The Bone Key (9 page)

We shook hands. Her grip was firmer than I had expected, although her long, narrow hand was as cold as it was pale. “How do you do?” she murmured.

I bit the inside of my lower lip and managed a perfectly unexceptionable, “I am pleased to meet you.”

“You are troubled,” she said gently, not quite a reprimand but definitely a correction. “You did not wish to come. You are angry at Cousin Luther, and frightened.”

I looked involuntarily at Mr. Ogilvy; he shrugged and smirked, deliberately unhelpful.

“Mrs. Davenant, I—”

“Please, call me Mavis. The spirits have told me so much about you that I feel almost as if we were children together.” Her smile was lovely, dreamy, and did absolutely nothing to quell the cold shivers of dread along my spine. “Come. Let us go someplace that we can sit down and talk.”

I could not have claimed that I wished to stay in the lobby; the crowding and the noise were already increasing the tension in my neck and shoulders. I followed Mrs. Davenant and Mr. Ogilvy into a small lounge off the main lobby, deserted except for a dark, heavy-set young woman who was seated in the exact middle of the plum-colored Chesterfield, her feet planted squarely on the floor, knitting. She looked up at our approach, and her muddy hazel eyes, fixing on Mrs. Davenant, lit like bonfires. She put her knitting aside and rose.

“Edith, darling, this is my cousin Kyle. Cousin Kyle, may I introduce you to my dear friend, Miss Edith Locksley?” The muddy hazel eyes fixed on me, and Miss Locksley produced a wholly unconvincing simper.

I shook hands with Miss Locksley because this ghastly
contretemps
was not her fault. But my unease was growing stronger, my sense of being a fox pursued by ardent hounds; I said, “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Davenant, Mr. Ogilvy, Miss Locksley, but I’m afraid I cannot stay. I have—”

“Cousin Kyle,” Mrs. Davenant said reprovingly. “We have traveled a great distance in order to speak to you, and at great inconvenience to ourselves. Please, sit down. A quarter hour of your time is surely not too much to ask.”

My skin scalded with mortification; I found myself sitting on the couch between Mrs. Davenant and Miss Locksley, while Mr. Ogilvy claimed an armchair. Miss Locksley picked up her knitting again, and I tore my gaze away from the needles, shuddering. They reminded me too much of Mrs. Siddons.

“Mrs. Davenant,” I said, “please—”

“Cousin Kyle,” she said, smiling and placing her hand on my knee, “do tell me about yourself.”

I gritted my teeth and did not tell her that I hate to be touched. She smelled strongly of incense. “I, er, I work in a museum. With old books. I . . . er, I . . . that is—”

“Are you married?”

I felt myself tense, and I knew she could, too. “No,” I said in barely more than a mumble, “I am not.”

“Have you objections to the married state?” she pressed, and the solicitude in her voice might have been mockery or might not, and I could not tell which was the more unpleasant thought.

“Considering what Mr. Ogilvy has told me, I am amazed that you can ask.”

“Cousin Luther?” she said past me, cold and stern.

“Seems I forgot to tell Kyle the most important part.” My head turned, unwillingly, stiffly, and he gave me a small smug smirk. “The curse wasn’t the only thing Alabaster passed on to her descendants. You don’t have it. Neither do I. But your daughter would.”

It took me a moment to realize what he was saying, to understand why the Murchison line had not died out over a century ago. “Oh God,” I said, my voice strange and hoarse and hollow in my ears. “Oh God, no.”

“Squeamish, Kyle?” said Mr. Ogilvy and leered repellently. “You shouldn’t be. It’s the power that matters. Your daughter could drink demon’s blood. She could call on darker gods than yours, and they would hearken to her call. She could unbraid the future, feel death in her hands. She could hear the voices in the earth.”

“No,” I said. I was on my feet somehow, shaking. “Never.”

His eyebrows went up. Not a toad, but a serpent, the serpent who knows that Eve lies when she says she has never wondered about the forbidden fruit. “Never?”

“I will not . . . I
cannot
—”

“Don’t turn your back on your family so quickly, Kyle.”

“And you should not be so hasty to dismiss marriage.” Mavis Davenant’s cold hand on my arm, pulling me back down onto the sofa. “For the spirits tell me it is your destiny.”

Then either she or her “spirits” lied, for if I know anything about myself, it is that I was not designed—by nature or benevolent Providence or any other force—for the matrimonial bed. “Mrs. Davenant,” I said, “please remove your hand from my person.”

In the shocked little silence that followed, Mr. Ogilvy started laughing, hard enough that he seemed likely to choke.

“Cousin Luther, please,” Mrs. Davenant said in genteel exasperation. Her hand was still on my arm.

“Mrs. Davenant,” I said, “I was quite—”

Now there was a hand on my knee on the other side. I turned my head, my flesh crawling, and saw that Miss Locksley had set down her knitting to place one plump hand on my knee, the other splayed starfish-like on her bosom. “I can tell that you are not a believer, Mr. Booth,” she said, and her voice was low and unpleasantly throaty, “but do you not feel it?”

“Feel what?” I could hardly help feeling her hand; it was heavy and, even through my trouser-leg, hot. I suspected it was also damp.

“The connection between us!” she said in accents more suited to one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroines.

“I, er . . . that is . . . No.”

“You will,” she said, the muddy hazel eyes boring into mine. “The spirits have shown me. Oh, they do not speak to me as clearly as they do to dearest Mavis, but I could not be mistaken in this!”

“Miss Locksley,” I said desperately, “I assure you that you could.” I wanted to rise, but Miss Locksley seemed to be leaning more and more of her weight on the hand that rested on my leg and Mrs Davenant had a remarkably strong grip for such a frail-looking woman. “Ladies—Mrs. Davenant, please. I have told you that I—”

“You are very noble, Cousin Kyle, but Edith is aware of the danger and is entirely prepared to face it.”

“The
danger
?” I said, my voice rising into a squawk; the understatement was too much to be borne.

“The curse,” said Miss Locksley, her expression uplifted.

“It would be murder!”

“Edith is a distant cousin, and we think she might—”

“Doesn’t have the hair,” Mr. Ogilvy struck in.

Mrs. Davenant ignored him loftily, and I wondered how many times they’d argued the point already. “We think she might have sufficient Murchison blood to withstand the dark energies.”

“And, in any event,” Miss Locksley chimed in, “I don’t mind.”

I could not help staring at her. “You don’t
mind
?”

She was looking very pure and noble and reverent, and I was conscious of a desire to slap her, an urge which I had never felt toward anyone before in my life. “My daughter will bear the power of the Murchison women. She will be a Queen of the Unseen Realms. And I know that Mavis will care for her as she would for a daughter of her own. Truly, I cannot complain if I lay down my life, so long as it is in the service of my destiny.”

“Miss Locksley, this is
not
your destiny!”

Both women looked at me reproachfully, and I shrank back, feeling my face heat.

“Cousin Kyle, you shouldn’t argue with the spirits. Much is revealed to them that we on this plane cannot see.”

“Mrs. Davenant—”

“Family, Cousin Kyle. This formality is very sweet, but really not necessary.”

No matter what powers Mrs. Davenant controlled, she was not going to make me call Mr. Ogilvy “Cousin Luther.” “Cousin Mavis, I don’t at all wish to be rude, but . . . ”

“This comes to you as a shock. I understand that. And no one’s asking you to get married
today
.” She and Miss Locksley both laughed, a celestina of bones underscored by the cries of swamp frogs.

“No, it isn’t—”

“
Today
we are asking for something much simpler.”

Oh, dear God.
We need a human heart for our rites, Cousin Kyle. You won’t miss it, I promise.
I licked my lips. “What?”

Mrs. Davenant smiled, and I saw the hate and power and madness of Alabaster Whalen shining in her eyes. “The bone key. Where is it?”

For a moment, I truly believed she had lapsed into some other language, Chinese perhaps or ancient Sanskrit; I could make no sense of what she said. Even when, fighting panic, I replayed her words in my head, they were meaningless. “I . . . I beg your pardon?”

“The bone key, Cousin Kyle. I want it back.”

“Mrs. Davenant—er, Cousin Mavis, I’m afraid you must—”

“Don’t bother with the protestations of innocence, Cousin Kyle. We know Aunt Thekla took it. And it doesn’t belong to you. It has always been the talisman of the Murchison
women
.”

“Made from Alabaster Whalen’s own arm bone,” Miss Locksley said dreamily.

Dear God, I thought, no wonder we are cursed.

Mrs. Davenant gave Miss Locksley a
yes, dear, but not NOW
, look, and said to me, “It will do you no good. Aunt Thekla should not have taken it.”

“I have nothing of my parents’, as I think you know very well. Does the daguerreotype Mr. Ogilvy mentioned even exist?”

She allowed herself just the barest hint of a martyred sigh as she opened her handbag and produced a small, flat, rectangular object wrapped in black velvet.

“Thank you.” I unwrapped it only long enough to be certain that it was a daguerreotype and that the girl portrayed was not inconsistent with my memories of my mother, then rewrapped the velvet and tucked it into my inner breast-pocket.

Mrs. Davenant said, “The bone key, Cousin Kyle.”

“I wasn’t
negotiating
,” I said, incredulous and indignant. “I honestly don’t have any idea of what you’re talking about.”

“A rod about two inches long—it would look like scrimshaw if you didn’t know what it was.”

She saw the recognition on my face before I could school my features. “You
have
seen it. Where? When?”

“The last time was at my mother’s funeral. In her coffin.”

Mrs Davenant’s mouth thinned. “And where is Aunt Thekla buried?”

I stared at her in horror. “You can’t . . . ”

“The bone key is mine by rights, and I have no intention of leaving this city without it. Where?”

“No. I will not help you desecrate my mother’s grave.”

“But you already have, Cousin Kyle.” She smiled at me sweetly. “The spirits are urging you to speak. Listen to them.”

“I told you because I thought . . . I never imagined you would . . . have you no shred of decency?”

Mr. Ogilvy said, “Murchisons mostly don’t.”

“Cousin Luther,” said Mrs. Davenant warningly, and then turned back to me. “Cousin Kyle, I mean no disrespect to Aunt Thekla. But you must know, all that lies in her coffin is the remains of her mortal shell, the shackles she has cast off. Listen, Cousin Kyle, and you will hear her say so!”

“I will hear nothing of the sort.” I found myself on my feet, shaking with a mixture of emotions I could not even name. “Mrs. Davenant, I have already heard more than I wish to. I will bid you good night.”

I turned to go, and Mr. Ogilvy said, “We can find the cemetery without your help, Kyle, but are you
quite
sure you want to wash your hands of us entirely?”

I froze. I knew what he meant; the sly, slow emphasis of “quite” was enough to convey his threat. Clearly, Mrs. Davenant was prepared to violate my mother’s grave; it was not such a large step to wonder what else she might be prepared to do. I was not naïve enough to imagine that Mr. Ogilvy would have made any push to stop her, even if he and I had not taken each other in instant and mutual antipathy. And the thought of Miss Locksley standing in Mavis Murchison Davenant’s way was merely ludicrous.

I turned back slowly. “I could go to the police,” I said, but even in my own ears, my voice was not convincing.

Mr. Ogilvy snorted. “And you think they’d believe you?” He waved a hand from himself to Mrs. Davenant to Miss Locksley: an unlikely trio of grave-robbers.

“I will not help you,” I said.

“Come,” said Mrs. Davenant, smiling again. “Sit with us, and we will ask the spirits for guidance.”

Feeling as culpably helpless as I had the night of my father’s death, my mother’s suicide, I sat.

To my horror, it was true that something spoke to Mrs. Davenant—something she called “the spirits.” I myself would have been far more cautious about giving it a name or assuming I understood its essence. I could think of candidates other than the benevolent dead.

But whatever the true nature of her informant, it was accurate. I cursed myself for my ineffectuality as we emerged from the taxicab at the corner of Callum Street, cursed myself for my inability either to deter them from their purpose or simply to walk away. My mother had abandoned me when I was twelve; why should I not abandon her now?

But I could not. I could not do her that great dishonor. I knew I would not be able to live with the dreams that would follow.

Mr. Ogilvy had placed a telephone call before we left the hotel, and the results were awaiting us in front of the cemetery gates.

“Cousin Dominic!” Mrs. Davenant said, moving ahead regally, as if the cloak she affected—which made her look even more pre-Raphaelite—were coronation robes.

“We never lose track of the Murchison blood,” Mr. Ogilvy whispered, his breath nauseatingly hot in my ear. “Ever asked yourself why Thekla gave you that middle name, Kyle?
She wanted us to find you.
” My shudder was slight but comprehensive, and he laughed—a low, loathsome chuckle—as he moved away again to say something inaudible to Miss Locksley.

Mrs. Davenant finished her conference with “Cousin Dominic.” The small group of men approached the cemetery gates; Mrs. Davenant returned to where Mr. Ogilvy, Miss Locksley, and I stood. I was not watching, and therefore I cannot say exactly what those men—“Murchison men,” Mr. Ogilvy would call them—did, but in a moment, one of them beckoned, and I could see the gates standing slightly ajar.