Aether Spirit (26 page)

“Right now it’s in a neutral state,” she said.

“Aye.”

“How do you get it to change to a different one?”

“When we were experimenting in Paris, we would use a small engine to generate a certain frequency, which would then excite it and cause it to flow through the tubes.”

“That makes sense. But watch.” She pressed her gloved fingertips to the glass and tried to draw a sense of what the aether was experiencing. Its light went from opalescent white to gold.

O’Connell didn’t say anything, just watched and took notes.

“What are you doing?” he finally asked.

“Trying to determine what it’s feeling. Right now it’s just curious like a small child, wanting to know more about the world around it.”

“And you can feel that?”

“Yes.” She removed her hand from the glass and hoped the aether wouldn’t develop into a strange being like the first one had. Or did something else happen with that one, like when the shell came through the roof of the previous workshop, and it was released with chaos and destruction around it?

“And can you feel what others feel, other people?” he asked.

She hesitated before answering.

“If we’re going to work on this together, I need to know,” he said. “Trust me, I’ve known stranger. Did I ever tell you about the greatest actress in the world and what she could do?”

“No.”

“Her name is Marie St. Jean, and she can make anyone believe she is whatever role she’s playing.”

Claire laughed. “That’s what actresses do.”

His bushy red eyebrows drew in toward his nose. “No, I’m serious. Her talent went beyond mere acting. She tried to run from her abilities, and it ended up in disaster for her until she finally embraced them. If you can do something like that, don’t deny it. Is that what makes you a good neuroticist?”

Claire backed toward the door. “I don’t want to have this conversation. It’s already established that my mind is broken. Can we please drop what I can or can’t do?”

“Only if you’ll tell me with full honesty you can’t communicate in some primal way with the aether.”

Claire shook her head. “I can’t tell you anything.”

“How long have you been able to do it, sense what others are feeling?”

She didn’t want to say it, but she felt his desperate need to know. “Since the accident. Since I came to in that horrible place in Paris and was overwhelmed by the chaos of the emotions around me.”

“So you can feel what Chad feels for you.”

“Yes, as much good as it will do.”

He crossed the workshop in two strides and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Then don’t give up. He doesn’t realize it, but he needs you even more than you need him. Now as for our aether weapon, will I need to direct it with my mind somehow? And can you show me how?”

“I don’t know.” She tried to sense what he felt, but the only emotion she could detect from him was determination.

It must be nice to have one’s life be so mission-driven. Makes things simple.

“First, let’s figure out the frequency which will be best for the weapon to concentrate the light energy from it. This is where we need your knowledge of lenses and how light passes through different materials. You do remember that, right?”

“Yes, my father taught me well.” She decided she needed one piece of information. “Just tell me one thing. Were Doctor Radcliffe and I engaged or otherwise seriously committed to each other? I feel like we were.”

He reached out and drew her hand from her right temple, which she rubbed with an index finger. “You and I both know you’re not ready for that answer.”

But I really want to know.

She vowed she would find out…and soon.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Fort Daniels, 28 February 1871

When Chad arrived at the hospital, he was in a foul mood. He’d barely slept, having kept an ear out for any more strange noises coming from Claire’s room. Plus he struggled with the knot of anger in his chest tied to the weight of guilt in his stomach over being so eager to try the aether therapy device on her. It had worked beautifully with Amelie Lafitte and her recent trauma-induced hysteria, but it had backfired with Claire, having caused strange hallucinations rather than curing them.

As for the creature they had seen in Claire’s room, he knew there must be a scientific explanation for it. Shared hysteria, perhaps? There were the experiments by Charcot where he hypnotized his female hysterics into having the same symptoms as an example patient, typically a male with some sort of paralysis or anesthesia in a specific body part. Chad and Patrick hadn’t been hypnotized, but they’d experienced psychic shock as a result of their rooms in the barracks being broken into, and perhaps later hearing Claire’s story had planted a suggestion in his own mind.

He especially keenly felt the loss of Claire’s engagement ring, which might explain the creature’s warning. Plus, he and Claire had both had exposure to the aether that afternoon, and he knew it could transmit emotion—hence Edward Bailey’s and Patrick’s strange melancholia in Paris—so maybe it could transmit other hysterical symptoms as well?

It was all a strange question and he disliked not having empirical evidence to fall back on. Even more, he disliked the loss of control—however temporary—of his own mind and senses.

The first person he saw when he walked into the hospital was—
oh, great
—Nanette.

“Doctor Radcliffe, Private Smith wants to have a word with you.”

“And how is our consumptive today?” he asked, but he didn’t really want to deal with the patient/prisoner, who had proven to be a pain in the posterior since he arrived.

“He’s difficult, as usual, but he insists upon seeing you.”

“I’ll be there in a moment.” He went into the office and shut the door. The pile of charts for the patients he and Claire were going to see together the previous afternoon still sat on the desk. Not that they would now—her skills as a tinkerer were needed more for immediate use rather than the long-term work of a neuroticist, and he told himself it was better for him if she wasn’t around the hospital.

Still, the charts represented the soldiers whose minds hadn’t recovered from their battle wounds as their bodies had. What was he to do with them? He suspected that when the war was over, they’d all be sent their separate ways, and what then? It seemed the military treated its men as it did its horses and other equipment, and damaged ones were to be used as much as possible then discarded.

He placed the charts on the shelf behind him and tried to put his dark thoughts up with them. He needed his wits to deal with the so-called Private Smith.

The only thing they had managed to figure out about consumption was that it was an airborne disease, not a hysterical one, so Chad put on a cloth mask over his nose and mouth before going into the patient’s room. Private Smith lay back in the bed and looked much worse than when he had first come in. He seemed to have lost ten pounds since being there, and his cough had deepened and produced more blood than mucous.

“I understand you wanted to see me?” Chad asked. “How are you doing?”

“I’m dying,” Private Smith said. “And I am being haunted.”

“You and everyone else,” Chad muttered under his breath, but aloud he said, “Let me listen to you, and then you can tell me whatever it is you want me to know.”

Smith’s lungs confirmed the boy’s statement about his impending death. Chad straightened and couldn’t keep the sympathy from his tone. “You’re correct in your assessment, and I’m sorry we can’t do more for you. Is there someone we should notify when you pass on?”

“Do you know when that will be?”

The temperature in the room dropped, and what little color the boy had in his face disappeared. Chad resisted the urge to cross his arms.

“I suspect it will be sooner rather than later.”

“It matters not. Can’t you tell whatever it is, it’s here, watching and waiting to snatch me up when my soul flies?” He looked around the room, his green eyes wide with fear.

“Do I need to fetch the priest?”

“Not yet. I feel I have at least another day, but I’m frightened. Can you move me to a different place?”

“No, I fear our other private rooms are occupied. I’ll think on what to do. The priest may be able to exorcise whatever this is and take your last confession.”

“And pressure me to reveal secrets of the army at Fort Temperance. No, thank you. Leave me be, let me die here alone and miserable.”

Chad didn’t know what to say. He wondered if the boy was delirious, and perhaps they shared a delusion like he had with Claire the night before.

“I’ll send the nurse in to check on you later.”

Smith turned his face to the wall, and Chad got the message—he was dismissed—but thinking of Claire had given him one idea.

“I’ll have the nurse bring in paper and pen for you so you can write a letter to your sweetheart or mother or whoever might need to know when you’re gone.”

“There’s no one. Both my mother and my sweetheart are dead.”

“Then perhaps one of them is haunting you, or you feel they’re close. That happens to some people when their souls are preparing for death.”

“Perhaps. Thank you, I’ll ponder that. Goodbye, Doctor.”

* * * * *

The last thing Claire wanted to encounter when she returned to her room that night was a hysterical ghost, but when she arrived after a quiet late dinner, she found the ghostly Emma Morley sitting and sobbing on her bed. Claire had eaten with Beth, who kept her apprised of Bryce’s progress, and was exhausted and feeling guilty that she hadn’t seen him that day. Still, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for the girl. What would she do if the man she loved was near but couldn’t see her?

Oh, wait—she did know what that was like, to be invisible as a woman and only present as a set of symptoms in a fragile shell.

“What’s wrong?” Claire asked.

“He knows I’m there, but he thinks I’m a vengeful spirit who’s haunting him,” the girl-ghost said.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing, but wherever I go, it gets cold. It’s nothing like the warmth of our lo-ove!” She sobbed again.

Claire supposed she should be glad the girl was dead. Otherwise, her blankets would be soaked. Still, the dramatic teenage tears broke her heart, and she guessed the young soldier must be suffering too, especially if he was dying and knew his love had preceded him to the grave. Was he wondering if he would see her again? People believed different things about what happened after death.

“Then perhaps we should go to the hospital so I can explain to him.”

“Oh, would you?” Emma looked up and dried her tears with the hem of her nightgown.

“Yes. It’s too bad you didn’t die with a handkerchief on you.”

Emma stuck her tongue out. “This is the first time I’ve cried since I died.”

“Figures it would be over a boy,” Claire said.

“Yes, it does.” Emma sighed. “But that’s life. And death.” She put a hand over her mouth and snickered.

With the ghost’s distress lessened, Claire laughed too. “I had hoped such things would change beyond the grave, but I suppose not.”

“I think they do if you rest peacefully.” Now the girl sounded wistful.

Claire looked down the hall before leaving her room so she could continue to converse with Emma as they walked if necessary, but thankfully the ghost seemed to appreciate the importance of discretion and didn’t say anything until they got to the hospital. Most of the lamps were dimmed, and Claire hoped she wouldn’t run into Radcliffe. He already thought her crazy. What would he say if he knew she was on a mission of the heart for a dead girl?

“Where is he?” she whispered.

“In one of the private rooms. I can show you.”

Claire’s reprieve was short-lived. When she walked past the office, the door opened, and Radcliffe stepped out. She immediately assessed him with the eyes of a lover and determined with a glance that he hadn’t slept well and hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Did he regret his words to her? She hardly dared to hope.

“Doctor McPhee,” he said and rubbed his arms through his sleeves. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Are you here to visit Bryce? Beth said she was meeting you for dinner. And why is it so cold out here?”

“I might say hello to him on the way out. As for the temperature, it’s related to why I’m here. Apparently there’s a young man with consumption in a private room on the nearest ward?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yes, but that young man is a Confederate prisoner. What business do you have with him?”

“I, um, have a message for him.”

“From…? You do realize that passing messages to prisoners from their associates constitutes treason.”

Emma poked Claire with a cold finger that felt like an icicle and said, “He already thinks you mad. Just tell him.”

“Thanks,” Claire replied and swatted at the ghost. Of course it did no good.

“For what?” Radcliffe asked. “And what are you swiping at? Is there a bug? It’s chilly for those, but they’re always around with all the blood.”

Claire sighed. “I wasn’t talking to you. The message I have for the patient/prisoner is from his former lover.” She couldn’t resist the barb, “Because some love surpasses everything, even the grave.”

She immediately regretted her words when his mouth drew tight.

“And I know this is the case how?” he asked.

“Because I know information about the prisoner that you can’t, like how his name is actually Thaddeus Mitchell, and he’s the son of a horse trader who was in Baltimore and whose family was loyal to the Confederacy, so they moved to Mississippi, where he joined the army.” She related the rest of it, including the relationship between the prisoner and the general’s daughter.

“That’s quite the tale. I’m going to talk to him,” Radcliffe said. “See if all this checks out.”

“Fine.”

“Are you sure? Because you’re telling me all this on the word of what? A ghost?”

“She started talking to me when I moved into her room in the general’s house and I saw her grave from the window.”

“And you’re sure it’s her and not part of your hysteria?”

“Positive. You feel the temperature. There’s something else here.”