Angel of Ruin (29 page)

“What shall we do with him now?” Mary asked, stepping back.

“Hide him somewhere.”

“Will he be well again?” Anne asked, poking him with her toe.

“I don’t care,” Mary replied.

“I shall remove him to his own home soon enough,” Lazodeus said with impatience. “I do not understand your anxiety, Anne. Has he not received what he deserved?”

“It is … I …” Anne was speechless. She kneeled next to Father Bailey. His eyes were glazed and unfocussed, but he still breathed softly. “He is not dead then?”

“What would it matter even if he were?” Mary said nonchalantly. “Anne, he tried to kill our angel.”

“I do not want to be hanged for murder,” Anne replied, “that is all. I hate the exorcist as much as you!” There, now she sounded like a petulant child. She took a breath and tried to calm herself. “We need to hide him somehow.”

“But Betty knows he’s up here.”

“We can tell her he has finished his work and gone.” Anne frowned. “Though I doubt she’ll believe it.”

“She’ll be too frightened not to believe it. Wait here. I shall go to my secret room and bring back something to hide him in.” Mary disappeared out the window, leaving Lazodeus and Anne facing each other.

“Please,” she said. “Do not interpret my anxiety as concern for the exorcist.”

“I am sorry. For a moment I thought …”

The silence grew. Finally, she said, “You thought what, Lazodeus?”

He smiled sadly. “I thought you bore no more love for me.”

“Love for you? Oh, Lazodeus if you only … I mean … my feelings for you remain unchanged. No, they have grown stronger, for seeing you so weak.”

“Thank you, Anne,” he said softly. Then leaned in and kissed her forehead with gentle lips. “I owe you my life.”

“This should do.” Mary was climbing in the window once more, and Lazodeus stepped away from Anne. She felt her heart beat frantically. Could it be that he loved her as she loved him? Loved her so much that the thought of losing her affection had frightened him? Loved her so much that he must hide his feelings from Mary? She barely noticed as Mary laid out a rich red velvet arras across the floorboards.

Anne tore her eyes away from Lazodeus. “What are you doing?”

“Hiding Father Bailey until we can get him out of the house. Will you help me?” She already had his feet held firmly in her hands.

Anne crouched near Father Bailey’s head, and Lazodeus took his arms. They lifted him and placed him in the centre of the arras. Mary brought the edge up over his body, then rolled him over twice.

“Won’t he suffocate?” Anne asked.

Mary parted the material near his head. “I’m sure he can breathe through there.”

“But …”

“Stop worrying. Help me get him under the bed.”

They pushed his body under the bed, letting the long covers drop so that he could not be seen. Anne sneezed from the dust. She stood back and brushed her hands on her skirt. “We won’t leave him there for long, will we?” Anne said.

Lazodeus put a hand on her shoulder. “The very next time Betty leaves the house, I will help you take him to his home.”

“And then he will be better?”

“No, he will always be like this.”

“Should we not reverse the spell, then?”

“He may return,” Mary said. “Don’t be stupid.”

Anne tried not to think about the strange, glazed look of the exorcist. Lazodeus was well again. That was all that mattered.

“You should set your sister free,” Lazodeus said. “And I shall leave so that I may recover my strength in Pandemonium. It may be some time before I can return.”

Mary dangled the key in front of her. “I should very much like to keep this,” she said.

“It belongs to Deborah,” Lazodeus replied. “She knows how to use it. You do not.”

“I know a couple of spells now — how to lock someone up, how to make them swoon.”

“You were drawing on my power. It won’t work for you without me near. Give it back to her. It is not worth you risking the love of your sister.”

Mary sighed. “I suppose you are right.”

“Let me have it a moment,” he said. She handed it to him and he held it out and called upon the same demon who had locked the door. The five sweet notes rang out again. When their echoes had faded, Lazodeus returned the key to Anne. “I have unlocked it. She may come out.” He offered Anne a smile. The white scar on his lip twitched.

“Farewell, Mary. Thank you.” Then to Anne, “Farewell. I will return before he dies, do not concern yourself.”

Anne watched as the glow around him gathered, shimmered, then disappeared with him. Her heart hammered, from excitement and love and fear.

“You can come out now, Deborah,” Mary called.

Deborah emerged from her closet. Anne had never seen her look so enraged. Her face was flushed and her eyes glittering. She snatched the key and gave Anne a look of such abhorrence that she had to divert her eyes.

“How dare you?” she hissed.

“While we speak of daring, how dare you repeat the exorcism? Were you trying to get him killed?” Mary said.

“I care not if the angel dies,” she said. “He is my enemy.”

A long silence weighed heavily on Anne’s ears, as the shock settled in.

“Be careful what you say, sister,” Mary said, her eyes narrowed.

A new fear clutched at Anne’s heart. They had fought before, they had squabbled with each other since their infancy, but the dark surge of anger between her two sisters now was unforgiving in its intensity.

“And you, Mary, be careful what you do.”

“I shall protect the angel.”

“And I shall protect the innocent.”

“The angel is innocent.”

“You know that is not true. Since the moment he first appeared, there has never been a trace of innocence about him.”

Anne decided to intervene. “Please, do not fight. Are we not sisters? Do we not love one another?”

“I love her not,” Mary said, her eyes never leaving Deborah’s. “Not if she wants to hurt the angel.”

“I do not want to hurt any creature,” Deborah protested. “But I will be watching you. And if you dare to touch my belongings again,” her hand went defensively to the key around her neck, “you may find that I am as formidable an enemy as Lucifer is to God.”

The door to the bedroom suddenly swung inwards.
Betty stood on the other side, clutching Liza’s hand, peering in timidly.

“Hello, Mother,” Mary said icily, her top lip curled.

“I —”

“If you are looking for your friend, he has left already. He did not have time to say goodbye.”

Betty drew pale. “When did he … when did he leave?”

“Not long since. He passed on his best regards.”

Deborah suddenly broke away from them and turned to Betty. “Betty, I shall join you in the kitchen anon. We should break our fast. Please go on ahead. Mary and Anne are still feeling unwell.”

Betty, clutching the collar of her dress like a frightened child, backed out of the room.

Deborah turned to Mary and slowly extended her forefinger so it nearly touched her sister’s nose.

“You shall leave Betty alone,” Deborah said.

“I shan’t.”

“You shall,” Deborah returned, more forcefully.

“If she keeps interfering —”

“I will stop her interfering. I go now to stop her from ever meddling again in our affairs. Promise to leave her alone.”

Mary shrugged, casting her eyes to the side in a feigning of nonchalance. “Perhaps. I shall think upon it.”

“Ensure you do,” Deborah said. A few moments later she was gone. Anne was terribly aware of a third presence in the room, of the exorcist breathing softly under the bed.

Mary strode to the door and slammed it with an exasperated sigh. “Does she think to make an alliance with Betty?”

“She said she would protect the innocent.”

“I should kill her.”

“She is your sister!” Anne cried, unable to stand the pressure of the animosity any further.

“Not Deborah, you fool. Betty. But no good would come of it. If she interferes again, though, I shall make her pay. I shall make her pay so dearly.”

“Mary, you are frightening me.” Her sister’s cruel streak had always been unsettling, but this morning it was pure, undiluted by a jest or a flippant quip about Mad Mary.

Mary shook her head. “You do not understand my passion,” she said. “I have an angel as my companion, and he shall not be taken from me.”

“I care for the angel, too.”

“Then you do not care enough, for to want to kill for love is its only true expression.” She turned and stalked to the window, slipped out and left Anne alone.

Almost alone.

So Mary was in love with Lazodeus; she had all but admitted it. Anne sat heavily on the bed and put her head in her hands. Of all the rivals she could have for the angel’s love, Mary was perhaps the most forbidding.

B
etty — frantic, stomach fluttering and skull buzzing — paced the kitchen while blockheaded Liza prepared their tea.

Soon Father Bailey would be missed. Lettice would be at the door asking questions. Gossip would spread. Betty would be blamed.

The girls. What would they do to her?

A noise near the door made Betty look up. Deborah. She felt her whole body shrink away from her stepdaughter.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I need to speak to you, Betty.”

“What do you have to say?”

Deborah glanced towards Liza. Of course Deborah wanted them to be alone. But if Liza were not there with her, who would protect her?

“I am …” Betty started.

“Afraid? Do not be.”

Betty gazed at Deborah a long time, apprehensive. Then took a deep breath. “Let us walk into the garden. Liza,” she said to the maidservant, “please do not disturb us.”

She led Deborah out the back door and they sat on the stone bench against the wall. The sky was nearly
fully light now, but the coming day did not fill Betty with hope as much as horror. How many hours would pass before someone came looking for Father Bailey?

Deborah turned to her and, to Betty’s surprise, grasped her hand. “I fear for you, Betty.”

Terror washed over her. “What do you mean?”

“You must not question what Mary does any more. You must not question any of us, but especially not Mary. Mary grows dangerous.”

A small rage ignited in her stomach. “So I am being threatened by you? By my stepdaughter?”

“This is not a threat. This is a warning, a benevolent warning. Mary will leave you alone if you drop all your investigations into our conduct.”

“Can you guarantee that? You are not Mary.”

“I know far more than Mary.”

“You are but a girl,” Betty said. “How can I take my comfort from you?”

“What other comfort have you been offered?” Deborah shook her head. “Betty, this is not one of your childish superstitions. This is real, this is danger. I will protect you as much as I can, but if you delve into Mary’s affairs again … I fear for you.”

Anger and terror fought within her. “And what of Father Bailey?”

“I will take care of Father Bailey as best I can.”

“Where is he? Sent to the infernal realm with the devils you worship?”

“I worship no devils. Father Bailey is in a swoon, wrapped in an arras, under Mary and Anne’s bed.”

A hot rush of dread moved up Betty’s back. She groaned. “He will die,” she said, “and I shall be blamed.”

“I think I can save him. I think I can reverse the magic they performed, but you must promise me that you will leave us be, that you will turn a blind eye to
our activities, and go on as if nothing has ever happened.”

“And what of your father? Should he not know what kind of daughters he has raised?”

Deborah wove her fingers together as though trying to steady them. For the first time in this exchange she dropped her eyes and seemed at a loss for words. “Yes, what of Father?” Slowly, she raised her head and looked at Betty with pleading eyes. “Betty, for the love you bear him and for the love I bear him, he is safer if he knows nothing.”

Betty knew this to be true. As much as she wanted to be rid of the girls and recognised this as her best opportunity so far, there was too much danger in pursuing it.

“But are there devils in this house? Should I not fear them?”

Deborah lifted her eyes upwards, thinking. In that very serious, considerate way that she had, she said, “There is a force in this house that begins to run out of control, but all my endeavours are now bent towards solving that problem. And I do not believe it is necessarily evil, perhaps mischievous. I assure you, this force is not a devil. I believe you have nothing to fear if, as I have said, you stay away from our affairs, and especially from Mary’s.”

Betty shook her head. “I want to trust you, but … Father Bailey …”

“Let me think upon it. Today or tomorrow I will do something.”

“I …”

“Betty, you have no other choice. You must trust me. I have little love for you, nor you for me, but at the moment we are united by a common enemy and a common love. I will undertake to manage Mary if you undertake to protect yourself and Father.”

The girl was right. Betty had no choice but to trust her. And to be truthful, she had started to feel a sneaking hope that Deborah could protect her, that this nightmare of bad omens would soon be behind her.

“I agree, then,” Betty said, and to say it was a relief. “I shall not tell your father.”

Anne felt the covers slowly slipping from her upper body. He was coming for her. He was angry and he would repay her. Gently, gently, trying not to wake her, he was tugging the covers down. She was unable to stop him, tried to call out but couldn’t. Could only make a grinding, guttural noise in her throat.

A long space where nothing happened. She almost relaxed, and then suddenly, with icy hands, he seized her feet.

She woke with a start. Looked down. Her covers were still in place, no cold hands touched her feet. The exorcist was still in his unnatural sleep in the arras, with the dust and shadows beneath the bed.

Anne took a deep breath. Her heart was thumping madly in her chest.
Merely a nightmare.
But it wasn’t merely a nightmare — it was true. A man lay bewitched directly beneath her. She rolled over and watched Mary for a few moments, breathing deeply, sleeping the sleep of the innocent. How could she? Why was she not mad with anxiety as Anne was?

She wanted so desperately for the angel to return and remove their guilty secret from the room. Surely, when Father Bailey was returned to his home, she would sleep easily again. If the guilt did not trouble her too badly.

She flipped onto her back and stared into the dark. Over and over, she had berated herself for her guilt. The exorcist had tried to kill Lazodeus, and the revenge they took had saved her beloved from
annihilation. No blame lay with her. She was simply saving the creature that she loved most dearly in the world.

But it felt all wrong.

Anne closed her eyes and tried to reclaim her lost sleep, but without success. She imagined she could hear the sound of the exorcist’s breathing, or even a struggling, suffocating cough. Finally, she threw back the covers and got out of bed, went to stand by the window.

A light still burned in the window across the way. Happy people with less complicated lives. She watched the light for a while, trying not to let her thoughts return to the awful secret under the bed. What was taking Lazodeus so long? Did he not realise that if he didn’t return soon, Father Bailey would die for want of food and water? Or would the enchantment protect him?

Protect him? He was dead in life in the state they had induced. Once again guilt rose, self-hatred on its heels. She put her head in her hands and pressed her fingers savagely into her face.
Why can’t you be more like Mary? She loves him more than you do, and he will see it.

If only he would come.

“Lazodeus,” she whispered into the dark, but with no expectation. And, indeed, no luck. She watched the light in the opposite window until she was too tired to hold her eyes open any longer, then she went back to bed to dream of icy hands grasping desperately at her ankles.

When morning came, it was almost a surprise. Daylight once more. It took a few seconds to remember the horror under the bed, but then the memory returned swiftly and slyly. Mary was already
out of bed and gone to breakfast. Anne lay there a few moments, then rolled over.

And found the note.

Gently positioned half under her pillow, a crisp piece of paper folded in half, then in half again. She did not recognise the writing at first, but soon spied his name at the bottom: Lazodeus.

She pressed the letter to her chest, realised she had held her breath for too long. What a fool she was for mistrusting him. Of course he would solve the problem with Father Bailey. She had let her feelings of jealousy towards Mary cloud her judgement. She would wager all she had that he had never written such an intimate note for her sister. She read it over and over, imbuing each word with new significance. If she didn’t know better, if this letter wasn’t addressed to lame Anne Milton, she may even read desire into it. But that couldn’t be so.

Or could it?

Thursday was nearly a week away. How she would ever wait that long was a mystery.

Deborah crept as quietly as she could up the stairs. Mary and Anne were in the kitchen with Liza and a wary Betty. An opportunity which may not be repeated: her sisters rarely left their victim alone, as though their guilt led them to maintain watch.

She opened the door to the bedroom and went quickly to the bed. Max lay curled up on the bed, sleeping soundly. Kneeling, she lifted the covers. There, under the bed as she had seen it in her scrying mirror, was a velvet-wrapped shape. Father Bailey. She stood and hesitated. Too risky to try to reverse the enchantment while her sisters were still in the house. She chewed her lip as she considered.

Max. Still Mary’s weak point.

Deborah picked up the little dog, and he whimpered softly in his sleep. “Come with me, little friend,” she said softly, and took him to her closet. He settled on her bed with a yawn, and went back to sleep. She closed the door and returned downstairs. Took a deep breath and burst into the kitchen.

“Mary, Max has run off!”

Mary looked up. Her sleeves were rolled up and her hands were covered in flour. “What do you mean?”

“I was in Father’s study when I heard him whimpering at the front door. When I let him out, he saw a rat and went dashing after it.”

“He can’t have got far,” said Mary, wiping her hands on a cloth and hurrying out of the kitchen.

“Anne, you’d better come help us find him,” Deborah said, and Anne, as was her nature, complied.

“Which way did he go?” Mary was asking when they joined her near the front door.

“Down that alley.”

They crossed the road.

“There’s no sign of him. I hope he hasn’t been strook by a carriage.” Deborah almost hated herself for putting such an awful fear in Mary’s imagination, but then reminded herself that Max was safe and well and Father Bailey was not.

“Don’t say such a thing!” Mary cried. “Max! Max! Where are you?”

“You two go in that direction and I’ll go back the way we came,” Deborah said.

“He can’t have got far,” Anne said soothingly, laying a hand on Mary’s shoulder.

“Stupid Deborah. You should never have let him out the front door. You should have let him into the garden.” Mary stalked off towards the junction of the alley with the next street, Anne behind her. When they disappeared around the corner, Deborah dashed back to the house. Betty waited near the door.

“Deborah, are you —?”

“Just wait in the kitchen. I shall do what I can, and I shall do it better uninterrupted.” She took the stairs quickly, threw open the bedroom door and dove under the bed. Dust irritated her nose and she sneezed once, loudly. The sound echoed in the room. With effort, she pulled Father Bailey out from under the bed. She tipped him on one side and rolled him over, rolled him out of the arras. By the time he lay exposed, face down on the ground, she was perspiring heavily. Her shaking fingers went to the demon key. Would it even work? She was such a novice. She suspected the reason Mary had been able to induce the swoon was that Lazodeus had been helping her. For all his protestations of illness and powerlessness, Deborah was almost certain that the angel had not been affected at all by the exorcist. The demons in her walls were still there. If they could
withstand a Papist’s prayers, then a creature like Lazodeus certainly could.

She held out the demon key. “Drachiarmus,” she said, remembering the name from Lazodeus’s instructions, “I call upon you with this key as your commander. Release Father Bailey from his unnatural sleep.”

The notes rang out clearly, and as they did a profound thrill coursed through her, greater than she had ever felt it before. Momentarily, it seemed her body was formed of liquid gold. Then she was flesh and blood again, a laugh caught on her lips and a nervous excitement jittering through her.

And Father Bailey sat up. “Where am I?”

She knelt next to him. “Are you recovered?” she asked, astounded that the magic had worked so well. She had expected him only to wake enough to be helped home, not to speak and move so freely. “Completely recovered?”

Father Bailey shrank from her. “Are you one of the witches?”

“I have just saved your life, Father Bailey. You must leave now, and you must never return. I cannot vouchsafe you from my sisters’ wrath.”

“You are a witch,” he breathed.

“If you must think me so, then at least consider me a good one. Come, rise. My sisters will return soon, and if they see you recovered they will not be satisfied until they have spilled your blood.” She tried to help him to his feet, but he shied away from her.

“I do not wish to be touched by you.”

“I cannot stress to you sufficiently, sir, how much danger you are in.”

At once, he started reciting his exorcism and Deborah pressed her hands to her forehead in exasperation. Think, think. Which demon can be
relied upon to induce forgetfulness? She reviewed the lists in her head, found the name and held up the demon key.

“Shayax, I call upon you with this key as your commander, make this man forget why he is here.”