Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) (4 page)

“How is Louisa?” I asked.

“As well as the combined medical knowledge of all the finest doctors in Europe could make her. I left her in an asylum in Vienna where there was a doctor who made some progress with her—at least enough so she’s stopped trying to run into the woods and can sit down to tea without playing chimes on the teacups. In her doctor’s last letter he informed me that she’s learned to repeat a few phrases of polite conversation and doesn’t tear her dresses to bits anymore, so I suppose she’s as fit as half the automatons here.”

He looked scornfully at the dance floor. “Really, where are they sending you girls to dancing school these days? I’ve seen less complicated maneuvers at the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.”

“Oh, there’s the most brilliant new dancing school up in Riverdale. All the new girls are going there,” Helen said with a touch of envy in her voice. The dancing school was too expensive for the van Beeks. In solidarity I had gone to lessons with old Madame Musette in her fusty Stuyvesant Square studio. But Nathan didn’t hear the strain of jealousy—or anything else Helen was saying. He was staring at me.

“That’s an interesting dress,” he said, looking me up and down in a way that made the blood rush to my face. “What are you supposed to be?”

“She’s a phoenix,” Helen said, “in honor of the girls who died in the Triangle fire.”

I stared at Helen, amazed that my interview had traveled so fast and that Helen had paid attention to it. But that was Helen—loyal when you least expected it.

“Oh, so you’ve become a socialist,” Nathan said, not softening at all. Why had he come over here if he was going to be so disagreeable?

“Ava’s been working at the Henry Street Settlement House,” Helen went on, surprising me by knowing the settlement house’s name. “She was just telling me about a girl who’s gone missing.”

“A missing girl?” The interest made his face human again. “Do you think she’s been
taken
?”

I knew he meant taken by the Darklings, whom he believed had taken Louisa. Even though Raven had helped get Louisa back, Nathan still thought the Darklings were evil. Would I ever convince him—or the Council of the Order—that they weren’t? Not unless I found
A Darkness of Angels
—which proved the Darklings’ innocence and revealed how to end the centuries-old curse that kept them out of Faerie. That is, if it wasn’t lying on the bottom of the ocean among the ruins of the
Titanic
.

“The changeling didn’t say Ruth was taken by a Darkling,” I said. I told them what she had said about Ruth meeting a shadowy man in Coney Island. I didn’t say it was van Drood, because I was still hoping she had assumed his features from my memories and not Ruth’s. I was still hoping van Drood had died on the
Titanic
.

“Ruth’s memory of the man she was meeting might have been obscured by shadows because a Darkling had mesmerized her.”

“Nathan’s right,” Helen said. “Just like that Darkling mesmerized you last year.”

“He didn’t mesmerize me!”

“How would you know?” Nathan asked coolly. “He could be using this changeling to lure you back to him. You’re planning to go look for the missing girl, aren’t you?”

As soon as he said it, I knew I was. Nathan knew me better than I knew myself. “I thought I’d go to Coney Island to see if anyone saw Ruth and the man she left with.”

“Alone?” Helen asked, appalled. “With all the rabble that frequent Coney Island? Why, I’ve heard that women show their bare legs on the beach and drink spirits in public and men take improprieties on the carousel rides . . .”

“Why Helen,” Nathan said with a grin, “you’ve done quite a bit of research on the place. It sounds as if you’re dying to go there.”

Helen turned pink. “I never!” she cried.

“Then you don’t want to go with Ava and me when we go investigate?”

“You’re going with me?”

“I can’t very well let you go alone and get snatched by a Darkling or pawed by a lowlife on the Steeplechase, can I?”

I stared at Nathan, trying to figure out what he was up to. He stared back. Helen looked from one to the other.

“Yes, Nathan’s right,” she said. “We can’t let you go alone. We’ll all go. I suppose I’ll have to acquire a new bathing costume; my one from last year is horribly out of date. I should have one by Thursday next.”

“We’ll go tomorrow,” Nathan said. “While the trail’s still hot.”

I began to object that the trail was hardly hot and to think of some other pretext for not going tomorrow. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t be glad of Helen and Nate’s company, but if a Darkling
was
behind Ruth’s disappearance . . .

“It’s settled then!” Nathan declared. He grabbed Helen’s hand. “Now have we come here to dance or what?”

Helen was barely able to suppress the jubilant smile that rose to her face, but she did spare a backward glance at me. “But we mustn’t leave poor Ava alone,” I heard her whisper in Nathan’s ear.

“Oh, I don’t think
poor
Ava will be alone for long. I’ve noted half a dozen gentlemen eyeing her, just waiting for their chance to ask her to dance. You’ll be fine, won’t you, Ava?”

I wasn’t at all sure I’d be fine dancing with a stranger, but I didn’t want to deny Helen the pleasure of dancing with Nate. “Of course,” I assured them both.

They were instantly sucked into the whirl of the ballroom as if into a cyclone. I stood on the edge of the dance floor watching the swirling couples, moving faster now in steps I didn’t recognize—no doubt one of the newfangled dances the girls were learning at that new dancing school. I could no longer make out individual faces in the blur of pastel satin and lace and the dark, upright men whose heads all inclined to their dancing partners, moving to the rhythm of the music as if they were gaily painted automatons in a huge clockwork mechanism—a mechanism I stood outside of. I wasn’t sure what I was most frightened of: remaining here on the margin or being taken up into it.

“Of course no one would want to dance with her . . . after all, no one even knows who her father is.”

The whisper came from behind me. I turned to see who had spoken, but the edges of the ballroom had been built into dusky green arbors from which onlookers could sit and watch the ball unobserved. I made out dim shapes in the shadows, matrons in subdued dark dresses and older men in black tails, their stiff clothing rustling like wings.

The room seemed suddenly full of whispers and rustlings, my ears tingling with the undercurrent of sound. I had an image of crows roosting in the shadows. The elders of the Order were plotting who would marry whom, which matches would be most advantageous for wealth and property, but also to strengthen the Order’s powers. I had discovered last year that the Order kept records of bloodlines going back for centuries that recorded magical traits . . . and flaws. They bred their children as if they were livestock, selecting for desirable gifts and winnowing out the weak and abnormal. If the Order determined there was something wrong with you, you would be condemned to a life of spinsterhood. Which would be preferable, I thought, to being mated to a stranger. I’d far rather stand here alone all night.

“May I have this dance?”

The voice was so low I thought I might have imagined it; it was the voice I heard in my dreams. I turned slowly, afraid a quick motion might dispel the dream, and found myself facing a winged creature.

“Raven!” I cried, my whole body tingling at the sight of him. Black wings stretched out behind him, in full view of the Order. How had he dared . . . ?

But then I saw that the wings were made of wire and feather, costume wings. Like me, he was hiding in plain sight. Only I didn’t see how anyone could look at him and think he was an ordinary mortal. His black eyes flashed behind a feathered mask. His skin was the color of fine marble veined with gold. His teeth, when he smiled, were slightly pointed and fully menacing. I could sense the power of muscles flexing beneath the velvet doublet and lace collar and cuffs of his costume.

“They’ll kill you if they see what you are,” I hissed. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

“You mean without an engraved invitation?” he asked with a crooked smile. “I flew into the garden along with a flock of pigeons who weren’t on the guest list either. Your Order seems to forget that footmen and high gates can’t keep our kind out. As for what I came for—well, to dance, of course. But if you say no, I will have risked the wrath of the Order for nothing.”

“Oh!” I should tell him to flee before they recognized what he was—and recognized what
I
was when they saw me with him. The music swelled—a new waltz was beginning. I felt my body swaying with it, swaying toward Raven as if a magnetic force were pulling us together. I put my hand in his and felt a spark of electricity race through my body, my fledgling wings tingling beneath my shoulder blades.

“Yes,” I said, afraid I would explode if we didn’t move. “I would be most honored to share this dance with you.”

5

IT SHOULDN’T HAVE
surprised me that Raven was such a good dancer. After all, he could fly. Being in his arms
felt
like flying. My dancing slippers barely touched the marble floor as he swept me into the waltz. A jasmine-scented breeze from the garden ruffled my hair. My wings itched to spread out . . .

“They won’t,” Raven said.

“How did you know . . . ?”

“I felt your shoulders tense. Just relax. Quit trying to lead.”

“I’m not!”

“Is this your first dance?”

“It is,” I admitted.

“Mine too,” he said, grinning. “I got the Sharp sisters to give me dancing lessons.”

I giggled at the picture of Vionetta Sharp’s plump aunt Emmaline and tiny aunt Harriet practicing dance steps with Raven. “And they still don’t know wha—
who
you really are?”

The smile disappeared from his face and his arm tensed around my waist. “No, poor dears, they have no idea they’re harboring a monster in their midst.”

“Raven, I never meant . . . when you told me about my father I was shocked to learn what
I
was. I’ve never thought of
you
as a monster.”

“But you’ve spent these last few months seeing yourself as one, haven’t you? You’ve been working at the settlement house to appease your conscience. You’re dreading the moment your wings will break out . . .”

His voice faltered as I flinched under his accusations.

“Have they?”

“Almost,” I whispered, looking around to see if anyone was close enough to overhear us. But each of the couples revolved around the floor in its own separate bubble. All I could hear was the music and the beating of my heart as I told Raven about chasing the changeling over the rooftops and my wings breaking through my skin.

“I could have told you that leaping from high places is often enough to fledge your wings. My father tossed me from the top of a tree when he thought it was time.” He twisted his lips in a wry smile at the memory and I pinched his arm.

“You should have told me that! All these months I’ve had to wonder when it would happen and what it would feel like . . .” I stopped because my voice was hoarse with tears. I hadn’t realized until now how angry I was at him for letting me go through this alone. But then I realized I hadn’t been alone. He’d known I was working at the settlement house.

“Have you been following me?”

“You needn’t make it sound so predatory. I’ve wanted to make sure you were all right in case you were being pursued by the
tenebrae
and to be there when you fledged . . . in case you needed me,” he added. “How
did
it feel?”

I blushed at the intimacy of the question. “Painful, frightening . . . amazing!” I admitted. “Like I was free for the first time in my life! Like I could have kept on going into the clouds . . .”

“. . . and straight on till morning.”

I laughed at the quote from
Peter Pan
. “Yes! Only the changeling saw my wings.”

“I wouldn’t worry about the changeling. They’re shy, retiring creatures who don’t like to make trouble.”

“So they
don’t
steal human babies?”

Raven snorted, a sound so uncivilized that it attracted the attention of a stout matron on the edge of the dance floor. We had fallen out of step with the other dancers, and people were beginning to stare at us. Raven waltzed us out the open glass doors and into the garden. He put his arm around my waist and steered me away from the crowd. I could feel the warmth of his arm through the thin silk of my dress. My wings quivered at his touch pressing against the corset. I could barely follow what he was saying. Something about the Order spreading myths . . .

“. . . a changeling only takes the place of a human baby if it’s dying. They’ve spared many a human family heartbreak over the centuries. I hadn’t heard of them taking the place of missing people, but from what you’ve told me, this changeling spared the Blum family the grief of losing their daughter.”

I collected my senses at the mention of the Blums. “But if the Blums had known that Ruth was missing they could have told the police!” My voice had grown so loud that Raven pulled me into one of the secluded bowers at the end of the walled garden.

“Do you have any idea how many girls go missing in this city? And what usually happens to them? I’ve carried the souls of the departed to your mortal afterworld enough times to know how often they perish alone and unloved in unheated tenements or beneath the icy river.” His voice grew husky and he looked away, as if the memories were too painful to share.

“I wish I could make you
see
 . . .” He looked back at me, his eyes glittering. “I
will
make you see!”

Before I knew what he meant, he had shucked off his fake wings and unfurled his real ones. My own wings tingled in sympathy against my corset, but they were restrained by Raven’s arm tight around my waist.

“What are you doing?” I hissed, but my words were drowned out by the beat of his wings, which seemed to be keeping measure with my heart as he pressed me tightly against his chest and we rose into the air.

“People will see us!” I cried.

“Not if you stop squirming,” he snapped back. “Our wings cloak us from human sight, but that dress of yours is awfully . . .
bright
.”

I was going to object that he had picked it out, but then I realized I didn’t know that for sure—and it seemed a minor point now that we were flying over the city, sailing over rooftops and streets like Wendy and her brothers in
Peter Pan
. We were flying southeast, over rooftops of mansions with statuary and gardens that no one would ever see and, as we flew further downtown, humbler tenements where the occupants had dragged out their mattresses to sleep in the cooler air. An old woman in a headscarf lifted her head to watch us winging toward the river.

“I thought you said we couldn’t be seen,” I whispered.

“By humans. Not everyone who lives in this city is human.”

“What sort of non-humans . . .” I began, but he hushed me.

“Quiet. We’re almost at the river. Do you hear her?”

“Hear who?”

“Use your inner ear,” he told me.

I was going to ask what he meant, but suddenly I knew. All summer I’d wondered at my strange new sensitivity to noise, picking up whispers I shouldn’t have been able to hear. Now I made out an underground stream running just below the surface of the night, full of sighs and clicks and whistles that made my ears tingle and my hair stand on end. Some of the clicks came from a flock of pigeons that had joined us. Raven clucked back to them.

“They’ve seen her, too. We have to hurry.”

He ducked his head and folded his wings. We were suddenly diving, caught in a current of wind that was rushing us to the East River. I heard the water—and smelled it: the reek of refuse mingled with a tang of salt where the river met the tides from the bay. And then we were caught in those tangled currents of air.

“Hang on,” Raven yelled above the roar of the river. “She’s there on the pier.”

We were fighting the wind to reach the shore where a lone figure stood on the edge of an old rotting pier. Even over the shriek of wind and water I could hear her ragged breath—because I was
meant
to, I realized. She was a soul in danger and I was a Darkling. I was meant to save her. My wings itched under my skin, my ears burned, I felt my heart beating with hers in fear—

Of what?

She looked over her shoulder, but there was nothing there but shadows.

Shadows that writhed like snakes.
Tenebrae
. She was running from the
tenebrae
. They reached out for her . . .

She screamed and plunged into the river. Raven dove toward the water, but he couldn’t reach for her because he was holding me. I stretched out my arms for the girl, but when she saw us she screamed and flailed away. Still I was able to grab her wrist.

“I’ve got her!” I screamed.

But something was pulling her away from me. She was caught in a current—but no ordinary current. It wasn’t pulling her to sea; it was dragging her down into a whirlpool. I’d heard stories of dangerous tides on the East River. The sailors and wharf rats had a name for the river.

“The Hellgate!”

Raven’s voice was tight with fear. “It traps souls—even a Darkling’s soul. If you’re caught you’ll spend eternity there! You have to let her go.”

“No!” I cried. The fetid stink of the river rose out of the churning maw—all the refuse of the river concentrated here like a foul breath belched from a hungry mouth.

It
was
a mouth, a hungry, gaping mouth that ate souls. I couldn’t let this girl sink into it, but Raven was right. We would be trapped if I didn’t let her go. I felt her hand slipping from my grip. Her eyes locked on mine. I saw terror in them—and
more
. I saw her life, the glimpse a Darkling was granted of a dying soul. I heard a dying woman say her name—
Molly
—and saw a windowless room where bent-backed women sewed until their fingers bled, and the dirty floor on which she slept. Then I saw a man whose face was blurred by shadows
.
He had lured her away from her family with promises of a sweeter life, but then he had locked her away into another hell. This hell was pretty and soft, full of satin and velvet and feather beds . . .

The vision became blurry when it moved toward the bed, and I wondered if Molly was trying to shield me from seeing what happened there or if she was too ashamed to let me see.

I’m here with you
, I said, not out loud, but inside her head.
You’re not alone.

I felt something relax in her.
You have to let me go
, she told me,
before I turn into a monster.

I cringed at the word
monster—
and her hand slipped from mine.

“No!” I shouted, reaching for her, but Raven was pulling us back, out of the way of something that shot past us and dove into the water. Raven shouted something as the water broke over us. It sounded like a name:
Sirena
.

“Who’s Sirena?” I asked.

“One of our fledglings. She’s too young to try to save a soul from the Hellgate whirlpool. She might get stuck there—”

Before he could finish, the girl Darkling broke the surface of the water and rose straight up. In her arms she held Molly. Only it wasn’t the flesh-and-blood girl who’d held my hand, but a luminous transparent phantom. A soul. Molly was dead.

“Can’t we try to save her?” I cried.

“Sirena has saved her soul,” Raven said. “That’s more than we could do.” He was already winging away from the churning whirlpool.

“We have to go back!” I cried, pounding Raven’s chest with my fists.

“She’s gone.”

“Molly, her name was Molly. I saw her life, saw what happened to her . . .” I poured out everything I had seen as we flew back over the city. Raven was silent, his arms tight around me. He didn’t speak until we lit down in the Montmorency Gardens, in the same bower we’d taken off from.

He put me down on the bench and put his wings around me as I sobbed out the whole of Molly’s story for the third time. I would have started a fourth, but he stopped my mouth with a kiss. The warmth of his mouth on mine shocked me into silence. I shuddered all over, aware for the first time of how cold I was. His warmth poured into me. When he pulled away he touched a finger to my lips.

“There,” he said. “You can stop now. You were with Molly in her last moment. She knows that her life was seen, her voice heard. You have borne witness. It’s what we do. You can let go now.”

My whole body began to shake and he folded me back into his wings. When I stopped shaking I raised my head and looked at him. His face was wet—with my tears, I wondered, or his?

“You saw, too?”

“Yes,” he said grimly. “I was connected through you. I wish you hadn’t had to see . . .
those horrors
.”

“But now that I have—now that
we
have—we can’t rest until we find the place where those girls are being kept.”

“We’ll look. I’ll talk to Sirena and see if she found out anything more.”

“Sirena. She’s . . .” I tried to think of a way of asking what she was to Raven, but only ended with “She was very brave.”

“And reckless,” Raven said shaking his head. “She could have been trapped inside the Hellgate. I should go and make sure she’s all right.” He stood up and looked down at me. “Are
you
all right?”

I looked down at my limp dress. The silk had been drenched in the water of the East River. I smelled awful. “Well,” I said, “it’s not exactly how I thought my first dance would go.”

He laughed—a short bark. “Me neither. You still owe me another dance.”

With a movement fleet as hummingbird wings, he brushed my cheek with his lips. Then he was gone, vanished into the darkness.

I made my way through the gardens slowly, not sure if I was ready to join the bright lights and gaiety of the party after the horrors I had witnessed. How could I make light conversation and eat cucumber sandwiches after what I’d seen?

You have to let me go
, Molly had said,
before I turn into a monster.
I had held that girl’s hand and given her some comfort. I hadn’t felt like a monster then. I had felt . . .
useful
. If that’s what being a Darkling meant, then I would gladly be a Darkling. But I hadn’t been able to save her. Sirena had. Perhaps I was no good as a Darkling. Perhaps I didn’t belong in either world.