Chapter 18
Griffin had been in a madhouse?
Goosebumps pricked my skin, and not just because of the icy air. What was it he’d said the night we’d found the Guardian in the warehouse and he’d told me of his last case with the Pinkertons? “…They said I’d broken under the strain. I was mad.”
Had they sent him to the asylum? Told him the things he’d seen in that accursed place were the result of a fractured mind? Dear God, I’d heard the stories of what went on behind the walls of such places. Had they locked him in? Restrained him in a straightjacket? Used injections or ice-water baths to “cure” him?
My gorge rose, and my muscles tensed with the need to do something, anything, to protect him. But of course it was far too late.
Nor would anger help the situation now. Leaning forward, I pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Of course not, darling,” I said, as tenderly as I could form the words. “No one will make you go anywhere you don’t want, ever again.”
“I’ll be good; I promise.” He closed his eyes and his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Please. Just let me go home.”
I slid my arms around him; all resistance was gone, and he let me pull him back down and cover us both in the blankets. His skin was like ice; I wrapped my legs around him as well, trying to warm him. “You are home,” I whispered into his ear. “The monsters are real, but they aren’t here now. You’re safe.”
He buried his face against my neck, dampening my skin with hot tears. I closed my eyes, stroking his brown curls rhythmically. Seeing him in pain was like swallowing broken glass.
I wanted to do more than just hold him. I wanted to take away every hurt he’d ever suffered. I wanted to find whoever had sent him to the asylum and pummel them senseless. I wanted to hide him away from every cruelty in the world, somewhere safe and warm and happy.
I couldn’t do any of those things. So I did the only thing I could and held him close, murmuring words of comfort into his ear. Eventually, the small tremors and occasional whimper subsided, and he fell into an exhausted sleep. But I lay awake until dawn, on guard in case the terrors of the night returned to claim him again.
~ * ~
When I next awoke, I found myself alone. The early sunlight streamed through the window, and frost traced fanciful patterns on the panes. I slid a hand over to Griffin’s side of the bed and found the sheets had gone cold.
Had he awoken disoriented again, trapped in the past? He’d dressed at least, and the washbasin had been used, so hopefully he had recovered from his fit.
I slid out from under the sheets and dressed hastily. The water of the basin had a thin crust of ice on it; I decided to heat some water in a kettle to shave, as I had no desire to freeze my neck and face.
I went out into the hall and made for the warmth of Griffin’s study. He sat in his wing-backed chair, staring out the window, with Saul curled up on his lap. There was a snifter in his hand and a bottle of whiskey on the floor beside him.
“I don’t blame you for not wanting to stay,” he said without turning to look at me. The words were hurried and sounded rehearsed. “I hope you’ll agree to continue our association in a professional capacity until the case is done, but I understand if you don’t wish to.”
Had he been sitting out here alone for hours, convinced I would leave at the first opportunity? I’d done nothing to give him that impression, I was sure of it. Perhaps he simply couldn’t imagine anyone would stay with a man who wasn’t entirely whole. Who had been broken, and hadn’t managed to put all the pieces back together.
I cleared my throat. “I certainly hope your detective skills are normally sharper than this,” I said briskly. “Otherwise you will soon be out of business.”
I crossed the room and took the snifter from his unresisting hand. “Although this is surely not helping anything,” I added. I opened the window, tossed the whiskey out, and shut it again hastily as a wave of cold air poured in.
I turned to find Griffin sitting forward, his eyes wide. Saul meowed grumpily and hopped down off his lap. “You’re staying?” The words were spoken softly, as if saying them too loudly would somehow make them untrue.
I put down the snifter and crossed my arms over my chest. “Do you truly think me so inconstant?”
Griffin’s lips tightened and he slumped back in his chair. “I was in an asylum. I have fits, as you saw last night. I should have mentioned it before we became involved, but I chose the coward’s path. If you left, it would not in any way reflect on you.”
I knelt beside him and laid my head in his lap. “I hope you realize you have my highest regard and-and affection,” I said. Strange, how much harder it was to expose my heart than it had been my body. “You can confide in me without fear.”
“But I am afraid.” I could feel his fingers trembling as he rested them against my hair. “What if you change your mind, once you hear?”
“At least give me the chance to prove I won’t.”
“Yes. And…you deserve to know. It was the last case, as I said. We split up.” Griffin’s voice was low, tremors cracking the words. “Glenn and I. They called us G&G at the agency.”
“Was he…were the two of you…?”
“He was married. Four children, and another on the way.”
At least they hadn’t been lovers. “Still, I’m sorry.”
His fingers stroked my hair, smoothing the stubborn locks. “I did a quick search of the upper floors of the house, while he went into the basement. There was nothing upstairs, so I followed him into those damnable depths.” A shudder went through him. No wonder he had been alarmed at the prospect of going through the trapdoor in the abandoned house.
“It was dark,” he went on. “And it stank. God, the smell! I couldn’t stand the thought an innocent girl might be down there. I held my breath and pressed on. There were rooms burrowed down into the earth itself, and I swear some of them were far older than anything built by human hands.
“I don’t know what I might have found, had I gone all the way to the bottom of that rotting pile of ancient, hollowed stone. There was a hall—and a room—and Glenn—and a thing.”
His fingers curled in my hair, his entire body shivering now. “I don’t know what it was. It was slime and eyes and ropy tentacles, and it had Glenn. No. It was digesting Glenn. It had him, and his face…it was gone. Melted off, down to the skull. But he was still alive. Still screaming.”
Dear heavens. My mind shied away from picturing it. How had Griffin endured the sight? Even worse, what must it have been like for poor Glenn? Of all the horrible ways to die.
Griffin let out a long shuddering breath. Was he weeping? I kept my cheek pressed against his leg, not wishing to embarrass him by seeing his tears.
“I shot him,” he said, his voice raw with grief. “There was nothing else to be done. I killed him, and then I emptied my revolver into the thing, and it didn’t even seem to notice. One of its tentacles whipped out and wrapped around my leg. You’ve seen the scar. It was cold, beyond cold, like the darkest night ever known, and yet it burned at the same time. I think I screamed. How I pulled loose from it, I don’t know. Perhaps it was still busy absorbing Glenn. Or maybe it was nothing but blind, stupid luck. A sort of cosmic joke, where one of us lived and one died, with nothing but random chance to say which was which.
“I don’t recall fleeing the house, although I must have. The next thing I knew, I was strapped to a gurney in the hospital. I told my boss everything. But he said I was wrong. The police had come, and there was nothing left of Glenn but a pile of bones. He said the culprits had tried to dissolve him in acid. They’d thrown acid on my leg, and the pain had unhinged me. And when I screamed he was wrong, everyone said I was mad.”
Griffin let out a bitter laugh utterly devoid of humor. “I was mad. For a little while at least. Screaming, clawing-at-the-walls mad. But I wasn’t wrong.”
“No,” I said quietly. “You weren’t.”
“I ended up in the asylum. It was…bad. I don’t…I can’t talk about it. I thought I would die there. But my father came and insisted they turn me over to him.”
“Your father?” I asked. “Weren’t you an orphan?”
“Yes. Sent to Kansas on the orphan train after my parents died. Adopted on the platform by a couple who couldn’t have children of their own. They didn’t even try to give me a new name, which happened to most of the orphans. They were good to me, and I never felt like anything less than their son. At least, not until I was caught with the son of the neighboring farmer.”
“Oh,” I said. Had the boy been Griffin’s first love? “What happened?”
“I left town, and he stayed behind and married the girl he’d already been engaged to, and everyone agreed I was a devil who’d tempted him off the Christian path.” Griffin’s voice grew rough with old anger and hurt. Then he sighed. “But Father came for me, when I had no one else. He removed me from the asylum and took me home. I don’t know what he thought of me; I didn’t dare ask, and he didn’t offer. But he and Mother gave me a safe place to come back to myself, and for that I am eternally grateful.”
“And you moved here?”
“Eventually, yes. I wanted somewhere different, somewhere I could forget. And yet the past refuses to go away.”
I opened my eyes to avoid the visions of a stormy night on a lake, which threatened to play out against my lids. “It has a way of doing that.”
“Yes.” He sighed and stroked my hair again. “I won’t pretend I wasn’t unhinged by what I saw. I still suffer from fits, as you now know. If…if you decide to leave, I understand, and will not think you faithless.”
My neck was developing a crick, but I didn’t want to move. “I am where I wish to be,” I said at last, not sure how else to make him understand.
His body hitched slightly, as if against tears, and his fingers coiled in my hair, tenderly.
I had dedicated my life to words. But sometimes, words are not needed. We sat together quietly in the warmth of the fire, and watched snow drift past the window, for as long as we were able.
~ * ~
That night, I put on my tuxedo suit and removed my silk top hat from its box. I gave more care to my appearance than usual as I dressed. When I was done, I added the gold pocket watch and diamond cufflinks which had been my eighteenth birthday present from my father, before he realized I meant to defy him. Normally I considered them too fancy, but perhaps Griffin would like them. I even managed to induce my hair to lay flat, through the judicious application of oil.
I was as well put together as possible for me. Now all I had to do was go down to the street and wait.
Fortunately, the evening was comparatively mild for December, the clouds rolling away, the stars shining in their multitudes against the velvet sky. A few people walked about in the early evening, moving through the streets on their own business. None of us made eye contact or greeted one another. Would Griffin think it strange, or did the people of Chicago or Boston mind their own business just as assiduously?
The clop of hooves heralded the approach of a cab. I caught a glimpse of Christine’s face at the window as it pulled up, and she flung open the door for me. It was always odd to see her in an evening dress; this one had the usual froth of skirts and sleeves so wide she might have concealed an arsenal of handguns in them. Knowing Christine, she probably had. “Hello, Whyborne. Ready for an exciting evening?”
“As ready as one can be,” I said, climbing into the cab. Then I saw Griffin, and couldn’t catch my breath to speak further.
He was always handsome, but in his tailcoat and top hat, he looked resplendent. His brown curls were neatly brushed, and his elegantly tailored clothing showed off his lean form to best advantage. He sat beside Christine, leaving the rear-facing seat for me. I was glad for it, because I hadn’t appreciated just how difficult it would be to keep my hands from him. I wanted to kiss him hello, to strip off his gloves and press my lips against his fingertips, to—
The cab started with a lurch, and I nearly fell on Christine. “For God’s sake, Whyborne, sit down,” she said irritably.
Griffin gave me a smile, his eyes warm. “The tuxedo becomes you,” he said.
My face grew hot. “I, er, thank you.”
“You never put forth such an effort for me,” Christine said.
“Not true,” I objected, although of course it was. Christine rolled her eyes.
“We should lay our plans for tonight,” Griffin said. “Whyborne, I would like for you to circulate as you see fit. Keep an eye on anyone who seems odd or suspicious. Christine, as the excavator of Nephren-ka, you are most in the spotlight. It would make sense for you and I to remain close to the mummy at all times, before and after its unveiling. I understand refreshments and dancing will precede the reveal. Will it seem suspicious to do no more than a single turn around the dance floor?”
“Call it a refreshing chance to have even a single turn,” she said. “It’s impossible to drag Whyborne out of whatever spot he finds to hide in.”
“You could always find someone else to escort you,” I replied stiffly.
“Bah, the rest of them are useless. At least with you I’m assured of intelligent conversation.”
“I’m flattered,” I said in a tone meant to indicate the opposite.
Griffin held up a white-gloved hand in front of his mouth. I suspected he was trying very hard not to laugh.
The Ladysmith was brightly lit for the occasion; I hated to imagine the gas bill once the night was over. A line of carriages, hired and otherwise, waited in front of the museum. Uniformed attendants greeted each carriage as it pulled up to the curb. When it came our turn, Griffin climbed out, then offered his hand to Christine and helped her down. Although he said he’d been raised a farmer, he’d learned fine manners well, every gesture impeccable as she took his arm.
There was no reason to feel any jealousy whatsoever. But our first night together, Griffin had asked me if I’d ever been with a man, as if allowing the possibility I might have been with a woman. And I’d heard some of those who visited the bathhouses went home to a wife and children.
I hadn’t the courage to ask him if he’d ever made love to a woman, just as I hadn’t the courage to ask him about any of the men he’d obviously been with. Acid crept along my veins as I pictured those other men, those potential women. No doubt they were all handsomer, smarter, and more desirable than me. How long would it take Griffin to remember he could do better?
I trailed after Griffin and Christine as we went up the stairs to the entrance, where there was a small scrum, as all the new arrivals vied to check hats and coats. In the confusion, Griffin slipped to my side and leaned in to whisper in my ear.
“You look very handsome, my dear. A good thing Christine was with us, or I would have had a difficult time restraining myself, and you would have arrived in a far more disheveled state.”
The tips of my ears went hot, even as other parts roused. “Not here,” I whispered back.
The look he gave me smoldered. “If we didn’t have a job to do tonight, I’d have you in the storeroom right now.”
I didn’t dare move, for fear of showing the rigid outline of my erection through my trousers. It would be utterly mortifying to be noticed in such a state…and yet his boldness only fed my arousal. I didn’t say anything, but my expression must have given me away; he gave me a sly, promising smile before turning to the coat check.
Damn him. Did he have to flirt, knowing we could not act on it in even the smallest way? And now I was distracted, thinking about what I wanted to do to him after the gala, instead of worrying about the Brotherhood.
Apparently, my priorities weren’t quite as noble as I’d hoped.
“Come along, Whyborne,” Christine said impatiently.
The path to the coat check was clear. I hurriedly handed over my hat and coat. No one seemed to find anything out of the ordinary, except for Griffin, who insisted on smirking at me.
As soon as we passed into the grand foyer, however, he became all business. A buffet lay beneath the looming hadrosaur, while waiters in immaculate uniforms circulated with trays of champagne balanced on their fingertips. A number of chairs and tables encircled the outer reaches of the room, while in the center a string quartet played a waltz. To the left, the drapery across the exhibit hall entrance had been removed, although the mummy itself was still under guard and hidden from view. The idea, as I understood it, was to allow the guests to see the other artifacts, while prolonging the mystery of beholding Nephren-ka himself for a while longer.
“Dr. Putnam!” Dr. Hart exclaimed, swooping in from one side. She and Griffin stopped; I slipped around them and did my best to blend into the crowd.
And it was quite the crowd; everyone who was anyone had been invited. Uncle Addison conversed with Mr. Rice, Griffin’s employer. The owner of the canning factory danced with his wife; rumor had it they were in fact first cousins, and their identical, oddly-bulging eyes seemed to confirm it. The publishers of all the local newspapers were there, alongside various other captains of industry. My family was among the few not represented.
I wandered over to the buffet. Bradley stood there, heaping his plate full, which greatly diminished my appetite.
“Ah, there you are, Percy,” he said heartily. “Here alone, are you?” He glanced across the room, and a decided smirk formed on his mouth. “I see Christine has thrown you over for that detective fellow. It must rankle, eh?”
“No,” I said flatly. Not in the way he imagined, anyway.
Fortunately, Mr. Farr wandered up. “I say, Bradley, what about the portrait of…”
With Bradley distracted, I fled. A quick glance around showed nothing out of the ordinary, with the exception of Christine and Griffin waltzing elegantly across the dance floor. I snatched a flute of champagne off the tray carried by a passing waiter and downed half the contents in a single gulp.
Eager to get away from the dance floor, I scurried into the exhibit hall, clutching the remnants of my champagne. A few others circulated here already, looking at the lesser exhibits, but it was clear the bulk of the crowd had come to see the mummy. Uncertain what to do, I followed my natural inclinations and went to the darkest, most secluded corner. Perhaps I could keep an eye out from here.
An unrolled scroll lay beneath the glass case I ended up standing beside. I’d not had the time to translate it, thanks to the demands of Griffin’s case, but as I looked at it, my mind automatically picked out certain hieroglyphs.
Immortality. Opening the way. Those from Outside.
Nyarlathotep.
“Fascinating, is it not?”
I jumped, my champagne glass falling from my hand. Long, white fingers caught it before it hit the ground. How could anyone move so fast? I started to thank the man, or apologize, but my voice died in my throat.
He rose from a crouch, standing uncomfortably close to me. A smile played around full, sensual lips as he lifted the flute to them and took a sip. His golden hair curled in ringlets about his face. His perfect cheekbones, high forehead, and straight nose made him seem almost impossibly handsome.
Those eyes. There was no rational way to know, yet I felt certain they were the same which had stared at me from beneath a hood in the Draakenwood. Their gaze trapped me like a pin through a butterfly: burning and intense, as if he knew the whole of every secret desire.
I needed to run, to tell Griffin, to raise some alarm. But I found myself unable to move.
Then he looked away from me, directing his gaze to the scroll instead. He lifted my champagne glass again, his nails long and filed into points. “Most of those present are dazzled by the mummy,” he said. His accent was strange; I could not place it. “And yet I can’t help but feel it is here, in these words, where true knowledge lies. Would you agree?”
Did he know I recognized him? Did he care?
Afraid he would turn his gaze on me again, I hastily put my back to him and focused on the scroll. It was a mistake; he took the opportunity to move closer to me, until I fancied the heat of his body reached even through the air between us. It reminded me uncomfortably of Griffin’s seduction in front of the fireplace.
“It’s all important,” I said. At least my voice didn’t tremble too badly. “But, yes, in many ways I agree.”
“I thought as much.” His breath stirred the hairs on the back of my neck. The odor of rot and mold wafted over me—from him? Or from some other source? “You are a man of learning, as am I. The gold, the jewels—all meaningless baubles, distracting lesser minds from the only source of real power: knowledge.”
A shiver ran over my skin, and I had to lock my knees to keep from bolting. “Who are you?”
But I already knew the answer, didn’t I?
“A man who shares your interests,” he said. His low voice was like a soporific smoke, making my thoughts heavy and slow. The ends of his fingernails traced the length of my spine, from shoulders to seat, and a wave of unwilling pleasure sent blood rushing to my groin. “Several of your interests, I suspect.”
My resolve broke. “Excuse me,” I said breathlessly, and walked away on trembling legs, half-afraid he would give pursuit.
He didn’t. And when I risked a glance back over my shoulder, he was gone.
I hurried out of the exhibit hall, into the swirl of mingling guests. Some of the trustees nodded to me in vague recognition. Uncle Addison called my name, but I pretended not to hear, ducking on the other side of a flock of ladies in colorful dresses.
Griffin and Christine loitered near the hadrosaur, heads together in conversation; anyone else might have thought they were courting. But it would be hypocritical to be jealous, when I was the only one who’d been targeted for seduction tonight.
Something in my expression must have betrayed me, because they both straightened as I approached, and Griffin looked alarmed. “Whyborne? Is everything all right?”
“No,” I said. “It’s not. Theron Blackbyrne is here.”