A Deadly Fortune Read online

  “Jonas!” There came a frantic shout from the hall, and a busboy appeared in the doorway, his skinny chest heaving.

  “What is it?”

  “Some a’ them Eastmans has caught a couple fellas in the alley. They’re near ’bout beatin’ ’em to death. There ain’t nobody out there,” he said, panting. “You gotta come quick.”

  “Sporting with the fairies” was a popular entertainment for some of the lower-tier members of the local gangs. It rarely escalated beyond taunts and shoves; Sabine’s security knew their business. But there was always a risk. Tonight’s ruffians could have come looking for a fight, or they could have stumbled across this one on their way somewhere else. It didn’t matter; once a fight like this started, it usually ended with bodies on the ground.

  “Bastards,” Jonas seethed. He lunged for the stairs. “Stay here!” he ordered Amelia over his shoulder.

  As he dashed out of the room, the dull foreboding Amelia had felt all day flared to life. Her breath caught in her throat. She darted after him.

  “Go find help!” she ordered the busboy, not staying to see if he obeyed.

  Jonas took the stairs at a run and vaulted over the railing near the bottom. His hurtling bulk cleared a path through the throng, but it closed in again behind him. Amelia shoved her way through the crowd, all pretense of elegance forgotten. Panic drove her, as the certainty that something terrible was about to happen rang in her head like a gong.

  She dashed out the front of the club and around the corner, taking in the scene in an instant.

  A silver-haired man in evening wear lay curled on the ground, bloody and still, being kicked with obvious relish by a dirty-looking fellow in a stained shirt. Two men were holding his younger companion, twisting his arms behind his back while a third slapped and taunted him. The younger man’s face was desperate as he struggled.

  Four on two, she thought with disgust. Cowards.

  Jonas seized the kicking man by the arm and spun him around, planting his fist in the assailant’s gut. The man folded in half with a grunt. Jonas dropped him and turned on the others.

  The one who’d been doing the taunting grinned, revealing a mouthful of unfortunate teeth.

  “What’s this? Another fairy wants to join the party?” he asked with a faux lisp.

  With an inarticulate sound of rage, Jonas surged toward him.

  The young man being held took advantage of the distraction, yanking free of his tormentors and seizing one of them around the waist, dragging him to the ground to grapple on the cobblestones. The other assailant hesitated, as if unsure which of his companions to help.

  Jonas settled the matter by tackling the lisper and driving him backward into his friend. They both crashed against the wall of the alley and fought to remain upright, stumbling over each other and the pair of men struggling on the ground.

  The man Jonas had punched had recovered enough to reach into his boot. As he straightened, Amelia caught the glint of metal in his hand.

  “Jonas!” she shouted. “Knife!”

  Jonas ducked at her warning. The knife sank in near the top of his shoulder and came out red. The man went in for another stab. Jonas grabbed his wrist, twisting his arm behind him and forcing the blade away.

  Shouts and the sounds of running feet echoed across the mouth of the alley; help was coming. The two attackers still on their feet must have heard the reinforcements approaching and decided they’d had enough. They turned and sprinted for the street, Amelia in their path. The larger of the two flung her aside with a meaty arm. She flew backward into the alley wall. Her head hit the bricks with a crack. Pain exploded in her skull, and the world went black.

  2

  There is nothing more I can do. She will either wake, or she will not.”

  Jonas scowled at the doctor and considered punching him. The impulse must have shown on his face, because the man eyed him warily and moved away from Amelia’s bedside.

  In the front room of their apartment, the doctor continued. “Injuries of this kind are unpredictable. There is a great deal medical science still does not understand about the brain. The skull might have had a minor fracture, but if it did, it is healing. Her eyes react normally to the light, which indicates that her brain is intact. I don’t know why she does not wake. All you can do is keep her comfortable and wait.”

  Jonas only half listened, having heard some version of the refrain near daily for the past three weeks. It had not grown more hopeful, or for that matter helpful, since the first time.

  The doctor gestured to a chair. “Sit. I want to have a look at your shoulder.”

  Jonas scowled again but removed his shirt and did as he was instructed. The doctor lifted the bandage covering his half-healed wound and sniffed.

  “There’s no sign of infection. It’s healing well, although you’re fortunate not to have torn it open again, using it as you have.” He glanced back toward the room where Amelia lay.

  Jonas ignored the rebuke. He had been forced to accept the help of a nurse in the days immediately after their injuries, when his arm had been immobile and he’d needed laudanum to quell the pain, but he didn’t like having a stranger around and sent her away as soon as he was able. He’d nursed Amelia by himself after that.

  Well, almost by himself. Tommy’s mother kept him fed, and she had insisted on coming over several times to sit with Amelia. Mrs. Franklin was a powerful force for such a frail old woman. She’d ordered him out of the apartment when she arrived, and he’d been intimidated into obeying. He returned to find the place scrubbed and shining and Amelia lying on clean sheets. She’d been far more help than the doctor, with his lectures on the mysteries of the human brain.

  “Keep the wound clean, and it should heal without loss of function.” The doctor reached for his hat. “You were lucky. Any lower and it would have hit something vital.”

  Jonas showed the man out with as much politeness as he could muster—it wasn’t much, he knew—and returned to Amelia’s bedside. Lucky. He didn’t feel lucky.

  Seeing her fall had been the worst moment of his life. Terror had swamped the pain in his shoulder. He’d wrenched the arm of the man he held until it popped and shoved him away, only dimly aware of the man’s howls and Tommy’s arrival. The man and his companions, who hadn’t gotten far, had received a thorough lesson in the folly of attacking Sabine’s guests. Jonas would have enjoyed helping impart that lesson, but he’d missed the rest of the action. With blood streaming from his shoulder, he had managed only to stagger over to where Amelia lay and reassure himself that she was breathing before he collapsed beside her.

  He would be fine. But Amelia might not. Jonas looked at her in the weak afternoon light. She had grown alarmingly gaunt in the weeks since her injury. She swallowed when he trickled water into her mouth but had taken no other nourishment. Her cheekbones threw deep hollows in her face, and her breathing remained so shallow that more than once he’d held his hand beneath her nose to reassure himself that she still lived. If she didn’t wake up… Or, he shuddered, if she did but wasn’t there anymore.

  They’d known a boy back at the Foundling, when they were children, who had fallen from a tree and dented his skull. He lived, but it was a shadow-life. Jonas knew Amelia would prefer a pillow pressed to her face to living like that.

  But what if she stayed as she was now? How long could she live like this? How long could he afford to care for her? He wasn’t working, and Sabine had already brought in another fortune-teller to use Amelia’s room.

  “I can’t have it standing empty,” she’d said when he complained.

  He and Amelia had savings enough to keep paying their rent for a while longer, but the money would run out eventually. His jaw clenched. She had to wake. She had to recover. He’d promised to take care of her, and if he failed…

  Jonas closed his eyes, pushing away the dread and forcing himself to take a deep breath. Releasing it with a sigh, he picked up the book he’d left at the foot of the bed. He found
his place and continued to read:

  Dantès rose and looked forward, when he saw rise within a hundred yards of him the black and frowning rock on which stands the Château d’If. This gloomy fortress, which has for more than three hundred years furnished food for so many wild legends, seemed to Dantès like a scaffold to a malefactor.

  “The Château d’If?” cried he, “what are we going there for?” The gendarme smiled.

  “I am not going there to be imprisoned,” said Dantès; “it is only—”

  “Haven’t we read this one before?” A weak voice from the bed shocked him to silence. He froze for a moment, then dropped the book and leaned forward. Amelia’s eyes were shadowed but lucid.

  “You’re awake! And you’re you. Thank Christ.” His voice shook.

  “Sister Martha would wash your mouth out for that. What happened?”

  “What happened? You nearly got yourself killed, that’s what happened. You’ve been lying there closer to dead than alive for weeks. How do you feel? The doctor just left.” He leapt up. “I’ll get him back.”

  “No, don’t, there’s no need,” she said.

  “How could you possibly know that?” he said with sudden irritation. “You weren’t the one sitting here worrying you weren’t ever going to wake up. Worrying that if you did you’d be feeble. I’ve been half out of my mind—”

  “Could I have some water?”

  “Oh. Oh, god. Yes, of course.”

  He dropped his pique and hurried off, returning with a cup. He helped her sit up to drink, holding it to her lips as she leaned forward.

  “Little sips. That’s right.”

  She finished it all and sat back. “Thank you.”

  Jonas looked at her in silence, then squeezed her hand. After a moment, he stood. “You should eat.”

  She nodded.

  He came back a few minutes later carrying a steaming bowl of Mrs. Franklin’s stewed chicken. Amelia was asleep again. This time, however, she was curled on her side and breathing with a deep and satisfying regularity. Jonas muttered a prayer of thanks to a god he was fairly certain didn’t exist, then took his book and crept from the room.

  * * *

  Amelia recovered. Each day she remained awake longer, spoke more. Jonas kept nursing her. By the next week, she was up and moving around.

  Jonas spent part of a night away from the apartment and returned wearing a beautiful silk scarf, his initials monogrammed in one corner. Something tightened in Amelia’s chest when she saw it. She looked away, her lips pressed into a thin line.

  Late that afternoon, they were in the yard enjoying the last of the sunshine—Jonas sitting on the third step and Amelia in the chair he’d insisted on hauling outside for her—when Tommy and Mrs. Franklin appeared at the mouth of the alley. Jonas waved to them, and the pair turned, identical looks of pleased surprise spreading over their faces.

  “Miz Amelia,” Tommy called as they neared. “Good to see you out.”

  “It’s good to be out.” She smiled at them. “I’m glad to get a chance to thank you,” she told Mrs. Franklin. “Jonas says you were a great help to him while I was ill.”

  The old woman waved off the thanks. “People got to help one another. And besides, you’ve been good to my boy—he told me you treat him right.”

  They chatted for a few minutes more before mother and son made their farewells. Mrs. Franklin patted Amelia on the arm with a gnarled hand, her thumb brushing against Amelia’s wrist as she withdrew. Amelia’s vision darkened at the touch, and half a dozen images roiled inside her head, layered one over another, all stinging and urgent. It was over in an instant, before Amelia could so much as gasp in surprise.

  Mrs. Franklin had already turned away, but Tommy still faced her. Before he could take a step, Amelia’s hand shot out as if of its own volition and clamped onto his wrist with a desperate, viselike grip.

  Tommy looked at her. “Miz Amelia?”

  “Don’t leave her,” she said, her voice hoarse and low.

  Tommy glanced at Jonas, who had half-risen from his perch.

  “Don’t leave her,” she repeated. “Not tonight. Something’s wrong.”

  Something in Amelia’s face must have convinced him. He shot a worried look at his mother, then nodded at Amelia and gently disengaged her hand from his arm. “I won’t. I’ll take her home right now, and I’ll stay with her.”

  Jonas sat back down as they left. “What was that?”

  Amelia frowned. “I don’t know. I never felt anything like it before.” The sun fell below the roofline and cast them into shadow. She shivered. “Let’s go inside.”

  * * *

  Tommy knocked at the door the next day, his eyes tired and his voice awed. “You saved her,” he said, looking at Amelia. “We’d just got home and she’d gone to start dinner. I heard her fall. She was on the floor when I got to her, gaspin’ and holdin’ her chest. I ran for the doctor, and he said it was her heart. Gave her somethin’—put it under her tongue. It brought her around after a few minutes. Doc says she’d probably have died if I hadn’t been there.” He took Amelia’s hand in a crushing grip. “She would have laid there on the floor alone. You saved her.”

  When he’d gone, Jonas looked at her, his expression odd. “She touched you yesterday, and you knew something was going to happen. What did you see?”

  Amelia shook her head. “I didn’t see anything, not exactly. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

  “But you knew something would,” he said, thoughtful.

  When she came to the table for dinner that night, her cards and crystal were sitting in its center.

  “What are these doing here?” She looked at him.

  “I thought you might like to practice. I’ve had them in the cabinet since you got hurt. Sabine has had someone working out of your room,” he told her. “A sort of substitute.”

  “A substitute,” she said in a flat tone. “I should have realized. Have I lost my place?”

  “I don’t think so. She’s not a patch on you. But she brought her own props. Although she calls them ‘gateways.’ She claims different tools connect to different levels of the spirit realm,” he said with disdain. “Makes these grand pronouncements in the most awful fake accent—”

  As Jonas went on, describing the manifold deficiencies of her successor, Amelia brooded. Too many things were slipping from her grip. She needed to get back to work. That would start to set things right. She leaned forward across the table to touch the crystal with one finger, then pushed it away and slid the cards out of their wrapping. She held the deck and stroked her thumb over the slick back of the top card, only partly listening to Jonas.

  “—the most obvious old fraud you could imagine,” he continued with relish. “Terribly dramatic.”

  Amelia idly shuffled the deck and drew without looking. She glanced down: the Tower, signifying misery, adversity, calamity. Appropriate enough to their circumstances. Perhaps more to come if she couldn’t get her place back. She shuffled and drew again: the Tower. With a prickle of unease, Amelia shuffled a third time, carefully averting her gaze from the telltale markings on the cards. When she drew, the Tower appeared once more. Her heartbeat was suddenly noticeable in her chest. Jonas had gone silent, looking down at the card in her hand. He knew their meanings as well as she did.

  “That was… odd,” he said finally, subdued.

  Amelia avoided his eyes. She stood to stack the cards and put them away.

  “Do it again.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Please,” he said with uncommon gravity.

  She met his eyes and sighed. “Fine.” She shuffled slowly, the deck warm in her hands, and drew the card. The desolate gray crenellations of the Tower stared up at her, lightning kissing the spire at the top, desperate figures falling from its heights. Neither of them spoke.

  After a frozen moment, she put the cards away. “I’m going to bed.”

  The first dream came hours later.


  She stood on an open plain, the night pressing in on her with a palpable weight. The tower loomed before her, its top a roaring inferno. A man leapt from its heights, screaming. She turned away before he hit the ground. Behind her, it was midday. She watched as a woman followed a yellow cat into a field of riotously colored flowers and was swallowed up, vanishing as though she’d never been. Another woman rose up in her place, pale and armless, like an ancient statue. With a banshee shriek, she turned to Amelia, her eyes imploring, before drying up like a husk and crumbling to dust. A third stood behind her, this one weeping from eyes as black as night. Amelia leaned forward to brush away the tears, and the woman snapped out of existence with a hollow pop. Amelia looked down at her hands—her palms were streaked with blood. She gasped and scrubbed them against her dress, a rough gray thing with black smudges at the hem. The flowers faded, and a man dressed in the robes of a monk bloomed in their place. He stood mute and unhearing as yet another woman circled him, pleading. Amelia blinked, and they were gone. A scraping, scratching noise behind her, and she turned again. Her breath caught in her throat. An impression of limbs, withered and gnarled, sinews standing out against leathered hide. Fur and scales and long, matted hair trailed on the ground. A knob at one end for a head, and when it raised itself toward her, it had no face, only an open pit lined with glistening fangs. She whirled to run, fell, looked down her body. The creature’s hands were around her ankles. She howled, an animal sound, raw with terror. The hands moved up her body, gripped her shoulders.…

  Amelia woke with a gasp. The sheets were twined around her legs, damp with sweat despite the cool night air. A dim outline leaned over her in the moonlight—Jonas, both hands pressing her shoulders into the mattress.

  “You were screaming,” Jonas told her, concern heavy in his voice. He released her and leaned back. “I had to shake you hard to wake you up.”