A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2)

Chapter 29

29

Violet still disliked Mrs. Anna-Maria Moretti, but had to admit that the woman knew how to set a scene. They’d secured a card room on A Deck at short notice through Maud’s mercenary relationship with the steward Jamison. Mrs. Moretti had hung a piece of red gauze over the porthole, plunging the room into a close, warm redness like swimming through watered-down wine. The white tablecloth laid over the pushed-together card tables took on a pink tinge. A modern electric lamp glowed like a small sunset in the centre of the table, an elegant brass stalk mushroom-topped with a dome of etched glass. A hint of old cigar smoke clung to the air.

“Please be seated,” said Mrs. Moretti. The con woman wore a fox-fur-trimmed hat and an eye-wateringly glittering brooch in the shape of a peacock. Her voice was vaguer than usual, as if part of her had already split off to dwell on the spirit plane.

There were ten of them in total. As well as Violet, Maud, and Hawthorn, the Bernard sisters had been issued invitations more or less as camouflage, and Diana Yu had brought herself along out of pure curiosity.

Mrs. Moretti had frowned at this transgression against her spiritual authority, but Violet gave a tiny shrug, so Miss Yu’s aura was deemed acceptable.

“Does it matter where we sit?” asked Helen.

It mattered to Violet, who had already manoeuvred herself to Mrs. Moretti’s left hand. Mrs. Moretti assured the group that success would be due more to the combined force of their auras than any specific placement.

“Miss” came flatly from Violet’s other side.

The skin of her cheeks crawled as Morris touched his cap and nodded down at her. There were ways and ways for men to look at women, and Violet knew most of them. This malice-tinged disinterest was both new and unnerving.

Unlike Morris, who looked out of place among the first-class finery, Chapman held himself like a man who had the right to be wherever he was. He took a seat next to Maud and dropped a gauntlet of a smile. Maud’s smile in return was impeccably polite, but she shifted an inch away from him and towards Hawthorn, who’d already claimed the seat on her other side.

“Shan’t we need candles, or a letter board?” asked Rose Bernard.

“Perhaps a charlatan would.” Mrs. Moretti dripped disdain. “A true medium needs only her own gifts, and a strong and open mind. Now, I’ll ask you all to concentrate quietly. The conditions on this plane must be perfect for Mrs. Navenby’s spirit to draw close to the veil. We must all join hands and create a circle of invitation and trust.”

Violet steeled herself as Morris’s fingers closed around hers. She’d asked Mrs. Moretti to insist on the circle; she wanted everyone’s hands where she could see them.

Silence fell.

A circle of trust. It was a lie so full it was bursting at the seams. Three curious spectators, four people in on the sting, and two-possibly-three members of a murderous conspiracy.

At least Violet’s hunch had paid off. Even if they suspected a trap, neither Chapman nor Morris had been able to resist turning up; Maud and her allies had the contract piece, as far as they knew. And despite being thwarted once, Chapman and Morris still had them outclassed in terms of magic.

Thus the Bernard sisters, and Miss Yu, and the two ship’s stewards who stood inside the door: Jamison and a pimply younger boy who looked outright nervous at the idea of ghosts. They were witnesses. Nothing too violent, too truly magical, or too revealing could take place in this room.

Mrs. Moretti had approached Seraphina Vaughn personally and reported that the woman had seemed uncertain but flattered to be included. Mrs. Vaughn’s brow was furrowed now, where she sat draped in a grey shawl between Hawthorn and Miss Yu.

“I cannot hear the dear departed clearly yet,” said Mrs. Moretti in that distant voice. “I can sense—I can barely glimpse—a vision. A large garden. Flowers, everywhere. This place was important to her. Roses, lots of roses.”

Violet snuck a glance through her lashes at Mrs. Vaughn, whose eyes were abruptly wide in her sweet, moon-round face. Mrs. Vaughn’s mouth half opened, as if to speak, then she reconsidered and closed it again.

Violet had given Mrs. Moretti enough information to be both vague and tantalisingly specific. Now she tapped Mrs. Moretti’s ankle with the toe of her boot, encouraging. They’d laid a hook. Time to create some slack in the line.

“Ahh,” said Mrs. Moretti obligingly. Her eyes snapped open. “She has arrived! Can you feel her presence? Welcome her! Let her know this is a place of safety!”

Maud gave a stifled little gasp, as if someone had dropped ice down her back, and looked at the ceiling. “I felt a breath against my cheek. Could that have been her?”

Mrs. Moretti rained approval on Miss Cutler, clearly a girl of unusual psychic sensitivity. Rose Bernard ventured that she, too, had felt a change in the temperature of the air.

“Mrs. Navenby did not meet most of you in life,” said Mrs. Moretti, “but she can feel your belief, your need to know that she’s close. It’s strong. Very strong indeed. Perhaps she’s drawn to some of you because you have lost people in your own life. Who have you lost, my dear?”

This last was addressed to Miss Yu, two chairs to her right. Miss Yu blinked and, after a moment, volunteered that she had indeed lost her dear Charlie, just last winter.

“Ah.” Mrs. Moretti adopted a look of limpid sympathy. “There are no certainties beyond the veil. But if Mrs. Navenby were to encounter your Charlie’s spirit, are there any messages you would wish her to pass on?”

Miss Yu considered this. “She could throw a spirit-ball for him to chase, I suppose. Charlie was a spaniel.”

Helen gave a stifled giggle.

Mrs. Moretti’s sympathetic look gained an irritated edge. “It might amuse you to play games with the forces of mystery,” she said, “but I cannot see the humour in it. We are dealing in the weighty matters of life and death.”

Violet squeezed the woman’s hand firmly. They didn’t need Mrs. Moretti to turn diva. The woman had wanted to use her usual approach: clients expected a spirit guide, she insisted. Violet had pointed out that she was the only paying client in this scenario. The lack of real knowledge about how mediums worked was going to play in their favour here, but things had to look semi-plausible to the other magicians at the table.

Mrs. Moretti sighed and turned to Maud. “For you, Miss Cutler, her voice rings clear. She wants you to know that she doesn’t blame you for her death. She knows you would have done everything you could, if you’d been there. But… she’s glad you weren’t. Oh, she’s distressed, remembering it. Mrs. Navenby! Elizabeth! Stay with us! You must let yourself inhabit it without pain!”

Maud looked somewhere between touched and distraught. Morris’s hand tightened around Violet’s.

“What does she mean? What pain?” asked Maud, taking up her cue. “Oh, I hate to think of her death being painful!”

“No, not the moment of death. There is something she’s trying to show me… some shadow hanging over this memory… a sense of danger.”

Chapman had the sense not to react to that, but he and Morris exchanged a glance. Chapman’s mouth was a firm line.

Another single ankle-tap from Violet. Time to move on to the main event.

“Sarah?” said Mrs. Moretti suddenly. “Is there a Sarah at the table?”

A long, careful sigh like the creak of wood came from Mrs. Vaughn. “My name is Sera.”

Mrs. Moretti drew herself up. Violet’s hand was tugged an inch towards her. “Sera. There is a sense of grave danger that surrounds you as well. That is why you’re here. Be careful. She says…”

Absolute silence. The room hung on Mrs. Moretti’s next words, uttered as if she were translating them from an ancient language.

“… she says, All the rest of us have proven disposable, and you may too . Does that mean anything to you?”

“I…” Mrs. Vaughn shrank back.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” said Rose encouragingly. “The spirit clearly wishes to help you.”

Morris’s hand was a vise. Violet gritted her teeth against it.

Mrs. Moretti’s tone sharpened. “She says— Why are you on this ship, Seraphina Hope? ”

Mrs. Vaughn dragged her hands back from Hawthorn and Miss Yu. She set palms on the table as if she might rise, but stayed, pinned to her seat, staring at Mrs. Moretti.

“She doesn’t want to think the worst of you,” Mrs. Moretti continued, “but she says it’s terrible to think of the alternative. To think of you betraying a trust in that way, when you—”

“ What trust, Beth? ” hissed Seraphina Vaughn, sudden as the strike of an asp. “You didn’t trust me with a piece of the thing.”

Everyone else rocked back in their seats. It was as if the sunset lamp had exploded invisibly and they’d felt the blow. Violet’s pulse thundered in her ears. They’d done it. They’d actually done it.

“Ma’am…” said Chapman urgently, but clearly had no idea what to say next.

Fury rouged Mrs. Vaughn’s pale face. Her attention swung between Mrs. Moretti and the ceiling, as if she wasn’t sure where to direct her tirade against the ghost of her friend. “What do you want me to say? It was never going to stay hidden. I told you someone else would work it out eventually, and they did .”

Violet went to tap at Mrs. Moretti’s ankle again, willing her to keep the woman talking, but there was no need for it. Mrs. Vaughn’s quavering voice strengthened as it continued.

“And if Flora had been an inch less stubborn—less certain that she knew best, that she should make decisions on behalf of all of us, of all—” Violet heard the gap where the woman managed not to say the word magicians . Mrs. Vaughn sucked in an uneven breath and finished: “Well. If that was the case, perhaps she’d still be alive today.”

“Get her name out of your mouth, you traitor.”

Violet’s elation turned like the flip of a card to fear. It was Maud standing, Maud’s chin held with that particular arrogant angle that wasn’t her own mannerism at all. And it was Mrs. Navenby’s voice steaming out.

“ Don’t you dare speak of her. You turned us in, didn’t you? Enid, and then me. You gave our names to these men”—nearly spitting the word, with a wave of her arm that encompassed Chapman and Morris— “and they killed her, and they killed me, and now you’re the only one left to be listened to. Just as you always wanted .”

The silence was wine-coloured, blood-coloured.

“… Beth?” said Mrs. Vaughn.

Everyone stared at Maud. Violet couldn’t feel anything past her knees or elbows. She had no idea if Morris or Mrs. Moretti still held her fingers.

“A… a truly impressive sensitivity, Miss Cutler,” said Mrs. Moretti. “Have you ever felt the psychic vibrations before now?”

“Beth?” Mrs. Vaughn said again. “It is—oh, Lord—”

“ What is going on?” asked Rose.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” said one of the stewards. “If I might remind you—”

“Perhaps,” said Chapman loudly, “Miss Cutler would like—”

“I don’t think Miss Cutler—” began Hawthorn, even more loudly.

“ The cup, ” said Mrs. Vaughn.

It was uttered low and sharp and clear to Chapman. The words would not have meant anything to the unmagical people in the room. They might not even have heard Mrs. Vaughn speak. Panic spiralled high into Violet’s gut, where it twisted.

“The cup. Beth knows what it is. And this girl is the medium.”

Oh God, Violet thought—oh fuck .

She shot an appalled glance at Maud—and it was Maud again, swaying on her feet with a hand to her mouth as if to cram the betraying voice of the dead back into her lungs.

“ Quiet .” Chapman was standing, too, all the musicality of his voice vanishing in the kind of bellow that would quell a street fight. “This farce has gone far enough. Miss Cutler, I’m afraid I’m placing you under arrest.”

At least five people spoke at once. Violet might have been one of them; she could barely hear herself within the chorus of alarm.

“You’ll do no such thing,” Hawthorn growled. “Who do you think you are?”

“Special Branch,” said Chapman.

“Special Branch of what ?” snapped Violet. She was ignored. Chapman had the flow of the scene, and he knew how to use it.

“I’ve been on the trail of this young woman for some time. I suspect her of being not only a thief, but also a con artist. Such a low, immoral thing, staging a séance to throw suspicion off herself after her supposed relative died— Oh,” he went on, triumphant over Maud’s furious gasp, “do you think I didn’t notice that you were at such pains to establish you weren’t present at the time of death? Do you deny that this entire gathering was masterminded by yourself, under false pretences?”

If there was ever a time for Maud to lie, this was it. She was red-faced with anger, and to Violet’s horror there were tears standing in her eyes.

Maud managed, “How—how dare—this is—”

Chapman raised his eyebrows and smirked. He looked around the table, letting his gaze linger on Mrs. Vaughn, Violet, and Mrs. Moretti.

“A pretty performance, ladies, but the game is up. And believe me, the law won’t look kindly on anyone who helped her.”

“It was her,” blurted Mrs. Moretti, shooting out a finger to point at Violet. “She paid me! She told me exactly what to say!”

The only experienced fraud at the table, she’d clearly not been expecting the voice of the law to appear. She was trying to save her skin. Violet nearly bit her tongue with the effort of not lashing back. What good would denying it do? Why was the truth so damning, and how had she lost control of the script? God, why couldn’t she think ?

Chapman’s smirk widened at this unexpected gift of testimony.

“Well. We all know that Miss Debenham is an accomplished actress.” His tone coated the noun with grime.

“Maud?” said Helen, in a small voice.

Chapman reached into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out—“Are those handcuffs ?” said Rose, sounding close to hysterics.

“I didn’t do a thing!” screeched Mrs. Moretti, not much better.

“You’re a damned Cooper.” Hawthorn didn’t raise his voice, but the low drawl of it carried. “Aren’t you? You work for my cousin.”

Nearly everyone was on their feet now. Violet didn’t know when she’d stood, or when Morris’s grip had moved from her hand to her forearm.

“He oversees my branch of the government, yes,” said Chapman.

Wording that would sound unremarkable to non-magicians, and yet a horrible chill joined the rest of Violet’s fear. George Bastoke, Hawthorn’s cousin and likely the most senior member of the conspiracy to use the Last Contract, also oversaw the magical police. Wonderful.

“Lord Hawthorn,” Chapman went on. “It’s kind of you to extend your protection to this dissolute pair of women, but it’d be best if you stayed out of this.”

Maud was by now nearly hyperventilating, a hand to her chest where beneath her clothes the locket—

The locket . If a magician got Maud alone and helpless in a room, determined to get Mrs. Navenby’s truth out of her… Even if Hawthorn and Violet could talk the ship’s actual authorities into forcing Chapman to release her, it might be too late. The Coopers extracted information and extinguished problems. That was their function.

The dark core of Violet’s anger welled up like a boiling pot, and she cursed the well-meaning planning that had landed them here with non-magicians on all sides.

Chapman turned and took hold of Maud’s arm. His fingers pressed cruelly deep into flesh as he brought the first cuff to her wrist.

Violet snatched up the table-lamp in her free hand and threw it at him.

It was yanked back by its thick electrical cord like a dog on a leash, but she’d thrown brass-end-first, and with force; Chapman shouted and threw up his hands before the lamp stopped midair and fell back onto the table. The glass shade cracked but didn’t shatter.

“Maud,” Violet said, “run. Run now .”

Maud dodged around Chapman with the speed of panic and made for the door. Morris started after her, dragging Violet with him, and Violet twisted and flailed. When Morris turned on her, his face ugly with annoyance, she stepped close and drove her knee up as hard as she could into his groin.

That was the plan, at least.

Her bloody narrow skirt hampered the force of it, and Morris had good reflexes. Violet managed only a glancing blow between his legs—not what she’d intended, which was to drive his fucking bollocks so far up his arse his ancestors would be singing soprano.

It was enough for him to grunt, and for his grip to loosen. Violet twisted again, pain worming through her shoulder at the awkward angle, and snatched herself free of him.

“You meddling bitch,” said Morris, and reached for her again. His hand had just tangled in Violet’s hair—she yelped with the flare of sharp pain across her scalp—when he let out another, louder grunt and released her with equal suddenness.

Miss Yu stood at his shoulder. In her hand was a hatpin, wickedly sharp and long.

“Mind your language,” Miss Yu said coldly.

Violet took a few stumbling steps towards the door, where Maud—oh, the little fool —was hovering anxiously, waiting for her. The stewards had vanished some time ago, probably to fetch ship security. Violet exchanged a frantic look with Hawthorn.

He lifted his hands and cradlespoke speed. Go .

Then he grabbed Chapman’s arm, dragging the man back.

That was enough for Violet. She opened the card-room door with one hand, took hold of Maud’s arm with the other, and they ran.