The Weeping Lore (Witte & Co. Investigations Book 1) (47 page)

Irene sighed. “I was looking for you.”

Marie-Thérèse, even for a dead woman, looked a bit worse for the wear. She was still a diaphanous figure, translucent and filled with a cold glow, like sunlight off a patch of ice. She wore the same white dress, although now the hem was ragged and blackened, as though she had been dragging it through the mud—or, perhaps, as though it had been burned. Lines of fatigue marred Marie-Thérèse’s face, and she cast a backwards glance at the cellar wall.

A fox watching for hounds.

But when Marie-Thérèse turned back to Irene, she offered the same smile and said, “I’ve been busy, Irene. It’s good to see you again.”

“Harry said you were driven out of the church. How’d you get here?”

Marie-Thérèse pulled back her hair, and now Irene noticed silver mixed with the dark strands. The silver strands of hair glowed brighter than an electric filament. One more advantage to being dead, Irene supposed. Even gray hair looked beautiful.

“I was not driven out,” Marie-Thérèse said.

Irene tapped her lips.

“Very well,” Marie-Thérèse said. “Perhaps I left not entirely of my own design. As to how I came to be here—did you really think I could be kept out of the home of one of my descendants?”

With a prolonged eye roll, Irene stretched out her legs and lifted the revolver, aiming it at Marie-Thérèse.

“I don’t think this would hurt you,” Irene said. “But then again, I’m terribly bored, so I don’t particularly care.”

“Be thoughtful, child. I’m here to make you an offer.”

“Another?”

“Irene, you have not told me where the mask is.”

“I haven’t been able to find it. As you said, I’ve been busy. Your visions led us right into a trap. Or was that not entirely of your own design either?”

Marie-Thérèse was silent for a moment. The strands of silver in her hair shone like starlight. Then she said, “I was . . . misled.”

“Did your father lock you in a cellar too?”

With a surprisingly human snort, Marie-Thérèse shook her head. “He sent me to a nunnery.”

“You don’t seem particularly religious.”

“Appearances are deceiving, child. The dead are far more religious than the living. We have the most to lose, after all.”

“Did you like being a nun?”

Marie-Thérèse burst out laughing. “No. Not at all. I left the convent and married. I was not meant to be a bride of Christ, I think. I was not meant to be a wife at all, at least, not the way men wanted.”

“You should have been a suffragette.”

“I would have rather liked that, I think. The dancing, especially. And the skirts.”

“I’ll be sure to invite you the next time I go out.”

“You won’t go out again, child. You know that. Your father has thrown himself in with the Children, but he is not the only player. A man with big eyes and a big stomach, but without the skills or resources to be of value. He knows this. He is not a fool. He also knows that to keep his place with the Children—and to keep his wealth, his status—he must recover the mask. The mask is everything now. Dagon is restless. The Children hear him stirring. Your father will give you to the Children as a sign of his good will and faithfulness.”

“But the Children have the mask,” Irene said, gesturing with the pistol. “I saw those spiders take it.”

“The spiders did indeed have it, but the problem is that those spiders, in spite of their size, still have the brains of bugs. I had sent an agent to intervene and recover the mask. There was a struggle.” Rage flicked across Marie-Thérèse’s face like a lightning stroke. “My agent turned out to be less faithful than I had hoped.”

“So who has the mask? Where is it?”

“My agent, true to the American spirit, has decided to put the mask up for auction. The Children will be there. As will the two bands of thugs who have been squabbling over the mask.”

“Why not go get the mask back, then?” Irene asked. She paused, then laughed. “You can’t, can you? All this show, and you can’t get the mask back. You might as well be a girl hiding under a sheet. Boo!” Irene laughed again.

“Boo indeed,” Marie-Thérèse murmured. Her eyes were huge and dark, swallowing up the cellar’s light. “As you have so eloquently pointed out, I am . . . limited. Particularly now, without access to certain resources.”

“The cathedral.”

“In part. This is why I have come to offer you a deal, Irene. The same deal I made to you when we first met. The deal that I offer you as one of my blood.”

“And what do I get out of it?”

“You will not die here, alone, in this cellar. You will not be given to the Children to be used in their rites. You will not see Dagon rise to take the River Throne. Three things, I offer you.”

“I’ll pass.”

Marie-Thérèse stood and stalked towards Irene. “Don’t be foolish.” The pale light flickered, like a candle tipping over, and Irene’s hand was sweaty on the revolver. “You can’t do anything from here. Your friends will be hunted down once the Children have the mask. You will be another meaningless victim to the Children’s lust for power.”

“Then sweeten the offer.”

“What? What do you want?”

“This pays for all,” Irene said. “It cancels our previous deal. Cian will remain healthy, and I am absolved of finding the mask.”

Marie-Thérèse paused. The light in the room had wrapped itself around her like skeins of yarn until she stood at the center of darkness. For a moment, something fluttered behind her translucence, like a cloud passing over the sun. Irene felt all those peach pits in her stomach tumble around as though she’d been doing somersaults.

And then Marie-Thérèse held out her hand. “Agreed.”

Irene pocketed the revolver. She stood, but she didn’t take the other woman’s hand.

“It is all right to be afraid,” Marie-Thérèse said. The compassion in her voice was surprising for its sincerity. “The old nun who first taught me these secrets told me that knowledge is a burden. The things you have seen, the things you know, men and women were not meant to know. This knowledge, these secrets, the old nun called them
la sagesse des larmes
. The weeping lore.”

“I’m not afraid,” Irene said. She reached out and took Marie-Thérèse’s hand. “And I’m not weeping.”

And then the world became a wall of white.

At some point during the night, something large and fuzzy had crawled into Cian’s mouth and died. A rat, perhaps, with a bad case of mold. Or an especially mobile piece of that awful-smelling Hun cheese. Whatever it had been, it had plastered itself to the back of Cian’s throat and was now trying to kill him by smell alone.

Cian groaned, stretched his legs, and immediately regretted it. The movement sent him tumbling off the too-short sofa, and he landed face-down on the rug. The headache lurking behind his eyes sprang forward and started hammering at his brain.

“Morning, big boy.” Sam’s voice was bright and cheery and loud. It had all the charm, at that moment, of an icepick to the ear. “I was wondering if you were going to go ahead and die, or if you thought you’d linger a bit longer.”

Cian spoke into the rug.

“What was thought?”

“Kill me,” Cian croaked. Then, in a stroke of genius, he added, “Quietly.”

A soft thud came near Cian’s head. He managed to turn and saw a glass of water and two aspirin. He took them, drank the glass of water, and dropped back to lie on the rug.

“I didn’t have any decent poison,” Sam said.

“Please don’t talk.”

“But I have so much to tell you.”

“Please. I’m begging you.”

“I suppose, if you don’t want me to tell you, I could find some other way to let you know. A song, maybe? Or maybe a message conveyed by drum? I read somewhere that’s how the Indians send messages. I tried my hand at the trumpet once. Well, not so much tried my hand at as stole and played for a few hours, but you get the idea. I could go find a trumpet and see if I still remembered something—”

“Sam,” Cian said.

“Yes, Cian?”

“Please.”

“Cian, this is very important. I take things like this very seriously. We can’t all spend our nights getting sloshed beyond redemption.”

Cian groaned again.

“Sam,” Pearl said.

“Pearl, good morning. I just got home and I was telling Cian that I have wonderful news, important news.”

“Pearl,” Cian said. “He’s being very loud.”

“Come tell me in the kitchen, Sam,” Pearl said. “Quietly.”

“But—” Sam said.

“Now, Sam. You’ll have time to torture them later.”

Sam grumbled and followed Pearl out of the room.

Cian thought, for half a second, about naming Pearl for sainthood. Then the headache took a sledgehammer to his right eye, and Cian struggled to keep from emptying his stomach.

It was not a promising way to start the day.

After a half an hour, though, the aspirin massaged away the worst of the ache, and Cian managed to sit up, finish the glass of water, and not vomit. He considered all three major accomplishments. From the kitchen came Sam’s voice punctuated by Pearl’s soft laughter. When a few more minutes had passed, and Cian was fairly certain that he wasn’t going to die, he got to his feet and made his way to the kitchen.

The small room smelled of toast, eggs, and cheese, and Cian swallowed to keep from losing the contents of his stomach. Sam and Pearl sat at the small table. Behind them, sunlight poked through the window like an ill-intentioned neighbor. Pearl set to work buttering a piece of toast, and the scrape of the knife across the dry bread sounded louder than a Wisconsin sawmill.

Sam whistled. “You look like death.”

Pearl nodded, her expression sympathetic.

“Eggs?” Cian said. “You had to cook eggs?”

“They’re good for a hangover,” Sam said. He got to his feet, scraped eggs from a pan, and brought the plate over to the table. “And toast. And we would have cooked up some bacon, but we used it all for the sandwiches yesterday.”

Cian dropped into the seat. He accepted the piece of toast like a flag of surrender. At least the worst of the noise had stopped. He swallowed another wave of nausea as he contemplated the eggs.

“You’re not going to feel better unless you eat,” Sam said.

Cian squeezed his eyes shut. “And the cheese?”

“Oh. That was just for me.”

Of course.

Cian took his first bite. His stomach decided to stand on its head. He pushed the chair back, ran to the bathroom, and emptied his stomach into the toilet.

After he’d washed his face and brushed his teeth, his head felt like it had shrunk to half its size. When he came out of the bathroom, Harry was standing in the hall. The other man’s face was pinched and white, his eyes shadowed, and he looked like he’d spent the night wrestling a pack of dogs. Sick dogs.

“My turn,” he croaked and pushed past Cian.

Cian returned to the kitchen. Sam had a huge smile plastered across his face.

“Better?” he asked.

“I am going to kill you. Later.”

“Eggs,” Sam said. “They always do the trick. I bet you’re feeling a hundred percent.”

“Pearl,” Cian said. “Make him stop.”

She frowned, handed Cian a piece of toast—no eggs—and pointed to the chair.

Cian sat and ate. It was a bit like chewing a tray of sawdust, but the toast dropped to the bottom of his stomach like anchor and sat there, soaking up the last of the sickness. Harry came in a few minutes later. When Sam offered eggs, Harry glared at the boy until Sam’s smile fell off like a piece cheap of plaster.

Point for Harry. And for bad drunks everywhere.

Without a word, Harry accepted a piece of toast and dropped into the chair next to Cian. He ate with savage bites, still staring at Sam.

Sam paled.

“There’s no need to walk around wearing a thundercloud,” Pearl said. “Stop it right now, Harry.”

He gave the toast another unnecessarily vigorous bite and turned to look at her.

“Sam has something to tell both of you,” Pearl said.

“I went out last night,” Sam said.

“I thought you were asleep,” Cian said.

Sam shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep. And since I wasn’t invited to join what has to have been the loudest drinking party ever thrown by two men, I decided to go out.”

Cian swallowed the last bit of sawdust in his mouth. He looked at Pearl.

She nodded. “It was . . . impressive.”

Cian glanced at Harry.

He shrugged, but a blush was steadily mounting his cheeks.

“Where did you go?”

Sam smirked. “You know, if you’re going to drink, you should really learn some new songs.”

Cian groaned.

“Don’t tease them, Sam,” Pearl said, but she was fighting a smile.

“I thought I’d look around. Nothing major. I wanted to get my ear to the ground and see what I’d missed over the last few days.”

“And?”

“And the Children have still got a price on my head.”

“Of course.”

“Well, a fellow can hope, can’t he? I thought for sure they’d forget about me once you two showed your faces again.”

Cian opened his mouth, ready to tell Sam exactly what he thought about the conversation, Sam’s usefulness, and the dubious quality of the boy’s maternal genealogy.