The Vespertine (16 page)

"What's all this for?" Zora asked, reaching for another raisin and nodding toward the extensive spread of sweets and breads that covered the counters. "Are you having a party?"

Mrs. Stewart straightened up, smoothing her hair from her sweat-damp brow. "As if I could afford you and a party besides. No, these are to take on your calls."

"What calls?"

Plucking a familiar box from the shelf, Mrs. Stewart turned its contents out on the table. A rain of cards spilled out, fifty at least!

Immediately on our feet, Zora and I pressed against the table, reaching into the bounty. Choosing randomly, we both pulled out cards
pour pré senter.
Name after name, few familiar, all clamoring for our company.

It had been steady before our trip, but this! It seemed like an entire phalanx—all hoping I could be their conduit to the sunset beyond.

And against all reason, I could hardly wait.

***

Barely home, and we went off again, Zora and I. I had tucked in my bag an entire clasp of my new calling cards, finally lifted from their boxes and granted, as tickets, to the front doors of what seemed like every row house in Reservoir Hill.

Though crowding crushes continually left me overexerted, I began to appreciate the joys of a wide circle met in small increments.

Some plied us with sweets, and others with clean copies of their cards, for it seemed lately that it was fashionable to make collections of them. "Do come back," they all said, leaning out their doors to judge the sky. Calling hours could last only so long, and I apologized again and again that I had but the briefest window into the future.

And trust Zora to make the most of that window, indeed. She'd spent the morning arranging us, deciding who might wait, and whom we wouldn't care to see at all, but of greatest importance would be those who took our visit closest to dusk.

This is how we came to present ourselves at Caleb Grey's door just as the shadows grew long. It was a curiosity, for the card in our box had actually been marked Lucy Grey—Caleb's baby sister, who couldn't have possibly invited us on her own. We weren't meant to call on young men unless we had business with them, so it was a clever lure, we both agreed.

"Hurry," he said, peering around us to see who might glimpse us at his door, and then closing it quickly to silence any possible rumors.

We followed him not to the parlor but to a music room—small but handsomely appointed, with a pianoforte at the window and violins sitting in their hooks on the shelf.

Absurdly, I longed to pluck the strings, just to hear them hum, a remnant of the ball recaptured and released.

"I'm sorry to compromise you," Caleb said, his face drawn.

For he had, in truth, done just that. Caleb was no cousin to Zora, and no friend even to me. Though Zora and I chaperoned each other, there would be no end to the stain on our reputations if it was known that we met alone with boys in their houses. We were naughty enough to take correspondence and steal kisses in the ballroom's shadows.

But Zora knew him well. Quiet with concern and unconcerned with propriety, she caught his chin in her hand and raised his face to meet hers. "What's the matter, then?"

Turning to me, Caleb came too close, then jumped back a step, as if caught by a spark. Something dark moved through his expression, a wildness—a terror that I couldn't quite name. How many times had Nathaniel thrilled me with his inconstancy? But Caleb's same temperament frightened me.

"How do you see?" he demanded.

I stammered, "Is there some question I could..."

Caleb pressed closer, but Zora stayed him. "If You can't reveal your distress, how can she possibly illuminate it?"

Fire seemed to travel beneath his skin, leaping from place to place, and giving, altogether, an impression of a blaze far greater than his body could contain. Finally, his voice rough and defeated, he said, "Sarah. That's my distress. Ask for nothing more, I beg you."

"That's not a question," I said.

Another flare of temper blackened his eyes. "Mind your place and ask for nothing more!"

"Mind your manners," Zora snapped.

He tried to brush her aside, reaching once more for me—as if he had some right to put his hands on my personage, after luring me to his house by trickery. "You read for anyone, why not me?"

Zora intervened. To be specific, she rapped him on the arm with her bag. Quite honestly, if she'd had a newspaper, I think she would have rolled and wielded it, as if he were a misbehaving puppy.

Then she offered me her elbow and said, "We'll be going. We've got hundreds of callers who won't abuse the mystic."

Lunging in front of us, Caleb all but threw himself against the door. I really thought he might try to lock us in. Struggling from the inside out, his mouth twisted uncomfortably, until it finally settled into something like a smile. Slowly, he said to me in a forced voice, "I apologize, Miss van den Broek. Please stay."

Zora shook her head slightly, but I wavered. Shamefully, I longed to know more—for my first impression of Sarah and Caleb was of two magnets, held apart only by force. But everything Sarah had said since, that she cared not for Caleb's intentions and intended to marry beneath her—I admit it, I hungered for a taste of gossip.

"Very well," I said, swallowing down nervousness. We returned to the music room, sunlight making threats on the strings of the violins. I took a chair that turned my gaze to the window and offered a hand. "Think on her, and I shall try."

Caleb grasped my hand, rather too hard, but I bore it with grace. His skin felt so hot as to be fevered. Beneath his skin, he quavered, a tight trembling that disconcerted me entirely. Thus, with trepidation I took my clearing breaths, spilling myself out so the sunset might pour in.

A crimson beam streaked across my face, a rosy sunset full of wine hues, extraordinary to admire but different from the usual gold that tempted my sight.

I drew again, exhaled once more, gazing with a blinkless stare that took in no more and no less than the window and the aventurine curtains that surrounded it.

Just when I lifted my face to offer my condolences, the world turned scarlet. Not an intimation of it—all was scarlet, in truth.

Warily, I moved, for I felt very much myself
inside
this sending, as if I could stand up and wander the Greys' house unseen. As if I had only taken a step to the side, instead of a leap toward the future.

The weight of a gaze touched my bare neck; I felt the hair rise. I
said, Nathaniel.

And he answered, Are
you well?

Coming round to face him, I circled and circled, examining the shape of him in this vision, the shade of
him. Are you yourself? Or is this only sight?

Both?

We had an awareness here, a privilege of motion I hadn't felt before when calling on the vespers,
I
took this moment; it didn't take me.

Part of me very much wondered what Caleb and Zora saw as I approached Nathaniel; did I sit still in my chair, frozen? Did I fall and fit before them, in Privalovna's hysterical way?

I'm looking for Sarah,
I said, but as the words slipped out, they lost meaning for me.

I wanted to press myself into Nathaniel's arms; I wondered if here, he could loop his fingers in my hair and kiss me again with no fear of reprisal. I didn't know what my flesh might do, so I held back. My lips stung in memory, in desire. A look, I decided—I could satisfy myself with a look.

Nathaniel felt no such hesitation. His hands bare, he dared frame my face with them. His thumbs swept at once, beneath my lip and up to trace the curve of my cheeks.
I would say, then, you haven't found her.

"Nathaniel." My lashes sank, gentle in spite of the painful winding of anticipation that gripped me otherwise.

"Amelia," he answered, but suddenly his voice was not his voice.

Snapping my eyes open, I peered up into Caleb Grey's face. Oh, I could have wept, distraught with frustration, but likewise relief that I came to in my chair. My trance had, if nothing else, turned Caleb pale and still, water on the fire that devoured him from within.

"I see nothing," I told him.

He shook as he blew out a breath. "And that means?"

To comfort, I offered a smile. "I've seen tragedy before. Whatever mysteries you have remain, Caleb, but ... if you tremble, I would fear not."

How I believed that as I spoke it; how very boastful my certainty sounded. Oh, the pride.

My terrible, terrible pride.

I
T SEEMED OF LATE
, I sat nothing but sunsets. The whirlwind of it scarcely taxed me, but soon the clamor grew in a way that had the force of a demand behind it.

With the end of day so short, when a storm interfered with the light, I could only slip into so many visions. My path to the future was limited—at least, until the discovery on Camden Street.

I suppose I had never been entirely explicit about taking single callers, after speaking to Miss Lawrence, because I found myself in the middle of eight girls in an unfamiliar parlor. I recognized their sharp, hungry looks, though. They yearned for a vision, and this hostess, Miss Brosmer, pressed paper and pencil into my hand.

"I don't understand," I said, tipping my head back to gaze at her. "Didn't you wish me to see?"

Dropping herself into the chair beside me, she straightened a stack of papers, flattening them on top of a book before offering it all to me. "Have you heard of automatic writing? Mayhaps you could take down messages for all of us."

"She's never done it that way," Zora said. She came with me always, protecting and prodding me at turns, and I wouldn't have trusted myself to see without her.

"Couldn't you try?" Cutting her gaze toward the window, our hostess forced a pleasant smile.

I held the pencil with an uncertain grip. "I don't know..."

The brittle smile cracked, and Miss Brosmer asked quite bluntly, "Are you after a fee? We heard you don't take one."

Once when I'd been asked that, I trembled—now I burned. Did I have no good reputation? Did I not bring forth visions on command and give my gifts freely? It was an insult, and I put the pencil down sharply. "I most certainly do not, and you offend me greatly in the asking!"

"Then what's the matter?" she asked, though a worried murmur filled the room. I could see their eyes shifting, looking to me, then looking to the door. I could feel them vibrate with disappointment, to think I might leave them fortuneless.

Impressed with the weight and power of my rebuke, I reminded myself to be gracious still. Perhaps Zora called me Maine's Own Mystic, but I knew that I was yet a young woman who couldn't begin to explain how the sight came on her. Clearing my throat, I said gently, "You're just asking something of me that I've never done."

My retreat emboldened her. "Would it hurt to try? We read about it in
The Strand,
" she said. It was a magazine full of fantastic stories, and I'd read it, too. Mediums opened themselves to the spirit world and let phantoms write with their hands.

I had no spirits. I had no guides. I had only the sunset. Fighting a sense of panic, I looked at the girls all around the table and shook. Raw with want, with need, they all watched me as if I alone could spare the meal to save them. What flare of pride and power I'd felt a moment before had fled me. It was cruel that my confidence never lingered.

With a look to Zora, I clutched the pencil once more and said, "All right. I can try."

Guessing at this, I started my breathing, then stopped. "Give me something. Anything, all of you, you'll have it back when I've finished. A glove."

"Hurry," Zora urged them. "The light's fading!"

The tea guests exchanged looks, but each stripped themselves of a glove. They piled up in my lap, lace and kid and satin, all in tasteful shades of cream or buff. I pushed my hand into the pile, balancing the paper and book on my knees. I felt awkward, but the worst of it, I felt inspected. Turning my eyes to the dimming light outside, I put the pencil to paper and waited.

Nothing came, and I blinked, shaking my head as I looked around to faces strangely drawn. "I'm sorry."

Zora wrapped a tight hand around my arm, so hard that my fingers flexed and the pencil flew from them. Before I could demand some explanation for her roughness, Miss Brosmer snatched the slips of paper from me, turning to pass them around.

"'Today in the vespers, I see the girl with the butterfly brooch at the druggist,'" read a red-haired girl, who wore, in fact, a butterfly brooch at her collar.

The lady beside her leaned over her shoulder to read, "'Today in the vespers, I hear a voice sweet as a nightingale gone hoarse just before a party.'"

A chill swept me, and I turned to Zora as another guest read, "'Today in the vespers, I see this day the same as the next, the same prospects held now to be the same prospects found three years hence.'"

That one burst into tears, and I murmured to Zora, "Did I write that?"

"And more," she said.

Miss Brosmer cleared her throat, lifting a paper before her face and reading, "'In the vespers, I see this lovely glove of crepe and kid, gone missing and ruining the set. " She lowered the page and squinted at me. "You've had us all on."

"I never claimed my visions were of consequence," I said stiffly. Taking to my feet, I shook the gloves from my skirt and returned both pencil and book to their perturbed owner.

Some complaints rose, but a fair girl at the end of the table snatched the paper from her neighbor's hand and fled to the kitchen. Her friends followed, a great clamor and demand for her to tell them the matter, and I thought it best that we go before they all turned on us.

Just as we made it to the door, Miss Brosmer came down the hall. "Wait!"

"Blasted latch," Zora cursed, rattling the doorknob, and then, when we found our egress too slow, turned to face whatever awful recrimination we had to bear to take our leave.

"I did apologize," I said weakly.