We stood on the doorstep of the small studio early the following morning, a full hour before the school day would start. I stifled a yawn with the back of my hand; desperately wishing I was still in my warm bed back at Portland Row. Lockwood was doing little better. He was pale and didn't speak much, instead staring out at the school grounds with a glazed look in his eyes.
After last night's disaster, we'd gone home to recover. We shared a quick meal of crisps and hot chocolate and then both gone up to our rooms. I'd taken a quick shower, crawled into my bed, and then lay awake for all three hours I had to sleep before we would need to get up again.
I was dead tired but each time I closed my eyes, scenes from the job flashed through my mind. The hurricane of papers, the flying music stand and the melody that accompanied the rampage of the poltergeist made it impossible to fall asleep, so the most I could do was lie still in bed with my eyes closed.
I don't know whether Lockwood had manage to catch some sleep. Either way, he was not in a good mood right now. Our failure to locate and secure the source of what we had originally thought to be a low-level haunting was a blow to his pride. Add to that the fact it was a poltergeist – a type of Visitor that had brought us disaster before – and it made for a sour faced Lockwood.
He schooled his expression when Mrs Jefferson approached though. He conjured up his 50% smile (warm, polite but a little distant) and turned to intercept her.
"Good morning Mrs Jefferson," he said. I gave a polite nod.
"Mr Lockwood, Miss Carlyle," Mrs Jefferson greeted. Even though she had told George she always arrived at school at this hour, she seemed nervous to be out this early. She was bundled up warmly and seemed to want to hide in the wool cowl wrapped around her neck. She wore her hair braided back, and two large silver hair clips held back stray hairs.
"Did everything go well?" Mrs Jefferson asked, casting a worried glance at our faces. Both Lockwood and I had several small paper cuts littering our cheeks and forehead, Lockwood was pale and the bags beneath my eyes were so dark they looked like they'd been drawn on.
"Unfortunately not," Lockwood started. His smile slipped a bit at the admission. "It seems we have a poltergeist on our hands, and it gave us quite some trouble." He was trying to downplay our experience, but as a teacher Mrs Jefferson was skilled in seeing through evasiveness.
"What happened?" she demanded, her voice growing tight. "Are there damages? Please tell me none of the instruments are broken."
"No, no, the instruments are fine, but-" Lockwood took a deep breath. "I'm afraid it made quite a mess of your studio…"
Mrs Jefferson clenched her jaw as she unlocked the door to her studio, preparing for the worst. A gasp left her mouth as she entered and took in the chaos we'd left behind. She covered her mouth with her hand as she walked past the upturned chairs to the mess of sheet music surrounding the circle we'd abandoned last night.
With great care she stepped over the papers, trying not to tread on them, and made her way to the door of the storage room. The keys jangled in in her shaking hands as she unlocked it and looked inside. The iron lined door had done it's job, there had been no psychic interference . Her shoulders sagged in relief, and when she turned around, the worst of her tension seemed to slide off of her. Still walking carefully, she made her way to her desk, picking up pens and pencils along the way and casually sliding them into a penholder, as if she found her studio in this ransacked state every other week. She unbuttoned her coat, hung it over the back of her chair, and turned to face us.
"So what exactly happened last night?" she asked. Lockwood launched into an explanation, but in my tired state, I had a hard time keeping focused at the conversation. Instead I found myself surveying the room again.
In the soft light of the morning, the damage seemed far less severe than it had last night. Sure the chairs were toppled and the sheet music had been dumped out on the floor, but except for the mirror –which had cracked in the upper left corner, the lines spreading out like a cobweb- nothing had been irreparably damaged. Hell, it hadn't even been all the sheet music that had been sucked into the tornado; the lower two shelves of the bookcases were still full.
"So you haven't found the source then?" Mrs Jefferson asked. I glanced up at her, expecting anger or irritation. Instead her face showed reluctant resignation.
"We haven't, I'm sorry," Lockwood answered. "We'd like to try again tonight."
Mrs Jefferson bit her lower lip, glancing away from Lockwood in deep thought. "I suppose I don't have a choice," she mused out loud. She cast a slow glance around the room. "This thing, this …poltergeist is clearly strong and dangerous. Even if we're usually out well before curfew, I can't risk my students' safety."
"Very wise," Lockwood agreed. "We'll take the chains and silver nets and come back tonight." With big, careful steps he made his way across the sheet music, until he'd reached the circle. I followed him, tiptoeing over the booklets in an attempt to do as little damage possible. A flash of cold ran through me and was gone again.
"We're sorry about the mess, Mrs Jefferson," I offered the teacher watching us while we gathered our chains. She gave a weak, half-hearted smile. "I suppose it can't be helped. Maybe I can make it into an exercise for my students, sorting through the sheet music to complete everything…"
"Most of the music is still together right?" Lockwood asked as he rolled up one length of chains.
"I'm afraid not, the booklets contain the accompaniments, the solo parts often fit on a few loose papers, and well…" Mrs Jefferson waved a hand in the direction of the paper carpet. "It's going to be quite a task to find which solos belong to which piano accompaniments."
Something in my mind clicked. I paused and surveyed the papers.
"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Of course, how did we not think of that?" Lockwood gave me a surprised look. "Think of what?" he asked.
"We were focused on the wrong thing!" I exclaimed. "We thought the source was the piano because that was the first thing the Visitor interacted with, but the piano was only the accompaniment!"
"What do you mean Luce?"
I struggled to put my thoughts into words. "Well, it gave us a concert, right? Wanted an applause and all that?" Lockwood nodded. "You heard the piano part, but I also heard the solo, I think. With my inner ear."
"Where are you going with this?"
"What if it wasn't the instruments that are important, but the music itself? The solo?"
Now Mrs Jefferson joined the conversation. "The visitor played a piece of music?" she asked. I gave a nod.
"It played the piano kinetically, but on a psychic level, I could hear the solo. It repeated it twice, and threw it's fit in between. We focused on the piano, but I'm starting to think we should've put our money on the music instead…" I glanced at the sheet music. "Maybe… maybe the music was the source…"
"Do you know which piece it was?"
I shook my head.
"No, I don't know much about music," I confessed. "Lockwood, did you-"
"I only heard the piano Luce, haven't got a clue." Lockwood replied with a shrug before I even finished my question. "Besides, my musical education isn't much better than yours."
Mrs Jefferson looked at me. She had one arm wrapped around her chest and leant her other elbow on it as she rubbed her chin in thought.
"Do you think you could sing it?" she asked.
"It-it didn't have lyrics," I protested. "It was just a flute, I think."
"Yes, but you heard the melody, do you think you could hum it for me? If you think the music might be the source, it stands to reason that you need to seal the sheet music – the text of the story, if you will – and I have a limited collection of flute solos…"
Feeling incredibly self-conscious, I concentrated on the memory of the music and started humming. I couldn't reach the high tones or mimic the mood of the music, but Mrs Jefferson's eyes stilled lit up in recognition after a few seconds. She snapped her fingers, the loud sound startling me.
"Dance of the Blessed Spirits!" she exclaimed, a smile growing on her face.
Lockwood raised an eyebrow. "Is that the name of the piece?" He asked, and Mrs Jefferson nodded. "It is, it is! It is a solo piece for flute and strings but often performed with piano accompaniment instead. Written for a 18th century opera if I recall correctly."
She made her way to the half empty bookcases and scanned its remaining contents. "I bought a second-hand copy for one of my students last spring… No, not here…" She turned back to us. "It must be between the sheet music on the ground, do you mind?"
Lockwood and I exchanged a glance and then knelt down to help her look. About ten minutes past with us crawling around trying to find the right papers until Lockwood triumphantly held up a thin booklet with a worn grey cover. Two loose papers stuck out of it, and he nudged them back between the pages with his index finger.
I walked over to him and put a finger to the paper that had softened with age. A flash of cold shot through my arm immediately.
"Seems like this is might be it," I said, taking the booklet from him and browsing through. It might as well have been written in Chinese for all that I understood the bars and black dots in it. What did catch my attention was the full title though.
"Minuet and Dance of the Blessed Spirits, from Orfeo ed Euridice?" I read out loud.
"Ah yes. It is an opera about the myth of Orpheus written by Glück," Mrs Jefferson said. "Do you know the story?"
I exchanged a glance with Lockwood. We had heard the story during our visit to the Orpheus Society when Penelope Fittes had offered a merger with the Fittes Agency.
"Yes, we do," Lockwood said. "Orpheus was a skilled musician, was he not? Conquered death itself with his music when he tried to get his wife back from the underworld?"
"Well, I suppose that's one way to explain the story," Mrs Jefferson replied. "Although the focus in the Opera is a little different. It starts with Amore, the god of love telling Orfeo it's possible to get her back from the underworld if he goes to get her, on the condition that he doesn't look her in the eyes until they get back to earth.
"On his way down he runs into the furies who tell him to go back or they'll sent Cerberus, the hound guarding the underworld after him. He begs them to let him through by singing a song about his longing for Euridice, and when they let him through, finds his wife in the most beautiful part of the underworld. Dance of the Blessed Spirits plays during that scene."
I looked down at the sheet music and recalled the melody I heard last night. The first part certainly did sound like something I could match to and idyllic afterlife, but the second part not so much.
"It's- it didn't sound just happy, though," I remarked. Mrs Jefferson's braid swung from side to side as she shook her head. "It isn't," she confirmed. "The Furies' warning rings through clearly, and when Orfeo leads Euridice out of the underworld, he doesn't turn to her. Euridice doubts his love for her and refuses to make another step until he looks at her. And when he does, she's trapped in the underworld forever."
Her smile was melancholic as she bent down to gather another set of sheet music. "Here the opera diverts from the myth. Orfeo decides to kill himself to join Euridice in the underworld, but before he can, Amore rewards him for his continued love for Euridice by returning her to life. In the opera the moral is that love conquers all."
"And in the myth?" Lockwood asked hesitantly.
"There are multiple versions," Mrs Jefferson answered. "In some he does take his life and join her, in others he lives a lonely life until his time has come and he's reunited with his wife. In the end the myth teaches that mere mortals cannot break the rules of life and death so easily."
Just for the record, the sheet music of Dance of the Blessed Spirits was the source of the Poltergeist haunting the studio. As promised we came back to the studio (helpfully cleaned up by Mrs Jefferson's students) that evening, just to be sure we hadn't missed anything. We set up our equipment, took measurements and waited for the haunting to start. But with the sheet music of the opera piece safely wrapped up in a silver net, there wasn't so much as a temperature change.
A/N: Whelp, I seem to be unable to keep the promises I make myself, and this final chapter got away from me. I hope the length makes up for the fact that it took longer to put out!