She was nearly there when a man stepped out from behind the tree. She slowed, her tongue twisting, her entire body a pulse. He was tall, just like she was, with a prominent nose and dark eyes, unlike hers. His tan spoke of days out in the sun, and his hair was long and straight, streaked with gray that made it look the color of sand. It might have been Elsie’s color, years ago.
She stopped a few paces away from him, surprised at the hardness in his face. Lost for words, she tried, “Hello.”
Her father lunged at her, his calloused hand grabbing her neck. Elsie stumbled backward until she hit the plum tree’s trunk.
It was only then she saw the pistol leveled with her forehead.
Speech fled.
“You won, I’m here. Tell me what you want.”
Elsie gaped. He spoke with an American accent.
This was not her father.
Confusion, fear, and disappointment swirled within her. She grabbed the man’s arm, but he easily overpowered her, and she could not lift his hand from her neck. She croaked, “Who are you?”
He scowled. “Don’t play games with me, Elsie Camden.”
He knew her name. He had come looking for her, then. But why?
When she didn’t answer, he said, “I read your articles. You thought we’d do this on your terms? I looked up your workhouse records. I know what you want, but I’ll kill you before I utter the words.” He dug the pistol into her forehead.
“Stop!” she screamed, writhing, though it cut off her dwindling supply of air. “Help!” The call was little more than a rasp. Clawing at the man’s grip, she said, “What articles? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about!”
He sneered. Stared at her for a moment. Released her, but kept his gun level. Elsie bent over, gasping for air.
“You’re too young.” He lowered his gun slightly. “Who sent you?”
Straightening, she looked at him, incredulous. “Who sent me? You did, you blunderbuss! I got a telegram saying you were looking for me!” Her words tight, she said, “I-I thought you were my father.” He must have faked his dialect with Agatha. Either that, or she’d simply gotten it wrong.
Confusion lined his forehead. Elsie shivered with the effort of keeping her thoughts organized and her heart in one piece.
“What articles?” She pushed the question through her sore and tight throat, eyeing the gun. She didn’t think it was enchanted, not that it mattered.
“The newspapers. Magazines. All over Europe and the States.” He glared at her, and his gun twitched. “You’re a pawn.”
“I’m no one’s pawn. Put that bloody thing away!” She gestured toward the gun. The man lowered it a fraction more, so he’d only blow off her knee instead of her head. “I’m no writer. You’ve the wrong person.”
“No.” He shook his head, but he stepped back. He glanced around, as though expecting someone to jump out of the grass and tackle him. “No, it’s you. You must be an apprentice.” He raised the gun again.
Elsie lifted both hands. The letter fell to the ground. “I work for a stonemason!”
“You’re an aspector. And I’m telling you now that you won’t have it.” His arm tensed.
“Stop!” she shouted again, half hoping someone would hear, but the road remained empty. “I-I’m not! I’m a spellbreaker, I swear it.” Dangerous, to offer her secret to a man holding her at gunpoint, but it was the only thing she could offer to prove he’d mistaken her for someone else. “I’m only looking for my family. They left me in Juniper Down when I was a girl. That’s why I have a workhouse record. I swear it!”
He lowered the gun again, which fountained cool relief up Elsie’s stomach. “Prove it.”
She opened her hands. She needed a spell first.
He stepped forward; she retreated. He raised the pistol. Elsie held still.
He touched her forehead, and Elsie felt a spell seep into her skin, the same one the truthseeker had used. A spiritual aspector, then. The spell crept over her skin like a worm, and she tried her best not to cringe.
“I’ve never published a newspaper or magazine article in my life.” She was glad for the spell if only because it verified her words. “I haven’t the faintest idea who you are.” Then, reaching up, she felt for the threads of the rune and pulled it apart, relieved when its magic dissipated.
The man holstered his gun. “An unknowing pawn.” He shook his head. “Watch yourself. If our paths cross again, I won’t be so forgiving.”
He headed for the road.
“Wait!” Elsie charged after him. “Tell me what you—”
His gun reappeared in his hand. “I will shoot you if you follow me.”
Stopped in her tracks, Elsie held up her hands in surrender. She kept them there until the mysterious foreigner turned for the woods. He vanished, and moments later, the galloping of horse hooves swept into the distance.
Elsie stood by the plum tree for a long time, staring at the bit of road where the man had vanished. She stood until her spine and knees ached. Then she dropped to her knees like a dress freed of its mannequin. Her head filled with the complaints of crickets, and a spot on her cheek started to burn where sunlight scissored through the leaves. Confusion simmered like tea in the back of her mind, but its pungency was nothing compared to the hard truth rooting her.
Mr. Hall had been right. They were never coming back.
Her tongue felt swollen in her mouth, her ribs bruised, her stomach empty. All of her, empty.
Had it been so foolish to hope? To think someone from her faded memories had remembered her, thought of her, determined that she wasn’t so unlovable after all, and come looking for her? She’d been ready to give them everything—forgiveness, understanding, kinship, and every penny she’d saved since she was eleven years old.
But they hadn’t come. He had.
Blinking her eyes to clear her vision, her thoughts sluggishly turned toward the American. What did he mean, a pawn? A pawn of what? Newspaper articles, under her name? And they had to be traceable to England, and to this area, if he’d known where to look up her workhouse records. Where to find the Halls. And it was her name, not a pseudonym. What exactly did the articles say? And why her?
Why all of it?
She finally moved—rubbing her eyes to alleviate a headache pounding beneath her skull. Would the Cowls know? Ogden? More kindling to add to her fire of questions. So many questions.
It was her corset that finally got her moving. It wasn’t comfortable, out in this heat and in that position. Her skirt was thoroughly wrinkled, too. So Elsie stood, her legs shaky, and dragged herself back to Juniper Down. The echo of her footsteps sounded hollow to her ears. Her mouth was dry. Her back hurt.
The little town seemed to have forgotten her as she approached. She spied another family in all black and gray, among them an older woman, a mother perhaps, with a drawn face. Elsie felt for her and her loss. She felt it keenly.
She spied two others dressed for mourning before reaching Agatha’s house. She was sweeping off her porch.
“There you are!” she exclaimed when Elsie’s shadow drew near. She spied around her. “He’s not coming with you?”
Her lungs constricted, but she managed a quiet “No. Later.”
Agatha nodded. “Will you be staying the night? We can make you a space by the fire, unless you want to share a bed with the children.”
Stay the night. Would she? Elsie wanted nothing more than to be back in Brookley, in her own bed, the shutters drawn and the door locked. “I’m not sure.” Then, eager to shift the conversation from herself, she asked, “Why are so many mourning?”
A frown pulled at the woman’s lips, and she set the broom against the door frame. “Most terrible thing. Happened almost a week ago now, but they’re expecting the ashes anytime now.”
Elsie touched her chest. “Oh dear.”
Agatha nodded, a tear coming to her eye. She dabbed it with a rough knuckle. “Poor lad. He was only fifteen, and had such a future ahead
of him. Got a sponsorship for aspection, he did.”
Elsie’s stomach sank, and she almost wished she hadn’t asked. She didn’t know how much more bad news she could take. “A sponsorship?”
“The Crumleys’ boy. Been studying for three years already. They pinned their hopes on him, and now it’s rubbish.” She shook her head. “Terrible way to go, too. Died in the fire at the academy. Weren’t too big a flame to start, we’ve heard, but the local firemen couldn’t put it out. Their water staffs had been disenchanted.”
Elsie rolled her lips together, then stiffened. Her breath caught in her throat, and it took half a second for her to push it out. “Water staffs?” she asked. Pre-enchanted tools that called up water from the ground and even the air. Hands cold, she added, “Y-You said this happened a week ago?”
“A week tomorrow.” Elsie’s expression must have been dire, for Agatha laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Terrible, isn’t it? Him and another boy, as well as one of their professors. To top it off, there ain’t even an opus to send home. Fire ate it up, too. Professor John Clive—that was his sponsor—sent his regrets himself, before he . . .” Agatha’s words caught, and she turned her head to clear her throat. “Sorry, lass, that one is still fresh.” Withdrawing her hand, Agatha took in a shuddering breath. “Still can’t believe it. None of us can.”
Elsie tried to swallow and found she couldn’t. “Agatha. Where . . . Where is the academy?”
She tilted her head, confused by the question. “Up in Colchester. Why?”
Elsie might as well have bled out on Agatha’s doorstep. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The same time, the same place, the same magic . . .
She had disenchanted those water staffs.
Which most certainly meant the Cowls had started the fire.
CHAPTER 21
Elsie stumbled back from the porch.
“Miss Camden?” Agatha followed her. “Are you all right?”
She couldn’t breathe. It couldn’t be true. It simply couldn’t be. Ogden was one of them, after all, and he didn’t have a foul bone in his body! And she . . . all those deaths . . . she . . .
“Just . . . too much today,” she muttered, sure she sounded intoxicated. “I need a moment.”
“There’s beds just upstairs—”
But Elsie shook her head and fled from the house. Fled so fast she was tripping over her skirts. She stumbled all the way to the well by the road, then gripped its sides and leaned over the dark pit, cool air from between the stones whispering against the sweat on her face.
It’s a misunderstanding.
“Oh dear, you look sick. Don’t turn up your stomach in there, though.” An older woman approached, hair pinned messily under a threadbare cap. “Take a sit here. You’re Agatha’s visitor, ain’t you?”
Elsie numbly allowed the woman to guide her to a nearby stump. To draw up some water for her to drink. Elsie swallowed the stale liquid until her belly hurt and she had to stop or suffocate. She spilled some on her dress, but couldn’t bring herself to care.
“There.” The woman set the bucket aside. She, too, had black on her, though her dress was a simple brown. She offered a soiled handkerchief, but Elsie waved it away. “Did you get some bad news, dear?”
Elsie cradled her aching head in her hands. “You could say that.” She could still feel the end of the pistol against her forehead. The touch of the weapons beneath her hands in Colchester. The Cowls had offered such a compelling explanation in their letter.
But who else would have disenchanted the water staffs?
She felt a hand on her shoulder. It tightened in reassurance, then lifted. “It’s all bad news around these parts. Might help to get it off your chest.”
Elsie could have laughed at the notion were her body not so heavy. “I doubt that.”
She picked at the black scarf tied around her left sleeve. “One of our own lost a boy.”
“I heard. I’m . . . sorry.” She had to croak out the last word.
“Just yesterday we got a telegram saying his sponsor had passed, too.” The woman’s voice squeezed tight, and she coughed. “So terrible.”
Lifting her head, Elsie asked, “Professor Clive?”
She nodded. “Agatha must’ve told you.”
Elsie sighed.
“It’s all a mess, what’s happening in London. All those stolen opuses. It’s terrible.”
Sitting up straight, Elsie said, “His opus was taken?”
“The report claimed as much. He didn’t just go missing; there was vomit on the library floor, full of poison. Someone broke right into that atheneum and did him in.” She wiped her wrinkled eyes with the handkerchief. “One less good man in this world.” Managing to smile, she added, “At least your ails can’t be as bad as that, hmm?”
But Elsie’s body felt cold in the afternoon heat. “Which atheneum?”
“The London one.”
Elsie stood, nearly knocking her head on the edge of the well’s roof. “There are two in London.” She knew she sounded forceful, but she had to know. “Physical and spiritual.”
Don’t say physical. Don’t say—
“Well, he was a physical aspector, so I suppose the first.” She eyed Elsie like she was half-mad.
Maybe she was. She was ready to scream, or weep, or . . . she didn’t know. Her thoughts were retreating from her, almost to the point where she forgot to breathe.
Too much of a coincidence. She had been in Colchester. She had disenchanted security at the Physical Atheneum just before leaving for Juniper Down.
“I need to talk to your constable,” she croaked. Gossip was well and good, but she needed solid information, not hearsay.
The woman stood. “What’s wrong? I . . . We don’t have one just for us. You have to go to Foxstone.”
Elsie swallowed, blinking rapidly until her unshed tears sank down into a hard ball in her throat. “I will pay a florin to whoever will drive me.”
“I don’t know, miss,” the young constable said when she, with the help of a man from Juniper Down, stopped him outside a small millinery. The shop had already closed for the day. Without the patience to introduce herself properly, Elsie had immediately barraged him with questions about the recent sequence of murders and opus thefts.
Adjusting his hat, he continued, “We’re just small folk, even here in Foxstone. If you want to know more, you’ll need to head to a city. Reading, perhaps?”
And so Elsie did.
Elsie was tired yet restless as she rode a mail coach to Reading. Her urgency had not been enough to convince someone to take her so late on the Sabbath. At least the constable had been generous in letting her take a room in his home, but she’d returned to the streets before dawn, eager to travel at the first opportunity. It took every bit of control she possessed to keep from weeping in the privacy of the cab.
She clung to the notion of a misunderstanding. It couldn’t be her. It could not be Ogden.
She went first to the police station on Friar Street, but the constable was not in, and the only other officer available was young and uneasy with her request, so Elsie got directions to the constable’s home from the post office. She went on foot and, after finding it, knocked incessantly on the door. A nearly grown child answered, looking perturbed, as Elsie had apparently interrupted their luncheon. Their table was set, food barely touched. A woman leaned forward to get a better view of her, but the man rose and came to the door, dismissing his son.
He was tall and broad shouldered, with a severely receding hairline. He wore a blue peelers coat, so Elsie had no doubt she’d found the right house. The lines on his forehead suggested he was annoyed by the disturbance, yet his eyes were quizzical.
“Mr. Theophile Bowles?” Elsie asked, heart hammering.
“I am.”
She took a deep breath. “I know I am interrupting, but I badly need to speak with you concerning the recent crimes regarding aspectors and their opuses.”
He drew back. “Th
e journal is hiring women now?”
Normally Elsie would have bristled at the comment, but she didn’t have the strength to be indignant. She might as well encourage the assumption. “I assure you, the story is crucial. My own employer was nearly a victim. I’m ready to pay you for your time.” Her life savings might as well go to some use.
Mr. Bowles paused, then glanced back at his family. Rubbed his eyes. “Come in, Miss . . . ?”
“Camden. Thank you.” She stepped inside, tripping over her own relief that he was inviting her in. She knew the records were public if they were in the papers, but she wouldn’t know where to go next to access them if he turned her away.
To his wife, Mr. Bowles said, “Just a moment,” and gestured toward a back room, barely large enough to be a bedroom. It had within it a desk, a bookshelf, and a small harp in the corner. Mr. Bowles sat behind the desk. Elsie remained standing.
He pulled out a thick book from a desk drawer and flipped through it, silent enough to make Elsie feel awkward, before pausing near the center of the pages. “Which are you concerned about? Only one occurrence happened in my jurisdiction.”
“But you’re made aware of others, yes?”
He paused, nodded.
“From the beginning, if you would.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, but he did as she asked, listing off an unfamiliar name and location, and the crime: murder. The next crime, a robbery, had happened in a town Elsie had never heard of. Another name, location, minute details. He turned the page. “Baron Halsey attacked and murdered in his bedroom, opus stolen, May 4. Viscount Byron attacked and murdered at the London home of Walter Turner, opus stolen, May 10. Theodore Barrington—”
“Wait.” Elsie stepped forward, knees stiff. “Did you say Turner?”
Mr. Bowles rescanned the passage as though he’d already forgotten it. “Walter Turner, yes.”
“London home?” The words came out on a whisper. “The viscount was . . . murdered there?” She recalled what Mr. Parker had told her, and the article in the paper. A witness claimed he’d been struck by lightning. And—
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