Of Midnight Born (13 page)

“I see you as a transparent woman, with your own illumination, as if glowing from a candle within.”

“What else?”

“I see the faint colors of your dress, and of your hair. You wear a girdle of some fashion. Your hair reaches to your thighs. I do not know the color of your eyes, or”—he hesitated, and she got the feeling he was changing what he was about to say—“or if you have wrinkles ‘round your eyes. I cannot see you that well.”

“In truth?”

“Do you have wrinkles?”

“Marry, I would not tell you if so.” She pursed her lips a moment, then backed off. If he was lying, he would not admit it. She could best judge the truth of his statements by his behavior. If he could see her scar, he would not long have an interest in her. She had no control over it one way or the other, a realization that made her stomach roil. She stared at him for several long moments, digesting that, then changed the subject. “Why do you humor your sister, letting her play her foolish games?”

“Because they are just games,” he said, going toward the door. “I save my strength for the battles worth fighting.”

And with that he left, leaving her to wonder if he referred to her.

“Silence!” Madame Zousa said. “We must have total silence!”

“The ghosties have fragile nerves,” Rhys said to Alex in a stage whisper. “They need their quiet.” Both Beth and Sophie hushed him with furious hisses.

“If she thinks that, she knows nothing of our Serena,” Alex whispered back.

“Alex!” Sophie said in a hiss.

“So sorry.”

Alex leaned back in his overstuffed seat in the blue drawing room, watching with some amusement as Madame Zousa set up her paraphernalia. The gaslights and candles were all out save for a single fat candle in a dish, set in the center of a swath of black silk on the floor.

At least the cloth saved him from having to look at the marquetry.

Madame Zousa dumped the contents of a charmbedecked cloth bag onto the edge of the cloth, revealing what looked to be a pile of barely clean chicken bones, bits of dried brown flesh still clinging in a few spots. A shriveled chicken head and one withered claw emerged from one of Madame Zousa’s pockets, and then a small pouch, contents unknown.

Alex couldn’t help but wonder if these were the usual tools of her trade, or if instead she was making good use of last night’s supper.

A familiar pale illumination caught his eye as Serena came into the room, an appearance that brought him a conflict of emotion. She came directly to his side, then knelt down on the floor, her eyes on Madame Zousa.

When he had first seen her on the stairs after her threeday absence, he had been both dismayed and relieved. Dismayed because it meant he had not somehow effected a cure for the insanity of thinking he had talked with a ghost. Relieved because as inharmonious as their acquaintance was, it was obsessively fascinating.

Those three days without her, his mind had gone again and again to their encounter: to what she had told him; to the medieval accent of her voice, which he thought he could gladly listen to for days; to how she had looked, so eerily similar to what he had dreamed; and most of all to how strangely human she seemed, her emotions rich in her voice,
her gestures and movements no different from those of a living woman except in their intensity.

He had gotten next to nothing done with his star charts, his mind had been so filled with Serena and with worrying—absurdly!—that she might not come back. He was tempted to blame her for draining him of his intellectual energies; only honesty forced him to admit it was his own lack of mental self-discipline that was the culprit.

But then, what did it matter if he let his mind dwell on her for a few days? He had no deadlines under which to work. Why shouldn’t he allow himself a minor obsession, especially one so intriguing and unusual?

The days of unwashed clothing and lunatic ranting were obviously fast approaching. He could see it now, mothers telling their children to beware of Mad Woding of Maiden Castle, who conversed with spirits. His sisters would have him crated off to the asylum—or worse yet, Bath.

Ah, well.
He glanced at Serena, at her profile, so clear to him in this near-dark. The candlelight had the odd effect of making each place it reached on her slightly more transparent, leaving the back of her head more clearly defined than her face. It was as if her own light struggled to compete with light from other sources.

What did she make of these goings-on?

Madame Zousa arranged her chicken bones in a star pattern on the cloth, then cast her dark-eyed gaze on each of the guests in turn. They all sat in separate chairs around the cloth, too far from each other to touch. Alex wondered if that, and the dark, were meant to increase their unease and susceptibility to Madame Zousa’s tricks. The candle on the floor underlit their faces, making the familiar eerie. Sophie herself looked ghoulishly sinister, with the dim orange glow touching under her chin, nose, and eye sockets, her normally rounded cheeks deeply shadowed beneath her eyes.

Serena was the only one of the lot who looked almost
normal. Madame Zousa was positively troll-like in contrast, her black hair hanging loose and wild. God only knew what the woman had in mind, or of what she was capable. Sophie, when pressed, had admitted to having hired her through a friend of a friend, who claimed the woman lived in the woods.

“A harpsichord should be playing off-key,” Rhys said. “To complete the mood.”

Madame Zousa pointed a bony finger, and gave a glare that silenced him. He looked over at Alex with raised eyebrows, his fingertips to his pursed mouth like an old woman caught gossiping. Alex smothered a smile.

“The spirits,” Madame Zousa said, her voice low and portentous, “are everywhere.” She waved her hands over her chicken-bone star, and started speaking in what he assumed to be her native Romany tongue, rolling her eyes up into her head, the whites glimmering beneath her half-closed lids. She rose up on her knees, swaying back and forth, her chanting guttural and loud.

The swaying slowed, and Madame Zousa’s eyes rolled back and forth. Her voice decrescendoed to a soft, childish tone, and she switched back to English.

“Spirits, hear my call,” she said, then rolled her head on her neck, her eyes unfocused, staring into the dark. “Spirits, come to me. Tell me who haunts this house, and what deeds he has done. Tell me what holds him from the world beyond.”

Despite himself, Alex felt a shiver go through him, the dark room alive now with anticipation. He glanced at Serena, who was watching the display intently but otherwise seemed unmoved.

“Spirits, move through me,” she said. She opened the small pouch and upended it over the pattern of chicken bones. A matted clump of orange-brown chicken feathers landed on
the bones with a
poof,
breaking apart like a poorly packed snowball. “Spirits, move through air.”

The feathers stirred, as if touched by an unseen hand. Alex saw Serena’s eyes widen, and she crossed herself. She glanced up at him, as if for reassurance.

For heaven’s sake, what was he supposed to do? If anything, he should be asking
her
for protection. This was her realm, not his.

Madame Zousa held her arms out wide in front of her, as if waiting to embrace someone. She leaned back, kneeling, her knees spread wide under her skirt. It looked as if she were expecting the spirits to come to her in more than one sense.

Serena was reminded of how she must have looked to le Gayne, at the stream, inviting his attentions. The thought seemed to call to some unseen spirit, and she heard, as if from a distance, a female voice begin to sing:

“There were three ravens sat on a tree, They were as black as they might be, With a down, derry, derry, derry, down, down.”

A frisson went up the back of her neck, and she shifted slightly closer to Woding, suddenly not so certain that Madame Zousa was a complete charlatan.

“Aaaaa,” Madame Zousa groaned, and undulated her arms and shoulders in a rippling wave, as if they were a snake. “Aaaaa…” She let her hands drop down to her groin, clasping herself there. “I feel you,” she said.

Beth and Sophie gasped, and Rhys and Blandamour let out grunts of surprise. Serena’s muscles tensed, but she saw that Woding just watched, his eyes narrowing in the look she knew meant he was suspicious.

The thought that he doubted was almost a comfort, but
then she saw
it
; a shadow in the dark, a shapeless form, rising above the candle and then moving toward Madame Zousa.

“Then one of them said to his mate, ‘Where shall we our breakfast take?’”

The female voice sang again out of the darkness. The others seemed not to hear it.

Serena scrambled to her feet, her eyes on the black cloud. Everyone else’s eyes were on Madame Zousa. Was she the only one who could see it? She could feel evil coming off the shadow, deep and corrupted, as foul as the corpses of the Pestilence. It moved toward Madame Zousa, then covered her.

Madame Zousa groaned again, her hips jerking forward in a rhythmic motion, as if she were being held and mounted by a man. Her eyes turned to Serena, focusing on her for the first time, and in their depths Serena saw both fear and a desperate plea, her body continuing to jerk under the thrusts of the assault.

“Stop him,” Serena said in a hiss near Woding’s ear. All the others were staring with fascinated eyes at the groaning Madame Zousa, writhing on the floor.

He looked up at her uncomprehendingly.

“Stop him!” Serena repeated, trying to keep her voice low, but feeling it rising with her panic. “Don’t you see what he’s doing to her?”

“Who?” Woding asked.

He didn’t see the shape, didn’t feel the evil.

Oh, God, that poor woman.
She couldn’t just stand there and watch.

She did the only thing she could think of, leaping to the center of the black cloth and kicking the chicken bones apart. The shadow dropped Madame Zousa, who collapsed to the floor like a boiled cabbage, and then it turned to Serena
and began expanding, filling her vision in a claustrophobic cloud of evil.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Serena recited desperately in Latin, her voice loud and audible in the room of silent observers, her heart thudding. “Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen!”

The black shape gave a shuddering bellow that vibrated down to her bones, calling forth the memory of le Gayne’s howls on their wedding night. She continued quickly through her rosary, her muscles weak with terror, and the shadow began to fade away, dissipating with each word she spoke, and then it was gone.

Serena dropped to her knees beside Madame Zousa, her hands fluttering helplessly over the woman’s slack face. She looked imploringly to Woding, whose expression of confused anger changed to one of deep concern as he finally understood that something had gone wrong, and Madame Zousa’s collapse was not part of the performance.

“Rhys, get some light in here!” he ordered, lurching from his chair and coming to kneel beside Serena. He pulled Madame Zousa’s upper body onto his lap, cradling her head in his arm, lightly patting her cheeks. “Madame Zousa!” he said. “Madame Zousa!” And then, to Sophie, “Smelling salts! Do you have any?”

“What? Salts?”

Beth took Sophie’s reticule from her, and started digging through it, coming up moments later with the salts. She gave them to Woding, who opened them and waved them under Madame Zousa’s nose.

Sophie was still flustered. “What’s happened? I don’t understand. She was in a trance, wasn’t she? Isn’t she all right?” Blandamour came and put his arm around her, half lifting her from the settee and forcing her to accompany him from the room.

“Hush, sweeting,” Serena heard him murmuring to her. “Madame Zousa has had a fit. Leave her to your brother and the Coxes. They will know what to do.”

“But she did contact Serena, didn’t she?” Sophie asked. “The voice. Whose voice was that, praying? I didn’t see Madame Zousa’s lips moving.”

“Hush, dearest, and don’t think of it. We’ll see if Cook can make you a toddy.”

Madame Zousa began to come around, blinking, closing her mouth and reaching up to wipe at the saliva that had dribbled down her chin. Woding pulled out a handkerchief and helped her. The room brightened as Rhys got the gaslights back on, and several candles lit.

“Where is she?” Madame Zousa asked weakly.

“Where is who?” Beth asked, wrapping her own shawl around the woman’s shoulders as Woding eased her into a sitting position.

Madame Zousa looked around, her eyes passing over Serena without seeing her. “The tall, pale woman, with the long hair.” Her voice had lost its Romany accent, and begun to take on a distinctly Cornish hue.

“I saw no one,” Beth said, “but I heard a woman’s voice speaking Latin. Did you hear it, too, Rhys?” she asked, turning to her husband.

“I heard someone,” he said, “but I’m not saying I know who it was.” His tone of voice suggested he was holding much of his opinion back, and none of it was kind toward Madame Zousa.

They all looked toward Woding.

“I think we had best get you tucked up in bed,” he said to Madame Zousa. “I’ll ring for Marcy to keep an eye on you. We can discuss this all in the morning.”

Marcy was duly called for, and Madame Zousa taken away. Serena caught Woding’s eye and she pointed to the black silk, candle, and chicken remains. He took her hint
and blew out the candle, then gathered the silk, bones, and feathers together and tossed the lot into the fire.

Serena stood and watched the materials go up in flame, wanting to be certain that every last scrap was burned to cinders. It was only when she heard the others leaving the room that she pulled herself away, unwilling to stay in the drawing room alone.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Beth was saying as the threesome crossed the entry hall and went into the library. It was a far cozier room, the fire already burning merrily in the hearth, the spines of the books giving the room a sense of comforting familiarity.

Rhys and Woding pulled three chairs up around the fire; then Woding served them all brandy, Beth included. Serena wished she could have some herself, her body was still trembling with the aftereffects of fright.