Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

still felt a little brutal in forcing even this less transgressive card upon her at all. She remembered her own first immersion—the way in which she had naively assured Doctor Svenson it was nothing she could not bear (though she had been unable to fully meet his eyes afterwards)—and the shocking sudden delicious troubling rush of sensation she’d felt as the Prince had stepped between his lover’s open legs, the lover whose undeniably sweet experience she had herself then shared for that exquisite instant. As a young lady, the value of her virtue had been drilled into her like discipline into a Hessian soldier, yet she could not exactly say where her virtue presently stood —or rather could not separate the knowledge of her body from that of her mind, or the sensations she now knew. If she allowed herself the room to think—a dangerous luxury, to be sure—she must face the truth that her confusion was nothing less than the inability to distinguish her thoughts from the world around her—and that by virtue of this perilous glass her access to ecstasy might be as palpable a thing as her shoes.

Miss Temple had taken out the card as a way to prove to Miss Vandaariff in one stroke the wicked capacity of her enemies and the seductive dangers they might have already offered, to warn her by way of frightening her and so win the heiress to her side, but as she watched the girl gaze into the card—biting her lower lip, quickening breath, left hand twitching on the table top—and then glanced to the end of the table to see Mrs. Marchmoor studying the masked woman with an equally intent expression—she no longer knew if the gesture had been wise. Faced with Lydia’s intensity of expression, she even wondered if somehow she had done it to gain perspective on her own experience, as if watching Miss Vandaariff might be watching herself—for she could too readily, despite the need to pay attention, the obvious danger, imagine herself again in the lobby of the Boniface, eyes swimming into the depths of blue glass, hands absently groping her balled-up dress, and all the time Doctor Svenson knowing— even as he turned his back—what was passing with a shudder through her body.

Miss Temple recalled with shock the words of the Comte d’Orkancz—that she would fall prey to her own desire!

Her hand darted forward and she snatched the card away. Before Miss Vandaariff could do anything but sputter in mortified confusion, it had been stuffed back in the green bag.

“Do you see?” Miss Temple cried harshly. “The unnatural science—the feeling of another’s experience —”

Miss Vandaariff nodded dumbly, and looked up, her eyes fixed on the bag. “What…how could it be possible?”

“They plan to use your place of influence, to seduce you as they have seduced this man, Roger Bascombe —”

Miss Vandaariff shook her head with impatience. “Not them…the glass—the glass!”

“So, Lydia…” chuckled Mrs. Marchmoor from the end of the table, relief and satisfaction in her voice, “you weren’t frightened by what you saw?”

Miss Vandaariff sighed, her eyes shining, an exhalation of intoxicated glee. “A little…but in truth I don’t care about what I saw at all—only for what I felt…”

“Was it not astonishing?” hissed Mrs. Marchmoor, her earlier concern quite forgotten.

“O Lord…it was! It was the most exquisite thing! I was inside his hands, his hunger—groping her—” She turned to Miss Temple. “Groping you!”

“But—no, no—” began Miss Temple, her words interrupted by a glance to Mrs. Marchmoor, who was beaming like a lighthouse. “There is another—with this woman! And your Prince! Far more intimate—I assure you—”

Miss Vandaariff snapped at Miss Temple hungrily. “Let me see it! Do you have it with you? You must—there must be many, many of them—let me see this one again—I want to see them all!”

Miss Temple was forced to step away from Miss Vandaariff’s grasping hands.

“Do you not care?” she asked. “That woman— there!—with your intended—”

“Why should I care? He is nothing to me!” Miss Vandaariff replied, flapping her hand toward the end of the table. “She is nothing to me! But the sensation—the submersion into such experience—”

The woman was drunk. She was troubled, damaged, spoiled, and now yanking at Miss Temple’s arm like a street urchin, trying to get at her bag.

“Control yourself!” she hissed, taking three rapid steps away, raising the pistol—though here she made the realization (and in the back of her mind knew that this was exactly the kind of thing that made a man like Chang a professional, that there were things to learn and remember about, for example, threatening people with guns) that whenever one used a gun as a goad to enforce the actions of others, one had best be prepared to use it. If one was not—as, in this moment, Miss Temple recognized she was not prepared to do against Miss Vandaariff—one’s power vanished like the flame of a blown-out candle. Miss Vandaariff was too distracted to take in anything save her strangely insistent hunger. Mrs. Marchmoor, however, had seen it all. Miss Temple wheeled, her pistol quite thrust at the woman’s smiling face.

“Do not move!”

Mrs. Marchmoor chuckled again. “Will you shoot me? Here in a crowded hotel? You will be taken by the law. You will go to prison and be hanged—we will make sure of it.”

“Perhaps—though you shall die before me.”

“Poor Miss Temple—for all your boldness, still you comprehend nothing.”

Miss Temple scoffed audibly. She had no idea why Mrs. Marchmoor would feel empowered to say such a thing, and thus took refuge in defiant contempt.

“What are you talking about?” whined Lydia. “Where are more of these things?”

“Look at that one again,” said Mrs. Marchmoor soothingly. “If you practice you can make the card go more slowly, until it is possible to suspend yourself within a single moment as long as you like. Imagine that, Lydia—imagine what moments you can drink in again and again and again.”

Mrs. Marchmoor raised her eyebrows at Miss Temple and cocked her head, as if to urge her to give up the card—the implication being that once the heiress was distracted the two of them—the adults in the room—could converse in peace.

Against all her better instincts, perhaps only curious to see if what Mrs. Marchmoor had just said might be true, Miss Temple reached into her bag and withdrew the card, feeling as her fingers touched its slick cool surface the urge to look into it herself. Before she could fully resolve not to, Miss Vandaariff snatched it from her grasp and scuttled away to her seat, eyes fixed on the blue rectangle cupped reverently in her hands. Within moments Lydia’s tongue was flicking across her lower lip…her mind riveted elsewhere.

“What has it done to her?” Miss Temple asked with dismay.

“She will barely hear us, and we can speak clearly,” answered Mrs. Marchmoor.

“She seems not to care about her fiance.”

“Why should she?”

“Do you care for him?” she demanded, referring to the explicit interaction held fast within glass. Mrs. Marchmoor laughed and nodded at the blue card.

“So you are held within that card…and on another I am…encaptured with the Prince?”

“Indeed you are—if you think to deny it—”

“Why should I? I can well imagine the situation, though I confess I don’t remember it—it is the price one pays for immortalizing one’s experience.”

“You do not remember?” Miss Temple was astonished at the lady’s decadent disregard. “You do not remember—that—with the Prince—before spectators—”

Mrs. Marchmoor laughed again. “O Miss Temple, it is obvious you would benefit from the clarity of the Process. Such foolish questions should nevermore pass your lips. When you spoke to the Comte, did he ask that you join us?”