With Fate Conspire (39 page)

The old woman’s brow knitted in confusion. “I’m afraid they aren’t here, Miss Baker.”

“I know that,” Eliza said. Belatedly, she realized she sounded like an Irishwoman. She hadn’t attempted to pass for English since she attacked the changeling; after that, there hadn’t been much point. Now she was out of the habit.
It doesn’t matter—I hope.
“But you seemed friendly with them; you can tell me where they live.”

Maybe the accent did matter; Mrs. Chase seemed deeply reluctant. “They are … rather
private
individuals, Miss Baker. It wouldn’t be right of me to direct you to their house, out of the blue, without even asking them first. But if you would like to write a letter—”

“I do not have time for that!” Eliza grimaced, regretting the sharpness of her tone. “Forgive me, Mrs. Chase. This is very important. I come in Cyma’s name; I’m searching for someone, a friend who’s been missing for a very long time, and I was told the Goodemeades could help. Please, I
must
find him.”

She didn’t miss the way Mrs. Chase’s face stilled at the name “Cyma.” When Eliza finished speaking, the old woman sat in thought, one finger tapping on her lower lip. Then she nodded decisively. “I cannot send you to their house, but I can ask them to meet with you here. Go to the Angel on the corner—” Rising, she pressed a sixpence into Eliza’s palm. “Have something to drink, and settle your nerves. Come back in half an hour, and we will see what we can do.”

What pride Eliza had once possessed was long since gone. She took the sixpence without hesitation; it was all the money she had in the world. But when Mrs. Chase showed her to the door, Eliza did not go to the coaching inn on the corner of High Street. She started in that direction, but stopped as soon as she could watch the door of No. 9 discreetly, and there she waited.

It wasn’t so much that she intended to follow Mrs. Chase—or Mary, if she sent the maid—to the sisters’ house. Simply that there was something
decidedly
odd about this entire affair. Clearly there was more going on here than Eliza could see, and she’d had enough of that in her life; right now, information and that sixpence were the only things of value she had.

But the door to No. 9 did not open again. Eliza fretted, rolling the coin between finger and thumb. There might be a back way, some garden gate through which the maid could go, though it did not look like that kind of house. She cursed her failure to look out the window during the meeting a few months ago. Or perhaps the explanation was simpler; Mrs. Chase had only intended to get rid of her, and was not contacting the Goodemeades at all. But in that case, wouldn’t she send her maid to fetch a constable? She couldn’t possibly believe Eliza would fail to return.

Twice she had to move to avoid suspicion, but she came back almost immediately, fast enough that she doubted anyone had slipped away in her absence. Which surely they would have done, if they knew she was spying, and wanted to go to the sisters unseen.

Eliza knew her thoughts were running like panicked dogs, inventing one wild theory after another, all of them probably wrong. She couldn’t help it. To be so close, after all these years—her fingers ached, the coin’s edge digging into them. She loosened her grip, and waited for half an hour to pass.

As soon as she thought it had, she marched back down the street and rapped on the door again.

This time the maid was expecting her. “They’re waiting for you in the parlor,” she said.

They?
Eliza opened the door and found three women inside: Mrs. Chase, and the mirror images of the Goodemeade sisters.
Where the devil did they come from?
She was certain they hadn’t slipped past her on White Lion Street.

Upstairs, perhaps. Mrs. Chase wouldn’t be first widow to seek out female companionship in her old age; maybe the Goodemeades lived here, too, and didn’t want that known. It hardly mattered, though. They were here.

Now she just had to convince them to help her find Owen.

“Miss Baker,” the rose Goodemeade said, “we’re so terribly sorry about what you’ve been through. Please, do sit down—Gertrude, the tea, if you would—and we will do everything we can to help you.”

The changeling had told the truth. Dumbfounded, all the arguments she’d prepared dying on her lips, Eliza took a seat.
That easily. They scarcely know me, let alone Owen—and yet, without so much as a single question, they offer to help.
She accepted the teacup from the daisy Goodemeade, Gertrude, and almost laughed. Sitting in a parlor, drinking tea out of a porcelain cup, as if she were a respectable woman. And preparing to talk about faeries.

Once she’d taken a sip of the tea, the other Goodemeade—Rosamund, that was her name; it should have been easy to remember—smoothed her hands over her skirt in a businesslike fashion. “Now. Where did you hear that name? Cyma, I mean.”

“From Miss Kittering,” Eliza said.

The sisters exchanged glances. “How
exactly
did she put it?” Gertrude asked.

Eliza thought back. “She said I should tell ye I came in Cyma’s name.”

They both seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “And she sent you here for help, I imagine,” Rosamund said. Eliza nodded. The tiny woman shook her head in fond exasperation. “Wouldn’t bring you herself, I see. I wish I could say I’m surprised, but—well. Never mind. Tell us what happened, from the beginning.”

A simple request. Yet when Eliza opened her mouth, nothing came out. She had told Quinn the truth, and that was far more dangerous … but what if they doubted her? The others had spoken so much at the Society meeting; she had no idea what these women knew or believed about faeries.
Because you left,
she remembered suddenly. It had been lost in the panic of chasing Louisa Kittering.
They were trying to invite you to something further. If you had stayed to listen …

Rosamund seemed to guess her thoughts. Smiling encouragment, she said, “Tell us
everything
. Faeries and all. You won’t surprise us, I assure you.”

Hearing the word out of the other woman’s mouth both unsettled Eliza and steadied her. Licking her lips, she began.

“When I was a girl, my friend Owen and I came across a group of boys tormenting a dog. They’d looped an iron chain around his neck, and they were dragging him about, throwing stones to make him yelp … boys do things like that all the time, and most people hardly take notice, but this dog saw me.” Even now, years later, she remembered those eyes. However much she tried not to. “One look at him, and I—I made the boys stop.”

Ran at them shrieking, actually, and knocked the biggest lad down before he could throw the broken bottle in his hand. Its jagged edge gouged her arm as they fell, but Eliza didn’t feel that until later. She’d slammed his head against the ground, and one of the others got her around the neck, but by then Owen had come to her aid. Six boys, and only two of them; but they were fourteen, and the others a good deal younger. Besides, there’d been a fury in Eliza that none of them were eager to face.

Her hands clenched again, in the stained fabric of her skirt. Eliza stared at them as she said, “The dog let me take the chain from its neck. I knew even then it was in an odd way; sure any dog hurt like that would have tried to bite, but it just stood there and let me help. Once the chain was gone, it licked my hand and limped off, and I thought that was the end.”

She brushed her fingertips across the spot, remembering the brief touch of a warm, soft tongue. Owen hadn’t let her go after the dog, even though Eliza wanted to take it in and feed it.
You can’t afford it,
a stór;
just let it go. You’ve done your good for the day.

All three women were listening patiently. Eliza took a deep breath and went on. “A few days later, when I was returning from church, I met a man.” Even then, before she knew anything about him, his eyes had seemed familiar. “He walked up to me in the street and said, ‘Thank you.’ Then he tried to vanish into the crowd, but I chased him; I wanted to know who he was, and why he’d thanked me. He said his name was Dead Rick, and that I’d saved him.”

For the first time since she began, one of the women made a noise. Eliza paused, looking at Gertrude, but the woman waved her on. She obeyed; if she stopped for long, she might not have the courage to go on. “I kept asking questions—what did he mean, that I’d saved him; I’d never seen him before in my life—until finally he turned into the dog.”

No one looked surprised. Rosamund actually nodded, as if Eliza had confirmed what she already suspected. Eliza could scarcely believe their lack of disbelief; she’d scarcely believed the sight when she saw it with her own eyes. The wiry, hard-faced man had thrown his hands up in disgust—
if you’re going to keep pushing like that
—and then dropped, curling inward, clothes somehow becoming fur, until he stood on four legs before her. Then he’d licked her hand, in the same spot as before.

“How long ago was this?” Gertrude asked.

“A little more than seven years ago.”

More nodding. Only the sisters; Mrs. Chase listened silently, but it was clear the Goodemeades were the true audience for her tale. “Go on,” Rosamund said.

It was almost easier to tell the next part. Painful as the memory was, it hurt less than remembering how things had begun, the friendship they’d enjoyed once both she and Owen knew the faerie’s nature. Running wild through Whitechapel. Tithing bread to him when they could afford it—sometimes when they couldn’t—so he could be among them safely. Telling him of her mother’s ghost, and him teaching her to make use of that gift, so that it might earn her money someday. “A few months later, I went to Mass, and Owen wasn’t there. Mrs. Darragh was in a fine fury, saying Dead Rick had caught them as they were about to go into the church, and convinced Owen to go with him instead. I slipped out before the priest came in and went looking for them, and—”

The words lodged in her throat like a piece of chicken bone. Try as she might, Eliza couldn’t get them out. If she spoke, she would burst into tears, and she refused to do that in front of these women, when she scarcely knew them. Gertrude patted her on the hand, and that nearly broke her. The woman said softly, “For now, just give us the shape of it. If the details matter, we can worry about them later.”

It helped, a little. “The faeries took him,” she said. There, it was out; now she could go on. “Dead Rick betrayed us. All those months we spent together, the friendship—it was a lie; it meant nothing to him. I was a fool to think it did. Faeries can’t be
friends
with human mortals. The look he gave me, when I asked him how he could turn against us like that—” He might as well have been looking at a wall that suddenly began to scream at him. Mild curiosity, but nothing more. Cold. Empty.

Gertrude reached out again, but Eliza pulled away before the woman could touch her. “I chased them,” she said, hearing her own voice high and tight, “but they got away. And I never saw Dead Rick again, until last year, when he helped the ones who bombed the railways. Since then I’ve been trying to find people who know something of faeries. I’ve told ye my tale; now ye tell me—who is this Cyma, and can ye help me find Owen?”

Rosamund nodded. “Cyma’s name was … merely a sign to us, to make certain we’d listen to you when you came. We already know where your lad is.”

Her calm, casual words struck like a bolt of lightning.
“Where?”

The woman hesitated before answering. Eliza nearly leapt from her seat and shook her. “With the fae, still. But not the ones who took him before. Kinder folk, who are doing for him what they can.”

Eliza’s heart pounded in her ears, making her whole body tremble. “Miss Kittering said he was with an Irish lady.”

“An Irish lady
faerie,
” Gertrude said. “It’s almost the same thing.”

Rosamund spoke before Eliza could find the words to express how far from the same thing it was. “Please believe us, Miss Baker. There are cruel faeries in this world, certainly—far too many of them, and even more who are only good when someone gives them a reason. But there
are
those for whom it’s in their nature to be kind. You’ve been badly hurt, you and those close to you, and no kindness after the fact will heal that hurt entirely; but please, believe that not all fae are like that.”

The passion in her voice was startling. Mrs. Chase gave Rosamund a peculiar smile, then said to Eliza, “They’re telling the truth. Remember that, Miss Baker—that I, too, believe there are kind faeries in the world. I’ve lived many long years, and seen more than you can imagine; I hope my word will count for something.”

She said it as if her word should somehow carry a different weight than that of the Goodemeades. Eliza didn’t understand, and honestly didn’t care. Kind faeries, cruel ones; there was only one thing she wanted. “Make them give Owen back to me.”

Another hesitation. This time Eliza did leap to her feet, but Mrs. Chase’s outstretched hand stopped whatever she might have done. “He’s eaten faerie food,” Rosamund said. “Lived among the fae for seven years. We’d have brought him out already, but for fear it would hurt him.”

“Then take me to him.” She said it without thinking. Damn the danger; she could be the heroine in this tale, going underhill to rescue her true love.

Even if it’s been seven long years? Even if you need a photograph to remind yourself of his face?

Even then. If her love wasn’t strong enough to win him free, then she would find something else. The faeries would regret the day they took Owen from her.

The sisters exchanged another one of their glances, as if they were carrying on a conversation no one else could hear. Then Rosamund shrugged, and Gertrude smiled up at Eliza. “Very well. We’ll take you to your friend.”

The Goblin Market, Onyx Hall: August 6, 1884

The usual noise of the Goblin Market had taken on a harder edge of late. Voices were grimmer, laughter more shrill; and everyone kept their weapons close to hand.