Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) (8 page)

No wonder Ruth was terrified.

“She’s been hypnotized to see us as monsters,” I told Nathan, who’d knelt beside me. A twin horror leapt into Ruth’s vision: Nathan as he might appear three months dead with worms crawling out of his empty eye sockets.

“She seemed to think I looked all right before. It was only when I mentioned Etta—”

Ruth whimpered and Nathan’s reflection bared yellow fangs and spat with a forked tongue.

“Et—her sister’s name must be a trigger of some sort to prevent anyone trying to lure her away by promising to return her to her family.”

“What a nasty trick,” Nathan said with a grimace of disgust.

“That’s how van Drood operates,” I said, recalling the images of my mother van Drood had shown me in the Hall of Mirrors. “He takes what’s most precious to you and makes it horrible.”

“Can she be cured?”

“I broke van Drood’s spell by using my bells.” I took out the repeater from underneath my shirtwaist. “I’m not sure if it will work with her.”

I was about to press the watch stem, but Nathan stayed my hand. “Shh. Do you hear that?”

I’d been so intent on Ruth that I’d forgotten to listen with my inner ear, but when I focused now I heard a voice in the hall. “Madame LeFevre says to get all the clients out in case that harridan outside draws the coppers.”

“We don’t have much time,” I said. “We have to hurry.”

I pushed the stem of the watch, holding it close to Ruth so the sound wouldn’t be heard outside in the hall. She cringed when I got close to her, but when the repeater began playing, her face relaxed and she fastened her eyes on the tiny figures hitting the bells. The watch played a tune I’d never heard before but that reminded me of the folk songs I sometimes heard the Jewish women singing at Henry Street. Ruth’s eyes filled with tears that washed away the ghoulish images.

“I think she’ll come with us now.”

A loud rap on the door startled me so badly I nearly dropped the watch.

“Time’s up, boy-o,” a loud, gruff voice announced. “Less you wanna end up spending the night in the Tombs.”

I nudged Nathan to respond.

“I say, old sport, it’s not cricket to rush a fellow. Give me a minute to . . .” Nathan’s face turned beet red. “Er, say my farewells.”

Raucous laughter greeted his remark. “Kiss the girl goodnight and be off with you!”

“Keep talking!” I whispered, getting Ruth to her feet and steering her to the window. As long as she looked at the watch she moved docilely. I helped her out onto the fire escape while Nathan declaimed love poetry to the amusement of the men in the hallway. With one hand holding the watch in front of Ruth and the other on her back I managed to lead her up the shaking fire escape. Miss Corey was there to help us onto the roof.

“Thank the Bells! I think the police are on the way. I’ll go signal Vi that we’ve got Ruth while you get her to the next rooftop.”

I led Ruth to the roof of a neighboring tenement, down its stairs, and out the back door to a side street where Agnes, Sam Greenfeder and Kid Marvel were waiting in a car. As soon as we were inside, Sam peeled away from the curb. I kept Ruth’s eyes focused on the repeater while Sam navigated the crowded streets of the waterfront to get us back to Henry Street Settlement House.

I was beginning to wonder if there was any way to break the spell for good when the door to the house opened and Etta burst out crying Ruth’s name. The minute Ruth heard her sister’s voice she looked up from the watch. Would she see a monster when she looked at Etta? I wished I had been able to prepare Etta. No one wanted to be looked upon as a monster, especially by her own sister.

But then Ruth was rushing into Etta’s arms and bursting into tears. The spell was broken.

10

WE ALL GATHERED
in the downstairs parlor. Agnes went to the kitchen to find Helen, who’d used her time waiting for us to prepare an elaborate tea, while Omar examined Ruth for aftereffects of the hypnotism she had been under. Miss Corey paced nervously until Miss Sharp and Mr. Bellows appeared, laughing at the parts they had played and reprising bits from their roles. Miss Corey paled and turned away, excusing herself to help Agnes with the tea. Kid Marvel congratulated everyone on a con “well played” and Sam asked for details of what cons he’d played in the past. The drab little parlor with its union meeting notices and worn copies of
Girl’s Life
and
The
United Worker
was suddenly filled with a gaiety more buoyant than the Montmorencys’ ball. There was one figure, though, that hovered on the periphery in the shadowy hallway: the changeling. I left the warm circle and went to stand beside her.

“I only came to bring Etta,” she said quickly. “I didn’t want her walking here alone. But I see I can leave her now. I suppose I’d better before your Miss Corey decides to kill me.” She had tied a scarf over her head to hide her features, but I could make out her red swollen eyes.

“Where will you go?” I asked.

“Back to the Blythe Wood. I’ll be absorbed back into the forest, into the bark and moss and ferns. Once we’re set loose from our human hosts we revert back to our natural state. See, it’s already happening.”

She looked down at her hand, which was resting on a wooden table. I followed her gaze. Her hand was turning the color and texture of the wood. It was nearly invisible.

“Is that why I’ve never seen your kind in the woods?” I asked. “Because you’re . . .”

“Camouflaged? Yes. Without the human spark we merge with the elements. It’s not so bad, really, only . . .” Her voice hitched in her throat. “I think it will take me a long time to forget Etta.”

I reached out to touch her hand, but she snatched it away. “No, Ava, I don’t want to steal your memories. But will you do me one favor?”

I nodded.

“Will you come to the woods and talk of Etta sometimes? Don’t worry if you don’t see me—I’ll hear you. It will make me feel I belong to something, the way you belong with your friends.”

I began to tell her that I wasn’t so sure I belonged anywhere, but she held up her hand to stop me. “You
do
belong, Ava. I can feel it. Will you promise to come to the woods and talk to me?”

“I will,” I agreed, wishing I could touch her or offer her some comfort.

“Thank you,” she said with a sigh that already sounded like wind moving through trees. “Now go back. I’m only going to watch a moment longer before I leave.”

I left her standing in the shadows and went to join the warm circle in the parlor. Would I, too, be an outcast once I became a full-fledged Darkling? The circle, though, had become heated rather than warm.

“It’s no use,” Ruth was arguing. “I can’t stay. Madame LeFevre told me that if I ever ran away they would find Etta and take her instead.”

“They made you think that through hypnotism,” Miss Sharp said. “It was how they controlled you.”

“That may be, but I know it even now when you’ve broken my trance.”

“She’s right,” Omar said. “She’s no longer under their control. They used her love for her sister as a means to control her, but there’s no reason to believe the threat isn’t real. Once a man—or woman—is taken over by the shadows, they have no conscience. They are capable of unspeakable atrocities.” The grimness of his face suggested he had seen some of those horrors.

“Then we’ll hide Etta,” Sam Greenfeder said. “I’ve done it before with witnesses. We can get police protection.”

“Because that worked so well for Herman Rosenthal,” Kid Marvel said sarcastically. Just last month a man named Herman Rosenthal had been gunned down because he had agreed to testify that Police Lieutenant Charles Becker was extorting protection money from gangsters. The case was in all the papers.

“Then we won’t use the police,” Miss Sharp said. “The Order will clean out the Hellgate Club.”

“Yeah, like the ding-dongs care what happens to a bunch of street girls and madges,” Kid Marvel said, sneering.

Miss Sharp bristled. “They certainly will take an interest in a club run by the Shadow Master.”

“Some of them girls they’ve taken ain’t exactly human,” Kid Marvel said. “Your ding-dongs’ll blunder in and round ’em all up together and kill the madges, but the humbug will be long gone before youse bell ringers set foot on the doorstep. They’ll just set up shop somewhere else.”

“I’m afraid he has a point,” Mr. Bellows conceded, looking sheepishly at Miss Sharp. “I did a year on Underworld Operations for the Order and I’m afraid we were less than, er, effective.”

“All’s your informants got dead,” Kid Marvel remarked.

Ruth turned pale and squeezed Etta’s hand.

“We can’t just leave those girls at the Hellgate Club after—” I’d been about to say “after what I saw in Molly’s dying moments,” but of course I couldn’t say that without revealing I was a Darkling. “After what we know about what goes on there.”

“But that’s just it,” Omar said. “We don’t really know what’s going on there. If the Order, or even my associates, storm in to rescue those girls, the shadows will just hunt them down again—and their families.”

“That’s why I must go back,” Ruth said, letting go of Etta’s hand and standing up.

“No!”

The voice came from outside the circle. We all turned. The changeling stood in the doorway, her shawl fallen from her face. Ruth gasped as she recognized her own features. The changeling was staring back at her.

“Ruth is right,” she said. “The Shadow Master will stop at nothing to fulfill his threat. If Ruth is discovered missing from the Hellgate Club they’ll come for Etta. They’ll track her down wherever you hide her and take her as a replacement for her sister.”

Miss Corey spoke up, her eyes fastened on the changeling. “She’s only saying that so Ruth will go back to the Hellgate Club and she can continue living Ruth’s life.”

“No,” the changeling said, staring back at Miss Corey. “I’m saying it so you’ll all see what must be done. Isn’t it obvious? I’ll go back to the Hellgate Club in Ruth’s place.”

Of course we all argued with her, Miss Sharp most vehemently.

“We can’t possibly let you do it. It would be like . . . well . . .” She looked nervously at me and Helen.

“Acting as her procurer?” Nathan suggested. “Or as they say in the streets—”

“Actually,” Ruth said, glancing at Nathan and blushing. “That’s not what we were there for. We were supposed to talk to the men and make them feel special. Madame LeFevre said most of them just wanted someone to listen to them. That their wives didn’t care about what they did all day and that we should ask them questions.”

“What sort of questions?” Sam Greenfeder asked.

“Oh, about how their day was, what was new at their office, had they made any interesting investments if they were stock traders, or how a certain trial was going if they were judges—”

“Judges!” Sam repeated, the tips of his ears quivering with indignation. The idea that a judge might even
visit
a place like the Hellgate Club—let alone discuss his cases there—clearly made him livid.

“Do you know which judges?” he barked. “And which cases?”

Ruth shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. Etta moved protectively in front of her and clutched her hand.

“I can’t remember. After the men left, Madame LeFevre would come in and ask me to tell her everything we had talked about. After, it was like I had emptied it all out of my brain. I’d feel drained”—she choked back a sob—“like a tin of beans that’s been scraped and tossed on the garbage heap.”

“Those scoundrels!” Agnes cried. “To use poor innocent girls like that!”

“They
were
used,” Omar said. “They were compelled with an eidetic spell so that they would recall everything they heard but forget it once they relayed the information.”

“So they’re using the girls to collect information from powerful men,” Mr. Bellows said. “But to what end? What are they up to?”

“The
pishaca
is gathering his forces,” Omar said. “I have heard from others like myself that they have been approached by shadow creatures and induced to take sides with them against the Order.”

“Well, I certainly hope they refused!” Mr. Bellows said. “Surely your friends know how evil the
tenebrae
are.”

“My friends,” Omar replied, looking down from his great height at Mr. Bellows, “have suffered at the hands of your Order. My dear friend Zao Shen watched his people become addicted to opium brought to his country by your Order. My Irish friends taught your Order the magic of the little people, but when they asked your Order for help during the Great Hunger, they were told the Order could ‘not interfere.’ My Voudon friend Shango was sold into slavery—”

“Now wait just a minute,” Miss Corey interjected. “We of the Order were abolitionists. We fought to free the slaves.”

Omar bowed his head to Miss Sharp. “That is true, my lady. Many of you have done good in this world, but not enough good. Yes, you were abolitionists, but are there any Negro students or teachers at Blythewood? Or even any of the Jewish faith?” He bowed to Etta and Ruth.

I mentally searched through the rolls of Blythewood, but Helen got there before me.

“Madame Musette has that funny little whatsit on her doorframe.”

“A mezuzah,” Omar said. “Yes, Irena Musette is Jewish. And you’ll notice that she’s never been invited to teach at the school. As you can see, the Order makes use of madges, but keeps us on the sidelines—or worse.”

“Yeah, at least the ding-dongs don’t hunt you down and kill you like they do to my folk,” Kid Marvel said. “They call us
freaks
. Could you blame my kind if we joined the other side? Not that I’d go over to the shades. And I tells my crew to stay away, but they don’t all listen.”

“I, too, have certainly urged my associates to resist the persuasion of the
tenebrae
,” Omar said, “but they offer powerful inducements, and where those fail they make threats that are difficult for even the most valiant to resist. A small group of us have banded together to resist the
tenebrae
and protect our own kind, but we do not have the resources of the Order.”

“Well, then,” began Miss Sharp, “we’ll go to the Council and tell them of this threat—”

“What threat?” Mr. Bellows asked. “All we have is the word of one girl who’s been mesmerized and whose memories have been tampered with. Without more information the Council will just as likely think that the Hellgate Club is run by fairies.”

“If only Ruth could remember more details,” Miss Corey lamented.

“
I
could.”

We all turned to the changeling. Her eyes burned fiercely. She no longer looked like she was fading into the woodwork. “Changelings can’t be hypnotized or enspelled. And we remember everything. If I take Ruth’s place I’ll be protecting Etta
and
I can report back to you what I learn at the Hellgate Club.”

“It would be very dangerous,” Miss Sharp said.

“I want to do it,” the changeling said, gazing fondly at the two sisters. “For Etta and for Ruth. At least then when I fade back into the Blythe Wood I’ll know I had purpose in this life. I’ll know I was part of something.”

“But if the changeling takes Ruth’s place,” Helen asked, “where will the real Ruth go?”

“Ruth can stay at my aunts’ house in Rhinebeck,” Miss Sharp said. “And Etta . . .” She held out her hand to Etta. “Etta has powers that need to be trained. No matter what you all think of the Order, they
are
good at that. She’ll apply to Blythewood. We don’t have to tell Dame Beckwith or the Council about the Hellgate Club until we know more. We’ll just say we discovered Etta’s powers on a home visit to her tenement. And if they object on account of her religion I personally will resign from my post at Blythewood.”

“As will I!” Miss Corey said.

Miss Sharp beamed at her friend and then looked at Etta. “What do you say, Etta?”

Etta looked uncertainly at me. “Will you be there, Avaleh?”

I hesitated. For the first time I realized I’d been considering not going back to Blythewood in the fall—and all I’d just learned about the Order didn’t encourage me. I was one of the “freaks” that Kid Marvel said the Order killed. How long could I keep that secret?

But here was Etta looking up at me trustingly. True, she could go stay at Violet House with her sister, but then what? Back to working at sweatshops? Keeping what she saw a secret her whole life? Blythewood would train her to use her powers and give her a chance to make something of herself, and she’d be safe there until we found out what van Drood was up to at the Hellgate Club. I owed it to the girls there—all the girls like Ruth and Molly—to stay put at Blythewood until I found a way to help them.

“Yes,” I told Etta, “I’ll be there with you.”