The Death of Jane Lawrence(49)

She couldn’t smell blood anymore, and when she blinked, the vision was gone. She was being held fast by Hunt and Vingh, and all around her the doctors murmured to one another in their playacting robes. Tremors rocked her as she looked between the gathered faces.

“Mrs. Lawrence?” Hunt asked. “Are you back with us?”

“I saw—” She gasped, then fell to shaking once more, confused, in pain. Augustine had lied to her, had hidden Elodie from her, had left her unable to trust her own memory, but she had not thought him a monster. Had never feared him to be a brute. The Augustine of her vision refused to coalesce, not only with the man she wished him to be, but with the man she had observed. His outline did not match the wretched horror she had seen.

And Hunt, Vingh, Nizamiev—they’d all been clear. Elodie had been dead when Augustine arrived. Whatever ritual Dr. Nizamiev claimed he had worked, it had been after her death. Not—not whatever it was that she’d just conjured, on the scaffolding of Hunt’s pageant.

And yet it had felt so real. And yet she could not explain it. She remembered the words of Reese’s incantation: By the flowing of this water, we align ourselves to the forces at work and begin to see their origin, their path, their conclusion. They had tried to summon up Augustine’s affections and draw him back, and instead, they had revealed to her …

What?

She was helped to her feet, then down the stairs. Hunt settled her in the sitting room and pressed more brandy into her hand. Behind her, Jane could hear muttering, make out only isolated words: sensitive, perceptive, a true medium.

“I am sorry,” Hunt said, touching her shoulder.

“Leave me,” she mumbled.

“Drink your brandy.”

Jane took an obedient sip, the liquid sloshing from the shaking of her hands. She stared at it, and then beyond it, to the darkened window. Her reflection stared back at her. She willed her features to be transformed, for her gray eyes to weep red. She willed Elodie to appear before her, to offer some explanation, some condemnation, anything.

She could hear, distantly, Hunt’s voice. Discussing diagnoses and treatments with one of the other doctors. They would take her apart to find what was wrong with her. The thought filled her with revulsion.

“Give Mrs. Lawrence some space,” Dr. Nizamiev said, moving in front of her, the fabric of her skirt obscuring the window. Jane looked up. Dr. Nizamiev looked back, impassive. Hunt left without argument.

Dr. Nizamiev was, after all, an expert in madness.

All the other voices faded, retreating out to the hall. The foyer. Perhaps they would leave, and at that thought, Jane started forward. No, no, I cannot be left here alone for the night. But Dr. Nizamiev caught her shoulder and eased her back, then sat down beside her on the small couch, not looking away. Jane turned to face her mechanically.

“You saw something,” Dr. Nizamiev said.

I saw horror.

“I don’t understand,” Jane mumbled, gripping her glass tightly. “I don’t understand what I saw.”

“The ritual can be affecting,” Dr. Nizamiev said. “The power of suggestion, a type of hypnosis.”

“No.” Jane seized Dr. Nizamiev’s hands with one of her own. “I need you to tell me what Augustine did. I need you to tell me about magic.”





CHAPTER NINETEEN


“YOU MUST PROMISE me one thing, before I continue.”

Dr. Nizamiev’s notebook was open on her lap, and Jane watched as she penned a quick observation. Whatever it said, she could not read, but Dr. Nizamiev looked pleased.

Jane’s skin crawled. “Of course,” she said. “What is it?”

“That you will accept as true everything I am about to tell you. It will not be easy, but it must become a part of your understanding of the world, or else I will have wasted my time.”

“I promise,” she said hastily, desperately.

Dr. Nizamiev set the pen down in the gutter of the book but did not close it. “Good. Now. I do not know precisely what Augustine did to try to bring Elodie back from death,” she said. The admission kindled quick anger in Jane, but before she could argue, Dr. Nizamiev held up a hand, stilling her. “He only told me of the results. But I can tell you the logic of it.”

Lindridge Hall was silent around them. The lamps beyond the sitting room had dimmed, and they sat alone in a small pool of light. “Please.”

“You are an accountant.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps you can think of magic, then, at its most basic as changing numbers,” she said. “Shifting the reality of a thing. Making it into something else. Alchemists strived to change lead into gold, water into wine. But it’s not simply replacing a two with a three in a column of sums. It is changing what two represents.”

“I don’t follow,” Jane said, though she could feel herself leaning forward, the mathematical logic seductively familiar. “You could say that the word two means three things, but two items would still always be two items.”

“It’s a strange sort of logic,” Dr. Nizamiev said as if conceding a point.

Jane frowned. “It doesn’t work.”

“Remember your promise, Jane. Here, another option: change the meaning of an operator. Summing goes from one thing being added to another, to one being added to another and another.”