Winterspell (9 page)

Somewhere inside herself, somewhere hidden and furious, Clara was screaming. She was Godfather's creation there, a vengeful
whirlwind, bloodying them with her blade and coloring the room red.

But externally she was close to sobbing, reaching for Plum like a beggar. “No, she's not a part of this. Don't bring her here. Don't hurt her. She knows nothing. I won't say anything about any of it, I swear to you. Leave us be,
please
.”

“You're absolutely right. You won't say anything about it. I'll see to that.”

“I don't like this, Plum,” muttered the Butcher. “Let me dispose of the girl. No one need know what's happened here.”

“No. That would arouse too much suspicion and upset Dr. Victor.”

“Hang the doctor. He's mad as a hatter—”

“And he has done much for Concordia, as well as serve loyally as my personal lieutenant since my darling husband's death.” Plum's expression had turned deadly, making the Butcher seem to shrink where he stood. “You would do well to remember that.”

The door opened and shut with a swell of faint music. Dr. Victor had Felicity by the shoulders. An outsider might have thought him a kindly uncle shepherding his niece to bed, but Clara saw how his gaze roamed over Felicity's body.

Oh, for the courage to beat him senseless.

“Here you are, Clara!” Felicity hurried forward, curls slightly askew. “I've been looking everywhere for you. Godfather's acting so strangely. I hate when he's like this. It's humiliating. He keeps asking for you, and I said I could help him if he needed something, but he said, ‘No, only Clara,' and he's taking the toys back from everyone, and . . . What is it? Clara, you're crying.”

“We were talking about Mother.” Clara turned away, meeting Patricia Plum's coldly amused gaze. “She loved these parties.”

“God rest her soul,” Dr. Victor added silkily.

Clara felt Felicity's slender arms about her waist and held her close, breathing in the smells of cinnamon and cake, and curls damp from dancing.

“Oh, Clara.” Tenderly Felicity fiddled with Clara's skirts. “Mother wouldn't want you to be sad. She would want you to dance. Don't you like your gown? Come back to the party. You can dance with me, Clara.”

Clara glanced at the Butcher, who glared at the fire, and at Dr. Victor, whose eyes gleamed. The sight paralyzed her. What were the right words to say? What was the right expression to assume? She could not have felt more helpless before them if she'd been peering out past the bars of a cage.

“Yes, I'll come dance,” she whispered. “Will you wait for me by the stairs?”

Felicity smiled up at her. “Oh, yes. I'll even be the boy and lead, if you want. I dance better than any old boy.”

“True enough. The boys here are cows with four left feet. Go on now.”

Felicity stood on tiptoe to kiss Clara's cheek and left in a flutter of emerald-green skirts.

Clara kept her eyes on the door. Breathing—she must, impossibly, keep breathing.

“Why did you bring her here?”

“I wanted to remind you of how much you love your sister.” Plum's voice was deceptively sweet. “She's a pretty creature, to be sure. Young and innocent. And if you utter one word of anything you've heard here to anyone, if you do anything to interfere with our plans regarding your father, I will kill her.”

“You can't.” Clara was sinking beneath waves of shock; they threatened to smother her. “You wouldn't. She's a
child
, twelve years old—”

“And I won't simply kill her, no.” Plum advanced, perfectly glamorous, glittering. “I'll give her to Dr. Victor first. She's a bit younger than his usual patients, not to mention lovelier. I'm certain he'd relish the chance to experiment.”

The study swirled about Clara, but Dr. Victor did not let her fall, catching her by the arm and whispering at her ear, “A pair—a lovely pair of girls for the good doctor. How sweet that would be.”

“You've brought this upon yourself, Clara, with your deplorable
behavior tonight.” Plum slid close enough for Clara to smell the woman's breath against her face. “And really you should be thanking Dr. Victor. Without his, shall we say,
partiality
toward you, we would not be having this conversation. You should consider yourself lucky to have this choice at all: You can let us proceed as planned and save your sister's life, or you can watch her be mutilated at the hands of your fiancé.”

Clara didn't understand at first. She could do nothing but turn the word over in her mind as though examining an unfamiliar artifact.
Fiancé.

“Oh.” Plum's hand, dripping with rings, stroked Clara's cheek. “I forgot to mention that, didn't I? How careless of me! Dr. Victor has requested your hand in marriage. I daresay your father wasn't too pleased with the idea, but soon enough . . .” Plum waved her hand dismissively. “It should work out nicely. With your father gone, you and your sister will fall to our care. He wants it that way. It says as much in his will.”

The world had been reduced to a single, searing point, buried beneath Clara's breastbone. She longed to pluck it from her body, wield her own fury like a blade. But she could only stand there, reeling.

“I'll kill you,” Clara whispered, frantic. “I'll kill you. I swear I will.”

Patricia Plum burst out laughing.

Dr. Victor wrenched Clara's arms back, twisting them until she cried out in agony and fell to her knees. Pain pulsed through her in waves, and she discovered that she was sobbing, that numbness was giving way to grief and unstoppable horror.
Stop crying, Clara, you stupid girl,
the voice of her mind hissed. But she couldn't.

“Oh, you poor, foolish girl,” Plum said, kneeling to cup her cheeks. “No, you won't. You'll do as you're told, stay quiet, and keep things as painless as possible for you and your sister. New Year's Eve is a week away, Clara. I'll be watching you closely. If I don't like what I see, your sister's blood will be on your hands. The choice is up to you.”

Clara nodded, her vision a blur, and leaned back against Dr. Victor. She could not see a way out, not from this. The study's walls were folding her away into a tiny, pounding box, and she welcomed
it. Dr. Victor's eyes tore off her clothes, and she let them.

You asked for this, the way you behaved.

“Then we're agreed,” said Plum cheerily, and they left her.

* * *

Clara sat alone for long moments afterward, dizzy.

Perhaps she could take Felicity tonight and run. But run where, and what about Father? Yes, he had been more and more distant of late, to the point where the household staff came to Clara first with their questions, and Clara had to remind her father to attend his appointments, to go over his accounts, to comb his hair. Yes, he infuriated her—and saddened her—beyond expression.

But could she truly abandon him like that, even to save her sister?

I'm abandoning him regardless,
came the inconceivable thought,
to assassination.

“To save Felicity,” she whispered to the empty room, but the reminder was no comfort. How was she to trust that Felicity would be safe, even if Clara did everything Concordia asked? Plum had said yesterday that she would do anything to keep Dr. Victor happy. Perhaps he would change his mind, decide that having Clara was not enough; perhaps he would eventually turn his attentions to Felicity. Clara would lie in her husband's bed at night and hear Felicity crying out for help, and be powerless to save her.

“Husband.” The word sat heavy upon her, and so did the future it conjured—vowing to be his, a wife paraded around on his arm, catching the scent of dead girls upon him after a day at Harrod House.

Clara's thoughts spiraled to a dullness in her belly, a nausea she knew would never dissipate. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide or run. Plum had said she would be watching Clara, and Clara believed her. Concordia's tendrils snaked throughout the entire city; the empire's eyes were in the walls, on the streets, in the mansion itself. Patricia Plum's web had ensnared Clara as completely as had her gown's layers of lace and satin. She could only hope that staying as quiet as possible would keep
Felicity safe. If she could not save her father, she could save her sister. Or she could try.

Clara stumbled back toward the ballroom. She smelled of Dr. Victor; the stench kept her unsteady, but she strove to quell any outward signs of what had happened. She would return to the party and smile, dance, and play the gracious hostess until the last guest departed in the early hours of the morning, which seemed an impossibly long time from now. The ballroom's enormous grandfather clock—a present from Godfather—was chiming eleven o'clock.

She would also make Godfather go home and take his trinkets with him—including the statue. Distantly she wondered what he'd been on about—the blue light, the proclamation of danger, the silver liquid coating his hands—but such questions faded in the face of Patricia Plum's threat. So much for training, for excursions to the shop, for explanations; she might never know what those symbols on her mother's body meant, for she suspected Dr. Victor would now put a stop to that part of her life. Certainly now, after tonight. A selfish pang of loss overwhelmed her at the thought.

As Clara entered the ballroom, shouting erupted from above.

“Leave, all of you! Now!”

Clara's breath caught; that was her father's voice, slurred and hoarse.

Felicity rushed toward her. “Oh, Clara, stop him. Father's been drinking, and Godfather's frightening everyone, and—oh, what will they
think
of us?” She wrung her hands. “Do something, won't you? Hurry, Clara dear.”

Guests had stopped dancing to stare—some with curiosity, others with horrified amusement—up at the mezzanine, where John Stole addressed the room, waving his drink.

“I've had
enough
of this ruckus,” he bellowed, his eyes red and unfocused, his cheeks damp. “All you people eating my food, drinking my drink, pretending that you don't know what's going on around you. . . .”

Godfather hurried out from the crowd to Clara's side, his pack
of tools in hand. “Well, this is unexpected but spectacularly convenient. I was about to tell them to leave—for their own sakes—and here comes your father, doing it for me.” Godfather rubbed his face, leaving silver behind. In his other hand he held a black clockwork dragon to match the one atop his cane. Its eyes gleamed red, like rubied blood.

“Go home, Godfather,” Clara said, feeling slightly unhinged. Her father's shouting, Godfather's ranting, Felicity's hands tugging fretfully at her skirts—couldn't they stop for one moment to see the disaster written on her face? “You can't be here anymore.”

“But, Clara—”

“Don't argue with me. You should never have come here tonight.” Without waiting for an answer, she took Felicity by the shoulders and tried not to imagine Dr. Victor doing the same, lifting her onto one of his surgical tables. “Go put Father to bed,” she told her sister, “and hurry. Mention Mother's name. That will make him listen.”

Felicity had begun to cry. “Clara, everyone's
staring
at us.”

“I don't care. Now go.”

“Yes, go. Go on!” Godfather waved his arms at everyone he passed, parading around like a deranged ringmaster. Guests began trickling out, frowning over their shoulders and chuckling to themselves.

“Off his rocker,” she heard one guest mutter. “Gone mad. It's the murder that did it.”

Patricia Plum floated toward the ballroom doors. “Yes, perhaps we had best call it a night? It seems Mayor Stole is eager for some peace and quiet.”

“If peace and quiet come in a bottle,” someone said, to relieved laughter.

Clara stood frozen. Her father continued shouting out curses from upstairs, and Godfather was bustling about, closing doors and hammering boards over them, nailing shut the windows. He even seemed to be muttering to the walls themselves, and was he actually
painting them with whatever silver substance coated his hands?

Clara was aghast.
God help me, he
has
gone mad.

“I do hope you'll remember everything we discussed tonight.” Patricia Plum slipped past her with a light kiss to her cheek. “We'll talk again soon. Merry Christmas, Clara.”

Clara watched her leave, Dr. Victor at her heels. He caught Clara's eye and bowed low, grinning devilishly.

When the last guest slipped out into the night, Clara stood alone in the empty ballroom littered with empty plates and glasses, and Godfather's abandoned creations. One of the electric light strings flickered. From outside on the street came laughter, spirited John Stole impressions, and the icy crunch of carriage wheels.

“Ah, Clara,” Godfather said, hurrying over. “Finally we've a chance to speak alone.”

If Clara looked at him, she would cry. She stared out the entryway after the departed guests. “Get out.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Take your things and get out.”

“But, Clara, dearest . . .”

“Don't call me that,” Clara whispered. Dr. Victor would call her that in their bed, a mockery of an endearment. She fled upstairs with that image in her mind, ignoring Godfather calling her name. Once in the safety of her bedroom she sat on the edge of her bed with her fists clenched in her lap, fighting for a calm that would not come. The sound of Felicity crying from down the hall pulled her mind into a noxious chorus:

It's your fault. You should have been braver. You should have been smarter. You should have taken better care of them.

It's your fault.

All of it is your fault.