Chapter Twenty-Three. A Missed Appointment
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A Missed Appointment
I dragged my weary body from my warm bed well before dawn and hurriedly dressed by candlelight.
I couldn’t sleep. Too worried about whatever information Leona wanted to share.
Anxiety, I supposed, was better than nightmares—but not by much.
Discovering that Leona’s friend Jonathan Treadway was involved in the earlier theft of the Radix Maleficarum sat in my belly like a stone.
Did she know of his involvement in the book’s initial disappearance?
Surely not. The fear on her face when she sent me to him with the note was real, and I knew her.
At least I thought I did—and Leona was a librarian first and foremost. It was what she had trained to do before she obtained the position with Reaver at the museum.
She was not the sort to steal a book, no matter the reason.
Fiachna lifted his ebony head, blinking slowly, eyes flashing that unnatural green in the flicker of flame.
He butted into my palm, demanding attention before I left.
It was still dark by the time I stepped outside the house, made more ominous by the thick blanket of fog that enveloped the city overnight, muting all sound and distorting the charming streetscape into a dreamlike world of shadows and shape.
The cold air, however, was not the stuff of dreams—stinging my lungs with each step I took to the Artemis Club.
I wrapped my scarf tighter, hurrying along the well-worn path to the club.
The club’s baroque facade towered arrogantly over its neighbors, alluding to its previous life a century ago as an opera house.
A muffled sound echoed in the dark, and I turned in time to see the shadowy shape of a dog disappear behind a building.
Death. A spectral dog means death. That’s what Ruan had said.
Or—you foolish girl—it means someone was careless and forgot to lock their gate.
Not mad. I am not going mad. I repeated the words over and over, willing myself to believe them.
A foggy morning, a mysterious book about witches along with a murderer afoot, and all my good sense flew out the window, replaced by superstition.
While I occasionally could admit to the existence of the inexplicable—ghosts, witches, pellars—I wasn’t about to believe in omens or signs. Now that was nonsense.
No. Decidedly not mad.
Still, I was not willing to test my luck. I dashed the last several yards to the grand front doors of the Artemis Club before casting a wary glance behind me.
Empty.
No dog. Nor men. Not even the strange woman Ruan had spotted following us after we left the police station.
See? Not mad.
Pulse settling to a steady beat, I stepped inside the warm, dimly lit entrance, closing my fear outside the club.
“Miss Vaughn!”
It seemed a lifetime ago that I met Leona here for breakfast, but in truth, less than twenty-four hours had passed.
The stark overhead lights had been cut for the evening, leaving the room bathed in warm lamplight emanating from the desk in the center of the round room.
The young receptionist leaned around a particularly large floral arrangement to smile at me.
“Has Leona arrived yet?” I unwound my scarf, unbuttoning my field jacket with numb fingers. I’d forgotten my gloves. I stared down at my stiff hands in confusion. How had I forgotten my gloves? I could have sworn I’d grabbed them on the way out the door.
The young woman gave me a puzzled look. “No, miss. I haven’t seen her since she left here in a rush yesterday morning.”
A worried frown settled in my brow. Leona was always the first one to the club. She lived not far, just beyond the castle.
I blew hot air into my hands, roughly rubbing them together. “It’s no matter, I’m sure she’s running late.”
The young clerk gestured to the lush velvet couch against the wall.
“You can wait here and warm yourself. Or go on ahead into the tearoom. Breakfast won’t be served for another two hours, but if you’d like to read the paper, the morning edition arrived just moments ago, I can have them put on a pot of tea for you.
” Her eyes were fixed upon my bare hands.
“No … no, I’ll wait.” My mind raced, searching for any possibility for Leona’s absence. Either she was once again avoiding me, she was simply running behind schedule … or something bad had happened.
Harker. Mueller. Leona.
Two of the three were already dead.
My fingers tightened on my lapels as I hastily refastened the buttons and started toward the door. “If she arrives, will you ask her to wait on me?”
“Of course, Miss Vaughn, but I cannot make her wait if she doesn’t wish to stay. You know the rules. Our members are free to come and go as they please.”
I didn’t hear her words. There was nothing but the riot of my pulse in my ears as I ran out the door, for I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Leona was not coming.
Whether it was the fear on Jonathan Treadway’s face yesterday as he warned me of the danger or the growing death toll across Oxford connected to Harker’s Curiosity Museum, that damnable truth echoed in my ears—Leona was in trouble.
ST. GEORGE’S TOWER, the only remaining part of the old Oxford Castle, loomed high in the morning fog.
It was more prison than castle, and had been for ages.
The first rays of sun broke through the clouds, slowly burning away the haze.
I turned from the old prison complex and ran down the street to Leona’s house.
Before, when I’d trod this path, I hadn’t given two thoughts to who might notice my comings or goings.
Nor did I worry about who might be waiting ahead.
But now, with each step, my own fear pounded in my chest.
I rounded the corner onto the narrow cobbled lane leading to Leona’s home and froze. Her front door was open, and light from inside flooded out onto the street. My mind miles ahead of my body, I broke into a sprint down the uneven surface and burst into the house.
“Leona!”
The hall table had been overturned, one aged leg snapped in two.
I darted up the stairs.
On an ordinary day, Leona’s room was tidy with everything in its place.
But today it was utterly ransacked. Drawers pulled from the dresser and cast upside down on the rug.
Her undergarments and blouses scattered in heaps.
Her finely painted enameled jewelry box smashed to pieces, bits of glass and broken wood littering the carpet.
My own cracked reflection stared back at me in the shattered mirror.
Broken lamp.
Overturned chair.
A reddish smear on wood.
Hands shaking, I reached out for the dresser and touched the wet spot, drawing my reddened fingers back. Blood.
“Leona!” I cried out. She had to be here. She simply had to be, for the alternative was too much to bear. My riding boots thundered on the worn wooden floorboards as I sailed around the newel post and into the sitting room, my voice growing ever more frantic.
“Le—” I skidded to a stop. A lifeless hand lay palm up on the carpet from behind the sofa.
Annabelle.
Leona’s young roommate was motionless on the floor. I dropped to my knees next to Annabelle, who lay sprawled on the far side of the sofa with an ivory-handled blade embedded in her stomach. I brushed the hair from her face with my icy hand. Her breath came faintly against my palm.
Not dead then.
Her blood pooled around the metal of the blade, seeping through the thin white lace of her nightgown and onto the woven rug. I tugged my cashmere scarf from around my neck with trembling hands.
Thick grief settled in my throat. I carefully wadded the fabric.
“I have you, darling. I’m here now. I won’t leave you.
” The rote words returned. They’d become habit after the thousands of times I’d said them to dying soldiers.
Holding them in my arms at the regimental aid post as they’d asked for their mother or sweethearts.
Listening to those last words meant for another’s ears.
The men stable enough to move went into my ambulance.
The ones who couldn’t … well … they were left behind.
Triage was the word the French used for sorting through the wounded.
Dying. Dead. Likely to die. Might survive.
By all appearances, Annabelle was in the first category. If I removed the blade, she’d bleed out immediately. If I left it in, I had minutes at most to save her. Not nearly long enough to seek help and return in time to save her.
“Lee—” she started, struggling against my hand.
“It’s all right, darling…” I pressed the scarf to the wound, keeping the knife from moving, all while hopefully staunching the bleeding long enough for …
For what, Ruby Vaughn, a miracle?
My eyes stung as I rubbed my face on the rough shoulder of my coat, hoping the girl couldn’t see the truth written across my face.
Annabelle whimpered.
Surely someone had to have heard the struggle.
In desperation, I shouted out for help, my voice hoarse.
Once. Then twice. Her hot blood soaked through the fabric.
I did not feel the growing wetness on my cheeks, or the slowing of her pulse beneath my hands.
Nor did I hear the quiet footsteps behind me on the rug.
It wasn’t until Ruan crouched beside me on the ground alongside the girl’s body that I realized that we were no longer alone.
He had come.
Of course he had.
Ruan touched my shoulder softly, before setting his old British Expeditionary Force haversack down beside him.
“How did you…” But there was no sense finishing the question. It did not matter if he’d followed me or if he’d heard my panic with that strange ability of his.
“You’ve done well…” he murmured, rummaging around in his bag for an orangish brown concoction. He tilted it into the light, confirming the contents before removing the lid.