Mrs. Wexford might be able to summon dear Annie for him. Cyma frowned at the notion, and spoke again, to keep Myers’s thoughts on matters scientific. “What are such things made of? Is it some coagulation of the air, a curdling that results from the ghost’s presence?”
Myers came back to himself with a sigh that said his thoughts had gone exactly where she guessed. “No one knows for certain. It felt gauzy against my fingers—”
“Usually it is gauze.” Sidgwick had joined them. He gave his friend a sympathetic, pitying look. “You know such things are so often faked.”
“Often, yes—but always?” Myers shook his head, rubbing his fingertips together as if he could still feel the substance. “I see no wires, Henry, nor mirrors. I believe this one was real.”
Cyma laid a supportive hand on his arm and smiled up into his sad eyes. “As do I. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
“You had a theory about the stuff, didn’t you, Frederic?”
“Did I?” Myers shrugged at his friend. “I don’t recall.”
Sidgwick tapped one finger against the bridge of his nose, eyes closed in thought. “Ectoplasm, you suggested we should call it. Some kind of emanation from the ghost itself—you never told me the details. Spirit made physical, or some such; a thumb in the eye of the materialists, you said. But you never wrote the article you promised.”
They began wrangling amiably about the Proceedings of their society. Cyma didn’t attend to any of it. Spirit made physical. It was one of the basic discoveries of the Galenic Academy last century, that in faerie realms, spirit and matter were the same thing; faerie bodies were a particular configuration of the four classical elements that made up their spirits, intermixed with the aether that permeated their world. Was it somehow possible for human spirits to achieve a similar unity?
She could ask in the Academy—but that might be a very dangerous thing, if it touched on Nadrett’s business.
Cyma knew she should keep silent. You’re almost free of him; knowing will only put you in danger. But encountering Myers last month, after not seeing him for so long—she couldn’t let this go.
Sidgwick went to crank up the gas lights, thoroughly breaking the mood; there would be no more raising of ghosts for now. Experimentally, Cyma said, “I recall reading an interesting theory once, from someone in the Theosophical Society. You’re familiar with their notion of the astral plane?” Myers nodded. “I do not agree with them on the matter of spirits, of course; clearly the souls of the departed do sometimes stay near to comfort those they leave behind. It is not all trickery on the part of the medium. But what if some of it is indeed trickery, as they suggest—on the part of something else?”
His fingers had begun to pull at his beard in a gesture she recognized very well. “Madame Blavatsky’s ‘spooks, elementaries, and elementals,’ you mean. Lower principles cast off by human spirits on their way to a higher existence.”
“Not precisely,” Cyma said, hoping she could invent well enough to keep Myers from dismissing her entirely. What she was about to say was pure balderdash; the point was to see what he said in response. “There is, after all, a long-standing association in folklore between faeries and the spirits of the dead. Is it possible that the spiritual realm—the astral plane, as the theosophists would have it—is in fact shared by those two classes of being? And when a medium is deceived, it is by a creature we might in other contexts term a ‘faerie’?”
She was watching very closely as she said it, recording every movement of eye and brow and mouth. Goblins did sometimes deceive mediums, it was true, but only as an occasional lark. Myers pursed his lips, then shook his head. “I confess, I’ve never given the possibility much thought. It is an interesting theory, at least.”
Not a single twitch, not the slightest spark of recognition.
He doesn’t remember.
Myers had given the possibility some thought, in the days before Cyma handed him over to Nadrett. It was why her master had wanted the man, though what purpose such an erroneous idea could serve, she didn’t know. Did Nadrett think this “spiritual realm” or “astral plane” was Faerie itself? Or did he think to extend his control over such a place?
That question was far too dangerous for Cyma to allow it to remain in her mind. Myers had considered such things, and now did not remember; that meant Nadrett had taken the memory from his mind. Just like he’d done to Dead Rick, though in this case, the removal appeared more precise. Myers was not broken like the skriker.
Perhaps because Nadrett still had use for Myers’s knowledge. After all, he’d let the man walk free, back to his friends in the Society for Psychical Research.
I should get away from him. Cyma was suddenly cold in a way that had nothing to do with the séance. She murmured something inane when Myers took his leave, going to coax Mrs. Wexford into trying again; after a paralyzed moment of standing where the manifestation had been, she slipped out the door and asked the footman to fetch her a cab.
She was almost free of Nadrett. Not even for Frederic William Henry Myers would she trap herself again.
White Lion Street, Islington: April 11, 1884
Eliza smoothed the bodice of her borrowed dress with nervous hands. “Borrowed” might be the wrong word; Ann Wick didn’t know she’d taken it. But the wages she’d saved so far weren’t enough to buy a respectable dress—something that wouldn’t instantly advertise her as somebody’s maid—so she’d sneaked this one from a hook in the room they shared, and changed into it once she was away from Cromwell Road. It wasn’t stealing, not when she intended to put it back.
Thus disguised, she was going to attend a meeting of the London Fairy Society.
It was the best she could think of to do. A fortnight of working for the Kitterings had gotten her no further than those few stolen minutes of nosing through Miss Kittering’s things; she’d uncovered nothing about faeries, and had no further opportunities to speak to the daughter. So, a month later, she was back where she had been before—but this time, with more preparation.
She would never have dared show her face at the meeting, except that she knew Louisa Kittering wouldn’t be present. Mrs. Kittering had decided to host a dinner party tonight, with the Honorable Mr. Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes in attendance. The row between mother and daughter had been audible two floors in either direction, and when Miss Kittering lost, Eliza had gone promptly to Mrs. Fowler with news that her mother was gravely ill. That had sparked a second row, nearly as fierce as the first, for with the missus planning this dinner party, the housekeeper needed every servant on hand. But Eliza was a good deal more stubborn than Miss Kittering, and had generally been a good enough worker that Mrs. Fowler was not eager to sack her; and Eliza had sworn she would quit if she were not permitted to go.
A threat that worked because she came quite close to meaning it. Louisa Kittering did not matter very much at all, except as a connection to her friend, the one she’d met at the previous society meeting. Eliza’s time in the Kittering household had failed to show her that woman again, though, or to turn up her name. It was worth risking her position at Cromwell Road to come to Islington, where she had a better chance of seeing the woman again.
Eliza’s optimism had been sufficient that she paid for an omnibus fare out to Islington, rather than walking the whole distance. She even looked respectable enough that a gentleman gave up his seat inside the ’bus so she wouldn’t have to climb the ladder to the knife-board bench on top. Crammed in between a mother with three squalling children and a clerk who somehow managed to sleep through all the disturbances, she’d felt very pleased with herself… until she got to Islington High Street.