Eterna and Omega Read online

  Clara sat with this news. It would seem things were about to get even more complicated.

  “News from our Effie?” Bishop asked hopefully. She passed the telegram across the desk for the senator and Franklin to read. She hoped Effie hadn’t had a difficult time of it, there.

  Ephigenia Bixby’s intrigue was doubled by her and her brother deciding to “pass” in hopes of better treatment from society. Clara and Bishop wished that was unnecessary—but that was easy for them to say. And so they simply reassured Effie and Fred that as far as Bishop and Clara were concerned, having lived as Quakers and fought for equality all their lives, the siblings were valued entirely for who they were and needn’t make any other choice on their account.

  Light skinned, with a dusting of dark freckles and dark eyes, Effie was a gifted field agent, efficient, autonomous, moving between races and classes with seemingly effortless skill. Clara admired her fiercely … and, ignorantly, coveted some of her freedom, as Bishop would never allow the same of her. She’d remarked upon that once to Effie.

  Effie clucked her tongue at Clara’s expression of envy and spoke with a bite. “Oh, no, people like you are too important to send out into the field; those with titles, standing, and lineage are seen and missed. I love my job, Miss Templeton, be assured. But my being ‘unimportant’ is a part of my success. My ambiguity and understanding of more than one social code, it all comes with a cost of feeling expendable in either world.”

  Clara had no idea what to say to any of that, but she didn’t dare argue. Passing necessitated a complex double life. The Bixbys had seen pain and injustice in ways Clara had not, that was simple fact. They all had hope for a city that at its very best, if it held to principles and innovations, could reject cruelty, injustice, and systematic racial and cultural disenfranchisement. It was a hope for a distant future, perhaps. Clara wondered if it was any different in London.

  Gazing down out her window onto the bustling waterfront beyond, she knew that New York had a very long way to go toward their hopes.

  “Note a forthcoming telegram,” Bishop stated. “She knows not to list direct sources of intelligence in one place. We should consider relocating our offices,” he added. “Perhaps shift locations like our scientists did.”

  “Are any extra precautions enough if British agents are already en route to Manhattan?” Franklin asked.

  Clara frowned. She liked this office. For years Eterna had gone almost entirely unremarked upon by the government, at least once the shock of Lincoln’s assassination had waned. Each year, Bishop had seen that they were funded, but they went conveniently ignored. Recent events had made it clear that England found them of more interest than they’d hoped.

  The important question now was how involved was England in the unfolding evil. Was it their doing, or were they merely observing? To this, Effie offered no answers, and they didn’t know how long it would be until they dealt with the Empire once more descending on their harbor.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Andre Dupris abandoned the prospect of New Orleans before he even got to the great river that would have carried him home. He forsook the southbound call of the Mississippi and turned back toward the murky confluence of the Hudson and East Rivers.

  Were all twins as opposite as him and Louis? Gentle Louis, fair and ardent in the understandings and practices of his mother’s Vodoun principles of faith and transcendent supplication to Bondye and the mystères. Andre, a vastly more restless, complicated, unsatisfied man. During his travels in England, he had seduced more than one important English aristocrat of more than one gender. Lord Black, a friend of the variously offended, had offered him one path to redemption: Spy on what his devoted brother and Louis’s Eterna Commission were up to back in the States.

  Under the Eterna eaves, Andre had been exposed to a raw magic and horrific tragedy he’d never bargained for. He’d once considered himself fearless, capable of flouting all customs and circumstances. But now, he was terrified. He continually looked over his shoulders, convinced he was never alone even when he saw no one nearby. He sensed shadows watching him constantly … tracking him as he began his journey south.

  So he retreated to New York because it had become the most familiar. Yes, there was an item Louis had stolen that he had hoped to return in person; Andre hoped the postal service would take good care of the sacred item in his stead.

  Paranoid or not, valid or hallucinatory, the fact was Andre could feel presences watching him. His experience with his brother’s ghost led him to think the newcomers were not of the same species. Something a great deal darker walked in the wake of Louis’s death.

  He never found his mother’s Vodoun faith appealing. The idea of spiritual intercessors and losing oneself to song or rhythm, of giving over to anything but pleasure, wasn’t his idea of how to live. Sensuality was Andre’s patron saint. If he couldn’t spend it, eat it, drink it, sleep in it, or kiss it, he counted it of little value.

  Throughout their lives, the twin brothers had argued many times about who had gotten whom wrapped up in what. To himself, Andre had conceded that Louis was a “better man,” but Andre always believed that he’d had more fun.

  But right now, Andre was in crisis. Of faith, heart, and life itself. He stood at the rail of the ferry carrying him across the noisy Hudson River, uncertain of his next steps.

  “Louis,” he said, “tell me what to do. How can I help this situation? How can I shake the pall that hasn’t left me since your death?”

  “You called?” came a voice.

  To Andre’s great surprise, his brother floated before him, grayscale, slightly transparent, dressed in his solemn fashion—dark fabrics with none of Andre’s brighter flair. He wore the clothes in which he had died, and Andre was endlessly grateful that his brother’s incorporeal body appeared to him whole and not desiccated.

  “I did, Brother,” Andre replied, shifting away from his fellow passengers lest they think him mad, talking to the air.

  Unmoved by the wind at the ferry’s prow, Louis floated easily before him, the jagged, ever climbing, sooty, and scrabbling skyline of Manhattan visible through his brother’s transparent gray forehead. “You can do that?” Andre asked, incredulous. “Come when called?”

  His ghostly brother shrugged. “From what I understand of the laws of my transitional state, if the pull is strong enough, if the tie is blood, if the location has magnetism, I can be summoned. While others might need assistance to do so, I suspect you will always be able to draw me back. We have a deep bond, even if you never acknowledged it.”

  For a long moment the nearly identical faces stared at each other, solid to shade.

  “I wish I’d let you know in life how much I appreciated you,” Andre said quietly. “Respected you. Wanted to be like you, envied your peace … It’s so unfair that you, the peaceful one, are now the restless ghost.”

  “I thought I absolved you of guilt, Brother,” Louis said with a warm smile that brightened his charcoal features. “You’ve changed,” he said, scrutinizing him, floating along after Andre as the ferry bumped against its west side docks and the passengers spilled out, teeming over lower Manhattan like a wave. Andre spoke softly as he strode onto the wooden pier that boomed with the tread of disembarking passengers.

  “I have, dear brother,” he agreed with weary contrition. “I accept all the complications of existence, of the mystical and spiritual.”

  “That is music to these dead ears,” Louis exclaimed. “Oh, don’t be sad,” he added, with the gentle kindness that had been his way since boyhood. “Help heal what you can. Don’t try to set me to rest until I’ve had the chance to do more work. I may be the only one who can solve certain mysteries due to ghostly access. I’ve never been more vital than now.”

  “I do want you to have peace, Brother,” Andre murmured, “more than anything.”

  “Our destinies were always entwined. Any past selfishness of yours is redeemed by work you’ll do to protect the
world from deadly shadows.” He paused, as if listening to a far-off voice. “I am needed elsewhere. For now, take up residence at my old apartment by Union Square. I’ll haunt you there soon enough.” With that, Louis vanished.

  Andre sighed. His next task was crucial. He made his way to the nearest post office, nestled between grand-looking government buildings with their Federal colonnades, pulled out a dagger from his pocket wrapped in cloth, enclosed it in cardboard, and set to work on the letter that would accompany it.

  My Dear Mademoiselle,

  I am writing to return to you this piece, with apologies and hopes. My brother Louis took this from you and I am bid return it. Please don’t curse him, or anything of the sort. You can rest assured that he has already met an untimely end, choked to death by forces I can only describe as evil. I would like to think better of you than a cruel smile and hope that, even if for a moment, you will share my grief.

  While I may not be a believer in your Bondye or your mystères, I can tell good from bad. Something very bad killed my brother, who was a good man, the theft of this dagger notwithstanding.

  On behalf of Louis, I know he regrets any pain he caused you. In no way did he intend to disrespect you or the tradition that this dagger represents, which I confess I know little of. In his last year on this globe, Louis discussed with me at great length how he despised the sensationalism with which Vodoun has been fetishized by white persons here in the North and by tourists in our beloved New Orleans. It’s terribly uncivilized up here, for all their elite airs, and there is none of our beautiful Creole culture, at least none recognized as such.

  Louis did not want your shared faith to be associated with any kind of violence or misunderstanding. If you can believe it, he was hoping that his work would help elevate Vodoun principles into scientific practices.

  For my part, I believe he failed in that, but it was not for lack of trying. It was not his fault that their quest shifted from faith to “magic”—and then everything went (perhaps literally) to hell.

  I hope this heals a rift.

  It seems that for whatever remaining days I am afforded, I am meant to make wrongs right and smooth that which has been rent.

  Louis visits me even now and advises me of a dark pall that is about to break across the country. He bids you take great care, to Ward and shield, to protect our cherished New Orleans. He is certain you can take care of her, and yourself, and all believers. He is very frightened. If a spirit is frightened, it’s unsetting indeed, so take that for what you will and do act accordingly.

  Sincerely,

  Andre Dupris

  He sealed the package, debated about including a return address, and decided he would, no longer wishing to live in hiding. The truth would all be out eventually.

  Sending the item through an ornate golden-trimmed mail slot brought Andre a measure of peace that he hadn’t felt in a very long time. Neither attempting reconciliation nor fixing messes was a usual element of his repertoire. He was sure the peace would not last, and he procured a bottle of bourbon before retiring to Louis’s apartment. He best dealt with spirits once he’d imbibed some.

  * * *

  O’Rourke was very nervous about Majesty Moriel’s ruse. He paced the dank hall in the back corridors of the Courts of Justice, death ripe in the air, the crimson splatter of the decoy’s blood bathing the stones behind him.

  If the lie was not believed outright, he’d die in the spectacularly gruesome way he could still note out of the corner of his eye. He was in too deep, and spending time wondering if he shouldn’t have gotten in at all wasn’t helpful at this point. Only staying alive was.

  There had been no way to win with a man like Moriel, O’Rourke had known that right from the start. That he’d been assigned to watch the man was mere fate. He couldn’t curse God for that. Having given up on the idea of a heavenly father awhile back, he could only blame circumstance. And damnable England. He could certainly blame England.

  “Your Majesty…” O’Rourke bowed his large head.

  “What’s this I hear about an issue in these vaults?” came the sharp voice of the empress.

  The imperious round woman all in black was an inimitable, unmistakable presence, changing the focus of the shadowed hall as she moved swiftly through one of the Gothic arched corridors of the Royal Courts of Justice, entering this secret space. Just before she reached the place where the hall narrowed as it led into the alcove outside the makeshift cell, O’Rourke stepped forward and blocked her path. He was a full two heads taller than the regent, yet she looked at him as sternly and directly as if they were eye to eye.

  “Out of my way,” she ordered.

  “I cannot let you pass, Your Majesty. Your see, it’s … there was some kind of … I don’t know how to describe it,” O’Rourke said.

  “Try.”

  “It’s … Moriel. Whatever evil he did, well, it seems to have caught up with him. This is no sight for your eyes, Your Majesty. Nor any man nor woman of any age…”

  “I shall decide that for myself,” the queen said curtly. She stepped forward and O’Rourke gave way. What he had concealed was immediately visible. The empress gasped and stared. From her sleeve she pulled a scented kerchief and covered her nose and mouth. When she spoke, he voice was slightly muffled. “Good God in heaven.”

  “Please, Your Majesty, come away from there, I cannot bear…” He trailed off.

  It was a mistake ever to have fallen under Moriel’s thrall, and he knew it now as he never had before. Seeing the rightful queen look bravely and unflinchingly at that offal … O’Rourke knew that Moriel would wish that kind of wretched sight upon the entire world.

  “Well, at least it’s justice,” the queen said finally, turning away and gesturing for O’Rourke to follow her back into the broader stone corridor. “He was useless anyway, gave us nothing but a sense of misplaced devilry. I don’t know why I kept him alive. We’re no closer to immortality than those poor Americans in their own misguided search.”

  “Indeed, Your Majesty,” O’Rourke said. He was tiring of the word “Majesty” and of bobbing his tall head to so many shorter, self-important folk. He wondered what, if anything, he could do to put a spoke in Moriel’s gears. Perhaps the Metropolitan Police? “Pardon me, Your Majesty, but what should we do with this?”

  The regent wrinkled her nose. “Clean it all up and burn the lot. Tell no one. Let it remain our business alone. It’s good of you to keep this as hushed as you have. You’re brave, Mister…”

  “O’Rourke, Your Majesty. Jimmy O’Rourke.”

  “O’Rourke. You’ll be commended for this.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty, that is most kind of you,” O’Rourke replied with a surge of desperation. “My struggling family, my little Bethany in particular, will truly appreciate it.”

  That was the God’s honest truth. That’s why he did anything. That’s why it didn’t matter what side Moriel was on as long as he paid out. There was a sick little girl at home whose lungs were ruined from all the factory fluff of cotton she’d breathed in since age seven when she’d started working. He’d do anything to give her a bit more ease for her last few years. Life was nothing but pain; he just wanted her not to go unto heaven in the throes of it.

  “Do send a vague note to the palace alerting me that all of this is quietly gone,” she declared.

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  With a swift turn and swish of black bombazine and taffeta, the regent strode out as imperiously as she’d arrived. O’Rourke expected that she would, as usual, make her way quickly to a modest carriage, the average look of the conveyance ensuring her private comings and goings did not become city events.

  Her footfalls faded and O’Rourke was left alone. The next shift wasn’t due for another hour. More than enough time for him to think about his family. Bethany had gone to work without complaint and had worked rings around her older sister and brother. O’Rourke’s son had been only twelve when he’d died at his munitio
ns factory job. The family had barely finished mourning Joe when Beth got the cough, after only a year of work.

  If immortality were real, O’Rourke thought, he’d steal it if he could and give it to his children. Just them. The rest of the world could rot in the hell it constantly created for itself. A hell where children didn’t outlive their parents and there were no days of rest, no Sabbath and no Elysian fields.

  If he could, he’d take them somewhere far away from the city, maybe, just maybe back to Ireland. They could work a quiet plot of land and let the rest of folk stew in their own miserable pot.

  * * *

  The Eterna team were stewing about England when Lavinia’s “neutral” bell rang from below. Lavinia’s particular gift was sensing intent, and three bells rang upstairs depending on what she determined downstairs: friendly, malevolent, or neutral. Upon hearing the bell, depending on her assessment, Clara then pressed a button indicating the caller could come up. Bishop rose and went to the threshold to press another button, a red knob on a newer fixture, and that disabled their fresh trip wire.

  Everyone in the room stiffened as familiar company appeared at the open door. Franklin rose to his feet in a defensive posture, unsure what to expect.

  Tall and handsome, with full lips and fair skin with a pale brown undertone, closely shorn brown hair, and hazel eyes whose gemlike quality was aged by dark circles ringing their hollows that bespoke ill rest, this man, Andre Dupris, had caused them all a good bit of strife.

  Clara took small comfort in the fact he’d taken to wearing clothes that were not noticeably his dead brother’s. Andre’s style was livelier by nature, and he was dressed smartly in a russet frock coat, beige striped trousers, a black brocade waistcoat, and a golden cravat. To prove the contrast, behind Andre wafted his twin Louis, his somber grayscale not so different from the color scheme he’d worn in life. Identical in features, but so different in form and solidity.