Content.
“Just about, yes. Why aren’t you dressed?”
“Georgiana’s latest theory,” he said, waggling his book in the air. “On possible transmission vectors for swamp illnesses, now that miasma theory has been firmly put to bed.”
The woman—older than Augustine, but similar in bearing and the lines of her cheeks, perhaps his mother?—looked distantly amused. “It will be there when we are through. Elodie is waiting.”
Augustine conceded with a smile, one Jane knew well, and rose from his chair.
I am dreaming. Panic shot through her, and she rose to her feet, staggering forward. Nobody looked up at the noise or movement. Augustine left the room, and she followed him down the stairs, candlestick clutched tightly in her hand.
Lindridge Hall in all its splendor was breathtaking. Every window was gleamingly polished, every rug washed and beaten and just so, every piece of furniture lavishly upholstered and bedecked in finery. The house pulsed with vibrancy, and every odd angle in the walls, every strange geometry was now beautiful to her. In context, around this cheerful family, it sang in a distant but recognizable harmony.
Augustine disappeared into his bedroom and Jane followed, slipping in just before he closed the door.
He was already tugging off his waistcoat.
“Augustine,” she said, rushing to his side. If this was a dream, if she had ruined the ritual, she would have this, at least. Some little contact, some kindness. “Augustine, it is Jane.”
Her husband did not respond.
She tried to take his hands and found she could not. She did not pass through him, or feel any resistance, but still she could not reach him. It was as if she were looking through a mirror, and her idea of where things might be was not quite right.
A mirror.
She could see Elodie in the mirrored windows of Lindridge Hall. Might dream logic allow the reverse? She followed him to his dressing table as he shucked his shirt, his trousers.
She had no reflection.
“Augustine!” she cried. “I must speak to you. I have so much to tell you, so much you need to understand. Please—”
He stepped into the washroom and closed the door.
Numb, Jane stared after him, then retreated from the bedroom.
In the foyer, Augustine’s mother waited alongside three others: two men and a woman, one in Augustine’s image and the other two fair and copper-haired. Augustine’s father, and the Pinkcombes.
And beside them …
Nothing.
Not just the empty foyer, but blankness. Jane’s eyes refused to focus on it. Her gaze slid away. She watched instead as Augustine’s mother approached it, holding out her hands.
“He was caught up in his work, of course,” she said. “But he will be down soon, my dear.”
The blankness encircled her hands. Jane’s throat grew tight.
Augustine’s mother canted her head, as if listening, then laughed. “You must learn not to forgive him so easily,” she said to the blankness, “or he will govern your future.”
The blankness was Elodie.
Augustine descended the stairs, dressed in dark blue robes picked out with shining green thread. They were cinched at the waist, with a mantle about the shoulders. They were finely made and well kept, but they, like the robes the rest of them wore, looked old. Very old.
She watched, frozen, as Augustine drew close to the blankness and pressed his face against it, a gentle kiss to the top of the lacuna. He murmured something she could not make out. The families laughed, then processed together down the hallway toward the cellar.
The door was closed but had no shining padlock on top of it. Augustine’s father was the one to open it as the rest of the group came to a halt. “Elodie, dear,” he said, his voice lower than his son’s, more resonant. “Can you recite the order in which we are to enter the ritual space?”
Silence. And not just silence, but an absence of all sound, so deafening it made Jane cry out. But the Lawrences and the Pinkcombes did not notice, and they smiled, then schooled their expressions to firm solemnity. They were like Hunt and the others, but unlike them as well—possessed of a careful grace, a seriousness that the doctors had not had. Jane followed them beneath Lindridge Hall, ghostlike at their heels.
They did not go to the funeral chamber, with its carven chairs and long table, but instead to another room, the stone floor worked in concentric circles and fine patterns. Jane watched them place anointed candles at each spoke of an inscribed polygon, then take up carefully chosen positions within.
For now, for this moment, Augustine did not have blood on his hands. No horrors had been enacted. Her husband had only powdered pigment that he pressed to every person’s forehead. He had only poetry, recited until his words vibrated into meaninglessness. She felt power on the air, on her tongue, and she leaned forward, desperate to reach it. To feel it, to know it. But as the circle raised around them, firm and real, their voices became distant, their outlines blurred.