“Coulton?”
Mrs. Harrogate’s little nostrils flared. “He was murdered by Jacob. On the train.”
“Oh,” said Alice, stunned.
“He was very strong. He thought nothing could hurt him. I … I thought the same.”
Alice remembered Coulton shoving her and the children behind him, the screams as the carriage darkened. “The last I saw him, he was … changed. He was using his talent, I think. He ran at Marber in the carriage. Directly at him. It gave us the time to get out.”
Mrs. Harrogate nodded. “Yes, that sounds like him.” She turned her face so Alice couldn’t see it. She adjusted the bandage at her ear, busied her hands. “Well, we must collect ourselves,” she said in a thickened voice. “Mr. Coulton would hardly approve of a show of feeling, hm? Now. You are dressed for travel. Is it so?”
Alice glanced at her clothes. “I, I wasn’t…”
“I’ll be returning to London myself. I have business there, business that will not wait. There will be room in the carriage for another.” She seemed to consider something. “You haven’t yet seen Cairndale, of course. Would you like to?”
Alice, still shaken, nodded mutely.
The upper corridor was long and wide and they went slowly, like invalids. Had anyone seen them, Alice in her oilskin coat, both hands clutching at her ribs, and old Mrs. Harrogate in her widow’s weeds with her swollen eye and her bandaged ear, they might’ve stared, or laughed; but there was no one, no one at all to see, and the two women shuffled instead through the badly lit hallway, every second sconce snuffed out, past the closed doors and along the dark wood wainscotting, until they came to a turning, and a wide staircase that descended down. She heard the distant voices of students, along the halls, the sound of running footsteps. But the interior of the manor seemed, she thought, larger than it should be. There were just too many doors.
“Because it is built beside an orsine,” said Mrs. Harrogate, watching her from the corner of her good eye, gauging her reaction. “I am impressed; most don’t notice it so quickly. It can be quite disorienting for some. There was a woman here whom it used to make physically ill.” She raised an eyebrow. “The building is indeed larger inside than out. Cairndale Manor is a liminal space, a conduit between worlds. Here, the world of the living and the world of the dead touch.”
Alice gave her a strange, uneasy look, but said nothing.
The stone staircase descended. A stained glass window drenched their faces with a bloodred light. Its panels showed the lives of the sainted dead.
“The orsine, Miss Quicke, is the last passage between those worlds. There were others, once; but Cairndale is the only orsine that remains active. It is our task, here, to contain it. It is Dr. Berghast’s task. The orsine must be kept closed, you see.”
“Why?”
“Or the dead will come through,” said Mrs. Harrogate simply. “The dead, and worse.”
Alice raised a skeptical eyebrow. It all sounded mad to her. “I guess it’s a good thing you keep it closed, then,” she muttered.
“Cairndale has always been here,” Mrs. Harrogate continued. “The original structures are old, far older than you can imagine. It was a monastery once. You can see the ruins still, on the island in Loch Fae. You have seen it? From your balcony? The land was sold by its order centuries ago to the first of the talents, a man who claimed for himself the title of lord and constructed the manor as you see it around you now. He was the first of his kind; but when he learned there were others like him, he determined to establish a refuge for them. Ah. Here is his likeness.” She stopped in front of a smoke-darkened portrait. Dark eyes stared out from a face now long-dead. “The property has been added on to, of course, first as a hospital for the poor, later as a sanatorium, now as a clinic. Or, at least, this is how we have wished it to appear. But in fact it has always just been a sanctuary, for its resident talents. Most of them are old now, too. You will see them, some of them, when they come out of their rooms. The ones who wish to be seen, that is. In recent years, it has also become a kind of … school.”
“For the children.”
“Yes. There are twenty-one of them now. As they come of age, some leave, of course. They must learn to control their talents, to focus them.” She paused. “This must all seem rather strange.”
Alice let her gaze drift upward, to the ancient candle wheels suspended from the coffered ceiling. “Stranger than what?”