Page 7 of Foresyth Conservatory
I watched the memories stirring behind her expression. “Your father investigated that school before he died. It pains me to know that you’ve come across it. He did everything he could to keep you away from it.”
My eyes widened. “Father investigated Foresyth? But why—what happened there?”
“Is this because we couldn't send you to Sawyer Academy? I wish we could have, darling, but you know how hard it’s been to keep the shop running,” she said, trying to change the subject.
“This isn’t about Sawyer—it’s about Foresyth. Why did father investigate the school?” I pressed.
She sighed, her gaze turning distant. “It’s hard to talk about your father, Dahlia. I’d rather not.”
“Mother, please. What happened there?” I pressed. The furrow of pain in her brows was almost enough for me to abandon my curiosity, but this was the most we had been able to speak in weeks.
Her shoulders fell. “I don’t know what happened, but I do know this: your father became obsessed. His obsession with Foresyth led him down a path from which he could not return to me. It was his first love, and his last enemy. I lost him to it, and I don’t want to lose you, too.”
His first love?What could she mean by that? Was Foresyth one of my father’s earliest cases?
I swallowed hard before answering. “I don’t believe in all of father’s notions about magick or the occult. They’re stories, warped by men who wish to be Gods. Unlike them, I’m content with being mortal, and firmly planted in this world. But I can’t make my own in this world if I don’t take this chance.”
“You were always my brightest star, Dahlia. Reaching further than I could ever dream of,” she said turning her face away from me, her grief a mist stretching between us. I could feel her sadness intertwining with my own.
A voice in my head—my father’s voice—seemed to whisper,Listen to your mother, Dahlia.Tears threatened to well in my eyes, but I swallowed them back, replacing them with a surge of determination.
You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, father. You left me.
I took my mother’s pale hand, tracing the veins that crisscrossed beneath her paper-like skin. “I promise, I’ll always take care of you, mother. I’ll be back before you know it. And I’ll hire Lady Florance’s daughter to look after you while I’m gone. You won’t be alone.”
A heavy silence settled between us. She said nothing, turning away from me. I stood, trying to break the tension. “Let’s eat the lamb roast I made. We can talk more over dinner, maybe read some Dickens afterward.”
*
We didn’t discuss it over dinner, nor over Dickens. My mother’s pain had intensified so much that she couldn’t manage the trip downstairs. Instead, we sat in her room—she in bed, and I in her armchair—eating the roast in silence. Despite my attempts to sway her, the conversation was over. Her concern for me was greater than any argument I could make. I understood her fear. Losing my father had been a severe loss, and the thought of losing her daughter must have felt unbearable. But the truth was, the Meister’s offer had opened a door for me, and I couldn’t ignore it.
And then, there was the discovery that my father’s past intertwined with Foresyth.
After settling my mother into bed and administering her medicine, I decided to explore my father’s old library. Tucked away behind a hidden door, it could only be accessed by arranging certain books in a specific order. It was a project I had helped him with before the shop opened, meant to safeguard his most valuable tomes and journals. I also enjoyed helping him design the mechanical locks as a diversion from my studies that summer. Now, I was searching for any mention of Foresyth in my father’s journals.
I spent the entire night pouring over his notes, but I found nothing except for a passing reference to “a mysterious greenhouse brimming with exotic plants from the four continents” in 1891. Beyond that, there were no detailed notes on the Conservatory. Strangely, the years from 1891 to 1893 were missing entirely—the gap stretched the year before my birth in 1894. My father was meticulous in his record-keeping, so this absence stood out.
If it wasn’t in my father’s library, then there was only one place that held the answers: Foresyth itself. Whatever had tied my father to the Conservatory, I needed to uncover it. The Meister’s offer wasn’t just a way out of Greenwich, it wasa path to the truth about my father’s haunted past, and to myself.
An occult arts school, a potential killer, and a link to my father’s past awaited me. I had better pack all my ceremonial daggers.
Chapter 4: A Final Goodbye
A week later, Gabriel found me at the shop just after closing. The sky had unleashed its torrent, and rain was coming down in fat droplets. He walked into my shop soaking wet. His hair was matted and stuck to the side of his face. He looked more like a bedraggled puppy than usual, and I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him.
“What are you doing out in this storm, Gabriel? Come in!” I pulled him into the store, the heat from his arm radiating through his soaked blazer.
“I needed to see you before you left,” he said through his misty glasses. They were fogging up from the change in temperature, and I instantly reached over to swipe them off his face to clean. He caught my hand, and despite the warmth of his grip around my wrist, a chill ran down my spine.
“You can’t go to Foresyth,” he said. His face was set and grim, and his features were so stiff that I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Let me guess, you’ve unearthed their terrible lies and secrets. A sex cult powered by virgins’ blood? Or one of those voodoo sects that crucifies small animals?”
“Stop being so flippant and listen to me, Dahlia,” he said, reaching into his soaked satchel and pulling out a folio. “I couldn’t find anything on Christopher Renate. The archives areblank. Do you know how rare that is? I even called the Library of Congress but couldn’t pin down a single fact about the man. He must have bribed someone high up to erase his name from existence, or it’s a fake name.”
“So, you didn’t find anything?” My hand drifted down, confusion flooding me.
“Not exactly. I found records on Foresyth dating back to the 1870s,” he said, unraveling the pages from his folio. “The school was founded in 1872 by a Brit named Edmund W. Foresyth—look at this announcement inThe Greenwich Observer: ‘Prestigious Academy opens in Enderly, enrollment welcome to women and all races,’ the title reads.”
