Unnatural Issue Read online

  Isolation . . . blight . . . could it be . . .

  It was beginning to sound as if Susanne did indeed know who the necromancer was, and it was her own father! But perhaps—no, she’d said nothing about the sort of magic he was doing, or even if he was doing anything at all.

  “Did you ever see anything—” he groped for words. “—nasty about? Elementals that were not something you’d care to run across?”

  “What, boggarts and kobolds and all?” she asked, and before he could reply, shook her head. “Never. All I got were those feelings of being watched. The only thing that was . . . nasty . . . were the books.”

  “Books?” Peter repeated sharply. “What sort of books?”

  “Well, I don’t know precisely. They just made me feel a little sick when I touched them, and he was keeping them all in that secret room.” Now besides her pallor, she was looking a bit green.

  Peter made up his mind. “Come,” he said, closing his hand around hers, standing up, and tugging her upright. “We need to go straight to Charles about this.”

  He could see the puzzlement in her eyes. Not surprising, considering he was referring to the son of the house by his first name. “But—”

  “Now,” he insisted.

  She let him draw her to her feet and lead her out of the cottage and down the path to the Great House.

  While having Charles Kerridge notice her was very high on Susanne’s list of desires, she was not sure that having him notice her in this way was going to get her the sort of attention that she wanted.

  Nevertheless, when Peter’s way of speaking changed to something very much posher, and he insisted that she come with him, she was so taken aback that she found herself following him as faithfully as any chick following a hen. It was still light out, which was a good thing, as otherwise she was so dazed that she would have stumbled along like a little fool and probably tripped over something and gotten her gown all dirty. She hoped her hair was tidy. Oh, how she wished that she had something better to wear than this uniform! Right now she would have given a great deal for one of those pretty gowns she had left behind! She didn’t want him to look at her and see just a faceless dairymaid, she wanted him to look at her the way Peter did, seeing her and not the uniform.

  She fretted so much during the long walk that she hardly noticed they were at the Great House until they were literally at the door. And not the servants’ entrance either, but the door closest to the path to the gamekeeper’s cottage, which was one of the family entrances, used only by the estate manager and the Kerridges. She was shocked into silence at that point and just let Peter lead her. He stopped once to send one of the housemaids after Charles Kerridge; the girl obeyed him with no question. Another shock.

  In no time at all she found herself in Charles Kerridge’s office. There, the gamekeeper addressed him familiarly and by his given name, and Master Charles reciprocated. In fact, they sounded like old friends. Clearly, this man was not just a gamekeeper, anymore than Robin had been. She stood there with her hands clasped under her apron and listened, flushing with embarrassment, as Peter—could it be Lord Peter?—summed up everything she had told him.

  Finally the two of them turned to her. “Sit down, Susanne,” Charles said, with the same understanding smile he’d worn when she first saw him. Gingerly, she took a seat on the very edge of the chair he offered and clasped her hands tight in her lap. Peter took another chair, and the two of them began a gentle but very firm interrogation.

  From time to time they paused in their questioning to confer, but then they came right back to her, asking more details. She understood then that she knew far more about her father than she had thought she did.

  And all those little details meant a very great deal to them. Especially the part about the books.

  “Were you there?” Charles asked Peter. “No, wait, we were both too young. But Father might have been. He told me about the Exeter necromancer, the library he had. I had always thought the books were destroyed. What was Alderscroft thinking?”

  “That this was an Earth Master who could be trusted and that we might one day need what was in those books,” Peter countered. “No, I can understand that, and far safer those volumes were in the hands of someone as sound as Whitestone was then.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between two long fingers. “It’s obvious the death of his wife unhinged him.”

  “More than unhinged him,” Charles replied grimly, looking a bit sick. “I can think of a damn good reason for that obscene behavior Susanne described—once you add ‘necromancer’ into the sum. Think about it, Peter.”

  “You can—oh, lord.” Now Peter looked sick. Susanne looked from one to the other as if she were at a tennis game. “Oh, so can I, now.” He looked at Susanne with an expression of horror. “He wouldn’t—”

  “He would,” Charles said, and stood up. “I’d better go consult with Pater and Mater. They knew him after all.”

  “Master Charles, wait!” Susanne exclaimed urgently. “He wouldn’t what?”

  “Don’t worry your little head about it,” Charles said, and rushed off.

  Peter rolled his eyes. “That is just about the worst bit of idiocy Charles has ever spoken. I’m sorry, Susanne. Being told not to worry about something is only likely to give you nightmares.” He paused. “Although, I can’t imagine you could have a worse nightmare than what we think Whitestone has in mind.”

  “Tell me!” she demanded, sounding shrill even in her own ears. Charles might still intimidate her, but Peter did not.

  “Well . . . let me start at the beginning.” He leaned forward a bit, looking at her earnestly, and she wondered then how she could ever have thought he was “just” a gamekeeper. It was obvious, when you looked at him, that competent as he was at the job, he was right out of the peerage.

  Then again, he seemed to be something of a chameleon, able to take on the color of wherever he was.

  “There is an organization of Elemental Masters out of the Exeter Club in London; it’s led by Lord Alderscroft. We call him the Old Lion, and he has his finger on the pulse of most of what goes on in England, magically speaking. He got wind of something in this part of the world that he didn’t much like and sent for me. The long and the short of it is, I was sent here to find a necromancer, and with what I’ve done and what you’re told me, Charles and I are both pretty sure that your father is that necromancer. Now, do you know what I’m talking about?”

  Susanne shook her head.

  “Necromancers aren’t the sort of thing you run into very often, thank goodness. They’re a kind of perverted Earth Master, and everything they do has to do with the dead. They can talk to the dead, but mostly they don’t just talk to ghosts, they force spirits to come to them and then tether the spirits to something in the real world and keep them here. They can animate dead bodies and even bones, which is sickening enough, but they can also drag unwilling spirits back by using bits of those bodies, an’ they can imprison those spirits in a body to make it self-controlling, so the necromancer doesn’t have to act like a puppet master all the time.”

  Peter spoke very calmly, but Susanne was feeling sick at the mere thought of all of this. It completely revolted her to the core, it was so very wrong. “But how can you do that if—if the person has gone to heaven?” she asked, unable to think of how God could be so thwarted.

  “You can’t. But if they’re lingerin’, and a lot do, then you can. And there’s always deception.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “See, if a spirit wants a body again, and they’re clever enough, they can make the necromancer think they’re the right one.”

  “So if the person has gone to heaven, it won’t matter if the necromancer has . . . bits,” she said, and Peter nodded. “And if a clever spirit comes and says that she’s the right one, the necromancer might not know.”

  “The thing is, old girl,” Peter continued, “We’re both pretty sure that unhinged as he is, he’s been trying to do something about bringin’ his wife
back, and she might be the sort that lingers, makin’ sure that you are all right, for instance. Except, of course, at this point she wouldn’t be very pretty, eh what? But if he can drag her spirit back, there’s one thing he can do that will give him a livin’ body rather than a sack of bones. He can shove your spirit out of your body and put hers in it. Which is what, we think, he was goin’ on about when you overheard him.”

  For a moment Susanne was quite sure she hadn’t heard him right.

  But then she remembered those horrible moments when she’d listened to her father talking to that painting . . . and of course he couldn’t possibly have a painting of her, now, could he? He hadn’t even really known she existed until a few weeks ago. Paintings required that you sit for them, and they required an artist to paint them. There’d been no artists about Whitestone Hall, and she certainly hadn’t sat for a painting.

  So the picture had to be of her mother.

  Which meant that Peter was right.

  “I think I’m going to be sick.” she said, faintly. She fought down both a wave of nausea and one of absolute terror.

  “I’m not going to say it’s going to be all right,” Peter told her with candor that was as good as a glass of cold water to the face. “But of all the places you could have come, this is the best and safest. It’s absolutely stiff with Earth mages, and I’m a Water Master. “To get to you, he’ll have to get through us, and I don’t think he can do that. I’ll be letting Lord Alderscroft know all about this immediately. And you are an Earth Master, so you are not exactly defenseless. You might not know the sort of combative magic that I do, but you have many allies among the Earth Elementals, and their sort don’t much like necromancy. You’ve been keeping your side of the Compact all this time, doing the land-work. They’ll honor their side.”

  She nodded, slowly. Not that this made her feel any better . . . but he was right. She could fight back.

  “Now I think you could use a good lie-down,” Peter continued, kindly. “Can you get to your room by yourself?”

  She nodded again, and he helped her to her feet. “Don’t worry too much, if you can help it,” he urged, as he opened the office door for her and let her out. “And even if Charles thinks you ‘needn’t worry your little head about it,’ I will make sure you know everything we are doing.”

  “Thank you,” she said faintly. And in a daze, she headed for her room, very glad that she wasn’t going to be alone in it.

  Peter watched her go, with worry but also with admiration. The girl was holding up under the revelation of horror that would have sent virtually anyone he knew, male or female, screaming or fainting. Or both.

  He sighed. Oh, he liked that girl. Brave, amusing, self-reliant . . .

  . . . quite pretty, though not in the exotic way of his divas and dancers.

  And eminently more sensible than all the society girls his mother kept throwing at him. Good Lord, put one of those in this situation, and we’d be coping with more hysterics than a cage of monkeys with a snake in it.

  Plucky, that was what she was. Just the sort of girl he wished one of those society wenches was.

  For a moment, he was distracted by other thoughts. He was not the sort of fellow to whom an ascetic life appealed, but thus far, he had never found the sort of woman he could see spending the rest of his life with. There were not many unattached female Elemental mages about, and none of them had given him that spark he required, that kinship . . . and he was never going to do what his father had, and marry someone without any magic in her. What a disaster that would be!

  Good thing I’m not the heir, only the spare. My dear old brother can take care of the family line. But still . . . no, this was all futile, even if he could get past the expectations of his mother.

  Bah. You’d have to be blind not to see how infatuated she is with Charles, poor thing. And the fact is, she can’t stay here any longer. We have to get her out of the country.

  He shook off his distraction. The main thing was going to be making sure Susanne was not just safe, but able to defend herself. Because she was going to insist on just that, once she got over her shock. Lord, yes! He knew her well enough to know that. There was another thing about her—not just sensible but brave.

  Oh, Susanne had plenty of faults. Working with her these past few weeks had shown him that. The chief of those faults was that she was not just stubborn, she was damned stubborn, and once she had an idea in her head, right or wrong, it took a steam engine and a chain to haul it away.

  And she was . . . well . . . just a simple country girl with a wretched education. Fortunately that wouldn’t matter as long as she stayed out in the country among people she knew, but she’d be miserably unhappy anywhere else. She was intelligent enough to recognize just how . . . simple . . . she was, and take it to heart, and feel out of place and slighted. He had the shrewd notion that had been happening even when her father elevated her to the position of daughter and heir, and that had only been within the confines of the house she’d grown up in and the people she’d always known. It would be far, far worse if she went into the great world and people who were technically her equals snubbed her and made fun of her because of that.

  And it would happen, even among the Elemental mages, who should know better. Just because someone had power, it didn’t follow that they were going to be shining examples of all the virtues the padres preached about.

  Well, let’s get her safe and get that madman of a father safely rid of, or tucked away where he can’t do any more harm. Then we’ll worry about what’s to become of her.

  Yes, indeed, first things first. And the first of the first things—

  Get back to Alderscroft. Both by conventional means and arcane. In this situation it was just not possible to be too careful. Magical messages and physical ones could miscarry, but do both, and you should get through. The village post office had a telegraph, so did the Exeter Club, and among his many accomplishments, Garrick knew how to operate one. Time to rouse the postmaster, gain access, and have Garrick do the sending.

  This was one message he didn’t want anyone else to see.

  Garrick and a ten-pound note were able to get the telegraph off to Alderscroft at the Club. Peter had called up his undines and had already spoken to his “twin,” Peter Scott, who lived in London. Alderscoft was a Fire Master, and there was not a chance that Peter’s Water Spirits would speak with his salamanders, but Scott was a fellow Water Master, and getting hold of him was almost as simple a matter as picking up one of those new telephones and calling him up. He’d gotten Scott in his scrying bowl within moments of setting up the magic. Scott had promised that he would go straight to the Exeter Club and speak with the Old Lion directly. The Kerridges had already started on strengthening their defenses, and the next step in that would be to let everyone on the estate know—quietly—that there might be trouble.

  “I’d like to keep Susanne’s name out of this,” Michael said, as they conferred around the table just before midnight. “Just let everyone know that we’ve discovered who the necromancer is and that there might be trouble with him.”

  Peter grimaced. “I’m not sure that is a good idea, but . . . it’s your land and your right.”

  “I don’t want anyone blaming her or suggesting we toss her out,” Michael replied. “After all, she’s the stranger here, and it would be only natural to do so.”

  Peter was not at all sure that Michael was right; it seemed to him that Michael was underestimating his servants’ capacity for compassion.

  Then again . . . they were his people. And Susanne was a stranger. When it came to a choice between a stranger and your own . . . you couldn’t blame people for choosing their own.

  “Well, the best thing to do is get her out of England altogether,” he said, feeling a headache coming on. “The farther we get her, the less likely it is that her father will have any way of finding her.”

  “Scotland?” said Charles.

  He shook his head. “I’m thi
nking right across the Channel. I have some family connections in France. Jean-Paul Delacroix, a distant cousin, another Elemental mage. He’s got a little gentleman’s farm, probably not unlike Whitestone Hall, in the Ardennes. He’ll be pleased to play host to a pretty young woman, and all that water between her and her father will kill the connection dead.”

  “Whitestone never went any farther away from the Hall than London, and then with extreme reluctance,” Michael said with a nod of agreement. “I know for a fact that he doesn’t know a soul outside the county, other than other Masters, much less the country.”

  “Yes, well, Alderscroft will make damned sure he won’t be able to use the Lodge connections,” Peter replied grimly. Scott had been appalled. Even more appalled when Peter had told him just what Whitestone had planned for his own daughter. Alderscroft was going to get an earful. Peter Scott was not a “gentleman.” He was a tradesman, and he had been a merchant sea captain. As such, he was not handicapped by the reticence that one member of the gentry often displayed when confronted with the misbehavior of another member of the same. He wasn’t going to mince words with the Old Lion.

  And he would make certain that Alderscroft got the word out before the night was over.

  “Are you sure France will be safe?” Elizabeth worried. “Oh, not magically. But with all that nastiness brewing up over there . . .”

  “It’s just the Balkans, my love,” Michael said dismissively. “The farthest it will get is Germany.”

  Peter was not at all sure of that, but there was no point in saying anything. “Believe me, if I could send her to India, I would, and I am thinking strongly of Australia or New Zealand,” he replied grimly. “But I don’t have connections there, I don’t at the moment have anyone I could send with her, and we’d be sending her over blind. France is the best I can do right now.”