Fascinated Page 26
No. No, that wasn’t true. Alicia pulled hard on the bell rope. She needed a carriage. She would hire one if necessary. There was one place she could go and demand help and they would not turn her away. She would not permit it.
“Let me in! Let me in!” Alicia stood in the dark and hammered on the kitchen door of Hartwell House. It had taken seemingly forever for a carriage to be found and then to cross town to her family’s home. It had been scarcely eight o’clock when she’d left Mrs. Hamilton’s. Now the street was silent around her and the house was dark. Alicia didn’t care. She’d pound and she’d shout until someone answered her.
“Let me in!”
Agonizing moments later, the door creaked open to reveal Follett’s bewildered face.
“Lady Carstairs!” he exclaimed. “What…”
“I’m sorry, Follett,” said Alicia hastily as she pushed past him into the kitchen. The fire had been banked and the night turned the usually warm and fragrant space cold. “I need to speak with my aunts immediately.”
“But they are abed, my lady!” Follett protested.
She spun on her heels to face him. “Then either you will wake them or I will.”
“There is no need.”
Footsteps sounded on the narrow back stairs, and slowly Aunt Hester descended into view, with Eugenia behind her. The flickering of the single candle she carried made a shadow mask of her harsh features and it took much of Alicia’s strength not to shrink back from her.
“Go back to bed, Follett,” said Aunt Hester as she stepped onto the worn flagstones. “I will deal with this.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Follett sounded distinctly relieved. He made his bow, and shuffled quickly away. Alicia did not watch him leave. She did not dare take her eyes from her aunts.
Leaning heavily on her cane, Aunt Hester moved to the hearth. She had aged since Alicia had left the house. Just two days ago, her back had been straight and she carried herself with the swift assurance of a much younger woman. Now, she sat heavily in the spindle-backed chair by the hearth and groped for the poker. Alicia looked to Aunt Eugenia. She too was watching Hester, her face screwed up tight, her expression impossible for Alicia to read.
“What do you want here, miss?” Aunt Hester stabbed the poker into the banked coals. A single flame sprang up.
“I need your help,” said Alicia. “I need to find Edward.”
“So, your man has deserted you already, has he?” Aunt Hester’s smile was thin and triumphant as she broke open another coal, causing the fire to rise and spread. “This came more quickly than even I would have believed.”
“No. It is nothing of that kind.”
“Of course not. He loves you,” said Aunt Hester to the fire. “That he is gone Heaven knows where and you have returned home is a small matter.”
Her words struck hard against Alicia, but she held. If she gave way to doubt now, it was all over for Edward and for her. “I don’t know why he has gone,” she answered through clenched teeth. “I suspect he may be trying to confront the Fae King.”
Alicia waited for Aunt Hester’s answer, but none came. She just stared at the fire, her jaw working back and forth as the flames danced before her.
It was Aunt Eugenia who finally spoke. She had not moved from her place on the stairs. “If he has gone to challenge the king, it is already too late for him.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s walking into a trap—that’s why,” snapped Aunt Hester. “The king means to use him as bait to catch the man calling himself Smith.”
Clarity, harsh and unwelcome, opened inside Alicia. It made perfect sense. What could the Fae King want with her? For herself, nothing. But she could be used to capture Edward. Edward understood the magical defenses of the country. His captain would want him rescued or ransomed before the Fae claimed those secrets. Captain Smith himself might even take part in that rescue, and if the Fae captured or killed him…
“We have to stop this,” breathed Alicia.
“Why?” Aunt Hester asked the fire bitterly. “It is no business of ours.”
“How can you say that!” She spoke to Aunt Eugenia as well, but Eugenia only curled her twiglike fingers around the railing, as if to hold herself in place. “You know what they can do!” Alicia shouted. “You saved me from them when I was a child!”
Hester shrugged irritably. “Only because I trusted that fat fool, your aunt Mary. She said it was safe to let you live, despite the fact it was too late to remove your curse from you.”
“What curse?”
“This curse of magic!” Aunt Hester slammed her cane against the stones. “Were it not for this, we could have lived in peace. I could have…We could have…led normal lives. But no.” Her lips curled back from her teeth as she snarled. “We must be forever on guard. There is no respite. We must give all we have to ignorant fools who despise us for keeping them alive. Until they need us, that is. Then it’s ‘Oh, please, Hester. I’ll do anything, Hester.’ Just like you are doing now. Well, it is too late for any of that.” She leveled the tip of her cane at Alicia. “The king will have your man, and he’ll come for you in his own good time.”
Alicia wanted to strike out. She wanted to scream and weep and run away into the dark to find Edward. She did none of those things. She squarely faced her aunt who had ruled and ruined her family to try to save them.
“I am sorry for you. Both of you,” she added toward Aunt Eugenia. “You did not choose your lives any more than I was able to choose what happened to me. But things have changed. There is help for all of us. We just have to accept it.”
For just a moment, doubt flickered in Aunt Hester’s eyes. Her hand trembled. The cane slipped from her fingers and fell clattering to the floor. Now Eugenia moved, and quickly. She came down the stairs and across the room. She brushed past Alicia without a word, to pick the cane up and put it back into her sister’s hands.
“Get out of here.” Aunt Hester gripped her cane fiercely. “I made the mistake of saving you once. I will not do so again. Find your ignorant, mewling cousin and let her help you!”
“I have no time. You must help me.”
“No.” Aunt Hester did not shout. She did not need to. The refusal in that single word was absolute.
Alicia did not permit it to move her. “I will not leave,” she replied, her voice just as hard and just as steady as her aunt’s. “I will rouse the house. I will rouse the street if I must. I will spill your secrets to whoever will listen. You think your peace is gone now? Wait until I raise my voice. I will ruin the whole of the family right now if you will not help me.”
Her aunt believed her. Alicia could tell by the way her jaw hardened. “Eugenia,” Hester snapped and held out her hand.
Eugenia’s gaze flickered from Alicia to Hester and back again. Alicia drew herself up to her full height. This had been the great gamble. She had understood her actions might press Aunt Hester into trying magic against her. It was Aunt Eugenia as Catalyst who held the key to whatever happened next. If Eugenia stood with her sister, Alicia had lost.
“It is your choice now, Aunt Eugenia,” said Alicia evenly. “Aunt Hester will try to subdue me, perhaps kill me. Perhaps she’ll turn me over to the Fae again. Perhaps she will leave me to die as she did my parents. What will you do?”
Emotions chased one another across Aunt Eugenia’s face—fear, anger, sorrow, and too many others for Alicia to read. She found herself wondering what Aunt Eugenia had seen in her long life as Hester’s Catalyst. How long had it been since she’d permitted herself to care for any of the children she’d helped to maim? How long had it been since she’d even been free to weep for her fate?
“There’s still time, Aunt,” whispered Alicia. “Help me end this, here and now.”
“Eugenia!” barked Hester.
But Eugenia stepped back. “No, Hester.”
Slowly, Aunt Hester’s fingers curled in on themselves. She clenched her jaw until the muscles stood out against her neck.
Fear squeezed Alicia’s heart, but Eugenia just took another step back. “I’m coming to my senses, as poor Mary came to hers.” She turned to face Alicia. “I am not sure how much help I can be. I am an old woman and my training is limited, as is Hester’s.”
Aunt Hester lurched to her feet. “Stop this!”
“Or what, Hester?” snapped Aunt Eugenia. “Will you strike me down like you did Mary? Leave me to die like you did Constance? But how, Hester? Without me, how will you do anything?”
Aunt Hester swung her cane over her head, her eyes gone wide, not with anger, but with fear. Eugenia slipped back into the shadows, swift and silent as a cat. Alicia, though, walked forward. She grabbed her aunt’s cold hand, and pulled the cane away.
“Go to bed, Aunt Hester,” Alicia said. “You have done all you can here.”
Hester’s eyes darted this way and that, seeking a weapon, seeking escape.
“Go,” said Alicia again.
The realization that she had lost settled over Aunt Hester. Her back and shoulders bent. Her eyes glistened. Guilt threatened, but Alicia did not let herself move. There would be time later for apologies, for reconciliation if any was possible. Now she could not allow Aunt Hester to interfere any further.
Hester turned away, stumbling and shuffling, forward until her hands found the stair railing and she began to climb. Alicia supposed there should have been some sort of triumph in watching the cruel woman grope her way blindly up the narrow stairs, but none came.
Aunt Eugenia’s face was hard and cold as stone while they watched her sister retreat. Neither of them said anything until the sound of Hester’s slow footsteps faded overhead. Then, Aunt Eugenia came forward and took the cane from Alicia’s unresisting fingers. Carefully, almost tenderly, she leaned it against the chimney piece.
“It always was a hard road for her. For us,” she said, and Alicia thought she heard the echo of old heartbreak in the words. “That poor, foolish Mary should prove to have the sharpest understanding of any of us…” She shook her head abruptly and turned her face toward Alicia. “What do you need from me?”
Twenty-six
The city night wrapped heavily around Carstairs as he made his way through the streets. This had never been a good part of the town, but it had sunken lower since he’d had last walked here. The street was entirely given over to taverns, brothels and not a few gaming hells. Fires had been lit on the cobbles and men stood about, singing and shouting as they passed bottles and laughing women between them. The unseasonably chill air reeked of the complex city filth; damp stone, damp horses, wet refuse and guttering fires. Clouds scuttled across the moon overhead to crowd against their fellows and threaten more rain. More than once, a man slid from the darkness, thinking to make an easy mark of Edward, but fell away when they got a good look at the murder in his eyes.
Carstairs’s initial plan had been to return to the Hartwell garden, and meet the Fae King at the gate. But despite the agitation of his mind and spirits, he quickly realized this would amount to suicide. That was a gate to the Twilight Realms, the king’s home and the seat of his power. Carstairs would be at an even greater disadvantage if he ventured there. No. If he meant to do this thing, he must choose the dueling ground with care. He would have only this one chance to save Alicia. He must meet his enemy somewhere he could not forget who he was or what he must do. This once, his recklessness, his blindness, must not overtake him.
That left only one place, really: the Bella Sognore club. The place where Nicholas had died.
As Carstairs drew closer to the place where Bella Sognore once stood, the low, riotous crowds fell away, and the dark took a firmer hold. Had not the wind sprung up to clear the clouds away from the gibbous moon, or Edward would have been walking blind. Not that it would have mattered. Bella Sognore, what was left of it, drew him like a magnet.
After the half-blood proprietress had been killed and her followers driven out, the Bella Sognore had developed an evil name. It became a haunt of ivory turners and cardsharps, far better known for violence than it had ever been for its bawdy elegance. No one was surprised when a brawl caused candles and lamps to be overturned so that the whole house went up in flames. All that remained now was the gaping cellar full of ashes and waste.
A carriage filled with young bloods out looking for low entertainment rattled by, followed by a knot of revelers staggering toward the friendly lights of the bonfires and taverns. No one noticed one more shadow searching for the ruined stone stairs so he could descend further into darkness. Once he reached the dirt floor, Carstairs kicked charred boards and refuse aside, giving the rats plenty of time to scurry off as he made his slow way to the center of the ruin. Each step raised the smell of wet ash and decay. His polished, Hessian boots, he reflected absently, were ruined by now.
But that didn’t matter any more than the rest of it. Carstairs halted in the center of the wreckage. What mattered was that tonight he would finish this thing. Alicia would be free. No one would ever again attempt to bind her against her will. She would be free to choose her own path, her own loves. She would be able to forget him.
Carstairs turned his face toward the west. There were rituals for summonings the Fae. They provided a means to protect the magic worker and oversaw the careful courtesies that were part of dealing with creatures of magic. But the finality of his circumstance made Carstairs reckless. He would not survive this encounter. There was no reason to act as if he might.
“Oberon!” Carstairs called to the darkness. “Oberon! You wanted me, Majesty! Here I am!”
“There’s no need to shout, Carstairs. I’ve been here these ten minutes.”
A man stepped out of the shadows. This was no White Knight. If he’d met this man in the street, Carstairs would have nodded and passed by without pause. Perhaps he would have noticed his clothing was both expensive and immaculate, or that his fine-boned face was paler than average, but otherwise he appeared wholly unexceptional.
It took a long moment for Carstairs to realize he could clearly see the green of the man’s waistcoat, the fresh brown of his high-crowned hat, and the delicate yellow of his breeches. Carstairs stood in shadows and moonlight. Where this man stood, it was bright as day.
“You seem surprised to see me, sir.” The Fae man adjusted his cuffs fastidiously. “You should not be. A blind child could have followed your wish to find me here.”
Carstairs could not let himself be goaded or distracted. Fae words carried power, and they only ever engaged humans in conversation to trap them. “There’s a matter I wish to take up with you, sir,” said Carstairs flatly.
“Only one?” King Oberon cocked his head. Although he stood in broad daylight, the curled brim of his hat still managed to leave his eyes in shadow. “Very well. I am all attention.”
Carstairs was being barely tolerated and he knew it. Unease and shame twisted in his guts. He should not have chosen to wage such a noble fight in such an unsavory place. He pushed these thoughts aside. They were not his own. Carstairs reached into his pocket and drew out the cinnabar brooch.
“You baited a trap with this thing years ago,” he said. “It’s done now. Whatever your game. I’m here to finish it.” He pitched the amulet into the ashes at Oberon’s feet.
Oberon in return sighed and shook his head. “You humans. So bound up in your little lives.” He waved two fingers carelessly, and the brooch was gone. “Finish my game? You can’t even see the board let alone understand the play.”
“I know you need Alicia.”
“Oh, dear.” The king laughed, a sound like ice shards falling. “Poor Carstairs! Calling me out to protect his lady love! Well, let me set your mind at ease. I care nothing for little Alicia. No, sir.” Carstairs felt the king’s gaze level toward him, as he might feel the sense the barrel of a gun swiveling to take aim. “It is you I want.”
“You’re a liar,” snapped Carstairs. “It’s th
e Hartwell family you’ve dogged for all these years.”
“And you are insolent, sir.” The Fae King’s words crackled with cold and menace. “Oh, I knew the Hartwells would lead me to the heart of the Service, and I have my own reasons for wanting to see Smith fall, but you may believe me when I say, I have long planned for you to bring about that fall, Edward Carstairs.”
Real doubt threaded its way into Carstairs thoughts. What had he missed? “Why?”
A breath of cold from the other washed over him, like the wind that promises winter. “Who died here, Carstairs?”
“My brother,” Carstairs answered at once.
“Who else?”
Unease stirred in him. “A Fae woman, a half human.”
“My daughter, Carstairs,” said the king. “My daughter died here that night. Oh, a bastard child to be sure, but mine.” The force in the last word snapped Carstairs’s head back. “You drained her dry of the magic she needed to sustain the Fae portion of her being. I promised then you would watch all you had loved be destroyed.” Carstairs’s guts twisted at the bleak and violent expression that overtook the king’s inhumanly delicate face. “And you know full well, our kind cannot break our promises.”
Carstairs swallowed. He had not stopped to think of the Fae woman. She’d been an agent of the enemy. She had killed Nick. That had been all he’d ever needed to know. That she might have family of her own, let alone some connection to the ruler of the Twilight Realms, had simply never occurred to him. That, he now saw, had been a mistake. Another mistake.
“Very well. I killed her.” Carstairs gritted his teeth. “You want your revenge. Come try me, then.”
“I’m not going to fight you, Carstairs.” Oberon’s declaration was filled with pity and a terrible, icy humor. “You are going to give me whatever I want, and do it freely.”
“And how is this miracle to occur?”
The king raised his chin. Edward dropped his gaze just in time to avoid looking directly into the Fae King’s eyes. There was a flash, as if a spark was lit and extinguished in the same instant. Then a voice lifted from the shadows. A young man’s voice.