Chapter Nineteen
“You already know I didn’t kill you, Miss Cavanaugh.” Pavel’s voice was much less confident now that he was stuck hanging, suspended by Jenny’s will, in the center of our foyer. “You died while I was sleeping.”
“That’s true,” Jackaby said, thoughtfully. “Alice McCaffery, too. They were both attacked in the daylight. You work with an accomplice, then? Who is it?”
“Their lives were insignificant.” Pavel sneered. “But just thinking about all that blood just draining across the floor.” He turned his eyes to Jenny. “Such a waste. She’s sloppy. I would have savored you.” A windowpane cracked behind Jenny, and Pavel winced painfully.
“She?” Jackaby said. “Your associate is a woman, then?”
“There’s always a woman.” The vampire chuckled wetly. “Hell of a woman, too. Worlds better than any human doxy. Your boy Howard Carson certainly thought so.”
“You’re lying,” Jenny snapped. For a moment I thought I saw her face flutter into a double-image, just a hint of an oncoming echo, but then her chest rose and fell as she maintained control. She was stronger than I would have been. It wasn’t even me he was taunting and I wanted to knock the rest of Pavel’s teeth in.
“So, Jenny’s killer is a woman, and not human,” Jackaby pressed calmly. “Is she your benefactor?”
“Good effort. Ribbon for trying, Detective, but you’re off the mark.”
“Then who are you working for?”
“Not a chance. Hell hath no fury and all that, but the most your ghost girl can do is kill me. I’ve been through that. I can handle death. They would do far worse. They’re downright visionary in that way.”
“You’re underestimating me again,” said Jenny. “How well did that work for you last time?” Pavel said nothing.
“You may not have killed those women,” Jackaby interjected, “but you have plenty of blood on your hands.”
“Not at all,” Pavel said, attempting to sound casual, although his throat was tight. “I always wash up after meals.”
“Mrs. Beaumont?”
“She thought I was a dignitary. A count from Romania. She was useful for a time. Her blood was surprisingly sweet.”
“Mrs. Brisbee. Mr. Denson. Professor Hoole.” Jackaby rattled off victims.
“Yes, yes. I remember last week’s menu. Do you have a point?”
At the sound of her husband’s name, Cordelia Hoole stopped rocking. She peered over the desk, and I could see waves of emotions washing over her. Her hands were trembling.
Pavel noticed her, too. “Your husband didn’t put up much of a fight,” he said. “In case you were wondering.”
Cordelia Hoole swallowed. “Why?” she managed.
“Call it professional dissidence. Your darling Lawrence was a promising architect, but he found the nature of our work distasteful toward the end. I found his lack of cooperation equally distasteful—although I liked his carotid artery well enough.” He sneered smugly at the widow and licked his lips.
The words struck Cordelia Hoole with physical force. She buckled, but caught herself with one hand on the desk. She looked as though she might need to be sick.
“What was Hoole working on?” demanded Jackaby. “What did your benefactors want him to build?”
“Let me go and I’ll send you to ask him yourself,” Pavel snarled. I could see his muscles straining against Jenny’s will, but his invisible bonds held fast. He breathed heavily. “Better yet, why don’t you tell them, Miss Cavanaugh? You helped your busy little beau build it the first time. Tell them what you helped us create.”
Jenny’s scowl deepened. “I don’t—I don’t know.”
“So many things forgotten. The future, Miss Cavanaugh. Don’t you remember? Well, not your future, of course. Yours ended years ago. You’re just one of the forgotten things now, like the rest of us.”
“Tell me what happened that night.”
The pale man twisted abruptly and squawked in surprise and pain.
“Miss Cavanaugh . . .” Jackaby said.
“Tell me what happened the night I died.” Jenny’s voice was hollow. Pavel’s back was beginning to curve in an unnatural backward arc. The wind whipped and the windows rattled. A piece of plaster chipped off from the wall and spun across the room.
“Jenny.” Jackaby’s voice was soft. “We have time. He does not.”
Jenny’s shoulders relaxed a fraction and the cold eased up a few degrees. She nodded. “Make yourself comfortable, Pavel,” she said, although her captive looked anything but. He revolved slowly like a grotesque ornament from an invisible string. “You have about three hours to sunrise.”
Pavel continued to evade our questions for the rest of the night, although he was far from silent. He goaded Jenny at every chance, but she refused to rise to any more lurid implications about her fiancé and the mysterious murderess.
Eventually he turned his venom on Jackaby.
“The last Seer was much more fun,” he said.
I froze. There was no way this monster knew about Eleanor, I thought. I watched Jackaby’s face, but he did not give Pavel the satisfaction of a response.
“The two of you were friends, weren’t you?” Pavel continued. “What a pair. I don’t remember seeing you the day they sent the legion. You weren’t there, were you? You should have seen her. There was none of this standing around for hours nonsense. She was a firecracker, that one. What was her name? Ellen? Ella? Eleanor. That’s it.”
“Miss Rook,” Jackaby said with forced calm. “Does that window look smudged to you? It would be a shame to miss even the smallest bit of a beautiful sunrise.”
“I cleaned them just last week, sir,” I said.
The sky was already beginning to glow. Pavel strained against his invisible bonds. “Your little Eleanor wasn’t so fiery by the end,” he continued. “She broke. My benefactors saw to that.”
Jackaby set his jaw and did not respond.
“They had such high hopes for her. In the end she was just another disappointment.”
Jackaby took measured breaths.
He knew. Pavel knew. Jenny’s past and Jackaby’s—both of my dearest friends’ darkest hours were somehow tied to this awful man. I was reeling. He knew, and time was running out. The sky was ripening to a soft orange as the sun prepared to breach the horizon.
“Eleanor spoke of a man with red eyes and a long, dark hallway,” Jackaby said at last. “What was it? Where was it?”
Pavel chuckled. “Is that how she described it? A child’s mind is a beautiful, tender little thing, isn’t it?”
The chair slammed backward onto the floor as Jackaby stood up. He stepped forward until he was inches away, face-to-face with the pale man. “Time’s up.”
The sky was growing lighter by the second. Pavel was breathing heavily. An unhealthy slate gray was darkening his pallid complexion. “You want to know about Howard Carson? He’s dead!” Pavel grunted. “Carson is long dead.”
Jackaby looked at Jenny, and then back to Pavel. “Howard Carson is dead? You’re certain?”
“Yes, damn it! Howard Carson is dead!”
“You’re running out of shadows, Pavel, and I don’t think Miss Cavanaugh is satisfied with that answer, do you?”
“I did it myself!” he roared. “I ripped out his throat and I drained him. The bastard had it coming.” Sores were beginning to break his skin, and the room smelled of sulfur. “You should thank me!” His head lolled at a sickening angle toward Jenny. “He abandoned you to go trotting after that strumpet, and he never looked back. She cut you open the very next day while the disloyal rake stayed on with us.”
Jackaby closed the curtain, and in the sudden darkness Pavel sagged like a broken marionette. Jenny flickered. “No. Y-You’re lying. That’s not what happened.” Her voice shook. She was upright, chin held high, but then in the same moment she was on the ground. Her contours flickered. Her elegant pearlescent dress was now torn and darkness was spreading across her chest. The anger had left her. She looked sad. She looked confused. She looked like she was dying and she did not know why.
“The council doesn’t leave loose ends,” Pavel panted. “That’s all you ever were. A loose end.” Wheezing breaths became a ragged laugh.
I felt the blood rising to my head. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to wipe that wretched half grin off his face. Suddenly the room was spinning. I felt a hand on my shoulder, but whose I could not say. The edges of my vision darkened and I leaned against the shelf, my fingers stumbling over the broken half-brick. I blinked.
Wind whipped through the torn curtains in front of me and I found myself kneeling on the floor. There was glass everywhere. Where had it come from? I felt nauseous.
“Abigail?” Jenny’s voice sounded muffled and distant.
Hands shook my shoulders and I looked up into Jackaby’s cloud gray eyes. “Rook. Rook!”
I whipped around. Cordelia Hoole was still crouched behind the desk. Finstern lay on the bench, but Pavel was gone.
Panic shot through me. “What happened?” I managed to say.
Jackaby’s expression was furious. “Hold still,” he said, staring into my eyes intensely. At length he stood and helped me into the chair. “She is herself again,” he said. “What do you remember, Miss Rook?”
I tried to make sense of what was happening. “I don’t know! I just—he was talking about Jenny and I was furious, and then I felt dizzy and . . .” I took a deep breath. “Where is Pavel? What happened?”
Jackaby and Jenny looked at each other. Their expressions were not reassuring. Jackaby stepped over to the window. Glass crunched under his shoes as he looked through the broken frame into the garden. “He’s gone,” he said.
“What was that?” Jenny asked, looking at me nervously.
“She shows signs of a phrenic mutuality. The aftereffects of possession.”
I glanced at Jenny. “There are aftereffects?”
“Of course there are aftereffects!” Jackaby pulled the curtain shut again over the shattered hole and crunched back across the room. “Two spirits are not meant to occupy the same mind. If you and I were to wear the same pair of trousers at once, what do you think would happen?”
I swallowed. “They would stretch out all wrong?”
“That’s an optimistic outcome. How do you feel?”
“A little weak about the seams, now that you mention it.” I took a deep breath. “Jenny, we need to tell him.”
Jenny nodded. “Tell me what?” Jackaby looked back and forth between us. “You wouldn’t. You didn’t. Of course you did. What were you thinking?!”
“Oh, Abigail! I’m so sorry! I had no idea,” said Jenny.
“We only tried it once,” I said. “Well, a couple of times, but not for very long. She was making such marvelous progress, sir!”
“Have you felt any other dizzy spells? Blackouts?”
“No, I—” I caught myself. “Well, yes, actually. Right before Finstern turned on his machine, and maybe once earlier, in the office.”
“This is all my fault.” Jenny looked mortified.
“And how did you feel, right before it came over you?”
“I was angry,” I said. “He was laughing, and it just made me furious.”
Jackaby considered. “You may be experiencing Jenny’s emotions alongside your own. If she entered your mind, then she may have left a part of herself behind. Argh! How could you be so foolish? Both of you! Spiritual possession is inexpressibly risky and unpredictable. This is absolutely unacceptable!”
“It won’t happen again,” I said. “But I still don’t fully understand it. I had a dizzy spell—but that doesn’t explain how Pavel broke free.”
Jenny answered gently. “Pavel didn’t, sweetheart.”
I shook my head. “What? Me? I pushed him out?”
“I don’t think push fully expresses it. You were”—Jackaby paused to choose his words carefully—“forceful.”
I wracked my brain to recall my own actions, but all I came up with was a headache. I stood slowly and crossed to the window. The morning light stung my eyes as I brushed aside the drapes. The sun was beating down and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Glass and scraps of wood from the window frame littered the front lawn. A rough patch of grass had been singed in the middle of the debris, and in the dead center lay a broken red brick.
“Is he dead?” I asked. It felt like the brick was in the pit of my stomach.
“If he isn’t dead, he is in exceedingly poor shape,” Jackaby replied. “He’s not the one we need to worry about right now.”
“I’ll worry just a little bit, if you don’t mind,” I said. “I don’t make a habit of making enemies out of creatures inclined to murder me horribly in my sleep.”
“Pavel mentioned a council,” said Jackaby. “His benefactors. Now, there are countless factions within the otherworldly courts, but the Unseelie have never been well organized. Dangerous, yes, but historically unruly and wild as lightning. The collective races have never coexisted, which may be the only reason the human race has survived this long. Now they’re organizing. And what’s worse, they’re good at it.”
I didn’t know what to say. A splinter of glass freed itself from the ruined frame and tinkled to the ground. The tiny clink resonated in the silence of the room.
“I don’t know who this council is,” Jackaby said, “but they’re organized, they’re effective, and they’re powerful enough to make a self-serving monster like Pavel risk death before disloyalty. If you’re going to worry, Miss Rook, worry about them. They are architects of chaos, and now they have the creative genius of some of the most powerful scientific minds of our age engineering their evil. Whatever they’re building, it isn’t good.”
“The future,” Jenny breathed.
Jackaby turned to the broken window. “Not if we can help it.”