Cogling Read online

  The gold plated handle weighed heavy in her hand as she swiped the soft boar bristles through Rachel’s black hair, long enough to reach the noblewoman’s waist. As the Lady preferred, Edna counted the hundred strokes aloud. This time, she would make certain Rachel knew her name.

  “Edna combs Lady Rachel’s hair once, Edna combs Lady Rachel’s hair twice….” At the end, Rachel wouldn’t doubt her name.

  The evil slipped away with each stroke and her heart beat more evenly. Keep it at bay; no one needed to know about its presence. When Edna finished, she braided the straight tresses, fastening the end with an ebony ribbon. Weaving the braid into a bun, she secured it to Rachel’s scalp with bejeweled hairpins and stuck an ivory comb into the top.

  Holding the hand mirror behind the Lady’s head, Edna tilted it so Rachel could see the reflection in her vanity mirror. “How does that look?”

  “Excellent.” Rachel unstopped a crystal perfume bottle and dabbed a dot behind each of her ears before lifting her rouge brush. “How old are you?”

  Edna drew a deep breath to avoid grinding her teeth. “Fifteen.” Which you know.

  “And today I turn eighteen. I feel so very old.” Rachel lifted a lemon-drop from a crystal bowl on her vanity and popped the candy into her mouth. “For my wedding, I’ll have you curl my hair. You’re the only one who uses the steam curling iron well. Once I’m wed, I’ll need someone just for preparing me. It’s so tiresome to marry a count. If only my mother were still alive to advise me, but then, she only married a duke.”

  Rachel would marry the wealthy man her father chose. Edna would marry a fellow servant, or maybe a butcher. A working man who couldn’t do better than her, with no chance of altering their social status.

  A man who could never know about the evil. Not even Harrison could discover it.

  The automation brought Rachel her silk undergarments, then removed the Lady’s nightgown. Edna gathered the spilled muffin, stifling a chuckle as Rachel struggled into a corset. At least she was still young enough to go without one. Next year, Saints providing she still had a job, Lord Waxman would require her to wear one too, as befit her age.

  “There’s going to be a cake with real rose petals,” Rachel said as the automation buttoned the back of her blue gown. She’d insisted her pre-wedding garb match her eyes. “I want the sunroom prepared for my guests.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Edna wrapped the muffin in the napkin for disposal. Why did she have evil that clamped down on her heart while Rachel, self-centered and careless, could be free to live in the light of the Saints?

  Rachel lifted her right foot so her maid could place the white silk stocking upon it. “Father’s hosting a foxkin hunt for my marriage celebration.”

  Edna’s head snapped up. “What?” How could the king not declare that sport illegal? To hunt an innocent creature who could talk and have the decency to cover its body with clothes it sewed itself, left her with a sour taste. Simply because a foxkin resembled a fox in appearance made its life worthless. Bile rose in her throat and she steeled her nose against wrinkling.

  That evil spiraled through her as though crawling from her fingertips to her heart.

  “The foxkin is around somewhere. Down by the stables, I suppose. They’re so soft. I love foxkin shawls.”

  Edna couldn’t allow the hunt to happen. She clenched the napkin. “If you’ll excuse me, I shall see to the sunroom.”

  “Pity you can’t participate in the hunt. It’s so fun to chase after the little creatures on horseback.” Rachel extended her leg for the automation. “Fetch my slippers.”

  Edna hurried from the room, shutting the door behind her.

  A figure in a cloak rounded the top of the stairs.

  “I beg your pardon….” Edna’s voice tapered off and her eyes widened. A hag.

  In the dreaming, I am seeing.

  he plump hag stood outside Lady Rachel’s bedroom, licking her lips. Below a lace babushka, her wrinkled skin appeared blotchy around her puckered lips. A wart grew alongside her left nostril, with a hair poking from it. Her knobby hands clutched a basket covered by a green cloth. The scent of lavender, with an undertone of sandalwood, clung to her cloak.

  “Mother Sambucus!” Edna crushed the muffin, crumbs dribbling, as goose bumps broke out across her arms. She’d never been so close to a hag before. The silver eyes seemed to burn her skin with their gaze. Edna willed herself not to gag at the sour taste in her mouth. To calm her nerves, she tugged on a curl and her bracelet of prayer beads slid down her arm. May the seven Saints protect me. Could she sense Edna’s likeness to the hags, that wretched darkness that refused to fade?

  The hag nodded, air whistling through her nostrils. “You know me.”

  Although taller than Edna by only a few inches, the woman’s demeanor made Edna shrink against the door. “Y-yes, ma’am. Everyone in the city knows about you.”

  “Oh?” Mother Sambucus showed a crooked front tooth, blackened around the edges, when she spoke.

  Edna bit her lower lip. “You’re…over two hundred years old. You… bless weddings and christenings.” Of those who fill her pockets with gold.

  “May the moon bless you,” Mother Sambucus rasped. “I’m here to bless Lady Waxman for her wedding.”

  Did the hag know what Edna planned to do? She forced herself not to think about it, in case the hag could read her mind. The hag might not want the foxkin freed, or feel compelled to report Edna’s traitorous plan.

  “Where is Lady Rachel?” the hag wheezed.

  “She’s within.” Ice from the hag’s stare crawled over Edna’s skin. Keeping her eyes lowered, Edna waited until the hag entered Lady Rachel’s chamber before she took to the back stairs, passing the sunroom, and hurried through the yard to the stable. May the seven Saints keep me safe despite the evil within my soul.

  Inside her chamber, Rachel sat on her settee, crossed her legs, and smoothed her skirts over the velvet cushion. “For my wedding, I would like to be blessed with artistic talent. Every proper Lady knows how to paint for her husband, but I’m afraid my landscapes aren’t”—she puckered her lips—“realistic enough.”

  Mother Sambucus set her basket on the marble table beside the door. “As you wish, Lady Waxman.”

  “Of course, I also want to have a handsome son. My husband would love that. Father will pay any price.” Rachel folded her hands in her lap. “How does this work? Will it be like when you gave me silky hair?”

  “That was a special potion. For these blessings, you must dream.”

  “I always dream.”

  “Then you must dream extra hard.” From her basket, Mother Sambucus lifted out a metal box and a pocket watch.

  Should I keep the dropped muffin? Edna’s family could use the food, but it’d been soiled. I don’t need noble handouts. We’re not that poor yet that we have to eat garbage. Dumping the muffin by a woodpile, she hid the linen napkin in her apron pocket and stepped through the stable doors.

  “Hello?” Edna called. A horse whinnied. The grooms must have been helping park the locomobiles in the carriage house. Perfect. Excitement tingled along her nerves and the darkness refrained. Straw crunched beneath her boots, perfuming the air with an earthy aroma. She pushed back a bouncy curl that refused to stay in her braid.

  “Foxkin? Where are you, little guy?” She peered into each stall hoping to spot a cage. The horses eyed her before returning to their hay. Only Rachel’s favorite mare came to the stall door to butt at Edna’s hand. Edna patted the horse and moved on.

  Soot demon nests, wads of straw and leaves stuck together by saliva, hung from the corners of the ceiling. The grooms would have to knock them down before one of the soot demons bit a horse. A soot demon, the size of her hand, scampered across a beam, flicking his forked tail. Seeing their bodies always unnerved her—despite their pinched features and bony limbs, the soot demons resembled humans with bloated bellies.

  Once, Cook had caught a soot demon in the kitchen. As she’d
bit off its head, the animal screaming, Edna had pictured herself in its place. If she were tiny, with a long tongue and tail, would Cook eat her?

  She shouldn’t try to free the foxkin, shouldn’t risk being fired, yet her conscience wouldn’t allow her to turn back. Last time the lord had bought a foxkin to hunt, she’d hidden in a closet until it was over and Cook was skinning the body by the stove. This time, the foxkin wouldn’t perish.

  Dust motes danced in the sunlight pouring through the stable windows. Glancing at the stable entrance to ensure no one approached, she ran to the stable master’s office door and knocked. When no one answered, she tried the brass knob. It opened and she slipped inside through the crack.

  Aha! A silver cage stood beside the master’s desk. A red foxkin crouched in the corner, looking up at her with bulging eyes, his three tails poking through the bars. One tail hung limp, as though broken, but the other two stuck upright. The foxkin’s body quivered as he whimpered. A sob rose in Edna’s throat—the poor little creature!

  She pressed her finger to her lips for silence and knelt beside the cage. The tiny creature leaned away, flicking back his pointed ears. White tufts sprouted from his cheeks, but grime matted the rest of his long hair. A tear ran up the side of the foxkin’s blue jacket. Last time, Lord Waxman had removed the animal’s clothes. Would they hunt the critter fully dressed? Her stomach clenched and she bit her fingernail, tasting dust. The darkness whispered in her mind. If she gave in, it might attack to end it all. Dire things would happen if she ever surrendered; dire things she refused to imagine.

  The foxkin twitched his long snout and lifted one paw, curling his nails around a metal bar.

  “I’ll get you out.” Edna searched through the papers and riding crops on the desk until she found a letter opener. She pried the point into the cage’s lock, wriggling it until the gears snapped.

  The foxkin tugged on his tails, straightening and fluffing the clumped fur. If she had her brush, she could help the animal feel cleaner, but she didn’t have time to look through the horse supplies.

  “Come on, little guy. Run before they get you.” She reached into the cage to pull him out, but his hackles rose and he hissed. Edna jerked back. “I have to get back before I’m missed. When I go, you must run, all right?”

  The foxkin hissed again. Edna raced from the office, her boots thumping the stable floor. If he thought she was fleeing, he might too. She wished he would speak to her, but foxkins didn’t speak around humans unless they felt safe.

  How could people put the critter through a hunt, where he would know fear and pain?

  Nudging the kitchen door open, she opened her mouth to ask Cook where Rachel’s cake was, but Harrison stood in the corner.

  Her heartbeat sped. “Odds bobs! Harry, what are you doing?” Not more trouble from him. It would be nice to not worry for a short while.

  Cook stirred a pot on the stove with a long-handled spoon. Black moles stood out against her floured hands. “Teddy told him to git home, but he stands there.”

  Edna groaned. “We need your brittin, Harrison. You gotta work or you don’t get paid.” As she approached him, his brow didn’t crease and his nose didn’t wrinkle. He had to be really sick, but his color looked good. If he could muster out the day, he would still get paid.

  “Cook…” Edna began, but the tomtar shook her head.

  “Gotta send him home.”

  Edna gasped. She couldn’t allow him into the streets alone. “Some gin-addict might jump him hoping for a few pennies.”

  Cook tapped the spoon against the side of the pot. “Take him. I’ll cover the party for an hour, but no longer.”

  “Thank you!” Edna pulled Harrison toward the dressing room. He changed his clothes at her orders, tucking the pocket watch beneath his shirt. She hustled him from the manor and refrained from mentioning the theft until she pushed him into their apartment a half-hour later. The evil coiled through her body as though it had become one with her blood. Her breath quickened at the tightening around her lungs.

  “You owe me, Harrison! If anyone finds out I had to bring you home, it’ll be my job. Not to mention I had to waste money on trolley fare. I’ll have to walk home tonight, and tomorrow night, too. It’ll take longer to get your medicine. What hurts?”

  Harrison stared at the wall.

  “Give me that wretched watch. Where you got it is beyond me, but it ain’t ours!” If he behaved, the evil wouldn’t make her shout at him so.

  He wailed as she tore open his shirt, seizing the pocket watch. Color drained from his face and his eyes adopted a dark glow. A moan escaped his lips.

  “Stop it!” Edna yanked the chain over his head.

  The sound of grinding gears filled the apartment. Harrison gurgled, his howl ceasing. Black smoke puffed from his ears and nostrils, pouring from his mouth, and he burst apart in a shower of sparkles.

  A pile of metal cogs remained.

  You are nothing, I am more.

  dna’s mouth dropped open as she circled the pile of cogs, poking it with her foot. “This is a dream. Hag magic.”

  Harrison would pop back up and laugh. He had to.

  She held a gear to the light filtering through the dirty kitchen window. Triangles were engraved into both sides of the metal. The evil vanished as though ice water had washed it away.

  He fell apart. She shook her head. It couldn’t be him. Some cruel joke, sick entertainment, something. “He had an earache. That didn’t make him a machine.” She pictured the automation in Rachel’s bedroom. Harrison didn’t look anything like that.

  Edna’s eyes watered. “Are you hiding? Come out now, please!” Her voice quaked. “This isn’t funny.”

  A motorcar honked in the street, and in the apartment below, a man laughed. The sounds vanished into a whirling hollow that consumed her head. Edna stepped over the pile of gears and cogs, grabbing the edge of the table to keep her balance.

  She had to be delirious, still in bed dreaming. Edna breathed deeper to quell the erratic beating of her heart, but her head felt lighter, dizzier. She had to find him.

  “Harrison!” She staggered into the living room and parted the paisley curtain screening her parents’ bedroom. No one. The evil winked back like a sadistic reminder: I’m here, I’m playing off your emotions.

  Edna threw open the door to the bedroom she shared with her brother, empty as well, and checked the normal places he hid: beneath the beds, behind the trunks. Empty. She dropped to her knees, twin thumps against the floor. Her hand gripped the splintered doorframe, forehead bowed to the wall. A soot demon scurried toward a hole under the window. Its backbone stood out in a row of knobs against its golden skin.

  Edna rubbed her prayer beads. May the seven Saints protect him.

  She couldn’t solve the mystery alone; she needed help. Who else would be home during the day? “Mrs. McGraw!”

  Edna stuffed the watch into her coat pocket and ran for the hallway. She bolted past the peeling, whitewashed walls and banged on the neighbor’s door.

  “Mrs. McGraw, I need your help! It’s me, Edna Mather.”

  The door squealed open and Edna fell into the warm, round arms of her neighbor.

  The elderly woman frowned. “Dearie, what’s the matter?”

  “Harrison blew up!” Edna’s lips trembled. How hollow the words sounded against her ears.

  Mrs. McGraw grabbed Edna by the shoulders. “What’d ye say now?”

  “My brother’s gone; he just exploded.”

  Mrs. McGraw sniffed Edna’s mouth. “Ye been sipping gin? Why ain’t ye at work?”

  Edna twisted free. “How can you even think of that with my brother missing? I had to leave. Harrison didn’t feel well, and when we got home, he started screamin’, and then he….” Her voice trailed off when she realized how unrealistic her story sounded.

  Mrs. McGraw narrowed her pale eyes, clucking her tongue.

  “Yer mother’s got enough to worry about at that music hall and yer fat
her off buildin’ the railroad. They don’t need no gin whore.”

  Tears burned Edna’s eyes and she stomped. “I swear it on the king’s head.”

  “I don’t got time for yer ramblings.” Mrs. McGraw glared at Edna. “Get yerself back to work and hope that brother of yers don’t turn out like ye.” She slammed the door.

  “I’d love to go back to work!” Trembling, Edna tipped her head back, a tear slipping down her cheek. Mrs. McGraw had always been so nice, checking on Harrison when he didn’t feel well. Now she was going to tell Mum…

  Mum!

  Edna took the stairs two at a time, jumping off at the landings. Darting through the door of the tenement building, she met a street crowded with onlookers. Edna pushed through the group, running up the sidewalk. She kept one hand in her pocket, clutching the watch lest it fall out.

  A boy around Harrison’s age stood outside a drug store. Seeing him with ruddy cheeks and a cap slanted over his forehead made her nostrils burn. Fresh tears welled in her eyes. She would find Harrison. He depended on her.

  “Gin sold here,” he bellowed. “Cheapest place in the city. Hey, miss, you want some?”

  Edna shook her head, and his voice trailed behind her. “It solves many a problem…”

  “It can’t solve mine.” Curling her hands into fists, she ran harder.

  The streets appeared less crowded than earlier, most people at work—those who had work. She stepped over a drunkard slumped in the street, green saliva dripping off his puffy lower lip.

  Steam locomobiles, radiating heat, roared by, the brass contraptions shining as brightly as the steel spokes inside the black tires. Edna darted down a side street. Moss and mold crept across the red bricks of the buildings on either side. Broken bottles littered the dirt. A door loomed in the back of the alley near a crate. Her mother had told her if she absolutely needed to, Edna could reach her by knocking on the dressing room entrance.

  She kicked and pounded on it, the wood cold through her lace gloves. “I need Victoria Mather!” The sound of traffic and violin music mingled with her racing heartbeat, blood pounding in her temple. Mum, I need you, something’s happened to Harrison—