Eterna and Omega (22 page)

“Presuming we could possibly get him to trust us, what would we do with him?” Rose countered, fighting to keep her tone level, trying not to worry for Mr. Wilson. “My team is untrained to deal with someone of … such a nature. One of our operatives may have been killed by the display of his current, and I must return to my colleagues to assess the damage.”

“He's more inclined to trust us than those who forced him into today's display. Appeal to his British heart. Offer protections against the Society. Remember, your enemies are the demons, but don't let the demons think you're building an army against them, lest they turn theirs against you before you're ready to fight.”

As Rose shuddered at his use of “demon,” the unpredictable operative turned and fired a gun into a nearby tree, sending two ravens squawking angrily into the air and causing a wave of screams. Men and women ducked, parasols and top hats flying. The confusion made excellent cover for his disappearance. In the wake of his departure, the two women stared at one another, baffled.

“Will you sit with me a moment, Miss Everhart? I am unfortunately unwell,” Clara asked, dazed. A wave of nausea must have struck the young woman, as she had to steady herself on Rose's shoulder.

“Yes, Miss Templeton.” Rose led her to a small iron bench beneath a tall sycamore near the Federal-style City Hall, its Beaux-Arts detail and lovely white dome a more delicate architectural bastion amid surrounding sooty brownstones and cast-iron industrial facades.

“I suffer from epilepsy,” Templeton explained. “And do call me Clara. When there are too many ghosts nearby, my body responds to their amassed sparks of life with a seizure. I've been fighting off a fit for the past hour. Thankfully, that Mosley fellow seemed to have driven off the tethered dead, but there's a bit of an after-effect.”

Rose remembered her darting from the tent and read the struggle in her body now, saw the tension in her muscles and the occasional shudder as she tried to unknot them, causing rippling shivers all the way from the ribbons of her small straw hat down to the black trim of her skirts.

“Funny thing about you, though,” Clara stated, breathing deep between words. “Your presence helps. It's as if I can breathe easier. Whatever you're doing, don't stop.”

Rose shrugged. “I'm not doing a thing that I know of. But do call me Rose.”

“Well … then, Rose. Where do we even begin?” Clara asked, trying to master a body fighting against her. “You say I may do you harm, but I tell you that is not in my nature,” she said with a weary but engaging smile.

Rose took a deep breath. “Let me first say, Clara, that our aims on your shores are simple: to recover the bodies of our scientists and lay hands on Mr. Mosley, a British citizen. I did not imagine those tasks would be entwined in such a terrible way.”

“Those poor folk who are now reduced to ash—they were your team searching for immortality?” Clara asked. Rose nodded. “Our pursuits of the same yielded too similar a result…” She trailed off, seeming overcome with emotion.

Rose felt similarly moved, somehow at ease in tumultuous sentiments. She was scared by what had happened, grieving for her wounded colleague, and overwhelmed, but she did not feel judged, as if she sat beside a long lost family member who knew her well. How could that be? There was no connection between her and Miss Templeton.

“You cannot trust me yet any more than I can trust you. And I want to, despite the warnings,” Rose stated.

Clara nodded. After a long moment she continued, “The Master's Society, with which today's demonstration appears to be correlated, has invented the strangest kind of … what's the word for it?”

“Terrorism?” Rose offered.

“Precisely.”

“I've only heard that term referred to in terms of the French regime and the revolution's subsequent Reign of Terror,” Rose mused, “but it seems apropos.”

“It appears that via terrorism, this is the kind of world the Society wants—ruling through terror inspired not by guillotine but by reanimate bodies powered by ghostly retinue and gaping graves,” Clara said mordantly, “specters, and all manner of supernatural threats we've been policing through the years but, when it comes to our office, always took second place to the search for immortality. I know you know about all that.”

“Yes, I am a member of the Omega department, but do let me reassure you, Miss … Clara, that we had no direct say in what Brinkman would do. He's a bit of a…”

“Liability?”

“One might say that.”

“Is he even trustworthy?” Clara posited. “How do you know his sending you after Mosley isn't a trap?”

“I'll bring along someone who is … gifted enough to assess the situation.”

“Good. We need as many of the gifted as we can,” Clara said, as if that were the most normal thing in the world. Rose nodded. “What's your gift?” Clara asked.

“Codes,” Rose replied. “Although after I was hurt in an accident and then … accosted by a strange, insistent woman, I've been seeing the world differently. As if I've woken up to a world beyond our mortal one.”

“That's very familiar. And don't worry, you
have
woken up, precisely. Most people have access to their sixth sense, but most don't wish to wake to it,” Clara said supportively. She winced and tried to shake a clenched muscle in her forearm. “Pardon me. It takes a little bit until I'm fully clear. Usually I go right to sleep but I don't at present have that luxury.”

“Don't let me keep you. I should be returning to find my colleague—”

“No, you're helping. The aftereffects are usually worse, and considering how many spirits were here, I should have already have gone into a full convulsion.”

“That must be very frustrating in your line of work,” Rose stated, “with your sensitivities, to have that kind of impediment.”

“Oh, indeed,” Clara murmured. “A Templeton curse…”

This sparked Rose's memory. That strange Marlowe woman had said the name Templeton.

“Do you know anything about a Lizzie Marlowe?” Rose asked. Clara looked blank. “Imperious woman, reddish hair, sharp featured. She mentioned your name, that we would have to make sure our departments didn't become something insidious.”

The description of the woman seemed to ring a bell. “The visitor!” Clara exclaimed. “The visitor has a name?”

“Yes, she did say ‘visitor', once, but she called herself Lizzie Marlowe after barging into our offices as if she owned the place.”

“Sounds like her,” Clara said with an exasperated laugh. “Ah! You must be the missing piece she referred to. That's it. Do you believe in lives past?”

Rose passed a hand over her hair, tucking errant brown strands from the ordeal back into the loose bun atop her head. “I didn't believe in much until this work, but now … Well, I am forced to believe in a great deal more.”

“May I be forward?” Clara asked, piercing Rose with peculiarly gold-green eyes.

“Have we any choice but to be?”

“I think we've always been siblings. I've a sense of where those with whom I have an instant affinity fit, in worlds past. I know mine rather clearly. You've either been a sister or brother, nearly every time,” Clara said, with mounting amazement as if she was seeing each iteration of possibility before her eyes. Perhaps she was. Rose was very moved by this.

“I was born a twin. The other died…” Rose trailed off. Clara nodded with a knowing smile. “I've always felt something missing…”

“I know. I've thought so, too. Been told so, even,” Clara said. “Well, hello, then.” Suddenly Clara embraced Rose.

Rose allowed the embrace and after a moment returned it. “Hello, old friend,” she replied.

Clara pulled back, her hand still on Rose's shoulder. “So what's this about my being the death of you, then?”

“Perhaps our respective dangerous works coming together increases the threat for both of us.”

Clara nodded. “Then we'll be twice as careful. I believe that warnings should be heeded, but I don't believe in a fixed destiny that ends only one way.”

“Good,” Rose agreed. There was a great relief in this.

“I was about to tell you where our offices are, but,” Clara said with a slight edge, “you already know. Can you give that Brinkman orders to not be such a lunatic?”

“We already did,” Rose countered. “Our director, Harold Spire, is a very sensible man. If I were a betting woman, I'd say you'd like him a great deal. He was afraid the issue of the kidnapping and the séance, when all Brinkman had been asked to do was gather information, would cause an international incident.”

“You're lucky we're understanding folk interested in secrecy,” Clara stated. Rose nodded. “So was your office responsible for any of today's madness?”

“Solely in the first tent.”

“Agents of a secret department masquerading as mystical performers and talented acrobats?” Clara grinned. “That is rather clever.”

Rose chuckled. “It's innovative, I suppose … to our poor director's chagrin.”

“For my offices to trust yours, we'll need to know who and what in your government—as we'll have to ascertain in ours—has any involvement with the Master's Society, the force behind today's display, along with other tiers of supernatural terrorism. Come to my offices tomorrow, please. Top floor. Don't mind Lavinia, our receptionist, she'll have to get her own
read
on you.”

“I won't mind,” Rose said, the paranormal aspects of the work becoming part of the routine. “Now if you'll excuse me,” Rose said, rising to her feet, smoothing her sensible skirts, they were very much two women of a set.

“Your colleague, by all means, I hope he is all right. Heading downtown, by chance?”

“Yes.”

The women left the park and walked in as brisk a stride as their skirts would allow down busy, bustling Broadway that was still the epicenter of gossip, terrified declamations, and more than a few New Yorkers rousing from faints and vapors.

“You'll come tomorrow?” Clara asked. Rose nodded.

“If we don't stop what's going on,” Clara added, “we'll all be the death of each other. It won't be by my direct hand. I hope whatever you can be sure of, in how
familiar
we feel. Sometimes instinctual trust is all I have to go on. The magic my team has been working on to keep the darknesses roused by events like today at bay is a very deeply personal one. We'll need all the connections we can get, not alienations.”

Rose nodded. “That sounds heartening, at least, even if I don't really understand precisely what you mean by magic.”

Clara smiled. “Magic doesn't need understanding. Not wholly. That's why it's
magic.
Someday I might know the science of it, but until then, well, let's call it something wondrous.”

“Fair enough.”

The women continued down toward Pearl Street, with New York all abuzz around them. The news of what had happened in the park was on the lips of every passerby, there were policemen and officials out and about on every walk and corner, but the ladies wove through dazed crowds with focused skill.

Clara stopped at Pearl and Whitehall and reached out to offer a comforting squeeze of her gloved hand on Rose's shoulder. “Good luck with your colleague. If I can be of help, let me know. It is good to meet you, Rose Everhart. And, I suppose, welcome home.” She turned to walk away down Pearl Street.

Watching her until she disappeared around the bend of the street, Rose recalled the Edison power plant nearby and her directive to call upon the man who may have accidentally killed her colleague. She prayed, as she hurried down the block and around the corner to the entrance of the embassy's safe house, that she wasn't walking into the too-personal kiss of death.

As she came into the safe house parlor, a bland, boring room with a staid still-life painting, no windows, a plain brown carpet, and uncomfortable wooden chairs, Rose collapsed in the nearest one, utterly overwhelmed and exhausted by the tolls of the day. Blakely sat across the room, staring at the wall.

“Thank goodness you're safe,” Knight murmured. She hoped their somber expressions didn't mean what she thought they did.

“Any luck out there? I'm so sorry I lost you, I was worried sick, but I had to…” The psychic trailed off, gesturing toward the closed door of the next room, tears falling from her dark eyes.

“We all did what we had to do,” Rose replied. “By dire circumstance and force, I met both Clara Templeton and our agent Brinkman.” She sighed, staring toward the closed door. “How is he?”

Blakely shook his head. Miss Knight put her face in her hands. In that moment, Rose could hear Adira crying from the next room, mourning softly in Arabic.

“Oh, God.” Rose slumped further, rubbed her eyes, and bit back a sob. “What do we do now?”

“Continue on,” Blakely whispered. “It's what he'd want us to do. And take care of Adira.”

Rose nodded, closing her eyes to block the sting of tears. She explained what all had happened, withholding the more personal past-life aspect from discussion.

“The key,” Knight said after Rose finished, “will be to get this Mosley fellow on our side.”

“It's clear what the Master's Society will do with him after today,” Rose declared. “Scores of dead bodies waiting to be woken … he can give them all the charge those unhallowed bodies need to rise and connect the ghosts that trail those horrid bodies.” She shuddered. “Brinkman gave me his address, on Pearl Street, saying we should go to him. Protect him.”

“He's tailor-made to be exploited by their evil,” Miss Knight added, rising to her feet. “I can find out why he is so angry and access his ability to trust. I can give him the closest thing he's ever had to a friend.”