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see-arcane-scribbles · 1 year ago

Text

Before the journal opened

Before it saved his life

Before Hell staked a claim

Before he swung his knife

A storm rolled in with the spring

And hope paved his long way

Through monsters and their red wants

He takes step one today.

WARNING: Contains some grisly imagery towards the end.

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Harker

C.R. Kane

March to April

Spring rolled in more grey than green that week. It dribbled rain through morning and noon, pondering to itself whether it would save an encore for evening in the way of a proper storm. The songbirds and the street noise went on as best they could between showers. They made up the only true din in Jonathan Harker’s corner, not counting the hammering of the typewriter or an occasional rustle of sheets. The usual low cacophony of the firm had been whittled down immensely due to the cough that had been shared at the start of the week and sent the greater part of Peter Hawkins’ small legion home to hack and sniffle in private.

This left Jonathan somewhat abandoned, not counting Hawkins’ presence behind the office door. It was just as well. He’d been splitting his attention between the eternal tower of logistical and legal chores that ruled his desk and the shorthand notes made in preparation for his exam. Such had been his constant state for the past two months. There had been ribbing from all directions, some bemoaning the imminent loss of a load-bearing clerk, others saying now they could draw lots and boot someone else out the door, and still more wheedling about whether or not they could still drag him in place as a shield when clientele of a certain incendiary temperament came around. Please?

Jonathan had remained ominously mum. Groans and lamentations ensued.

This was a joke, of course. Young Mr. Harker was nothing if not dedicated to the task of transmuting Hawkins’ charity to a whipcord child fifteen years prior into a proper investment. Case in point, using a lull in his own workload to get things in order for those bedridden solicitors who had the nearest deadlines pending. Bentley idled through with his tea as he did and shook his head.

“Don’t know what it is that comes with your kind, Harker, but it’s a busier thing that any of us idle English have. We’re down two thirds of the building and here you are doing three-quarters of the work. Get the examination out of the way and you may as well tell the old man to retire.” A thoughtful sip came from behind the porcelain. “Must be something they teach you Gurkha sorts, eh? Some kind of discipline our doughy little English schoolboys never get knocked in their heads.”

Jonathan weighed the decision of whether or not to give Arnold Bentley his bimonthly reminder that he was, in fact, English by birth. His parents as well. But the reminder would likely fall into the same pit between the man’s ears where all the others had gone. Worse, it might risk a tally mark against him in whatever invisible score was kept by peers. The one that determined whether the combination of Jonathan’s physiognomy and disposition really were enough to pardon his status or not. He finished this measuring of scales in less than a blink. A smile was summoned.

“Not at all. Just helping where things can be helped.” He straightened a sheaf of forms back in order. “That, and I cannot go a day without productivity, or else I shall have to go home and carve my hand with the kukri knife in penance.”

Bentley paused halfway through his laugh when Jonathan held his gaze. He gawped over his cup.

“God. Really?”

“No, not really. My penmanship would suffer terribly.”

This spurred a louder guffaw from the man, likewise a rattling clap of his open palm to Jonathan’s shoulder. Then he was out like a breeze to carry on with whatever it was he had drifted from in his own territory of the building. Jonathan resumed his interrupted rhythm. Read. Check. Write. Type. Read. Check. Write. Type. So he went for another hour before his watch told him it was time to check the post.

He stepped out during a lull of rain. The thunder talked with itself in the slate-dark clouds, debating whether or not to turn the spigot on the moment the wad of envelopes was out in the open. Jonathan applauded himself on dodging the first drops of the deluge by seconds. Peeking through the window, he saw there were even a few fitful winks of lightning hopping through the sky. What few pedestrians were left went running for shops they had no interest in, restaurants they had no appetites for, and cabs that turned frustratingly scarce within the minute. Jonathan grimaced in premonition of the dash he and Mina would have to make under the umbrella once she was free of her students.

But that was for later. For now, he flipped through the day’s heap and dealt them out to the waiting desks, occupied or not. The last in the stack was a familiar packet and one of extraordinary make. It was patterned with the stamps of myriad countries with ornate flourishes in the writing. A thick crimson seal sporting a rearing dragon marked it as the second delivery from the same foreign estate that had written to Hawkins in February. A castle set in the backdrop of the Carpathians.

Jonathan had felt his heart twist the first time he’d handled a parcel from the address and it twisted doubly hard now. There had been time in the interim to start combing through Exeter’s libraries for any beginning details to have ready should Hawkins want some background to aid one of the solicitors, especially in the case of a potential trip. If the latter came to pass, it would mean a visit to London and a perusal of denser material. A fine enough excuse to wander the superior bookcases and the British Museum on its own. But the luster of the errand was already gone in his mind. The first glimpse of the prospective client’s territory in the first book he’d cracked open, wrought in illustrations and sparse photographs as it was, sent a spear of longing through Jonathan’s chest that still hadn’t left.

Why would anyone living there want to trade such a place for England?

Jonathan was not oblivious to the advantages of the country. He understood his good fortune in access to modern works, from amenities to entertainments; at least in theory. With cautious budgeting. But all his life had been spent in cramped rooms or congested streets. The presence of a park, a farmer’s field, a distant beach, or a picturesque cemetery were the nearest he would ever come to the broad and chainless beauty of places not yet stomped flat with bricks and smoke.

Imagine! Meadows and hills, valleys and forests, all topped with the great serrated crown of the mountains. Cities and villages worn smooth with generations going back through centuries.

Imagine being there with her. Seeing sunrise flood over the peaks, walking old roads and footpaths, tasting and seeing and playing and breathing in a place without its laces drawn like a noose around throat and purse. The trains alone would be enough for her, true, but we would find somewhere to stop. Somewhere in every swatch of the countryside. At some point, as she became lost in a view, in a meal, in a walk, she would see me on my knee and what I held in my hand, and the wedding could happen right there in an ancient chapel, and then…

But the fantasy turned to dust before it could finish.

The required funds were cudgel enough to smash the whole daydream to atoms. At most they might manage a trip someplace other than their usual heights of hedonism. That was, a brief trip to Piccadilly and back. Maybe a bit of theatre. Possibly a picnic. Perhaps even some further place in the Isles. Somewhere rich with quiet and history of its own, but likely not across the Channel. Never a locale so far and mythic as the place Hawkins’ new client seemed interested in abandoning. Jonathan pictured Hawkins writing back to the noble on his behalf, wailing at the stranger not to forsake his fairy tale castle for the doldrums of a Londoner’s garish crate of a manse, no matter how crusted in filigree.

Save yourself! Do not trade your mountains for an English molehill! Turn back, turn back!

But that would be a poor way to run the firm, wouldn’t it? Resigned, he brought the packet to Hawkins’ office and knocked at the door.

“It’s open, Jonathan.”

Jonathan ducked in with his smile already nailed in place. It was an expression he now had to work at as recent months plodded on and Peter Hawkins’ complexion failed to improve. The man behind the broad desk was only half as rubicund as he’d been the year before. He had insisted to everyone who dared ask that he was merely suffering from a particularly ugly attack of gout and that he would be fine in a week or so. As it stood, Hawkins could still sit up straight and bellow thanks when Jonathan came by with his delivery. He even turned a shade ruddier upon seeing the dragon’s seal.

“Well now,” he said through a grin. He turned the packet over and pointed it at Jonathan. “Have you taken lunch?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Go on and fill up quick. If this is what I believe it is, I expect I’ll need your ear within the hour.”

So saying, Hawkins slit the packet open and began to read. Jonathan dismissed himself with his fingers crossed in his pocket. Perhaps the British Museum wasn’t too far off after all. That and the London libraries. It would be too brief a visit for anything more extravagant than what Lucy referred to as his and Mina’s ‘academic holidays,’ but it would make an interesting exercise just the same. Plotting the trip was a pleasant enough distraction to eat to.

He finished just as he heard the tell-tale grunt and shuffle that meant Hawkins was hefting himself up to trudge around his desk. Jonathan flew to the door first, only just recalling to swat his knuckles against the wood before opening it. Hawkins looked up with a shock before gratefully flopping himself back into his chair.

“You have a dog’s hearing and cat’s feet. Ought to have a bell on you to give an old man some warning.”

“Apologies.”

“Nothing to apologize for. Saved me dragging myself around unduly.” Hawkins thumped a hand on the desk as if patting a horse. “I suppose I need to throw this out and trade desks with you. I can make it past that little square of yours in no time.” He thought further on it. “Less than a minute, anyhow.” He made a face that couldn’t decide itself between a smile or a grimace. “My doctor, who only seems to tell me what I already know, declares that I am not fit for any arduous travel. In his terms, that includes going further than the street corner on foot. Even a train ride is apparently a gamble, being that I should be in bed resting and rotting like a good patient rather than hobbling my way to and from the cab to work. Already I press his orders and my luck. Which means this,” he held up an envelope, “is out of the question for me.”

Jonathan recognized the torn envelope and scarlet seal. What held him up was the recognition that it was the first of the two packets. The February delivery.

“That’s unfortunate. Who was the client?”

Hawkins grinned in earnest now, purposefully turning the envelope so that the address was hidden.

“You tell me.”

Jonathan offered half a smile back. It was an old game that had begun years ago when he was still just a bookish boy underfoot, helping around the office for whatever could be spared for a child’s wage. Even then his eyes had been hungry things.

“Count Dracula, from the castle of the same name, of Transylvania. The address is from a Bistritz postal service situated in the Carpathians.”

“True and true.” Hawkins set the envelope on the desk and tapped it with a thick finger. “Curious taste in property, this one. Likely has the cravings of a renovator. No trouble on our side but for the hunting. But the esteemed gentleman is so damnably far into the Continent that I couldn’t rightly offer myself up in the way he’s asking. I ought to say, the way he insists upon buying. The way our Count puts it, he would rather pay every fee of travel for his English solicitor to and from his keep in the mountains, and play host on top, rather than, he says, ‘Suffer bartering land through stationery.’ In short, he’s willing to ship a solicitor to his door rather than play at this back-and-forth for all his questions, all out of his own pocket. He wants someone who’s not just going to find and sell the manner of place he’s after, but someone who can play encyclopedia if he’s unsure of something.”

“Hence him being prepared to rent out the owner of the firm for an in-person visit,” Jonathan finished. Hawkins gave a nod.

“And the owner might have been up for it a decade or so ago. But time marches and gout outweighs gold. So I fear that leaves me out of the picture.” Jonathan watched Hawkins fold his hands with a calculated laxness on the desk. “Your examination is coming up.”

Lightning flickered outside. More danced across Jonathan’s brain.

“Yes, sir. It is.”

“You have been my clerk since you were old enough to rent a flat,” Hawkins went on. “My apprentice and professional living plaster to this place well before that.”

“Yes,” Jonathan breathed more than spoke. He feared his vocabulary was leaking out both ears while his heart tried to climb his throat.

“And,” Hawkins half-leaned over the desk, “you have been holding onto her ring since last year. Haven’t you?”

Heat rushed up to Jonathan’s face as he got out, “…Yes. I have. Sir, are you—,”

Hawkins brandished the packet Jonathan brought through the door an hour ago. This he laid beside the February envelope so that the pair of them seemed like strange square eyes staring up at him.

“I need you to understand: This is not an offer as much as a prayer. If there’s no chance with you, that means Bentley is the next choice. He’s my longest running man here and is liable to set up his own firm before the decade’s out. But for all that, and for all that he is a trustworthy one to patter with most Englishmen, I would sooner trust a cat with a lame canary than Bentley to not choke on his own tongue with a foreigner. Clients of noble lineage included. The man can barely toe his way around an Irishman let alone anyone from across the Channel. And, since the door is shut and no one is around to cry nepotism, I can speak the unvarnished truth.

“You could do with one week what anyone else here could manage inside a month and have it done better. That is not me being rosy about the past or present, that is me having eyes that work and a basis of comparison between how things ran before you began working here and after. The after is smooth as silk compared to the pre-Harker gravel. Stable gravel, I allow, but not nearly as easy a burden as things became once you were attacking the paperwork. And the footwork.” Hawkins raised a caterpillar brow at him. “Any good finds in the local bookshelves?”

“Not as many as I hoped,” Jonathan thought he heard himself say. It was hard to tell as he seemed to have relocated to some remote island in his skull and could only register what was happening as if from across an ocean. “I wanted to stop by the options in London if I had the chance. Just to gather some background on the client’s location if it was needed.”

“I’d say it is,” Hawkins hummed. “Supposing you can tell me you have your schedule open for some traveling come May.”

Jonathan told him it was. Hawkins told him to go to the corner cabinet and move the bust of Alexander off the high shelf. Then to bring down the bottle and two tumblers. There were toasts and there was talk and there was a laughing chide from the older man as he shooed Jonathan’s pocket notebook back from whence it came. No notes today, young man. At least not right now. Actually, perhaps one for later. Did he have time open to visit a tailor? There was a travel budget that was about to go unused if the Count was to have his way. It may as well go toward a good cause. Hawkins could hardly send his best solicitor to a noble’s door without looking his best, and it was for the firm’s image, really, so it could hardly be helped, and the doctor couldn’t grudge him such paltry exercise as going to harangue a suit seller…

Jonathan’s eyes burned and his face ached with smiling. He was mortified to find himself close to a sob before turning the sound into a coughing laugh. Hawkins told him to drink, not inhale. That turned the next sound into a true chuckle. He couldn’t tell whether it was an effect of the liquor or his own imagination that made it seem as if the thunder was laughing too.

“Transylvania,” Mina said for the dozenth time.

“Transylvania,” Jonathan echoed. He turned to face her rather than cling to the charade that either of them were focused enough to continue their mutual study. His pile included the texts that had come to haunt his subconscious with its rules and rites of property law, now with the hypnotic temptation of the library books waiting just an arm’s length away. Mina, who Jonathan knew was as much or more a pillar of solid focus than himself, had not a mote of attention to spare for the papers taken from the realm of educational etiquette or her personal project of mirroring and translating his shorthand. The latter made a certain gleeful anticipation turn over in his stomach. It left him floundering between elation and anxiety with equal force until he thought he might lose his last meal on the floorboards.

Which would be a shame, as he and Mina had combined their efforts into a delightful result in Jonathan’s narrow kitchen. Jonathan had only half-jokingly implied that they were making a child’s ideal feast because he was, in fact, giddy as a boy who’d just shaken hands with Father Christmas. Mina had declared this was nonsense.

“A supper made of breakfast is an entirely sound culinary decision.”

“Yes, Miss Murray,” in his best schoolboy tone. “Did you want crêpes or toast?”

“Crêpes. Extra cream.”

They had giggled like children over their respective plates. Just as they did over the rapidly ignored chores they had planned for themselves after. It was the frightful intoxication of feeling the future unrolling into a new smiling mystery before them. One that whispered, yes, yes, this is real, this is coming true. A future that might include…

Jonathan gulped down a heavy lump of air as his gaze flicked again to the sheet of shorthand messages he had scribbled out for her to translate. She had stopped halfway through. Close, close, close. But he didn’t let his stare linger. Instead he found her face again, still glowing. Jonathan was forever surprised that he had not dreamt her up as a boy and continued dreaming her until now. It surprised him more that he had managed to earn her love and dumbfounded him entirely to think that she regarded herself in the same terms. More, that she insisted she was the luckier half of their equation. He did not follow her meaning then, nor did he think he ever would.

“Mina, anyone with a sliver of sense in their head would feel the same for you,” he had insisted more than once. Each time she had smiled and shaken her head. Her eyes forever bright with a sweet-somber knowledge he couldn’t decipher.

“There is plenty of sense to spare. Loving hearts as well. But there is a different lens that women see the world through and it shows things men shall never have to see. It shows so much to watch for. To be wary of, or to hope for, or to know not to expect because life has made it clear that so much of what’s dreamt of only exists for a few, while the rest make do with storybooks and stage plays.” Her hand had held tight in his. “You were not meant to exist outside the borders of a fairy tale, Jonathan Harker. That you cannot see as much for yourself makes me wonder if someone really did peel you off a page and if you will vanish back to a fair princess somewhere when I wake up.”

“That implies I am either a prince or some clever farmhand. I’m cut out for neither. I am a squire at best. Though I would not settle for a mere princess either way, however fair.” He had dared a grin at her. “Or have you already forgotten Mrs. Westenra’s unique stance on the matter?”

Memory had nettled Mina out of her glumness with a sputter that tried and failed not to turn into shamefaced laughter. She had improved somewhat in the years since the incident itself, back when the whole ring of persons involved had flamed with embarrassment over the misunderstanding of Jonathan’s presence when spotted with Miss Lucille Westenra and her companion Miss Mina Murray now that all of them had stretched out of childhood and into the far end of adolescence. Followed by the ensuing inquiry as to why Mr. Harker had been baffled at the very concept of seeking to gain Miss Westenra’s affection as anything more than a friend.

Jonathan remembered sitting in one of the gilded rooms of the Westenra estate, sat across from Lucy’s increasingly rose-faced mother as she came to the belated realization that Mina Murray’s young man was not trying to court anyone other than Mina Murray. Worse, it had been left on his shoulders to steer the conversation out of potential wreckage by thanking his hostess for clearly being concerned on Mina’s own behalf, as there were too many people in the world who took the notion of seeking out a secret paramour behind another’s back as a matter of course. He was heartened to know that Mrs. Westenra cared enough to be mindful should an actual cad come into the orbit of her daughter or her friends.

Still flushed, Mrs. Westenra had chased agreement in this, poured on apologies for the mistake and had thankfully never brushed the topic since. Though Lucy had words enough to spare on the matter for months afterward. She had languished at them in the garden about it, the image of woe in peach blossom tailoring.

“Jonathan, I fear we must become enemies,” she’d intoned gravely. “You must walk with a cane in hand and I must brandish my parasol so that we keep our distance and never risk breathing the same air. We cannot even deafen poor Mina’s ears with the Bard or eavesdroppers will take us knowing the lines of Hamlet and Ophelia as proof of a tryst. Perhaps we should go around with our hats pulled down over our eyes, lest we give into temptation and acknowledge each other’s existence while being the opposite sex. It is our only chance of salvation.”

“Miss Lindon again?” from Mina, her smile placid. Jonathan knew she wore the same callused shell he did when it came to the patter that trickled down from higher tiers than theirs. Those tiers were many and their squabbles almost alien in what they deemed worth sniping about behind their fans and cigars. The infamous Miss Lindon was apparently a thorn too serrated even for Lucy’s compassion to withstand.

“Very much Miss Lindon again. ‘He would just do for you, Lucy.’ As though she thought I would be doing a charity by going behind my friend’s back and she were doing a charity by her sneering compliment. At least nature was kind enough to spare me having to think of a similarly charitable rebuttal, as a beetle helpfully flew into her hair a moment later and she went running. One must take silver linings when they come. Unrelatedly, Jonathan, when you do become a solicitor in full, should Miss Lindon and her future beau ever approach you for a house..?”

“I shall do what I can to find them a lovely estate,” Jonathan assured. “In Northumberland.”

“Next door to an entomologist?” Mina asked over her cup.

“Of course.”

Jonathan blinked the recollection away, wondering whether it was the dizziness of the day or the ticking of the clock between Mina and the final line of shorthand that was making his mind slosh. Perhaps it was simply the subconscious’ effort to dodge the weight of the evening and what it might promise. His thoughts were fleeing to hide from hope and worry. But Mina knew him too well. She caught him with her eyes before pulling him back into the headiness of the present.

“You will do fantastically, Jonathan. Tell me you know it as well as I do.”

“I will not say I know it. Too much confidence risks laziness. I will only say that I shall give all of myself to the task. It must be done so it will be done. If I think any further than that simple fact, my head will burst.”

“If you do, I promise to sweep you up and put your pieces back in order.” Her smile softened an increment as her hand settled in his. “I mean it.” She squeezed. He squeezed back.

“The same goes for you. We are neither of us allowed to hold ourselves together with string and brittle smiles once the door is between us and,” Jonathan flapped his free hand at the rain-streaked window, “all of that. No acting when it’s us alone.” He flashed her a decidedly less-than-brittle smile. “I promise not to tattle to your girls.”

“You were bad enough today, Mr. Harker. Half the classes were watching.” Her voice tutted, but the grin showed in her eyes. Jonathan had arrived at the school with the umbrella in one hand and a bouquet in the other. A bundle of her beloved lilies that he’d used as a screen behind which to steal a kiss and drop the announcement of Hawkins’ assignment in her ear. Forgetting her audience, Mina had kissed him back, forgetting to mask herself behind the petals. They had absconded to the cab to the sound of a dozen girls cooing their farewells, Miss Murray, see you tomorrow, Miss Murray, has he got a brother, Miss Murray?

“Hardly a terrible thing. If you are one of their examples, mustn’t they have something to look forward to at the end of all their practice?” He assumed a pose of scheming innocence, lashes batting. “I could be especially nefarious come Valentine’s Day. Take a holiday from Hawkins and show up toting chocolates and train tickets and a florist’s worth of flowers.”

“You will do no such thing.”

“I can hire an orchestra to follow us around. Have them play waltzes the whole day.”

“Jonathan.”

“No, of course, an orchestra would be too cumbersome. A singer and a violin, perhaps. I can hire a paperboy to throw rose petals after us. Or else I could send them up to the classroom to follow you in procession out of the building…”

The typewriter hammered back to life. Its keys were struck with more force than they needed.

“Sorry,” Mina sang above the din, “no hearing you over this. You will have to be a foul minion of Eros a little louder.” Jonathan bit his tongue against a reply. Yes, she was typing again. Yes, she was reading the last of the shorthand. Tap-tap-tap, clack-clack-clack. So far it was all the lines of a love note—a common enough surprise, if one that fished more than the usual dimpled grin out of her tonight—and she had not caught on yet to the conclusion. “How long will the client need you over there?”

“Between the travel to the estate, the stay, and the return trip, the whole thing should be over within early May. I shall have time to hoard you a while before you and Lucy have your summer escape to the coast. Was it Whitby?”

“Yes, quite near the landmark Abbey. I mean to harass the townspeople with demands for any ghost stories they might spare about the place. Perhaps Marmion is but a single drop in a sea of waiting legends.”

Tap-tap-tap.

“Then I shall try to collect what I can abroad in turn,” Jonathan said from behind a fan of notes. He kept only the corner of his eye pinned on the swimming lines. “There should be spirits in abundance along the route.”

Clack-clack-clack.

“I would think so. But don’t settle for ghosts alone! I shall happily adopt any devils or revenants or folkloric fiends the locals can share—,”

Her voice died mid-key.

Jonathan looked over the top of his pages. Mina sat frozen as a sculpture. Her hands still hovered at the typewriter, lax and immobile. But her eyes were in motion. Flicking back, forward, and back again between Jonathan’s shorthand and the five words they had translated to in plain ink.

Will you marry me, Wilhelmina?

By the time she finally turned her head back to face him, he was already on the floor, swift and silent at her hip. The box sat open in his hand. Set inside was a petite gold band whose stone gleamed like a fleck of starlight.

Mina looked from the ring to its holder with eyes that were already spilling.

“Yes,” Jonathan heard a dozen, a hundred times in the ensuing night. Yes, yes, yes, a thousand, a million times, yes. Between kisses, between tastes, between touches and takings that skirted the furthest edge of propriety between unmarried bodies. Yes.

“We are engaged. We must prepare for the wedding night as one must study ahead of an examination. Isn’t that right, Miss Murray?”

“It is, Mr. Harker.” Then, furtive despite her position over him, she grew a smile both shy and sly. A lure surrounded by the hanging curtain of her hair, “…Can you say it? For practice’s sake.” He did not have to ask her meaning.

“Mina Harker.”

Her teeth bared in a white moon.

“I didn’t quite hear you. Say again?” As she asked, her hand moved. He gasped in the trap of it.

“My pronunciation must be off. How is this?” His own hand moved. Her eyes went wide and dark. “Mina Harker. Mina Harker. Mina Harker.”

More practice unspooled. Harker, husband, wife, I do, I will. Around and around again until their tongues ran dry and they were left folded into the tangle of each other, their last fig leaf still reserved for the nuptial night itself. As midnight rolled past, the storm slipped off with it and left the moon to throw its rays through the edges of the curtains. Mina’s ring trapped its glow on her knuckle. He almost wept to look at it.

Real. This is real. I am awake and this is real. God, God. Thank you.

“Thank you,” he murmured into the top of her head. Her hair massed into a perfect curling cloud under his chin. The cloud tickled there as she lifted her gaze to him.

“For what?”

“You know.”

“If I must say, ‘You’re welcome,’ so must you.” Jonathan held his tongue. “Exactly.” Her hand cupped his cheek as she went on, “I feel much the same. Like a lottery was won and the prize is an unfair gift by dint of how precious it is compared to the recipient. By how that prize refuses to acknowledge their own value. But there is time yet to filter that all down into something better. We will have our vows to smother each other with and neither of us will be able to shush and insist, no, no, I am the luckier one. All while the pews roll their eyes. For tonight I ask that we have a truce. No deprecation, no hoisting onto pedestals. Just for now, we will pretend we each feel equal to the blessing of the other. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Good.” Mina lifted herself high enough to find his lips with hers. “I love you, Jonathan.”

“I love you, Mina.” He mouthed the words to himself long after she had fallen asleep atop his heart. I love you, Mina. I love you, Mina Murray. I love you, Mina Harker. I love you. Thank you.

Jonathan faced the covered window and the sliver of pane visible at the cloth’s edge. He spotted the moon hovering in a split among the breaking rainclouds. As sleep finally found him, he could not shake an unpleasant certainty that he was looking at a great glowing eye. And that it was staring back.

Jonathan discovered Carfax Abbey on a clear blue day. His immediate impressions of the place ran in quick succession. First, that the location was so precise in its accommodation of Count Dracula’s specifications that it might have been commissioned. Second, that it looked like a place meant only to exist after dark on a sinister moor. This remained true despite the brilliance of spring stubbornly budding along the edge of its high stone fence.

He sent back a late thanks to himself as he’d been that morning, when he had tossed a coin on whether or not to bring the Kodak with him for the day’s hunt. Though the cab would be trusted to take him to the general area, it would be down to more literal footwork to inspect the properties he hoped to survey as far as he could without increasing the fare. Which would not bother him too much if he were going light. He did have a fondness for a run when it could be gotten away with sans pedestrians. But there would be no jogging with the camera to mind. Only a steady trudge.

Yet even that predicted march was trimmed down to a mere amble by dint of the cabman��s suggestion. He had heard out Jonathan’s description of his ideal quarry and first assumed him to be a tourist who’d gotten lost in a search for haunted houses.

“The area hasn’t much in that way, lad. Only place that comes close is old Carfax. Used to be an abbey, but looks more like a hideaway for the Dark Ages’ ghouls.”

“Do you know if it’s for sale?” This had earned him an odd look before the cabman admitted he had seen a sign staked out front that might have claimed the place was available. Supposing one cleared away the accumulated grime.

“I have to wonder if your buyer will bother with such a place. Ghosts can be dealt with, but it has more unsavory living neighbors to deal with.”

“Who are they?”

“Can’t say I know them personally, thank God, but I know for certain they’re perfectly mad.”

“Really?”

“Well, they’d not be in a private madhouse otherwise.”

The cab passed said lunatic asylum en route to the site. Jonathan was happy to note that it was at least a stately building, clearly a former domestic estate that had been expanded into suitable proportions for the inmates and staff. Better still, it was so far from Carfax as to be invisible through the facility’s wall of tended trees even when standing outside the latter’s stonework border.

Seeing the composition of said fence’s rough stones had plucked at Jonathan’s boyhood itch for play. If it were not for the cabman as a witness, he might have clambered his way up and walked along the edge as he’d done around his aunt’s home before he was declared too old for such nonsense. Still musing, Jonathan thanked the man again for the find and paid for the ride, promising another fare if he would return in an hour’s time. The cabman hesitated even after he had taken the first half of the pay.

“You’re certain you’d rather not go up the whole road first? There aren’t many houses, but they’re each of them empty and all far less a stain on the eye than that evil heap of rocks.”

“Do any of the rest have a chapel attached?”

“Don’t believe so. But if your buyer’s so keen on his prayers he ought to make do with a trip to church like the rest of us.”

“I imagine he means to refurbish it for that very purpose.” Jonathan offered a smile. “I’m certain whatever spirits might be lurking will have to clear out once he’s put the place in order.”

“Or torn the bloody thing down,” the cabman muttered not quite under his breath. He huffed and checked his watch. “An hour, you said? Just to wander around the place?”

“To wander here and across the neighboring grounds. I need to take note of the full landscape as well as the estate.” The cabman snorted at this in time with his horse.

“I hope your buyer is paying what you’re worth, lad. Any more on his list and he’d have you mapping out all of Purfleet to be sure it suits his fancy.” When the cab pulled away Jonathan began the photography. As much as he could manage from outside the fence. But then, because there were no witnesses, and because there was no way of opening the gate without ruining the rusted lock, and because it really wouldn’t be a thorough survey of the property without a glimpse of things on the inside of the towering stone walls, Jonathan shouldered his bag and scaled the rock as blithely as a spider.

He landed in the shade under one of the sundry trees that crowded the interior grounds. Jonathan marveled at how the trees’ shadows and that of the hulking abbey combined to hold a permanent dusk in place. So much so that it was a challenge to find any well-lit spots in which to take pictures without losing details. Up close the chapel was no less imposing than the abbey. It stood apart in its overgrown gothic solitude while the abbey puffed itself out with late additions to the structure. Jonathan made a note to reserve some pictures for Mina once he’d set aside an album for the Count. Sadly there was no letting himself indoors without becoming a full intruder, and so he satisfied himself with touring the rest of the land. A tour he was happy to make at a run.

The camera and his bag were set carefully aside with the chapel to manage this—for he must manage it, seeing as the grounds seemed to cover no less than twenty acres—and sent another belated thanks to his morning self for donning more active shoes than his workplace pair. While the place was no forest, it was an easy enough copse to imagine as such. A private patch of woodlands in which he had no one to be mindful of on a trail or blush over as they gawked at him, wondering what his hurry was. Here the exercise even bore fruit in the form of revealing a pond set at the estate’s southern end. A pool clear with spring water and trickling a faint stream through a grate into denser growth beyond the rear gates. Another run and a returning walk ensured this too got its photograph.

It was as he took these pictures that he saw the place even had some refreshment in the way of brambleberries snarling their way along the masonry. They were still some months away from being in season, but the desire to steal a piece of their thorny nest to plant his own shrub gnawed. At least until he reminded himself it would be hopeless with his current lodging. A mint tin of a flat slotted wall-to-wall with the rest of the street. Mina’s was worse still, he knew. When they married, they would pool their funds to find somewhere with a little girdle of a garden around it. Or else they would have window-boxes to grow things for the kitchen. Or both. Just a wedge of greenery to tame and taste for themselves.

For now, he satisfied himself with adding it to the marital itinerary and took out his notebook to jot the impressions of Carfax Abbey as he had for half a dozen other estates, all of them falling short on one preference or another. Too new, too near to the hub of a city, too compact, too bright, and, most damning, not a single chapel to spare among them. At least, none that were not in use by the general public. He would likely run around for another couple weeks to check on other prospective options, but he held little hope for a finer match than Carfax.

Carfax, Carfax. I wonder…

The notebook was tucked away in exchange first for his watch, which showed he’d somehow burned only twenty minutes, and then a compass. A minor note from the Count had mentioned a desire to have, ‘an open sky with which to see all the night and day, the dusks and dawns, without men’s brick and smoke in their way.’ Jonathan could not fault such a wish and so had brought the compass to see if he might happen upon a house with the view clear for the east’s sunrise and the west’s sunset. The compass revealed he had done even better with the abbey.

‘Carfax.’ Quatre Face. A four-sided house with its walls facing the four cardinal directions. All clear of any rooftops and their belching chimneys. I’m sure it will please you, Count.

The thought sank his joy like a stone. Jonathan looked again at the abbey. Haunted and a relic of dead centuries, true, but a place of dignity and grand dimensions all the same. A voice rose up in him with smiling malice as he stared at it.

You will never have such space. You will never have a home so broad that Mina can have rooms all for herself and more for the daydream of children. You will live close to all the fruits of a metropolis, as near as the gutters themselves, and only ever know what it is to skim them, to borrow them, to daydream without laying your lesser hands on them except to use them for another. You will have neither the sprawling beauty of nature or the boons of modernity. Not for your entire life, Jonathan Harker.

And, because he could not stop the flow once it was running:

She should have found someone better. Someone with more than your scraps to offer.

He ground the heel of his palm against each eye until they dried.

“What would she say?”

Something kind you do not deserve.

Jonathan shook his head and marveled at the paradox that still found its way to nettle him even with the ring on her finger. Perhaps because of it. It was the miserable uncertainty of the hours preceding his examination turned up a hundredfold. Time, experience and evidence all stood in favor of him passing his tests on the professional and romantic fronts, yes, yes, he knew it…

…But what if he didn’t? What if he had somehow fooled himself and Mina and Hawkins and peers and the world itself into thinking he was more than what he was? What if?

What if you stop wallowing and get out before the cab returns?

Jonathan stopped long enough to skip a stone across the pond before following his route back to where he’d clambered over the wall. With half an hour to spare, he began walking at a healthy gait across the spread of land between the abbey and the asylum. If only to say he knew how many paces it was between the properties. One, two, three, four, five…

The pacing turned irregular once he had to cross through the border of trees that stood for a property line between Carfax and its company. Jonathan was stunned to discover there was no proper fence hidden behind the picturesque rows. Only a walled and gated section at the rear of the asylum that suggested an area for outdoor excursion or perhaps a private kitchen garden. He hoped it was the former. Even the insane needed leave to stretch their legs beyond the borders of a cell. As he mulled this, he heard a shout. It sounded like it held the weight of every expletive known to the English tongue and several more beyond it.

Following this was the same livid voice grating seemingly out of thin air, “Idiot! Fool! One damned page and you do this?” Jonathan heard a clatter of hollow things against a wall. “Imbecile!” He stepped fully beyond the wall of trees and saw the voice’s owner pacing back and forth inside a barred window set at the foot of the asylum’s wall.

“Sir? Are you alright?” Jonathan was almost as surprised as the man in the window to realize he had not only spoken, but come closer. There was an instant in which the man tensed. The picture of one who’s realized someone of influence has caught them in a bad moment. Yet upon actually seeing Jonathan and recognizing his lack of import, he relaxed enough to smile. Albeit sourly.

“Apart from this most inconvenient stint of homemaking, courtesy of concerned friend and kin, I am quite fine, young man. Ebullient, ecstatic, elated.” The polite rictus hardened. Jonathan thought queasily of wild dogs. “Apart from the fact that I have lost the last of my stationery to an overfilled glass. My cup runneth over. My cup ruins days of work and turns the remaining space to so much waste. Just look!”

The man thrust something up to the gaps in the bars, stopping just short of throwing the spoiled pinch of paper out onto the grass. For it was spoiled. Jonathan saw the stationery was really little more than a large cut of butcher paper folded and refolded until it made a sort of accordion-book. The whole thing was so waterlogged that Jonathan could barely tell tally marks from letters as the crayon bled together and the pages sagged.

“Ruined,” the man punctuated with what was either a sneer or a sulk. “At best I can try to mash and dry the thing out as a new sheet. But the stuff was already muddy enough to write on and I shall have to reduce myself to the penmanship of an infant with the bluntest marks just to make anything legible. And I had just started to make progress.” He cocked his gaze more fully at Jonathan. His look was one accustomed to giving brisk appraisal. “If you are a journalist, you are quite tardy with your pen. You’ve not even set up your camera’s tripod to record the travesty.”

“I am no journalist, unfortunately,” Jonathan admitted as he unearthed his notebook. “But at least that leaves some of this to work with, if you’re amenable.” Covering the shorthand of the last full page, he showed the man in the window the remaining blank sheets. Not a great many pages left, and certainly not of impressive size considering it was a pocketbook, but it would be a fair amount of writing space for a careful script. The man’s expression did not change, but his eyes brightened.

“I may be. Supposing I know the price at the other end of such a trade.”

“No price, sir. You would do me a kindness in taking it as I shall have to start a fresh one for another project soon. The predecessor would be left unfinished and forgotten in the meantime.”

“Ah, a worse fate than a journalist. An author. How many poor diaries have you left abandoned in their pretty bindings for the sake of a new volume?” The man clicked his tongue through a grin. “I jest, of course. You do not seem the sort to waste what he has.” The grin, still genuine, flattened an increment. Bloodshot eyes gleamed. “I fear I wasted a great deal of what I once thought mine on the other side of these delightful accommodations. Never make such a mistake as mine, young man. Do not doubt for an instant that what you trust today cannot turn on you tomorrow.”

“I won’t, sir.” Jonathan thought of adding that he had lived under that knowledge since the day he attended the funerals which ended his childhood. He swallowed it back. “May I..?” He held the notebook up, his shorthand sheets pinched between thumb and forefinger.

“I would be most grateful.”

Jonathan tore his filled pages neatly out. The remaining clean pages were barely thicker than a pamphlet, but clung sturdily to the little spine. Jonathan knelt low enough to lay it within reach on the grass. He noticed a small dusting of white powder at the window’s edge. A crowd of ants whittled away at the mound.

“Ants,” the man scoffed as he followed Jonathan’s line of sight. “Pitiful company. I had hoped the thaw would bring in something heartier. Flies, ladybugs, perhaps some early butterflies. But the real trouble is keeping them around. Ah, apologies, might you bring it a little closer?” The man raised his forearms into view. “I haven’t the best angle from where I stand.” Jonathan scooped up the notebook and brought it an inch nearer.

The man’s hands were abruptly out through the bars and clapped around Jonathan’s. Tight. Short of hurting, short of breaking, but locked as firmly as a vise. Jonathan tensed without pulling back. Again he thought of wild dogs. Of things that only seemed to be dogs until they closed in. Creatures that chased once they saw something run.

Jonathan was still. The man was still. Grasping Jonathan’s hand and the notebook in a pantomime prayer.

It’s my left hand. Smart enough for that, at least. I can still do my paperwork with the right intact and the other broken. Will the fingers heal in time for Mina to slip the band on? How mortifying to have to explain it all to her. I wonder if the asylum would make up a cast without charging for it…

“There is no need to shake upon it, sir,” Jonathan heard himself say. “The book is yours.” The man regarded him with less of a smile now. His lip still curled, but it seemed only to hold on by sheer will. It dropped entirely with the gust of a sigh.

“The book and a lack of tact, I fear. Even if I were not mad, I would still be a churl.” The hands relaxed and a set of fingers drummed once on the back of Jonathan’s wrist. “Though I suspect you are a soul used to them. I would tell you to be more wary on your way, but it is only a simpleton of a preacher who would bother teaching his flock wariness in a world where they must interact each day with wolves. Though I will advise that it is rather foolish to go around making conversation with confirmed lunatics up close. I am confirmed, you know. The facts are printed and signed all over by professionals. I saw the document myself.” The man’s look floated away from Jonathan and into a distance he couldn’t guess at. “Printed on far finer paper than what we settle for.”

One of the gripping hands came away, leaving only the one folded over the notebook and Jonathan’s palm. They shook. The notebook was collected in the same gesture.

“My thanks,” from the window.

“Quite welcome,” as Jonathan righted himself. He surprised himself with his own steadiness. The rote pitch of the office and a life’s worth of reflex steered his tongue while mind, heart, and stomach rattled where they hid. Because he had to do something with his freed hand rather than clasp it in its brother, he fished out his watch. Only now did a ripple of worry manage to rise to his face.

“Some trouble?”

“I fear I may have lost my ride.”

“You came from the by-road, yes? It hardly sees traffic. If your driver’s gone on without you, go around the front here and see if you cannot bribe our beloved head doctor into lending out the wagon. Just say you have managed to wring a whole quarter of an hour’s worth of nattering from his friend R.M.”

“R.M.?”

“Short for Mr. Rig R. Mortis.” The man chuckled at Jonathan’s look. “Pseudonym, young man. Can hardly have the family being shamed under my real title. He will know who you mean. Though I do hope you manage your ride instead.” With that, the man ducked back from the window and was gone. Jonathan had made it three strides away when the voice called behind him, “Here!” Something small struck the back of Jonathan’s heel. He turned and saw gold winking up at him. A sovereign. “It is not payment. You are merely ensuring the attendant who lost it when I had my last room search never gets it back.”

“Sir—,”

But the window was already abandoned. Jonathan picked the coin up. It was partially obliterated on one end, erasing part of Victoria’s face and the rider on the reverse. This was because the edge had been ground to a sharp edge that nicked his thumb open as he turned it over. Blood smeared Saint George, his steed, and the dragon hissing up at the sword and hooves.

Cold fingers seemed to walk up his spine as he examined it. Shaking the chill away, he tucked the coin in his pocket alongside the notebook’s harvested pages and dashed back the way he’d come. He made it to the waiting cab just as it was pulling up to the gate.

“Well, lad? Is it what your buyer’s after?”

“I believe so.” Jonathan smiled as he said it and held the expression admirably until the cabman turned his gaze back to the road. He gloved his hands despite the balmy weather, sheathing his thumb as it traced the thin impression of the cargo sitting against his breast.

“If you keep up with that you shall tear the whole cheek off,” she said at his shoulder. “You are awake, I promise.”

Jonathan stopped pinching at himself and split his attention between Mina’s face and the clock’s. The magic circle of Roman numbers seemed to shake a phantom head. No, it said, not yet. But soon.

“This is happening, then?” he asked as he turned fully to Mina. Mina, here at the last moment together until mid-May. Mina, wearing the ring he had saved a year for on her finger. Mina, who had clasped and kissed and kept him from collapsing outright in stupefied relief upon the announcement that he had passed his examination, her fiancé now a solicitor. Mina, who held his hand and kept him from floating off through the ceiling and into the sky. “This is really happening? Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.” Jonathan’s eye traveled to her neck and the glimpse of a cord peeking from her shirt collar. She caught him and spared her free hand to tuck it out of sight. “Just as I am sure you will not fly off with my treasure, you magpie.”

The treasure being Jonathan’s own plain gold band now worn as a necklace. He had been the one to slip it over her head the night before, mesmerized by the soft shine as it landed over her heart. It was done by mostly mutual agreement. Mina wished to hold a scrap of tradition close and leave his hand bare until they reached the chapel. And, though Jonathan suspected this was mere theatre, she said she wished to hold onto it as proof to herself that she was awake and that the engagement was a reality. Besides, it was practical! If he were wearing the cord on his trip, what if he should lose it in any number of countries as he traveled? It was one thing to risk forgetting it at the office or leaving it at home. Quite another to imagine losing it in a hotel in another nation. Even with all this logic at her disposal, Jonathan donned his best moue. Mina covered it with her hand.

“That is unfair.”

“I am not above unscrupulous tactics, Mrs. Harker.”

“Like trying to break me by calling me Mrs. Harker?”

“Possibly.”

“Well, you are foiled. My will is too great.” She brought her hand away to brush a strand of hair from his brow. “There is no need to scheme anyway. You shall have the thing back soon enough.”

Jonathan pretended not to hear the slight tremor at the word ‘soon.’ Yes, it was only a few weeks’ separation. A month at most if there were delays in train or coach. But even in this zenith of excitement, knowing unequivocally that this was where their future began—a future where they were taking their first steps up rather that walking the same flat circle in the dust—it felt strangely like waiting to leap into a chasm. A gorge that required endless paperwork to keep track of, plus what was required for the travel itself. Documentation, letter of credit, passport, polyglot dictionary, and, carefully packed, the first new suit he’d had in three years.

Mina had insisted on his modeling it before packing it away. After, she declared she must send a letter of gratitude to not only Mr. Hawkins, but to the tailor. They would have to see him again about the suit for the wedding. Lucy had already written back in response to Mina’s last letter with the announcement, erupting with insistence that, while she was not the sort of girl to live and die by fashion plates, she wanted to know the very instant she began hunting for a dress.

In the present, however, the only new attire was the coat Jonathan wore. A companion piece Hawkins had insisted join the suit before Jonathan could escape the tape measure. Jonathan’s hand drifted up to one of its pockets now and found it unexpectedly light. Worry spiked for a moment before his mind caught up to what it was he’d been feeling for. He almost laughed. Mina canted her head at him, searching. She never missed even the most minute shift behind his eyes.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Only I’ve realized I was so adamant about packing everything for the needs of the trip and the client that I forgot the one item I meant to bring solely for me.”

“Your books?”

“No, the law texts are there. A bit of Dumas as well. But I have forgotten my book.” He offered a bashful smile. “Ours, I mean. For your assignment.”

Her brow furrowed a moment before she recalled, “The journal?”

“Yes. I meant to grab one of the spare pocketbooks from my desk, but it’s not in its place. Maybe I bundled it in the case without thinking.” If not, he could shave out a little of his emergency budget for something en route to the castle. But Mina was beaming at him.

“An ordinary pocketbook might suffice for a clerk, but not a solicitor. Especially not when I’ve held onto this since you turned your back to peruse the dictionaries two months back.” She brought out her reticule as she spoke. From the reticule came a slim leatherbound volume with supple pages made to resist the traitorous smudges and tears of its precursor’s flimsy leaves. The whole thing was tied with a white ribbon that pinned a matching pen to its cover. “All shorthand. Promise?”

“Promise,” Jonathan nodded as he took the book gingerly from her hand. It fit so perfectly in the coat that it failed to even dent cloth. “Though I don’t believe the same applies to the recipes. Which I shall collect in abundance and inflict upon us both once I return. Is there anything specific you want me to bring back?”

“You know my tastes already.”

“Other than the cuisine, I mean.”

“Nothing comes immediately to mind. A good story or two would be nice, but,” again her hand found his face, cupped against the angle of his cheek, “as long as you come back, I will be satisfied.”

“I suppose that can be managed.”

The clock tolled and the call went out to the station. All aboard, come along. Mina’s eyes flicked with brief wonder to the train itself. Locomotives and their railways had been one of her chief interests for as long as Jonathan had known her. She regarded her copy of Bradshaw’s Guide with the same reverence as some did their Bible, to say nothing of the clipped articles she had collected concerning new routes and models being laid out within various countries. In sum, Mina loved the practicality and potential of trains. To her they were proof that their world was not limited by whether or not they could hail a hansom or how far it was willing to take them. But now her smile dimmed.

“It had better bring you back on time,” she said as they walked arm and arm up to his car. “I shall be standing in this very spot with my watch out.”

“I’ll warn the conductor.” Because they were among strangers, she had allowed him to hold her arm rather than the reverse. He gave a gentle squeeze first to her arm, then her hand. The lump of the stone stood out under her glove. “If it runs late, I will simply run ahead.” Her laugh did little to hide the dew in her eyes. It matched the mist in his. Their hands held tight.

In that moment, an absurd impulse leapt up in him. An animal-twitch of fear that went deeper than mere anxiety, deeper than love, deeper than concern of career or separation or wandering in unknown lands. It was the needling of a sense he had no name for. A thing that smelled or heard or tasted some imperceptible sign that bodily and mental awareness refused to acknowledge. It whispered:

Do not go. Do not do this. Go home. Go now. Before it’s too late.

The whisper froze him. Mina appeared to freeze with him. Her eyes reflected a feverish glimmer of his own disquiet. They stood locked in that second like a hart and doe with their ears pricked toward a huntsman’s tread in the wood.

But then they blinked. Mina’s gaze lightened and the uncanny sensation left Jonathan as quickly as it came. Only a shudder of nerves disguised as a portent. Really, he could hardly bow to it even if it had meant anything beyond a hiccough of his own fretting. Fact outweighed fear and the fact was he had a job to do. A job that began here, now, with the release of Mina’s hand so he might grab his other bag from her.

Thus unburdened, Mina abruptly trapped his face between her palms. Jonathan bent down until his mouth met hers. Here was the plush press of her lips on his, feeling so much like a reverie he thought once again that he must be asleep. He would wake any moment and the fantasy would fall away into foam. Now. Now.

“Now, I don’t mean to intrude, but there is a train waiting. I’m afraid you must save the rest of the young man for his return trip.” They both snapped up at once to see the uniformed man at Jonathan’s back. He was eyeing them with a look that spoke of a career forever encumbered with similar scenes. The man peered at Jonathan over his spectacles. “You are boarding?”

“Yes, sir. Apologies.” But an apology not even fractionally meant. He turned back to Mina who now steamed from the neck up as she avoided the gawking of an older couple taking in the show. The wife gestured at the sight of them, muttering something in a tone of mingled mirth and query in her husband’s ear, to which the husband rolled his eyes. Jonathan spared them only a mote of attention. “Mina.” She looked to him. “I love you. I’ll be back soon.”

“I love you, Jonathan. I’ll be right here.”

He found his seat at the window and did not turn his head away from the glass. Not while the train idled. Not while it pulled away in its hiss and puff of turning wheels. Not while Mina stood there waving after him, her feet tugging her forward a few unconscious steps so that she might see his window longer while he craned his head to keep her in view. Only when the station itself was a speck in the distance did he turn back around. Off to the future to lay an invisible track for them both. To collect countries as keepsakes and bring them home on paper like pressed flowers.

Jonathan tried to imagine what he might cross on his travel to and from the castle that would be a worthwhile souvenir. Images of books and baubles were conjured as he traced the edges of his journal. So he went on musing until excitement burned out to exhaustion and the first doze of his trip dragged him down into sleep.

A dream came and went.

He was still on the train, still at his window, but the seat facing his was no longer empty. A face he knew was there. One harvested from the far end of his school days and the nascent career as a clerk. So he believed.

It was a familiar countenance in the way that the sight of a stranger always seen in the same place amounted to vague acquaintance. Known enough to nod at in passing. Jonathan had nodded at this one and been given a nod back in student years. He’d thought of introducing himself once or twice, only for the young man to flush and hurry off like a frightened stray. Jonathan had never quite understood it.

Now here was his anonymous acquaintance again, finally sedate in his seat and hidden in his newspaper. While he was not Jonathan’s senior by more than a year, he looked to be in a more professional state of dress. Pressed and tailored and relaxed in that way men can be when they know they have a wardrobe full of similarly fine ensembles waiting at home. But it was his choice of accessory that gave him away as being on a similar pilgrimage to Jonathan’s. The unoccupied portion of his seat was taken up by the paperwork of a sale, carefully weighted by a discarded hat. His companion spared it no attention, having his gaze pinned on the newspaper open in his hands. It blocked the view of him from the whiskers down. Jonathan was still wondering whether to announce himself when a voice came from behind the newsprint:

“My way goes through Munich. Yours as well?”

“Yes,” Jonathan said. “Though I fear there will be no real stop there. At least, the Count did not pencil a hotel stay in the route.”

“Hm,” his companion nodded. “I suppose he would not gamble it twice. Even if he did set it right the first go around.” The newspaper rustled and the young man’s eyes finally lifted above the print to find Jonathan’s. They were bottle glass-bright. “What all have you packed?”

“Necessities, mainly. Everything for the sale, some changes for the overnight stays and—,”

“And what haven’t you packed?”

“I…” His hand traveled again to his chest. “Mina saved me at the station. I forgot a notebook, but she had one ready. I should be fine.”

“No. You are still missing something. Rather, I expect you will be missing it quite soon.” There was a sigh behind the paper. “All that practice and you go and leave the damned thing under your bed.”

Jonathan straightened in his seat. His right hand clamped reflexively, as if palm and fingers were dreaming of a hardwood handle.

“I’m not going to the jungle.”

“There are worse things than animals to worry about. If you cannot cut them down, what will be left to you?” Another page turned. The bottle glass eyes slid to look out the window. Jonathan followed his gaze and saw that the world had gone black and white under a skull-faced moon. “But then, you might make do without the steel. You handled the worst of our schoolmates well enough back then without even raising your voice. Whatever you may lack as a full-blooded Englishman you make up for in softer stuff. Enough that one or two of the lads confessed over drinks that they wished you were a girl. I was not one of them. You gave me trouble enough as a boy.

“All that said, you have skills that will help. Appealing attributes. Ones I could have used myself.” The unblinking eyes slid back to Jonathan. It was a greyer stare now. Almost filmy. “I had nothing to sell. Neither in English property or my personal wares, so to speak. I could not even muster charm enough to be worth an extra hour’s chat.” Jonathan watched his companion’s hands crumple the paper in two fists. He saw for the first time that those hands were red. They left dry maroon stains across the gazette. “Who is waiting for you, Jonathan Harker? Who at home? Your Mina, old Hawkins, and who else? Any names come to mind?

“Of those friends, are there any who will know to worry when it goes wrong? Anyone to ask questions? To watch the calendar and the post and wonder how you are? Because I thought I did. I even knew the difference between friends and amiable acquaintances, unlike you. Fellows in and out of my firm. Even a girl who understood my needs and was willing to play her part. They all said they expected letters from me. Said they’d be on watch if I was not back within half a month. That was a year ago. And still they do not know where I am. Nor have they cared enough to look.

“But you would have, I think. If I had ever gotten over my cowardice. If I hadn’t wasted boyhood cringing, so afraid I would give myself away. If I had not made a ghost of myself rather than a friend. I was so proud of myself for not daring at the time—I fear I would have made a wretched scene when I first realized you and the pretty schoolmistress were serious. Instead I took my wine and my pain in silence. Told myself how wise I had been not to try. Ha.” Jonathan watched pallid lips peel open on a smile glazed pink with bleeding. Red rivulets trailed out between the young man’s teeth and into the trimmed beard. “Not that it would have mattered in the end. If we had been friends, if we had been more, if we had been anything at all, there wouldn’t have been much for you to find.”

Jonathan leaned forward. It took an effort. A growing stench was starting to waft from the opposite seat. The stink of copper and rot.

“Please, just tell me what this is. Tell me how to help. What’s happened?”

His companion’s grisly smile wilted. The bottle glass eyes ran like his mouth.

“What’s happened is you have climbed onto the same train I took. You will ride on plenty more. The same coaches too. Perhaps that will help. They never caught on to the truth of things when it was me. After all, he does have work to do, being what he is. People must have made it to and from that place before in official capacity. They must have thought it would be the same for imported goods. Hopefully they will know better now. But then, so will he. Soon all you will have to rely on is yourself. Use what you have. All that you have. Play the game as best you can. As long as you can.” Red tears and dribble flowed in a thickening cascade. “I could not last a week and so lost everything. Or nearly so. I am restless, true, but it could have been worse. Much worse.”

“I don’t understand,” Jonathan almost rasped. Fear choked him like a noose.

“I know. And I am very, very sorry to say that you will.” His companion sighed, releasing a crimson haze of spittle into the air. “Well. This is all I can manage as I am. I suppose I shall not need this anymore. Here.” The newspaper was shut and held out for Jonathan to take. “Somewhat out of date, but well worth the read.”

Jonathan spared barely a mote of attention for it. There was no headline or story that he could make out. Only a flash of what looked like the stanzas of a poem, though he couldn’t say for certain. He was too gripped by the sight of the young man below the neck. Seeing the fullness of it hooked something in Jonathan’s stomach and drew it up to the very edge of his teeth. He wasn’t sure if it was his breakfast or a scream.

That was when the hand fell on his shoulder.

Cold. Just as cold as the lips now pressed at the side of his neck.

Whatever sound he might have made was cut off as something sharp drove into his throat and the train went as dark as the world beyond it.

“Sir?” Jonathan fell against his seat as if thrown. The uniformed man started back himself, taking his hand away from Jonathan’s shoulder as he did. “We’re coming to the station soon. Can’t have you sleeping through your stop.”

“No. No, of course. Thank you. Sorry.” The man glanced at Jonathan’s lap with a look possessed by every father who has ever known better than his progeny.

“You could pick lighter reading to nod off on. You’re only setting yourself up for sour dreaming if that’s what you skim beforehand.” He didn’t loiter long enough to explain what he meant. Jonathan looked down.

He had picked a gazette to stuff into his things before he and Mina reached the platform. He’d had an idea that he was reserving his books for the far end of his travel and so would make do with some final updates from his native soil. At some point he had turned all the way to the obituaries. His hand rested on one describing the tragic loss of a young man at sea. A sailor fallen overboard in a storm, presumed dead.

They could be wrong, Jonathan thought with sudden desperation. Perhaps he lived. He made it safely to an island or some distant beach. They could find him alive and well. Couldn’t they?

The newspaper was shut, folded over twice, and tucked back in his luggage. Jonathan did not touch it again until he left the final station that spat him out by the shore, feeding it to the first wastebin he saw. He almost laughed to himself when it came time to board the ship. It would be May by the time he cracked open the journal and wrote anything of interest.

“I shall do better on the return trip,” he promised the naked pages. “I’ll record a view of the sunrise on the water, I swear.” And he meant it. But for this first voyage across the water, Jonathan stayed shut in his room. If he dreamt of a black tide coming up to swallow him, he was happy to wake without recalling it.

#want to preserve this on Blog 2 just in case

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see-arcane-scribbles · 2 years ago

Text

Barking Harker TEASER 2

The following is a rough draft of a chapter for the in-progress horror novel, and alternate ending Dracula sequel, Barking Harker.

It will contain unsettling imagery.

It will contain unsettling possibilities.

It will contain things that bite, bleed, scream, and laugh.

If all this is acceptable, then welcome. Enter freely and of your own will.

And leave all of the happiness and humanity you bring.

For a version that isn’t in Tumblr format eye strain mode, check out the Google Doc version HERE.

Link to Barking Harker TEASER 1 is HERE.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Apparently the full length of the document is too big for Tumblr's app to handle without crashing, so you'll have to consider the section below a teaser to the teaser. For the full whopper, you'll have to refer to the Google Doc link.

Barking Harker

TEASER 2

C.R. Kane

Preludes and Interludes II:

Dead, Dogs, and Detours

DEAD

She didn’t take note of the hansom for at least three turns. Having noticed it, she tried to convince herself against the obvious. Paranoia, it might be called. Nervousness. In the company of anyone with eyes, they would have cooed and tutted, yet quite understood. Well, look at you, dear! It’s a wonder your young man lets you be driven out and about on your own. You do have a young man, do you not? No? As it happens, I know a young man or ten in the family who are in want of a good wife…

But her mind drifted. Just as it had drifted when the little man with the jeweler’s loop had come out of the shop with her delivery in hand. He had gone to the trouble of doing away with the dull parcel’s wrapping and redone it in patterned paper and ribbon.

“Direct from Mellerio, mademoiselle,” he said, only butchering the latter words a touch. “It is a magnificent piece.”

“Mellerio dits Meller never disappoints. Perhaps the finest gifts to the world old Marie ever had her hand in. Well, her and the dear Concinis.” She had smiled for him and the little fellow turned pink as a carnation. “Merci,” she hummed, letting more of her lilt into it as she cradled the parcel. The pink flushed to red. Then the victoria was pulling away and the pedestrian bustle was retreating around her. From the corner of her eye she spied a mourning couple milling away toward a park. The pretty girl in the veil—a beauty that her peripheral senses had alerted her to, being that the girl had thought herself unnoticed in her own dreamy staring—

(Oh oh she is lovely she is gorgeous I could see her as a painting she is too fine too fair oh oh oh I wonder what Lucy would think of her I think she might go red just at the sight of her dress Jonathan? Jonathan! Jonathan oh no Jonathan what is it what’s wrong Jonathan Jonathan)

—was half-supporting her gentleman as he staggered in tow, seeming as if he had been struck. She caught a glimpse of a face that was quite handsome even with the fearful rictus carved into it.

A needle of terror flew from his mind. It pricked at her own, as sharp and vivid thoughts often did. She shelled herself against it by reflex. Yet it stung and stuck, if only for the twinge of familiarity she sensed in it. Something unpleasant reached her thinly through a mental haze she could not define.

(Him him him it is it cannot be but it is unless it is not but that face that face young or old or wan or hale I know I know that face the eyes the razors of the grin him it is him he is here unless he is not unless you are mad unless you are not or perhaps both but he is here he is there he is in England and you never woke from the nightmare and Mina Mina Mina we must be gone Mina he knows my blood he will find me find you find us no no no Mina)

But she was going and the couple was staying. She tamped the bristling thoughts down to smoothness and resettled in her airy bliss.

Had that been when the hansom began its pursuit? When had she begun to register the clatter of its chase? She could not say. Not when her focus was steeped three quarters of the way into the future. A future filled with music, with dates, with revelry, with the flutter of games, with the freedom hidden under silk masks, with the parade of her latest wide-eyed throng come to gape and cavort, with the increasingly ardent play of darling Andy, née, Lord Andrew Blythe, her newest high-born shadow who had resorted to all but bribery to move her from her estate and into a wing of his own manse. All quarters furnished, he said, precisely to her liking.

“And how is it you are so confident of that, Andy?”

“Because it will be furnished until you like it.”

She had so far been able to dodge his invitations with jokes first of Bluebeard, then of La Dame aux Camélias. Soon she would run out of segues. Or worse, out of desire to dodge. He was a fun fellow, which was a rarity among Englishmen of all walks. Even that foppish sweetheart, Arthur Something—Holming? Goldwood?—had been so gallant as to cloy. She had scarcely mourned his loss to that dainty peach of a girl some seasons ago. Andy, at least, had the decency to enjoy a bit of indecency.

Her nails drummed against the wrapped box, daydreaming of the surprise intended as a nightcap to the latest party that would embrace the far end of autumn in ghastly glee.

Even the tautest souls permitted themselves to unravel when there was a masquerade to hide behind. It was rare that she ever loaded her rooms with guests choking on silver spoons as a rule. In truth, she often preferred the company of her staff, their friends and kin over a deluge of the prim and powdered. When she first laid hands upon Perrault’s works, she had at once seen herself in the Fairy Godmother more than the cinder-dusted heroine. If not merely for the saccharine pleasure of providing enchanted nights to those who make the most of them, then for the fact that she had not encountered a single aristocratic affair that did not put her to sleep with its fine filigreed manners within an hour. Give her noise, give her life, give her a Bacchanalia, not church service with duller music.

Lacking superior options, it often became the case that she must play hostess to events that satisfied her own wishes, just as she was conspiring to throw her latest one in the coming weeks. One tailored to celebrate as the nights overtipped the days and the presence of strange entities crept at the edges of the mind. A perfect atmosphere for a bit of charade devilry if she did say so.

Costumes, canapés, cards, claret poured by the bucketful, perhaps even some spiritualist playing with a crystal ball. And yes, Andy, he can bring a few of his gilded friends. But do try to keep things discreet, hm? She dare not offend any of his polished circles’ poor ears with talk of her festivities and the uncouth entertainments therein. It would hardly interest such refined persons, after all…

A caveat that she knew would lead to a loose whisper too many and several a ruffled eavesdropper. If history served, it would result in quite a few covert extra additions trying to wheedle their way onto the guest list. Assuming they did not dare the unthinkable outright and try to duck through her doors under cover of a costume or a pretense that one of the invitees had brought them along. It was what Andy himself had resorted to, making use of the one loophole she provided—that the uninvited be allowed entry provided one of the invited brought them along as a friend.

It had been his farrier, Henry Caldwell, who had to sneak him into that first gathering half a year ago. And oh, how many exciting hues he’d turned in the face when the young lord discovered the man who tended his horses had received an invitation to her ball rather than him! He’d turned colors again at learning the only other attendees of noble blood had needed similar patrons and matrons from their underlings and staff. Imagine, a lavish romp thrown for the Cinderellas while the ‘stepsisters’ were left hoping for the charity of their invitation.

Practically an age ago, that was. Andy had grown on her since. He had glowed when she told him he almost passed for a proper rogue in stolen clothes. Now here came the surprise in her box. The treat awaiting him at the end of the costumes. She sang from Baudelaire’s poem:

“La très chère était nue, et, connaissant mon coeur,

Elle n’avait gardé que ses bijoux sonores…”

My dearest was naked and, knowing well my prayer,

She wore only her sonorous jewelry…

Her laugh almost broke on the air, but the driver pulled up short and clipped the sound. The driver and the poor mare both huffed over a passing cat in the road. In the same instant, she heard the whinny and hoof-clatter of horses behind her. It occurred that she had been hearing those same hoofbeats for some while. Three turned corners. All quite far apart.

The moment she recognized as much, she became aware of a hostile edge to the air. It came to her the way a rush of sensory reminder will hit one after fixating too deeply on a task or thought until all other stimuli loses volume. Such was how poor musicians, bad smells, and dreary lectures were weathered. In the case, a nigh tangible essence of threat had been ignored as she lost herself in plush premonitions.

The denied sensation carried its own portent—all but a promise.

A certainty that was not helped by the fact that the hansom’s driver saw her looking and shamefacedly ducked under his hat brim. The picture of a child caught committing a crude prank at the behest of an older boy.

He was not paid to be taken to a destination. He is being paid to stop where you stop. Perhaps he was told that it was you who insisted on being followed, that the gentleman in the hansom can find you again later. We are old friends and he is stopping in town. Go on, good man. She will lead us on.

Perhaps that was it. Perhaps not. But the man behind the horses gave her a pained look when the victoria resumed its trundling way. It grew grimmer still when he bade his stallions to plod after her and he kept his eyes trained strictly on her wheels. And though no other eyes were visible, there was no ignoring the fact that she felt observed. Ogled in the way fat rabbits feel themselves seen by a predator who is no more than a wheeling dot in the sky, waiting for the moment to descend and sink in the talons.

Come now. Do not insult birds of prey so callously. All an animal wants is to eat. Not that one. Not him.

For it was a him. A very singular him. The kind that would make the Ripper seem positively chummy.

Oh, stop. What are the odds? Truly?

This scene was not what she thought it was. It couldn’t be. Wouldn’t be. In a few more stops, the hansom would turn away and be gone.

And what you think is in the cab will not be there.

Five stops and two turns later, the hansom cab was still with her. As was the pressure of a very particular presence. One whose secrets were locked against the cursory probing of her mind, but could not smother the miasma of himself for anything. Not that he would want to. The grim clockwork of his thoughts was a guarded thing, yes, but he wanted her to know it was him.

After all this time, it was him.

“Damn it.”

“Did you say something, Miss?”

“I should like to stop at a café. That little place with the garland on the sign.” She smiled by reflex despite Joseph’s turned back. “Is there anything you might like to take along? I will not be needing you for the drive back after all. I can hail another rather than keep you lingering on my account.”

“Are you certain?”

She was.

They stopped. She ordered. Sent him off with a steaming bundle to eat along with an apple bartered from the kitchen for his patient steed. Then she took herself to the furthest table outside the restaurant and pretended interest in her tea as she stared down the hansom. The driver pulled up his horses for a moment, teetering between his options. Flicking a sweat-shined look at her table, then quickly away, he urged his horses on. He meant to give renewed chase to the victoria—

(Just following your orders sir follow the victoria you said—)

—but came just as abruptly to a halt.

His face crumpled in comfortless lines as the cab door opened. All at once, whatever thin patter there was among the sparsely peopled tables shrank several octaves. The September air puffed with a breath of malign cold. Somewhere close, a dog barked and bayed. Truthfully, she was surprised the windows did not crack because the man stood too near to them. Assuming one could regard him as a man.

He was dressed as a moneyed one. The midnight of his hair was tied back, moustache and sharp beard impeccable. Yet his eyes. His eyes were chips of red glass lit by hellfire. Or so he would have prided himself to hear. Liken him to Judas and he would preen like a peacock. She’d encountered more than one such fellow in her time, but even in this, he was singular.

She watched him toss the money to his driver. He watched her watch him.

Go on, said the red stare. Go on. Say something. Do something. I am only a man stopping for a meal. What fine coincidence it should bring us together like this, dear.

She suppressed a sigh and turned her box round and round on the table. For effect, she produced her little gold watch to mind the time. Tick-tock. Though no shadow fell across her table, she was not surprised by the skid of the chair across from her pulling out. Nor by the gloved hands folding where she could see them.

Resigning herself to a lost afternoon, if not worse, she peered up at him through the thick fringe of her lashes. A look that had set more hearts racing than could be counted and had, on some rare occasions, stopped them altogether. The gentleman feigning humanity merely smiled at her.

“Is there something I might help you with, sir? I am waiting on a friend and he shall need the chair shortly.”

“It would not surprise me,” he said. “You could point at any man on the street, declare him your companion, and have him propose before sundown.”

“A flattering estimate. Yet I would blame it more on the country’s quality than my own. This is a land of such tedious constriction.” She glanced at the amber swirl of her cold tea. “If I showed one inch more of decolletage, I would have a husband by dusk, a mistress by midnight, and three consorts by morning.” Her gaze rose back to him. “I would not even have invited them, but there they would be.”

Behind him, a server approached to ask after an order, met the gentleman’s gaze, and hastily swerved away to attend another table. Satisfied, the gentleman shrugged.

“That is the price paid for being what you are.”

“Is that so?”

“You cannot be so desirable a thing and not expect pursuit.”

“Perhaps. But with some, the effects of distance have proven a decent enough deterrent.” Lashes batted. “That and death.”

“There are always exceptions.” Saying so, he bared the top row of his teeth. It was the edge of a white saw.

“I suppose there must be. Pardon, I am at a loss for your name..?” He paused to consider this. Then, to her misery:

“Count DeVille.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. You can do better. Please, please, say you can do better.”

“Alucard.”

Her eyes fluttered shut in pain as she frowned over her cup.

“I should have asked for cognac.”

“I would expect something redder in your case.” She looked up at the sound of tearing paper. He’d tugged her parcel across the table and slit the wrapping. This he did with his thumbnail. He had peeled his glove to show a hand almost as wan as the silk. “Ah. Almost as red as this.”

His spade of a nail hooked the necklace and let the briolette cuts catch the light until every ruby burned. It could not be brought out of the box in full, or else the gems would drag upon the table. She planned to wear it with her artfully gruesome gown on the night of the masquerade. All glittering gore sewn into supple white while the necklace spilled over her chest like an exquisite slit throat. Then, in private, she would wear that pantomime blood for Andy’s eyes alone. In the present, the necklace received an admiring hum.

“An interesting design.” He lowered it back into the box. “Yours?”

“Commissioned for a special occasion.”

“What occasion is that?” He slid the box back. “A party, perhaps? One of costume and pageantry and that unholy relief worthy of the old Carnival days?” His grin showed even the bloodless edge of his gums. “You always did make such a lovely Columbine.”

“You must be mistaken, sir, and tragically senile as well. Venice killed its dear Carnival in 1797.”

“So I heard.” His tongue clicked in disgust. “That wretched Francis. Was it the first or second?”

“The second. Twice as miserable as his father.” She struck a praying pose. “May they rest in Hell. Do give them a hello from me when you pass through.”

“Surely we can greet them together.” He leaned forward until he had nearly come over the table. His eyes were lanterns. “Or must we find another abbot to spill his holy water on you first?”

“Again, sir, I fear I do not follow, and that you have taken me for another.”

“I have taken you, yes. But I make no mistake. Even a blind man could not forget you.”

“You are adamant in this performance, my friend, and most original.” She scooped her parcel up and made a show of righting her already-righted hat. “But I have other strangers to be accosted by. Hopefully less mad ones.” She moved to stand. “Good day—,”

He recited two addresses.

One hers.

One the Blythe estate.

“I had planned to pay my visits later, as I am so terribly busy with business and pleasure alike. England makes for a most engaging territory. It really was pure accident spotting you ahead of schedule.” It was his turn to bat his lashes. “Shall it be a happy one? Or do I pay my fellow gentleman a visit tonight? He seems a healthy young man, despite his merry vices. The kind that so often catch up to a body in the most unfortunate ways.”

She looked at him. A emerald stare grating against ruby.

“Which will it be, Clarimonde? Stay or go?” And, because he threw himself at her mind, she heard the unspoken—

(Again.)

—barb. Under better circumstances, be they petty or romantic, she might have flattered herself at the genuine displeasure laced in the thought. Something that could almost pass itself as the heartbreak of an abandoned lover rather than whatever distorted translation of emotion had resulted from their parting. Partings, plural, if they were to play pedantic. But she was in no mind for flattery or for purpling the mental prose.

Clarimonde was of a mind for irritation.

Which was good. To be irate, annoyed, even perturbed was better than pulling such chafing shields away and letting in the thing that lurked beyond their bounds. She told herself the monster there was not her own. Not wholly. It was part of his presence; that artificial injection of dread that he foisted on others like a pile of offal inflicted its stench. Such was the fear that lived on the other side of mere exasperation. Not hers, no. Just another unwanted gift from an old friend.

Not mine. Not mine. Not yet. Keep it that way.

All this churned through her head with the speed and sting of a wasp’s needling visit. There and gone but for the aching throb. It lent some credence to her striking a pose of one bashed by a sudden headache. She sighed.

“Go,” she said. It was pleasing to see the momentary flicker of surprise and a chasing moue of disappointment in his face. Just as it was supremely annoying—ah, blessed annoyance—to see the triumph flash back in place as she added, “We both will. This place lacks for our preferred delicacies and it is rude to take up their table while we fuss over the menu. Besides, you are up and about at noon.”

“So I am. What of it?”

“Unless you have forsaken your old habit, that means you have stored up your waking hours and are no doubt eager to indulge in daylit distractions. I doubt you shall get your fill idling over teacups and pastries.”

A quarter of an hour saw them away from the café and drawing looks of either envy or pity from passersby.

The former were of that demographic who looked upon ‘Count DeVille’, grousing over how his wicked mien was outweighed by enough wealth to buy him the company of either the plum of all eligible daughters, a prize-winning mistress, or else the most expensive woman of negotiable affection in the country.

The latter were those who saw only Clarimonde, pondering whether her smile was true or a mask, and thinking in their hearts that they were witnessing some poor girl doubtlessly haggled away from her parents like a glorified sheep to slaughter. It surprised Clarimonde but little that there were so few of the second onlooker compared to the first.

Yet the Count himself remained a dark room in which no hint could be read. She had been trying to squint through that iron murk since their amble began. He seemed content, even pleased, to let her fail as he busied himself with catching the eye of the occasional gawker and spiking them with a fresh jab of inexplicable terror. One poor man saw a need to be grateful he wore dark trousers—the smell would have given him away even if his mind hadn’t. A laugh tried to escape, but the Count caged it behind a smaller chuckle. This caused a nearby infant to wail in her pram.

A lovely walk, this. One still lacking for revelations from the gruesome mire of a mind. It remained to be seen whether this was an unconscious feat or one which he was maintaining through cold focus. So.

“From the passable accent and the new ensemble, I take it you have been making yourself comfortable. Do you wear them for the sake of a holiday or for expansion?”

“Can it not be both?”

“It can. Which makes it doubly worrisome for the local fauna. All the carefree gluttony of a vacation, all the ongoing attention of an extended stay.” She sighed. “That was you who delivered the empty ship to Whitby, was it not?”

“No, not at all. I am certain it was another undetectable party onboard, indulging in the local…hm.” he paused in thought. “Would sailors be considered seafood?”

“Was that all they were? More pressingly, is that all they are?”

The Count peered down at her. He wore a passable expression of confusion, but for the eyes. They smiled too much.

“Whatever do you mean?”

Dropping her voice a pitch below a whisper, affecting the tone of one interrogating the cat as to whether they knew how the glass was knocked off the table, “Exactly how dead did you leave them before they went overboard?” In answer, the Count dropped his own pitch to a stage whisper.

“Not dead enough to escape an appetite. The first mate was alive when he threw himself off the ship in an attempt to escape their fate. As it turns out, all his crewmates were waiting below the surface to welcome him. All quite delighted to see him again. That one, at least, is dead in full. As for the rest?” The gaunt shoulders rolled in a shrug. “They go on as an intriguing experiment. I have wondered what would happen to a vampire turned amid the waters he cannot cross. Now we know. The only question now is what will happen to them in a century’s time. Will the water still corner them? Or will they be free to travel so long as they bring a box of sand to sleep in? I shall have to make a note in my calendar.”

A true headache lent its aid to her expression now, crimping her brow into a disappointed slant.

“You have not indulged so boldly in an age. There must be a special occasion in progress.”

“Perhaps it was merely my excitement at traveling to your new hideaway.”

“How flattering! Supposing I could believe it. But I do not doubt for a moment that you, so freshly groomed and with an oblivious bevy of English beauties, have not set your sights on newer fare. Am I wrong?”

“I would be a most terrible liar to deny it.”

“And you are an excellent liar. Who is the lucky girl, then? I would ask after a harem, but if you have even an ounce of taste left in those old bones, I know you are choosing with care. Pretty faces and pure souls.”

“Never a combination in ready supply. Not even in these soft times.” His teeth caught the sunlight. The canines blazed. “Yet I have managed.”

“Anyone I know?”

“I should think not. You would have been sunk to the gums in her dreams otherwise. Such a tender one, in all respects. Yet a temptress wholly unaware. She will be mourned by many a poor suitor, I think. When the time comes, I do not doubt that she will have heart enough to spare for all.”

“She must be special if she has been your sole quarry since wrecking yourself on the shore. Or else you are sinking into another old custom, greedy thing that you are.”

“Greedy? How am I greedy?”

“Leaving aside the trio you no doubt left to hold down the castle while you cavort across the Channel, I could not help but notice you have another new friend already accustomed to your unique company. One not so oblivious as you usually take them. Though I do not fault you for the exception. He looked to be a charming thing. There are girls who would kill to get such a gaze without a smear of kohl. His wife was a fair match as well.” She conjured a convincing smile. “Are you collecting in pairs now?”

Her answer was a sudden hush. When Clarimonde looked up she found herself grateful for the meager shield of the cartwheel hat. It cut the Count’s gaze by half. There was more than the default of cruel joy in it now. Things moved behind the scarlet pane of his eye like demons toiling at a forge. Drawing plans, turning gears, heaping their screaming fuel upon a thousand fires. The eyes burned brighter as he spoke.

“If you refer to the couple spying on us from the park, you are nearly right. Both in their time. It may amuse you to know the young man surprised me by appearing here. He too was meant to await my return to Transylvania once my initial business was concluded here. Alas, he slipped free of his keepers.” His head canted toward her. “Not all hostesses boast such persuasive charms as yours.”

The leer found itself somewhat lost when her line of sight fixed an inch above his stare. She leaned her head back to squint beyond the brim of her hat.

“What happened here?” She tucked the box under her arm so that her hand was free to reach up and tap the vivid red scar slashed across his forehead. She had assumed on first seeing it that the wound was new and would seal up in the time it took to walk around a corner. Yet the mark lingered. “Did you run into some holy crusader aboard the Demeter?”

At this, he seemed to brighten. She watched him trace the mark with something very close to pride.

“Ah, this was a parting gift from that same young friend! I’m afraid he took his new living arrangements quite poorly and made sure I knew it before I departed. It has stayed in place as a reminder for quite some time now, if only because I have not found myself the time to gather the materials for the usual plaster. I think I may leave it a while longer, for its own sake. A visible scar puts the onlooker at ease. Any wound in plain view does.”

“If only because it proves you can be wounded. But again, it takes more than a mere scuffle to land a lasting blow on your like. So, what was it? Don’t tell me you have sacred paraphernalia just laying about in that old ruin. Your housemates could only resist such a temptation so long.”

“Ha. No, nothing sacred.”

“Then how—?”

“If I intended to divulge all my stories in a single dose, I would have already swung the doors open and let you go pillaging my memories. An allowance I never permitted cheaply.” He patted her glove with his own. “It seems you will have to suffer as the commoners do and simply not know all the interesting details in a single prying sitting.”

Memory prickled. She did her best not to show it.

While he had never been one to unload all the machinations of his thoughts and plots as the villains on a stage were compelled to—indeed, as some of the more grating self-styled kings of any age were wont to do when they wished to impress a room—the Count was nothing if not a habitual orator. So long as it was not a thing detrimental to his designs, he would happily make full use of his dead lungs and listen to himself while his audience, so often captive, debated the merits of tearing their ears off. Which was all to say that his not saying more was proof positive of…what?

Something important. Assuming anything he’s said yet is true. He does so love to mingle fact and fiction.

Yet the scar seemed evidence enough of that nebulous Something. Neither shrinking nor radiating the essence of the divine, it simply blazed there against the chalk of his brow. It made her think unhappily of damage administered to a corpse too cold to bleed. She shelved it all away in a private crevice of the mind and turned her attention back to the street.

They had managed to pass by the more crowded areas and its gawkers. Pedestrians milled thinner and thinner the further they walked from the condensed clamor of the Square. Neither could complain of exhaustion despite the unfolding distance, not even she in her button boots. It was one of those smaller perks that hitched onto the greater ones in their condition and quite made up for the price. Most of the time. Unless her senses deceived her, and they didn’t, the price would become its own boon within—oh, she would guess less than ten minutes. Fifteen at most.

In her peripheral, she saw the Count’s attention sharpen into recognition.

All we need now is Lord Killjoy and it would be our little haunting party all over again. …Oh, do not let him be part of this. I do not think I could stomach them making up for another round.

The notion was a limp one and it died almost the instant it came to her. Neither half of that pair carried a mote of forgiveness in the ravenous pits they might mistake for a soul. Both were convincing enough actors to fool less initiated victims to the contrary, but history had proven that neither was so idiotic as to buy the other’s performance. A combination of novelty, familiarity, and that occasional itch for company not predestined for the blood-crusted altar of their own appetites had been the truer bond in-between all the little evils flung at one another. But the last row had been of a very particular sort. The kind that did not merely burn bridges, but the bodies left broken-legged and howling at the middle. No, Ruthven was nowhere about. Common as well as uncommon senses verified as much. How fortunate for him.

All this mulling passed in the space of a blink.

“I shall have to treat you likewise,” she said aloud. “Though I expect it is hardly a loss for your end. I’ve so little to tell. Not all of us have grand machinations within machinations to eat up our nights, O Great Alexander with your conqueror’s itinerary. For we mere commoners, hedonism is enough to while the hours away.”

“Not all conquests are the same. Or was I deceived in all the so-secret-but-not chatter whispering of a certain rising queen among revelries? A curious phenomenon, how many speak of it versus how many bodies I imagine could actually fit in your estate. Apparently you manage to fit half of England in its walls and a third of Hell with it.”

“Preposterous. A quarter at the most. I must always reserve space for the Maenads, the witches, a few practical instructors of the Kama Sutra. And there must be comfortable space enough for all the orgies.”

No less than five sharp-eared heads turned. Notably, these were the only five pedestrians present. The herd was thinning, thinning.

“No vampires?”

“Not of late. Names will not be named,” she flicked her best glower to the side, “but in the past, certain parties had a habit of poaching my guests to excess. And, though it may wound some of those parties’ pride, it was one of my more recent invitees that sealed my prejudice against the lot.”

“Oh?”

“Back when I was touring about through Styria. It was my ball, but not my castle. Invitations were not wholly in my hands. I caught dear Millie sniffing around the girls—which would have been fine enough if I did not see the pure Lothario lurking under her pretenses. You know the type. Makes a big dramatic production of fondness and obsession and stalking and ‘I must have you, my darling!’ Then the moment the bedmate’s bled and undead?” Clarimonde flicked her hand in a dismissing gesture. “Poof. Lost in the night. Off to nibble another pretty thing. I can allow for juggling multiple loves in the know, but I quite draw the line at such utterly caddish treatment.”

“I tremble to imagine earning such displeasure.”

The barb flew—

(Again.)

—and struck. Clarimonde withheld a bristle as his arm unfolded out of her hand and moved to loop her closer. His glove rested on her like a massive spider. The sight irked her for many reasons. Reason one being that she would quite like to run a hairpin through it. Repeatedly. Reason two being that, like the rest of him, it truly was gaunter than she had ever seen him. The cut of his greatcoat was enough to disguise much of his thinness, but up close there was no mistaking the narrow dimensions that had overtaken his frame.

She did not brush off the gripping hand, but, to his surprise, tugged it nearer until she could pinch the mountain range of knuckles in her fingertips.

“All charades aside, you did finish off that whole ship, did you not? Bar the poor captain?”

“I have eaten well of late, yes. I’ve left hibernation famished and indulgent.”

“Then how did this happen, mon géant?” She rolled the spindly digits in her soft grip. “I know broomsticks with more bulk than you.”

“Ah, the return of the Nursemaid. I so missed her. Shall she kiss me better? Or do I have the pleasure of a reunion with one of the Consorts? Perhaps an Adulteress feigning a tryst behind your fresh little lord’s back?” In a blink, he had twisted her hold around so that her hand was locked inside his. It held just at the edge of pain. “You have such a broad cast living in you, my love.” He brought her glove up to his lips. Cold on cold. “Losing you was losing a legion.”

“Yet now that we’re here, you can speak to none of us.” She considered trying to pull herself free, but left it on the off-chance that he would grip it until the fingers groaned. Her thumb grazed the back of his hand. “That is your second dodge. I begin to think you do not have anything to say except that you have nothing to say.”

“I have much I wish to say to you, Clarimonde. A great deal.” He gave her fingers a parting crush before snatching his own hand daintily away. “Alas, I cannot even spare a full day’s escapade! Not even with an old friend. Too much to be done in too many ways. So many potentialities need their foundations in place.” He performed a great sigh. “I cannot even say if fair England will be my only destination in the year to come. Time must tell.” Though his face was a caricature of distress, once more his eyes gave away nothing but delight. There was a project in his hands. A true goal that had cracked through some dreary shell of stagnation and set his dust-choked mind into motion. Had Clarimonde been a dimmer person, she might have been happy for him.

As it stood, she felt a most unwelcome resurgence of concern. That vague and edgeless unease which stretched beyond herself and those she could conceive of enjoying in her immediate future. It sat in her chest like sickly flowers going into bloom. She did her best to kill it.

“In that case, I shall not force you to dally longer. If we must part ways…”

She had not made it a step away before he had snaked around her again.

“Not so soon. Not until the midday meal has been and gone. Is it close?”

“Yes. He is.” And she did not lie.

Alec Mooring was a gentleman of that particularly disappointing blend of rich prose, wide acclaim, great potential, and a wide stinking smear of prejudices and predilections to stain the underside of all the preceding virtues. Epithets were varied and plentiful regardless of a body’s hue, nationality, ethnicity, faith, or sex. There were opinions of the non-Anglo and tragically female body and brain stewing behind his pen that would make even the most odious sectarian turn from white to green. Yet enough degrees and a flair for the written word made much of his work as good as gospel in many an empowered circle.

Tragically, when away from the lecture halls and salons, one of Mooring’s most habitual locales was a certain small building he owned under a pseudonym. In the cellar of this tidy brick box, he entertained a hobby that, were it known to the shivering bruise-speckled wisp that was his wife, would see him divorced; were it known to his followers and peers, would see him violently ejected from his career; were it known to the world at large, would see him hanged twice; were it known to the families of the victims—or, considering the age of some, merely the parents—his body would never be found. At least not in one piece.

As it happened, Mooring would have his sins revealed too late for them to matter to anyone living. He had been approached whilst he was making a less fevered return to the building for a bit of clean-up. The place needed a scrub and some chemical application to fight the stench building up with its occupants.

It was as he was about to unlock the door that he felt a hook land in his head. It turned him around and brought him eye to eye with a beauty even his eloquence stumbled to define.

Love herself stood before him, poured into the hypnotically curved mold of a tailored dress. She was patterned everywhere with brilliant butterflies. More balanced on the disc of her hat. Her gaze held the lushness of the forest, the depths of an absinthe sea. In her mouth was the supple curl of the opening rose. The rose’s thorns showed behind the petals. White and pointed. She even smelled of a garden. Was it perfume or her own scent? Neither would surprise him. A springtime goddess come to visit him in the ruddy rim of autumn.

Behind her was something he first mistook for a shadow on the alley wall. But to his knowledge, shadows did not have their own eyes. Provided they did, he thought they ought not to glow like twin furnaces. Nor should they turn his bowels into quivering ice water.

“Shall we head in?”

His attention fell back to her. The seraph smiled. Love and loins demanded he lead the way in for her. Surely the threshold would clip her shadow off at the heels. Mooring held the door open for her. He had some faint idea that perhaps he was dreaming, and that even after he saw to the services he meant to apply to her indoors, she would simply cobble herself back together for another round. She seemed infinitely accommodating in all things. A perfect woman, a finely fashioned Galatea among the tawdry strumpets and frigid harpies plaguing the cusp of this backwards century. She alone was perfection. An oasis in a wretched desert.

They were inside. Perfectly—ah, he could sing it, perfect, perfect, perfect!—she did not bat her eyes at the signs of his work within. Neither stain nor stench nor the sorry state of the mattress or manacles moved her smile an inch. But as he moved to shut and bolt the door, the shadow slithered in. Rather, a sort of black fog did. Mooring might have taken it for smoke but for the lack of smell and the sudden shudder of a chill that passed through him as it seeped in. The fog grew a hand and helpfully shut the door the rest of the way. And bolted it.

There was some minor debate that Mooring was aware of toward the start, before the full comprehension of the nightmare settled in. That is, the comprehension that he was not in a nightmare.

“Ladies first?”

“You are the guest, I insist.”

“I insist back. You have been starving yourself again. A holy man’s sneeze would leave you blistering.”

“Oh, but he simply reeks of the druggist. Anyway, I would not risk him enjoying even a moment of it. He deserves your attention more than mine.”

“If I decant, will you drink? More than a thimble?”

“…Two thimbles.”

“Swear a pint or it will be over in a blink for him. No play at all.”

“Fine, fine, a pint…”

And then Alec Mooring proceeded to be unmade in most meticulous fashion. Whatever noises he could make during this were as muffled behind the insulated brick as the noise of his collected tenants had been while alive. Ignorable as the squeal of vermin.

He would be found later that day by the police following an anonymous tip. Amid the mess of Mooring and the unearthed rot of his collection, only a single sign would be left of whomever might have committed the final murder in that miserable killing floor. A sole print of a sole pointed at the door.

The underside of a woman’s boot, stamped in blood.

“You know, with the proper look, you could have some passing husband lick that clean for you. There is a slavering wretch I know who would plead for the chance.”

“I would have to charge you for the show.” Though she could not deny a certain temptation of her own. The silk handkerchief was beyond saving now, swollen as it was with the coagulating mess. The Count had his matches out before she could get hers. They watched the scrap burn, its motes drifting from their rooftop perch and up to the clouds. “You really do mean to loiter here, don’t you?”

“There are worse places to run out the last of the millennium. You are here, after all. Perhaps I shall wring an invitation out of you before the next one.” He canted his head in pantomime of epiphany. “Or I could always get an invitation from one of the invited.”

“Supposing your schedule clears up.”

And supposing you know when my doors will open.

“It will be clear for the night of October 31st.” His smile widened as hers curdled. “Likewise for the week preceding and following. Oh, but I shall have to find a costume. Perhaps I will come as a priest.”

“I would not put it past you. As for now, I believe you said you were short on time? I did not mean to distract you so long with lunch.”

“You do excel in distraction and I would gladly suffer it again. Especially if it means seeing you forestall your latest death with proper nutrition. I can tell you are out of practice.” He tapped his lower lip in illustration. Clarimonde licked her own, wiping a spot of wet red glaze from her mouth. “How often are you feeding, Clarimonde? I would so hate to think I have found my old friend again only to discover her wasting away from weakness over poor self-maintenance. Do you mean to tease your little lord into the same phantasmal play as dear Rom—,”

Clarimonde looked at him.

Clarimonde looked into him.

Not to read the secrets, but to follow the familiar routes that were open in all minds. The pathways of senses and sensation. She went to work. It was uncanny how easy it was to fall back into the old habits. Even with all the time between them. Nostalgia, nostalgia.

She watched as his eyes rolled up, red to white, his head trying to loll back with them. His mouth shuddered and twitched. Fangs still scummy with drinking caught the sun as he spasmed on his feet. Bliss. Pain. High. Low. Victories old and miseries new.

Back and down and burrowed into the meat of the human animal on which he had built himself, all the base foundations that were slick and sweating and sticky with the ghost of living longing, and then he almost pitched forward, swarmed, drowned, buried in the pretty folds and holds of loves given and stolen in ages past and they are there, they are breathing for the joy of it, incense and candles and death in the air, the fools a floor below call their teacher Geber instead of Jabir, all pretending to know the truths of God and Devil and Trismegistus, oh my, and they do not know what is up here in the dark, these greybeards will never know anything of all the black wonders of the world and the worlds beyond it until its thirsty teeth and truth bite them open and suck them dry as fruit and oh, oh, oh, don’t go, don’t go, don’t let his mind retreat back to itself, this, always this, turning, running, betraying, no, no, no—

Within him the walls cracked, the moat drained, and for just a moment there was something—

(—show me show me yes good yes look at that look how he does it, yes, yes, above God and Devil and soul, yes, good boy good man, so much hidden inside, yes yes yes, Solomon needed a ring, but all I need is—)

—there and gone before the fortress righted itself again.

It helped that his hand was locked around her throat. Crushing.

“Try that again and your next party shall be a funeral.”

“Well, that will be bothersome, but hardly anything new,” she rasped. Her lungs had no complaint beyond that. “Really, you act as if you’ve never been goosed before. You did help yourself as much as I did down there. You only have yourself to blame for possessing enough of the old verve in you to produce the,” she gestured airily at him, “natural results. Ah, but it has been a long while. Things may have changed. I do hope I have not overstepped my bounds.” She laid her fingertips on the strangling hand. Against the agony in her neck and the would-be panic trying to roost in her chest, she bowed her head until she had to look up at him through the fans of her lashes again. And winked. “Are you saving yourself for someone new, dear? If so, we could form a club. The Regrettable Romantics Society has a decent ring.”

Then Ruthven can laugh at both of us.

The Count seemed to hesitate on the line between releasing her and snapping her neck. He settled for flinging her aside. His claws had pricked through the gloves and scored her throat as she went. The skin sealed itself readily enough, but not before the blood spotted her shoulder. At least it hid well amid the butterflies. Salvageable.

Clarimonde looked to him only to discover his back was to her. He’d lost his hat as he tilted his head back. When he rose from retrieving it, it was like watching an obsidian plant grow its shoot from the earth. Slow and silent. The hat went back in place. He did not turn.

“You may see me at your revelry. You may not. Perhaps I shall pace out my time here for months and years and decades to come. Yet the odds are just as fair that I may be gone before the first gasp of November. Much is in motion. Some priorities outweigh the others. You, consort of Concini, of so many decadents besides, are not at the top of the list in any eventuality. You are there, of course. You will be seen to. But do not flatter yourself to think you are of such significance that you can be sheltered indefinitely from the consequences of your play.”

If I ever played, voivode, I never played alone. A consort does not break into the chamber where they work. They are bought and begged for. Just like any narcotic.

“I’m certain. Alternatively, if you must kill me to satisfy whatever amorphous whim dictates I must die for whatever vague crime I committed in your mind, you could always do it now. Save me the time and effort of playing hostess. Only, do try not to ruin the ensemble. But first.” She opened the box and let it fall away as she fastened the necklace and its pouring rubies at her throat. The effect improved when she opened her walking coat and the gems spilled over the dress beneath. “Leave my corpse someplace picturesque. A nice botanical garden someplace.”

Now he turned. She recognized some of the old hunger in his look. Yet it was crowded in with something else. Something that stoked the flame that was almost fear in her. It did not lessen when he began to soften at his edges, the body breaking down into a bruised fog. She watched it seep out and away on the wind.

“Clarimonde. I would never kill you. There is no repercussion for you in that. There never has been. For you, I must utilize true artistry for a consequence, and I shall not fail the task. But if it is any consolation, such things are still at the bottom of my itinerary. If properly convinced, I may even forget it. Regardless, my love, you can go back to your château with at least one certainty to warm you in the coffin. If you are to suffer, you shall not suffer first…” Eyes and teeth were all he had left. They blazed. “…and yours will be a far kinder agony than his.”

With that, she was alone.

Time had come, time had gone. The masquerade went with it, another scintillating success, whispered about behind fans and winked about over cigars. Andy had loved the necklace.

Her friend made no appearance. Even so, anxiety had opened the door to dear Andy’s reserved wing at last, replete with the gentleman’s delight. He really was a darling thing, and she was not far off in guessing he would hear her ulterior reasons for the stay—

‘A grim shadow from my past has followed me to England, sweet Andy, and I am afraid!’

—and think himself a knight with a desperate damsel in hand. Assuming, naturally, that the fear was for herself.

If truth were told in all its coldness, she could not say she was in love with the young man. Yet she had reserved a corner of her heart for him as she had for many in her time. If the Count meant to start tightening the noose, those closest would be the first to feel the rope. She could at least buttress the manor and its people against his entry.

You say it as if it matters. He would as soon burn the place to the ground as charm his way through the door. …So why hasn’t he?

A persistent question.

Flashes that might have been trying to form an answer had come to her in dreams as September tipped to October, as October bled to November. When she was not constructing worlds against a dreamscape, she could fish for more than her own inventions in the psychic ether. More often than not these came to her as pure gibberish made of symbols and metaphor and hints so layered in enigma they bordered on indecipherable.

A whirl of bats and loose earth littering the air.

A face melting like wax between a vaguely familiar beauty and a screeching flower of teeth and blood.

A thunder-drum of living hearts beating in the same tune with eyes piercing an endless dark like desperate candles.

A second face, another semi-recognition, grinning with hate and pulling apart into something horrid beyond words.

A pack of collared dogs with sharp twigs of ash in their mouths, a foaming pale hound racing ahead, carrying a great shining knife, all giving chase to a massive wolf leading them into snowy wilds, leaving a trail of dropped blood from the beating heart caught in its jaws.

A pair of shadows embracing, kissing, eating out the other’s heart.

A world that was a cemetery, every tomb and casket around its dead globe breaking open to scream a choir against a bleeding sky.

All less than heartening and even less enlightening. No more than her discovering the state of the Count’s Piccadilly purchase following the first nervous week of October. His estate or no, she had the benefit of not requiring an invitation at any home’s threshold. Not that there was much about the place that could suggest a home.

Here was dust tramped with strangers’ footprints, broken glass, whiffs of garlic blossom and, hidden in the lowermost dark, boxed Transylvanian dirt muddled with both its owner’s unmistakable stamp and the divine stain of the Eucharist. But no Count. Not even a spot of blood to mark a quick nibble taken before his exit. In the busiest room—at least busy in way of mess—she had found a single gold coin forgotten in a corner. There were a few fibers of fine black cloth with it.

No more than that. Not for days. Weeks. Now creeping toward months. With that time and no sign of change in the Piccadilly estate, she could only guess that whatever his business was, it had moved elsewhere for the time being. It had also given her a significant enough pause to mull her own status and that of Lord Blythe; namely, that perhaps her very nearness would be the thing to paint a target on him and his. It had already drawn enough attention to make his address known. Better to excise themselves from the others’ circles.

A dalliance was only a dalliance and the boy didn’t need to die over it.

Away and adieu, now. Go blow away to a new corner before the poor boy gets it in his head to come clawing at the door.

Such was her intention.

Among others, formless and imperative as they felt. She wanted to be away from where Dracula knew she could be found. She wanted to replenish herself with another unhappy red draught. She wanted to make a pilgrimage to poor Romuald.

She wanted to shed the nauseating disquiet of her last nightmare, a thing full of howling, barking, cackling horror that still left its echo reverberating in her head like a shriek in a cathedral, made worse for how it had crashed its way into her dream-dead mind without warning.

Away. Clarimonde wanted away. It could be her, it could be the Count, it could be the whole jagged mess that was the shattering of her latest pleasant bout of idle comfort and debauchery, so long as it was away.

For now, it must only be her. The single moving piece she had control of. She could take a holiday away from her holiday until she could arrange for a new permanent residence. All this should have been enough to consider. Plenty to frustrate the plush default of her life.

And yet, there was more.

Of course.

Three new nuisances in the shape of three envelopes of varying stationery. Two of which had come by post. The third she had found hidden, with schoolboy bluntness, waiting in the lingerie chest she had left behind during her stay with Andy. That one bore the black wax seal of the Dragon. Despite the sender’s best efforts, it did not unsettle her as much as the deliveries sent by mundane measures.

A crimson seal of an ornate dagger planted in a skull marked one’s sender clearly, even without his true name in the corner. She was less than shocked at the whiff of blood stirred into the wax. A predictable thing was Ruthven.

The third she did not know at all. No more than she recognized the sender’s address, being even more distant and stamp-smothered than the one in ruddy wax. It was this last alien offering that disturbed her most. Unbidden, she found herself repeatedly hiding, revealing, and hiding it again under the letters she knew. The carriage ride’s dullness had not yet bored her enough to break any of the seals. Even the train’s steady chugging march had not prodded her into killing the suspense and rending the wax. Not yet.

But her novels were tired and the fashion plates more-so. Curiosity warred with the premonition of deepening displeasure.

Clarimonde looked again at that third seal. All the while sensing, despite her best efforts at senselessness, that the seal was looking back at her and seeing more than it should.

This wax seal was gold.

And at its center was a single staring eye.

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