Sparks of Light (Into the Dim #2)

We’d barley crossed that threshold when a sturdy older woman, dressed in at least a dozen yards of heavy black silk, stormed us. Tall black feathers protruded from her snow-white hair. They wobbled when she stopped abruptly and glared down at me.

For some reason, I didn’t want the sergeant to leave. I twisted in my chair to look at him, but the door was already closing, and he was on the other side. The lock clicked. There was a finality in the sound that tugged my stomach up into my chest.

The elderly woman’s strident voice pulled me back around. Punctuating each word with a thrust of her folded fan, she said, “This. Is. Not. Mrs. Caldecott. Where is she? Where is Louisa? Tell us at once! Where did they take her?”

“Now, now, Mrs. Forbes,” Hannah said soothingly. “You know we ain’t to discuss ’nother patient’s treatment with—”

“Treatment?” Mrs. Forbes’s voice sliced through Hannah’s speech like a light saber through butter. “Ha!” The woman turned to address the two ladies perched in the ornate seating behind her. “Treatment, she calls it. You have the unmitigated nerve to call it treatment?” She scowled at Hannah. “If that doctor scrambles her brains like he did poor Miss Allen’s over there . . .”

The slender young woman Mrs. Forbes indicated was seated in a wing chair, a kitten sprawled on the lap of her frilled pink gown. Paying no attention to the shouts, the girl smiled blandly at the tabby as it batted one of the ribbons that threaded through her cascade of white-blond ringlets.

“Oh, do stop playing with that blasted cat, Annabelle, and pay attention.”

When Annabelle Allen looked up, I realized there was something deeply wrong with her. Though pretty, with doll-like features, the girl’s vacant smile never altered. Her huge, hazel eyes looked vapid, empty, fixed on nothing as she stroked the cat.

“Whatever is the matter, Mrs. Forbes?” Annabelle said. “Bootsie and I have come up with the most marvelous game.”

Mrs. Forbes stared at the girl, her large baggy eyes softening before she whipped back in our direction.

“Mrs. Forbes.” Hannah spoke up before the woman could start her tirade again. “This here’s Miss Randolph. Maggie is supposed to be bringing clothes from the community wardrobe, as the dear ain’t got a stitch with her but what she has on. Please make her feel at home, won’t you?”

Mrs. Forbes merely snorted.

Hannah ignored her as she removed the blanket from my lap and helped me stand. My legs wobbled as the other women watched silently.

“Dinner in a half hour,” the nurse said to me. “Maggie is the chambermaid—?though where she is at the moment, I couldn’t say. I will find her. She’s to help you dress, do your hair, and such. Which, if you’ll forgive me, miss, looks like a bird’s nest after the cat’s gotten to it.”

As I automatically lifted a hand to the back of my hair, a spike of fear jammed me between the ribs. Though I still wore the teal gown the seamstress had dressed me in only hours earlier, the neckline was loose. The tiny buttons on the back of the high collar gaped open.

When I patted the embroidered fabric over my chest, all I could feel was my heart hammering beneath.

My lodestone. Gone.

I wheeled on Hannah. The sudden movement, combined with the remnants of the drug, made me sway. I gritted my teeth, forcing my voice to sound calm and reasonable. “Nurse Hannah, where is my pendant?”

When she didn’t answer, I grabbed her. “The necklace I was wearing when I was brought in. Where is it?”

Hannah snatched her arm away. “You just calm yourself right down, Miss Randolph, or I will call the guard. Your necklace is safe. The doctor, he don’t let folks go to Ward B with nothing that can be used to harm others.”

“Harm . . .”

“She means,” Mrs. Forbes explained, “that it was removed, in case you become inclined to choke someone with the chain.”

As Hannah marched off, muttering under her breath about lazy maids, I tried to calm myself. This wasn’t like last time. Mac had two extra lodestones tucked away in his case. Still, the black opal pendant had been in the Carlyle family for generations, and I couldn’t help but feel even more violated.

“Don’t think to get the jewel back, either,” Mrs. Forbes murmured, sending a fish-eye glare after Hannah. “I think Carson sells them. I’ve been asking after my emerald hairpins for seven months now.”

As I stood beside the wheelchair, the other women—?aside from Annabelle Allen—?all stared at me. Even Bootsie seemed intrigued by my bedraggled hair and creased, rumpled gown.

After what felt like an eternity, Mrs. Forbes released a sigh that made her perfect posture slump. “You might as well come sit, child.” Taking my arm in her firm grip, she led me toward a divan upholstered in rich burgundy velvet. “That slattern Maggie isn’t worth two red cents. The nurse will probably find her taking a nap in one of our beds. Why,” Mrs. Forbes went on, “if the girl were in my employ, I’d—”

“But she isn’t in your employ, is she, Dorothy?” A curvaceous, striking woman in her thirties interrupted Mrs. Forbes.

With tawny skin and upswept hair the color of rose gold, the woman lounged against an arm of the opposing couch. “In fact, since your perfect son took over that moldy old mansion of yours, all the servants are his now, aren’t they?” She shook her head in mock sorrow. “I hear he and his cow of a wife are living it up, spending all your lovely money. While you rot here in the madhouse, just like the rest of us. You can pretend otherwise,” she added. “But you know it’s true.”

Dorothy Forbes’s upper lip quivered in outrage. “Don’t you dare speak of my son, Lila Jamesson. You know nothing. M-my Wilbur just wished me to recover my nerves, is all. Why, I can leave any time I want.” Dorothy was shaking, bits of spittle gathering in the corners of her mouth as she turned an alarming shade of fuchsia. “And as for you. We all know why you’re here.” She stomped off to plop down at the grand piano on the far side of the room. But not before we all heard the hissed word. “Unnatural.”

“Yes. Yes,” she called to the older woman. “We all know how little you approve of my tastes, Dorothy.” Green-gold eyes and lips that tilted up at the corners gave Lila Jamesson a feline appearance. With a boneless, slinky grace that matched her looks, Lila slid from the sofa’s arm and glided across the oriental carpet to settle herself at my side.

“Oh, I’ll admit, when my husband discovered—?in a very compromising manner, I might add—?that I enjoy the company of women, he was a bit . . . put out. Imprisoned me here so that the good doctor could rid me of my ‘aberrant inclination.’ But I won’t stay long. Not near as long as her, anyway.”

Hannah strode back into the room, followed by a maid and a young girl in a pearlescent evening gown. “Miss Rittenhouse,” she said, “this here’s Miss Randolph. Let’s make her welcome.” The nurse tilted her head toward the girl. “Miss Rittenhouse is eighteen, close to your own age, miss. I imagine you two will become fast friends, ain’t that right, Miss Rittenhouse?”

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