The Apothecary's Curse (11 page)

The contorted rictus smile pulled the white-gray skin of Sophie's face tight—a skull wearing a mask. The line of red-black blood was dried and sticky on her chin and down her neck.

Hands a vise, Simon shook her hard, the burning in his left hand a vague nagging. He prayed for a return of her convulsions—any sign of life at all. His entreaties echoed through the room, by turns plaintive and thunderous. “Do not leave me, Sophie. You cannot! Please, love, open your eyes for me! I promise I shall go out into the garden with you. I shall!”

He'd forgotten Mrs. McRory was still in the room, and now she was at his side, pulling at his fingers to wrest them from Sophie's arm. “Please, Dr. Bell,” she addressed him, a kindly grandmother. He shoved her away, sent her staggering into the armoire.

“I am sorry, Mrs. McRory. But please leave me. Leave me now!”

“Come with me, sir; we shall call your cousin. . . .”

No, that would not do. He could not leave her side. Climbing into the bed beside Sophie, Simon brushed the long curls from her eyes, which stared, accusing him, wide and blank, from sockets already beginning to hollow in her lifeless face.

“Oh my God, Sophie. What have I done? My love . . . you cannot be . . . You are only sleeping; I am sure of it. You
shall
awaken. Do
not
leave me!” he bellowed, even as he forced her eyelids shut with his hand.

“Dr. Bell, if you cannot bring yourself to leave just yet, allow me to settle you a bit.”

Simon had no desire to be “settled” at all, but he let her guide him into a rocking chair. He was only vaguely aware of the blanket draped around his shoulders as he stared ahead unseeing.

“My God, Dr. Bell. I am so very, very sorry. I will take my leave, but only to prepare you something to eat. You must keep up your strength, sir!” The door closed behind Mrs. McRory, and finally he was alone with her.

There was
something
he ought to be doing, was there not? Calling for someone to come? But he could not reckon what to do or whom to call. The undertaker, certainly. James, perhaps.
No! She shall awaken. It is only a matter of having patience.

The full moon washed the room, glinting off the cobalt phial, which still sat upon the night table. He should hurl it across the room, shatter it into a million pieces. What a fool he had been to trust Erceldoune.
My God, Sophie. What have I done? What have I done?
How might he face James, Sophie's parents, even his poor housekeeper, who had witnessed the act?

Time ticked and the hours chimed, one bleeding into the next as he sat in the dark of Sophie's boudoir.

“I've set out some supper for you, Dr. Bell. You must be starved, sir, and you
must
eat.”

Simon heard her, muffled through the heavy mahogany door. The mere mention of food made him queasy, and he ignored her plea. “I beg of you, Mrs. McRory. Do go away and leave me be!”

Simon was not surprised to hear the doorknob turn and see his housekeeper once again at his side. “I hope you don't mind that I sent for your cousin to come; he awaits you in the dining room.”

No. Not James.
But who else might be called? “Let me be a while longer . . . with her, would you be so kind? Tell my cousin—”

“That I cannot rightly do, sir,” she interrupted. “You are in a terrible state; you should not be in there. Not like this. Not with her lying there. Please come with me downstairs.”

“No. I
cannot
. What if she awakens? What then? She should not be alone.”
What if the medicine works oddly and this is simply the way . . . ?

Mrs. McRory placed a hand on Simon's shoulder. “I know, Dr. Bell. It is so hard to believe. But you must come now. Please.” She gently took his hand, guiding him from the chair. He recoiled from her grasp, standing upright as the blanket slipped from his shoulders into a pile at his feet.

He mustered a poised and formal tone. “Tell James I'll be down presently, Mrs. McRory,
after
I have washed.” She remained, unmoved, unconvinced.

Simon puffed out a breath, acknowledging her concern with a nod. “You needn't worry. Truly, I shall be down in just a moment,” he said a little too lightly. “If you would be so kind as to place a jug of hot water in my dressing room—”

“Very good, sir. But mind you do not take long, or I shall send your cousin to fetch you himself.”

Simon knelt again at Sophie's still body, which had already gone stiff. All medicine is poison, and he supposed the more potent, the more venomous. Had his simple act—opening a bottle, exposing the contents to air—so altered the elixir as to make it poisonous? It
was
possible, this much he knew. Or had that been Erceldoune's intent from the start, his worst suspicions about the apothecary proved tragically correct?

With trepidation, Simon pulled back the bedcovers a last time for a final glance. He faltered, stunned and disbelieving.
Impossible!

The tumors had vanished!

CHICAGO'S NORTH SHORE, PRESENT DAY

CHAPTER 13

Simon reread the e-mail:

Dear Mr Danforth, I believe I may have in my possession the book about which you advertised on the Antiquarian Online site. Might I ask further about your interest in it? Might it be for your research, perhaps? A new Holmes? BTW: I am quite the fan, and would quite like to think I may be of assistance in this way if it is.

Yours, Paul Gilles, DSc

How many inquiries had Simon made over the years? Fifty? Seventy? All had led him to pay a small fortune sight unseen for interesting volumes, alchemy texts with the promise of hidden formulas and obscure language, most of which now sat in Gaelan's shop, cluttering the shelves. And all of which Gaelan insisted were his in the first place, lost when he was arrested oh so many decades ago. But neither he nor Gaelan had ever turned up the ouroboros book.

Gaelan believed Simon had long ago lost his mind pursuing a phantom that likely no longer existed. But he couldn't give up. He owed that much to Sophie, no matter how spiteful, even malicious, she, or rather, her spirit, had become over the years.

She'd scuttled every attempt he'd made at having a normal, intimate relationship with a living woman, turning up at the most inopportune moment possible. It was bloody maddening.

“Malicious? Me? And who was the one rousted me from my eternal rest? And
you
have audacity to call
me
cruel?”

Sophie stood inches from Simon, hands poised on her hips, expression haughty, but with a twinkle in her eye. More the seductive mockingbird tonight than the shrill shrike. She was attired in red this night—Victoria's Secret—and her hair was drawn up in a jeweled feather comb.

But how many minutes would it be before impatience and pure spitefulness ended this respite, changing her into the malevolent, shrieking specter he'd come to expect? But even then, she was, and ever would be, his beloved Sophie.

He stopped suddenly as if to avoid her, knowing full well he could walk right through her. “Please, Sophie, not tonight, my dear.”

Her fingers fanned, reaching out toward his cheek, her nails scarlet daggers. If she'd been real, his face would now surely be in shreds.

Her lips pursed into a pout.
“You insult me with your little betrayals. First, you summon me from beyond the grave, then you try to bed every young woman you meet!”

“My dear, it has been nearly two hundred years, after all.” He'd given up on women of any sort a long while back. He might as well be living in a monastery.

“Your friend Mr. Erceldoune seems to fare all right without . . . entanglements—”

“Living like a monk in a small flat. Half out of his mind, hardly a life worth living.”

“As if either of you has a choice!”

“Soon, love. I'll put it to rights, I promise. And we both shall finally rest, and on the same side.”

Sophie laughed. It was a dissonant, deafening cackling. The vixen had vanished, transformed into a hideous wraith. Simon clamped his hands to his ears to stifle the terrifying sound, squeezing his eyes against the sight of her. And then she was gone, suddenly as she'd appeared.

His footsteps echoed on the oak flooring as he strode angrily from one end of his study to the other. Halted by an inconvenient wall, Simon slammed his hand against the plaster in frustration and reversed course, considering the Bedlam discovery. All those years he and Gaelan had eluded exposure. Could those bloody diaries at last be their undoing?

He'd once proposed to Gaelan that they reveal it themselves. It had been New Year's Eve 2000, the turn of a new millennium, and after much to drink. “Out with it already. So what if the world knows? It's the twenty-first century, and you've bloody discovered the secret to immortality. You'll be rich beyond your dreams—a celebrity. What have you to fear?”

Gaelan had been in the midst of an especially bad patch just then, and Simon didn't know what else to do. It had been impulsive—and exactly the wrong thing to suggest. Gaelan had gotten that haunted, hunted expression—a rabbit about to bolt—insisting that Simon couldn't possibly understand what sort of Pandora's Box they'd open. And then Gaelan disappeared. Again.

It had taken two years for Simon to find him, this time on a remote island off Vancouver. And he suspected that Gaelan was found only because he'd wanted to be found, grown exhausted of living on nightmares and loneliness. He'd been in desperate straits, beyond gaunt, sitting outside a run-down caravan in a rusty lawn chair, barely recognizable, stoned out of his mind.

Simon hadn't been serious about disclosing their not-so-little secret—not really. He had no desire for discovery either. When he'd been too long in a place, he would relocate to the Continent, to Africa, to Asia, only to reappear years later with a slight change of name, a descendent with a claim to Simon's legacy: great-grandnephew, fourth cousin twice removed, great-great-grandson, and always bearing a copy of the will, guaranteeing his inheritance of Simon Bell's fortune. He'd become as adaptive as one of Darwin's tortoises, but never venturing so far from himself as to get lost in the maze of time and age. This most recent occupation of writing Holmes suited him, connecting him to home, his time and place. It kept him grounded, like Gaelan and his antiquarian books.

With the discovery of the Bedlam diaries, Gaelan would likely withdraw entirely into himself, then slip away one morning, departing without a word. Simon could not let that happen, not again. Not now. Not with this strong feeling that the ouroboros book was finally within their grasps.

“You tell me he is not your friend, yet here you are, living not ten miles from his home! And when he disappears, you follow. Spare no expense to find him.”

“I need him to translate the book if . . . when . . . I recover it.”

Sophie's icy glare sliced through him; she was inches from his face. At least the banshee had vanished for the moment. She would not be moved until he confessed it.

He sighed. “I owe him.”

“For what you'd not the bollocks to do yourself.”

Pressing his head against the cold, hard window pane, he allowed the cool moisture to release the tension in his brow. Sophie's reflection appeared just behind his shoulder, in the darkened window. He pivoted, about-face, but she had vanished.

He blinked and turned back toward his desk; there she was again. He hated when she did that.

Now perched upon Simon's writing desk, Sophie caressed his uncapped fountain pen.
“How quaint.”
She giggled girlishly.
“Quite the tip on this. How the ink must flow—so viscous and smooth as silk.”

Simon collapsed into his chair, feet up, lighting a Silk Cut. She was going to have her say. He'd learned her moods over the years. She could be quite reasonable, sometimes, and if he was patient, she'd gift him with a flicker of her old self. But then, a perceived offense, and she would turn, shrieking in his ear until he could stand no more. He would run from the house to the edge of the bluff and hope the waves below crashed loudly enough upon the rocks to shut her out. It almost never worked.

It hadn't always been thus. For years after her death, Sophie existed only as a recurrent vision, sweet and lovely as when she was living until Conan Doyle dragged him to a séance just after the Great War. The night was still vivid in Simon's memory. . . .

“I know, old chap, you are sorely missing someone dear.” Conan Doyle had worn away at Simon's denial for months. “I am acquainted with quite a marvelous medium, and she is skilled at this sort of—communication. It has quite comforted me to speak with my dear son Kingsley, who died just last year. It is nothing short of miraculous; I have spoken with him several times now, and it has done my heart a great joy to know he is alive on some other plane. It would do you as well, I think, a modicum of good.”

Protests fared not well against Conan Doyle's insistence, and then Simon found himself in a dark room at a table full of believers—dupes, one and all, including Conan Doyle. Simon hoped the medium was, indeed, a fraud. If she was genuine, and truly might see into his heart and soul, she would be privy to far too much. Simon riveted his eyes to the woman as she swayed and keened, her voice transmuting at will.

He was caught off his guard when her gaze suddenly latched onto his, her lids flying open in surprise. Simon found himself caught in her unyielding stare, unable to extricate himself, waiting for her to proclaim to the room the secrets of his heart. But the battle between them finally ended, and he felt his mind loosen as the room brightened. Exultant applause erupted, drowning out the gasps and bewildered murmuring—inquiries about what they'd witnessed between the medium and Dr. Bell. But the medium, now pale and very quiet, declined all questions. “I was mistaken,” she stammered, her eyes haunted with something not there before.