Investigator of the Supernatural, Brewer of Tea (sedulus) wrote in shadowlands_ic, @ 2018-01-22 22:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | bertie eden, dex kessinger, zipporah bakst |
Who: Dex Kessinger, Zipporah Bakst, and Bertram Eden
What: Making sense of the unexpected (immediately following this)
When: 4th Jan, 1889, late evening [slightly backdated]
Where: Zipporah's home
Rating: PG-13 for disturbing imagery
After Bertie’s episode at the house, he had held the man close for a few minutes to let him ground and collect himself. When he felt that Bertie was finally able to let go of him, he pulled away and straightened both their clothing and then hollered for someone to fetch his automobile. His butler, in his night clothes, ran quickly to do his masters bidding, and soon he had Bertie snug in the passenger seat, wrapped in a blanket, while he drove through the streets of London.
It took a while for him to understand Bertie of just where Zipporah Baskt lived, but eventually he was pulling into the lower income part of Whitechapel and then in front of the home of Miss. Baskt.
“Stay here,” Dex told Bertie and hopped from the car. In a few strides he had closed the distance to the door and he rapped three times. “Miss. Baskt,” he called out. “I believe we may have an emergency. I have Bertie Eden with me…”
Zipporah was used to knocks at the door at all hours of the evening -- as her Auntie liked to say, ‘Babies have no sense of timing.’ She’d been curled up on the couch, reading (Auntie Miriam was out playing poker with her lady friends), and startled a bit at the pounding, but rose fast enough and padded over to the door, opening it just as she heard a familiar name.
She looked at the enormous man standing there (she had to crane her neck to see his face), and blinked.
“...Yes,” she replied, a little uncertain, before nodding her head. “Yes, this is she. Where is he? Come in, come in.” She craned her head to see around the mountain of the man, and boggled a bit at the sleek automobile parked outside her flat.
Bertie had not particularly desired to stay in the car, but Dex's order had been quite clear, so he was attempting a sort of compromise wherein he stayed by the car but made his way laboriously out of it. It would have been simpler had his legs been willing to stay beneath him and not fold like a collapsed soufflé, or had he been willing to leave behind the blanket he had clutched about him, which had made him feel an invalid when Dex had tucked it around him, but which he'd been grateful for quickly after.
It was his first time in an automobile, and he thought perhaps that hadn't helped the wobble in his legs--although he also wanted to repeat the experience, preferably quite a few times over, when he could better appreciate it and how Dex looked there in it.
"It's not an emergency," Bertie demurred, leaning rather heavily against the side of the car once he'd finally managed to climb out. He hesitated, thinking of the protections she’d mentioned, and the fact that if he hadn’t been stained enough by necromancy before, he almost certainly was now--then admitted, "Only, I'm not certain I can pass through your door at the moment."
“He’s in the…” was all Dex was able to get out before he heard Bertie behind him. He let out an unhappy sigh that he had not listened to his instructions. “I don’t know if I can explain what happened, but he sort of went away for a moment and the bracelet on his wrist caught fire and turned to ash...he said he needed you,” he said as he went back to Bertie and gave him a disapproving, but worried look.
Without asking, he swooped Bertie up in his arms and turned back to the woman. “Why wouldn’t you be able to….” and then he could sense something unusual. “Oh…” was all he stated. “Can he pass..can I? He needs to be inside, laying down.”
“Of course,” Zipporah replied, vacillating between worry and amazement. “Of course. Let me… just in case,” she said, standing up on her tip-toes to kiss Bertie on the forehead. She looked up at the mountain of a man, and then sighed, and gestured for him to bend just a bit more so she could to do the same for him.
It was bitterly cold and properly dark outside, and she was starting to shiver, and by the looks of him (good God, he was pale), Bertie did indeed need looking after, so once that was done, she gestured for them to follow her indoors. “Come on, then,” she huffed, and led them tromping through the house to the back room, where she saw to patients. (The man carrying him very nearly had to duck to get through the door frames, and while she was used to the comforting bulk of Ach, this man… loomed.)
Bertie was rather torn between giving an apologetic and conciliatory look to Dex for being such trouble, and putting on a brave, unconcerned face for Zipporah, who was not the sort of person to brook weakness. He thought his show of independence was somewhat compromised by being carried around in the arms of a possessive dragon, although he couldn't help but feel quite warm and fuzzy about that occurrence.
Zipporah had not asked yet, but Bertie didn't wish to try her patience by keeping her waiting, so he opened his mouth with every intention of giving an explanation, before finding he understood very little himself.
"The dead," he said after a moment, shivering once all over at the memory. "I was with the dead. Something...it felt as though I was...pulled there. But then..." He swallowed, seeing the nightmare death's head again in his mind. "Then I was known, and thrown out again."
Bertie laid his hand on Dex's heart, vouching for him as well as seeking reassurance for his own nerves. "Mr Kessinger knows," he told Zipporah, so she would not waste her time trying to be careful with her words for his sake. "About me. About the ghosts. And...a little, about the other." He began to say Dex had been with him for one of the night terrors, and then realized what that implied - more than implied - and closed his mouth.
When Miss Baskt motioned for him to lean down, he did so to take the kiss to the forehead. He would say that was odd, but it wasn’t the oddest thing of the night yet. He then carried Bertie into the home following the woman to the back.
He was sure Bertie would wish to walk, but he was in no way going to put the man down. He would not take the chance that he would collapse and hurt himself, not while he was around. The hand to his chest made him look down and smile at Bertie before turning his attention back to where he was going. Once in the backroom, he laid him where instructed and then stepped back so he was not in Miss Baskt’s way. “I am not new to things of a hidden world,” he said, meaning the world of supernatural. “So please, feel free to speak openly.”
Zipporah looked at Mr Kessinger out of the corner of her eye a little warily, but Ach didn’t appear to be overly bothered (he sat placidly in his chair in the living room -- Heavens, she could only imagine if the two of them were standing -- there would be no room left to speak of.
“Sit,” she said to him, tipping her head over to a chair resting against the wall.
She suspected it would take his weight.
Just.
She turned her head back to Bertie, whom she examined with a sharp look before going over to the basin and briskly washing her hands. “Tell me. Was there any action you took to… to trigger such a thing? Or did it happen on its own?” She looked over her shoulder at him. “You seem weakened, unsteady. Are there any other lingering symptoms?”
Bertie shook his head, clutching the blanket tighter around him before Zipporah's wash-up reminded him that he would likely need to take his shirt off again. At least Ach was here, and Dex--he could hardly claim they had no chaperones, even if they were unusual choices.
"I was dining with Mr Kessinger--we'd just finished, and were in conversation, when I felt something..." Bertie found he couldn't put into words the sensation, or even recall it perfectly. He realized that he was rubbing his chest where he always imagined it rotting away, and let his hand fall, embarrassed.
"I didn't recall where I'd been, what I'd been doing, who I'd been with...a nagging sense that something was...changed? but nothing I grasped. But then at the end, when I...when she...when I woke up," Bertie fumbled uselessly, and then fell briefly silent before finishing. "I remembered everything. Or some of it, at least. Enough to feel I remember."
Bertie looked over at Dex, troubled, thinking of the woman at the table and the skull who'd turned to gaze on him, not knowing how much she'd seen. Whether she'd seen anything through his eyes once he'd awoken. He tried to recall himself to Zipporah's questions, as he was certain he hadn't managed to answer them. Looking down, he let the blanket slump and pulled back his collar to show the burn on his wrist. "Your string didn't make it, I'm afraid...that's why I asked D--Mr Kessinger to bring me here. I think I felt it go, right before...right as I went...there."
What had Dex said? That he'd gone away? That was how it had felt. Bertie resisted the urge to pull the blanket tightly around him again, or to wish for Dex to sit at his side instead of across the room. "I feel unsteady on my feet," he admitted. "And my head aches, but everything else is in my mind, I think. Apart from the wrist. So a great deal of it was in my mind."
He was lucky, he thought, that he wasn't seeing in odd colours and the room wasn't throbbing in and out. His removal from the land of the dead had been rather forceful. Bertie shivered again, and tried not to think of it, his hand fluttering up to his collar in question. "Shirt off?"
Dex sat when he was instructed to do so, folding his large frame into the chair and resting his hands on his knees as he listened. He had nothing more to offer, not in the moment. He could have spoke up, told Miss Baskt that it had actually happened after dinner, after having put Bertie on the table as a special kind of ‘dessert’ but he wasn’t sure if that was important or if it was what had triggered him. If Bertie wished to give the information away, if he trusted Baskt to keep the information to herself, then he would not mind if it would help aide in what had happened to him.
“She?” He rose an eyebrow. Was this the first time he had mentioned that there had been a woman? “She who? Did you see her?”
“Yes,” Zipporah replied, bossily, covering her worry with sharpness, reaching over with a still damp hand to feel his forehead. “Shirt off. I shall…” she frowned. “I shall see what I can see. Where did you go?” She asked. “Who did you see?”
She could suspect well enough.
She felt a twist in her chest -- there were limits to her knowledge of the spirit realm, and for good reason. She’d told Bertie I am no necromancer, and meant it. She could heal, but there were limits there too -- and if this was to keep happening…
“Come on, then,” she said, a little more gently. “Let us see what we can.”
"There was a woman," Bertie said quietly, raising his fingers to undo the buttons of his shirt. "Not like the others. The others...it was as if I could see two of them, or others looking through their eyes. I saw ghosts, doubled over them, moving through them. One of them I knew, from London. Not the others, though, not any of them. But she..."
Bertie paused to collect his thoughts and shed his shirt so that he could also pull off his vest. He was grateful, suddenly, that the evening hadn't progressed any further than it had, so he was unblemished.
"At the end, there was a table," Bertie remembered, trying to answer all of their questions, to piece the dream - had it been a dream? - together in some sort of order. He shook his head and tried again. "I saw people in the hallways, and ghosts as well. One of the ghosts spoke to me a month past, after her death. She didn't...she didn't speak to me in that...place, though. And then there was a room with a table, and two people speaking, but I couldn't understand them. I could see the man's face, and he looked..."
Frightened, so frightened, and desperate, and pleading, as though Bertie could have helped him. His entire face had transformed from despair into hope when his gaze had caught on Bertie. Bertie felt ill at the thought.
He realized he'd stopped without finishing, and forced himself on. "He looked at me. At the end. But then the other turned around, the woman, and she was..." Terrible. Astonishing. "...nothing like I'd seen before. A death-mask, a skull." Bertie pressed his lips together before finishing. "She said 'get out', and that's all I can remember before I woke. Or...came back. Returned."
His hand tried to stray toward Dex, out of reach across the room. Bertie pulled it back in against his side and sat still for Miss Bakst.
Dex listened, his brow furrowed in worry. Bertie had only been gone for a few seconds, a couple of minutes at most, and he had witnessed so much to where he had gone. Was it some spirit world? Had he been called for help? He didn’t like any of it and didn’t understand it. And he felt absolutely helpless. In this, he could not help Bertie. He could not chase away these demons, could not protect him. Not until he knew who had done this to him...if there was a who.
He watched as Bertie started to move his hand and then as he pulled it in and Dex only felt more helpless; he could not even comfort him. And with that helplessness, everything piled on, the anger started a slow burn within him.
Zipporah could feel the enormous man behind her shifting in his chair, boring holes into the back of her head.
He was clearly worried.
So was she.
Bertie seemed to be drifting, like the ghosts, and she latched onto that as a point of familiarity -- albeit a tenuous one. She’d sorted out Jamie, perhaps she could sort out this. She gently took hold of Bertie’s wrist, examining it -- it looked like the string had burned clear away, and while there was a bit of a pink mark, it wasn’t otherwise remarkable.
She then chafed his hands between hers a bit, to warm his fingers some, and to get a sense of the energy she was working with.
“You were walking in another realm,” she said, quietly. “Beyond the veil, in the place of the dead, I think. A place where you did not… did not entirely belong.” She looked over at him, her expression steady despite her worry. “We shall see whether there is damage, as there was the last time, and see what we may do for to keep you here, so that you do not get pulled there again against your will.”
She nodded, before giving his hands a squeeze. “I get some tea,” she said, “for you as well, Mr Kessinger. I shall only be a few minutes.”
She stood, and shot Bertie a bit of a look before leaving the room.
Bertie smiled wanly after Zipporah, hoping she knew his gratitude, as his attention turned entirely to Dex. She knew, he thought, or guessed, and was giving them these minutes of privacy to reassure and comfort one another.
He trusted Zipporah's discretion, and while the decision was not his to make alone, he was willing to risk her seeing them in order to reach out to the man he'd no doubt badly frightened, without warning or explanation.
"Dex," Bertie said softly, holding out a hand again, this time not pulling back. He swallowed, feeling ill for more reasons than his sojourn into the land of the dead--he'd promised to keep Dex's son safe, and his home, and he'd failed in that. "I'm sorry."
“Thank you,” Dex murmured to Miss Baskt, watching her receding back as she left. When he heard his name from Bertie, his gaze shifted to him and then he stood and went to him. “There is nothing to apologize for Bertie,” he murmured, taking his cooler hand in his warmer ones. “You did not know this would happen and could not stop it,” he continued. “Thank the gods that you were with me and not alone. I fear what might have happened…” he said gently.
"I'll be all right," Bertie promised, reaching with his free hand to touch his palm to Dex's cheek and offering a faint smile. "Miss Bakst will set me right, don't worry. She’s very skilled. I don't think..." He stopped and bit his lip, rephrasing. "I hope there was no damage, or danger to Samuel. I wouldn't have put him in danger if I'd believed anything like this might happen."
Dex seemed calm enough, but he'd been through quite an emotional evening, so Bertie moved his hand down to cover Dex's heart again, where he could imagine it beating even if he couldn't feel it through layers of cloth. "Are you all right?"
Mention of his son and the danger that could come of what had happened worried him. Could danger come? He thought that maybe he should go home and check on him. To make sure. “I am...fine,” he said slowly. “I am worried about you and now about my son,” he admitted. “Angry. Upset. Helpless,” he lifted his own free hand to cup Bertie’s cheek a moment, rubbing his thumb across his cheek. “And torn. I don’t know whether to stay with you or go home and check on my son,” he frowned.
"You should go," Bertie murmured, covering Dex's hand with his own. "I don't believe there should be any danger, but you'll feel better once you see him, and he you. And your staff will feel better once you return home safely. And you shouldn't leave that automobile outside in this neighborhood," he finished, with a hint of laughter in his voice.
Turning his face toward Dex's touch, Bertie kissed his palm. "I'll be well. I promise you. Miss Bakst is a fierce champion, and for some reason she's become quite protective. I'm in the best of hands, yours and hers."
After the briefest pause, where a kiss might have been in another room, Bertie offered, "You're not helpless. Only as confused as the rest of us. You've taken care of me quite neatly, I assure you." Bertie bit his lip, smiling sadly and crookedly. "Go. I'll write you in the morning."
Dex sighed and nodded his head. He needed to take care of his son, to make sure he was alright, but that would not have him feeling settled. He would only worry of Bertie while he was at home, but it seemed had not much choice. “I worry not of the automobile,” he gave a small smile. “It’s you that I will worry about.”
“I’ll go,” he sighed, unhappy. “You will be in my thoughts. If you can, instead of writing you should come see me,” he stated. “So I can see for myself that you are well.”
Bertie hesitated only for a second, then pushed himself up far enough to touch Dex's lips with his. "I'll see you tomorrow," he promised quietly. He caught Dex's hand to give it a squeeze, then pushed him gently away toward the door.
"You'll be missing out on Miss Bakst's tea," Bertie told him, raising his voice enough to signal Zipporah that it was safe to return, and making a face to tease them both and hopefully restore some of Dex's good humour. Bertie felt nearly exhausted, but if he let it show, Dex would only worry more, and perhaps stay when he ought to return to his son.
Zipporah had just been about ready to make an ungodly clatter, to let them both know she was coming back in, but when she heard Bertie, she opened the door and looked up at the mountain of a man standing in it, still looking out of sorts.
She huffed a little, and set down the tray on a nearby table, and fished around in her pocket. “If you are to be going,” she said, “do take this. As a precaution. For the child.”
She passed him a small tin cut-out of a hand with an evil eye painted in the middle, strung with string. “I shall take good care of him,” she added, tipping her chin towards Bertie. “We shall sort it out.”
Dex may have been slightly surprised at the kiss, afraid that Miss Baskt would catch them, but it was a surprise that he gladly accepted. He gave a soft smile to Bertie and then stepped back from him with just a second to spare before the woman stepped in. He wasn’t sure if she knew something or not, and in any case he wasn’t sure he was too worried about it. Not right now, not when more important things were happening.
He took the item she handed with a raised eyebrow and then gave a nod. “Thank you,” he said graciously. He looked at Bertie one last time and then after a nod of his head, he took his leave. As he moved through the small building, he stopped at a small table close to the door. After a moment, he fished out his money clip and took a few bills from it and placed it on the table and weighted the paper bills down with a stone. If she were willing to help take care of Bertie, then he was willing to help her out in some way as well. Then he was gone, stepping out of the door and to his automobile so he could go home to check on his son.
Zipporah stepped into the room, raising an eyebrow of her own.
“You have… interesting friends,” she said. Then again, she was one to talk. “Come on, then, let me see you,” she said, before pulling up a stool and sitting down. “Examination first, and then tea. You are cold?” She said, pressing a hand to his forehead gently. “Colder than usual,” she clarified. “Is there any pains, other than your wrist?”
Bertie raised a hand to rub at his chest, then shook his head and let it drop. "Phantom pains, only," he judged, sounding wearier than he had a moment ago. "I'm just tired." He swallowed, remembering the banquet, the ghosts with dead eyes, the dark wine. "Although I don't think I'll want to sleep for some time."
He pressed his temple, and reconsidered his answer. "My head aches," he admitted. "I might have knocked it when I was...sent back."
“Hm,” Zipporah replied, placing her hand over his chest. She looked over at him. “I am far better at the healing of the body and soul than getting up to the bottom of what has happened, and why. I think I may know how we might keep you here, and while it is not certain it will work, it is worth it for to try, and I shall. And I shall keep trying if need be.” She gained a stubborn tilt to her chin, and nodded her head.
“Now hush,” she said, spreading her fingers. “Let me look.”
It took a few minutes of praying to focus, to really see -- last time around, when she’d checked to see how he was healing, she’d seen a soul free of the awful, wrong taint she’d drawn from it, but still open to the elements -- a wound that had yet to close.
This time around… hm.
It was decidedly different.
Less of a wound, and more… more like a door. A deliberate passage, with a new energy behind it that set her teeth on edge and led to a copper taste in her mouth.
Normally Bertie could follow Zipporah's accent and unusual grammar enough to understand her meaning, but either his head spinning, the sound of Dex's motorcar outside rumbling to life, or general distraction confused him this time. He was staying here? Surely not overnight, not even with Ach looming somewhere nearby...although Bertie had to privately admit that Ach's good-natured, silent hulking was much less impressive when placed into direct contrast with an agitated dragon lord.
Zipporah had told him to hush, though, so he held his tongue on impatient questions, letting his eyes dip closed and huddling a little down into the blanket Dex had left bundled around him.
He jerked his eyes open a few moments later, afraid he'd started to drift off, heart pounding at the thought of involuntarily ending up there again, whether by magic or vision or simple nightmare. Zipporah remained silent, and it had been long enough that Bertie began to worry, anxiety making him hot and antsy.
"Miss Bakst?" Bertie prompted, and winced at how small and hesitant his voice sounded in the room.
Zipporah gave her head a little shake, and frowned, and opened her eyes.
“Your soul has not been damaged, this time,” she said, “but it is different. The energies are different.” She looked over at him, thoughtfully. “You are adrift, like your Mr Percy, and we sorted out how for to keep him steady, so we shall have to try something similar for you, so you do not wander away again.”
She hummed. “Let me fetch a ring.”
Bertie sat up in alarm, hearing the echo of her last diagnosis - unmoored - now coupled with a more alarming comparison. "If I lose that locket--if it should be stolen, Jamie would be lost. What would happen to me, if we bind my soul to a ring, or some other tangible item? Would I be physically affected, should it go astray? Or is it only that it may not leave this earth? Miss Bakst, I am not at all certain I wish to be so bound."
The alternative, however...
"If this is not done," he said slowly, "I might go...wandering? Into the land of the dead? And without warning, as happened tonight?"
Zipporah paused at the door, frowning in thought.
She exhaled a little, trying to take the time to find the right words, which was more than a little tricky, as she was more than uncertain herself.
“Mr Percy is nothing but his soul,” she replied. “There was nothing else for to bind. This would be more… more an anchor for the soul. For to keep it here, so that you would not go unless you wished to. It is…” she sighed. “I would think of it as a temporary measure at best, until you learn how to better control it. There are a few things I could suggest, but…” she shrugged a little, a tight, unhappy expression on her face. “I am not, perhaps, the one you should talk to.”
They both knew who the alternative was.
She made a harrumphing sound.
“I can talk to her on your behalf,” she said, a bitter taste in her mouth. “There is a great deal in her ledger she has yet for to make right with me, so I may be able for to convince her of the value in being helpful.”
She did her best to master her frustration and uncertainty, and look over at him. “I would not separate your soul, and put it in a piece of jewelry, Mr Eden,” she said, sighing. “I would not put it at such a risk. I would remind your soul that it has a body, and to stay in it until told otherwise.”
Bertie, who had blanched white and faint at the mention of 'her', took on an aspect of subdued guilt. "No, of course not," he murmured, apologetic. "Whatever you think is best, I will be grateful."
The mention of a ledger and things needing to be made right disquieted him, however, and though he was loath to become any more involved, he also could not turn his back when Zipporah had been so steadfast in helping him. "Has she harmed or threatened you or yours?" Bertie asked, tentative and cautious. His thoughts leapt at once to Zipporah's constant, silent companion. "Ach?"
He had pitifully little protection to offer, but he would give her what he could. He supposed that they could only hope Mrs Linden found Zipporah as 'helpful' as she found Gabriel. "If there is anything you need that I can provide..."
Bertie let the rest remain unspoken, but hoped she understood. She had stood by him, and he would in turn stand by her.
Zipporah made a face. “They did not get along, last time we met,” she said, “but he was not hurt too very badly, and gave as good as he took.” She shrugged. “It is more…” she huffed, a little frustrated. “I have been told to keep my peace, to go against my principles for her sake, for her…” she frowned. “Her blood feud. And I have done so, despite my reservations. And if she claims for to want a peaceable co-existence, it is high time she gave me something in turn.”
Her eyes flashed.
“She is a stubborn creature,” she added, “but so am I.”
She looked over at Bertie, her expression softening. “Thank you,” she said, with a nod of her head, and while there was little she could think of at the moment (and he looked so vulnerable with his thin, pale shoulders), she could take the offer as genuinely enough meant. “I shall be certain for to let you know.”
The ring took some fishing to find, but she dug it out of a small drawer -- a simple affair made of tin. “Mr Allen gave me several of these for spell work,” she said, her mouth twisting. “There were a few left over. It is as good as anything.”
"Oh dear," Bertie said before he could think better of it--before he could think at all, really, beyond the brief surge of reassurance and then dismay. He buried his face in his hand and laughed softly, only a little strained.
"A conversation earlier tonight." Bertie lifted his head to offer the explanation, too turned-around to be able to think clearly with the problems of the next day. He had the feeling that he would be more worried if he could have. Bertie looked at the ring and continued with a rueful expression, "I believe Mr Kessinger will be less than pleased to find me wearing a ring bought by Mr Allen."
He held out his hand for Zipporah to do whatever work she might need. "We shall all have to live with it," he said simply. "Thank you."
“Indeed,” Zipporah replied, frowning a little, the spectre of Gabriel Allen in the room an uncomfortable reminder of a conversation she’d been putting off. “Your Mr Kessinger, is he… is he the jealous sort?” She reached for Bertie’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Regardless, he seems for to be a good friend. And quite interested in your welfare.”
She paused. “While you are getting your energies sorted,” she added, her eyes briefly meeting his, two spots of color high in her cheeks, “I would recommend you take care. With Mr Allen.”
Apparently traveling to the land of the dead and back had quite taken the shame out of him, because Bertie didn't flush in the slightest when he smiled a little back at Zipporah. "He's the caring sort. As is Mr Allen. As are you." Bertie paused briefly to catch Zipporah's eyes before he said quite deliberately, "As you say, I am very lucky in my friends. I don't think I truly understood how much until this began."
Intimacy with Gabriel was already off the table for another reason - Dex's objection and Bertie's promise to give them time to come to an arrangement - but even if it had not been, Bertie could honestly say he didn't feel the least amorous. "I will take care," Bertie promised nonetheless. "As will Mr Allen, I'm sure. He fusses."
Bertie's eyes went wide in alarm, and he nearly clapped his hand over his mouth. "I'm sorry," he stammered. "I don't know why I keep saying these things. I'd blame drink, but I haven't had nearly enough to account for it."
Zipporah’s cheeks flamed, but a smile quirked around the edges of her mouth despite herself. “That reminds me,” she said, a little primly, “you are in need of some tea.”
She fetched the tray, and in the process, caught a glimpse of a stack of paper weighted down by a stone, left, no doubt, by the enormous Mr Kessinger, and her mouth tightened.
It was decidedly odd, and more than a little counterintuitive, but she couldn’t help but feel like a charity case at times like this -- she hadn’t requested payment, nor expected it, as Bertie was a person she considered to be a friend, and had taken a certain degree of responsibility for. His offering was, no doubt, intended to be helpful, and would be, but it still made her a little sour.
“Drink it all down,” she said, a little more sharply than she would have, and sighed to clear her head. “I shall see if I might make something of this that will help give you an anchor.” She hemmed, and then dug around in another small drawer for an iron nail, and sat in her chair, looking at the ring thoughtfully.
“You are a good man, Mr Eden,” she said, chewing her lip, keeping her eyes trained on the ring. “You are well worth befriending.”
Bertie required no such instruction on the subject of tea, and did indeed drink it all down, as it had cooled enough not to burn his tongue in the drinking of it. It was a strange evening all around, he thought, as he said with a faint smile, "You are a good woman, Miss Bakst. I am fortunate to have been befriended."
He ought to let her work in peace, he knew, but the vision he'd had still gnawed at him, and brought him to say quietly at last, "The ghost I knew. The one who looked at me through the face of another, and knew me as well. She was...she'd died in the..."
Too late, he realized the trap--the newspapers had reported none dead in the factory fire, none missing.
He chose his words more carefully the second time around, picking through them as if stepping around puddles of rainwater. "There are ghosts I've met who have asked me to convey messages to...to Mrs Linden." Bertie took a breath. Zipporah knew some of what had happened--that he'd collapsed in a dance, that he'd been used in a necromancy spell, and - he suspected - by whom. But not that it had been intentional, not that he was so known.
"The ghost I recognized was one of those. And I wonder if...as I have Jamie, if she might not have...allies...of her own."
“She does,” Zipporah replied, with a dark expression. “One of them came to this very house, trying for to cause no end of mischief. Kathy,” she spat out, making a face. “Nothing like your Mr Percy. Bent on vengeance, just like her mistress.”
The thought of the expression on Slava’s face when she’d woken him, when she’d told him that she would not be helping him, that she was letting Biddie have her way, made her frown deepen. Yes, he’d been complicit. Yes, there was no love lost between herself and the Russians. But his fate…
She shuddered, feeling itchy and miserable, and sighed, putting the ring aside, and reaching for some tea herself to get her mind on a more productive track.
Bertie felt distanced from his body - unmoored - almost as if he were wandering again. "Kathleen O'Wells," he said faintly, hearing the echo of Zipporah's words, bent on vengeance, just like her mistress. "It was she, in the land of the dead. She...she smiled, when she saw me."
He shuddered a little, clinging to the empty teacup. "But the face she wore, like a mask...it wasn't hers. I could see both of them, he and she. One over top the other."
Zipporah felt a lurch in her stomach.
“A man,” she said, harshly, less a question and more a statement, knowing what she said to be true. “A handsome man with black hair and a strong brow. Captain Slava Petrotavich.” She shook her head, her voice thick, guilty tears stinging her eyes. “He came… he came for to see me, for help, and God forgive me, I turned him away, because I was a coward.”
She stood abruptly, the ring and nail clenched tightly in her fist, and sat next to Bertie on the bed. “I will not do so with you,” she added, “I will not let you be lost,” and then flung her arms around him, heedless of his mug of tea, and current state of undress. “I will not,” she said, fiercely.
Bertie was rather taken aback by the unexpected display of emotion, and looked automatically and helplessly for Ach, but no offense seemed to be taken and Zipporah's well-being was more important than propriety, so Bertie hugged her back just as tightly, until she was ready to let go.
"It's not your fault," he told her, hoping against hope that it was true. "Nothing that's happened. You haven't done anything wrong. And you are helping. You are."
Bertie rocked Zipporah gently in his embrace, wanting to soothe her without quite knowing how. Tempestuous feminine emotions were not something he was overly familiar with. "If they've done wrong...if anyone has," he amended, because he had no proof, no evidence, no certainty, "it shall be on their consciences. Not yours."
Zipporah sniffled, and huffed, feeling an ache bloom in her chest.
She finally sighed, and broke off the embrace, giving a rough scrub to her eyes with her fists. “There is so much suffering in the world,” she said, her mouth slipping into a frown, “but I can do this much, I hope, and God will steer us true.” She looked at him, her hair sticking out every which way, her eyes red-rimmed, her cheeks blotchy. “Let us do what we can to make ourselves an anchor,” she said, as firmly as she could manage, “and the rest will follow as it may.”