Chapter Text
She had come home a dawn and a day and a dusk ago. The doctor had come and gone, and she sat with her father, having a conversation she’d been avoiding for more than a year.
“Is Cabal to blame?"
“No. It wasn’t his fault. He rescued me, dad.” And then buggered off as usual, she thought. She lay on the sofa, wrapped in blankets and supported by pillows. A cup of tea steamed at an end table drawn up to her elbow. The lamp behind the sofa was turned up to full, and another had been placed on the bookcase.
“Have you seen Cabal since the matter with the aeroship?"
She paused. This was going to cost him a sleepless night or two. “Yes. Several times."
***
To be fair, Cabal had not been thinking about making a dramatic exit. He had simply headed for the shadows before circling around to make sure the rendezvous occurred. Leonie was as tall as her father; he’d not noticed before. Of course, he had been preoccupied with extorting one of their souls when he’d last seen them together. Cabal watched the look on Barrow's face as he hurried towards her, then turned and left before the explanations started.
His pleasure with the neatness of the scheduling almost overshadowed his misgivings. It had fit, like a hand in a glove, or a fairie into a coffee tin. Leonie Barrow was under the best care he could have arranged, and Frank Barrow would be distracted caring for her. Meanwhile, he planned to keep clear of Penlow. No doubt Barrow could smooth over his daughter's unexpected return. They could tell what story they liked. He thought Leonie would keep him out of it.
The bedrooms of his house were full of dreadful things. More dreadful things than usual, he qualified mentally, both in quality and quantity. His preparations against the invasion of the house had been vigorous. He wasn't going to attempt to clear the first floor until after he'd had some food and sleep but the kitchen required immediate attention.
Cabal mused. He laid down a cloth to kneel upon, then used a rag dampened with mineral spirits to dab away the arcane sigils he had inscribed on the kitchen tile not three days ago.
Was it possible for him to find room for other loyalties? He would not have thought so, but thus far Leonie had made it easy. And he had… He had made exceptions for her. He avoided quantifying his behaviour any more precisely.
***
Frank Barrow sipped from his glass of brandy. He was not much of a drinker, but Leonie’s news had given him a chill. He tried to rally. "I met his brother Horst at the carnival. Odd… man. But… good, perhaps? He didn’t want any part of his brother’s business."
“Horst. I’ve seen the name, but you never mentioned…. I suppose you and I haven’t talked about the carnival much."
“I could have killed him, then."
“Really, dad?” Her question was not rhetorical. She sat up under her swathes of shawls and looked hard at his face.
“Yes. Well. What good would it have done? I hated him, sweetheart, and I could hate him still. I wish I knew why he’d done it. And why he gave the contract back. But I’ve never had to kill anyone.” He was taking this remarkably well, he thought. Perhaps he could risk a question. "What is my daughter doing mixed up in something with Mr. Cabal?"
She lifted her chin. “Nothing you’d be ashamed of."
“No. I know that. I know that." And he knelt by the sofa, put an arm around her shoulders, and silently, grudgingly, blessed Johannes Cabal for coming after his Leonie.
And then it was time to go to bed. She went upstairs, and he extinguished the lamps, checked the doors and windows, and resisted a second brandy.
***
Cabal worked his way down the stairs and through the cellar, collecting, dismantling, and erasing his defences as appropriate.
The spring chill of the second cellar called the Dee Society prison to mind. In his mind's eye he saw through the floor to her lying below. He needed to be sure. He stripped to his shirtsleeves and raised the stone; she was there still. He thought of Leonie on her chilly narrow cot in the dungeon - but the woman below was beyond reach and beyond all comfort. Cabal drew his overcoat close and lay down for a second cold night in a narrow bed.
****
****
A month later, the Barrow home in Penlow on Thurse was filled with light. New lamps elbowed photographs and books for space on the tables, but Leonie was in her bedroom. She was lying in bed, staring at the pattern her lace curtains cast on the walls. Her father knocked on her open door. “I’ve decided to go,” he said.
“Really. Well, that’s nice. Have a lovely time.” Her tone twisted from bored to barbed. “I’ll try not to get into too much trouble. Perhaps you should have the neighbours look in on me."
Barrow smiled. “Just try to stop Mr. Wilton from checking in."
Leonie felt heartsick. He was trying so hard, and she had been absolutely hateful. If she wasn’t sulking, she was lashing out. If she wasn’t lashing out, she was crying. She tried to keep it all to herself, but she couldn’t help it. She gave him a half-smile as a sort of apology, but that was the best she could do. If only he would go! “It’s a few nights. I’ll be fine.” She sighed and lay down again and he left. She was behaving like a damned teenager, and she was hurting him. Maybe if he left, she would get better.
She had not recovered. She was still in Penlow; it had been agreed by her father and the administration that she should rest for the summer term and come back in the autumn. Leonie had said little. She rarely passed the gate around the house, in fact; she gardened and cooked, but she spent a great deal of time in her bedroom alone. She wrote no letters. The school forwarded a large envelope of mail which she took up to her bedroom and did not open.
Everything was dim and blurred. The doctor said it was her pupils; the muscles controlling the dilation must have frozen. Time might unfreeze them. Her father had retained an oculist, who had offered blue spectacles with side-baffles. Her laughing fit had lasted five minutes, but it had held a hysterical note.
She tried to be normal. She read to him and they laughed and she kissed him good night before going up to bed. But there were flashes of bitterness and anger she couldn't contain.
Depression, said the family doctor to Frank Barrow over a quiet pint one night. Barrow, who knew rather more (but not, he suspected, all) about Leonie’s imprisonment thought she needed quiet time to heal, and let her be in the warm silence he could give her.
***
Cabal looked out a window with a cup of cold tea. His work had been going well. The latest test batch, incorporating some elements from the experiment that had so discomposed Leonie, had been moderately promising - in the sense of not being as utter a failure as usual. He inadvertantly calculated how long it might take to achieve his objective at his current rate of progress. Again. The number of years varied slightly based on resources and significant breakthroughs or setbacks, but it always came out depressingly long.
He recalled the first time he had seen Leonie Barrow, at the end of that dreadful and desperate year. How he had stood inert, inwardly demented, while she walked, smiled at an acquaintence, and greeted her father affectionately. He had seen nothing but a dead woman. He wondered what he might have done if he'd had his soul. It was obscurely embarrassing to remember this now. Even then, part of his mind had been searching for differences and had found them. Height. A small variation in the distance between the eyes. Voice, for which he was wholeheartedly thankful.
After his first mad thoughts had passed, she was no-one else but herself, which was a relief. It had seemed just possible that Satan had somehow learned things Cabal hoped he had hidden even from the Prince of This World, and he had wondered if he was equal to the temptation.
Now he wondered if Horst had seen Leonie at the carnival. He, surely, would have been just as astonished, but there had been little time for discussion. Horst would have spared him the shock if he could, even then. Oh, Horst. Cabal sipped his cold tea.
He had cleared the chessboard and put the pieces away. Eventually, setting up the pieces after dusting had felt futile. He could remember the layout if he needed it. He had rescued the damned woman, and she hadn’t even mailed her next move. Johannes Cabal was not a man much given to angst, but from time to time the bleakness of his existence obtruded itself upon his notice.
And for Leonie Barrow, the days were put neatly in separate boxes that did not overlap and did not vary, while she turned the same questions over in her mind. Until one day, she found a necromancer in her kitchen.