“That’s Montpelier Hill, then, there’s no mistaking it.” Alice sipped her tea. “The building itself is known by many names, most commonly the Hell-Fire Club. But that is no place for you.”
“Why?” Sam asked. “What is that place?”
“It’s cursed,” Alice said. “Nearly two centuries ago, William Conolly built the place on a rath, desecrating its standing stones for the foundation. The way the locals tell it, a man like that, born in Ireland of Gaelic stock, ought to have known better. But he found out soon enough. Just as the last stone was set, the Otherworld sent a storm. Took the roof right off. They rebuilt it, of course, only for it to become a den of debauchery and demon summoning for the Hell-Fire Club. The stories of that place: kidnappings, murder, violence, even cannibalism... No one was surprised when it burned down only twenty years after its founding and a monstrous black cat began stalking the grounds. For the last century or so, it’s been a haunted ruin.”
In short, it was the perfect place to hide your pet medium. The hauntings would be of little matter to a medium, and what better way to ensure your privacy? No one would risk venturing into a place known to be haunted. Not after enough people died.
“You say the cat is monstrous?” Sam pressed.
“I suppose I ought to say demonic,” Alice mused. “I heard from McLoughlin, just down the road from that old ruin, his father knew a priest who tried to exorcise the thing once. He was found dead the next morning, his face rent clean off with deep claw marks running through his features?—just like those on your standing stone. Later that night, the whole hillside went up in flames.” She hesitated. “If you don’t mind me saying so, I might not listen to that ghost of yours. It doesn’t sound as if she has your best interests at heart.”
“Thank you, that was very?—” Sam’s breath caught in her throat as her eyes lit on the flowers on the table beside her.“Those flowers.”
Sam hadn’t recognized them with their petals twisted up against the light.
Mad seeds, they were called, moonflower, and devil’s trumpets. Her brother had gone through an obsession with them. The stories said witches had used them to fly and change men into beasts. But their proper name was datura?—a vespertine-flowering plant that belonged to the nightshade family. Moderately used, they could provide sedation for medical treatment. At high levels...
“They’re poisonous,” Sam said. They smelled faintly of apricots, and beneath that, the faint stench of rancid peanut butter. Sam’s heart quickened, her gaze dropping to Alice’s fingers and the scent that clung there.
“Are they?” Alice said. “Well, I thought they were pretty.”
“The two are hardly exclusive,” Sam said.
“My gardener?—”
“Wouldn’t have access to them,” Sam said. “Unless he moonlights at Kew. They don’t grow here, not without a great deal of help.”
“They are a bit troublesome,” Alice admitted.
“They cause delirium, hallucinations, and death,” Sam said flatly. Like Alice’s husband, who had died after seeing ghosts. More damning, they were the same flowers as were in the photograph the Viscount had taken.
“Ah,” Alice said, setting down her teacup as she caught Sam’s drift.
“Your husband didn’t die due to the Wild Hunt, did he?” Sam demanded.
“I’m afraid not,” Alice admitted, as if she were talking about the rain and not murder. “Though it was convenient timing, was it not?”
Sam stood, feeling sick to her stomach. Her skin felt feverish. Oh God, she’d drunk the tea. How much did it take? No wonder Alice had added so much sugar?—datura was bitter. Hel and Van Helsing had been right. Just because someone was kind to you, it didn’t mean they hadn’t gone mad or monstrous.
“The tea?—”
“Is perfectly safe,” Alice said, her hands folded neatly in her lap. “Death sleeps within the seeds, but also release. If it was in the tea, you would feel their strength running like sunlight through your veins. Used to a limited extent, they can enhance a channel’s abilities, or help a man see a sliver of what a channel can. Too much, and, well... My husband learned where that road ends.”
She’d done it on purpose, she wasn’t even trying to hide it, her face sleek with satisfaction. “How could you? He was your husband.”Twenty-seven years.
“Do you know how I found my way out of the asylum?” Alice asked. Sam shook her head. She imagined she hadn’t escaped, as Sam had. “I was bought. My family had no use for me, a channel who might ruin their good name. He was my only chance at freedom?—stay in the asylum or be a stranger’s wife. I thought it couldn’t be that bad. He was rich, after all, even if we never found love, at least I’d be comfortable. Shows you what I knew.”
“He was a member of the Vespertine,” Sam guessed.
“Indeed. And I thought that meant I would be,” Alice said. “But I wasn’t. The man wanted a channel, not a wife. I was welcome in their rituals, as a source of blood, or a conduit. But I was never let into their secrets, never treated as one of them.”
Sam remembered the way the Golden Dawn had treated her in Paris, as if she were Hel’s possession instead of her partner. Looking at Alice’s scars, Sam couldn’t help but wonder what precisely the Golden Dawn had meant when they said they only took what was freely offered. Whether Hel’s offering would have sufficed. Whether Alice’s husband’s had.
“Why didn’t you go to the civic guard?” Sam asked. “I should think they’d be eager for a lead on the Vespertine.” Their proclivities were all of them highly illegal.
“I think you’ll find that spending any time in an asylum has a... sobering effect on your credibility,” Alice said. “Spend ten years in one, and, well.”
“You might have left, then,” Sam said. “Fled to England, or America.”
