The Eterna Files Page 11

  Franklin shook his head. “I don’t like it. How can we know what they mean?”

  “It must be something of the team’s legacy,” Clara replied, as uneasy as her colleague. “We have to find it. The warning was clear that unless we acted, others would act around us.”

  “Clearly that precise compound should never be made again,” Franklin said.

  “I doubt it ever can be,” Clara countered. “But my vision said: ‘If you don’t do it, someone else will.’ And that doesn’t bode well either.”

  Franklin paused. “True. I do trust our country more than any other. Where to begin?”

  “With whoever fled. One of the team? The one watching? One of ours … or another’s?” She lifted her glass. “It isn’t just us anymore. I can tell.”

  Though Clara barely heard the downstairs door open, she knew immediately who had entered the building. This was no visitor to the government offices below. No, this was the Eterna Commission’s own doorkeeper. They received few visitors, but there was the occasional call. Given the nature of their work, it was vital that their receptionist be savvy. Lavinia Kent was a marvel.

  “Hello, darlings!” she called up to them.

  Clara descended to meet the girl—the woman, rather—young as she was, at twenty-one Lavinia was certainly an adult and Clara had to stop thinking of her as anything else. It was hard—after so many rounds upon the globe, everyone felt like children to her. Yet to society, Clara was an aberration, a girl who’d gone to waste.… As with most of history, the assumption was that she should be a wife and mother by now. But the fates had other plans for her in this life.

  Lavinia was so dramatic that one didn’t have to be a sensitive to smell the giddiness wafting from the young woman like perfume. Her elaborate jet-black dress rustled as she entered, artful bombazine layers streaming with black ribbons. A few locks of her deep red hair flew free from her black bonnet, its crepe veil cast back. It might be supposed that the girl was in mourning, but this was not the case; it was simply her fashion.

  “Hello, Clara dear,” Lavinia said breathlessly, her bright green eyes wide. “I had quite the night,” she continued, holding out a bejeweled hand: a band with a shimmering dark stone. “It’s a black diamond, isn’t it amazing?” Lavinia cooed. “Didn’t Nathaniel do well?”

  In a breath, Clara banished the flare of jealousy that cracked through her like a whip, echoing through her timelines. “Congratulations!” Clara embraced her friend. “He finally came around?”

  “It was pure hell to get there, but I won him in the end,” Lavinia cried in a crisp London accent that announced her as a member of the striving class. “It will cost me everything, of course, the very last of Father’s favor and the home in Lancashire. But true love is worth it.”

  Clara nodded. Though she’d not yet been asked for her hand, her past lives understood love comprehensively.

  She moaned suddenly. “This means I need to start looking for another receptionist!”

  “As if I’d stop working for you!” Lavinia scoffed. “You’re my mentor! Well, you and Evelyn, of course.” She pressed a hand to her forehead, speaking like a melodramatic ingenue. “I wasn’t meant for a life of housekeeping alone!”

  Clara laughed. “Few of us are, and yet, you’d think the world has no other uses for us.”

  “Then we shall tell the world otherwise,” Lavinia said with a smile. “Like we’ve always done. We must stay together, Clara, we need each other’s support now more than ever.”

  The Kents had practically abandoned Lavinia after a terrible mishap with the law. Bishop had convinced Lavinia to work in secret for the Eterna office. Her family knew only that she had a “benefactor;” generally they acted like she didn’t exist.

  Lavinia had become the much needed bosom friend to take the place of the schoolgirl companions who all abandoned Clara when she did not continue in “society.” They’d had many conversations, shared innumerable secrets, yet Clara had never said anything to Lavinia about Louis. So she couldn’t even now unburden her heart to her closest female confidante.

  “Evelyn Northe-Stewart!” Clara exclaimed. “How is she? Hosting séances for curious girls? She’s such a dear confidante of the senator, I thought I’d see her at the house more often, but of late she has been absent.”

  “I suppose her being re-wed has something to do with that, now that she has a family of her own again. And yes, séances as usual,” Lavinia replied. “She has me helping now, with the more unstable ones, considering my experiences.…” She looked down at the floor.

  Clara lifted her chin with her finger. “What have I said?”

  “No shame in the office,” Lavinia parroted obediently.

  Two years prior, Lavinia’s social circle, followers of flamboyant, darkly dramatic actor Nathaniel Veil—now Lavinia’s fiancé—had been targeted by a strange chemist. They sought a “cure for melancholy,” but the drug he supplied produced wild rages. It was thought the chemist might be a recruit for Eterna research, but the man was arrested. However the event wasn’t a total loss, for Lavinia had developed an uncanny ability to judge human intention. She could quite literally smell intent.

  Behind Lavinia’s post on the first floor of the brownstone were pulls that went to bells informing the upstairs office as to what sort of visitor they could expect. Lavinia would assess a visitor and pull one of the four black tassels. The smallest led to a high-pitched bell signaling a known acquaintance or colleague. The next larger announced a visitor Lavinia deemed friendly. The next meant neutral, and the largest and deepest bell indicated that the company was a liar, a cheat, or potentially dangerous. At this signal, Franklin quickly descended with pistol in hand. This thankfully had only happened with a few drunks.

  “Are we expecting anyone today?” Lavinia asked, perching on her wooden desk.

  “Fred Bixby,” Clara replied.

  “Bixby!” the young woman cried, elongating the “y” sound in glee.

  Though Lavinia’s melancholies were intense, she was an utterly pure soul who felt things lavishly and found dramatic ways to express sentiment. Clara hoped she never lost this quality the women had in common, though Clara had learned to shield herself better. But then, Clara had had more practice; Lavinia was a newer soul.

  “What’s wrong, Clara?” Lavinia asked. “Something’s wrong and you’re trying to hide it.”

  Clara took a shaking breath. “It’s the Eterna team. They’re all dead, though one may be alive. We don’t know who.”

  “That’s terrible,” Lavinia breathed, skirting around the desk and flouncing into her chair, layers of black tulle and crepe spilling everywhere. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I should feel their loss but, not having been given the opportunity to even meet them, I don’t.”

  “Nor do I,” Clara replied, lying again and staring at the shelf above Lavinia’s desk, which was crammed with notepads, a compass, a replica Egyptian Canopic jar that she used to hold her quills and pencils, and more. Clara’s gaze rested on a collection of shards from gravestones, which Lavinia had artfully arranged into a miniature druid ring.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Lavinia continued. “I know that look, dear, the helpless look you get when you want to fix things you can’t. It wasn’t your fault. No shame in the office, right?”

  “Indeed.” Clara patted Lavinia on the shoulder. “Do send Fred up directly, won’t you?” Lavinia nodded. “Again, congratulations. Your nuptials shall be the most dramatic, black-crepe-filled affair the world has ever seen. The death of Prince Albert will have nothing on you dears.”

  At this, Lavinia laughed and Clara trotted up the stairs before her pang of grief deepened.

  * * *

  Wanting a moment alone, Clara asked Franklin if he’d be so kind as to fetch them some lunch from a nearby butcher. He graciously agreed. With him gone, Clara leaned forward, layers of bustle, interior ruffles, and petticoats shifting as she pressed her hand to her sternum.

  The
re, Louis’s amulet of protection nestled between her breasts, beside the knot of his cravat. Pressing, Clara felt all the strictures that bound her: rigid bodice bones upon corset bones upon human bones. She slipped her fingers beneath her clothes, fishing past the hooks of her bodice and the thin layer of her chemise, grasping an end of the saffron silk fabric with thumb and forefinger and sliding it from its warm hiding place.

  She tried to ignore how the pulling of silk from along her breast felt like Louis’s unlacing of her stays … but the more she tried to block the warm, passionate images, the more sensations washed over her. He was an inventive, thorough man in every regard; he was the first in this lifetime to leave her feeling as though he could chart her every inch and still seek further discoveries. His thirst for life, and for her, meant his sudden absence created the cruelest desert.

  Ducking beneath her desk, Clara shifted a small carpet and lifted a floorboard, then stared down at the small black metal face of the safe set into the floor. She had precious few secrets, but even she needed a secure place to hide them.

  A chill abruptly ran down her spine and the hairs at the back of her neck rose on end. The room became dreadfully cold and she saw her breath misting in the air. Generally this indicated that there was a ghost nearby. Her heart pounded.

  “Louis…” she whispered. “Louis, if that is you, give me a sign.…”

  There was no sound nor movement. A reminder that she’d never really had anything. Passionate words and caresses, but those too were phantoms in the end. He would never have offered for her, since they were not supposed to even know of each other’s existence.

  Her shoulders fell. She turned the combination of the dial, opened the safe and tossed the warm yellow silk into the black void, closing the lid on this sensual remnant of her lover, locking it and her feelings away.

  Franklin returned with cuts of meat and cheese, and they sat with the day’s difficult images and emotions in silence until a cry from the threshold:

  “The redcoats are coming! Or, rather, they’ve been here. Now they’re going back and forth!” Fred Bixby burst into the office, carrying a ledger.

  Clara was so entertained by him she forgave the start that caused her coffee to spill over the rim of the porcelain cup she had been holding when he’d shouted. Lanky, thin, light-skinned, with short auburn brown hair, what Bixby didn’t have in girth or bulk, he made up for in enthusiasm.

  “Look,” he exclaimed. “The log, here. One Mr. Brinkman. We’ve seen that signature before, haven’t we?”

  “It’s good to see you, too, Fred,” Clara said with a laugh. His energy wiped away the disaster site’s lingering chill.

  “Oh. Yes. Right. I haven’t seen you in, what, a month?” the man processed. “Sorry. Hello!” He waved at them both.

  “Two months since we last called upon your services, my friend,” Franklin clarified.

  The tall man blinked chestnut-colored eyes. “Has it truly been that long?”

  Clara nodded. “What has been keeping you busy?” she asked.

  “Well, I read the whole collection of the circulating library near Union Square.”

  “What were you looking for?” Franklin asked.

  “Peace,” the man replied, staring Clara straight in the eye. Fred was compulsive. A voracious reader and live wire, he kept himself content by constant intake.

  “May we all find peace,” Clara said softly. “Now, tell me why the British are coming.”

  “You remember Brinkman, right?” Fred asked. “Our slippery Brit, snooping for years?”

  He leaped over to sit in the chair opposite Clara, bumping his skinny knees against her desk. The man was a bloodhound of logs and ledgers, of finding needles in haystacks, an invaluable asset, as America was vast and so was her paperwork. It was a blessing that Bishop had found him and his sister through a mutual circle of progressive Republican activists.

  “Do you see this in yesterday’s southbound logs?” he said, pointing to a line on a ledger page. “Look how a Mr. Bankman appears, an alias of Brinkman, you can tell as there’s the same slant to the script, he appears on liners via the same agents who deal chiefly in British interests.”

  “Good eye, Fred,” Clara declared.

  “Thank you, ma’am. But this is a man who, it seems, shuttles solely between New York and London. Why would he now travel so far, having bought passage all the way to New Orleans? It doesn’t mean that that’s where he’s going, but the ticket gives him leave to travel the length of the Mississippi. Is there something down there to be aware of?”

  Clara ignored the searing pain that seized her at the mention of New Orleans; that magical, mysterious place that had raised Louis Dupris. There could be a correlation: maybe dear Louis was the one who escaped after all. Her heart leaped at the hope.

  “Maybe there is,” Clara said quietly. “Fred, you’re a genius.” She closed the ledgers and returned them to the man, who would return them to their rightful owners, the ships’ companies. “But do take a moment, breathe, eat something. You’re all elbows.”

  “Will your office be sending a tail?” he asked with a grin.

  “But of course, Fred,” Clara declared. “Set your sister loose.”

  Fred clapped and called over his shoulder, “Effie!”

  “You brought her with you.” Franklin chuckled. “Of course you did.”

  Clara and Franklin watched Miss Ephegenia Bixby traipse into the room in a modest calico day dress that covered a figure as gangly as her younger brother’s. Her brown spiral curls, less red than her brother’s, were wound tightly to her head and mostly covered by a lace bonnet. She and her brother both were dusted with a smattering of brown freckles.

  As far as most knew, the Bixbys had always lived in Greenwich Village. But Clara, Franklin, and Josiah knew the truth: they used to go home to a neighborhood where the average skin color was far darker, the law less fair, and the opportunities far slimmer. Unfair as Clara thought it was that they felt they had to, the conditions of the country were such that the Bixbys had made a harrowing choice to leave those lives behind and reinvent themselves.

  It was something Louis had talked about often. When he imagined a future with Clara, not in New Orleans but in New York, if they dared go public, Louis would continue to pass.… Clara clenched her jaw and forced him from her mind.

  Effie kissed her brother daintily on the cheek, then turned to Clara.

  “‘Bankman.’ won’t be far off yet,” she stated, her voice musical and pleasant. “If I take one of the newer express trains, I could catch up to a port of call in a day. Shall I go?” Excitement lit her brown eyes, indicating her happiness at the thought of more adventure than was usually afforded her sex.

  Effie was as energetic as her brother, but better at controlling it. The young woman could find anyone. Anywhere. A family of bloodhounds—one for names and paperwork, one for actual persons—and Clara had had the great fortune of utilizing their services in honor of their country. She felt sorry for snooping England, who couldn’t possibly possess such unique talents.

  “Yes, Miss Bixby,” Clara exclaimed. “Please go and foil that bully England!”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  When Harold Spire woke, he did the same first thing he did nearly every morning; clear the crimson-drenched image of his mother out of his mind. The human body has a great deal of blood to spill. Despite being moved to new, still unfamiliar apartments, despite the fact that the majority of his modest belongings remained in boxes, the daily routine of wiping horror away remained, unchanged. Something within him had died with his mother, seventeen years earlier. Only police work made him feel as though there was still a heart somewhere inside his hollow body.

  But his new appointment was hardly police work and it hardly gave him purpose. Indeed, it was an example of the very thing he’d sought all his life to avoid, having grown up in his mad father’s absurd worlds of extremes and ridiculous fictions.

  Knight urging
Spire to visit his father had struck quite a chord. A woman of the theater, she didn’t have to be psychic to know about the disconnect between father and son. The last time Spire had gone for an indefinite time without visiting his father or seeing one of his shows, the man launched a production about filial abandonment. All over London, adverts and plastered playbills announcing the show brightly proclaimed:

  My Son, My Son, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?—The Truth in Two Acts by Victor Spire.

  This angered the junior Spire more than he could possibly express. He got quite the ribbing for it at the precinct, save from his trusted colleague Grange, who had found it in as poor taste as the sensational account Victor Spire had published of his wife’s death years prior. That, for Harold Spire, had been the nail in the coffin of paternal affection. The play about the faithless son did, however, ensure that Harold paid dear old dad a reluctant visit once a month. His usual interval having nearly expired, Spire had determined today would be the day. Now more than ever, he could not afford light being shone his direction and so he embarked upon the dread routine, lest his father once again expose him to the world.

  His whole day, in fact, would be trying, he thought, prematurely weary. After his reluctant visit, he would attend an Eterna “team meeting” at their new offices. Keys had been deposited through the mail slot of his door with a note giving the address—somewhere in Millbank—and setting the meeting time at noon.

  Seeing the building where he had been raised, down a curving street just outside the Covent Garden district, always made Spire anxious. Not only because of the violence that had taken place here, but because his father did nothing to deter the air of misery and anxiety that permeated the walls.

  He climbed the stoop and tried the lock in the weather-worn door that needed a new layer of black paint. As always, he was surprised to find the locks from childhood unchanged.

  “Father,” Spire called up the stairs.

  “Harry, I presume?” growled a voice.

  “Unless you have another son,” Spire said wearily.