“Do you claim to be able to do magic, Mrs. Lawrence?”
Nizamiev was a rational doctor. And Jane knew what answer to give her, the answer that was simplest. The answer of a rational woman.
“No,” Jane said. “Of course not. Magic is impossible.” She met Dr. Nizamiev’s gaze and refused to flinch, refused to back down.
Magic was real, but they were not magicians. Of course they were not. If Jane began to believe otherwise, she might be lost again. But if Jane could know there had been no magic at Lindridge Hall, it could all be over. She could no longer raise a circle, there were no spirits, and her husband was as whole as any man—so what was there tying her to that fiction?
A useful fiction, yes. A fiction wherein a sort of truth lay. But there were other truths.
“And your husband?”
“He no longer plays such games.”
“I’m sorry, I will clarify—your husband, does he know what happened to him?”
Jane’s breath caught.
In the long, blurred days of her recovery, it had been easy enough to forget what she had seen in that indistinct, unreal place at the edge of death. The holes in Augustine, the yawning gaps that proved he was not the same man who had married her. When those memories came, as if from dreams, they came, too, with a vision of the final piece of the working, the mass of hair and eye and flesh, grown from the both of them and destroyed to set them free. It was easy to believe she had succeeded, or that there had been no trial to best at all. Because to bring a man back from the dead was impossible, and he was there, and present, and warm, and did that not mean that he was as he seemed?
But there had been moments. Glimpses in the mirror. Gaps in his memory. Inescapable evidence that he was not a man at all, but something else.
Had Dr. Nizamiev seen it, too, in what could only have been a glance in the hallway?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jane said at last, though her voice trembled.
“His long absence. Where was he?”
Another leading question, another balancing upon the precipice. Jane wanted to scream, hurl insults, drive Dr. Nizamiev away. But it was only for an instant; she and Augustine had already rehearsed this answer.
“The cellar,” she said. “The tunnels are unstable. He was trapped for a time. Their total collapse after he escaped is what destroyed the house. Or hadn’t you heard?”
“He went down below instead of attending a patient? My understanding,” Dr. Nizamiev said, making another note, “was that you saw him go out. Mr. Lowell mentioned searching the hills with the magistrate’s men.”
“I was wrong,” she said. “Overwrought. Exhausted. He left me to sleep, and I assumed he’d gone, but apparently he had stored books down there. Medical texts. It was dangerous, but less damp than the house proper.”
Dr. Nizamiev had not seen Augustine’s study in the house. The lie came easily, and Jane saw no flicker of distrust in her.
Or of faith.
“I’m sorry,” Jane added, before Dr. Nizamiev had a chance to probe further, “but I fear I must ask that you leave me to rest. You understand, the surgical intervention I required, it has left me quite worn down.”
“Of course,” Dr. Nizamiev said, rising from her seat, her dark skirts undulating. She closed her notebook, tucked it away in a pocket. “You have gone through a harrowing trial, and I am glad you have made it out the other side.”
“Thank you. I’m glad, as well; more glad that Augustine has come with me.”
Dr. Nizamiev inclined her head, bid Jane farewell, moved toward the door. But she hesitated at the frame, turned back to Jane. “Do not be a stranger, Mrs. Lawrence. It may be that in the weeks and months to come, you find you are not as much yourself as you would hope; please do not hesitate to call on me, should you need my services.”
And then she was gone in truth, her boots light on the stairs. Jane listened until the front door opened and closed, and only then began to sob.
Relief. It was relief only, that Dr. Nizamiev had not lingered to see Augustine, though it was the final confirmation that Dr. Nizamiev had been here to evaluate her.
“Jane.”
She lifted her head to see her husband waiting just outside the room, his brow furrowed in worry.
“Are you well?”
The question stilled her tears. It brought with it a moment of panic, but it passed off quick enough. Her nightmares would not fade for some time, but this man who came to her, sat on her bedside, stroked her hair—she trusted him. She trusted him in a way she couldn’t have two weeks ago.