Julia Vanishes (10 page)

“My father?” I look at him, startled, and he falls right off the chair. His teeth are chattering like mad.

“Sir, I am going to get help for you!” I cry, and run from the room while he protests loudly.

He's right to be afraid, no doubt, but I am as confident as I can be that Frederick would never do anybody harm, and so I go to him. He is in the library, deep in one of his histories.

“Frederick, it's Mr. Darius!” I cry. “He's very ill!”

Frederick leaps to his feet, dropping his pen and splashing ink all over the page he was writing on. He follows me down to the scullery and we find that Mr. Darius has dragged himself halfway out the side door into the snow.

“No—no more of your witchery!” he screams at Frederick. “You are killing me!”

“We need to get you into bed,” says Frederick gently. He turns to me. “Can you help me, Ella?”

“Of course,” I say.

“Take his legs,” says Frederick, hauling Mr. Darius up and grasping under his arms. I grab Mr. Darius's weakly thrashing legs. For a moment, I think I'm going to get to see his mysterious room in the cellar, but Frederick takes us upstairs, to his own room. There he has me light the fire while he arranges Mr. Darius in bed and gives him a bit of brandy. Mr. Darius twists under the heavy covers, muttering: “All liars…infection…this cannot be…witchery…it's a dream….I'll see you all hanged yet,” and so on.

“Thank you, Ella,” says Frederick, guiding me to the door. “As you can see, Mr. Darius has a very serious condition, but we are taking care of him.”

“He said the professor is trying to poison him,” I tell Frederick, to gauge his reaction.

“The professor means to help him,” he says firmly. The way he says it, I believe him, but still the rifolta niggles at me, and so does Mrs. Och's connection to the murders in the city, whatever that connection may be.

“Whatever is the matter with him?” I ask.

“Oh, it's complicated…some tropical illness.” He fumbles a bit. “The professor is out at the moment. Can you fetch Mrs. Och for me?”

I am not keen to go back to her reading room, but I don't have much choice. I knock dutifully on the door. When she opens it, she looks faded, washed out. She stares at me like she doesn't even remember who I am.

“Frederick is asking for you,” I say, bobbing a curtsy. “He's in his room. Mr. Darius is unwell.”

“Thank you,” she says. She shuts and locks her door before sweeping past me. I wait a minute and then follow.

I can hear them arguing before I even reach the door to Frederick's room.

“He is running out of time,” Frederick is saying. “We have done nothing to help him, and the things we are trying are more and more dangerous.”

“More dangerous than what awaits him?” demands Mrs. Och.

“We are adding to his suffering, nothing more, and perhaps endangering everyone in this house.”

“The professor tells me you have an unusual mind,” says Mrs. Och. “Think of something unusual. We need him.”

“Mrs. Och, I entreat you to consider other options.”

“There are no other options.”

“And if we fail?”

She answers that by opening the door abruptly, and I leap back.

“Is he all right?” I ask meekly, pretending concern.

“Come with me, Ella,” she says. I follow her back to her reading room again. She sits down at her desk and begins to write.

“Ma'am?” I ask tentatively after a moment, but she shushes me.

When she is done writing, she slips the notepaper into an envelope and writes upon the envelope. Then she hands it to me. It is addressed simply:
Miss Bianka Betine, Madam Loretta's, East Spira.

“I need this delivered,” she says. “Find a hackney to take you. It's not a safe area. You may ask Mrs. Freeley for money for the driver.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I say.

“And, Ella,” she calls after me as I back out the door, “tell the girls to set up the back parlor as a guest room.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I say again. And then, because I cannot help myself: “For whom?”

“A woman and a child,” she replies.

D
ek and Gregor are the only ones in the parlor when I arrive. I used the hackney money to pay a messenger boy to take the letter to Bianka Betine, freeing myself to take care of a few other things in the meantime, before anyone expects me back. Wyn is out but has left me a message:
Clarisa Fenn at Ry Royal Pub Mt. Heriot,
and beneath, a quick sketch of a pointy-faced barmaid offering me a drink. I smile and put it in my pocket.

Dek and Gregor are sitting with a large bottle of cheap whiskey between them, lists and charts spread all across the table.

“I was hoping you'd turn up soon,” says Gregor. “The client is waiting for a report, my girl.”

I give him the copy of Bianka's letter, along with a hastily scrawled note about the things I fetched from the Edge for the professor and about Mr. Darius's sudden illness. I've left out the witch-smuggling business and the rest of what I saw in Mrs. Och's study. I don't know enough yet. I don't know anything yet. Or that is what I tell myself. I can't stop thinking about that witch they sent off to Sinter. Perhaps she has children, and they didn't have to watch her drown.

“It's not even noon,” I say, nodding at the whiskey.

“All the more day to get through,” says Dek, giving the bottle an affectionate pat. I don't like to see him drinking with Gregor but I can't very well tell him not to. He's a grown man. I know he keeps his mouth shut when he doesn't approve of things I do. Wyn, for example. The two of them got on very well until I took up with Wyn. Wyn still makes a brave attempt at camaraderie, but Dek has turned chilly toward him. We've never spoken of it.

“How is that magnetic opens-everything lockpick coming along?” I ask. “Am I going to get a crack at it? I've got a room I can't get into.”

“The mysterious Mr. Darius,” says Gregor, and takes a long drink straight from the bottle. “Taking your time with that, aren't you?”

“Because I can't get into his room,” I reply coldly.

“Oh, that?” says Dek, brightening. “I got sidetracked, but I'll finish it if you need it.”

“What's all this, then?” I ask, picking up a sketch of what looks like a cannon.

Dek snatches the paper from my hand and says, “You wouldn't believe what a couple of Lorian thugs have offered to pay for this. If I can make it and it works, that is.”

“I am advising your brother that if he's going to design weapons, he needs to be careful who he sells them to,” says Gregor, slurring a bit. He's drunker than I realized.

“But ten silver coins!” cries Dek. “Only Julia is likely to bring in anything like as much right now.”

“Twice that,” I say quickly.

“Well.” Dek gives me a look.

“I didn't like the look of those fellows,” Gregor says. “If we were selling to some nice, wholesome revolutionaries, that'd be one thing, but there was the stink of the opium trade about them.”

“Ten silver coins,” repeats Dek sadly.

“Revolutionaries, or those that are left of them, don't have any money,” I point out.

Gregor gives me a hard, sober look suddenly and says, “You'd be surprised, my girl.”

“Would I?” I know Gregor's revolutionary days are long behind him, but I've never heard him speak of them, and I find myself suddenly curious. Gregor, Esme, and her husband all dreamed of a different Frayne when they were young. They dreamed hard enough to risk their lives for it. But things are different now. Nobody dreams of anything much in Frayne anymore.

For a moment, it looks as if Gregor might say more, but then his face changes, to careless and jovial again. He pushes the bottle of whiskey toward me. “Go on, Julia, sit down and have a drink with us,” he says. “We hardly see you anymore!”

“I'm not drinking that swill,” I say. “If you're going to drink in the middle of the day, you could at least get something decent.”

“Good liquor is a waste,” says Dek. “After the first couple of drinks, you can't tell the difference anyway.” He doesn't slur or loll about when he's drunk. It's hard to tell how much he's had. The real change is that he seems, sadly, more himself. When he isn't drinking, there is too often a hardness about him, like he is clamped shut so tight around his own private pain you can't gain access at all. But then, he is not that way every day.

“Come on, what's the beef, my girl?” says Gregor. “It can't be the poor quality of booze that offends you. Tell me why you don't approve of me today.”

“You're drunk,” I say. “As usual.”

“Not so very,” he slurs at me. I think he's exaggerating now, just to annoy me.

“Stop it, Julia,” says Dek wearily, gathering up his papers. “A fellow can drink whiskey if he wants to.”

“I'm not telling him what to do,” I argue, hurt to find Dek taking Gregor's side just because he's sharing his cheap liquor.

“It's because of your da, isn't it?” says Gregor. “But I'm not like him, you know.”

The anger comes so fast, it leaves me breathless. I want to hit him. For a moment, I think I might actually do it, but then I get a handle on myself. Dek has gone rigid.

“It has nothing to do with my father,” I say.

“He chose the drug over you and your ma,” Gregor carries on.

“Shut up, Gregor,” warns Dek.

“I'd never do that. I would never choose the drink over Csilla or any friend. Never.”

“You choose the drink over Csilla every blasted day,” I say.

He gives me a lopsided, uncomprehending stare, and I leave quickly, banging the door behind me. He'd better drop that line of thought or Dek will be the one to hit him.

I take a motor cab to Mount Heriot, a hill topped by Capriss Temple, the great white Lorian temple that overlooks the whole of Spira City. It's the most beautiful part of the city, the tree-lined avenues and steep stone staircases winding up the hill toward Capriss Temple's shining dome. From here, I can see the river Syne cutting the city in two, the Scola and Forrestal in the south, the Twist and the Edge to the East, and at the very center of the city, great Hostorak lurking behind the parliament. The wooded grounds of the royal palace lie in West Spira, where the most elegant shops and houses and hotels are.

There is a dearth of men of a certain age here—Gregor's age, my father's age—for so many of them were killed in the uprising. I can't believe Gregor is right that any remnant of that old guard still exists, in Mount Heriot or anywhere. To be sure, in certain bars you'll find miserable old dissenters muttering the same far-fetched rumors about the king's brother's newborn baby smuggled out of the country to return one day and claim the throne. But most people in Mount Heriot aren't holding their breath for a Lorian prince to come marching back to Frayne and take revenge. They are just getting by, like the rest of us. More than hoping for things to get better, they are praying things don't get worse.

It is easy enough to find the Ry Royal Pub. There is a large poster of the now infamous Marianne Deneuve on the wall outside, offering a substantial reward for her capture. I stop and look at her for a moment—this imperious, fair-haired beauty. I wonder if it's true about the monkey tails, and what kind of creature would think up such a thing. Then I shrug it off and go inside. There is a thin girl with straw-colored hair and a sharp chin behind the counter. I recognize her from Wyn's sketch, so I go and order a coffee and pastry and wait for things to die down a bit. It's mostly young men on their lunch break at this hour, and I am drawing a lot of stares but I ignore them, and nobody bothers me, which says something about Lorian manners.

“Busy day?” I ask the girl when things are quieter and she is wiping down the counter.

“Much as usual,” she says. She is a raggedy-looking thing, with sunken cheeks and the glassy-eyed expression people get when they are bored too often. The kind of girl who reminds me why I do what I do for a living and why I'll never take an honest job.

“How long have you worked here?”

“About a month.”

“You're Clarisa, aren't you?” I say. “You used to work for Mrs. Och in the Scola?”

She looks merely surprised when I say her name, but when I mention Mrs. Och, she becomes more guarded.

“Yes,” she says.

“I'm Ella,” I say. “I'm working there now.”

“Ah.” She keeps wiping the same spot on the counter methodically. “Going well?”

“I suppose, well enough,” I say. “I came to talk to you. Perhaps you can guess what it's about.”

She gives me a blank stare. This is a bit risky, but I don't think she has any contact left with anyone in the house, and I doubt there's a great sense of loyalty there—at least I hope not. So I say, “This is a secret, but my brother's a policeman. He got me the job there. He said I just had to work there a few months, have a look at the place. Something's up, he says, with the houseguest.”

Clarisa blanches. She stares down at the counter, wipe, wipe, wipe.

“Mr. Darius,” I press. “There's something horribly wrong with him. And I heard that you know something about it.”

“So why don't the police come talk to me about it?” she says.

Fair point.

“I haven't mentioned you to them,” I say. “No need to get you involved; I just want to know if my hunch about him is right. Can't you tell me what you saw, the night before you left?”

She frowns hard at the counter, her knuckles white around the rag.

“Something horrible,” she says. “I don't like to think about it. I still have bad dreams.”

“You poor thing,” I say. Nameless One, give me patience. “If you can tell me, it would help so much, and then we'll be done with it.”

“I heard a sound,” she whispers, leaning over the counter toward me, though the pub is nearly empty now, and there is nobody close enough to overhear. “Florence and Chloe were frightened. I thought it sounded like an animal or some such thing, and I am good with animals, so I told them I would go to see. I thought perhaps a fox had got into the house. I don't know why I thought that. It didn't sound like a fox. It didn't sound like anything I'd ever heard before, but somehow I decided it must be a fox.”

“Had you not heard any odd sounds at night before?” I ask.

“Mr. Darius hadn't been there long,” she says. “Barely a week. I'd heard some strange sounds and told Mrs. Och. She said it was a broken door in the cellar and the wind. But I know she was not telling me the truth.”

So they had been using that broken door story for a while now. Bit feeble.

“So you went down the stairs, expecting to see a fox,” I pressed her.

“Yes. Only I saw a man, or so I thought. I had my candle with me, and I saw a tall man with dark hair sort of curled up on the stairs, making this strange groaning sound. I had met Mr. Darius a few times and thought it must be him. I thought him drunk, or ill. I went closer and said, ‘Mr. Darius, are you all right?' Then he looked up at me.”

She begins to cry. I pat her hand ineffectually.

“It's all right, Clarisa. Tell me what you saw.”

Good girl, she keeps talking in spite of the sobs and sniffles.

“That face…it was not Mr. Darius, though it was wearing his pajamas. It had hair everywhere, on its face, even on its hands and feet. Its eyes were like the eyes of a beast, huge yellow things, and teeth…it was not a human face. It was not human.”

“What sort of teeth?” I say.

“Like an animal,” she cries, unhelpfully. “Terrible! An animal's mouth!”

“What did it do?”

“It looked at me, and it
snarled.
It wasn't like a dog snarling. It was something else. I didn't just hear it; I
felt
it in the very pit of my being! I screamed. I couldn't stop screaming. Then…I don't remember, I think I fainted, but Frederick and the professor were there, and the beast was gone. The professor told me I'd had a nightmare, but it was no dream. It was no dream.”

“Can you tell me more about what the thing looked like? Was it shaped like a man? Only the face was monstrous?”

“It was curled up on the stairs, so it's difficult to say,” she says vaguely. “The face is what I remember. That terrible face, all hairy and yellow-eyed, with those big teeth.”

“The nose? A regular human nose?”

“No,” she says. “I don't remember. Its face was an animal's face. A monster's face.”

Her descriptive powers leave much to be desired, but I am getting the idea. Either there is some beast in Mr. Darius's room, something he brought with him (that wears his pajamas, if Clarisa can be trusted on that point) or, as seems more likely given what I have seen, Mr. Darius himself undergoes some nightly transformation and becomes a kind of beast. I have heard of such things in old, forbidden stories—stories of the kind of terrible creatures that used to walk the earth long ago. Can such things really be, in modern-day Frayne? In Mrs. Och's genteel house? Why not, in a house where giant trees go missing and witches are whisked to safety from the waiting river Syne?

I ought to be afraid. Surely a natural reaction would be to tell Gregor and Esme that the house is too dangerous, that there is more to it than we had imagined, and then never set foot there again, in spite of the promised silver. But, in fact, I feel strangely exhilarated. How it all ties together I do not know, but uncovering the secrets of Mrs. Och's strange household is far more interesting than turning up illicit love letters or nicking someone's jewels. I thank Clarisa and wish her well, then head down the hill toward the river. The whole way back, I am thinking of Mr. Darius on the floor, his foam-coated lips, and Mrs. Och's voice, like ice, saying to Frederick,
We need him.