Elementary (27 page)

Something laughed in the darkness, a malevolent trill. She felt a draft where there should have been none, and smelled elderflower and ozone.

In the little light from the mostly shut doorway, she found the half of the syrup she'd set aside, and slowly poured a small measure of it into a Winslow's bottle she'd rescued from the rubbish pile.

She held up the bottle. “Does this make you happy?” she asked as the wind grew, making the jars rattle and her clothes flap. “Is this what you want?”

The wind died the moment she touched the door handle, and she returned to Mrs. Foster, who sat silently beside her daughter, stroking her hair and whispering softly to her.

“There was a little left over from a previous order,” she explained, kneeling down beside Alice.

Grace Foster reached for the bottle, and in that moment, a silent war burst into life in Aurelia's head.
I don't have to support this,
she realized.
I don't have to give her this bottle.

She would lose her job, but she'd already lost it. She had nothing left to lose.

Aurelia drew the bottle back, leaving Grace grasping at empty air. “What are you doing, Miss Weiss?” she asked.

“You know it's not good for her, don't you?” Aurelia said quietly. “It's laudanum. It's poison.”

Grace's jaw tightened. “Give me the bottle.”

“Her ‘cure' is the source of her malady—”

“
Enough
, Miss Weiss! I will not tolerate this kind of talk from a—a
cook
!”

Aurelia's face twitched with barely contained rage.
Would you tolerate this from Aurelia Weiss, New York socialite?
she wondered.
Or Aurelia Weiss, Elemental Master?

“All the doctors prescribe th-this for the common maladies that plague children,” Grace said. “It is a well understood remedy!”

On the floor, Alice moaned. Aurelia leaned forward, holding Grace's gaze. “Do you believe that, Mrs. Foster? Truly?”

Grace's eyes unexpectedly filled with tears. “It's the only thing that keeps her safe.”

Behind her, the cookstove's oven door creaked open. A small, scaly creature hopped out and flicked a forked tongue in Aurelia's direction.

A salamander?
she thought as it flowed like a line of fire across the floor, stopping just short of them. Grace Foster stiffened.

Aurelia gave her a sharp look.

“You can see it,” she said. “You can see the Elemental.”

Grace widened her eyes and stared. “You can, too?”

The salamander blinked slitted eyes at them, then slithered closer to Alice. Grace shrieked and swatted at it, and the salamander skittered back, flicking its tongue in vexation at her.

“Get away from her!” she yelled. “Get away!”

Aurelia blinked, dumbfounded. She stretched a hand out and whistled to the salamander, which cast a speculative look at Mrs. Foster, and then—skittering in a wide arc around her—came over to Aurelia, poking its nose at her hand.

“Are you . . .
petting
that creature?” Grace sounded horrified.

“It's a salamander,” Alice replied. “And yes. As much as it will let me. Fire isn't my Element, though it is my ally.” She looked at Grace. “Is it yours?”

Grace trembled. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

Aurelia sat back on her heels. “Mrs. Foster, do you know anything about the Elemental Masters?” Something most scandalous suddenly occurred to Aurelia. “Is Mr. Foster Alice's real father?”

Grace turned white as a sheet, then regained some of her regal composure. “How
dare
you—”

“So many miscarriages,” Aurelia said. “It's not always the woman's fault, you know. Sometimes the father—”

Grace slapped her.

The salamander hissed and snapped. A wind suddenly sprang up in the kitchen, whipping around Aurelia and shoving Grace across the floor and into a wall. Aurelia turned to see an elfin figure floating in the air behind her.

“The ghost!” Grace gasped.

“No,” Aurelia said angrily. “Not a ghost. Never a ghost. An Elemental that refuses to leave me be.” To the sylph she said, “
Stop it!”

The sylph laughed. “I don't need to listen to
you
,” it said.

The wind blew harder, feeding the flames that licked the salamander's scales. The kitten-sized creature began to grow, its Fire fed by the sylph's Air. It advanced on Mrs. Foster, who stared, dazed.

“Stop!” Aurelia commanded again, but the Elementals ignored her, the sylph swooping around and hovering above the salamander, laughing like a bedlamite.

Tears spilled down Grace's cheeks as she crawled across the floor and back to Alice. She pulled her daughter into her arms, shielding the girl with her body. Aurelia could hear her whispering Psalm Twenty-Three into her daughter's hair.

Aurelia stood and took a deep breath. It had been years since she'd invoked her magic. The last time she'd tried had been in the attic her grandmother had converted into a kind of magical atelier, and the subject of her arcane attentions had been the very sylph that floated before her.

Aurelia was certain her grandmother had deliberately chosen not to dismiss it. The sylph had spent the last three years chasing her, “haunting” every household she'd worked in, and Aurelia had played the good victim every time.

She drew the threads of magic around her—Air from her own breath, Fire from the oven, Water from the broth bubbling on the cookstove. Magic swirled around her as she cried, “I invoke our Pact!”

The salamander froze. The sylph turned and glided over until they were nose-to-nose. “There is no
Pact
, you silly goose,” the sylph said. “We are not bound. You never finished.”

“So let us finish now,” Aurelia said, holding and keeping the sylph's gaze. The intense blue eyes of the creature brought the memories of her grandmother's atelier into sharp focus: the smell of cedar, the motes of chalk powder floating in the air, and her grandmother standing to one side, watching like a hawk.

“Why would I answer to a creature such as
you
?” The sylph tittered indelicately. “You're no Master. You're just a
cook
. You allow this woman to treat you like
nothing
. And poor Alice. What has she been doing to her?” It leaned close to whisper in Aurelia's ear. “You're right about the child's father.”

Aurelia looked down at Grace, who still had her face buried in Alice's hair.

“Grace was quite the naughty girl,” the sylph continued, its words a private seduction of knowledge. “She acts proper now, but oh, the men
she
entertained when she was young! Would you like to know about them? Would you like to know about the Fire Master she met on summer vacation in St. Louis? The things I know would destroy her. She'd pay handsomely to keep them secrets.”

The sylph's implication was all too clear to Aurelia. Grace Foster would do anything to keep her husband from knowing about her past indiscretions—would
pay
anything. Aurelia would probably never have to work another day in her life.

“Would you like to know the secrets of the city's great men, the names and addresses of their mistresses?” the sylph whispered. “They would pay you, too. Oh, and they'd
deserve
it, every single one. Things will be like they used to be. You'll be rich without having to go back begging for your inheritance.”

Try as she might, Aurelia couldn't look away from the Elemental. How had she even managed to run away the first time? She couldn't remember. Her mind swam, and she could feel it slipping.

“I can show you corrupt politicians and businessmen,” the sylph said. “They'd be all too happy to pay you to keep their secrets.”

“Secrets. Endless secrets. The city is lousy with them,”
Millie had said.

Words formed on Aurelia's lips. “If you know so much,” she said, “then tell me where my sister is.”

The sylph looked pleased. Its voice wound through Aurelia's ears, echoing in her skull. “Your sister sleeps under the dirt in a potter's field on Hart Island. She's not alone, though. The grave is full of bodies, and she was six months quick with child when she drank her last drop of laudanum.”

Tears formed in Aurelia's eyes. She clung to the pain in her chest, and used it to form a single word.
“Stop.”

The sylph swirled in blessed silence around her. Across the room, Alice shifted in her mother's arms, moaning through her unconsciousness.

Aurelia took a deep breath. “Stop,” she said again, in a much calmer voice. “Do you swear the Pact with me?”

In an instant, the sylph's malevolence evaporated, and it retreated to fold its arms across its chest like a sullen child. “Your sister was more fun.”

“Do you swear it?” Aurelia asked again.

The sylph threw its head back and laughed—not the malevolent trill from before, but happy, clear laughter. It rushed forward and, surprisingly, kissed Aurelia's forehead. The kiss felt like the caress of a fogbank. “What a merry chase you have given me! Yes, we will swear the Pact with you, and I shall haunt you no more. Farewell, Aurelia Weiss—until you summon me again.”

It turned and swooped away, flying into the hearth and up the chimney, stirring the coals to briefly blaze into life—then fade back down again.

 • • • 

Aurelia was folding a dress when she heard a knock at the door.

“Come in,” she said.

Grace Foster opened the door, took two steps in, and paused. “Packing?” she asked.

“Yes, ma'am,” Aurelia replied. She smoothed the dress and laid it down in her chest.

“You already have another position elsewhere?”

“No, but I don't imagine you want me staying.”
Not with what I know.

Grace twisted the ring on her finger. “Miss Weiss, you are the first person since . . . him . . . that I have been able to talk to about this.”

Aurelia sat on her bed. Normally she would have remained standing, but she was too weary to bother with formality at the moment.

“Robert and I were supposed to be married,” Grace went on. “When he died, and my parents learned I was early with child, they acted quickly and had me married to Ellis Foster.” She stood silently a moment, gazing into the distance. “And Ellis, bless him, never asked too many questions. My mother coached me, told him the baby was early, even though she weighed a full eight pounds and popped out fat as a Christmas goose.”

“It's my experience that men don't want to know about how the babies come about,” Aurelia said. “They just like the part at the beginning.”

Grace laughed. “Too true,” she said, pulling up the only chair in the room and plunking down in it. “She has her father's eyes. We told Ellis she inherited them from my long-passed grandfather.” She smiled and shook her head. “I didn't think she'd also have Robert's . . . talents.”

“Mrs. Foster, you should know that I don't care,” Aurelia blurted. Grace raised a brow at her, and Aurelia quickly said, “I mean, I don't care in the sense that I won't use it against you. All I care about is that Alice is healthy and . . . aware of her talents.”

“But not her heritage,” Grace said. “Not yet, at least. Ellis is a good man. I have grown to love him, even if I will never be
in
love with him like I was with Robert. But I don't know how he would cope with finding out his darling daughter is not his, and his wife came to him as sullied merchandise.”

Aurelia nodded. “Did Robert ask the Elementals to reveal themselves to you?”

Grace made a soft noise. “Is that what he did? All I know is that after he learned I was with child, I began to see them. I never understood why. Honestly, I was happier when I was—er—blind. I certainly can't control them like you.”

I couldn't, either, until a few hours ago,
Aurelia thought, and then wondered if Robert had had a premonition of his fate. And
how
he'd done what he'd done. She'd only heard one story of a nonmagical person seeing the Elementals, and that had involved one of the old British Isles spirits.

Grace twisted her rings. “I know dosing Alice with that horrible stuff isn't the best way to make those—things—go away.”

“If you let the salamanders come to her,” Aurelia said, “they can heal her.” Grace's eyes widened. “She wouldn't be as sickly. She could easily quit that dreadful syrup with their help.”

“Would they hurt her?”

Aurelia shook her head. “No.”

“I don't know these things, Miss Weiss. I see a fiery lizard, and all I can think is that my daughter needs to be protected from it. Not invite it into her bedroom!”

Aurelia chuckled. “Well, I can tell you now that you can't run away from them. I've been trying for years. What your daughter needs is a teacher.”

Grace regarded her. “She needs a governess, too.”

Then she smiled, and Aurelia found herself smiling back. “Well,” she said. “I guess I should unpack.”

 • • • 

“Miss Weiss!” Alice said excitedly, pointing to the enormous contraption. “We
must
ride it!”

The Columbian Exposition had opened with much fanfare, but for all the amazing architecture and exotic goings-on, the thing that had most captured Aurelia's attention had been a giant steel monstrosity towering over two hundred feet in the sky.

She wasn't the only one. Alice wanted to climb into one of the great cars: at least a dozen sylphs and zephyrs danced excitedly around the Wheel, unseen by the throng of Exposition attendees.

In fact, now that she allowed herself to summon them, Aurelia realized that between the skyscrapers and the wind coming off Lake Michigan, Chicago had much for the Elementals of Air to love. The wide use of electricity at the Exhibition also seemed to entertain them. The Ferris Wheel made them positively giddy.