The Eterna Files Page 16

  “We also need a doctor on call.” As he crossed to hand Miss Knight a sheet of notepaper, he walked past Rose. She tried to touch his elbow but he was too far away—she would have to reach, and that would be noticed.

  Fluttering her satin-gloved hands over the list, Knight made a disdainful face. “Boring. None of them will do. None creative enough. Still, I’ll examine them.” She tucked the note in her bosom and turned to Rose. “Miss Everhart, will you come give a less flamboyant opinion, one that Spire will respect more than mine? Don’t bother objecting, Mr. Spire,” she added. “I’m not offended.”

  “With your permission, Mr. Spire, I shall,” Rose said, willing him to see, with eyes that bored into him, that there was news at hand. But he was not a psychic. Perhaps if she were out she could excuse herself to follow up on that damned wire on her own.…

  “As you wish,” Spire replied. “Miss Knight, where, might I ask, is Mr. Blakely?”

  The tall woman shrugged, turquoise fabric rustling as she replied casually, donning a fanciful headpiece that trailed ostrich feathers; “I’ve no idea, he’s not my husband.”

  Rose watched Spire clench his jaw. While she generally found Knight entertaining, she did not envy Spire having to direct such personalities, and on a day like today, everything irritated. She threw her gray wool half cloak over her shoulders and fixed a simple riding hat atop her head; a practical piece of fashion in stark contrast to Knight’s plumage.

  “I’ll go ahead and hail a hansom,” Knight called over her shoulder as she exited.

  Spire watched the woman go and Rose seized her chance.

  “Tourney’s dead!” she cried in a harsh whisper. “Found torn apart in his cell. Blood everywhere.”

  “Damn it all,” Spire seethed, balling his fists, a groan of anger growling past clenched teeth. “Anyone who he indicted, then, will likely die in the next round and the trails will go still colder. Their network can’t be this endless, or have such power at their command!”

  “It’s maddening,” Rose wanted to shout. “Even if the Crown threw all their resources to us, even if we were given leave to fully take part in the Metropolitan case, is this beyond all of us?”

  “I feel it’s the tip of the iceberg,” Spire said woefully, then brightened. “Grange has the list you crafted, and it’s far more comprehensive than what my boys were given clearance to investigate. Grange said they were doubling arrests, and will have to do more now, under the guise of protection.”

  “But as Tourney was killed in his cell, prisons aren’t any safer,” Rose countered. “Not that I’m not glad the bastard is well and truly dead,” she added.

  “Hear, hear,” Spire agreed.

  “You should advise Grange to bring more officers than he thinks he needs,” she suggested. “Armed, even.”

  “Indeed.” Spire sighed. “What a bloody mess.” He lifted the file in his hand. “And now this. This man is on our list of possible theorists and on your list of Tourney leads.”

  “I know, Mr. Spire, I compiled these documents,” she stated, offering him a prim, proud smile. “I assume you will take a look at that man yourself.”

  Spire clapped her on the arm like he might have done one of his Metropolitan colleagues. This gesture of respect warmed her heart and they were each off to their respective races. Time was most certainly of the essence.

  * * *

  Knight was right, Rose soon realized. The medical men were boring, ill-suited, and far too annoyed at being questioned by women. Even before Knight gave her psychic impressions, Rose didn’t like the reception they received. The physicians were accustomed to prestige granting them automatic appreciation from women; they leered openly at their female visitors.

  “Miserable, the lot of them,” Rose stated after they crossed the last off their list.

  “I’ve the solution,” Knight declared brightly. “A Russian man. Zhavia. He’s delightful. Perfect for our merry little band. He saved Blakely’s life back in our circus days. We owe him honest work. With discrimination being what it is, he’s struggling.”

  “Discrimination?” Rose asked, curious.

  “He left Russia during a pogrom against the Jews and hasn’t found Anglican England entirely welcoming. Even Disraeli couldn’t live as one.”

  “Disraeli’s father converted,” Rose said, perplexed.

  “My point exactly,” Miss Knight declared. “This country has an issue with tolerance—with allowing people to be who they are, believe what they believe, love who they love.” Her own personal choices undoubtedly informed her statements. Rose did not interrupt nor argue.

  Zhavia lived in a second-floor run-down flat on the South Bank. Miss Knight knocked on the door and shouted, “Bones, my love!”

  There was a chuckle from inside and the door was flung wide by a man who looked like what Rose would expect of a wizard from a fairy tale. Petite, with distinct, wrinkled creases on his forehead and around his mouth, indicating heavy thought and equal laughter, Zhavia was the very picture of Merlin; though his beard and hair were both long and black, save for a few white hairs around his temples. His head was topped with an embroidered red velvet cap that matched his full-length, red velvet robe, which brushed the threadbare carpets beneath their feet. When he saw Miss Knight, his wizened face became youthful with joy.

  “Sorceress!” he cried, his voice deep and accented. He embraced her and kissed her cheek. He bowed his head to Rose. “What brings you here, though you are most welcome?”

  “I’d like you to convince Miss Everhart here that you’re the right man for a job.”

  Zhavia ushered the women into the main room of his flat. He offered them seats in carved wooden chairs at a small table. “Give me a moment!” he called as he ducked behind a curtain.

  “Sorceress? Bones?” Rose asked with a gentle smile.

  “Zhavia finds my gifts impressive. Around him, I admit, they’re unparalleled. He helps me see sharper, at a longer distance,” Knight said reverently. “As for Bones, you’ll see.”

  The wizardly man returned, carrying three small, beautiful, gilded glasses filled with hot tea. Rose lifted the glass to her lips. As she did, Zhavia stared with a disturbing intensity at her wrist and murmured in Russian.

  “Beg your pardon?” she asked. The man just smiled, his gaze fixed on her fingertips.

  “Bones,” Knight said cheerfully. “Zhavia is obsessed with the magic of the body. He likes to recite the names of the bones, muscles, and tendons that make a movement happen. In Russian, of course.”

  “Well … that is unique,” Rose said. She looked at Knight nervously, disconcerted by Zhavia’s unwavering focus on her hands. “I’d hate to sit next to him at an orchestra.”

  Knight chuckled at this, then sobered as she added, “He was a special physician dispatched to several nobles in Kiev. One of them alerted him to the pogroms. Ugly stuff.”

  At the word “pogrom,” Zhavia’s eye twitched slightly. “You’d think,” he said with sarcasm, “with all the money those fine families of Kiev invested in my education, having plucked me from my shtetl after word spread about my gifts, that they’d want to keep me somehow, perhaps change my name and hide me. But no, it seems that no one wants my people, no matter how talented.”

  Miss Knight lay her hand on his where it rested on the table and the tension in Zhavia’s shoulders eased at her gentle touch.

  Rose began asking questions. They could not directly allude to the nature of Omega, but they wanted to get a sense of fit, competence, and potential conflicts of interest. Miss Knight always asked the final question. She had explained to Rose that it was at this moment that she put her special talents to work and learned the most about the person being interviewed.

  “What do you think about immortality?”

  Zhavia arched a thick black brow and twirled a lock of his beard between thumb and forefinger. “Man will always quest for it,” he replied pensively. “Man always has.” There was a long pause as they waited for Zh
avia to add to that statement. He did not.

  “Do you have an opinion about that quest?” Rose prompted.

  Zhavia shrugged. “Whatever man cannot help but quest for, as a doctor, I am … how would I say … called. Like prophets of old. To seek out the quest healthfully. Intelligently. Humbly, if that’s possible … Though I doubt determining the length of life should be in mankind’s hands at all.”

  Rose glanced at Miss Knight. This was the most thoughtful response they’d received. The other men laughed, stared at them as if they were mad, or discounted the idea of immortality outright. The women nodded. The choice was very clear.

  Knight and Rose made a warm exit, saying they’d be in touch.

  Once seated in the hackney Knight hailed, the woman pounced with a vehement query. “What are you and Spire up to?” Knight demanded. “You’re up to something and I cannot get a read on it, it’s driving me mad.”

  Rose narrowed her eyes, a righteous fury flaring within her. How did she dare? “Why wasn’t Blakely in this morning?” Rose countered calmly. “What are you two up to?”

  The women stared each other down. Rose might not have Knight’s purported psychic gifts, but she was whip smart, had good instincts, and was not in a mood to be either questioned or trifled with.

  Knight smiled suddenly and spoke brightly. “I won’t say if you won’t say.”

  “Provided we never endanger each other or our team,” Rose clarified, “let us keep our secrets. Because they are very important.”

  “Perfect,” Knight agreed. “It clearly is important, as you’re able to block it from me, which means it is entirely none of my business. I respect that, Miss Everhart. I truly do.”

  Rose nodded, trying not to feel overwhelmed by new parameters of psychic disclosure. To calm her racing heart and mind she looked at the passing scene: ship-masts bobbing in the muddy waters of the Thames, fires of industry churning along the riverbanks, spouting filmy smoke into the sky and dimming the already gray day. London was a study in charcoal.

  “Secrets aside, Miss Everhart,” Knight said earnestly, “one of the reasons I wanted you to accompany me on this little outing, is that there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Do I want to hear it?”

  “It’s something you think about often. And what I have to say might save your life.”

  “Then by all means…”

  “Your stillborn sister,” Knight began matter-of-factly. “You’ve always felt something was missing, and you wonder about that spirit.” Rose felt her stomach drop. This woman truly was gifted. That was hardly public knowledge. Knight closed her eyes as she continued.

  “Someone is tied to you who may be looking for you. If it is that twin soul, she didn’t come along immediately, but waited. For what, I don’t know.” Knight’s eyes opened again, piercing Rose. A hand descended onto Rose’s shoulder as if latching on with talons. “You’ve always been together. Male or female, one life to the next, you’ve always been siblings. But not this life.”

  “Why not?” Rose asked tentatively.

  “Do you truly want to know, Miss Everhart?”

  “Yes…”

  Knight exhaled slowly through flared nostrils before speaking. “Because this time, if what I sense goes unaltered, she may mean the death of you.”

  Rose swallowed. That was not what she’d been expecting.

  “I’m sorry,” Knight murmured. “Like Dickens’s ghosts, ‘These are but shadows. That they are what they are, do not blame me.’ But, also, again in his words, they are shadows of things that may be only. You’re missing something, yes, but I’m not sure I’d be in a rush to find it. Her.” Her earnest empathy turned suddenly into preening pride. “There. See? Not bad, eh?”

  “Brilliant, really. Th-thank you,” Rose managed. They rode in silence back to Millbank.

  * * *

  The chemist, Stevens, had a shop on Commercial Street in the East End. Spire had arrived by hackney, though the driver raised an eyebrow at the destination even though Spire offered him a bill before entering. The man’s expression said volumes about the assumptions he was making.

  If there was one thing Spire was looking forward to as the Metropolitan Railway expanded underground, it was the ability to travel in mass anonymity, without commentary or permission. He wondered if a stop would ever be put in near poor Whitechapel; when digging the tunnels, they might find hell itself. For now, the Metropolitan’s steam-powered carriages only traveled through the finer and financial parts of the city.

  Though the whole concept of cloistered subterranean rail made him painfully claustrophobic, Spire had made the underground journey many times since the rail had opened when he was still a child. He was proud of London’s cutting-edge innovations in transit. He’d make claustrophobia take a backseat to efficiency any day. But if he needed to travel east, for now he was most beholden to his own feet or a reliable horse.

  He watched the city change from regal to ragged. Stepping out at the intersection of Commercial and Hanbury Street, Spire’s eye fell upon STEVENS’S APOTHECARY, writ in careful gold paint across a glass window, which was doing its part to hold down a section of the street attempting to present a finer exterior.

  He entered the small street-level front that sold various herbal remedies—mostly to women, in Spire’s experience, and mostly laudanum. A bell clanged above the door, announcing him. Directly ahead, a gaunt, mousy-haired man in a leather apron stained with dark fluids stood behind a glass counter where powders in vials and crystallized salts nestled between mortar and pestle sets.

  “I’m looking for a Mr. Stevens,” Spire said, tipping his cap. “Pardon me, Dr. Stevens, actually.” The man stared at him blankly. His eyes were reddish and ringed with dark circles and he needed a clean shave. He did not seem well.

  “What for?” came a gruff reply at last. The hard tone was American. Eastern.

  “Just a few questions,” Spire said genially. “Dr. Stevens, I presume?”

  “And you are?” Stevens scowled. Possibly a New Yorker? Spire had worked hard with his colleague Grange to detect accents, but America’s vast variety often foiled him and he didn’t get much chance to practice. Now more than ever his ear needed to be sharp.

  “An officer of the law,” Spire said in that friendly tone natural to him only when trying to converse with potential suspects. He flashed the Metropolitan badge that he was so thankful Her Majesty hadn’t demanded he turn over. Provided he and his team were diligent, he hoped neither she nor Black wouldn’t think to ask for it later.

  “I have lawyers,” the man said nervously, glancing out the shop windows, narrowing his eyes at every passerby as if they were suspect.

  “Hopefully you’ve done nothing to need them,” Spire replied, already hating the man.

  “I just want to be left alone,” Stevens pleaded.

  “Where in America are you from, Dr. Stevens?”

  “East Coast,” he replied after a moment.

  “I’ve family in New England,” Spire exclaimed. “I’m dying to visit them. I adore America; can’t get enough of the place. Do you miss New York?”

  “I didn’t say I was from New York,” the man barked defensively. Spire smiled, trying to hide his brief triumph.

  “What brings you to England, Doctor?”

  “Work.”

  Having closed the distance between them, Spire leaned casually on the glass counter. “Does the average herbalist in a small East End shop need a retainer of lawyers? I assume you’ve used them before? Too many ‘cures’ not cure a thing?” Spire said, holding up a display bottle with a stopper whose label proclaimed it to be a sure cure for “hysteria.”

  The man busied himself, sorting bottles in a cabinet behind him. The glass vials rang against one another as he moved them, revealing that his hands were shaking. “Yes. I have had suits brought on me, but been acquitted.”

  “When was that?”

  “About a year ago.”

  “Here in
England?” Spire pressed. “Who in the East End could afford to bring a suit against you?”

  “To be perfectly honest,” the man said wearily, turning back to face Spire and leaning on the counter, “I don’t remember much about the whole ordeal over there, sir. I was fairly drugged.” For the first time, Spire thought he was telling the truth.

  Over there. A suit in New York. Acquitted, then fled or brought to England.

  “Do you know a man named Tourney?” Spire asked casually.

  The response was immediate and firm. “Never heard of him.”

  The detective maintained his conversational tone. “You haven’t heard about his arrest and the horror show found in his basement?”

  Spire watched Stevens gulp hard. “No. Doesn’t sound pleasant.”

  Leaning across the counter, Spire was nearly nose to nose with the now sweating Stevens, all geniality vanishing. “It was hell, Mr. Stevens.”

  Hatred sharpening, it took everything in him not to reach across the counter and throttle the chemist. But he had to be exceedingly careful. He had no proof to tie this man to Tourney, though his instincts were certain of it. He was also not supposed to be in this shop in the first place, or asking these questions.

  Stevens kept looking around—out the window, around the shop. But no one was there.

  “I … You should go, sir. My … lawyers said I should never talk about it. About anything. You should go.”

  Spire shrugged and presented the man with his card, which bore two addresses. “If you think of anything you’d like to share, please write and send it here.” He tapped the first address, the post office box held in Grange’s name. “Or go to this place. These days, I’d suggest the latter.”

  The second address was that of a district safe house that Grange had told him had been arranged for this case. Stevens stared at the card without touching it. Spire set it on the glass countertop. Spire wanted to press the chemist, to break the man, especially in so fragile a state, but he was constrained by circumstance.