Eden wasn't entirely sure what she'd been expecting from tonight's séance, but it was surely nothing like this: helplessly strapped into a chair, her mouth stuffed and stifled with silk, the gag tied painfully around her head so that it hurt even to think. And that was before anything actually began happening.
For now that Mircea was shut away in the spirit cabinet, the weird manifestations began in earnest: ghostly musical instruments that seemed to sound from everywhere and nowhere; strange gusts of wind that lifted the tresses of her hair and chilled the back of her neck; dimly-seen objects that seemed to glow with an eerie luminescence in the darkened room. Logic, Eden, she kept telling herself. Observation. Apply what Olivia has taught you.
But no amount of mental exhortation was sufficient to drive the animal fears from her mind: they were clearly in the presence of the uncanny; things were happening in this room that simply should not be.
She tugged reflexively at her bonds again, the leather creasing the flesh of her wrists and sawing uncomfortably around her midriff and under her bosom, Her struggles were still useless but that didn't seem to matter to her instinctual desire to escape.
And now, the terrifying sounds began to form words. A voice… dim and distant, but getting closer. Not a voice that she recognized, but as it spoke Alice's name, the young woman jumped as though she'd been slapped.
"Oh, my god… Ida?" her voice was a croaking whisper of terror.
"Alice," came the ghostly response. "Help me."
"Oh, Ida-- anything!" Alice wailed, and Eden bit down on her gag, trying to hold down the panic. Observe! Analyze! But her helplessness, the feeling of terror that seemed to suffuse her entire body, and now this manifestation that Alice clearly recognized as her departed sister… god, it was too much!
"Alice..." The distorted voice sounded barely human to Eden, and she wondered how Alice could recognize it as her sister's, or anyone's. "These women," the voice continued. "They can help me. They can make sure that I find my place in the next life. You must give them the aid that they seek."
"Please tell me how!" Alice was near tears as the ghostly voice outlined the steps that would be needed for the transfer of her new bequest to the fund supporting the sisters' work. Eden raged against the gag in her mouth, trying to mentally shout down her fears, to bring her detective training to bear: something was wrong here, terribly wrong. This couldn't be real… but it was! All her senses told her that it was completely, terrifyingly real. And her resolve began to crack, her gagged wails joining Alice's weeping, as both women fell under Mircea Heron's unholy thrall.
**
It was a subdued pair of young women who re-entered the coach for the ride back to Eden and Olivia's shared rooms in Dorset Square; Eden was still trembling, and Alice was stifling back quiet sobs.
After Ida's voice had departed, with a last plea to Alice to heed her words, an awful quiet had descended upon the room. A few minutes later, Sabinia had risen from her chair and opened the spirit cabinet, revealing Mircea still tied to her chair and gagged; the buxom brunette appeared disheveled, as though she had been writhing and twisting in her bonds; her face was flushed, her hair tumbling around the gag. After Sabinia had freed her, she sat still, staring fixedly while her sister undid the straps holding Eden in place, leaving the young detective to remove her own gag with shaking fingers.
The red-haired secretary Grizelda brought a tray with a pot of tea and biscuits, to allow the shaken women to restore themselves; she gave Sabinia a strange smile as she departed, but Eden was simply too done in to try and suss its meaning. Instead, she summoned up enough presence of mind to urge Alice to return home before making any commitment, and consider her next step after a night of rest, and in the light of day.
It clearly didn't sit well with the Heron sisters; Mircea seemed genuinely baffled that there could be any question of not following the directions that "Ida" had given her, and Sabinia spoke darkly of the dangers posed by any delay on Alice's part. Somehow, Eden was able to get herself and Alice out of the house without any promises beyond a followup meeting in two days' time with the sisters.
Eden sank back into the leather seat of the coach, and closed her eyes. She had no idea what she was going to say to Olivia when she saw her next, hopefully first thing in the morning. But one look at the mixture of terror and hope on Alice's face told her that this case would be far from simple, and was far from over.
**
Olivia Dunne was exhausted. The fact that escape from her prison seemed unlikely didn't diminish the urgency of getting free before the Heron sisters came to gloat over her… and worse.
The need for keeping her movements small, precise, and contained, so as not to fall off the table and hang herself, meant that her muscles were screaming for relief in short order. And while she knew virtually every Eastern technique ever created for breath control and relaxation of the body, few of them prepared one for having to breathe through a mouth full of India rubber, or to try and move limbs that were trussed tighter than a Christmas goose. After what felt like hours, but she knew could barely be twenty minutes, she rested her cheek against the table, her face nearly buried in her streaming hair; it was useless. She wasn't going to get free before her foes came to take possession of their prize, and with that dismal thought, her weary body shut itself down into fitful half-sleep.
Olivia woke fully at the sound of the door to her prison opening. There was a murmur of voices, then Sabinia Heron sneered, "The great detective."
Olivia winced as she felt the woman's strong fingers gather a fistful of her hair and twist it around her hand, yanking sharply, pulling Olivia's head up and back; the pale eyes gazed with cruel pleasure down into the detective's gagged face.
"A bit too smart for your own good, eh?" When the only response was a growl in Olivia's throat, she yanked harder on her handful of Olivia's hair. "What's that? --I can't hear you."
Olivia did her best to ignore the pain in her scalp, and give back nothing but a glare of defiance, but the woman merely smiled at the futility of the gesture. They both knew the situation: Sabina Heron held Olivia Dunne completely in her power, and could dispose of her as she liked. The strong fingers left Olivia's hair suddenly, at the sound of the door opening again, and she sagged back against the table as she heard Mircea join the party.
"How dare she?" the woman's voice carried a sense of genuine outrage. "How dare she interrupt my congress with the spirit world?"
"I think we can be sure she won't be doing it again," Grizelda giggled.
"Let me see her face." Mircea's voice was urgent, and angry.
With a shrug, Sabinia complied, once more burying her hands in Olivia's chestnut mane and yanking the detective's head up to face Mircea's wrath.
"How dare you?" She repeated. The medium's normally pleasant face was twisted into a mask of hate. She delivered a backhanded slap to the helpless detective's left cheek, then the right; Sabinia's grasp in her hair prevented Olivia from rolling with the blows, and she felt pain starting to water her eyes. "You have no idea what you're interfering with!", the woman raged at her. "My communion with the spirits is sacred!!"
Well, that answers one question, Olivia told herself through the pain. She's convinced that she has some genuinely supernatural powers.
"Well, that's as may be." Sabinia's response to her sister was casual. She dropped Olivia's head back to the table, but continued to idly run her fingers through her captive's long tresses, as though playing with a housecat; the anger and sheer humiliation of being handled so casually helped Olivia shake off the mental exhaustion of her captivity, even if it didn't exactly improve her perilous situation. "We still need to decide what's to be done with her," Sabinia went on.
"She needs to tell us who knows she's here!" Mircea snarled. "Take out that gag and let Sykes apply some persuasion."
While her mouth could have done with the relief, Olivia had the sense that remaining a gagged captive was preferable to having the hulking doorman brutalize her for information; Sabinia's response came as some cold comfort:
"No need. Obviously, she told Miss Blakeley, and the secretary." Olivia cursed herself again: if only that were so!
"Want me to kill them?" Sykes grunted pleasantly, but Sabinia demurred.
"It may come to that, but certainly not until we know how Miss Blakeley is disposed to us. I would hate to give up on obtaining her inheritance until we know for certain." She paused. "Grizelda, have a messenger take a note to Miss Blakeley. Have it say that our guest here," she continued playing with Olivia's hair as she dictated, "was impressed with the séance, and has decided that her former opposition was a mistake. Suggest that she's been called away suddenly on the Queen's business, but that Miss Blakeley should proceed as per our instructions."
"You mean Ida's instructions," Mirchea put in, with what sounded to Olivia like complete sincerity. "By all means," Sabinia murmured. "Ida's instructions. Either way, see to it that Miss Blakeley gets the note first thing in the morning."Olivia could have wept with relief: for all the apparent hopelessness of her situation, she knew that the worst of it was the fact that not a living soul knew she had come here. Now, her captors were going to, in effect, alert Miss Blakely and Edna to her plight! What they'd make of the note, or how they could possibly rescue her, were questions she'd simply have to wait to see answered, while she looked for any opportunity for escape, no matter how small: the important thing was that someone would know she came here tonight and did not return.
"So, now into the river with her?" Sykes's disfigured leer suggested that he'd actually prefer to keep Oliva around for a while, and she fought down nausea at the prospect of being handed over to him: at least in the river she could drown without being molested.
"Not just yet," Sabinia mused. Olivia wasn't sure just how relieved to be at her evident reprieve: these villains meant her no good, regardless of what they decided. "I think we should avoid doing anything… irreversible… until we know if Miss Blakeley is going to co-operate." She smiled down into Olivia's face again, once more punctuating her gloating with sharp tugs at her captive's tresses. "No, I think we'll let The Doctor look after our inquisitive friend, here, for a while."
There were chuckles at this, and Olivia was certain that whoever this "Doctor" might be, he wasn't going to have the Hippocratic oath uppermost in his mind.
**
Olivia had somewhat lost track of the time when she was thrown into Sabinia's coach, to be taken to see whoever this "Doctor" was, but she estimated that it lacked but an hour until sunrise.
Once it was decided to carry Olivia away pending developments, Sykes and Grizelda were instructed to free the captive detective's legs, to allow her to walk, leaving her arms and hands still bound behind her; but the stringent bondage had left her legs too weak to support her, and Sykes simply threw her across his shoulder like a sack of meal and hauled her downstairs. Sabinia met them at the door of a large black coach; she had added a hat, coat, and gloves to her ensemble, as though kidnapping a woman were just another errand for which one might go to town.
Olivia was tossed face-down onto one of the leather seats; at Sabinia's instruction, Sykes lifted her to a sitting position, facing Sabinia across the coach, and bound her ankles. He then took the noose that still hung about Olivia's neck and joined it loosely to her ankle bonds; again, it wasn't terribly uncomfortable so long as she sat still, but any movment beyond a slight twitch or squirm would cut off her supply of oxygen.
Olivia did her best to settle herself in such a way as to keep her pinioned arms from cramping up as badly as her legs had; she tossed back her disordered tresses and glared over her gag, across the interior of the compartment at her captor.
As the coach set out, Sabinia seemed to be ignoring her prisoner, as if lost in thought.
She's confident that I'm completely helpless-- and damnation, that would appear to be the case, Olivia fumed.
After they had gone perhaps half a mile, the woman's face broke into a thoughtful smile, and she spoke to Olivia.
"I must admit that, given your reputation, I had thought that our paths might cross one day." She fished out her cigarette holder. "I suppose I am a bit disappointed that the contest between us was such an easy one."
Olivia did her best to give nothing back as she glared over the gag.
"Still," Sabinia went on, lighting a cigarette, "you are clearly a remarkable woman, from all that one reads. A woman like myself in many ways… in many particularly special ways," and she gave a knowing smirk that chilled Olivia in ways that threats would not have.
"Indeed," Sabinia went on, "you are clearly a woman of intelligence… cunning… beauty… and, like me, you possess the confidence of the truly superior." Her smile now darkened, her eyes boring into the captive Olivia's. "And I must tell you that it is one of my great pleasures in life to take such women and bend them to my will; to break their pretty arrogance; to force them to acknowledge me their mistress, to submit themselves to me."
She reached a gloved hand and took Olivia by the chin with a grip of calf-gloved steel. "It's a pity you're not likely to survive this little adventure we are sharing; I would have quite enjoyed taming you."
She locked eyes with Olivia, and the detective felt a fear unlike any she'd known before: she'd had enemies wish her ill before, and more than one had tried to kill her; however, if given the opportunity, it was clear that Sabinia Heron would do far worse than kill her, and savor every moment.
The gloved hand released Olivia's chin, and Sabinia settled back into her seat. She glanced through the coach window out of the corner of her eye, flicking at the curtain with a finger.
"But who knows what the future may hold? It's time, now, to place you out of our way for the time being."
Olivia caught only a glimpse through the parted curtain, but her knowledge of London had allowed her to guess their approximate location as they had traveled, and the fact that she could see only a few letters on a rusting sign was still enough to know where they were taking her:
The Chardley Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
To Be Continued...