Behind the Veil Page 14

  Letitia stared at him, her disenchantment growing at his callous nature. After all, she had done, the risk to herself, and what it would add to her nightmares, here he was with his bundle of paper to ensure that whatever slate between them was clean.

  Shocked, she didn’t notice the car behind her until he reached for the door to open it.

  At the dismissal, her fury knew no confinement.

  “Your impertinence, sir,” she said, as coolly as she could muster, “is superseded only by your complete inability to understand my motivations or need for self-preservation, despite what you may have seen or what I have done.”

  “What you mean is that I never should have asked you,” he snapped. “No matter that you saved a young girl’s life who is irreplaceable to me. You have rendered us a great gift given the lengths I went to in order to facilitate your aid. I only thought if that were the case you be duly compensated.”

  Letitia’s choking rage fell out of her throat to spike her tongue in bitter words.

  “From the start, you only ever thought about what money could buy you,” she accused, “and from that same start, I said no. I came here to help you, and you thought this was worth what I could have lost?”

  She held up the envelope to him, and he narrowed his gaze.

  “That was all I had to hand.” Bitten out between clenched teeth, Letitia gave up.

  “I didn’t help you for this,” she said, dropping the envelope near him, not stopping to watch if he caught it. She stepped into the open door of the car and gave the driver her address. The driver didn’t wait, pulling out at once, and Letitia was glad she didn’t need Mr. Driscoll’s permission to leave.

  She refused to look back, but she still wondered if he turned away, done with the matter. And with her. Would he come to regret his actions? They were about to swing around the drive when she dared peak over her shoulder.

  He had not stayed.

  The budding attraction she’d had for him burned to ashes that coated her tongue the whole way home.

  Chapter 12

  She clutched her son, hoping they’d be ignored and that the letter from the lawyer’s office would go unnoticed in her handbag.

  Fear hammered at her heart, and she squeezed her son’s arm, but he looked so full of rage she thought he might pull away and do something stupid.

  “What’s in your purses?” the man in a mask shouted. “You came to deposit—give it!”

  He stank of alcohol and nervous sweat. The copper stains on his clothes weren’t his blood.

  There was a guard lying on the floor. She could see where he was going bald from where his cap had fallen off and rolled to one side. It couldn’t stay on his head, for he had to have more skull for a hat. The rest of it was splattered on the surrounding floor, shotgun pellets still smoldering.

  She hiccupped into her gloved hand and clutched her son closer.

  “Line up you useless f—!” The man was screaming again, and she didn’t know what to do. She had no money, and they would ask why she was there.

  The lawyer’s check was to give her access to an account worth a thousand dollars. It was her son’s entire future. It was everything she had left to give him.

  There had been a mistake, a dreadful, horrible accounting error that had left them destitute after the war. For three years she’d scraped by selling what few goods were left from the house she couldn’t keep. Her mother’s silver hairbrush. Her grandmother’s sewing machine. Her engagement ring.

  “Mom,” her son said, “lemme go, I gotta do this.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Elijah,” she whispered, but she’d drawn the robber’s attention.

  “Are you talkin’ back?” The spitter was in front of her, looking her over, but it was the gleam in his eye when he glanced at her son. “Looks like we got ourselves a hero!”

  “I got a hellovalot more honor than you, cur,” Elijah said, rising to his feet despite how she pulled at him to come back down by her side.

  But he was near eighteen now, not a boy, no matter how she tried to protect him. He could have gone to war like his daddy, could have fought, been brave, done his country proud if he’d been old enough. Instead, the work at the sawmill had changed him into a broad, strong young man.

  Elijah squeezed his fists, and the knuckles cracked.

  When he stood to his full height, he wasn’t taller than the robber, but he didn’t have to be. Not when he could swing like his fists were made of battering rams. He swung.

  The robber tumbled down, like strings cut on a puppet. It was so sudden, the other robbers turned only when they noticed the absence of his cussing.

  “You all best leave,” Elijah said, “police gonna come, women in here fair set to screaming until the angels descended themselves. So, go on now, you got the lion’s share, you stole what us folk couldn’t afford.”

  Dead silence descended over the bank.

  None of the robbers moved.

  “What’s your name, boy?” A fellow asked, coming out of the opened vault. He was tall, hat low over his eyes, bushy beard covering his face, but gimlet eyes burned above a smoking cigar.

  “Elijah Farnsworth.”

  The strange robber glanced down at her. “That your mom?”

  “Yessir,” Elijah said, standing in front of where she still knelt. “Been taking care of me since my daddy died in the Great War.”

  The stranger paused, taking a long pull of the smoke. “Son, everyone died in that war.”

  He raised his pistol to shoot Elijah.

  She was rising, unstoppable as the light of dawn and as bright as the flash of the muzzle as she stood in the bullet’s path. When she caught it, it pushed her back, hit her like the big goats when she’d been a girl on her uncle’s farm. She felt Elijah’s body behind her, catching her weight, but she was already crashing to the floor.

  “Mom…?” The quivering voice of her son came from so far away.

  She glanced around. People were screaming and running for the doors despite the shots. Men were overpowering the robbers. None of it meant anything as she stared up at Elijah, he was so tall above her. A tower of strength, not short at all. She saw that now.

  “Mom?” He called again, and she felt the pain then and knew it was only a matter of time. She held up her handbag, and it stirred him to action. Dropping to his knees beside her, he cradled her in his arms.

  “Take the lawyer’s letter, Elijah,” she gasped, “and you go get an education, or go buy land and farm it. You go make everything of yourself I couldn’t give you.”

  He took the bag but stared at it in confusion.

  “But you can’t go…” he cried.

  “Oh, my love,” she said, “I’ll be with your daddy, and I’ll always watch over you.”

  Elijah was crying, but a robber came up to him with a gun, and before he could get within arm’s reach Elijah lunged for him. Watching the fight, she couldn’t call him back. Some kind woman came up and put pressure on the wound to her sternum.

  She was numb now as the shadows danced, but she wasn’t alone. She thought she saw someone watching them fight.

  No, watching her…

  

  Letitia sensed it. It reached up through her stomach, fastened its hand about her throat, and squeezed. There was no breath to scream, no way to fight, and for a moment she thought it would hold her in the vision and force her to endure the final moment as she passed the veil and into death.

  She choked, the breath lodging in her throat like a piece of food, the blood rushing to her face. Letitia coughed, forcing the fear aside and dislodging the breath to take dry heaving gasps that brought her little relief.

  “Ms. Hawking?”

  A voice called across the table, and her nails slid across its surface until she found its edge. Gripping hard, she dragged her body away from the scryi
ng bowl to focus on the twisting wooden surface of the table. Dark, light, the smooth transition between the two. Always warm.

  “I’m sorry,” she wheezed. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Farnsworth, I don’t always handle murder cases and it came on rather quickly.”

  “Oh, ma’am, I’m sorry.” He was on his feet and running to the sideboard to fetch a cup of cold tea she’d put aside before they started.

  “Here,” he said, holding it out to her. “Drink this.”

  When her trembling hand almost dropped the cup, he steadied it for her. The oxen man beside her then retreated like a shy schoolboy to the other side of the table. He watched her, and she observed the anxious eyes, using their blind faith in her and the innocence there to ground herself.

  “I hope you aren’t hurt,” he said. “I told you, honest I did, but she didn’t die straight away, I promise you she spoke to me.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I warned you it could be a little unusual, given the circumstances.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He fidgeted in his chair. She wanted to take pity on him and to say something that would allay his fears.

  “She loved you so very much,” Letitia said, straightening in her chair, giving him a warm, encouraging smile. “When that gimlet-eyed man talked to you, she knew he meant you harm, and she wouldn’t let anything happen to you. Your father might have died in the war, but it didn’t matter what the robber in the hat said, she didn’t want you to die for some common criminal.”

  He took several deep breaths, broad chest heaving.

  “Ma’am,” he said, his thick Midwest accent endearing, “I didn’t come about that. I wanted to know…I started that fight. And maybe if I hadn’t—”

  He screwed his hat where he clutched it on the table, his eyes misty, but he gritted his teeth.

  Grown men don’t cry, Letitia thought with a little irony. Except Mr. Farnsworth was only nineteen, and as much as he looked a man, great shoulders confined by the cheap suit, it wouldn’t take long for one such as him.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered, Mr. Farnsworth,” Letitia said. “You were everything to her, and she fought for the honors to be paid to your father’s family trust. She wanted a bright future for you.”

  Letitia shouldn’t say more, since the young man in front of her was dealing with enough as it was, but she couldn’t stop the hand that reached across the table and wrapped around his wrist.

  “I think she wasn’t happy after your father died,” Letitia said, and he nodded, his eyes sliding shut.

  “But she was…you know, all right? Didn’t regret nothin’?” he asked, holding his breath.

  “No,” Letitia said, “she didn’t regret it, not if it meant you could go on.”

  He got to his feet. “Ah, I gotta head out, let you get some sleep. It must tire you. And it ain’t proper to have a gentleman in your room so late. I’ll take my leave and thank you for the kindness you’ve just gifted me.”

  Letitia didn’t have time to open the door. He was gone.

  She wanted to go after him, but fatigue ate at her consciousness, and she sat for some time in the chair, recalling what had happened.

  She was too tired, even as she did it, but she brought the scrying mirror down and watched the vision again.

  “There…” she whispered. There was a figure, standing in the dim-lit halls of the bank, behind the fighting robbers and citizens defending their small wealth, but it didn’t watch them. It was looking at her.

  Where had she seen it before?

  It was not the same figure as the one at the Driscoll’s house, and she shivered at the thought alone.

  Casting her mind back, the figure in the vision didn’t carry the same malevolence as the figure in the Driscoll basement. Yet she had seen it before.

  At the house with Joseph when the alcohol and concussion collided. Feet in front of Stephen as his heart gave out. But where else?

  Behind Mr. Driscoll when she first met him. Beside Mrs. Quinn—Abby—at the café. No, it wasn’t the same.

  Was it the nuance of her gift that eliminated the overwhelming spitefulness in the figure?

  She racked her brains, trying to understand what it was doing there if it wasn’t the figure that haunted Finola.

  The dark shadows were remnants of souls who couldn’t remember their physical form in life or even appear in such a way once they hit the veil. There was nothing left but what kept them here. They focused all of their energy on how they’d passed away in life—what had caused them to die and regret enough to stay.

  Old Mother Borrows had said it was always worse for people who could see ghosts, such as Letitia, most of all when they were the target of the phantom’s emotional connection to the world.

  “If you can see them,” Old Mother Borrows said, “you acknowledge them, strengthen them, give them a greater reason to stay. They could influence dreams, turn them to nightmares, drive you to madness.”

  Letitia’s ability to see them was not what caused her institutionalization.

  She had killed the figure that wanted to hurt her that terrible night when six women went to a witch who didn’t know what she was doing. The foolish woman called upon dark forces, bringing something into this world that was never human.

  The figure who had shadowed her before the séance had been vastly different.

  But to tell them apart was to rely on instinct alone.

  She’d loved her husband.

  Daniel hadn’t wanted to leave his wife and unborn child. He simply wanted to stay until the child was born, and then pass on. The goosebumps rose on her skin when she was alone in the house and heard her name called in empty rooms. A gentle breath in her ear whenever she’d touched her growing belly had driven her to distraction. She hadn’t known she’d attuned to his presence with her own latent abilities. But the more she listened for him, the stronger he became until she sought the help of a woman claiming she could commune with the dead.

  The witch opened a door, but she brought something far worse into the world than the ghost of Letitia’s loving husband. Letitia killed it and the witch.

  But it had cost Letitia her baby.

  After the operation, not only had her powers grown uncontrollable but so too had her ability to see Daniel, who was nothing more than a dark shape weeping with his wife. He was responsible too since his presence drove her to the psychic.

  After the event and Letitia’s expulsion from the asylum, Old Mother Borrows guided her through the entire soul-wrenching process of conquering her fear of Daniel and saying goodbye. It allowed him to go beyond the veil, though it hadn’t relieved Letitia of her guilt. And Old Mother Borrows warned her never to entangle herself with figures of darkness. Only Daniel’s emotional connection to Letitia had allowed him to pass on.

  Other creatures wouldn’t feel the same way.

  She hadn’t seen another figure until Mr. Driscoll first stood in her doorway, the shadow looming over his shoulder. Had she attributed her fear of the shadows to the phantom’s presence?

  Letitia had no control over her panicked reaction.

  Others would be dangerous, could cause her harm. Old Mother Borrows warning rang loud and clear, and Letitia remembered the lesson well. Not speaking to the soul that invited one in would cause it to lash out, being full of rage at its stolen life. Other souls lingered, attaching to people who could see them for far more malicious reasons, such as the revolting sensation of perverted joy Letitia had experienced when she’d sensed the phantom haunting Finola.

  Shuddering, she rubbed her arms, thoughts drifting to the recent and persistent presence in her visions. Her patrons’ loved ones had all passed on, so the figures weren’t attached to the patrons—they’d been watching her. But how and when had this come to pass? Letitia needed to write it down, to sit and think. Her brain didn’t plan on letting her though, and instead
, she massaged her temples and walked to her room.

  Her hand touched the knob of the door, and she perceived it then.

  The same shiver on her spine. The tingle through her bones.

  The intense and uncomfortable fear that something was staring at her with such intensity it would stop her thundering heart in her chest if she cast a look its way.

  Unsure what to do, Letitia realized she’d left the scrying bowl naked on the table, still facing the mirror. She couldn’t stop herself whirling about, even as she raised her hands to fend off a blow that would hurt her soul and not her body.

  There were no waiting shadows.

  Letitia hurried to the scrying bowl, the open access point to the veil. She was quick to carry it to the window and throw the contents out into the garden. Her head leaned against the raised sill, and she breathed in the chilled air.

  Her thoughts left her so distracted that she’d done the unforgivable in leaving a portal open.

  She inhaled the night air. It was still the tail end of winter, but she could almost taste spring, the coming of new life, the end of a dark time.

  Letitia wanted to believe what her senses told her, but as she closed the window against the dark, the creeping dread still lingered. Not about to let herself fall asleep without the relevant safeguards, Letitia defended her home the way Old Mother Borrows had taught her.

  Tools cleaned and locked away.

  Salt the doors and windows, even in her bedroom.

  Doors locked against inquisitive hands.

  A kitten wash of hot water from the iron kettle was all she needed as she’d had the long bath earlier that afternoon, though she dabbed juniper oil behind her ears. Using the remaining hot water to brew a soothing cup of chamomile, she got into bed with relief. Sliding between the thick flannel of her bed was a delight she relished for a few moments before picking up her book.

  But as Letitia settled in bed, a page of her book open at random and tea by her bedside, she couldn’t relax.

  Her brain buzzed with a million insects, and she was unable to quiet them or focus on her book.