Blaze, p.8
Blaze, page 8
Thankfully, no horde of evil swept past him and out the door. At least, he hoped not.
This is only a shop, he reminded himself. Even so, he closed the door quickly, causing the small overhead bell to ring again.
No one greeted him despite the bell. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anyone in the shop at all. Not too surprising given its wares.
There were a few customary antique pieces—table sets, chairs, settees and lamps—but scattered around the room and filling every glass cabinet were the most curious curios he had ever seen. One entire cabinet held nothing but jars with creatures suspended in formaldehyde. A snake curled its way up the inside of a long-necked bottle while a family of newts floated in the square jar next to it.
Not exactly your typical home accents. He somehow doubted he’d find Little Nell here.
“Hello?”
There was no answer but the gentle ticking of a large grandfather clock in the corner. There was something odd about it. The timing must be off, he thought. It was running far too slowly with a languorous tick ... tick ... tick. The entire place was strange, filled with a hodgepodge of items of many nationalities and belief systems. A Japanese paper lantern ghost, a Chōchin-obake, hung from the ceiling, its mournful expression drawn in silk, near a row of nkisi statuettes from Africa lining the shelves of a rather fine Sheraton bookcase. A small replica of Nemesis’s chariot, complete with harnessed gryphons, seemed so real that, despite its being carved from marble, Victor half expected it to come to life.
He moved deeper into the shop—Is that a shrunken head?—to admire what looked suspiciously like Tristan’s bow, when a large Siamese cat suddenly leapt up on to the glass case next to him.
Victor drew back in surprise. Where the hell had he come from? Despite the near-silence in the shop, he hadn’t heard the damn thing coming.
The cat gazed at him with inscrutable blue eyes and swished his tail to disburse a cloying tendril of sandalwood incense smoke rising from a censer on a shelf behind him. His dark chocolate points stood out in contrast to the creamy fur of his body. The dark mask on his face caused his already startling blue eyes to seem to be lit from within.
“Hello,” Victor said. “You’re a very handsome fellow, aren’t you?”
The cat straightened his back regally and curled his tail delicately around his front paws, as if it say, “Of course.”
He suddenly had the odd compulsion to reach out and touch his fur, which was quite strange indeed considering he wasn’t what anyone would call a cat devotee. Not that he had anything against them, but he generally preferred dogs. They were so much simpler.
Regardless, he felt the nearly overwhelming urge to pet him.
The cat’s eyes closed slightly in entreaty, and Victor’s hand hovered in mid-air between them. He hesitated a moment, then tentatively moved to touch him but was greeted with a startling hiss and bared fangs.
“Ramses!”
Snatching his hand back, Victor turned to see a young woman in her mid-twenties looking in gentle censure at the cat.
“I’m sorry,” Victor said, feeling as though he’d returned from somewhere far away. “I had the distinct impression that he wanted me to pet him.”
The admission sounded absurd, and he suddenly wished he could snatch the words back from the air.
The young woman moved over to the cat and picked him up. Victor could hear the purring even from a distance.
She stroked his head. “He probably did, until he didn’t,” she said with a wry look. She shrugged. “Cats.”
She kissed Ramses on the head and whispered, “It’s not nice to tease,” then set him down gently on the floor.
The cat gave Victor one last rather haughty look, even for a cat, and sauntered a few steps away before leaping up onto a red velvet parlor chair to curl up and ignore them both.
“Is there something I can help you with?” the woman asked. Victor shifted his focus to her. She was really quite lovely, with the most earnest green eyes. Her skin was pale and smooth, and the hair piled high atop her head was a rather peculiar tint of chestnut. Her smile broadened in both recognition of his admiration and a reminder that she had spoken.
Silently chastising himself, he smiled back politely in return. “I’ve come to see a Mrs. Ashcroft,” he said. “Is she in?”
The woman’s eyes gently swept over him. The glance was casual, but he had the distinct impression she’d learned more in that brief moment than most do in an hour’s company. “And whom may I say is calling?”
She really was quite young and lovely, he thought idly. Perhaps the witch was her aunt or grandmother.
Shaking himself from those thoughts he gave her a small bow.
“Forgive me. Victor Schäfer. Doctor Victor Schäfer. Arthur Darvill sent me.”
Her eyes brightened. “Did he?”
“Yes. He thought she might be able to help me.”
“With?”
He cleared his throat, trying to formulate a way to say why he was there without having to say it. He failed miserably.
“Well, you see, I ….” he began.
She waited patiently as he swung to and fro in the wind.
He cleared his throat again. “Perhaps I should speak to Mrs. Ashcroft about that.”
“I’m afraid that’s going to be difficult,” she said.
“Oh?”
“My mother has been gone for many years.”
“Oh. I’m terribly sorry. I …” He’d certainly made a fool of himself. “Arthur must have been confused.”
She looked at him with undisguised amusement at his awkwardness.
“I shouldn’t have …” he stuttered. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“It’s quite all right, Doctor. I’m fairly certain that Arthur intended you to speak to me. Did he say Mrs. Ashcroft?”
“No,” he admitted. He had simply assumed.
She smiled kindly at him. “I believe he meant to send you to me.”
“You?”
She laughed; it was a delightful sound. “Is that so strange?”
“You mean to say, that is …” When had his tongue tied into a knot? “That you are …?”
“A witch?”
He glanced around nervously, winning another peal of laughter.
“It’s not a dirty word, Doctor.”
She was the picture of composure and calm while he floundered helplessly.
“No,” he said, quickly. “Of course not.”
She continued to enjoy his discomfiture, but had the grace to attempt to hide it now.
“I wasn’t what you were expecting?” she asked.
“No,” he confessed. In truth, he’d envisioned an old woman with a crooked nose and possibly a rather unseemly wart. Best not to tell her that.
“Centuries of propaganda, I’m afraid, have put most people of the same mind. Uglier things are easier to fear.”
There was a keen truth in that. He’d do well to remember it in this new world.
She clasped her hands in front of her and took a small but determined step forward. “Now, Doctor Schäfer. How may I help?”
Edwin Grey tore a sheet away from the chair it had been covering. Dust billowed into the air and he waved a hand to chase it away. Despite his efforts, it made him cough.
What had these idiots been doing for the last twenty years? The least they could do was keep his home clean. He turned to glare at them.
The one called Bert was admiring his collection of cognacs while the other vainly tried to push a cuckoo back into its clock.
Idiots, indeed. It was a miracle he’d risen.
He tossed the sheet aside and took stock of his flat. It was exactly as he’d left it those many years ago. He liked this flat. It had been an inheritance from his last wife. Or was it the one before? He couldn’t remember and it didn’t really matter. He’d enjoyed the rooms very much before his time had run out and he’d been forced to regenerate again. He was on his ninth cycle now. And it would be his last unless he found the right mate. And he planned on doing just that.
He was not going to spend an eternity with the dead when the living—present company excepted—were much more fun.
“How was it?” Alvie asked.
Grey walked over to the window and looked down at the city. “How was what?”
“You know, being …” Alvie nodded significantly, “dead.”
Grey gave the question casual thought. “Dull. The dead are such a bore.”
“They are?”
“Have you ever been interred next to Karl Marx?”
Alvie thought about it, unsure, then shook his head.
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed. Workers of the world unite! Ad infinitum … Incredibly tiresome.”
With a sigh he pulled himself from those thoughts and turned to more pressing matters. He paused by the great looking glass over the fireplace to admire himself, but the glass was dull and unpolished.
“How are the young ladies this season?”
Bert tilted his head to the side and winced. “Well, sir, it’s not exactly the season anymore. It’s not far off, mind you, but—”
Anger grew within him. “What day is it?”
“September 26—”
“27,” Bert corrected.
“The 27th.”
Grey could hardly believe his ears. “September?”
“Yes, sir.”
Grey strode toward Alvie, who had the good sense to cower.
“I’m sorry.”
“We … There was a delay,” Bert added.
“A delay?” Did they have any idea what this might mean? Hunting season was over.
“There was works. At the cemetery. We couldn’t—”
He held up a hand to stop the man’s prattling excuses. “I don’t want to hear it.”
The fury grew inside him and then suddenly, as abruptly as it started, it ended. There was nothing to be done about it now. For all of his considerable powers, turning back time was not one of them.
He would find a mate without the shooting gallery that was the London Season. He was Edwin Grey, after all.
He looked around the apartment and noticed for the first time that one of his minions was missing. “Where is Clive?”
Bert winced again.
“Well, there’s good news and bad news on that front, guv.”
Grey breathed in deeply through his nose. “Go on.”
“It’s seems Clive went and got ’imself obliterated.”
Grey looked at him dully. “Is that the good news or the bad news?”
“Er, bad?” Bert said.
Grey’s patience was wearing thin. Why was good help so hard to find?
“And the good news?” he asked.
“A new Blaze is born.”
The word sent a chill up Grey’s spine and he narrowed his dark eyes at Bert. “And how can that possibly be good news?”
“She’s not yet come into her powers fully, guv.”
Grey smiled. That was good news. The Blaze was just about the only being on earth who could stand in his way, stop his quest for immortality. The last one had sent him to his grave, again, but she hadn’t been strong enough to destroy him. This one wouldn’t be, either.
“So, she’s still just a girl.”
Bert nodded.
Grey turned away, smiling wolfishly as he walked back to the window. Perhaps this delay would be to his advantage. If he could destroy this new Blaze before her Emergence, it would mean the end of her line. He would need more strength than he currently possessed for that, though. But meals could be acquired. And once he had enough power, and with no Blaze, nothing could stop him.
He pondered the deliciousness of that thought and whispered, “Just a girl.”
Chapter Eight
Victor saw Artemis through the window of his study as she came up the front steps of their home and let out a small sigh of relief.
Thank God, she’s safe.
While he didn’t expect another attack so soon, he’d been concerned to come home and find her gone. He walked out into the hall and was there waiting for her when she came in.
“Where were you?” he asked.
“I’ve been to the park,” she said rather abruptly, as if none of yesterday had happened.
He was about to chastise her for going out, but he stilled his lips. She was home safely. There were more important issues at hand.
After Miss Ashcroft had promised to see to the warding of their house, he’d spent the rest of the day vainly trying to find a loophole that would release Artemis from her duty, but there was none to be found. There was no escape. There had been four recorded instances of a Blaze refusing the call. All four had been killed before their seventeenth birthday. Artemis had no choice but to accept her fate—and her training.
“We need to talk, Artemis,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.
“There’s nothing to say.” She started to walk past him, but he took her by the arm and stopped her. She glared at him. His own pique grew but he tamped it down.
“Please?” he said.
Artemis squared her shoulders but didn’t pull away. He gestured to his study. She went inside, and he closed the door behind them.
Artemis stood there with her back to him, arms folded across her chest.
“I know you’re frightened,” he began.
She spun to face him. “Then why are you doing to this me?”
“I’m not.”
“You are. You want me to be something I’m not.”
He paused and took a breath. “I would give anything to change what is, but I simply do not have the power to do so.”
“You mean you don’t want to,” she shot back.
He flexed his hands in frustration. “Do you think that I would choose this for you? That I would choose the life ahead for you? A life filled with violence and danger?”
Her anger faltered a little. “Then what about all of that?” she said, pointing toward the hall, and he knew, to his secret study. “You’ve been waiting for this for sixteen years.”
“I have been dreading this for sixteen years. I had no choice but to prepare. And so must you.”
She shook her head. “I am sorry you wasted your time, Father, but I am not doing it.”
“Artemis—”
Her emotions began to visibly fray, but he saw her force them back under control. When she looked at him it was with surprising resolve.
“I am not the Blaze.”
If it had been over anything else, he would have been proud of her determination and self-possession. But this was one subject over which there could be no disagreement.
“Artemis.” He took her by the shoulders and held her gently. “You are. You must be.”
Despite the firmness of her expression, he could see the flicker of doubt in her eyes.
“There is evil rising in the city, Artemis,” he explained. “You will be all that stands between it and good. I must teach you, train you.”
She pulled away from his grasp. “I won’t do it.”
“Innocent lives will be lost, including your own,” he said, hoping the intensity of his voice and the power of his words would break through to her. It didn’t work.
“I’m not her.”
“You are. You must be. An untrained Blaze is a danger to herself and to others. One who is unable to protect herself is an easy target. The shades will come for you again. Let me train you in self-defense at the very least. You must prepare. Your very life is at risk, Artemis. Please?” he begged in a voice little more than a rough whisper.
He saw her begin to waver. All he wanted to do was comfort her, to tell her everything was going to be all right, but more than that he needed her to understand. He needed her to accept this. If she didn’t ….
“Artemis?”
Despite her warring emotions, her words came out like a cold dagger to his heart. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
He reached out to her again, but she slipped past him and disappeared out of the room and up the stairs. Dammit.
He stalked across the room, furious at himself. He should have told her sooner. He should have prepared her better. He should have done everything differently.
He’d made a complete mess of this and now she was ….
He closed his eyes against the thought but that did not shield him from the images that filled his mind.
In a fury, he picked up a glass paperweight from his desk and hurled it against the wall. It shattered into pieces and fell to the floor. And it didn’t help at all.
Artemis glanced idly around the luncheon hall wondering if she’d made a mistake in accepting Phoebe’s invitation. Making small talk with Lady Withelm about her prize roses was the last thing Artemis wanted to do, and yet here she was doing just that.
There had to be more to life than Lady Withelm and her roses, didn’t there? She studiously ignored the small voice inside her head that sounded frustratingly like her father’s, reminding her that there was more to life, more to her life. She was trying to deny it, but in favor of what? Of social engagements that were anything but engaging?
She’d tried to make conversation. Her one attempt at political discourse had fallen as flat as week-old Vichy water. She didn’t dare bring up the suffragettes, although she desperately wanted to, if for no other reason than to see just how apoplectic she could make Mrs. Nisbet. That woman, like many others, believed quite firmly that women were far too emotional for politics and that it was best for men and women “to have separate spheres.”
Artemis didn’t want separate spheres. Not that she wanted to be the same as a man, but why couldn’t she be treated with the same respect? Why was it men could discuss such things as politics over cigars and brandy, but women had to content themselves with tea cakes and roses?
She’d told her father that her life was her own to live. Surely, she thought as she looked around the table, there had to be more to it than this. And more to it than being the supposed Blaze, too.
Thoughts of her father brought back memories of their last discussion, if one could call it that. He’d been in a relentless brood since then, avoiding her, and she him. Of course, that couldn’t go on, but no matter how he pressed her, she would not relent. She was not this Blaze and never would be. The mere notion of it terrified her to her core. He would just have to find someone else.
