Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

“Are you sure? For I have seen you, Celeste,…I have seen you through the mirror, and I have seen you bent over the book…and do you know?”

“Do I know what?”

“That when you were in my room…kneeling over so sweetly…I could smell you…”

Miss Temple whimpered but did not know what she could do.

“Think of the book, Celeste,” hissed the Contessa. “You remember what you saw! What you did, what was done to you—what you became!—through what exquisite realms you traveled!”

At these words Miss Temple felt a burning in her blood—what was happening to her? She sensed her memories of the book like a stranger’s footprints in her mind. They were everywhere! She did not want them! But why could she not thrust them aside?

“You are wrong!” Miss Temple shouted. “It is not the same!”

“Neither are you,” snarled the Comte d’Orkancz. “You’ve already taken the first step in your process of transformation!”

The coach had become too warm. The Contessa’s hand found Miss Temple’s leg and then quickly vanished beneath her dress, the knowing fingers climbing up her inner thigh. Miss Temple gasped. These were not the blunt, stabbing, rude fingers of Spragg but—if still invasive—playful, teasing, and insistent. No one had ever touched her this way, in that place. She could not think.

“No—no—” she began.

“What did you see in the book?” The Comte pressed at her with his insistent, terrifying rasp. “Do you know the taste of death and power? Do you know what lovers feel in their blood? You do! You know all of it and more! It has taken root in your being! You feel it as I speak! Will you ever be able to turn away from what you’ve seen? Will you ever be able to reject these pleasures, having tasted their full intoxicating potency?”

The Contessa’s fingers pushed through the slit of her silken pants and slid across her liquid flesh with a practiced skill. Miss Temple shrank from her touch, but the coach seat was so small and the sensation so delicious.

“I don’t think you will, Celeste,” whispered the Contessa. She softly nuzzled the tips of two fingers, then wetly slipped them deeper while rubbing gently above them with her thumb. Miss Temple did not know what she was supposed to do, what she was fighting against save the imposition of their will upon her—but she did not want to fight, the pleasure building in her body was heavenly, and yet she also longed to hurl herself away from their openly predatory usage. What did her pleasure matter to them? It was but a goad, a tool, an endless source of thralldom and control. The Contessa’s fingers worked slickly back and forth. Miss Temple groaned.

“Your mind is set on fire!” hissed the Comte. “You cannot evade your mind—we hold you, you must give in—your body will betray you, your heart will betray you—you are already abandoned, utterly given over—your new memories are rising—surrounding you completely—your life—your self—has changed—your once-pure soul has been stained by my glass book’s usage!”

As he spoke she felt them, doors opening across her spinning mind directly into her fevered body—the masked ball in Venice, the two men through the spy hole, the artist’s model on the divan, the heavenly seraglio, and then so many, many more—Miss Temple was panting, the Contessa’s fingers deftly plying her most intimate parts, the woman’s lips against her ear, encouraging her pleasure with little mocking moans that nevertheless—the very provocative sound of that woman even counterfeiting ecstasy—served as a concrete spur to further delight…Miss Temple felt the sweetness gathering in her body, a warm cloud ready to burst…but then she shut her eyes and saw herself, in the coach between her enemies, beset, and then Chang dead, his pale face streaked with blood, the Doctor running and in tears, and finally, as if it were the answer she’d been seeking, the hot, clear, open view of barren white sand bordering a blue indifferent sea…she pulled herself from the brink— their brink she decided, not her own—

And in that exact moment, in such a way that Miss Temple knew they had not perceived her interior victory, the Contessa snatched away her hand and returned in smirking triumph to the other seat. The Comte released her neck and leaned back. She felt the sudden ebb of the pleasure in her body and its instinctive protest against the loss of stimulation—and met their eyes, seeing that they had brought her to the edge only to demonstrate her submission. They looked at her with a condescending disdain that seconds earlier might have been shattering—and before she could say a word, the Contessa’s hand—the same hand that had been under her dress—slapped her hard across the face. Miss Temple’s head spun to the side, burning. The Contessa slapped her again just as hard, knocking her bodily into the corner of the coach.

“You killed two of my people,” she said viciously. “Do not ever believe it is forgotten.”

Miss Temple touched her numbed face, shocked and dizzied, and felt the wetness from the Contessa’s hand—which was to say from herself. The spike of rage at being struck was dampened by her mortified realization that the close air in the coach was heavy with the smell of her own arousal. She yanked her dress down over her legs and looked up to see the Contessa wiping her fingers methodically on a handkerchief. Their attempt to demonstrate her helplessness had only solidified Miss Temple’s defiance. She sniffed again, blinking back tears of pain and further emboldened by the glimpse of her green clutch bag poking out of the side pocket of the Comte d’Orkancz’s voluminous fur.

Their coach ride ended at Stropping Station, where once more Miss Temple was made to walk in her bare feet, down the stairs and across the station hall to their train. She was quite certain that her soles would be blackened by the filth of so many travelers and she was not wrong, pausing to scoff at the dirty result with open disgust before she was again pushed forward. Again she was placed between the Comte and the Contessa, the Prince and his fiancee behind them, and the other three men bringing up the rear. Various people they passed gave a polite nod—to the Prince and Miss Vandaariff, she assumed, for they were often recognized—but were nonplussed by the sight of the barefoot young lady who could apparently afford a maid to dress her hair but not even the simplest footwear. Miss Temple gave them no thought at all, even when their questioning looks slipped into open disapproval. Instead, she gazed persistently around her for possible methods of escape but located nothing, dismissing even a pair of uniformed constables—in the company of such elegant nobility, there was no way anyone would credit her account of capture, much less the larger intrigue. She would have to escape from the train itself.

She had just so resolved on this plan when Miss Temple noted with sharp dismay two figures waiting with the conductor on the platform, at the open door of the rearmost car. One, based on the description of Doctor Svenson, she took to be Francis Xonck, sporting a tailcoat worn only on his left arm and buttoned across—the other sleeve hanging free—for his right arm was thickly bandaged. The other, standing tall in a crisp black topcoat, was a man she would no doubt recognize from across the entire station floor until the end of her days. Miss Temple actually stopped walking, only to have her shoulder gently seized by the Comte d’Orkancz and her body carried along for several awkward steps until she had resumed her pace. He released her—never once deigning to look down—and she glanced at the Contessa in time to see her smiling with cruel amusement.

“Ah, look—it is Bascombe and Francis Xonck! Perhaps there will be time on the journey for a lovers’ reunion!”

Miss Temple paused again and again the Comte’s hand shot out to shove her forward.

Roger’s gaze passed over her quite quickly, but she saw, no matter how he hid it behind the fixed face of a government functionary, her presence was no more welcome to him than his to her. When had they spoken last? Nine days ago? Ten? It had still been as engaged lovers. The very word caused Miss Temple to wince—what word could possibly be more changed by the events of her last hours? She knew that they were now separated by a distance she could never have previously imagined, discrepancies of belief and experience that were every bit as vast as the ocean she had crossed to first enter Roger Bascombe’s world. She must assume that Roger had given himself over to the Cabal and its Process, to amoral sensation—to one only imagined, if the book were any indicator, what depravities. He must have conspired in the murder of his uncle—how else would he have the title? Had he even stood by—or, who knew, participated?—while murders and worse were enacted, perhaps even that of Cardinal Chang? She did not want to believe it, yet here he was. And what of her own changes? Miss Temple thought back to her night of distress, weeping in her bed over Roger’s letter—what was this compared to Spragg’s attack, or the Contessa’s menace, or the fiendish brutality of the Process? What was this compared to her own discovered reserves of determination and cunning, of authority and choice—or standing as an equal third with the