“I suppose I must, then,” Jane said.
“Exactly. You begin to understand.”
She turned from Jane then and clapped her hands. The physicians came to attention, to a one. Even Dr. Nizamiev fixed on her. “To the library with us. Avdotya, will you be joining?”
The woman shook her head. “No, I’ll wait down here for you all to finish.”
“Of course,” Hunt said. Her attention had already slid away from Dr. Nizamiev, and back to Jane. “Lead on, Mrs. Lawrence.”
Jane did not relish the thought of going up to the library with the sun set and Augustine gone. What would happen if she took them to the cellar door instead? She might convince them to help her break the lock, based on their memories of Elodie. And what would they find behind it? But she was not sure she could explain herself, and so she led them up, turning on the lights as she went.
None of them guttered. No shadows moved. The rug remained smooth and even beneath her feet—no doubt Mrs. Purl’s doing, a quick tidy for their guests.
“Now, before we begin,” Vingh said, falling in next to her as they reached the second-floor landing, “what has Avdotya been filling your head with?” He held in one hand a valise. Several of the other guests carried cases with them as well.
“Just that you have done this before,” Jane replied. “I confess, I’m not convinced of it.”
“That is the adult, rational mind speaking,” Hunt said behind her. “It veils what we know to be true as children. Children, you know, often see spirits, often feel things. But they don’t have the context. It is the marriage of sight and context that leads to understanding. Do you follow?”
No. She had never seen anything of the sort; her childhood visions had been of bombs. Spirits were a monster of a different age. They should have been left behind along with all these superstitious practices.
“As much as I can.” They reached the third-floor hallway, and she led the way to the closed library door. She hesitated only briefly before turning the latch. The room was chill, but empty, blessedly empty. She scanned every window, every pane of glass that arched above her head, but found nothing but their own reflections.
The rest of the guests filtered in, talking to one another in low voices. She watched as they set out their cases and pulled out loose, pale robes, pulling them on over their traveling clothes. All wore pale colors, except for Hunt and the other woman, Dr. Reese. Theirs were dark, embroidered with something akin to star charts.
She took a deep breath.
“If you’re afraid,” Vingh said softly, by her ear, “you should know that none of this ever works. We haven’t figured it out.”
She twisted to look at him. What an oddly vulnerable admission from such a proud man. “Do you believe it could? Work, I mean.”
“Oh, yes. With all my soul. I have … seen things,” he said, quick to justify himself. “And read things, too many things to doubt that there is something else to this world that we can only barely touch. We have centuries of stories of ghosts, of monsters, of beasts beyond understanding. They fall off as the march of progress continues on, but they must have had their root in something. Tonight, though, nothing will happen here besides chemistry and theater.”
“So it’s fake.”
“Not at all.” He pursed his lips, then shrugged. “The best explanation I can give is that we are following a path laid out before us by a lineage that goes back many generations. To before those magical stories stopped. By following the path, we learn things each time, and we move closer to the truth of it.”
She thought of following proofs that greater minds had devised for mathematical conundrums, and how, though she followed the steps, she did not always understand the whole of the progression until she’d tried it many times.
It was … reasonable.
The whole room took on a peculiar scent as her guests lit curling incense, at once pungent and faded, acrid and sweet. From the empty shelves, the doctors hung painted cloths, covered in brilliant pigments, laying out intricate paths of symbols that Jane vaguely remembered from church services as a child and decorations in the magistrate’s office. They were combined with what she imagined were the iconographies of other peoples, married to some form of map. Geometric designs wove in and out of the depictions of fanciful figures, and the whole array created a sensation of deep uneasiness in her, of being lost in another world where different laws held sway.
The other woman, Reese, inscribed a circle of chalk upon the floorboards. Chalk, Jane thought, her breath catching as Hunt took her hand and led her to the edge of the circle, then across it, all the way to the center, where the table she had read at the night before still sat. “Kneel here,” the doctor said, and Jane swallowed, lowering herself to her knees. Hunt let go of her hand and unfolded a square of fabric, a silver veil. She draped it over Jane’s face.