Jane stared.
“I certainly have—seen things here, but—”
But what?
If spirits were real, if she could see the imprint of Augustine’s dead wife in a darkened window …
No. Blanching wedding rings in sunlight, wearing a shirt inside out—those were not spells, they were hope. The world was governed by logic and emotion, not esoteric power. Magic was not real. It was a fantasy, an impossibility, something from old superstitions.
But then she thought of Mr. Renton, of Mr. Lowell’s whispering, of chalk and salt.
“Magic is very real, Mrs. Lawrence,” Dr. Nizamiev said. “But what they were doing that week wasn’t. They were schoolmates reunited after several years of being separated by their residencies, and they were playing. At university, we were all part of a particular eating club, a covert gathering that performed rituals and had shared secrets. There are many of them in many universities across the country—and outside of it, too—and most are playacting at best. Ours was no different. We had gathered that week just to relive our younger days.
“And then the news came that Elodie Lawrence was deathly ill.”
Jane found herself leaning in, desperate to hear more. “And he left, but not in time to save her.”
“Correct. What happened next I wasn’t present for, but he told me some of the details when he came to me for help three months ago.”
Just before he came to Larrenton. At the end of the long disappearance that Vingh had wondered over. Jane felt the pressure increasing inside her skull.
“What did he tell you?”
“He was distraught after Elodie’s death, and both his family and hers blamed him for it. He was desperate. So he worked a spell. He tried to fix what he felt he had broken.”
Her skin crawled, and she hunched forward, shivering. “He tried to … bring her back?”
“Yes.”
Impossible. But she had seen Elodie, holding her finger to her lips. And so had Mr. Purl, and others, too, no doubt. “It didn’t work, though.” She breathed, desperate to maintain the foundations of her world, the logical constructs that had bounded her decisions, led her here to this moment, married to a man who believed in the ridiculous. “It couldn’t have worked. Elodie is not here. He—he is married to me.”
“You’re right, it didn’t work,” Dr. Nizamiev said, and Jane’s eyes watered with relief. But the doctor was not finished. She said, “It didn’t work, because transmutation of that sort is impossible. I don’t know where he found the spell, but at most it should have let him speak to her spirit, not make her body so much as twitch. Except nothing happened at all. The families found out and were disgusted. They felt he had profaned their home. And so they left him.”
Jane scrambled to slide all these new fragments into the expanding portrait of her husband. They fit easily.
“Why tell me this?” she asked again. Dr. Nizamiev had some less altruistic aim, but what it could be, Jane did not know. It yawned, black and indistinct behind the glittering sharp edges of the truth of Augustine.
“You are clever, Mrs. Lawrence; let me set the puzzle pieces out for you, and you can tell me what you see.”
Jane’s throat bobbed. And then she nodded, wordlessly. Go on.
“His spell was unsuccessful,” Dr. Nizamiev said, “but that does not mean it had no consequences.”
“The hauntings,” Jane said.
Dr. Nizamiev nodded. “He fled, trying to avoid them. But he sickened. When he came to me three months ago, he was barely able to stand, but no doctor had been able to diagnose him. He came to me first, instead of seeing Georgiana Hunt or the others, because he was afraid they would discover what he had done. He knew I was circumspect, and that I was … experienced.”
“Experienced how? Are you a—a sorceress?”
Dr. Nizamiev smiled then, animating her face, which Jane realized had been oddly blank while she related her story. “I study those who perform magic, and those who think they perform magic. It’s a personal curiosity of mine, after being a part of that eating club.”
“Mr. Renton,” she said, eyes widening as the logic clicked into place. “He called for you to attend Mr. Renton because he may have worked magic.”
“And then he turned me away, because he did not want to know what had happened, only to have me remove a problem from his hands. And because, I suspect, he resents that I could not help him when he first came to me. But I have been doing research on his behalf and have tracked down some texts that may be of help.”