A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2)

Chapter 19

19

At no point had Mrs. Moretti the famed spiritualist mentioned that channelling the spirits of the dear departed felt like dipping oneself in a lake of someone else’s essence. Maud’s nose kept chasing tobacco and face powder, and that pungent floral scent that lived in Mrs. Navenby’s silver flask. She couldn’t actually smell them. If she inhaled, they were gone. But they swam around regardless in the cavity of her mouth, which she couldn’t move . The ghost had her lips, had her tongue, was—she could see in the mirror—carving an impatient furrow between her brows.

Don’t frown like that, Maud darling, you’ll give yourself wrinkles.

Maud didn’t often find herself ranged on her dead mother’s side of an argument. But she would have liked to tell her dead employer that any wrinkles Maud ended up with, she would inflict upon herself, thank you very much.

“ A medium, ” said Mrs. Navenby, impatiently answering the question that Maud had managed to blurt out before Mrs. Navenby shoved her aside again.

And it did feel like a shove. Like Maud was now a driving seat meant for one, on which two people were crammed together and engaged in a squabble over the reins.

Mrs. Navenby, currently winning, used Maud’s body to look around.

“ Whose cabin is this? Who’s this creature with a face like a rainy afternoon? No, settle down, I can’t be forever passing back and forth, ” as Maud attempted to exert herself. “ You. Girl. Answer .”

Violet looked mulish. “I won’t tell you a thing until I’m sure Maud is all right.”

“Don’t talk twaddle—she’s possessed, not dead. Unlike some of us.”

Violet drew herself up into one of her regal, immovable looks. She said nothing.

“Very well.”

And there was the relief of space: an elbow being removed from one’s ribs. Maud shook herself all over.

“I’m fine,” she assured Violet. “It’s a very queer feeling, that’s all. Er. I suppose… introductions?” At least she could fall back to her society manners. She had no other framework to deal with what was happening. “Mrs. Navenby, this is Miss Debenham. She’s a magician, and a friend. Violet… this is Mrs. Elizabeth Navenby.” Deceased, Maud nearly added.

“Charmed,” said the poshest version of Violet.

“ A magician. Yes, I see those rings, ” said Mrs. Navenby. “ Trained in America, were we? I could never see the point of them myself .”

Maud extended an experimental elbow inside her own mind. She’d had enough of sitting silent and being talked over in her life. And she had questions.

“Am I—am I possessed forever ? Is that how this works?”

Awkward silence from both inside and out. Then Violet reached out and extricated the sunflower locket from a grasp that Maud hadn’t realised was so tight. As soon as it left Maud’s hands, the sensation of carriage-sharing disappeared.

“I thought so,” said Violet, who was inspecting Maud closely. “It started as soon as you picked it up.”

“She’s possessing the locket? Not me?”

“She’s haunting the locket,” Violet said. “If that’s even the right word to use.”

“We could ask Mrs. Moretti.” Maud giggled. It was probably an inappropriate response, but she couldn’t do anything else.

The hairs on her arms rose. She was clasped suddenly in cold. It reminded her of hearing the start of a sweet, venomous dressing-down of one of the servants; running upstairs to her room and closing her door against her mother’s voice, but still feeling the discontent in the house as if it were creeping fog.

She took the locket back. The sensation settled at once.

“All right,” she said quickly. “So you can possess me, and only me, when I’m in contact with this necklace.”

“ So it would appear,” said Mrs. Navenby.

“Maud,” said Violet, “do you think perhaps—”

The stateroom door opened, and Arthur Chapman stepped inside.

When he saw them, his hands dropped at once to the stance that Edwin took when he was holding his cradling string: no spell begun, but ready to move into whatever was needed.

Maud gathered herself to say something placating, but the other occupier of her vocal cords got there first.

“ You, ” spat Mrs. Navenby.

Chapman looked tense, but not surprised. Of course not. He knew exactly why they were there, and what they knew about him.

Why hadn’t Maud thought, for once in her life? She was a terrible general. They should have left the cabin as soon as they had the silver, not stood around introducing ghosts to the living. Now it was the two of them against a man, a magician who was probably better trained and more ruthless, and he was between them and the door.

“It’s them,” Chapman said over his shoulder. “Just the girls.” He stepped fully inside to make room for someone else.

Someone else closed the door behind them. The small, neat sound of it clicking shut twisted in Maud’s guts. Chapman’s companion was a heavyset man with close-cut fair hair and rough skin over nondescript features. Maud had seen those features before, in a split second before the illusion-mask swirled over them.

So. It was them against two men. Two magicians. And the second one had that awful gaze full of impersonal violence waiting to be called upon and put away.

Just the girls. Maud was so angry and so scared, she wondered there was room for a ghost inside her as well. Robin would have punched someone. What was Maud going to do—challenge them to draw a card? Play chess ?

She dared a glance at the magician on her own side. Violet’s hand was tight on the back of the desk’s chair, and she was frozen. No sparkling role or dry improvisation emerged. The blankness looked odd on her, as if she were a doll in a shop waiting for her features to be painted in.

Maud opened her mouth and screamed.

She made it as hard and long and high as she could, and had the satisfaction of seeing both men wince. If nothing else, she could attract attention. As soon as there was a concerned audience, she’d figure out a story to tell.

There was a tight, ringing pause once Maud’s lungs were emptied of air. She strained her hearing for any sound of help.

Another scream, as if in echo, sounded not too far away.

For the first time, Chapman smiled.

“They might think you’re in here with a tiger, Miss Cutler,” he said in his comfortable Northern voice. “But I don’t think anyone will care to investigate.”

Because the ship was full of screaming women. Because of Maud’s oh-so-clever diversion plan.

“Now, the wise thing for you to do would be to leave all of those things exactly where they are,” Chapman went on. “My friend here won’t do anything unless you try to be foolish. And then we’ll all agree to stay out of one another’s way for the rest of the voyage. How does that sound?”

“That sounds like a load of horseshit,” said Violet. They were the first words she’d spoken. “Stay out of one another’s way? You started this. You stole these in the first place.”

Maud could feel Mrs. Navenby stirring at that. No. The last thing Maud wanted to do now was lose what little control she still had.

“And I’m not very good at doing the wise thing.” It took courage to move her gaze away from Chapman and the unnamed man, and to put the locket with the other objects and wrap them back up into a parcel of velvet.

“Miss Cutler,” said Chapman. “You really aren’t in a position to do anything but cooperate.”

He made a small gesture to the other man, who cradled a spell with rapid ease. Violet inhaled sharply. But the man merely held the spell ready, a dense double handful of amber swirls. His eyes moved between Maud and Violet as if making a calculation. Chapman’s eyes were pinned to the velvet.

Maud’s pulse soared. Her hands were damp and hot, gripping the bundle. All of those things, Chapman had said.

“You don’t know which one it is, do you?” she said. “Any more than we do.”

“What?” said Chapman.

“Bluffing,” said the other man, blunt as a slap.

“Honestly, I’m not.” Maud had, finally, a finger curled around the reins of this confrontation. “Mrs. Navenby didn’t tell me what she’d done with her piece of the contract. In case… well, in case something like this happened.” She pulled on one of her company smiles. “And now she’s dead, and she can’t tell anyone . Isn’t that inconvenient for you? Perhaps you should have thought of that before you killed her ?”

Violet made a small noise. Maud would have liked to tread on her foot. She could only pray that Violet reached the same realisation: these people could not be allowed to know that Mrs. Navenby was a ghost, and that thanks to Maud she was available for questioning.

“Us? We haven’t killed anyone.” Chapman wasn’t even bothering to sound sincere. “Do you intend to announce that we have? How many people on this ship will you unbushel in the process?”

“Chapman. Stop wasting time. Get the bloody things off them.”

Chapman cast the other man a glance halfway between wariness and annoyance, as if a large dog on a leash had suddenly growled. Allies, then, but not friends.

“Maud,” said Violet tightly. “Perhaps we should—”

The man holding the amber spell lifted his hands and released it. It flew like a tight cluster of hornets in their direction. Violet lifted her hands, shielding rather than cradling, a motion of bewildered instinct.

Maud shoved Violet sideways with all the force her free arm could muster.

She then flung herself backwards, still clutching the velvet. Violet went crashing into the chair. Maud felt a searing, biting warmth in her outstretched arm. She stumbled and barely kept her feet. The room spun. And kept spinning. The floor heaved; she stumbled again.

“Maud,” said Violet, and then there was a crash and another voice, louder and harder.

This voice also said, “ Maud .”

Hawthorn. That was Lord Hawthorn.

Maud stumbled to the nearest handhold, which was a post of the bed, and clung to it. It was hard to focus her eyes. She wanted to close them and stay very still. With enormous effort she made herself aware of the situation. Lord Hawthorn stood inside the stateroom’s doorway; he was holding a cane tipped with silver, and the door was wide open behind him.

Violet was climbing to her feet. Maud still had Mrs. Navenby’s silver, wrapped and safe.

The unnamed man was staring at Lord Hawthorn with the most emotion that Maud had seen on him yet: something stricken and close to guilt.

“Maud. Violet,” said Hawthorn. “We’re leaving.”

Chapman reached into a pocket of his waistcoat. Whatever he took out was small and round, and glinted like glass. “I know about you,” he shot at Hawthorn, lifting his hand as if in readiness to throw a dart. “You’re not even—”

Hawthorn moved with a speed that made Maud’s head swim with a renewed wash of giddiness. She didn’t see Hawthorn’s cane collide with the side of Chapman’s leg, but she heard the cry of outraged pain that Chapman made.

The next moment she found herself dragged towards the door by a tight grip on her arm. Violet. Maud went, grateful for the support. She had the silver. Yes. She still had it.

“Fucking—shit— Morris! ” cried Chapman, from somewhere around knee level. Hawthorn must have collapsed his leg beneath him entirely.

And then Maud was at the door, and Hawthorn took over supporting her, and they were out in the corridor. The effect of the amber spell had faded further, but she still felt as though the Lyric were rocking unevenly beneath her.

“Walk,” Maud said, forcing herself to stand more upright. She kept her hand tight in the crook of Hawthorn’s arm and matched action to word. “That’s it. As if nothing’s wrong.”

“What is wrong?” Hawthorn demanded, low.

“They got her with a spell,” said Violet, looking over her shoulder. “I—bother. That man’s behind us.”

“He won’t do anything in public,” said Hawthorn. But he looked over his shoulder too.

“Are you sure?” said Violet.

There was a very short pause.

“Run,” said Hawthorn.