Selkie Cove
Book Five of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices
Kara Jorgensen
Fox Collie Publishing
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Copyright © 2017 by Kara Jorgensen
Cover Design © 2017 Lou Harper
First Edition, 2017
To Javier,
For never telling me to make my own coffee.
ACT ONE
“We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”
-Marie Curie
Chapter One
A Confirmed Bachelor
Adam Fenice resisted the urge to turn around and check the clock again for fear of drawing the attention of the other clerks and accountants. Keeping his back to them, he took a quick glance at his pocket watch. He smothered his anticipation beneath a veneer of practiced nonchalance. In a little over an hour, he and Immanuel would be having lunch. No matter how often they saw each other, knowing that he and Immanuel would be in public together sent a thrill through his breast. It didn’t matter if they were pretending to merely be flat mates, they were out. For the past few weeks Immanuel had been busy running errands for the Natural History Museum and the British Museum, and between the late nights, the impromptu meetings with the heads of the museums, and the nightmares and insomnia from the added stress, they had barely spent a peaceful day—or night—together. Today would be different. Immanuel said everything had been taken care of, and now things would go back to normal.
Adam scoffed at the thought. Normal. Nothing about his life was ever normal. Instead of dealing with Hadley’s toy business or his brother’s consumption, he had Immanuel’s magic to enliven his humdrum life. His time spent at the office puzzling out inconsistencies was a welcome relief from coming home to find Immanuel experimenting with new sigils that sent things crashing across the room or turned his tea to dingy brown ice. Between magic and Percy, their cat—if one could call him that when he was solely comprised of bones and mischief—Adam was happy to come to work and deal with facts and figures, where things were certain no matter what happened outside the office walls.
“Fenice, can you come here a moment?” Mr. Bodkin called from his office.
Rising from his desk, Adam stretched and glanced at the clock one more time. He silently sighed, hoping this wouldn’t turn into an hour long conversation on Sarah Bernhardt’s latest exploit. He had promised Immanuel he would get to the museum promptly to prevent Sir William Henry Flower from commandeering him. If he played his cards right, he could distract Bodkin with a question or two and return to his work. As Adam pushed open the door to the dim cubby of an office, he knew something was wrong. His supervisor sat with his hands folded on his blotter, his thumbs twitching in time with his beady eyes, which ran over everything but Adam’s face. Adam stiffly sat in the leather-backed chair before his desk, resisting the urge to scratch his wrist.
“Sir, is there anything—?”
“You’ve been dismissed,” Bodkin blurted.
For a moment, Adam merely stared at him, unsure if his ears had played a trick on him, but when Bodkin’s eyes never wavered and his lips twitched into a regretful frown, he knew he had heard correctly. The saliva dried in his throat as he strained to speak.
“I beg your pardon, sir, but may I ask why? Have I made an error?” Adam asked, his mind churning over the numbers he had tabulated and double-checked over the past few weeks.
“Oh, heavens no. You’re one of my best workers.”
“Then, why am I being let go?”
Mr. Bodkin released a tired breath, his rounded shoulders slumping in agreement. In the dim light with his face more pensive than Adam had ever seen, he seemed so much older. Adam had liked him best of all his employers. The man had given him his extra tickets to the theatre and chatted with him about novels and society page gossip, but as he tented his meaty, ringed hands and met Adam’s gaze, the fissure of rank widened into a chasm. It had been foolish to ever assume they were friends.
“You must understand, this isn’t my doing, Fenice,” Bodkin said, dropping his voice. “It was Mr. Ellis. His eldest is to marry soon, and he needs to secure a proper position for him.”
“I see,” he spat, his chest tight with a raw resentment he hadn’t felt since his older brother was alive. Adam’s jaw tightened as he pictured that miser Ellis’s lout of a son sitting at his desk. He eyed Bodkin. How long would it be before the boss’s son was out of his desk and in Bodkin’s chair? “And what about Penn or Weiland? They have been here less than a year. I’ve been here for four. This isn’t fair.”
“Trust me, I agree with you. You know you’re one of my favorites.” For a moment, he looked as if he might reach out and touch Adam’s arm, but upon seeing the blue fire in Adam’s eyes, he thought the better of it. “It’s just that— that— you aren’t the image Mr. Ellis wants for his business. You know, you go to the theatre, you’re an Aesthete who openly supports Wilde’s crowd, you dress flamboyantly—”
Adam glanced down at his silk paisley waistcoat as if seeing it for the first time before crossing his arms over it.
“And you’re a bachelor.”
A derisive laugh escaped his lips. “What does my marital status have to do with my work? If anything, I should have less distractions.”
Mr. Bodkin swallowed hard, his shiny black eyes darting for an answer. “A bachelor could pick up and leave at any moment, but a man with a wife and children has an anchor. You’re sharing your flat with another bachelor, aren’t you?”
Adam froze. Something lurked beneath the question, plunging his anger into something far colder. Bodkin of all people should have known the significance of Ellis’s decree. Then again, he had a ring on his finger and a brood at home.
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“I have no problems with it, but Mr. Ellis…”
“Dashwood shares a flat with another bookkeeper. Many young men have roommates.”
“Yes, I know, but do you perhaps have a lady friend you—?”
“No,” Adam replied, his voice sharper than he intended.
“I figured as much.” Pulling an envelope from his desk, Bodkin held it out for Adam to take. “I was able to convince him to give you an extra week’s wages for the inconvenience. I really am sorry about this, Fenice, but there was nothing I could do to change his mind.”
As he reached to take the money, Adam steadied his hand, stifling the urge to snatch it from his grasp. It was Ellis’ fault, he reminded himself. Bodkin was merely a mole forced to do his bidding. A man who, like him, had kept his head down and tried not to make trouble for anyone. Only he had succeeded.
“Thank you for your generosity,” Adam murmured, his voice quavering against his will.
He didn’t try to suppress it. The rage would come out one way or another, and a little edge was far better than the venom creeping up his throat. Adam swallowed and dug his nail into his wrist as he turned, pushing in until he regained control. That was his whole life, wasn’t it? Maintaining an air of control. As he stood to leave, Bodkin’s eyes bored into his back, but before he could look away, Adam whipped around in time to see th
e man jump back.
A smug, unkind smile crossed his lips as he stuffed the envelope of money into his breast pocket. “I appreciate all you have done for me, Horace. I just hope Ellis can see past our shared faults when he inevitably decides to promote his son. Good day, sir.”
Without looking back, Adam marched into the office with his back rigid and his face a mask of hauteur. His heart pounded as the junior accountants and clerks raised their gazes from their papers in unison to watch him pass while the only other senior accountant kept his eyes buried in his work. Adam stared ahead as he silently walked to his desk near the window despite half a dozen pairs of eyes pressing into his form. How much had they heard? He couldn’t look at them. He didn’t want to know what they thought of his sudden fall. All he wanted was to get out with some semblance of dignity.
His eyes traveled over the contents of his desk, lingering on the ledgers he had been perusing for a suspected embezzlement case. The figures he had toiled over for days were meaningless now. Some other man would finish his work and take the credit for the case he had built. Adam drew in a constrained breath. Unlike the other men in the office, he had no pictures of his pretty wife or handsome children to show to clients or Mr. Ellis when they came to call. Sitting on a stack of papers by the window was an ammonite fossil Immanuel had given to him when they stayed at his brother-in-law’s estate in Dorset that summer. It was the only bit of his life he had allowed to bleed into his work. He could still remember the thrill of danger at having a token of Immanuel’s love in plain view. That was all he would take with him. Adam snatched the fossil, ignoring the slap of paper and the startled cries of his coworkers as the wind scattered the stack. As he slipped on his coat and top hat, he felt the weight of the ammonite in his hand and saw himself hurl it through the windowpane in his mind’s eye. Dropping it into his pocket, he kept his gaze forward, his mouth neutral, and passed down the familiar creaking steps to Lombard Street.
The bitter October cold pawed at his cheeks and tousled the edge of his pomaded henna hair as he slipped out the door. With his hand tightly around the ammonite in his pocket, Adam walked blindly and tried to keep his pace casual. He up the rent, the cost to bring in a housekeeper, their monthly expenses, and how much the washerwoman charged against Immanuel’s salary and what Adam remembered to be inscribed in his bankbook. How long would it last? He had only been temporarily out of work once during his career and money had been the least of his concerns then. Bodkin had refused his resignation and given him time off to put his mind to rights, citing his brother’s recent passing. No one would come through for him now.
Men clad in dark wool and brushed top hats pushed passed him on their way to banks and solicitors’ offices just like his. One man tipped his hat to Adam. Recognizing him from their business dealings only a month before, Adam gave him a nod but kept his eyes ahead. How long would it take for news of his dismissal to reach the other accountants or the clients he regularly worked for? He had spent his whole life avoiding becoming the subject of gossip, and now, it had been thrust upon him.
When Adam stopped moving long enough to surface from his thoughts, he found his hand on the iron railing of the Met station that would take him home. Home. The word caught in Adam’s throat in a wet knot. He swallowed it down and hardened his jaw. He wouldn’t lose it. It had been his family’s home for as long as he had been alive and now it belonged to him and Immanuel. There was no way he would let someone like Ellis take that from him, but the idea of sitting alone with his thoughts until Immanuel came home was more than he could bear. Without someone there to temper his emotions, he could only imagine the destruction he might wreak, and that would be far worse than holding it in a while longer. That was simple. After all, he had choked down the same bitter pill for nearly twenty years.
Glancing at his watch, Adam took the stairs into the labyrinth of brick and wood two at a time. The stench of urine and feculence burned his nose as he listened for the distant rumble of the electric train. He could take the train to Greenwich and vent to Hadley about what had happened. His sister would understand. She would rail against the injustice of it as only she could, but then, she would have solutions. Hadley would have half a dozen thought up in an instant, most of which would inevitably be tied to her husband, the Earl of Dorset. The thought sent a wave of nausea gurgling through Adam’s gut.
No, Immanuel was waiting for him, and he wouldn’t disappoint him twice in one day. Before he could change his mind, the train barreled into the station. Straightening, Adam slipped into the crowded car. All he needed was to pretend everything was all right. Perhaps if he simply didn’t acknowledge it, then he wouldn’t be a disappoint to Immanuel, too. If it had worked for most of his life, then surely it could work for another hour.
Chapter Two
Sigils and Seals
Immanuel closed his eyes, drinking in the crisp autumnal air as it ruffled his sigil for conjuring wind. For most of the morning, he had barely gotten a stir of air. It wasn’t until he stopped picturing hurricanes and replaced them with birds soaring and the smell of rain that he felt the kiss of Hyde Park’s earthen perfume brush his cheek. Opening his eyes, Immanuel found a loose Celtic knot beneath the nib of his pen. A smile flashed across his lips as he quickly jotted down his thoughts and results before they could sink beneath the sea of the research piled on his desk. For most of the morning, he had been gathering information on Arctic mammals out of half a dozen books from the museum’s library, but he desperately needed a break from penguins and whales. Immanuel shuddered at the thought of having to dissect the latter beast and studied the new sigil’s form. While magic had only been part of his life a short while, it was proving to be as interesting a discipline as science.
Immanuel eyed the tea cup resting at the edge of his blotter and chewed his lip in thought. He had at least fifteen minutes before Sir William Henry Flower finished his weekly meeting with the heads of the museum’s departments. Anyone with any authority would be in the Shaw Room, which meant there would be time to practice a trick he had been working on. Placing the cup before him, Immanuel drew in a slow, steady breath. With his eyes locked on the cold tea, his finger traced a whirl that grew into a deformed star on the tabletop. For a moment, nothing happened. He pictured water rolling over his back, the sensation of water dripping across his skin, the call of the ocean lapping against the shore. A ripple passed from his mind to the tea’s surface. The harder he stared, the rougher the waves became until the tea nearly sloshed over the edge of the china. When it reached a peak in the center, Immanuel’s mind snagged it. The sigil evolved beneath his hand, twisting into a lattice of peaks and valleys as the surface rose high above the cup.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing!”
Immanuel jumped and the liquid plummeted into the cup, splashing tea across his blotter and papers. Scrambling to keep the ink from bleeding into an indecipherable blur, Immanuel looked up to find Peregrine Nichols glaring back at him from the doorway. The junior botany curator’s sharp brown brows furrowed as he kicked the door shut and stood at the end of Immanuel’s desk. Despite being over a head shorter than Immanuel, Peregrine had a commanding air he couldn’t hope to emulate. He had seen Peregrine take down a revenant with a pry bar and an incantation when Immanuel could scarcely will his fear-frozen body to move. Carefully mopping his notes with a handkerchief, Immanuel avoided Peregrine’s gaze.
“Are you out of your bloody mind, Winter?” Peregrine hissed. “What if someone saw you? How would you have explained your levitating tea?”
“It wasn’t levitating, I was merely experimenting with— with— I didn’t think anyone would barge in.” Immanuel’s face reddened against his will as he held the handkerchief over his paper and hoped he hadn’t ruined the wind sigil. “Sir William always knocks.”
“But not everyone does. That’s the point. If you’re looking for a way to get on Elliott’s bad side, provoking a modern Inquisition by being careless is a good way to st
art.”
“I didn’t mean any harm.”
“It doesn’t matter. One slip up and we’re all pyre fodder.” Running out of steam, Peregrine deflated and rested on his heels. “So, have you decided yet? She’s been nagging me to find out.”
A wave of guilt rippled through him as he broke from Peregrine’s hard gaze to shut the window and put the wet pages on the radiator to dry. He still didn’t have an answer. After discovering he had extranormal abilities and helping to foil a witch hell-bent on bringing an otherworldly creature to London, he had been offered the chance to join Her Majesty’s Interceptors, a sort of Home Office to deal with England’s overlooked world of magic. It had been tempting, but— Immanuel wasn’t certain what the “but” was. With all that transpired since he had been given a second chance at life, he was tired, and he savored the peace that had finally fallen over his life. His job as a junior curator and his relationship with Adam were all he could have wanted. Becoming an Interceptor would change all of that.
“I will get back to her soon. What is it you need?”
“For you stop doing magic at work,” Peregrine snapped, keeping his voice low. Releasing a sigh, the impish curator stepped around Immanuel’s desk to inspect the drowsy pink orchid blooming on his shelf between an ammonite and a sea urchin’s shell. “This is Hexalectris colemanii. Where did you get it? They’re exceptionally rare. I tried to get one, but it arrived dead.”
Immanuel met Peregrine’s umber eyes before quickly averting his gaze back to his papers. “I— I didn’t think you wanted it anymore.”
“So you fished it out of my rubbish bin?”
“I… Well, yes. I thought it might be pretty, and I wanted to see if I could revive it. It was an experiment, really. You can have it back if you want.”
Selkie Cove (The Ingenious Mechanical Devices Book 5) Page 1