Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(57)

“Go get him yourself.”

“And leave her here? Alone in the house with you? When we don’t know what she’ll do . . . or what she’ll be . . . when she comes around again?” I didn’t say the rest of what I feared, that of course, she might never come around again at all—and I didn’t know if that’d be worse. I was too afraid of too many things at once. They all swirled together fighting for dominance. None of them won. Or they all did, however you chose to look at it.

“All right, then. Jacob, next door.”

“Right,” I said, perking up at the scent of a plan. “I’ll go get him, right now. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

The neighbor’s boy was ten years old and constantly offering to do odd jobs for money. It was late, and he’d be in bed—but a light still burned in a window at the big white house next door to ours, and I had no qualms at all about declaring an emergency. I said it was my sister, and we needed the doctor, but I couldn’t leave her. Emma’s condition was well-known, and it was the easiest, nearest lie I could offer and expect to receive any help.

I offered his parents a fistful of coins, probably three or four times what he would’ve asked, even at that hour. The boy hopped on a horse, and was gone.

I went back inside, where Emma had successfully come downstairs by herself. I didn’t take the time to be surprised; her energy came and went. Some days were better than others, and under different circumstances, we’d celebrate her vigor with a glass of port—but I could only work with the spirits at hand, so there’d be no port.

“Brandy, maybe,” I said aloud, as I dropped to the floor beside Nance, who hadn’t moved.

Emma, ever to her credit, recognized my train of thought—or at least predicted its destination. “I’ll open Father’s cabinet, and find a clean glass.”

I didn’t really expect it to work, but it gave us both something to do.

I man-hauled Nance to the parlor settee and deposited her there, and soon Emma arrived with a decanter and a small glass. My hands shook as I filled it, and as I lifted Nance’s head in an effort to make her drink.

Much like her cooperative walking and stair climbing, she agreeably sipped the beverage and swallowed it. I hadn’t expected it, but I was relieved at this one small thing at least—she could drink, and presumably eat, and wasn’t quite so lost to the world that she might die of starvation.

And that’s preposterous, isn’t it? Starvation isn’t any real concern. If Nance is to die from this, it will almost certainly be at my hand. Whatever this illness is—be it infection, or some other form of affliction—it does not kill. It transforms, and inspires the victim to kill instead. They must be put down like rabid dogs, for the safety of everyone around them.

So already, kneeling on the floor beside her, with her lovely neck resting against my forearm as I propped her head into a drinking position, I was thinking ahead and planning for the worst.

“It might be,” Emma began softly, “she’s only stunned. You’ve been there yourself, and you’ve come back around again.”

“Not like this,” I said, and I would’ve sobbed if I hadn’t been all cried out for the moment. My eyes were sore from it. “I’ve never been this far gone.”

“She may need a little time, and that’s all. Give her overnight, and she may surprise you. Look, even now her breathing is calmed. It’s practically normal.”

She was right, but I didn’t dare believe that it was so simple as that. “Doctor Seabury may know of some treatment to help awaken her. He’s been working with . . .” I stopped myself. The only patients I knew who’d suffered anything like this had murdered, and then been killed.

“He’s a brilliant man, and he may have ideas. He may see patterns that have eluded us thus far.”

Emma sounded unbearably weary. I’m sure I did, too, when I replied with what pitiful hope I could muster, “Between us, we may have collected enough details to see those patterns. If there are any.”

“Lizzie?”

“Yes?”

“Your nose . . . it’s bleeding again. Or still, I don’t know.”

I felt the trickle even as she pointed it out. I rubbed it with the back of my bare arm again, and a second streak of red joined the first, which now had flaked and faded. This time, I noticed the pain. I rose to my feet and went in search of a tea towel. Upon finding one, I held it to my face and remained standing in the space between the kitchen and the parlor.

“I must look a sight,” I said, my voice muffled by the fabric. “God knows what the Wilsons thought, when I knocked so desperately on the door for Jacob. But they didn’t say anything.”

“They were too surprised, I’m sure.”

I dropped onto the arm of the settee. It creaked beneath me. But then the door rattled under the knock of a heavy hand, and I jumped to my feet once more.

“The doctor,” Emma breathed.

I opened the door and almost dragged him inside, babbling as I drew him into the parlor.

“It’s Nance, Doctor Seabury. She’s stumbled into my research, and she’s become infected, or afflicted, or I don’t know what word you’d use—I’m sure there’s a better one, something medical that applies, but I don’t know it, and she’s gone catatonic, and please,” I begged. “Please, will you help her?”