Chapter 30
Bethany hid behind me, ducking, as the ghost of Charles Voss disappeared. But all my focus was on the man with the mustache who’d brought me into this nightmare.
“Please,” Mr. Hoffmann begged. “You must act quickly. None of us should be in here.”
“I shouldn’t be in this dammed house at all,” I said angrily. “But thanks to you, I’m trapped.”
“I am sorry for that.”
“I don’t believe you.” I held up the bottled finger. “You say that this is your freedom?”
Mr. Hoffmann sighed and crossed his arms as he leaned back against the wardrobe across the room. “It is my finger, and the master cut it off in a magical act that guaranteed my subservience. I am not from this world, though I doubt that surprises you, Schwester Molly.”
“Very little does lately,” I mumbled. “Who are you, Mr. Hoffmann?’
His eyes darkened while he hesitated for a moment, as if he were deciding whether to answer me. Then he inhaled a deep breath and released it. “Who am I? Well, I guess you might say I’m merely someone who was minding my own business when Vincent Vermeer summoned me into your world.”
“Vincent Vermeer…?”
“In the sixteenth century, Vincent Vermeer was the master occultist in Europe, and he bested me, branding me with his mark.” The valet pulled back his shirt collar to show me the tattoo I’d seen when I’d first took the train here, the initials V. V. surrounded by horns.
“That is… a brand? Like, a cattle brand?”
Hoffmann hesitated again, then sighed in resignation. “Not quite. It’s a magical brand. It forced me into servitude, to do his bidding. I was his bound servant for the first hundred years of our lives together. He treated me well, and I gave him my loyalty.”
“Why? You say he forced you into servitude. How can you happily serve such a man?”
“I said I was his bound servant for the first hundred years we were together, not the second hundred. In 1670, he gave me the choice to leave—offered me my freedom.”
“You didn’t take it? Why?”
He shook his head. “I’d grown accustomed to this world and didn’t want to return.
And one might say we’d developed a bond, he and I.
The master was very powerful—the most talented magician in Europe—and it was hard not to respect that.
My kind enjoy serving others, especially powerful ones, you see.
And Vincent Vermeer could perform miracles.
There are few in your world with the talent to will their very souls into new bodies. ”
“Because it’s unnatural and shouldn’t happen!” I argued.
Hoffman bristled. “That’s your opinion.”
“Taking someone’s body without their consent is no better than pulling a trigger.”
The man gave me a conflicted look. “Whatever you may think of the morality behind it, Master Vincent defied death, which is quite a feat. When he tired of one body, he would take a new one, and we would live new lives—the lives of the bodies he possessed.”
“Like Voortman?” I said, thinking of the Scotland Yard letter.
Hoffmann’s gaze flicked toward the hidden cabinet. “You read the Scotland Yard letter, then.”
I nodded.
“I warned him he should burn them,” he mumbled, shaking his head.
“Well, I suppose there’s no use in keeping up any kind of pretense, is there?
” He sighed again; then his eyes dropped, and after a long moment he spoke in a softer tone.
“The acquisition of the Hastings estate in England was botched. Someone sneaked away and fetched help, a servant we missed. My master was inside the body of Voortman then, but he wasn’t able to possess that English man, Hastings.
The possession must take place during certain days of the year—windows of opportunity—and we weren’t able to wait long enough until the next window.
A mob showed up at the farm, and we were forced to flee. ”
“That’s why you came here, to New York?”
He nodded. “We’d been planning to cross the Atlantic for several years, so when the Hastings possession failed, we moved our plans around and just went ahead on to New York.”
“You came here,” I clarified. “To the Voss estate.”
“Yes, and everything was fine until Lavina outsmarted my master.”
“Lavina?”
Mr. Hoffmann pushed up the spectacles that sat on the bridge of his nose. “I warned him to stay away from romance. A wife would only distract him from his work. But he didn’t listen. She became his weakness. And then, on the night I first met you in the hospital, she became his downfall.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. You’re saying the master is married?”
“He found her years ago when he was lonely, and married her within days of meeting her. So Lavina Berg became Lavina Vermeer, but children still whispered her nickname when we passed on the street… the Witch of Amsterdam.”
The handbill with the screaming woman!
All the warmth left my body at once, and my hands began trembling.
“To be honest,” Hoffmann said, “I didn’t suspect she had dark designs on my master—not right away.
But she’d been planning it for years, learning all the secrets he shared with her.
Reading his books. But we didn’t know that, the master and I.
Things seemed normal when we first came to New York, but soon after taking over the bodies of the Voss twins, both the master and Lavina were distraught to discover that both bodies were compromised. ”
“How?”
“They were sick with consumption.”
Oh.
“The master was distracted with red tape, trying to obtain the legal inheritance of Riverbend Manor from the Voss parents, and his new body—the body of Charles Voss—was sick. Unfortunately for him, the body of Agnes Voss was much sicker, and Lavina wanted out of it. She also wanted Riverbend Manor.”
Images of that first night in the hospital filled my head. What was it that “Voss” had said after the coughing had started, that night in the exam room, right before he threw the hourglass?
This is no better than the last one.
He’d been talking about his new body.
Wait. Something eluded me, some niggling thing that was just there in the back of my head, but I couldn’t identify what it was. Maybe if I continued to get information out of the valet…
“You’d lost your finger that night, when I met you in the hospital,” I pointed out. The very finger that floated inside the bottle I held. “What happened before you were brought to Bellevue?”
“Lavina happened. That night she was still inside Agnes Voss’s body.
She made a big production of asking the master to take her to the opera in the city, and when it was over, and we walked back to the hotel…
” He shook his head as a look of doom came over his face.
“She’d entered into some kind of bargain with a god and planned it all out in secret.
The master had no chance. She stopped his heart with a rare plant, and when the body of Charles Voss was on the brink of death, Lavina used a spell to lure his soul out of his body and force it into a magical container, trapping him.
Then she exited Agnes Voss’s body and entered his, where she’s been ever since. ”
I blinked. “Lavina…”
He nodded. “The Witch of Amsterdam killed my master and stole his body.”
“Oh God,” I murmured as shock washed over me.
It couldn’t be true, could it? The entire time I’d been here…? The man I’d been taking care of, the man who’d taken me into town and bought me things, wasn’t even a man at all?
Hoffmann sighed deeply. “She hacked off my finger and forced me into servitude before the hospital ambulance drove past the alley and found us. She made up the story about the gang attack. The only ones attacked that night were me and my master.”
I felt faint.
Every interaction I’d had with Charles Voss came back to me in bits and pieces. The odd things he’d said… He hadn’t said any of them at all.
This Lavina person had.
My voice cracked. “A-are you actually telling me that this witch, this Lavina… she’s currently inside Charles Voss’s body?”
“I cannot directly reveal that,” he said softly, gesturing with his chin toward the bottle in my hand. “What you hold binds me from saying certain things. But I can tell you that Lavina knew exactly what to do. She is far smarter and more capable than I ever imagined.”
This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t be true. Panic washed over me. “Why was I brought here?”
Hoffmann’s face fell. “I’m sorry, I cannot tell you that, either. I can only say that Lavina’s new body won’t last forever.”
A terrible chill skittered down my back. I recalled something the master had said weeks ago.
My body is your body.
Oh God! She had plans for me.
“She didn’t bring me out here to nurse at all, did she?” I whispered, but the valet didn’t answer.
I had to get out of here. My breath came too fast, and my thoughts scattered. I wasn’t safe here. Nin wasn’t safe. Even Bethany might not be safe.
“I can do something for you if you do something for me,” Hoffmann said. “If you’ll break the bottle that holds my finger, I will be free from my bond with Lavina.”
I glanced at the blackened finger. “This?”
He nodded. “I cannot break it—that’s written into the spell itself. But you can…”
“You lied to me and brought me into this nightmare—”
“Against my will! She threatened to feed me to a god, threatened eternal punishment. I had no choice in the matter. But I knew you were special, and I tried to help you. I left the crypt unlocked, hoping you’d make your way down there.”
“You drugged me.”
“Lavina drugged you. She used the same plant that she used to kill my master.”
“And you didn’t stop her.”
“How could I? She owns my soul. I’m magically bonded to her.”
“And you’ve given me no reason to free you.”
“Because I don’t want to serve Lavina—I don’t want anyone to serve her!” he snapped. “She killed my true master!”
Righteous anger burned in the valet’s eyes. He wanted revenge. Or justice. Whatever he was, this creature who wore a human face, he felt betrayed. And I understood that.