Unnatural Issue Read online

  A woman emerged from the forest, and for one moment he was paralyzed with shock.

  Rebecca?

  Had her spirit at last answered his entreaty and returned?

  His gaze flew to the calendar on the wall—he had lost track of time—but yes, it was Beltane, when the veil between the material and spirit worlds thinned and spirits could pass over. Could it—could it be, at last?

  His hands clenched the windowsill so hard that his nails bit into the wood. He leaned forward, peering at that distant figure. But his impulse to shout a greeting was stilled by the realization that this was no spirit, but a very material and very mortal young woman.

  Who? Who could this be? Who was the image of his beloved? Surely none of the little mudball farmers around here could have given birth to this dazzling beauty!

  She headed in the direction of the Manor as if she had every right to be there, walking slowly but deliberately toward him. Instinctively he pulled back from the window, so that he could watch without being seen. The nearer she got, the more bewildered he became. She was so like—yet so unlike. This was not the Rebecca that had died in that bed in a room he never allowed anyone to open. This was the Rebecca he had first married, the young woman whose innocent body had not yet been awakened. Who was she?

  Whoever she was, he had to get his hands on her without drawing attention or suspicion down on himself! This girl was the answer to every difficulty! She was here, she was the image of Rebecca, she was surely the right age, and from the threadbare condition of her gown, she was not someone anyone would miss. At least, not outside of this household, since from the way she acted, she belonged here.

  Then she looked up, as if she sensed his stares. And it was then, when he saw eyes that were the color of his own and not Rebecca’s, that he realized there was only one person she could be.

  This was his daughter. His despised, wretched daughter.

  And that was when all the fragments of his plans tumbled into place.

  This—was—perfect. Perfect in every possible way.

  She was the right age, or soon would be. She was such a twin to her mother that Rebecca would awaken in the new shell and never realize what he had done. He would not have to kill his sacrifice, and thus, there would be no messy blood rites to alert the Elementals or Alderscroft’s wretched White Lodge.

  And given the blood link between mother and daughter, he would be able to easily displace the girl’s soul and replace it with Rebecca’s.

  Well, certainly, technically he would be killing his daughter, but who was she, anyway?

  Nobody. Uneducated, no better than one of those lumps of servants. No one would miss her—or rather, it would be trivially easy to manipulate all this. All he need do would be to take a sudden interest in this girl. The housekeeper had been at him for decades to do just that. He wouldn’t need any messing about with sleeping spells or kidnapping, just a repentant father finally taking an interest in his daughter. Then, once the transformation was accomplished, he could—yes, he could take her away on a holiday. He would direct his solicitor to replace all the servants. When he returned, it would be not with a daughter but with a wife. There would be no one here who would know that the wife had been the daughter, and he rather doubted that anyone outside these grounds had ever seen her.

  And this would be justice. The girl murdered her mother. It was only right that she be sacrificed to bring her mother back to life.

  He closed the window, then, unable to restrain himself, broke into a shuffling little dance of joy.

  3

  THE Exeter Club was thought by the “smart set” and the Bright Young Things to be the stodgiest of gentlemen’s clubs in all of London—probably all of England—and perhaps even all of the Empire. Nothing about it had changed in a hundred years—except first the laying-on of gas and then electrification.

  The doorman, Cedric, was a fixture himself; he’d been a steady daytime presence for as long as Peter had been a member, and Peter suspected that his father had been in place when Peter’s father first joined the club. With a respectful nod, Cedric held open the door for him; Peter gave him a little two-fingered salute and a half smile.

  The paneled entryway gave out into the main Club Room, and it was here that the atmosphere of stodginess was most apparent. No hand had changed the interior in decades. The wallpaper remained the same—something Japonesque that Whistler, had he ever seen it, would surely have approved of. The furniture remained the same—prickly horsehair settees and spindly-limbed little chairs in the Visitor’s Dining Room (until recently, the only place in which females were permitted to set foot) and overstuffed leather monstrosities everywhere else. Though gas fires had replaced the coal-burning fireplaces in the Members’ rooms, the Club Room stubbornly retained its cheerful grate and firedogs, its carved mantle, and its coal and wood. Even the carpets were the same, brought back from Turkey by some globe-trotting member when Victoria was merely a princess. The menu in the Member’s Dining Room had not changed in decades either. And anyone looking into the Club Room and the Member’s Lounge could be pardoned if he got the impression that the old gentlemen in their dark suits drowsing behind their newspapers had been installed there as part and parcel of the furnishings.

  In fact, as Lord Peter Almsley was well aware, all this was a façade. Most of the members seldom set foot in the public areas of the Club except to dine. And those old gentlemen drowsing away were nothing more than camouflage for what really went on in the Exeter Club.

  The club was the home of Lord Alderscroft—the actual home, since he had long since given up his London residence, and his country estate was managed in absentia by the “tenants” who ran the school for very extraordinary little girls and boys that was quartered there. These days Alderscroft never went there except for the occasional hunt and hunt ball, and now and again, when the heat in London became unbearable.

  But this was his true home, the headquarters, as it were, of most of the most powerful Elemental Masters in Britain. And Lord Alderscroft was the Head of one of the oldest and most powerful White Lodges of Elemental Masters in all of the Empire.

  Of course, that’s partly because trying to organize Masters is like trying to herd sheep with a cat, Peter thought to himself, wryly. It’s probably only tradition that keeps our lot muddling along as well as we do.

  He had passed rapidly through the public rooms and into the Dining Room today; the Old Lion had summoned him for a consultation, and he badly wanted a bite to eat before he braved the old fellow in his den. He had hoped for a quiet table to himself, but as soon as his beaky nose cleared the door of the room, he found himself hailed by a group that had uncharacteristically gotten the servants to shove several small tables together to form one long one.

  “Peter, old man!” said Nigel Harcourt, making an imperious gesture in his direction. “Come join us, we were just mentioning you.” As ever, Nigel was impeccably clad in the work of a tailor so exclusive that even half the Royal Enclosure couldn’t get fittings with him. Then again, Nigel was so perfect a specimen of British Manhood that he made the ideal body upon which to drape such an exquisite suit. And besides that, Nigel was the one who had discovered the man.

  “Oh, I very much doubt that,” he replied, genially, putting a good face on it. “Really, old fellow, I’m just down from the family barn. I’ve been quite out of touch, and I don’t know what I could possibly add to any sort of earnest conversation.” But he joined them anyway. It was partly out of politeness and partly out of curiosity. Curiosity was an Almsley byword. The family arms, after all, featured a domestic cat about to investigate an open chest, with the motto, translated from the Latin, No fortune without risk.

  “What d’ye think about all this saber-rattling on the Continent?” Nigel asked, both fair eyebrows furrowed, flourishing a folded newspaper in the air as if he supposed Peter could read what was on it remotely. “You spend half your time over there, chasing French ballerinas and Italian opera singers—it’
s all nonsense isn’t it? It’ll all blow over by Christmas.”

  “Oh, I very much fear it won’t,” rumbled General Smythe-Hastings. The general looked just like any of the old fellows out in the Club Room at first glance, but at second, aside from the keen intelligence in his eyes and the vigor in his movements, there was no mistaking his military background. It was there in the set of his shoulders and the posture of his neck. “This is too like the run-up to the Boer War for my liking. You mark my words. The Continent is seething, especially the Balkans. Good gad, it’s always the Balkans! But they’re itching for a dust-up, and the Germans and Austrians are itching for an excuse to stop prancing about in fancy uniforms and shoot something. Preferably something French.”

  “But that’s the point, old man!” Nigel cried. “How on earth does tossing a few Balkan anarchists into gaol turn into shooting Frenchmen? It doesn’t make sense!”

  “Whoever said war was logical?” sighed the Hon. James Minton, who had lost the better part of his youth in Egypt. James looked as old as the general, though he couldn’t be a day over forty. What he had seen there would have turned anyone’s hair white.

  The conversation circled around and around this subject while Peter grimly tucked into his saddle of mutton. He had just come from Heartwood Hall, the family estate, and plunging into this conversation was rather like plunging into ice water. He had gone from what could only be described as a pastoral atmosphere of benign and provincial ignorance to—this.

  “Our German and Austrian colleagues have completely withdrawn all contact with the rest of Europe,” James pointed out. “And I mean completely. There’s nothing coming from behind those borders now.”

  And if anyone should know, it would be James, since he’s the Magic Liaison to the Foreign Office..

  “But that just might be a precaution,” Nigel objected. “You know that lot. The least little thing happens, and they pull in their necks like so many turtles.”

  “Which is how they avoid having their heads chopped off,” the general said.

  If I dared, I would finish this excellent roast, bid them all a fond farewell and go trotting on back home, Peter thought wistfully; he was altogether too sure now that what the Old Lion wanted him for was—precisely this. He had an overt reputation as a Continent-hopping, genteel rake, and no one took him seriously but those of his fellow Masters who had actually worked with him. This could be very useful when you were fishing for information. The Old Lion found him very useful in this capacity indeed, in fact. Most, if not all of the Masters of Austria, Hungary, and Germany were under the impression that Peter had much more hair than wit, and one could discuss virtually anything under his nose without him taking any more interest in it than a greyhound in grand opera.

  He thought wistfully of the atmosphere he had just left at the Almsley estate. Sometimes ignorance was bliss. The people back home were sailing into summer full of serene plans about tennis parties and picnics, of ways to entertain the youngsters during the Long Vac, and thinking about the hunts in the fall and the inevitable Season once winter set in. His brother was entirely wrapped up in managing the minutia of the Home Farm and all the tenants and their farms—not to mention his pet cattle-breeding project, which was finally proving to be a great success. When Hall and Village looked at the foreign events in the papers, it was with a sense of detachment, for certainly nothing a lot of unwashed anarchists could do would ever affect them.

  Unfortunately for his peace of mind, Peter had far too much imagination and intelligence to believe that.

  “We’re sailing into dangerous waters, young Harcourt. Dangerous.” The general shook his head sadly, his face looking altogether like that of a sad hound. “Things are unstable. It’s not just the Masters of Germany and Austria that are withdrawing contact. They’ve closed off the borders to any sort of traffic, including the Elementals. For the last two weeks, not even a sylph has crossed over.”

  “The Kaiser wants a war, and he’s going to get it,” James added, glumly. “The Masters are making sure we get no information whatsoever, and that has to be on direct orders from Kaiser Wilhelm himself.”

  If that was true . . . well, then it was bad. Kaiser Wilhelm was no magician, but like the king, he was well aware of, and made use of, the mages of his own country. Normally this was for very minor things; far more than Britain, Europe was the home ground of some very unpleasant Elemental creatures indeed, and too much meddling could make them take an unhealthy interest in the affairs of mortals. Unhealthy for both sides, ultimately, but it was generally innocent bystanders that suffered the most. So generally, no head of state who was aware of magic actually asked his country’s magicians to do much.

  This might change all that, however.

  War had a way of changing everything.

  “I’m afraid the general is right, Nige,” Peter said apologetically. “I was hoping the rumblings in the thickets I was hearing this spring were going to turn out to be things that could be smoothed over, but it sounds as though the situation is growing pear-shaped. I think we had best prepare for trouble. Our brethren on the Continent don’t engage in business likely to rouse up the Old Things without a damn good reason, and closing the borders is likely to do that.”

  Nigel swore, and the atmosphere around the table took on a funereal color. No one here, not even the general, was under the illusion that Britain would be able to stay out of a Continental conflict. And no one was under the illusion that once Britain did enter it, things would be wrapped up in time for Tommy to come home for Boxing Day.

  “We’d better go consult the mirrors and oracles, then,” Nigel said with a frown. “If the avalanche has started, it’s time for the pebbles to try to reckon how bad it’s going to be and make preparations.”

  “It will be bad,” the general replied. “Very bad. Those idiots in the War Office think we can face down machine guns and gas with cavalry and sabers.”

  “Oh, it’s not that bad surely—” Nigel began, then swallowed at the look on the general’s face. “Oh.”

  “Ugly,” the general said, nodding. “I haven’t been snoozing in a chair at the fireside. Almsley here—and more important, young Hawkstell—have been keeping me informed. The Austrians have enough torpedo-firing submarines to run a pretty effective interdiction force on our merchant fleet. They have big guns with incredible range, they have those infernal machine guns, and they have and will use poison gas. They have armored vehicles with guns mounted inside them. They have highly trained and organized troops, a superb rail system to transport all of that, and a great deal of their army is motorized—nothing to get tired or frightened or need care and feeding. And we have the army of the last century.”

  At that point, Peter decided to forgo the sweet course. He wouldn’t have the appetite for it anyway. He pushed away from the table. “Sorry, chaps, but I was summoned, and it doesn’t do to keep Alderscroft waiting.”

  “Quite right,” the general replied. “Off with you, lad. Speak with me later, if you like.”

  “I shall, sir,” Peter said respectfully, and withdrew to the stairs and lift for the Members’ Rooms.

  “M’lord is expecting you, Lord Peter,” said the lift operator. Peter immediately got a flutter in his stomach.

  “Thank you, Collin,” was all he said, however. Were things worse than even the pessimistic projections of the general?

  But when he was ushered into Lord Alderscroft’s sitting room, it was clear that whatever the Huntmaster had summoned him for, it had not been urgent. Alderscroft waved him to a chair and had his valet present Peter with brandy (accepted) and cigars (declined) before getting down to business.

  The Old Lion was well-named. He had a great mane of unruly silver-gilt hair, a moustache and beard to match, and the powerful build of a born fighter that he had not permitted to run to fat in the least.

  “D’you need me to run to the Continent, m’lord?” Peter asked diffidently, once the valet had gone and they had both had a sip
of Alderscroft’s excellent liquor.

  “I’ve got Hawkstell out there now, and if I send another of you, it might put the wind up them,” Alderscroft rumbled, surprising Peter. “No, I have something domestic in mind for you. There’s a scent of necromancy up in Yorkshire; I want you to look into it. The only Earth Master in that part of the world is—or rather, was—Richard Whitestone. There’s no point in even trying to contact him. He mewed himself up after his wife died twenty years ago, and no one’s gotten so much as a glimpse of him since. Necromancy’s an Earth business, but you’re Water, so you’ll have to do.”

  Peter could not have been more surprised had Alderscroft asked him to don rags and join a Gypsy band—incognito, of course.

  “I say,” he objected. “M’lord, Yorkshire? Anyone performing necromancy is pretty blamed secretive, and I’ll stand out there like a pig in a cathedral! I’m not bad at disguises and all that, but Yorkshire—no native will be fooled for a minute by me, and whoever your necromancer is will know I’m there for only one reason!”

  He has no idea how insular the average Yorkshire man is, nor how impossible it is for an outsider to get anything useful out of one, he thought somewhat desperately. Even among the gentry, he wouldn’t have the right accent!

  “You’ll manage, my boy, you always do,” Alderscroft said serenely. Peter wanted to bang his head on the back of his chair in frustration.

  “You’ve got leave to make as much ‘noise’ magically as you please,” Alderscroft continued. “Provided you don’t frighten our game, of course. With the way our Teutonic neighbors are acting, with any luck at all they’ll assume that you are doing something that they should be interested in, and you might also distract them.”