The Eterna Files Read online

  Louis bit his lip before speaking quietly. “It’s good to see you, too, dear. But…”

  “Of course, of course. Go. I’ll retrieve the files. Stay low, hide, Louis, and I’ll find a way to make sure you’re protected. Whoever followed you, the British agent, will be very persistent—”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it.” He moved onto the landing. She followed him and pulled him into another kiss, but he resisted, holding himself away from her. Her heart fell and she drew away to hide her blush. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

  “Don’t be,” Louis said quietly, an odd guilt on his face. “I’ll stay safe and come again when I can.”

  He stared at her sadly for a moment, then raced off.

  Clara ran back into the office and to the window—when had she closed it? Through the lace curtains she watched Louis dart down Pearl Street. How could he be alive when every fiber of her being had felt him die?

  Her entire world, which he’d upended when he defied Bishop’s orders and spoke with her, then overturned again by his death, was in turmoil once more. Her head throbbed at a sickening pace, in time with the pounding of her heart.

  How was Louis still alive? What had saved him?

  Yes, he seemed different, but who would not be? Clara brushed aside her unease as a natural response to believing someone dead and then discovering that that was not true.

  If she found Louis’s files, would she suffer as the Eterna team had? Perhaps the whole gruesome business should be put to rest and never taken up again. Yet she could not set the task aside—her love had set the work before her and she had to complete it.

  While she yearned to go directly to the address he’d given her, she knew that would be unwise. She hated her limits but ignoring them would make everything worse. Considering she’d barely escaped Goldberg’s home safely, she needed her guardian now more than ever.

  Clutching the paper Louis had given her in a fist, Clara started for home, still in a daze. She ignored Lavinia’s inquiry as to her visitor’s identity. When the skies opened, she protected the paper Louis had given her in trembling hands and darted the last block to her stoop.

  The senator had a mug of coffee in hand and was poring over a legal document in his study when Clara charged in, dripping wet, and blurted: “Two things. The files. I’ve a location. And West Tenth Street. The building. It’s…” Her teeth were chattering despite it being a warm summer rain.

  “Clara, sit, please.” He guided her to a chair, then picked up a velvet throw and placed it over her shoulders before perching on the edge of his desk. “Take your time. You’ve seen a ghost or two. I know that look.”

  “I have, of sorts.” She took a deep breath. “The disaster site. I went again.” She held up a hand when he opened his mouth. “Don’t chastise me, it’s done and I’m fine … but I won’t examine a questionable site alone again and tempt fate. Something was in that house. Something terrible was bid to enter. You’ll have to see it. Remember that case two years ago that introduced us to Lavinia?”

  Bishop nodded.

  “One of the locations Sergeant Patt showed me then was similar to what I saw yesterday. Ritualistic in the worst way. The floorboards of the entire second floor were etched with quotes. I’ve encountered that sort of apocalypticicism before, but never in this combination. I can’t help but think those two are related.”

  Bishop rose. “I’ll have a look.”

  “No. This first.” She offered him the paper Louis had given her. “I received this. From … an unnamed source. It should lead us to the missing Eterna materials.”

  Bishop raised a disapproving brow. “You, a trained and seasoned professional, are following an anonymous note? You don’t think that has trap written all over it?”

  “No, I don’t, and I have my reasons.”

  He looked sharply at her but she did not explain. “Why are you only telling me a partial truth?” he asked warily.

  Clara pursed her lips. “You don’t like not knowing everything either, do you? Welcome to my world, Senator.”

  Bishop pursed his lips right back at her and she realized she’d probably picked up the gesture from him in the first place.

  “Come on, then,” Bishop said, striding briskly out the door and down the carpeted stairs.

  She shed the velvet throw and followed, trailing lace-gloved fingertips down the carved maple balustrade. Her clothes had begun to dry and she no longer felt as cold. Bishop plucked his hat, a fine summer frock coat with embroidered detail—one she’d given him as a gift the year prior—and a silver-topped walking stick from the wardrobe by the door. He studied her for a moment, then handed her a floral shawl which had been hanging from a peg next to a line of top hats.

  “Thank you, Rupert,” she said, wrapping herself in the soft fabric.

  He smiled. “You just called me Rupert. It’s been ‘Senator’ for a while now. You’ve been in a formal phase, I suppose.” He winked at her.

  Clara blushed. Her fondness for him was a hardy flower she could never pull up by its roots.

  They walked the half block to the carriage house, Bishop helping her into his fine black hansom. He gave Leonard—their favored driver, as he didn’t give one whit about anyone’s personal life or the odd hours they kept—the address from the note, and they were off.

  The destination was on Forty-ninth Street: Barnard Smith’s old laboratory in the natural chemistry department of Columbia College.

  During the trip, Bishop’s piercing stare threatened to provoke Clara to say more than she wanted. To avoid him, she stared out the window at the undulating tumult of New York. Pedestrians from every walk of life, in every class of dress, flooded the streets in rippling waves. Most wore dark hues but Clara spied the occasional pop of bold color, an errant red capelet or blue frock coat that bobbed about in the sea of people swarming the brick, cast-iron, and carved stone shores of Manhattan.

  “From what I understand,” Bishop began casually, “it wasn’t until Louis Dupris came on in 1880 that the researchers gained ground. He must have been very gifted. It’s a shame we never really got to know them better.”

  Clara concentrated on sitting very straight and focused on an errant thread on her lace glove. She took a calculated risk and went on the attack. “And why not? I wasn’t given leave to know them at all.

  “The Eterna idea was mine,” she pressed, “the implementation was yours. Why give it over to Justice Allen? A nice man, but he has the supernatural inclination of a lamppost. I don’t believe Eterna was taken from your oversight. You must not have wanted it anymore, which has left me, as a woman, doubly ignorant on the legacy of that night with Mary Lincoln. You can give me the same pat answer you always do about the distance kept, but I’ll keep asking until I hear something I believe.”

  Bishop chuckled.

  “It isn’t funny.” Clara glared at him. “Don’t patronize me.”

  “I’m not laughing at you Clara, I’m simply very proud of myself,” he said earnestly. She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ve raised just the woman I’d hoped you would be.”

  She folded her arms and glared, nostrils flared. “And that’s all due to you, of course, I don’t suppose I might be thought to have played some role in my own development? No, surely not. Men are responsible for every machination of the world, women simply stand there gaping as they are formed by the hands of their betters,” she hissed. He beamed at her. “Stop dodging me, Senator Bishop!”

  “Back to ‘Senator’ again,” he countered bitterly, as if wounded, then sighed and spoke more softly. “Clara, truly, I began to distance us from the team for the simple reason that I knew Eterna would attract all types of potentially dangerous energies. Psychically, it’s better that you and I are out of that fray. From what you saw in the lab, you know I’m right.

  “I thought a man like Allen,” Bishop continued, “trustworthy but hardly sensitive, was better suited for implementation. But perhaps I was in error. Maybe lack of psychic understanding becam
e a vulnerability. I haven’t the foggiest comprehension of what Franklin saw in his touch, or the exact dark nature behind the carvings you glimpsed. But I do know you and I could not have stopped what killed the team.” He looked out the window as the carriage came to a stop. “And we have arrived.”

  Clara’s heart was racing, frustrated that Bishop made everything sound so sensible.

  At the open quadrangle at Madison Avenue and Forty-ninth, Bishop handed Clara down from the carriage. “We’ll be back, Leonard, my good man,” Bishop called brightly.

  “Yes, sir,” the driver replied as if he could have cared less.

  The college loomed across a wide stretch of mid-Manhattan Island, an impressive amalgam of large, dark brick, Gothic buildings.

  Clara was enamored of the grand setting, the school whose legacy traced back to the mid-eighteenth century when New York was still a British holding. Its immense power and prestige had only grown since King’s College had tossed off its monarchial name to don Columbia. She wished she’d had a university education rather than a succession of boarding school and private tutors. She knew, as she looked around at the fine gentlemen parading about the stately library in crisp, dark suits bespeaking means and influence, that she, like all women, was unwelcome here.

  Bishop spoke gently, his gifts uncannily picking up on her mood. “It is my hope that soon, Clara, you won’t be the only woman standing within these blocks,” he said. “And I’ll do whatever I can in the legislature to assure it.”

  “Thank you, Rupert,” she replied quietly, grateful that he could acknowledge what an outsider she felt and how unfair it all was. At the sound of his name rather than his title, he smiled once more.

  “The School of Mines,” Bishop stated, leading her past the library toward a vast building erected eight years prior. He peered into a window that looked in on an office rather than a classroom, then strode to the nearest door, under a pointed-arch eave. Inside, a placard at the end of the long hall read, ANALYTICAL AND APPLIED CHEMISTRY.

  “Perfect,” Clara stated.

  They soon came to an open office door, where they looked in on a fastidious-looking man with neatly trimmed mustache and graying brown hair in a tweed coat. He was reading at a fine cherrywood desk. Clara stepped up beside the senator as the man within looked up past wire-rimmed spectacles.

  “Hello?” he said cautiously.

  “Greetings,” Bishop said brightly. Clara saw his gaze flick over the nameplate on the door. “Professor McBride, I presume?” The man behind the desk rose, nodding. “My colleague and I are with the Secret Service. We’re looking for some paperwork.”

  McBride’s eyes went wide. “Secret Service … Isn’t that for counterfeiting? We’re just chemists here.”

  “We’re looking for papers recently delivered here,” Clara added, ignoring the confusion on his face, guessing he was wondering why she had been referred to as a “colleague.” “Relating to Barnard Smith? Who might we speak with in that regard?”

  The man went pallid. “Ah. Yes. Those. I was told someone might come for them. Good. We had to lock the box away in Barnie’s old office.”

  “Why?” Bishop asked.

  The man looked away with a nervous laugh. “Because it kept moving on its own.”

  “Then it’s certainly what we’re looking for,” Clara said sweetly. The man looked even more uncomfortable. She would have to add poltergeists to the list of Eterna effects.

  “Can you … please, take it with you?” the professor asked. “Mr. Smith was beloved of this department, but this is a gift we’d like to return.”

  “We shall take it,” Bishop said.

  “Oh, good, then follow me,” McBride said. They stepped aside to let him lead the way, which he did swiftly.

  Bishop turned to Clara, murmuring, “After perusal I’ll bring this to the depository. No haunted objects inside your office, lest all the talismans and wards I’ve collected for you through the years be rendered useless.”

  Clara did not object. The team stored objects of interest deep below a bank vault in the heart of the financial district. Years ago, when Clara had gone there to stow away some exorcism equipment, the residual psychic and spiritual energy amassed in that cellar space had almost instantly brought on a seizure. She had not been back since.

  McBride stopped after a few doors and fished a key ring out of his pocket. He flipped past several keys before finding the right one and opening the door. “When Smith retired six years ago, he donated an extensive library to the college, under the orders it be open to all students. Women as well,” he added; Clara could feel him trying to overcome a deep discomfort at her presence.

  “Barnie was a dedicated man in that regard,” McBride continued. “His daughter died a year into his tenure, and because of her, it seems, he became more devoted to women’s minds than this college was and is ready to accept.”

  “I’d adjust your antiquated minds if I were you, professor,” Bishop said sternly. McBride glanced sheepishly at Clara, who smiled sweetly.

  “You can’t keep us in the Dark Ages forever,” she stated, stepping into Smith’s office.

  Floor to ceiling books; what a haven, was her first thought. One large stately window shed daylight through white curtains; a small stone fireplace on the east wall was a dark maw. There was no sign of wood or ash but the mantel framed a few glass containers with burn marks on them. Clara held back a smile, remembering Louis’s colorful tales of Barnie’s tendency to use fire in his experiments.

  McBride pointed at Smith’s wooden desk. In the center of the blotter was a cardboard box banded with a leather strap.

  “That box was brought in a little over a week ago by a young Frenchman. He gave strict orders that it was only to be turned over to an American who came asking for it. He had a healthy distrust of the British. What that has to do with the notes of a chemist I’m not sure. What has Barnard been up to? Sounds a bit more intriguing than academia,” the professor said with another nervous laugh.

  “That’s what we’re here to find out,” Bishop replied smoothly. “He’s … gone missing and we’re hoping what we find here will help us.”

  “Oh, goodness.” McBride frowned. “I consider Barnie a dear friend; please do let me know if I can be of service.”

  “You already are,” Clara assured, reaching into her reticule for one of her cards and passing it to the professor. “But if you think of anything else, anything strange you noticed in your last encounters with him, drop by those offices. Either I or my colleagues will take your testimony.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Clara noticed the box slide ever so subtly toward her on the desk. Eager to prevent a more obvious demonstration, she snatched it up in her gloved hands and passed the container to Bishop. Even in that brief contact she could feel the box’s contents trembling. Louis and Barnard must have infused a great deal of their essence into the material.

  The room was cooler than it had been when they’d entered. If she were a betting woman, Professor Barnard Smith would be haunting his office for some time to come. This might be useful to them.

  “Thank you, Professor McBride,” Bishop said, tipping his top hat. “That will be all.”

  “Who are you again? I know you’re from the government, but…” McBride’s voice trailed off as the senator leaned toward him. Clara could feel the pull of Bishop’s mesmerism, like a magnet.

  “Don’t worry about that and don’t ask any more questions, Professor, it’s all confidential. However if the British come sniffing, be a dear and alert us, will you? This isn’t King’s College anymore, it is indeed Columbia and we’ve our American interests to preserve. And while we’re chatting, professor, what do you think about Barnard? Sounds like a fine name for a women’s college. You should get to work on that.”

  “Yes, sir,” the professor said, somewhat dreamily.

  Clara grinned and kept stride with Bishop as they left the building. She knew McBride would soon shake the lingering, dazed
thrall of the senator’s unusual ability. Bishop had once explained to Clara that he wielded it infrequently lest he become addicted to the power.

  “Not everyone is meant for our work, are they?” Bishop shook his head as they crossed the quadrangle to their waiting carriage. She laughed, feeling his kind yet commanding personality counteract the dread chill that so often accompanied their missions.

  Once in Bishop’s stately carriage, heading back downtown, he slid off the leather strap and opened the box. The first item he produced was a leather-bound diary, which he handed to Clara before turning his attention to the papers under it.

  The cover was plain, but she could feel that the book weighed more than it should—an additional density that was metaphysical in nature. Opening it, she immediately recognized the script and her heart fluttered. This was Louis’s book! She scanned for her name in a panic and did not find it.

  No, this was Louis’s work diary, filled with essays on nature and the spirit. Her gaze fell on sweeping, beautiful passages of theory and limitless possibility; he drew parallels between scientific relationships proven in nature and the interaction between his spiritual core and the mystére intercessors of his Vodoun faith.

  Much of this, Clara remembered with a fond blush, he had shared with her in impassioned odes. Clara skimmed further and saw more of Barnard Smith’s theories of the natural sciences coming into play. Louis and he had developed the idea of every city and place having a specific spiritual energy that was harnessed by its material surroundings. They had speculated on how this might protect those who lived within its localized sphere.

  Bishop offered her the three sheets of paper he’d been looking at and reached for the diary. The slightly crumpled pages were also in Louis’s hand, Clara saw; they seemed to recapitulate the theory of the diary as a sort of recipe:

  The theory of Eterna in Spiritual Materialism is as simple as it is profound:

  Seven ingredients are an ideal combination.