The Book of Living Secrets, page 17
“When I saw those men surrounding the house, I went for help,” Hampton said. “Found Mr. Vaughn on his way to Byrne House.”
“I was going to call on Moira,” Caid said, offering his hand to Adelle after Orla had climbed in. She took it, and at once felt a little safer. “But this is more important. If we hurry, there may still be time to help your mother, Orla.”
“You saw Mama? Thank heavens!” Orla dug her nails into the seat cushion as Hampton started off down the road again.
Adelle took the place next to Kincaid, the sudden jostling of the carriage making the choice for her, sending her falling into the open space, her hand perilously close to grazing on his knee.
“Yes, miss. I kept watch from down the road,” Hampton called back. “If you two hadn’t come out I was going to go after Mrs. Beevers myself.”
“That is very heroic of you, Hampton, and after how abominably we have treated you. . . .”
“’Tis all right, miss. I did run down the young lady there.”
“Yes, and it was awful, but an accident! Obviously an accident. And now we must cherish you forever and ever. Please, drive on; I only hope we are not too late.”
Though he said nothing, Caid exuded the same kind of reassuring calm as a mug of tea held in the hands, just the right temperature. Or a duvet fresh from the laundry. His outer left thigh pressed against Adelle’s right, and she looked resolutely at Orla’s skirt.
Caid didn’t seem to notice they were touching, but Adelle very much noticed.
“Thank you for coming,” Orla said, leaning forward and clasping Caid’s hands, though they dwarfed hers. Tiny splotches of ink dotted the edges of his shirt and camel-colored suit jacket. “It is so good to feel that we are not alone.”
“Of course,” he replied. “I know how you must feel.”
Adelle’s heart twinged. He had lost so many family members. . . . It must be awfully triggering to now be racing to stop someone else’s mother from throwing herself into the sea.
“What if there are Chanters with her?” Adelle wondered aloud.
“Then Hampton runs them down,” Caid said without a hitch.
She glanced at Orla. “I thought they were supposed to protect people. That’s what you told me last night, Orla, when they tried to stop us outside the party.”
“They did not protect my family,” Caid muttered. “Why anyone in this town trusts them is beyond me.”
“They did help.” Orla fiddled nervously with her skirt, sounding pleading. “They have helped. Fewer of our people have gone missing lately. . . .”
Adelle puzzled over “our people.” With the streets empty and only a glimpse of Connie with the Penny-Farthings, it appeared that most of the city had vanished. Yet the soiree the night before had been quite lively. Perhaps what she really meant was the rich and privileged living in Moira’s neighborhood.
“But Mama . . . She has never been one to hold her tongue, and she has never liked the Chanters.” Orla glanced up, her eyes glazed with tears. “You were there, Adelle—did she provoke them?”
“There were some harsh words used,” Adelle admitted. She swallowed around a thumbtack. “She was trying to keep them away from me. This is all my fault.”
“And what did you do to anger them?” Caid asked.
“Nothing!” Adelle had run from them, of course, but they had not been friendly at all. Their outfits didn’t exactly say “welcome party.”
“Then the punishment hardly fits the crime,” Caid concluded. “They protect only themselves.”
Hampton steered them down the road carefully, nosing southeast, the lanes becoming more and more choked with overturned carts, carriages, bicycles, and ankle-deep muck. Adelle covered her nose and gagged. The stench was overwhelming, prickling at the back of the throat, rot and waste and fetid water.
“She will go by the Wall,” Hampton called back to them. “Most all of them go that way.”
“The Wall?” Adelle asked. She had forgotten all about her quest to blend in. These were things she ought to know, but she decided that any questions they tossed back could be explained away by her accident.
“Yes, dear,” Orla said solemnly, her eyes even wetter. “The Wall of a Hundred Faces, though I dare say it must be a thousand faces now. Maybe more. Whenever someone walks into the sea, their face appears on the wall of the old wharf storehouse. As if . . . as if they are forever trapped in the stones. It is truly an evil sight, and you must promise not to look. It is too, too horrible. I shan’t look. I . . . I cannot.”
Adelle stared numbly out the window. Orla and Kincaid must both have family members who might appear there, forcing them to relive the horror of losing them.
How had the Boston of Moira become so twisted and dangerous? She glanced at the sun, trying to estimate how much time she had before Connie would be expecting her. After they found Mrs. Beevers, she would have to make an excuse and slip away. Everything she had seen, everything she had witnessed, only made her want to go home all the more.
But she looked at Orla vibrating with fear on the seat across from her, reduced to chewing her fingernails bloody as they raced toward the wharves to intercept her mother. How could she leave Orla this way?
She has Caid and Hampton, a reasonable voice argued. She has Moira. She has friends, and she does not need you. You, who got her mother into this mess in the first place. You, who is driving a wedge between her and Moira. You, who doesn’t belong . . .
The voice turned more vicious and less reasonable. Adelle pinched the bridge of her nose, panic rising in her throat, threatening to close it up completely. Panic attacks were nothing new, though the first time she’d experienced one at school, they had rushed her to the ER, afraid she was having a heart attack. Usually it took an immense amount of stress to bring about an attack, and they tended to coincide with when her mother traveled for her job. She always felt more vulnerable without her mother close; they had been practically fused at the hip before Greg came along.
Connie had suffered panic attacks before her, and she helped her now whenever one threatened to strike. But Connie wasn’t there just then to soothe her.
Adelle started one of Connie’s breathing exercises, but it was too late. Her thoughts, her anxieties, were already spinning up, one minuscule flicker roaring into a blaze before she could recognize and stop it. She would have given anything to have her own mother there in the carriage, to have her scratch the back of Adelle’s neck lightly with her nails, the thing she did to calm her down whenever her anxiety threatened to turn her into a yarn ball of questions, every strand a worry, real or otherwise.
And what would her mother think? What if time was passing there just as it was in the novel? Or, if she could get home, would it feel to her family like no time had passed at all? If the girls had genuinely vanished from the real world, then her mother must have realized by now that something was wrong. Or, rather, Greg must have. He would have called her and said that Adelle hadn’t come home after the dance, and then Brigitte Casey, sitting in a Phoenix, Arizona, hotel room, would get a series of texts on her cell from Greg. Adelle squeezed her eyes shut. She could just picture it—her mother, full blond hair up in a towel after a shower, sitting on the hotel bed in a white robe, her legs stretched out in front of her while she watched Forensic Files and sipped a minibar gin and tonic, would text Greg something to the tune of That’s not like Adelle.
When the next morning came with still no sign of her, Brigitte would fly home from the conference, and everyone would be immensely disappointed that the preeminent death doula scheduled to speak had to cancel her big seminar to answer questions from the police about poor, missing Adelle.
What are you going to say to your mom and Greg? How are you going to explain any of this? That is, if you even see them again. What if you never get home and they have to cope with your disappearance for the rest of their lives?
“Miss Casey? Miss Casey . . .”
She had almost fallen prone against the carriage window. Adelle snapped her eyes open, hearing her own labored breathing. Caid’s face was inches from hers as she clawed her way out of her attack.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice soft with concern.
“My nerves . . .” Adelle hoped that sounded Victorian enough.
Orla reached down under her seat, pulled out a small drawer, and extracted a glass vial. She uncorked it, then handed it across to Caid, who waved it under Adelle’s nose.
“Smelling salts, dear,” Orla told her. “Should set you to rights.”
The blast of ammonia slapped her in the nose hard enough to make her see stars.
“I didn’t mean to . . . ,” Adelle trailed off. “This is all very overwhelming.”
“Well, steel yourself, Miss Casey,” Caid said with a sigh. “We are approaching the wharves. If you would prefer to stay in the carriage, I can accompany Miss Beevers and see to her safety.”
Adelle smiled faintly. He really was like a warm mug of tea, a blanket for the spirit. A boy had never stared into her eyes with such concern, and it felt nice enough that she wanted to get used to it. “I’m okay now. I will go with you. Staying here alone sounds much worse.”
“There!” Hampton’s shout worked as keenly as the smelling salts. “I can take us no further, but I spy her coming down State, by the warehouse just there. . . .”
They gathered against the window, peering out into the thick haze that had settled over the city. It was worse here, far worse, a miasma tinged sickly green. Rats scuttled freely across the intersection. Gray stone buildings surrounded them on both sides, the road abandoned, as filthy and cluttered as the streets that had led them there. They had driven close to the water, and Adelle studied the buildings, looking for landmarks, placing them somewhere near the aquarium, probably Long Wharf. That proximity to the sea could be smelled through the air oozing in from the open window to the driver’s seat. Dead fish and low tide, a nauseating combination.
Through the mist, Mrs. Beevers strode toward them, head held high, eyes straight ahead. As she came closer, Adelle saw her blank expression, her mouth slightly slack, her arms limp at her sides.
“Chanters,” Caid growled. “Six of them.”
“Maybe Hampton can distract them,” Adelle suggested in a whisper. “The carriage is big and noisy.”
“I concur,” Caid said. “Logically, that may give us the best possible chance to intercept Mrs. Beevers, or redirect her. Go, Hampton.” He unlatched the door quietly, nudging it open with his boot. “Make them run the wild-goose chase.”
Adelle smirked and glanced at him, amazed that the phrase had been around for so long. Caid mirrored her bemused expression.
“What?” He slid out the door, then held up his arms to help the ladies down. “It’s Shakespeare.”
“Oh, Mr. Vaughn, you can dazzle Miss Casey with your literary prowess later, for now we must be sleek and silent as the midnight alley cat. Come!” Orla jumped down before Adelle, and then she and Caid helped Adelle out, mindful of her leg.
Hampton waited until they were safely away, then cracked his whip, not bothering to conceal his approach, driving the coach directly toward the procession, veering toward the left so as to avoid hitting Mrs. Beevers head-on.
The trio navigated the slowing muck with big, clumsy steps. Orla held her gown up almost to her thighs, her petticoats and bloomers immediately stained a troubling greenish black. Caid took the lead, guiding them to the far side of the street and then around the gray warehouse. Behind them, the water could just be seen under a film of fog. It was black, completely, as if all the water in the harbor had been replaced with ink.
Somewhere in the fog, Adelle sensed the Wound lurking. Waiting.
Close.
“Look at my hem,” Orla whispered frantically. “Six inches deep in filth!”
“Sleek and silent,” Caid chided her, huddling close to the stones and watching the way they had come. “Remember?”
“There is no hope,” Orla sighed, regarding her skirt. “I shall have to burn it.”
They heard the whip crack again in the fog, and then gunfire.
“God protect him,” Orla murmured, taking their hands as they waited in the deepening gloom. “God protect my mother. God protect us all.”
21
“You have shaken me out of myself,” Severin said, and clutched Moira to his chest. They did not have long. Orla’s driver would soon worry if Moira did not reappear, and to be caught en flagrant délit would ruin any hopes Moira had of their love one day becoming proper and right in the eyes of her family. For she must have him. The words had become the drumbeat of her heart as surely as she felt his heart pound into her cheek. I must have him! I must, I must . . .
“Before, I had my painting,” said Severin. He stroked her hair, and she felt a kind of calm settle over her. “A painting . . . it can be changed at any time. A dash of color here, or another shadow. Always it can come back to life, and shift into something new.” Then he drew back and studied the intricacies of Moira’s face. “Our love is not a painting; it is a book. It is written, and it is immutable, the words now chosen and set. If you cut me open, it would be printed on my heart, vital and bright, written in blood.”
—Moira, chapter 9
“Look lively, Farthings—Clacker commotion down at the wharves.”
Connie glanced up from the novel nestled in her lap, watching Farai trot up to the bar while tying a strip of fabric around her hair like a headband. After she banged her fist on the bar three times, Sleepless Joe relented and poured out a drink for her.
“This is our chance,” she added, addressing Missi and Geo, though loud enough for Connie to hear, as well as the small group of kids the girls had been giving a demonstration to. They were showing the older children how to properly clean a rifle.
“Our chance for what?” Geo asked, propped on a bar stool, resting her arm playfully on the top of a blond boy’s head.
Connie had at first tried to nap, and when that didn’t work, had decided to see how many changes she could find in the novel. So far, almost the entire first half had rearranged itself, reflecting the darker, stranger world she now found herself in. Scarier still, she had noticed new characters popping up, referred to by names such as the Outlander and the Interloper.
It’s us, she thought, forcing herself not to throw the book across the room and draw attention. It’s putting us in the book.
The second half remained untouched, which told her approximately where they were in the events of the story. She wished she could cheat and skip to the end, see how it all wrapped up, but now she knew they couldn’t rely on the novel. It was a loose guide, nothing more.
The end is still unwritten. Let’s hope it’s a happy one.
Connie stuffed the book back into her nylon sack and pulled the bag over her shoulders. She wasn’t taking any chances leaving that novel lying around.
“Our chance to figure out how the Clackers get their boat in and out,” Missi answered, her face screwed up in concentration. It was a look Connie was becoming familiar with. It meant she was cooking up a plan.
“Exactly,” Farai said, clapping her hands, then rubbing them together. “They are probably hauling in a shipment right now. Even if we cannot steal their navigation secrets, we can make more of their supplies our supplies.”
“Ain’t quite noon yet.” Connie realized Missi was staring through the crowd around the bar at her. “What do you say, recruit?”
Connie had looked over the map provided by Farai and Geo, preparing for the journey from the chapel to Burger Buddies, and then to the seer woman’s location. She would need to go east anyway to meet Adelle, so a trip over to the wharves wouldn’t be far out of the way. And she would rather keep busy; otherwise, the book would suck her back in, and that thought made her shiver. She didn’t even like carrying the thing around. It felt alive, like a snake coiled in her bag, ready to slither out and strangle her.
“No mistakes this time,” Connie said, standing at the back. Farai and Geo shot her skeptical glances. “I promise.”
Safely so. She couldn’t imagine running into Adelle again randomly at the wharves, unless she, like Connie, had joined a club in the last day.
“Excellent! Jacky? Eyes up—you’re with us too,” Missi said, scooting off her stool and elbowing a boy tucked against the bar, whittling. Connie remembered him from the screamer attack; he had been the one to escort her, blindfolded, to the hideout.
His ruddy face lit up at being picked.
“We need someone to keep watch over the bicycles.”
He deflated.
“I thought this girl was the enemy—now you bring her on every run. How is that fair?” Jack stormed over to a child and snatched the gun out of his hands.
“It is fair because I say it is,” Mississippi declared with her usual tact. “Besides, this is mainly just an observationalist operation. Scouting, if you will. But that is prime Clacker country, so we take precautions.”
Taking precautions meant arming themselves to the teeth. Connie even saw Jack stick a hunting knife the size of a baguette in his belt.
“You better not let us down again,” Geo said, falling into stride next to Connie as they left the tunnel and headed toward the surface. Farai materialized on her other side, boxing her in. “I got to steal a carriage, so I am in a very good mood, yes? But I do not forget errors like that.”
Connie glanced around for Missi’s support, but she had charged way ahead with Jack, leaving Connie to the mercy of her lieutenants.
“I thought we were rid of you,” Farai added, looking her up and down. “Off to see the witch woman. Change of heart?”
“I’m still going,” Connie replied, keeping her eyes straight ahead from then on. “Thank you for the map. I appreciate it.”
Both of them laughed, quite noticeably at her expense. They walked faster, leaving her behind. A single square of light mingled with the torches burning down in the tunnel, cast from the hatch above with the ladder that led to the church. Farai climbed up first; then Geo put one foot on the bottom rung and turned to face Connie.
