Eterna and Omega Read online

  Evelyn sighed and quit pacing. The dark satin whorl stilled and silenced. “I’ve no choice but to help. We’ll need all hands on the proverbial spiritual deck.”

  “Thank you. There is an odd clarity in death that sharpens the grayscale of human morality. In the moments when I can keep focus, a feat itself, I see more clearly what’s most valuable.”

  The medium turned again toward the direction of his voice. “What do you need from Clara?”

  “As you know from the séance you were forced to undergo, there remains a block between Clara and me. I cannot speak to her directly. Yet she alone understands the heart of the Eterna Commission and its properties enough to see it to a solution. Those shadows were threatened by what we made. It was a mortal protection, and they killed us for it.”

  “Clara’s block is there to protect her. You know of her vulnerabilities, the senator guards her—”

  “Of course I know that!” Louis cried. “One spirit alone does not overwhelm her, only when they cluster. I do know her, knew her”—Evelyn heard wrenching sorrow in his voice—“well, Mrs. Northe-Stewart. I knew her well and loved her with my whole heart.”

  The medium pursed her lips. “Then why did no one know?”

  “Would I, a man with a most particular heritage, have been allowed to ask for her hand?” Louis countered bitterly. “Not to mention that Senator Bishop prohibited the Eterna researchers from contacting his ward.”

  “I am aware of the senator’s rules,” the medium said. “How did you meet, then?”

  “At a soiree, early in my employment, before any trouble began. From first meeting in a quiet alcove, I was lost. Our rendezvous infrequent as we were both so careful … My heart was noble, I assure you, and a gentleman’s boundaries were maintained. But all that is history. What I believe we created in that house was a Ward … Not a ward in need of a guardian but a Ward, in old magical terms—”

  “A Ward of protection, yes, I am aware of the concept,” Evelyn asserted.

  “Someone, something, didn’t want us to have it, and we need to know why. So now I beg you—obtain a lock of hair from my darling Clara,” the spirit said, his chill directly at her ear, as if he didn’t want her to miss one word of the vital details, “and take it to where I died. Localized magic is about connecting organic materials of life and death, and since I don’t have a grave, I can only hope that the disaster site will serve, and that from there, I will be able to tell Clara more about the Warding.”

  “I hope you’re right, Mr. Dupris.” She was brilliantly conversant with him, but she couldn’t be sure if that was instinct or literal translation from his plane to hers. “But I shan’t be visiting your haunted house, or Clara, past midnight. This is the stuff of the morning, for safety’s sake. Now leave me be lest you drive me to nightmares. Good night, Mr. Dupris, and I’ll deal with you tomorrow. You can … waft yourself out.” With a curt nod of her head, she exited the parlor.

  Louis bowed after her, a formality even if she couldn’t see him, calling a good night and thanks, and then, with what focus he had left, floated back onto dark Fifth Avenue, praying for dawn.

  * * *

  When Clara awoke the morning after any seizure, it was a sequence of putting herself back together, sense by sense, like restacking a deck of cards that had been thrown onto the floor and scattered.

  For a woman who prized herself on relative control of her vast emotional and metaphysical scope, the loss of control in an epileptic seizure was the worst fate that she could imagine. She’d had to endure it since a séance she’d attended just as she was beginning to blossom into womanhood. Clara had expected that becoming an adult would change her abilities somehow but had not anticipated that becoming more sensitive would make her more susceptible to fits. Since the age of thirteen, vastly greater care had to be taken lest she be overtaxed and overtaken, as she had been at midnight in Trinity’s sacred plot.

  Every muscle of her body was screaming in pain. The clenching part of the seizure was always brutal and lingered on like a beating. Thankfully, this time she hadn’t bitten off a chunk of her tongue; the cheek was bad enough.

  When the thorough aches sharpened her senses enough to grasp the whole of herself, she noted was in her own bed, in the elegant little upstairs room that had been hers since she moved into the town house after her parents’ deaths. Rupert Bishop had been a congressman then; now he was senator. But even then, he had made sure that his young ward had lacked nothing. He had seen to her education and given her leave to be and to express herself, to expand her mind. Most of all, to become the Spiritualist she and Bishop both felt she was born to be.

  When she was only twelve years of age, it was her vision as expressed to grieving widow Mary Todd Lincoln that led to the creation of the Eterna Commission. Now, seventeen years later, she would have to be the one to end it, somehow. Too many people—not least her beloved Louis—had already died.

  Lavinia. Thin memories returned like pale mist creeping over a dark expanse. Darling Vin had been her hero. That’s how she’d gotten home. She didn’t remember being helped into bed, but she must have put her in this muslin nightdress, as her best friend knew Clara would be mortified if Bishop had had to do it … What about Bishop…?

  As the last of the mists that enveloped her mind cleared, Clara realized her guardian was staring down at her, tall and imposing in fine charcoal shades of dress, his silver hair mussed, his elegant, noble face with its oft-furrowed brow knit more harshly than usual.

  “Hello, Rupert…” she said cautiously. Did he know she’d stolen out to bury Eterna evidence in the Trinity Church graveyard? Clara decided playing innocent was the best tack. “What happened?” she said, widening her eyes and reaching for her guardian’s hand.

  “You’ve been asleep awhile. Longer than usual. I didn’t see the seizure, but…” Bishop was about to step forward and grasp her outstretched hand when they were interrupted.

  “There was quite an event,” came a familiar female voice from the hall. The talented medium, Mrs. Evelyn Northe-Stewart, entered the room.

  She was tall and striking, her once blond hair had gained streaks of classic silver, matching her with Bishop, her contemporary, ever dressed in the most magnificent finery straight from Paris’s fashionably innovative minds.

  Clara had long ago taken on Evelyn’s style as inspiration, both in fashion and in furnishings, sure to tell her guardian that she, too, preferred her dresses Parisian and her surroundings entirely of the new Tiffany firm’s provenance, seeing as the studio had just redecorated the White House.

  Drinking in Evelyn’s latest fashion was one of Clara’s favorite pastimes, and today she did not disappoint in a champagne-colored bombazine day dress with a matching capped-sleeve jacket trimmed and accented with thin black ribbon.

  “May we have a moment?” the medium said, turning to the senator. “Clara and I?”

  “I … she … Clara just woke up,” Bishop replied. The hesitation was unlike him, and while relations between her and her guardian had been strained of late, Clara’s heart swelled that no discord could outweigh his infallible care for her.

  “It’s a personal matter, Rupert,” Evelyn insisted, keeping her tone warm out of deference to his protective instincts. “I received a message that concerns her.”

  The senator’s brow knit further. Giving Clara a worried look, he reluctantly left the room.

  The medium turned to Clara gravely. “I had a visit from your Louis…” she began.

  Clara swallowed hard.

  Louis had awakened aspects of herself—mind, body, and heart—she had not experienced before. She had loved him truly for who he was, a passionate and energetic man of visions and spiritual gifts. Rupert Bishop held an old sway over her heart, one she never dared indulge, but Louis had helped her live more fully than she’d ever allowed. His death had been a hard and unexpected blow; that he still had a connection to her was a bittersweet comfort and a pang.

  Evelyn, ever
attentive and empathic, waited for Clara to meet her gaze again before continuing. “Louis was very insistent on gaining access to you. To talk to you.”

  The memory was sharp enough to make Clara close her eyes. Louis had often said if he could do only one thing in the world, it would be just to sit and talk to her. They both believed in Eterna’s mission. Louis’s commitment to Eterna was shaped at least in part by his desire to make his principles of spirituality and his Vodoun faith something science could champion.

  She could not help but think back to their passionate discussions, often conducted while lounging about on the bed of his tiny flat near Union Square. Clara was all too willing to find reasons to excuse herself from work and dart uptown for a secret rendezvous. The weight of Evelyn’s stare drew her away from the memories of her dead paramour.

  Clara’s body felt suddenly restless and caged by her condition. She shifted to sit upright, wincing as her arm and back muscles clenched again in a painful vise, but she refused Evelyn’s help, as she needed her own movement to unlock them again. She cleared her throat and began cautiously.

  “Louis wishes to speak to me … about us? Or was it … something of Eterna?”

  “Eterna,” Evelyn was quick to reply, moving closer to Clara and sitting on the edge of the bed. “He is learning, in the spectral realm, about what may have gone wrong at the site. Dark forces are afoot, having been granted entry by human avarice.”

  Clara thought of the disaster site and shuddered. “That would stand to reason, if reason can even apply there.”

  “Devilry has a peculiar reason to it, and a twisted logic. Louis believes dark presences that invaded the room treated the Eterna Compound as a threat.”

  When Clara had, daringly, visited the site of Louis’s death, she had a terrible vision of looming beings … Perhaps the same presences Louis referred to. She had thought they were ghosts, but her time there had been so short, it was possible she had not perceived them as the threats they were. Her head wasn’t nearly as clear as it needed to be, hadn’t been since Louis’s death.

  She shook herself out of self-pity and stared at her dear friend and mentor with a ready ferocity.

  “I said I would do this only with your permission,” the regal woman stated. Clara nodded, hoping perceptive Evelyn would both note and trust her freshly steeled mettle.

  “There is indeed more at work here than mere sentiment,” Clara murmured. “I honestly don’t know what I’m meant to do, with the commission, the research, the information … Perhaps Louis can help be my spiritual guide through the mess.” She stared up at Evelyn plaintively. “I just hope I hold up. I have to. I can’t let my condition get in the way. I wanted to be there for him, in life, to work with him.” She clenched her fists. “I’ll take what time with him I can get.”

  Shifting out of bed, swinging her legs down slowly, and then rising at a bent angle that made her feel older than her age, Clara winced again. Evelyn moved to assist her, but she waved her off. “No, thank you, I have to move eventually, and on my own, otherwise I can’t shake loose what still wishes to clench and seize.”

  Clara moved to her vanity and withdrew a pair of small silver scissors from a top drawer. She looked into the mirror, her green-golden eyes staring past her somewhat haunted reflection, and snipped a lock of deep blond hair from her unkempt tresses. With a rough pull, she wrenched the clump free from the confines of her messy braid, looking alternately at the long streamer of hair in her hand and her somewhat mad-looking reflection.

  Plucking a box of matches from her nightstand, Clara lit a taper, removed the candle from its holder, and tipped it above one end of the lock of her hair. Droplets of wax fell, sealing the hairs together.

  Sitting back on the edge of the rumpled bed, Clara divided the strands and wove a thin braid, then sealed the second end. She blew out the candle and stared into the wisps of smoke for a moment as if she was hoping to read a message there.

  “I hope this works,” Clara said, and the tone in her own voice surprised her. Eterna had aged her beyond her twenty-nine years.

  Evelyn nodded. “I can feel the tide of the city will darken, waking up old, terrible cases we thought we’d put to rest. We need to avail ourselves of any and all information. Thank you, Clara, for being willing—”

  “It’s the least I can do for his life,” she murmured, worrying the end of the braid between her fingertips before finally passing it over to her mother figure and mentor. “I was never honest about him, I might as well attempt to honor him.”

  “I will try to do right by you both,” Evelyn promised. The two Spiritualists held each other’s weighty gaze.

  “You’ll find the key to that house in our offices,” Clara stated. “In the top drawer of my desk. Thank you, Evelyn. Truly.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” the elder woman said gravely. “We may yet be dragged through hell and back.” She stood and walked toward the door.

  Clara stopped her with a plea. “Don’t tell Rupert about Louis, please? About this return? It’s a…”

  Evelyn lifted a hand that fluttered in a gesture of understanding. “Sensitive subject, yes. But don’t leave the poor man entirely in the dark,” she insisted. Clara looked away, guilt twisting within her. The medium pressed a bit further, coming back into the room, close to Clara to take on a gentler tone. “You could have gone to Rupert with your love, Clara. Did it really have to be a secret? Do you not owe him more than that?” A look from Clara gave Evelyn pause. “I won’t tell Rupert unless circumstances of safety require the knowledge. But I am telling you now that you cannot fight this fight without him.”

  “I will tell him, I promise.”

  Evelyn reached out and took Clara’s hand. “You know I’ve always considered you family. Remember that. Brace yourself, Clara. You are strong, you mustn’t forget it. Don’t let your condition ever tell you otherwise, it’s undermined your agency and your confidence for years. Get that back at all costs. What we’re up against, if it’s anything like what I’ve unfortunately been inured to, Lord help us all. The meek shall not inherit the earth unless we, the loud and bold, stop an onslaught of devilry.”

  Clara nodded. “I promise that, too. Strength. Now more than ever.”

  Evelyn squeezed her hand hard, then let go and exited the room with the calm grace uniquely hers. Clara hoped she would embody the same qualities as she aged. She wondered when to expect Louis and what their new connection might be like.

  If Mrs. Northe-Stewart was successful, a new aspect of the Eterna Commission would unfold, along with a new stage in her relationship with Louis.

  She’d buried everything in the Trinity Church graveyard because she did not know what else to do, but she had to do something. Having dug a grave for all the Eterna material she had—all Louis’s papers, all his mystical and imaginative work on talismanic, localized magic, and personal power tied to one’s place on this earth—she had buried half her heart in that hole as well.

  After loving him, feeling responsible for his death, being misled that he might actually be alive, only to find out he remained a spirit after all, could she bear this next shift to a kind of relationship she could hardly have predicted? She steeled herself just like she had done with feelings for Rupert Bishop so long ago, reinforcing the mausoleum doors of her emotions.

  Sentiment cooled and hardened like a winter’s grave. There was no time for a star-crossed love between forbidden planes of existence when preparing for further supernatural woe. Friend or foe was impossible to determine, British or American, living or dead. Clara hoped the spirit realm could make some sense out of whom to trust and what next to attend to.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  London, 1882

  Harold Spire stared at paperwork. He despised paperwork.

  Director of the Omega department of the secret new Special Branches of government, Spire was looking at shipping manifests that were innocuous at first glance. He and his coworker, Rose Everhart, pored over t
hem in silence, looking for a specific listing. This was tedious cleric’s work, and they were doing it in a book-filled, file-laden closet.

  This tiny space, literally tucked away inside the walls of Parliament, was Everhart’s hidden office, which she still maintained even though Omega had its own facilities elsewhere in London. There were times when the raucous nature of other members of Omega made both Spire and Everhart yearn for quiet, and this was one of them.

  They should, Spire thought, be investigating the blood-drenched compatriots of the late aristocrat, Mr. Francis Tourney, who had committed ritualistic murders. But as Spire was no longer a member of the Metropolitan Police and could not prove a connection between Tourney’s infamy and the unnatural matters with which Omega was tasked, he and Miss Everhart had been consistently denied access to the case.

  There had been nothing in the papers, either. That was for the best, Spire thought, as ridiculous, sensationalistic journalism would do nothing to help the police with their inquiries. Later in the day, Spire would meet with his old friend and partner, Captain Stuart Grange, to find out more.

  He had to know. The horrors that Spire, Everhart, and Grange had seen in Tourney’s basement: children’s bodies, carved and marked, drained of blood and attached to strange wires; a woman’s corpse hung in hideous mockery of faith and humanity … Tourney had not acted alone, that much was clear.

  That Tourney was said to have been found reduced to pulp in his prison cell, the stone walls turned entirely crimson with his blood, was a great comfort to Spire, though it presented the police with no confession and little evidence to flush out the greater ring of insidious terror that Tourney represented.

  There was real devilry in the world.

  Why had the queen and Spire’s direct supervisor, Lord Black, set him on this quest to find out when a handful of British corpses had been shipped to America? Why look for the dead when murderers sought the living?