The House of Velvet and Glass (45 page)

Her eyebrows lowered in a scowl over her eyes, and Benton edged nearer to her, near enough that she was aware of his breath on her cheek, and he asked, “What is it?”

Then, deep within the smoky haze, Sibyl saw flickering lights. In clusters. A flash here. Another flash there. Like lightning, but not quite. Not the cold white light of lightning, but a hotter light, reddish, and each burst attended by tiny bits of what looked like dirt or debris. She watched this rumbling series of explosions within the smoke as it went on for several minutes. Then, with no further clarity or explanation, the lights slowly receded within the coils of smoke, growing fainter and farther away. The smoke drew into itself, pulling away from the surface of the orb until it vanished, leaving the scrying glass perfectly clear.

Sibyl sighed, dropping the ball to her lap.

“Well?” Benton prodded, stubbing out the end of his cigarette and leaning in to hear what Sibyl had to say.

“What?” she asked, shaking herself awake. She was startled to find Benton staring at her with those delving gray eyes. Benton, in her bedroom. What was Benton doing in her bedroom? She couldn’t remember how he had gotten there. She opened her mouth to speak, and when nothing came out he sprang to his feet and fetched her a glass of water from the decanter on top of the vanity table.

She swallowed, grateful, rinsing away the unpleasant aftertaste of the laudanum.

“Better?” he asked. Benton sat down again across from her. She nodded, setting the glass aside.

“Yes,” she said, pasting a reassuring smile onto her face. But the smile was troubled.

“So,” he began. “Was it as you suspected? Was the vision the same?”

She looked him in the face, her dark eyes wide. She shook her head.

He leaned back in the armchair, bringing a meditative hand up to his chin. “Really,” he said.

“No,” she whispered. “I thought it was at first. It started the same, with the black smoke. But then it was completely different. Perhaps I . . . perhaps I wasn’t doing it right this time.”

“What did you see?” he asked. Sibyl could hear in his tone the faintest sliver of doubt.

“Well,” Sibyl said, trying to sift sense from what she had seen. “There was the black smoke, sort of billowing in on itself. That’s how it always starts. And then usually it parts and reveals the surface of the ocean. I waited, but the smoke never parted this time. Instead, there were these sorts of flashes of light. Inside the smoke. Almost like explosions, because after a time it looked as though with each flash of light there was some . . . stuff . . . dirt, maybe? I don’t know. It would go shooting up in the air. But I couldn’t be sure, because the smoke never cleared.”

“And then?” he prompted, hanging on her words.

“And then,” she said, frowning as she gazed into the middle distance between them, trying to remember. “Then, nothing. The lights receded. The smoke went away. And it was over. That was all.”

Benton got to his feet with a strangled growl, as though his thoughts were racing beyond his control. He stalked back and forth in the small space behind the armchair. “Impossible,” he muttered. “I don’t see how it can be possible.”

“Ben!” Sibyl cried, getting to her feet. “What is it?”

He moved over to her and took her hands in his. His grip was warm and dry, reassuring, and Sibyl’s skin tingled from the pressure of his hands. “The vision. It changed, just as you surmised it would,” he said. “You said that if I were right, and the glass only showed you what was in your own mind, then it wouldn’t change. But if it was showing you something real, something true, then it would.”

“Yes,” she replied, searching his face.

“Sibyl, I— There are those who don’t hold that psychology is a science.” He faltered, his grip on her hands tightening. “But I’ve always considered myself a serious person. A scientific person.”

“But of course,” she said.

In his voice, the sliver of doubt deepened. “If what you’re saying is true . . .” he started, then stopped himself, looking down at his shoes. Then he glanced up again. “I think we should test you. In controlled circumstances. Then we’ll know for sure.”

“Test me?” she echoed. His face was close to hers, close enough that she could see the texture of his cheeks, nubbled with beard. She could smell the tobacco on his breath.

He paused, looking down at her, and his eyes filled with a tenderness that she had never seen in them before. He held her gaze for a long, excruciating moment. Sibyl gazed up at him, feeling her heart thudding in her chest. Benton leaned nearer.

“But there’s . . .” he said, hesitating. “There’s something that I’m afraid I must do first.”

“What?” she asked, eyebrows rising.

He brought his hands to trace along the line of her jaw, cupping her face. His thumbs brushed over the corners of her mouth, testing them. She held her breath, searching into his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But I have to.”

With that his mouth found hers, pressing there with tingling warmth and urgency. Her eyes drifted closed, relishing the sensation of his lips on hers, the nearness of his body, breathing him in. The perfect feeling lasted only an instant before he broke away, smiling down on her.

“Come on,” Benton said. He took her hands, and gave them a squeeze. “There’s no time to waste.”

Chapter Twenty-three

Harry Elkins Widener Library
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
May 7, 1915

Clusters of college boys strode past the marble stairs of the new Harvard college library, their shadows stretched long by the streetlights that dotted the pathways through the Yard, like the shapes cast by a spider perched on a glass lamp.

“Ben,” Sibyl started to say. “I don’t know.”

Benton gave her a mischievous glance. “I’m a professor, remember? They’ll be open.”

The main library vestibule smelled of fresh polish and paint, and their footsteps echoed through an elegant marble hall. Mrs. Widener would be proud to see her considerable fortune so well spent. Sibyl followed close behind Benton into a room lined with wooden card catalogue cabinets.

“Scrying,” he muttered. “Let’s see, here.”

His sturdy fingers riffled through the cards with astonishing speed. Flip, flip, flip, flip, and then they settled on the card they wanted. “Well, Miss Allston,” he said, in a teasing tone, “it appears that there is a single book in all of fair Harvard’s library collections that addresses our subject matter. And it’s in French. How about that?”

“French!” she exclaimed.

“You read French, don’t you?” He smiled. “I thought all proper Bostonian young ladies could read French and play pianoforte and do needlepoint pillows and dance a cotillion.”

Sibyl rolled her eyes. “But of course! That’s how you can tell we are
accomplished
,” she said, placing artificial emphasis on the last word.

“Well, that’s a relief,” he said. “Because mine’s pretty rusty. When we moved to Italy, I’m afraid the Italian pushed aside whatever meager French Andover had managed to impart to me.” He smiled, a sadness behind it. Sibyl rested a reassuring hand on his arm.

At the circulation desk, the laconic young man working his rubber library stamp said, “Working late tonight, then, Professor Derby?”

“Seems so,” he said, passing the boy the call slip.

“
Le Sang de Morphée
, huh? That’s some kinda strange title.”

“The Blood of Morpheus,” Sibyl translated. She glanced at Benton, worried. He smiled at her, and she felt his hand come to rest on the small of her back.

“Right you are,” the boy affirmed. “But you’re not the first person to ask for that book this week. Thought it was a weird title then, too.”

“Beg pardon?” Benton said.

“Hang on,” the boy said, riffling through a box of note cards. “Aha! Yep. It’s charged out to another professor. You want I should recall it? Take a few weeks, probably.”

“Perhaps whoever it is will just let me take a quick look,” he said, leaning forward on a conspiratorial elbow. “I don’t suppose you could tell me who’s got it, could you?”

The boy gave Benton a long look. “You know I’m not supposed to do that,” he said.

Around them footsteps and rising voices signaled the closing of the building for the night. In the adjoining periodicals room the lights snapped off.

“Oh, sure,” Benton said. “But listen. I just need a peek at it. I’m sure whoever it is won’t mind if I just drop by. Saves us all the trouble of having to recall it and charge it out all over again. Right?”

The boy weighed this idea, calculating the time and energy necessary to fill out the needed paperwork. “Okay,” he demurred. “I suppose it’ll be all right. Don’t make a habit of it, though.” He gave the professor a wily look, and said, “Maybe I’m just persuaded by your research assistant, here.”

Sibyl blushed. Benton, however, smiled. “And a better research assistant I’ve never had,” he said. His elbow nudged her ribs.

Without a word the boy passed the card to Benton, and then leaned on his elbows, chin on his hands, sending his most inviting smile in Sibyl’s direction.

“Ha!” Benton exclaimed, looking at the card. “Well, I’ll be damned. Thank you.”

He slid the card back and took Sibyl’s elbow. She glanced over her shoulder as they went, and the boy behind the desk waggled his fingers at her in a coquettish wave.

“Where are we going?” she asked as they hurried ahead of snapping-off lights, out the front doors of the library, and into the deepening darkness of the Yard.

Benton looked away and sighed. “I don’t know why it should surprise me. His curiosity is insatiable. Always was.” He then leveled his gaze at Sibyl, and she saw the red rims of his eyes. “Edwin,” he said. “Edwin has it.”

Sibyl bit her lower lip, sickened with guilt and sadness. “Professor Friend,” she whispered. She stopped in her tracks, bringing her hands to her face. He paused, looking left and right before enfolding her in a quick embrace.

“Come now,” he whispered to her. “Can you think of anyone else who’d be more excited by the idea of precognition? Real, provable precognition? Can you?”

She snuffled, eyes on her feet, shaking her head.

“Can you imagine how excited he’d be? If he were here, don’t you think he’d insist on testing you right away? He would, wouldn’t he?” Benton brought a hand up to Sibyl’s hair and smoothed it off her brow. The hand then traced along her jaw and lifted her face to meet his gaze. She saw that his eyes had cleared, in fact were glimmering with resolve.

“He would,” Sibyl agreed, wiping her damp eye with the back of her wrist.

“You bet he would,” Benton said.

She stared up at him, probing. “Yes,” she agreed. “All right.”

He took her by the hand, gave it a reassuring squeeze, and they hurried to the philosophy building. With his free hand Benton rummaged in a pocket for a set of keys. He shook his head and muttered, “Dammit, Edwin. I don’t see why you had to get on that blasted boat.”

The door lock gave with a creak, and Benton held the door open for her to enter ahead of him.

“Ben,” she asked, hesitant in the empty building. “How are we going to get it out of his office?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he confessed.

All the lights were out. Sibyl shivered against the forlorn atmosphere haunting the philosophy building at night. Benton produced a silver cigarette lighter from his pocket and lit it, holding the flame overhead to guide them. Sibyl edged nearer, threading her arm around Benton’s elbow.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said, though she could tell he was injecting his voice with confidence for both their benefits. They moved down the hall, the flickering flame tossing their shadows about in a way that made Sibyl dizzy.

“I’m not worried,” she lied.

They arrived at a glass door with the name
FRIEND
inked on it. Benton tried the door.

Locked.

“Drat,” Sibyl said. Benton glanced at her, amused.

“
Drat?
” he repeated.

“What?” she said, folding her arms.

“Drat,” he said again, smiling out of the side of his mouth.

“Now what do we do?” she asked.

“Hmm.” Benton tried the door again, but it was just as locked as before. The two of them stared at the doorknob, each silently willing it to open of its own accord.

Benton glanced at Sibyl with a small, mischievous smile. “How daring are you feeling today?” he whispered.

“Well. I’m already in an abandoned classroom building in the dead of night with a strange—dare I say
very
strange—man. So I guess I’m feeling more daring than usual today.”

“Touché,” Benton said. He reached over and pulled a hairpin from Sibyl’s hair. She gasped with surprise and brought a hand up to stay the slipping lock of hair. He grinned, said, “Thank you, Miss Allston,” handed her the cigarette lighter, and knelt before the office door.

“Ben!” she hissed. Benton slid the pin into the mouth of the lock.

“Could you bring the light a bit closer, please?” he asked, concentrating. Gingerly, she knelt on the floor next to him, moving the flame as close as she dared without singeing his eyebrows.