“Who is Miss Grey?” Mr. Kent asked.
“My former governess.”
“Well, Tuffins can send her away—”
“No—” I interrupted. After one year of silence, with no visits or letters, she somehow tracks and finds me here. Not to mention her appearances in those recent vivid dreams of mine. It was too strange. There had to be some meaning to it. “Mr. Kent, I don’t think I can accompany you on the search today.”
Perplexed, he gaped at me. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I must speak to her. It’s important.”
He frowned and nodded slowly, seeing my resolve. Or perhaps seeing signs that I truly needed rest. “I—very well. I’ll send word if I learn anything.”
Once I regained my ability to walk, Tuffins showed me into the drawing room, where I once again lost it.
“Evelyn,” the visitor breathed. It was her in the flesh, not another apparition in a dream. Her footsteps ruffled the carpet. Tears streamed from her face, splashing down onto her blue dress. She rushed over and embraced me, looking worse than she had in my dreams: sallow, bruised skin framing her bloodshot eyes; nose and cheeks a bright pink; loose strands of her red hair messily stuck to her brow. She was only twenty-eight, but whatever she had been through seemed to have stolen away that last bit of youth. Frantically, she clutched my shoulders and pleaded, “Where is Rose?”
I could not answer. My hesitation seemed to nearly destroy her. “Evelyn!”
“She’s . . .” I wanted to tell her, but I lost the words.
My governess closed her eyes with a sigh. She sank gracefully into the nearest settee and clutched her hat in painful meditation. “He still has her?” she asked, looking back up at me steadily.
Surprised, I peered deep into her grave eyes as I collapsed next to her. I nodded, and she pushed herself back up to her feet, pacing to and fro, weaving around the tables and chairs until I broke the silence. “Miss Grey?”
She stopped and looked at me, her eyes wet. “P-please, please forgive me—I am so sorry!”
I gaped up at her, unable to imagine what she could have possibly done.
“I—I tried to send warnings about Rose! I truly did!” The words poured out of her mouth so fast she started to cough on them. “But there was no way! They intercepted every letter, and no one would help me.”
“I saw you,” she continued, back to wildly pacing, hands in the air. “In your dreams. We spoke. You could discern me, Evelyn! Do you remember? Oh dear, I’m not describing this well at all. This must all sound absolutely mad!”
“I have been well acquainted with the mad lately, believe me,” I said. “I remember the dreams, although I only heard fragments. Are you saying you had the same dreams?”
Miss Grey sighed in apparent relief and gingerly sat back down. “It’s more than that. I’ll explain everything. All I ask is that you listen first, and then call me a lunatic and send me on my way.”
“I would never do such a thing.”
“I didn’t believe my parents would, either. That was the last time I told anyone about this, and it—well, it did not go as I wished.”
She cleared her throat and clenched her hands in her lap as her eyes met mine. Her breathing slowed. She began much as Mr. Braddock had. (Not that I was thinking of him.) Her tone had the same sad resignation: “Since I was fifteen years old, I’ve had an affliction. Whenever I fall asleep, I have very particular dreams about people I’ve never met. I used to believe they were parts of my imagination or characters from stories, because I would witness them perform extraordinary feats. Things no human can conceivably do.”
“I dismissed them for years until one evening, I had an encounter while I was awake. When you girls were about thirteen and fourteen, I traveled home to visit my parents for Christmas holiday, and while I was waiting at Victoria Station, a number of familiar faces caught my attention. They were all in a group, and I found it strange that I couldn’t recall how I knew any of them. Then I saw a dwarf of a man and had an even stranger realization: They were from my dreams. I had memories of them performing in a traveling exhibition. . . . They called themselves human curiosities.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I followed them, but I wish I hadn’t. I was curious to see if my dreams were true, and when my cab followed theirs to a small theater, my curiosity only grew. I watched them perform acts that seemed to take advantage of the powers I’d dreamed they had. A man who could create fire was a fire eater on stage. A woman with a powerful voice broke objects with just her song. And the longer I stayed, the more I hoped something would contradict my dreams, prove they weren’t all true. But nothing ever did, so I just kept watching.