“Bring Mother? But he couldn’t possibly have wanted to do that—”
“Probably not, but with a new wife and a new baby, Father would have been eager to please his employer. He agreed to go, and to bring Mother with him.”
“Father should have gone to the police—”
“A rich man like Mortmain would have had the police in his pocket,” interrupted Will. “Had your father gone to the police, they would have laughed at him.”
Nathaniel pushed the hair back off his forehead; he was sweating now, strands of hair sticking to his skin. “Mortmain arranged a carriage to come for both of them late at night, when no one would be watching. The carriage brought them to Mortmain’s town house. After that there were many missing pages, and no details about what happened that night. It was the first time they went, but not, I learned, the last. They met with the Pandemonium Club several times over the course of the next few months. Mother, at least, hated going, but they continued to attend the meetings until something changed abruptly. I don’t know what it was; there were few pages after that. I was able to discern that when they left London, they did it under cover of night, that they told no one where they were going, and they left no forwarding address. They might as well have vanished. Nothing in the diary, though, said anything about why—”
Nathaniel broke off his story with a fit of dry coughing. Jessamine scrambled for the tea that Sophie had left on the side table, and a moment later was pressing a cup into Nate’s hand. She gave Tessa a superior expression as she did so, as if to point out that Tessa really ought to have thought of it first.
Nate, having quieted his coughing with tea, continued. “Having found the diary pages, I felt as if I’d stumbled across a gold mine. I’d heard of Mortmain. I knew the man was as rich as Croesus, even if he was evidently a bit mad. I wrote to him and told him I was Nathaniel Gray, the son of Richard and Elizabeth Gray, that my father was dead, and so was my mother, and in among her papers I had found evidence of his occult activities. I intimated that I was eager to meet him and discuss possible employment, and that if he proved less eager to meet me, there were several newspapers that I imagined would be interested in my mother’s diary.”
“That was enterprising.” Will sounded nearly impressed.
Nate smiled. Tessa shot him a furious look. “Don’t look pleased with yourself. When Will says ‘enterprising,’ he means ‘morally deficient.’”
“No, I mean enterprising,” said Will. “When I mean morally deficient, I say, ‘Now, that’s something I would have done.’”
“That’s enough, Will,” Charlotte interrupted. “Let Mr. Gray finish his story.”
“I thought perhaps he’d send me a bribe, some money to shut me up,” Nate went on. “Instead I got a first-class steamer ticket to London and the official offer of a job once I arrived. I figured I was onto a good thing, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t plan on messing it up.
“When I got to London, I went straight to Mortmain’s house, where I was ushered into the study to meet him. He greeted me with great warmth, telling me how glad he was to see me and how I looked just like my dear dead mother. Then he grew serious. He sat me down and told me he had always liked my parents and had been saddened when they had left England. He had not known they were dead until he received my letter. Even if I were to go public with what I knew about him, he claimed he would happily give me a job and do whatever he could for me, for my parents’ sake.
“I told Mortmain that I would keep his secret—if he brought me with him to attend a meeting of the Pandemonium Club, that he owed it to me to show me what it was he had shown my parents. The truth was, the mentioning of gambling in my mother’s diary had sparked my interest. I imagined a meeting of a group of men silly enough to believe in magic and devils. Surely it wouldn’t be difficult to win a bit of money off such fools.” Nate closed his eyes.
“Mortmain agreed, reluctantly, to take me. I suppose he had no choice. That night the meeting was at de Quincey’s town house. The moment the door opened, I knew I was the fool. This was no group of amateurs dabbling in spiritualism. This was the real thing, the Shadow World my mother had made only glancing reference to in her diary. It was real. I can barely describe my sense of shock as I stared around me—creatures of indescribable grotesqueness filled the room. The Dark Sisters were there, leering at me from behind their whist cards, their nails like talons. Women with their faces and shoulders powdered white smiled at me with blood running out the corners of their mouths. Little creatures whose eyes changed color scuttled across the floor. I had never imagined such things were real, and I said as much to Mortmain.
“‘There are more things in Heaven and earth, Nathaniel, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ he said.
“Well, I knew the quote because of you, Tessa. You were always reading Shakespeare at me, and I even paid attention some of the time. I was about to tell Mortmain not to make fun of me, when a man came up to us. I saw Mortmain go stiff as a board, as if this were someone he was frightened of. He introduced me as Nathaniel, a new employee, and told me the man’s name. De Quincey.
“De Quincey smiled. I knew immediately he wasn’t human. I’d never seen a vampire before, with that death white skin of theirs, and of course when he smiled, I saw his teeth. I think I just stared. ‘Mortmain, you’re keeping things from me again,’ he said. ‘This is more than just a new employee. This is Nathaniel Gray. Elizabeth and Richard Gray’s son.’
“Mortmain stammered something, looking baffled. De Quincey chuckled. ‘I do hear things, Axel,’ he said. Then he turned to me. ‘I knew your father,’ he told me. ‘I liked him quite a bit. Perhaps you’d join me for a game of cards?’
“Mortmain shook his head at me, but I’d seen the card room when I’d come into the house, of course. I was drawn to the gaming tables like a moth to light. I sat playing faro all night with a vampire, two werewolves, and a wild-haired warlock. I made my jack that night—won a great deal of money, and drank a great deal of the colorful sparkling drinks that were passed around the room on silver trays. At some point Mortmain left, but I didn’t care. I emerged in the dawn light feeling exultant, on top of the world—and with an invitation from de Quincey to return to the club whenever I liked.
“I was a fool, of course. I was having such a high old time of it because the drinks were mixed with warlock potions, addictive ones. And I had been allowed to win that evening. I went back of course, without Mortmain, night after night. At first I won—won steadily, which was how I was able to send money back to you and Aunt Harriet, Tessie. It certainly wasn’t from working at Mortmain’s. I went into the office irregularly, but I could barely concentrate even on the simple tasks I was assigned. All I thought about was getting back to the club, drinking more of those drinks, winning more money.
“Then I started to lose. The more I lost, the more obsessed I became with winning it back. De Quincey suggested I start playing on tick, so I borrowed money; I stopped coming into the office at all. I slept all day, and gambled all night. I lost everything.” His voice was remote. “When I got your letter that Aunt had died, Tessa, I thought it was a judgment on me. A punishment for my behavior. I wanted to rush out and buy a ticket to return to New York that day—but I had no money. Desperate, I went to the club—I was unshaved, miserable, red-eyed. I must have looked like a man at his lowest ebb, because it was then that de Quincey approached me with a proposition. He drew me into a back room and pointed out that I had lost more money to the club than any one man could ever pay back. He seemed amused by it all, the devil, flicking invisible dust off his cuffs, grinning at me with those needle teeth. He asked me what I’d be willing to give to pay off my debts. I said, ‘Anything.’ And he said, ‘What about your sister?’”
Tessa felt the hairs on her arms rise, and was uncomfortably aware of the eyes of everyone in the room on her. “What—what did he say about me?”
“I was utterly taken off guard,” said Nate. “I didn’t recall having discussed you with him, ever, but I had been drunk so many times at the club, and we had spoken very freely… .” The teacup in his hand rattled in its saucer; he set them both down, hard. “I asked him what he could possibly want with my sister. He told me that he had reason to know that one of my mother’s children was … special. He had thought it might be me, but having had leisure to observe me, the only thing unusual about me was my foolishness.” Nate’s tone was bitter. “‘But your sister, your sister is something else again,’ he told me. ‘She has all the power you do not. I have no intention of harming her. She is far too important.’
“I spluttered and begged for more information, but he was unyielding. Either I procured Tessa for him, or I would die. He even told me what it was I had to do.”
Tessa exhaled slowly. “De Quincey told you to write me that letter,” she said. “He had you send me the tickets for the Main. He had you bring me here.”
Nate’s eyes pleaded with her to understand. “He swore he wouldn’t hurt you. He told me all he wanted was to teach you to use your power. He told me you’d be honored and wealthy beyond imagining—”
“Well, that’s just fine, then,” interrupted Will. “It’s not as if there are more important things than money.” His eyes were blazing with indignation; Jem looked no less disgusted.
“It’s not Nate’s fault!” Jessamine snapped. “Didn’t you hear him? De Quincey would have killed him. And he knew who Nate was, where he came from; he would have found Tessa eventually anyway, and Nate would have died for no reason.”
“So that’s your objective ethical opinion, is it, Jess?” Will said. “And I suppose it has nothing to do with the fact that you’ve been drooling over Tessa’s brother since he arrived. Any mundane will do, I suppose, no matter how useless—”
Jessamine let out an indignant squawk, and rose to her feet. Charlotte, her voice rising, tried to quiet them both as they shouted at each other, but Tessa had stopped listening; she was looking at Nate.
She had known for some time her brother was weak, that what her aunt had called innocence was really spoiled pettish childishness; that being a boy, the firstborn, and beautiful, Nate had always been the prince of his own tiny kingdom. She had understood that, while it had been his job as older brother to protect her, really it had always been she, and her aunt, who had protected him.
But he was her brother; she loved him; and the old protectiveness rose in her, as it always did where Nate was concerned, and probably always would. “Jessamine’s right,” she said, raising her voice to cut through the angry voices in the room. “It wouldn’t have done him any good to refuse de Quincey, and there’s no point arguing about it now. We still need to know what de Quincey’s plans are. Do you know, Nate? Did he tell you what he wanted with me?”