Unnatural Issue (6 page)

One thing he would not do. He would not reanimate what was left of her beautiful body with the spirit he would capture. That might do for a necromantic servant, but not for his beloved. No, Rebecca’s spirit would have a new home. She would live again!

He could do that. He would need to disinter her, of course, for he would need her bones. But on that framework, he could create a body for her. The spells were there. He could actually restore her body. Not reanimation but restoration, building her from power and blood, if he could just find the right sacrifice—or sacrifices. It might take more than one. They would have to be human, of course.

And that led him to the first problem. Where would he find them? He couldn’t sacrifice his own servants; they would be missed. He himself might be isolated from the rest of the community, but the servants were very much part of it.

Perhaps the common itinerant laborers that came at harvest time . . . or perhaps the Gypsies. If he took Gypsies, though, he would have to make sure he got the entire group. And he was just one man . . . no, that was out of the question. He could wait until harvest. The traveling laborers were often lone creatures, or at best traveled in pairs. He could dress like one, say he’d found work at Whitestone, lure his victim to one of the outbuildings no longer used, ply the sacrifice with liquor. It would be easy . . .

But what if someone saw him? What if one of the servants grew suspicious? Worse still, what if he somehow picked someone who was expected, who was supposed to meet with a larger group?

For the first time, he wished he lived near a city. The cities were full of people who would never be missed if they vanished. Could he go there? Could he make forays, like a big game hunter, into the city to stalk his prey?

But how? Once, perhaps, but over and over again?

How would he even get there? He didn’t have a motorcar, and he wouldn’t know how to drive one. If he took the pony and cart or the lone riding horse, it would be missed, and he’d probably be caught up as a thief.

Then when he got there—how would he ever find his way about?

The problems seemed insurmountable, but he kept studying, kept trying to find a way around the problem. Surely he was not the only necromancer to confront such difficulties!

Then, as he delved deeper still, he realized that he did not need to find several sacrifices, he only needed to find one, a single perfect one.

Because he did not need to create a new shell. That was doing things the hard way. There was a much, much easier way.

If he dared—and if he could find everything he needed, which included an even more exactingly perfect victim than simple sacrifice—he could oust one soul from the vessel he needed and give the shell to his Rebecca.

It would shock her, of course. At first, it might well appall her. She had been taught the same things he had, after all. She had been raised to believe that necromancy was utter anathema. But he could persuade her . . . he had always been able to persuade her.

She would live again, and not within a fragile creation that had been restored by magic—a shell that could just as easily be sundered by magic. No, she would live as a soul, in a perfectly ordinary body, as firmly bound to it as if she had been born into it.

There was the matter of finding the correct vessel, however. It would have to be someone who would not be missed. It would have to be someone either fourteen or twenty-one—multiples of the powerful number seven. Twenty-eight would be too old, because most women who would not be missed were dead before then—or if not dead, were certainly disease-ridden and gin-raddled, if not worse. Perhaps he could find a suitable widow or spinster, but not without more searching than he was prepared to undertake. And seven was much too young; he wouldn’t have the patience to wait for a child to grow up.

It would have to be someone who looked as much like Rebecca had as possible, to lessen the shock of the spirit being bound into a new body. The closer the vessel looked to her original form, the more likely she was to settle into it quickly and with few objections.

Another reason why using a child as a vessel would be inadvisable. Even a fourteen-year-old would be risky. Ideally—twenty-one.

He brooded over this for many days, trying to formulate a good plan. The largest numbers of young women who would not be missed were among the poor of the cities, and cities . . .

His initial thoughts on gathering victims had born
some
fruit.

Well, cities were not as much anathema to him as they had been. His forays into Blood Magic had skewed his powers rather drastically. No longer were the fauns and Brownies in the least attracted to him, but he could summon kobolds and redcaps, goblins and other unsavory Earth creatures. They thrived on the filth and decay of cities. He had realized that he did not need to hunt, physically, himself. They could search for him, although they were of limited intelligence. Still, even creatures of limited intelligence could recognize a picture.

Once they had found a suitable vessel, he could . . .

And that was where he found himself stuck on the same rock again. He had not left the house in so long that he was not sure where to start. It wasn’t as if he could simply help himself to a horse and cart and drive off to the city, then return with a bag full of girl. People would notice. And there was a very good chance he would be caught by the law. He certainly couldn’t entrust such a task to a troll or a kobold, they weren’t bright enough.

What to do?

He paced the floor for days, alternating his pacing with fevered forays into the books. Slowly, painfully, he developed a plan. Night and day passed, and he did not pay a great deal of attention, except that at night he had to light candles to read, and by day that irritating old housekeeper kept bringing up food she insisted he eat.

He came to realize that he was going to have to control some very dangerous creatures if he was going to succeed at this. The redcaps.

If he could control them, if he could command them
not
to slaughter his prize, they were capable of abducting someone for him. Unlike trolls and kobolds, abducting victims even from the heart of a city was something they did all the time. Strong, wicked and intelligent, powerful out of all proportion to their small size, and vicious, they got their name from the caps they wore that they kept red with the blood of their victims. Murder was literally meat and drink to them.

And although scrying did not come easily for an Earth Master, he could do so if he bent all of his will to the task.

So, if he could get control of some redcaps, he could send out the kobolds and goblins to hunt for him, and when they found someone, he could scry to see how suitable she was. Once he found the right vessel, he could send the redcaps to take her.

Once they brought her here, he would have to keep her bound in magical sleep in one of the unused rooms on this floor until he was ready. And that opened up another series of problems: There was a time limit to how long he could do that before his victim died of dehydration or became too weak to withstand the shock of being un-souled. So he would have to have everything prepared the moment she entered the house. He would get only one chance once he finally summoned Rebecca.

He groaned with sudden realization; that opened up yet
another
series of problems. Once Rebecca was bound into the vessel, how would he explain the presence of a strange woman here, one that just
appeared
in the upstairs rooms?

Problems piled on problems . . .

I shall not give in to such petty obstacles!
he swore to himself.
I will find a way! I—

The crowing of a rooster interrupted his thoughts, and he swung his head angrily in the direction of the sound. The window was open. The housekeeper must have done it, under some vague notion of “healthy fresh air.” Through it came not only the “fresh air” but also the infernal clamoring of roosters and birds. Furious at the interruption, he shuffled to the window and made to close it, when movement at the edge of the forest that bordered the dead lawns caught his attention.

A woman emerged from the forest, and for one moment he was paralyzed with shock.

Had her spirit at last answered his entreaty and returned?

His gaze flew to the calendar on the wall—he had lost track of time—but yes, it was Beltane, when the veil between the material and spirit worlds thinned and spirits could pass over. Could it—could it be, at last?

His hands clenched the windowsill so hard that his nails bit into the wood. He leaned forward, peering at that distant figure. But his impulse to shout a greeting was stilled by the realization that this was no spirit, but a very material and very mortal young woman.

Who? Who could this be? Who was the image of his beloved? Surely none of the little mudball farmers around here could have given birth to this dazzling beauty!

She headed in the direction of the Manor as if she had every right to be there, walking slowly but deliberately toward him. Instinctively he pulled back from the window, so that he could watch without being seen. The nearer she got, the more bewildered he became. She was so like—yet so unlike. This was not the Rebecca that had died in that bed in a room he never allowed anyone to open. This was the Rebecca he had first married, the young woman whose innocent body had not yet been awakened. Who
was
she?

Whoever she was, he
had
to get his hands on her without drawing attention or suspicion down on himself! This girl was the answer to every difficulty! She was
here,
she was the image of Rebecca, she was surely the right age, and from the threadbare condition of her gown, she was not someone anyone would miss. At least, not outside of this household, since from the way she acted, she belonged here.

Then she looked up, as if she sensed his stares. And it was then, when he saw eyes that were the color of his own and not Rebecca’s, that he realized there was only one person she could be.

This was his daughter. His despised, wretched daughter.

And that was when all the fragments of his plans tumbled into place.

This—was—perfect. Perfect in every possible way.

She was the right age, or soon would be. She was such a twin to her mother that Rebecca would awaken in the new shell and never realize what he had done. He would not have to kill his sacrifice, and thus, there would be no messy blood rites to alert the Elementals or Alderscroft’s wretched White Lodge.

And given the blood link between mother and daughter, he would be able to easily displace the girl’s soul and replace it with Rebecca’s.

Well, certainly,
technically
he would be killing his daughter, but who was she, anyway?

Nobody. Uneducated, no better than one of those lumps of servants. No one would miss her—or rather, it would be trivially easy to manipulate all this. All he need do would be to take a sudden interest in this girl. The housekeeper had been at him for decades to do just that. He wouldn’t need any messing about with sleeping spells or kidnapping, just a repentant father finally taking an interest in his daughter. Then, once the transformation was accomplished, he could—yes, he could take her away on a holiday. He would direct his solicitor to replace all the servants. When he returned, it would be not with a daughter but with a wife. There would be no one here who would know that the wife had been the daughter, and he rather doubted that anyone outside these grounds had ever seen her.

And this would be justice. The girl murdered her mother. It was only right that she be sacrificed to bring her mother back to life.

He closed the window, then, unable to restrain himself, broke into a shuffling little dance of joy.

T
HE Exeter Club was thought by the “smart set” and the Bright Young Things to be the stodgiest of gentlemen’s clubs in all of London—probably all of England—and perhaps even all of the Empire. Nothing about it had changed in a hundred years—except first the laying-on of gas and then electrification.

The doorman, Cedric, was a fixture himself; he’d been a steady daytime presence for as long as Peter had been a member, and Peter suspected that
his
father had been in place when Peter’s father first joined the club. With a respectful nod, Cedric held open the door for him; Peter gave him a little two-fingered salute and a half smile.

The paneled entryway gave out into the main Club Room, and it was here that the atmosphere of stodginess was most apparent. No hand had changed the interior in decades. The wallpaper remained the same—something Japonesque that Whistler, had he ever seen it, would surely have approved of. The furniture remained the same—prickly horsehair settees and spindly-limbed little chairs in the Visitor’s Dining Room (until recently, the only place in which females were permitted to set foot) and overstuffed leather monstrosities everywhere else. Though gas fires had replaced the coal-burning fireplaces in the Members’ rooms, the Club Room stubbornly retained its cheerful grate and firedogs, its carved mantle, and its coal and wood. Even the carpets were the same, brought back from Turkey by some globe-trotting member when Victoria was merely a princess. The menu in the Member’s Dining Room had not changed in decades either. And anyone looking into the Club Room and the Member’s Lounge could be pardoned if he got the impression that the old gentlemen in their dark suits drowsing behind their newspapers had been installed there as part and parcel of the furnishings.