“I don’t think it’s the age of the book, but the contents of it those men were after. Ezra always had such an urgent longing towards that sort of thing, as if he wished it was real.”
“What sort of thing?” The tea arrived and Tilly gulped hers down, reveling in the steamy strong fragrant leaves. Mrs. Geissler had seemed like she would be overly reticent but she had turned out to be an information jackpot.
She frowned into her own cup and shook her head. “Magic,” she said. The word hung in the air like a storm cloud waiting to burst until she laughed nervously and sipped her tea. “Fanciful of course. I’m sure I’m just upset about the robbery, but someone believes it enough to commit crimes over it.”
She tipped her head toward the door as if hearing something and a second later the physician was announced. Mrs. Geissler excused herself and while the doctor peered and prodded, Tilly turned everything over in her mind.
She’d only laid eyes on Wodge for a few moments, but she would bet her life they were identical. And it was too coincidental that someone who looked exactly like Wodge was infatuated with magic and had ended up with Ashford’s book. There had to be a connection.
When Ashford had performed his out of control spell, brought forth from him out of fear and rage, no one really knew what happened to Wodge when he disappeared in a bright ball of light. Tilly had assumed he was dead, disintegrated, turned to atoms, and while it had bothered her that Ashford was capable of something like that, she was grateful they were all alive and had forced it out of her mind. But maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t been killed after all.
When Tilly first started studying the ancient grimoire, one thing that kept getting repeated was how important one’s intentions were. If you tried to make someone fall in love with you, but your intentions weren’t pure, they either wouldn’t love you or it would become a perverse, unhealthy obsession.
She had a feeling that was at least partly why she hadn’t been able to properly get the portal to work for her. She’d been upset and hadn’t known what she truly wanted, only thinking to get away from Ashford. She should have concentrated harder on her mother and why she wanted to see her, but instead her thoughts had been a swirl of anger at Ashford, distress over not being sure she was making the right decision, what Dex would think of her for giving up, and probably so many little random thoughts that the spell could only go haywire.
She knew Ashford through and through, and though he always said he would shoot Wodge on sight if he got the chance, she believed deep down he didn’t want to hurt anyone, not even the monstrous, murdering villain who’d been hunting him for years. Perhaps his good intentions had somehow given Solomon Wodge a whole new chance at life, a chance to do better. It seemed Ezra Ermine had devoted his life to knowledge and helping others. He’d certainly helped Farrah with her addiction, and he’d saved them from the thieves, though rather ungracefully.
She had to wipe away a few tears, she was so overcome by her theory, and prayed it was true. The doctor mistook them for pain and stopped rotating her shoulder.
“Is that bad?” he asked gruffly, the first words he’d spoken to her.
“Not too,” she said. “In fact, I’m feeling much better, just a little woozy, which I think will pass after I’m home.” He looked skeptical of her self-diagnosis and she hurried to add, “I’m so terribly worried about my friends.”
It was the truth. She was afraid Farrah would ask too many questions, or ask the wrong people, and she was terrified for Thomas’ safety. She fairly itched to be away from all this fawning.
As if she’d been listening at the door, Mrs. Geissler barged back in, shooing away the physician. Farrah was behind her, hair all askew from its pins, a couple fresh bruises blooming near her collarbone. Tilly wondered what she must look like after her tumble down the stairs, but decided against asking for a mirror to find out. She didn’t need another blow today.
“This young lady looks like she needs my services,” the doctor said, not seeming to care much either way.
“I’m fine.” Farrah shrugged listlessly, looking past the man to Tilly with hopeless eyes. She hadn’t found anything out then. After the doctor and Mrs. Geissler left the room, assuring them a carriage would be on its way shortly, she sat beside Tilly on the couch and sighed. “This might seem like kind of a dodgy neighborhood, but it’s all old people and businesses. There’s rarely any crime. Everybody seemed shocked at what happened today, and nobody saw anything.”
“Ermine said it looked like one of the men recognized Thomas,” Tilly pondered aloud. “A witch maybe, another time traveler?”
“That seems about right since they took that book,” she said sourly, all but calling Tilly Captain Obvious.
Tilly was too weak and tired and heartbroken to snipe back at her. Her fear for Thomas didn’t allow her to think straight and she only wanted to be back in the room at Belmary House.
If the portal wouldn’t let her get back to Ashford, then she’d fall asleep and hope to dream about him again. Maybe he’d tell her what to do. She sniffed pathetically, thinking that not wanting to listen to Ashford had got her into this mess.
Chapter 17
Serena fidgeted in the overly cushioned chair in the overly stuffy room, sick of everyone treating her like she was an invalid because of a few headaches. She was too impatient to knit and gazed out the window. Kostya would be anxious if she went for a walk by herself, and truthfully, though she was full of nervous energy, she was too apathetic to get up. She couldn’t have the dogs around her any more. They worried her so with their neediness, that she’d shut them up in the bedroom.
It had been three days since she was able to study the book and the longing she felt to soak up its power felt like a physical thirst. Her chest ached when she thought about it, but Ashford had given up sleep, constantly bent over it, scribbling notes and muttering. If he did sleep at all, it was at his desk, the book under his folded arms or cradled in his lap. There had been no chance at all for her to get even a glimpse of it, and it had made her cranky.
She tossed aside the tiny hat she’d been knitting, deciding to take the walk after all, when the source of her woes poked his head in the room and begged a moment with her.
She rolled her eyes and motioned for him to take a seat. Of course, the one time in the last three days he tore himself away from the book, he had to come and visit with her. She forced her hands to unclench and smiled at him. Apparently not a sincere one, as he looked rather taken aback, but he still sat down and leaned toward her as if he had something important to share.
She wondered vaguely in the back of her mind why she didn’t care at all. She used to care very much what happened to her friends. Now she felt like she only had one friend left, and it was hundreds of years old and she wasn’t able to get anywhere near it.
The baby kicked and rolled and she pressed her side, trying to get comfortable. She knew it wanted her to learn more as well, as if it understood everything she read, and helped her understand it. The baby was the reason she’d been able to touch the thing, after all, perhaps it was the reason she felt so unsettled lately. She pushed that thought aside and focused on Julian, who was in the middle of a sentence.
“ — why I feel I should give it a go. What do you think?”
He wanted to try something, probably something to get Tilly back. Probably something dangerous or he would have already done it. Why was he asking her?
“Shouldn’t you be speaking to Kostya about this?” she asked. “He’s the one who knows about all that.”
“Ah, well, he’s been so skittish about it, and understandably so, since —” he stopped and shook his head.
“Since what?” She sat up straighter, thinking she might finally get some answers. “It’s about his time with his family, isn’t it?” She narrowed her eyes at him when he glanced away. “Or is it about Camilla?”
She didn’t like to think it was that. She knew Kostya had originally left because of some daft notion J
ulian had that she’d still been alive in France. From there Kostya had gone to Moldavia to take care of something with his family and had returned months later, full of secrets. Secrets she could tell ate away at him, were stealing away the man she loved.
“It’s nothing to fret about, Serena. He’s decided to live a life free from magic and I respect that. Especially since the baby—” Once again he stopped abruptly, wincing.
His preoccupation with finding Tilly had made him stupid and loose-lipped enough to spill those maddening crumbs, but she could tell he’d got himself under control and there was no way she’d be able to pry anything else from him. It was all she could do to keep from flinging her knitting needles at him.
Instead she urged him to tell her his plan. He wanted to try and combine several spells to make a new one, that if it worked, would take him directly to Tilly. He saw a few things in a bowl of water and now he thought he could create his own hexes.
She didn’t know where that uncharitable thought came from, it wasn’t as if she was any sort of expert. She did feel such an affinity for those pages, though. Perhaps she had talents of her own, and it wasn’t just the baby.
“You should try it,” she said. “Of course you should. We all want Tilly back.”
And if it succeeded, he’d be gone, away from the book so she could spend more time with it. He frowned and nodded, his brow more creased with concern than she’d ever seen it. Had he mentioned something she missed? Could it be so dangerous she was encouraging her oldest friend to risk his life? A sharp pain coursed down her side and back towards her abdomen, settling and stabbing painfully low in her belly. This time she couldn’t hide it and doubled over with a moan.
“I’m all right,” she gasped when Ashford was at her side, pressing a hand to her brow, which was beading with cold sweat from the pain. It had her in its grip and she shook with trying to fight it. Something deep inside told her to let it go, give over to the agony, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to. Even if it was the baby trying to communicate with her again, there was no way she could stop fighting this horrible pain.
Ashford was gone, replaced with Kostya, who held her hand firmly, assuring her the physician was on his way and she’d be fine. The baby would be fine. She gagged from the pain, which seemed to be spreading down her legs, a tight twisting fire seizing up her muscles. As it traveled up her spine, she imagined grotesquely that she was being consumed, that an actual monster with great sharp teeth was eating her. Her lungs gave out and darkness took hold.
***
Ashford watched helplessly from the doorway, unable to believe he’d been prattling on while Serena was in such pain. She’d doubled over and now she was clenching her teeth as if in pure agony. Kostya was with her and the doctor had been sent for. There was nothing he could do, and he couldn’t bear to watch her suffer anymore.
He slunk back to his room and shut himself in, turning back and forth between the pages he’d marked. A pan of bloody water sat at the edge of the desk and he nearly toppled it in his anxiety. He carefully moved it to the hearth, certain the servants must think him quite mad by now, and in truth, he felt he might have been.
The last image he’d been able to scry of Matilda hadn’t eased his fears at all, had doubled them. She’d been lying somewhere, much better lit this time and seemed to be comfortable at least, but her eyes were closed up tight, her delicate brow furrowed as if she was troubled or in pain, and the cut on her forehead stood out like a beacon on her deathly pale skin. He watched as long as he could hold the spell and after a few moments her face slackened so she was completely still.
‘You can’t scry the dead, you can’t scry the dead,’ he’d repeated over and over to himself until the pan darkened and her image faded. What had happened to her to make her so frightened, seemingly trapped in a dark place in one vision, then still and pale and injured in another? Was she safe, or only waiting for worse to come? It drove him to despair and he’d tried again and again to find her since, but the water refused to conjure anymore images of her. He tried not to, but he feared the worst.
And now with Serena fallen so ill so suddenly, he realized how easy it was to lose one’s loved ones. Today Kostya had a wife and a child on the way, but what would tomorrow bring, or, Ashford thought with a sickening lurch of his stomach, even an hour from now?
The fact that he could no longer find Matilda with the scrying spell made his blood run cold in his veins, his very will to live leaching out of him every moment he didn’t know what had happened to her. It was untenable that he might have to go the rest of his days without her, never knowing what happened to her, unable to save her.
He was ready to try creating his own spell. His grandmother, mother, and sister had all done it, and he was ready to accept that he was one of them, not an anomaly in his magical family, but a full fledged member with all the rights and privileges. He’d found several spells he thought he could cobble together to make one super spell that would take him straight to Matilda, whenever and wherever she might be. He flipped to the first one, a time traversing spell that was supposedly quick and efficient. His eyes couldn’t help but sweep to the bottom of the page where there was a scrawled footnote. Exceedingly painful, it read, underlined three times.
He seemed to recall Liam Wodge telling Matilda about such a spell. It was quick, but it had burned his skin? The man had said he’d never use it again, but he’d used it once and lived to tell the tale. What were a few burns if he had Matilda back?
The second spell was a locating hex, and it was only supposed to work for location, but he reworded it a bit, and then the third spell, a binding spell, was supposed to bring things together. He knew he should try them all in turn, or at least the two that weren’t purported to be exceedingly painful, so that he wouldn’t end up melded with a tree in the thirteenth century, but his worry was fast turning into full blown terror that he didn’t have enough time to spare.
He’d spent the entire day gathering everything he needed, and at the last moment wondered if he shouldn’t wait a bit more, if he was going to risk killing himself only to have Matilda returned to the house the next day. He’d gone to get advice from Serena, and she’d seemed eager for him to take action before she fell ill. With a spasm of guilt, he thought he should check on her before he tried to leave, but he’d already wasted so much time. He had to do it.
Settling everything in a row, and silently reading through the incantation he’d sweated over for hours, he nodded his head forcefully. It was time. He took the first item, a goat heart— God, but magic was disgusting— and placed it in a circle of ashes mixed with myrrh powder, then read off the first line, keeping his voice strong and sure, his thoughts trained solely on Matilda, his beautiful Matilda. He reached for the next item, his hand trembling slightly.
A sharp rap at the door caused him to jump a foot out of his chair.
“Go,” he shouted, trying to calm his heartbeat.
Instead of going, the person, who he determined would be put out of the house immediately, poked her head in. She looked scared half to death and he was about to finish the job, when she announced he had visitors.
“I certainly do not,” he yelled, pointing for her to retreat. “Have no one bother me again.”
“But, sir, they’re adamant…” she looked behind her nervously. “Oh, dear, you mustn’t,” she said to whomever was behind her, but they crowded into the room anyway.
He picked up the nearest heavy object, a crystal inkwell, ready to heave it at someone’s head, he didn’t much care whose, but stopped with his arm above him, his jaw about hitting his desk.
“Goodness gracious, is that any way to greet your almost in-laws?” Matilda’s grandmother Helen asked.
“Looks about right for Ashford,” Liam Wodge said, his arm around her shoulder.
He’d never been so relieved to see anyone in his life, especially not someone he’d previously thought of as an untrustworthy, lying, crackpot nutter such as Liam Wod
ge. It didn’t matter. The crackpot nutter was the most skilled spellcaster he’d ever met. Everything was going to be all right.
He dropped the inkwell and ran to hug them, shocking them more than if he’d thrown it at them.
Chapter 18
Tilly and Farrah sat swaddled in blankets, sipping tea laced with rum while telling Mrs. Hedley their story. The current Lord Ashford hadn’t been home for two days, and he was last reported to be seen gambling at his club, so they felt free enough to sit in one of the smaller drawing rooms instead of hiding out in the kitchen.
Mrs. Hedley was distraught about Thomas, and her imaginative conjectures about what might have befallen him caused Farrah to burst out in a fresh bout of tears.
“I asked everyone who would open their door to me, and no one saw a thing,” she said disgustedly, clearly not believing Ermine’s neighbors.
Tilly agreed with her. How could a fit young man like Thomas be taken by force and no one saw or heard anything? Tilly was certain if he was conscious he would have been fighting for his life, and raising a huge stink while he did it. Ermine had said they’d popped him over the head, perhaps he hadn’t been conscious? Even so, several cloaked men dragging someone through the street wasn’t a common daylight occurrence. Even if they’d thought he was a drunk whose mates were helping him home, they should have taken note of it as being out of the ordinary.
“The police acted like I was invisible,” Farrah continued angrily, chugging her spiked tea. “No one seemed to care at all that someone was kidnapped in their own neighborhood.”
“That’s not true,” Mrs. Hedley assured. “We care, and I’ve already sent a few of the lads to poke about some more. We take care of our own, so try not to fret too much.” She refilled her own cup, adding a healthy swig of rum, clearly fretting as much as any of them. “Oh, I do wish our dear Lord Ashford would get here. I mean, your Lord Ashford, dear,” she added, patting Tilly’s hand.
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