Irene was waiting for the sound when it came. The cellar door shutting. Then the lock being set.

She didn’t even bother to go and check. Instead, she let herself sink to the ground and rested her head against a sack of flour. She didn’t feel like crying. She felt like a woman who had been on a long voyage and somehow ended up right where she had started. In other words, she felt hungry and cold and frustrated. And a bit chagrined.

But mostly, sleepy. And with the feeling that solid ground wasn’t quite as solid anymore.

After a time—an hour? Ten minutes? Irene didn’t know—she stood up and brushed dust from her coat. There were, after all, only so many minutes that a woman could spend staring up at peach preserves without getting bored. The rows of glass jars sparkled in the electric light. They had been Sally’s work, the peaches, and seeing them made Irene feel as though she’d swallowed all the pits on a hot summer day. She climbed the stairs and checked the door. Locked, of course.

She set the tip of the revolver against the lock.

Then she hesitated.

Would it explode?

Since the more technical aspects of revolvers—such as their likelihood to explode when jammed up against a lock—were beyond Irene’s expertise, she pocketed the revolver and went back down the stairs. She made a circuit of the cellar. Aside from a cobwebbed barrel at the back, marked
Wheat
, and a mummified loaf of bread on a top shelf, there were no surprises. Irene wondered about the bread, though. Had it been intended for a dinner and then forgotten? Or had it been hidden on purpose, promised and then taken away, the only kind of punishment that Sally—or perhaps, Irene’s mother—had the power to inflict?

There was something funny, Irene supposed, in the fact that she was going to die in a cellar. A suffragette, a woman with a college education, freed from the tyranny of the household, and she was going to die and be buried down here like that damned loaf of bread.

Or perhaps her father would let her live. That would be a serious mistake on his part.

Irene swept the bottom step clean and sat so that she could watch the cellar door. She balanced the revolver on her lap.

Now, the waiting.

It took some time before Irene noticed the change to the light. The electric bulb buzzed like a bee in a bottle, and the light surged and waned. Perfect. Simply perfect. The bulb would go out, and Irene would be trapped in the dark. Perhaps that had been Father’s plan all along.

As though answering her thoughts, the bulb flared one last time, hissed like a cheap kettle, and died.

Irene leaned her head back and closed her eyes against the dark.

Yes. Perfect.

But when she opened her eyes again, Irene realized she could make out the shape of the closest set of shelves. They were nothing more than a charcoal smear against the rest of the darkness, but she could see them, and that meant she wasn’t in total dark. A pale, sourceless light began to grow, and Irene’s eyes adjusted, until she could make out the far wall of the cellar and the wine bottle offering salutes from the racks.

After a time, the light steadied. And then a dark-haired woman stepped out of the cellar wall.