“A channel?” Alice chuckled. “You mean aside from the hungry look in M. Voland’s eyes? Women aren’t members, dear. Which meant you were either a nosy wife or a channel, and I don’t see a ring.”
“Why is he here at all?” Sam said. She hesitated, uncertain as to whether she should voice her suspicions that this was a secret society akin to the Golden Dawn called the Vespertine, formed to indulge in the forbidden arts of alchemy, ritual magic, and prognostication. It seemed the height of folly. Who knew what such an organization might resort to in order to keep their secrets, if they suspected she didn’t belong? But Sam had to know: “I thought he was Golden Dawn, not... Vespertine.”
“Oh, you poor dear.” A look came over Alice’s face, as if she were a lost child. “Did your patron not say anything?”
Sam shook her head. Alice, it seemed, thought she was a member of the Vespertine?—or rather, that she was attached to a member, as a channel. Herpatron.
“Honestly, you’d think they were raised in a sty,” Alice said as she unlocked another door and ushered Sam through. “The Vespertine is an offshoot of the English branch of the Golden Dawn. More lunar than solar focused. Men only, as opposed to the Golden Dawn’s more egalitarian outlook. Sailed to Ireland on dreams of piercing the veil to the Otherworld. It will be good to have another channel around. It’s been far too long.”
The hope in the woman’s eyes was crushing; Sam didn’t have the heart to tell her she wouldn’t be staying. “Do you know anything about Mr. Enfield’s death?”
“Ah, now that was a terrible tragedy,” Alice said. “But not unheard of. I’m not normally one to talk, but he and Lord Lusk were close as brothers, did everything together?—fought together in the war, went into business together... fell in love together, with the same woman. Mr. Enfield told Lord Lusk to choose: his friendship or her hand. He chose her. It’s enough to shatter the stoutest of hearts, and he was never strong. I shouldn’t be surprised the Wild Hunt took him?—it’s said they like the brokenhearted best of all.”
It was the same story Lord Lusk had told, and it might very well be true. If Mr. Enfield had been having an affair with Lord Lusk’s fiancée, he’d hardly be the first man to murder another to protect the honor of his soon-to-be wife. Though traditionally, it was done in a duel, which, while also illegal, had the vestiges of honor about it, and there was something about the confirmed bachelor rumor that still made Sam suspect it wasn’t Lord Lusk’s fiancée he was in love with. Either way, it didn’t explain the urgency with which Mr. Enfield had sought Lord Lusk.
Then she realized what Alice had said.
“The Wild Hunt?” Sam asked suspiciously.
Alice looked away. “They took my husband, too. About a month ago.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Sam said, feeling terrible.
“He was seeing ghosts near the end, you know,” Alice said. “It looked as if he’d just fallen out of a window, and so everyone called it an accident. But I’ve been looking into it. The wind, the wings like smoke. I’ve been seeing murders of crows, too, flying at night. Unnatural, that. But not if they’re actually the Wild Hunt.” She looked sidelong at Sam. “The Vespertine has an excellent library if you’re interested in that sort of thing. Not every channel is, I know, but?—”
“No, no, that’s all right,” Sam said. Though she was sorely tempted, if only the cost weren’t her blood. She was willing to bet this library didn’t have a forbidden section. “Is there?—anything else you can tell me about his death?”
“Is there nothing else we might talk about?” Alice said, looking uncomfortable. She didn’t, it seemed, want to talk about the death of her husband. Fortunately, there was another topic on Sam’s mind.
“Do you know anything about ghosts?” Sam asked, and immediately regretted it.
“Seeing things, are you?” Alice said. Sam stiffened, but the older woman just chuckled, and led them through a small door Sam would have sworn was part of the wainscoting. Their voices echoed oddly in the windowless passage. “Just a little channel humor there. These old eyes have seen a thing or two. What do you want to know about them?”
“I think I’m being haunted. I know I should be frightened.” Least of all because it signaled she was marked for death. “But it feels almost like the ghost is trying to tell me something, I just can’t understand what she’s saying.”
Alice made an empathetic sound. “The Irish say that if you ask the ghost of a friend or family for help, a door to the answer will open within three months,” Alice said. “Were you and this ghost friendly, in life, anyway? Or acquainted at least?”
“No,” Sam said. “At least, I don’t think so.” The ghost looked like a vampire, which made her far from a family friend. Though that wasn’t the sort of thing she felt comfortable explaining. Not even if this other woman was a channel.
“Most likely this ghost needs your help, then,” Alice said. “There are ways to strengthen ghosts, if you’ve the stomach for it. I wouldn’t let your patron know about it, though.”
“Whyever not?” Sam asked, leaving aside the matter of her not having a patron.
“They don’t like it when we use our gifts,” Alice said. “They consider our power their own, and if we use it ourselves? Well then. But what they don’t know can’t hurt them, can it? If you want answers, it’s the only way I know, short of finding a medium, and they are far rarer than we are.”
Sam hesitated. “I don’t know.” There was a reason alchemy was outlawed, a reason channels were restrained. Wasn’t there?
“Have you ever noticed that the people who make the rules about what channels can and cannot do are never channels themselves?” Alice said. She pushed open a door at the end of the passage, and they emerged into a hallway that blessedly had windows again. “Do you really think they know how it works? They’re afraid. Jealous. You already know more about channeling than they ever will. But if it makes you feel better, it’s nothing they don’t do themselves, excepting they have to use our power to do it.”
“Tell me,” Sam said, then paused. She recognized the hallway ahead, could hear the murmur of conversation. They were nearly back to the others.
Alice smiled, as if Sam had passed a test. “Well, you’ve read of Odysseus, I’m sure, of how he offered a plate of blood to Tiresias, the blind prophet, to attract the ghost and strengthen him, so that Odysseus might glean his future?”
“It’s that simple?” Sam said.
“Who said it had to be hard?” Alice laughed. “You’re a channel. This is what you’re made for.”
Sam shifted uncomfortably. The way she said it, it made her sound like a hammer or a chisel, defined by what and not who she was. And it struck Sam that while she’d always thought of being a channel as an affliction, as something donetoher but not of her, she didn’t know who she was without it.
