The Eterna Files (14 page)

“No matter how hard,” Clara said as if trying to convince herself, “it's better than not knowing.”

Franklin nodded and drew a deep breath. “The team were all at the tables, working, when the incident began. Five people. Four at tables, but there was someone there who didn't quite belong. Someone hanging back and watching.” He paused and looked at Clara. She shrugged and he continued.

“They were putting ingredients into a large glass bottle with a narrow, angled neck and watching for a reaction after each addition. Words were exchanged, but too muddy for me to hear. After a number of items were combined, the compound reacted. There was a bubbling, a little spark. Smoke truly came to life—tendrils rose, reaching about the room like growing vines. The curls of dark gray vapor asphyxiated the workers, one by one, as if the acrid tendrils were strangling hands.”

Clara put her hand to the desk to steady herself, trying to not imagine Louis's handsome face distorted in pain.

“They did not suffer long, Miss Templeton,” Franklin added softly. “Then everything went up in a strange fire, the result of which we saw in that room. And throughout all of it, there was a dark silhouette against the wall. If it was another person, unrelated to the workers, it was too dark to tell. It was a big black shadow, a ghost in reverse. It stood there after the fire and then faded.”

There was a long silence.

Clara clenched and unclenched her jaw. She never wanted to seem weak in front of Franklin, no matter how much she trusted him. She sipped the brandy carefully. The sting was painful going down her throat but she welcomed any sensation that allowed her to in some way share the agony of Louis's demise, even something so mild as the burn of alcohol.

Setting the snifter on Franklin's desk, she pressed a hand to her bosom and felt the slight unevenness of the fabric caused by the cravat she'd stowed against her breast, next to the amulet.

“It was … it was a good idea, originally, Franklin,” she murmured. “The compound. After the assassinations, Lincoln, then Garfield…”

“You mustn't second-guess yourself,” Franklin insisted. “The bent of your heart is honorable. People die for good causes.” Franklin paused, likely thinking of his brother. “But take heart, Miss Templeton. Someone made it out of there. Someone survived.”

Clara didn't dare imagine that lone survivor could be Louis, but something flickered within her. She didn't like that small wick of hope. Small candles, even buried, were too easy to blow out. The cold wind of hard reality always got to them, no matter their depth.

“Now. Your turn. What did you see?” Franklin asked.

Clara sighed and relayed her encounter with the silhouettes.

Franklin chewed his lip, considering her narrative. “So, ghosts, then?” he began. “You think they were the spirits of the scientists? Bidding you to find their papers?”

“I'd like to think so. Manifestations come in all kinds, however, these … entities were unlike any spirits I've yet encountered. My glimpses of ghosts are shimmers of light, a suggestion of shape and body, and while sometimes I can ascertain words and messages, it's always brief. Any sustained communication triggers a seizure. I am surprised this did not. But who else would they be but the team?”

Franklin shook his head. “I don't like it. How can we know what they mean?”

“It must be something of the team's legacy,” Clara replied, as uneasy as her colleague. “We have to find it. The warning was clear that unless we acted, others would act around us.”

“Clearly that precise compound should never be made again,” Franklin said.

“I doubt it ever can be,” Clara countered. “But my vision said: ‘If you don't do it, someone else will.' And that doesn't bode well either.”

Franklin paused. “True. I do trust our country more than any other. Where to begin?”

“With whoever fled. One of the team? The one watching? One of ours … or another's?” She lifted her glass. “It isn't just us anymore. I can tell.”

Though Clara barely heard the downstairs door open, she knew immediately who had entered the building. This was no visitor to the government offices below. No, this was the Eterna Commission's own doorkeeper. They received few visitors, but there was the occasional call. Given the nature of their work, it was vital that their receptionist be savvy. Lavinia Kent was a marvel.

“Hello, darlings!” she called up to them.

Clara descended to meet the girl—the
woman,
rather—young as she was, at twenty-one Lavinia was certainly an adult and Clara had to stop thinking of her as anything else. It was hard—after so many rounds upon the globe, everyone felt like children to her. Yet to society, Clara was an aberration, a girl who'd gone to waste.… As with most of history, the assumption was that she should be a wife and mother by now. But the fates had other plans for her in this life.

Lavinia was so dramatic that one didn't have to be a sensitive to smell the giddiness wafting from the young woman like perfume. Her elaborate jet-black dress rustled as she entered, artful bombazine layers streaming with black ribbons. A few locks of her deep red hair flew free from her black bonnet, its crepe veil cast back. It might be supposed that the girl was in mourning, but this was not the case; it was simply her fashion.

“Hello, Clara dear,” Lavinia said breathlessly, her bright green eyes wide. “I had quite the night,” she continued, holding out a bejeweled hand: a band with a shimmering dark stone. “It's a black diamond, isn't it amazing?” Lavinia cooed. “Didn't Nathaniel do well?”

In a breath, Clara banished the flare of jealousy that cracked through her like a whip, echoing through her timelines. “Congratulations!” Clara embraced her friend. “He finally came around?”

“It was pure hell to get there, but I won him in the end,” Lavinia cried in a crisp London accent that announced her as a member of the striving class. “It will cost me everything, of course, the very last of Father's favor and the home in Lancashire. But true love is worth it.”

Clara nodded. Though she'd not yet been asked for her hand, her past lives understood love comprehensively.

She moaned suddenly. “This means I need to start looking for another receptionist!”

“As if I'd stop working for you!” Lavinia scoffed. “You're my mentor! Well, you and Evelyn, of course.” She pressed a hand to her forehead, speaking like a melodramatic ingenue. “I wasn't meant for a life of housekeeping alone!”

Clara laughed. “Few of us are, and yet, you'd think the world has no other uses for us.”

“Then we shall tell the world otherwise,” Lavinia said with a smile. “Like we've always done. We must stay together, Clara, we need each other's support now more than ever.”

The Kents had practically abandoned Lavinia after a terrible mishap with the law. Bishop had convinced Lavinia to work in secret for the Eterna office. Her family knew only that she had a “benefactor;” generally they acted like she didn't exist.

Lavinia had become the much needed bosom friend to take the place of the schoolgirl companions who all abandoned Clara when she did not continue in “society.” They'd had many conversations, shared innumerable secrets, yet Clara had never said anything to Lavinia about Louis. So she couldn't even now unburden her heart to her closest female confidante.

“Evelyn Northe-Stewart!” Clara exclaimed. “How is she? Hosting séances for curious girls? She's such a dear confidante of the senator, I thought I'd see her at the house more often, but of late she has been absent.”

“I suppose her being re-wed has something to do with that, now that she has a family of her own again. And yes, séances as usual,” Lavinia replied. “She has me helping now, with the more unstable ones, considering my experiences.…” She looked down at the floor.

Clara lifted her chin with her finger. “What have I said?”

“No shame in the office,” Lavinia parroted obediently.

Two years prior, Lavinia's social circle, followers of flamboyant, darkly dramatic actor Nathaniel Veil—now Lavinia's fiancé—had been targeted by a strange chemist. They sought a “cure for melancholy,” but the drug he supplied produced wild rages. It was thought the chemist might be a recruit for Eterna research, but the man was arrested. However the event wasn't a total loss, for Lavinia had developed an uncanny ability to judge human intention. She could quite literally smell intent.

Behind Lavinia's post on the first floor of the brownstone were pulls that went to bells informing the upstairs office as to what sort of visitor they could expect. Lavinia would assess a visitor and pull one of the four black tassels. The smallest led to a high-pitched bell signaling a known acquaintance or colleague. The next larger announced a visitor Lavinia deemed friendly. The next meant neutral, and the largest and deepest bell indicated that the company was a liar, a cheat, or potentially dangerous. At this signal, Franklin quickly descended with pistol in hand. This thankfully had only happened with a few drunks.

“Are we expecting anyone today?” Lavinia asked, perching on her wooden desk.

“Fred Bixby,” Clara replied.

“Bixby!” the young woman cried, elongating the “y” sound in glee.

Though Lavinia's melancholies were intense, she was an utterly pure soul who felt things lavishly and found dramatic ways to express sentiment. Clara hoped she never lost this quality the women had in common, though Clara had learned to shield herself better. But then, Clara had had more practice; Lavinia was a newer soul.

“What's wrong, Clara?” Lavinia asked. “Something's wrong and you're trying to hide it.”

Clara took a shaking breath. “It's the Eterna team. They're all dead, though one may be alive. We don't know who.”

“That's terrible,” Lavinia breathed, skirting around the desk and flouncing into her chair, layers of black tulle and crepe spilling everywhere. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I know I should feel their loss but, not having been given the opportunity to even meet them, I don't.”

“Nor do I,” Clara replied, lying again and staring at the shelf above Lavinia's desk, which was crammed with notepads, a compass, a replica Egyptian Canopic jar that she used to hold her quills and pencils, and more. Clara's gaze rested on a collection of shards from gravestones, which Lavinia had artfully arranged into a miniature druid ring.

“It wasn't your fault,” Lavinia continued. “I know that look, dear, the helpless look you get when you want to fix things you can't. It wasn't your fault. No shame in the office, right?”

“Indeed.” Clara patted Lavinia on the shoulder. “Do send Fred up directly, won't you?” Lavinia nodded. “Again, congratulations. Your nuptials shall be the most dramatic, black-crepe-filled affair the world has ever seen. The death of Prince Albert will have nothing on you dears.”

At this, Lavinia laughed and Clara trotted up the stairs before her pang of grief deepened.

*   *   *

Wanting a moment alone, Clara asked Franklin if he'd be so kind as to fetch them some lunch from a nearby butcher. He graciously agreed. With him gone, Clara leaned forward, layers of bustle, interior ruffles, and petticoats shifting as she pressed her hand to her sternum.

There, Louis's amulet of protection nestled between her breasts, beside the knot of his cravat. Pressing, Clara felt all the strictures that bound her: rigid bodice bones upon corset bones upon human bones. She slipped her fingers beneath her clothes, fishing past the hooks of her bodice and the thin layer of her chemise, grasping an end of the saffron silk fabric with thumb and forefinger and sliding it from its warm hiding place.

She tried to ignore how the pulling of silk from along her breast felt like Louis's unlacing of her stays … but the more she tried to block the warm, passionate images, the more sensations washed over her. He was an inventive, thorough man in every regard; he was the first in this lifetime to leave her feeling as though he could chart her every inch and still seek further discoveries. His thirst for life, and for her, meant his sudden absence created the cruelest desert.

Ducking beneath her desk, Clara shifted a small carpet and lifted a floorboard, then stared down at the small black metal face of the safe set into the floor. She had precious few secrets, but even she needed a secure place to hide them.

A chill abruptly ran down her spine and the hairs at the back of her neck rose on end. The room became dreadfully cold and she saw her breath misting in the air. Generally this indicated that there was a ghost nearby. Her heart pounded.

“Louis…” she whispered. “Louis, if that is you, give me a sign.…”

There was no sound nor movement. A reminder that she'd never really had anything. Passionate words and caresses, but those too were phantoms in the end. He would never have offered for her, since they were not supposed to even know of each other's existence.

Her shoulders fell. She turned the combination of the dial, opened the safe and tossed the warm yellow silk into the black void, closing the lid on this sensual remnant of her lover, locking it and her feelings away.

Franklin returned with cuts of meat and cheese, and they sat with the day's difficult images and emotions in silence until a cry from the threshold:

“The redcoats are coming! Or, rather, they've been here. Now they're going back and forth!” Fred Bixby burst into the office, carrying a ledger.

Clara was so entertained by him she forgave the start that caused her coffee to spill over the rim of the porcelain cup she had been holding when he'd shouted. Lanky, thin, light-skinned, with short auburn brown hair, what Bixby didn't have in girth or bulk, he made up for in enthusiasm.

“Look,” he exclaimed. “The log, here. One Mr. Brinkman. We've seen that signature before, haven't we?”