The Syndicate (Timewaves Book 1)

  Once we were alone, Cyrus headed straight for the liquor cabinet. Pulling two crystal tumblers from the rack, he poured three fingers of scotch into each. He handed one to me and then sank down into one of the armchairs. Leaning back, he closed his eyes and sighed.

  “Drink it, Stassi,” he ordered. “That woman is right, it will calm you.”

  Dutifully, I took a small sip of the amber liquid. The slow burn instantly warmed my insides from my throat to my stomach. Cyrus merely held his glass, as if the weight of the tumbler in his hand provided all the comfort he needed.

  We didn’t speak. My boss seemed content with the silence, so I followed his lead. Though his eyes were closed and his face the picture of serenity, the muscles in his arms and legs were rigid. I wondered what was going on behind those closed lids. Did he really believe we could free Gaige? What did he plan to do if the alchemist lawyer couldn’t arrange bail?

  Finally, the deafening silence was too much. A question had been marinating in my mind since I’d first learned of Gaige’s arrest, one that no one had addressed. I took another sip to steel my nerves—liquid courage, as Gaige would say. I smiled at the thought of my partner, even as tears threatened to fill my eyes. Blinking rapidly, I vowed not to cry. Tears were like lawyers; they only made a bad situation worse.

  With another gulp from my tumbler, I found the courage to break the still that’d settled over the living room.

  “You said the inspector wanted to question me again? Does that mean he thinks I am involved, too?”

  “He hasn’t labeled you a suspect. Yet. I believe he wants to speak with you in the hopes of tricking you into either incriminating yourself, or giving him more ammunition against Gaige. I have no intention of letting that happen,” Cyrus replied, without opening his eyes.

  His tone was so definitive, so matter-of-fact, that I didn’t know how to reply.

  Cyrus sat up abruptly, drained his glass in one gulp, and stood.

  “Try to rest, Stassi.” He started for the stairs, pausing at the first step. “Oh, and ask Mr. DuPree to join you tomorrow evening.”

  “Charles? Why?” I sputtered.

  “A double date. I need both Hadley and her husband out of their apartment. Will that be a problem for you? I was under the impression you enjoyed spending time with Mr. DuPree?”

  I swallowed thickly, the scotch making the gears in my brain turn slower than normal.

  “No, Cyrus, it won’t be a problem,” I said finally.

  My boss stopped at the top of the steps and peered down at me over the bannister.

  “It’s okay to enjoy yourself from time to time. We sacrifice a lot for the job. I, of all people, understand that.” His eyes met mine and held on intently. “Just remember that when the run ends, so does the relationship.”

  With that single look, I was positive that Cyrus knew I’d spent that afternoon with Charles.

  SALPÊTRIÈRE WAS ONLY twenty minutes away by car. Cyrus drove, while I watched candidly out the window as the streets of the heart of Paris ambled past. Beautifully dressed pedestrians meandered down the sidewalks, providing the heartbeat of this vibrant city.

  It could not have been more different than the area I’d grown up in. The work camps were in the middle of nowhere by design, surrounded by open land. I’d grown up dreaming of making it to the big city, but even my most ambitious hopes never reached Paris. It was moments like these that I couldn’t help but appreciate the dramatic shift in the course of my life, one that was due entirely to the man sitting beside me.

  Glancing over at Cyrus, the corners of my mouth turned up. I was a lucky girl, indeed.

  “Have I ever truly thanked you?” I asked him.

  “For what?”

  “Everything, Cyrus. My life…I would be…well, I don’t know where I’d be if you hadn’t come along. So thank you for that.” Though it was an awkward display of gratitude, I felt better at least trying.

  “You are always welcome,” he replied. “I hit the lottery the day I found you.”

  Not sure how to respond, I watched the Arc de Triomphe sail past in silence.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Cyrus finally asked in a light voice. Without taking his eyes from the road, my boss extended his arm towards me. In the center of his flat palm was a large silver coin.

  I laughed. “That’s not a penny.”

  “No, it’s much more valuable though.”

  The coin was tails up. I took his offering and flipped it over, revealing another tail. I pressed the coin back into Cyrus’s palm.

  “Only to you. Besides, do you really want to part with your two-tailed coin?”

  In answer, his fingers snapped shut, like a Venus flytrap swallowing its prey. When he turned his hand over and extended his fingers, nothing fell out. The coin was gone.

  “I learned that little trick you just did there before I could tie my shoes,” I said with a wry smile.

  “Yes, but can you do it while operating an automobile made in 1925?” Cyrus countered.

  “I believe the real question there is whether I would want to, or would ever have any need to.”

  My boss chuckled. “Touché.”

  I resumed my window-gazing, my mind reverting back to the work camp. Evidently, it was clear to Cyrus where my thoughts had wandered.

  “We don’t have to talk about if you’d rather not,” he began after several moments.

  “I’d rather not,” I said, tone sharper than I’d intended. Sighing heavily, I tried to backtrack. “I’m sorry. It’s just—”

  “No explanation needed, Stassi,” he interjected, waving off my attempt at an apology. “I do want to say this though: I am sorry for the time you spent in the camp. You have such strength, such resolve, to have been raised in a manner like that and still turn out to be a kind, thoughtful, and considerate person. Children should not pay for the sins of their parents.”

  “No, they shouldn’t,” I agreed. “But you got me out. For that, I will always be in your debt.”

  “You do not owe me anything,” Cyrus said quietly. His gaze was focused on the road in a way that didn’t allow me a good look at his expression. Probably by design. But with his hands at ten and two, and his spine ramrod straight, I was guessing his face was as rigid as his posture.

  “Well of course not, I’ve paid back my contract,” I joked to lighten the mood.

  Cyrus remained silent, staring straight ahead, for the final five minutes of our trip to the sanitarium. Something told me the road was not what he saw.

  JUST AS ALL horror-movie-worthy settings tend to be, Salpêtrière was set atop a hill, with a winding drive barred by enormous wrought iron gates. A guard station with one sleepy-looking man in uniform sat on our side of the divide. Overweight, with a cigarette dangling between his generous lips, the guard didn’t appear to be capable of running down any potential escapees. His nametag declared him to be Pierre.

  Pierre and Cyrus exchanged pleasantries in French through the driver’s side window, and then my boss explained the reason for our visit. I listened with my most pleasant smile in place, letting the Rosetta do its job. Apparently Cyrus had phoned ahead, so his name was already on the approval list on Pierre’s clipboard. As the guard checked off his name, Cyrus switched to English to introduce me.

  “This is my niece, Anastasia Prince, visiting from America,” he told the guard. “She will be accompanying me inside.”

  The man nodded, but said nothing. Turning his back and effectively ending our exchange, Pierre busied himself with unlocking the gates. Once the heavy metal doors parted with a mechanical groan, Cyrus tipped an invisible hat to Pierre and drove through.

  A nurse was waiting for us at the end of the drive, wearing the quintessential nurses’ attire of the time—a crisp white blouse with matching skirt and cap. Next to her, a male orderly stood dutifully with his hands behind his back. The vacant expression he wore reminded me that it wasn’t uncommon for the staff to dip into patients’ meds before regulat
ory agencies were in vogue. While I watched him watching nothing, the nurse’s gleaming white heels clicked softly against the gravel as she approached Cyrus’s window.

  “Bonjour,” she said cheerily. “Monsieur Shepard, I presume?”

  “Yes. I phoned yesterday, about my son.”

  “Yes, of course. I am Clara Beaumont, Salpêtrière’s head psychiatric nurse.” She pointed to herself, and then gestured to the orderly. “This is Renault. We will be assisting you on your tour today. Please, pull to the left.”

  Cyrus drove around the circular driveway and stopped where she’d indicated, not far from the front doors. There was no parking area in sight, leading me to believe that this part of the hospital didn’t receive many visitors.

  Whether because she spent her day caring for patients drugged to the point of zombiedom or because she was naturally talkative, Clara began a constant stream of chatter the moment we joined her on the front steps of the hospital.

  “Now then, welcome to the Salpêtrière hospital,” she began. “We are one of the world’s leading psychiatric centers. The hospital was founded by Louis XIV in the seventeenth century as a depository for the city’s indigent with psychiatric needs. This main building used to be an old gunpowder factory, which His Majesty hired an architect to convert.” She stopped at the top of the chipped stone steps and gestured back to the tall statute in the center of the main drive. “The statue you see there is Phillippe Pinel, who brought humane reforms to our establishment over a hundred years ago.”

  Though I nodded politely and tried to look interested, I wasn’t sure why she was giving us a history lesson. We were looking for my “cousin”, not a tour of France’s most infamous asylum. For his part, Renault looked like he’d heard this speech a million times.

  Clara’s voice grew softer as we passed through the front doors.

  While the outside of the building resembled an aging manor house whose occupants had either lost their fortune or their will to live, the inside had been completely remodeled and redesigned in clinical-chic. A reception desk was front and center, which we dutifully followed Clara to. After signing in, we were given plastic visitor badges that we were instructed to wear at all times.

  You don’t have to tell me twice, I thought.

  The last thing I wanted was to be mistaken for a patient.

  Like a docent leading the creepiest tour in France, Clara continued her spiel as she pulled out a massive key ring and unlocked the door behind the desk.

  “Dr. Jean Charcot established his clinic of neurology here in 1882—the first of its kind in Europe. Much of his work is still continued to this day. Sigmund Freud himself studied here under Charcot, and still graces us with his presence on rare occasion for lectures on psychoanalysis. Today, Salpêtrière is home to many of the best minds in psychiatry and neurology from all over the world.”

  Please say they don’t tell the patients that story. Mentally undisturbed people could easily be lulled into a catatonic state by it, I thought.

  Suddenly, my heart hurt. I missed Gaige. He would have appreciated that quip.

  The nurse’s narration continued as we navigated the maze behind the door that separated the sane from the insane. The pale yellow walls of the long hallways were undoubtedly meant to be calming, though the effect was counteracted by the glare of harsh neon lights from above. My stacked heels clicked loudly on the scuffed floors, echoing off-beat with Clara’s.

  “Ah, here we are. You came at a good time,” she said as she stopped to unlock yet another door, this one marked Ward C. “The patients have just finished breakfast and are now enjoying a recreation hour. Five of the unknowns should be in the common room, so we can start with them.”

  “Unknowns?” I asked.

  “Yes, patients whose identities are not known.”

  “How many unidentified patients do you have?” I asked. Five sounded like a lot.

  “Currently eight males and four females.” Clara chuckled knowingly at my look of surprise. “That’s actually far fewer than we normally have here. Because we are a government facility, many of our patients are sent by the judicial system.”

  Great. Being locked in with incarcerated insane people was not my idea of fun.

  “Not to worry,” Clara quickly added. My alarm must have been evident, because she patted my shoulder. “That does not necessarily mean they are violent criminals. In fact, most are not. The majority of our patients are men and women with known afflictions who simply stop taking their medication. Like your cousin, for example.”

  That was the story. Lachlan supposedly suffered from a mental disease that caused memory loss, blackouts, and disorientation. This same fictitious illness, left untreated, caused psychosis, manifesting most frequently in the form of wild delusions. Like being able to travel through time.

  I almost felt a little bad for Lachlan. Rather, I would have, had he not been a vicious serial killer.

  “Many of our patients arrive in a terrible condition. They are unable to tell us a name, age, or street address where they live,” the nurse continued. “Through hypnosis and other treatments, some are able to recall their previous lives.”

  I didn’t want to know the other types of treatment the hospital employed in an effort to help patients remember. Despite that statue guy bringing humane treatments to the hospital, it was still a barbaric time for the field of psychiatry.

  Clara pushed open the door to Ward C. After a steeling breath, I followed her inside with Cyrus right behind me and the silent Renault bringing up the rear. His presence was a huge comfort in that moment, since I didn’t know what we’d find on the other side of that door.

  Instead of a dank space filled with raving madmen, like I expected, the door simply lead to another yellow hallway with more doors on either side.

  “The recreation center is just down here, past the patient rooms,” Clara explained, leading us at a brisk pace.

  My earlier relief at the conditions had been decidedly premature. Halfway down the hall, I was hit with a horrific smell—a cross between a men’s locker room, a butcher’s freezer three days after a power outage, and an outhouse in the middle of the Sahara. My first instinct was to recoil. If flower sachets were still in use during the 1920s, this would’ve been the moment to reach for mine. The scent was nearly unbearable.

  “It takes a moment or two to adjust to the smell,” Clara told us matter-of-factly.

  I glanced at Cyrus, feeling dubious whether a “moment or two” would suffice. He shrugged and patted my shoulder reassuringly as we reached the ward’s common room.

  A large group of men wearing hospital gowns were gathered around a standing radio, listening intently to what sounded like a talk show. Other patients were scattered throughout the room on couches and at tables. Some were reading books or playing games. One man, with patches of shoulder length hair the color of freshly fallen snow, played chess against an invisible opponent who seemed to be besting him. Many others simply stared at things only they were able to see.

  “That’s Winston,” Renault said when he caught me staring at the guy playing chess. It was the first time the orderly had spoken, and his voice wasn’t what I expected from the strapping young man. It was soft, soothing, and effeminate, and probably helped calm the patients more than any drug in the dispensary. “He is plagued by voices,” the orderly continued.

  “Is that who he plays chess with?” I asked hesitantly, jumping as Winston slammed his knight defiantly from one square to another.

  “No. Diago is his opponent’s name,” Renault replied with a small smile. “Diago usually wins, but every so often Winston will prevail.”

  A dishwater blonde with big blue eyes and drool leaking from one corner of his mouth ambled over. He stopped only a foot in front of me and began to rock back and forth. I took a step backwards, but the wall behind me didn’t allow for more than that. Just as I mustered a small smile through my unease, he began to chant in a cadence similar to a nursery rhyme.
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  “Leave it to me. Three times three. A tree is just a tree. Birds, not bees. Leave it to me. Three times three,” he sang in accented English, continuing to rock.

  “Theo Three,” Renault told me quietly. “It’s not his real name, of course. But he’s an unknown.”

  “Leave it to me. Three times three. A tree is just a tree,” Theo Three repeated.

  “Does he ever say anything else?” I asked Renault.

  The orderly shook his head sadly. “I am afraid not.”

  Theo Three lifted an arm and pointed his index finger at me. “Jump, jump, jump, fast as you can. Dance, dance, dance, out of the pan. Sing, sing, sing, for the damned.”

  Renault laughed uneasily. “You have inspired him, it seems.”

  “Is everything okay?” Clara asked me in that overly cheerful voice of hers.

  While I’d been talking to Renault and rousing verse, Cyrus had given Lachlan’s old-fashioned photograph to Clara. She’d paused in her purveyance of the room when she notice Theo standing right in front of me.

  “Yes, of course,” I said easily, taking a step to the side. Turning to Cyrus, I asked, “Do you see him?”

  My boss shook his head.

  “Oh, Janna,” Clara called to a nurse passing by. “Have you seen this man?”

  Janna sauntered over to us, appearing as if to have all the time in the world, and plucked the photo from Clara’s hand. The bright red polish on the second nurse’s fingernails glinted under the light as she studied the picture of Lachlan.

  “It might be him,” Janna announced, flipping long brown hair over her shoulder and giving Cyrus a come-hither look. “Who is asking?”

  “Who might be him?” my boss asked.

  “There is a man who arrived about a week ago,” she replied shortly, quickly losing interest in our group. “He enjoys the fresh air, you will probably find him on the terrace.”

  Without another word, Janna returned the photograph and walked away.

  Stifling a laugh behind my hand, I followed Clara and the others across the recreation room to a pair of French doors. Two male orderlies stood on either side of them, feet shoulder-width apart and hands clasped behind their backs. Clara greeted them by name. They each nodded in acknowledgement, and then opened the doors for our little group.