Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(52)

Just go, already.

Traipse upstairs like the scandalous fools you are, get it out of your blood, and then get that girl out of our house. We have real problems here, and a real solution in sight—or at the very least, we have a real chance at an ally, and a shared wealth of added information. We can’t jeopardize it over a silly fluttering of the heart.





? ? ?


I pretended I didn’t notice, but just now Nance came downstairs. I don’t know what she wanted, and I didn’t ask. She made a show of getting a glass from the kitchen, collecting some water, and retreating again.

But she’s up to something.

She’s drawn to that damn cellar door, and drawn to what’s behind it. That part she can’t help; I know that, and I can’t even hold it against her. But we have to keep her out, and I am absolutely terrified that Lizzie is on the verge of some terrible decision, or terrible slip of her concentration, and we might all be lost.

What if Nance finds her way to the key, or to some other method of opening the door? It’s reinforced, yes. The lock is sturdy and expensive, yes.

But whatever is in those stones, those shiny bits of tumbled ocean glass (or so they innocuously appear) . . . it has an intelligence. Whatever voice cries through them, it cries not with words—yet it cries instructions, suggestions, and changes to a person’s ordinary behavior.

It commands.

That’s the word I’m looking for.

It commands, and it commands so forcefully that I must assume anyone snared in its call will find a way around whatever restrictions are tossed in front of her.





? ? ?


I caught Nance rifling through drawers, and she said she was hunting a pair of scissors. I directed her to the sewing room. I spied her examining the contents of Father’s old cabinet, and she said she was hoping for something hard to add to her tea. I said she should help herself. I found her fishing about under the settee, and she insisted she’d dropped an earring. I wished her the best of luck in its retrieval.

Really, she must think I’m a fool.

If she stays here much longer, she’ll find her way downstairs, and what will become of us then? What if she sees the whole lot of equipment, never mind what we added from the upstairs—the most incriminating books, charms, devices, and whatnot that we wished to remove from her view?

From a certain slant, it would appear that my sister and I are the witches we’re accused of being.

Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps the whispers have merit. What else would you call it but witchcraft—these experiments my sister undertakes in the basement laboratory, and around the walls and windows of this home? She’s turning it into a fortress of superstition, but if you ask her, she’ll argue that it’s all science . . . of a kind.

I understand her sentiments, but it’s hard to agree wholeheartedly when she starts wondering aloud which herbs and prayers might protect us.

The distance between an honest Christian mystic and a fortune-teller is sometimes less than half a whisper. Less than a pot of tea or the space between two book covers.

Unless I’m the silly one now—and that’s entirely possible.





? ? ?


It’s very quiet upstairs. I’m almost surprised they wore themselves out so quickly, though given the noisy vigor of the whole affair, it might not be such a mystery. Lizzie often has trouble sleeping, but if rumor among married ladies can be believed, there’s nothing quite like a good frolic to send one off to slumberland with haste.

And yet.

Lizzie’s trouble sleeping has extended into Nance’s visits, in the past. But tonight, she doesn’t even snore. It’s only Nance who’s restless, wandering up and down the stairs, standing in the kitchen like a ghost, like she’s forgotten something, like she’s waiting for something. Like she’s listening.

This is the second instance tonight that the girl’s appeared, and this time she either didn’t notice that I was still awake and writing, or didn’t care. She stood before the cellar door again; I could just barely see her shadow, stretching out into the corridor between us. It was long, for she is tall; and it was half-gauzy with the moonlight and gas lamp glow through the windows, shining through the fabric of her nightdress.

I reached for the bell beside my makeshift bed, but before I could ring it and, it is to be fervently hoped, summon my sister . . . Nance changed her mind and returned to the upstairs.

Maybe she was warned away by my candle after all.

Well, these words—combined with the last of the article revisions—have eaten up an hour and a half. No, closer to two, I should think. And I’m still wide-awake.

Perhaps I’ll begin that letter to Doctor Zollicoffer.

I would dearly love to hear from him again.





Owen Seabury, M.D.


APRIL 24, 1894

I’ve avoided the Borden sisters these recent days—not by choice, but by forced circumstance. The mysterious Inspector Wolf has occupied much of my time, and most of that has been too tedious to record in this informal, private journal. Regardless, I am sickened at heart to know what I now know, or believe what I now believe; and the scientific facts under consideration do little to soothe me. Whatever they are, they don’t add up. Whatever they say, it answers no questions that a reasonable man might ask.