“M-Miss Prescott!” Elsie paused, shoes making a muddy puddle on the floor. “I didn’t think you’d be coming! What with the storm and all.”
Indeed, she’d hoped for a reprieve.
“I am always punctual,” she said with good humor. “That’s why I employ my own vehicle. And I’ve been waiting only a few minutes. Come along, I’ve brought something exciting today.”
I doubt it. Elsie exchanged an uncertain glance with Emmeline. Should she change? But the woman had already been waiting . . .
“I’ll make tea,” Emmeline said, doing her best to clean off her shoes.
Sighing, Elsie slid hers off, cut through the kitchen, and entered the dining room in her wet, stockinged feet. Miss Prescott sat at the table with a shriveled plant, a rabbit’s foot, and a cage—
Elsie started, hand flying to her breast. “My goodness, where did you get that?”
A long-tailed rat sat in the cage, turning about, checking and rechecking the wires for a way out.
Miss Prescott grinned. “We’re going to study a few spiritual spells today! Rational we’ll really have to do at the atheneum, but I managed to get my hands on these bespelled items.”
Elsie sat down, hearing a pitch coming from all three items. She’d seen the first spell recently—the sad-looking flower was cursed, just as the Duke of Kent’s farmland had been. The rabbit’s foot carried a charm of luck, and the rat would have some sort of communication spell on it, just like the post dogs did.
Setting her chin in her hands, Elsie halfheartedly said, “Do tell.”
And Miss Prescott did, in her usual long-winded way. Elsie didn’t know how a person could find so much to say about spellbreaking, but Miss Prescott always managed it. Perhaps, were Elsie truly a novice, she would need the explanations. Maybe they would have helped in her younger years. Everything she knew had been self-taught, guided by bits of advice written on silvery paper and stamped with a raven’s foot. Had those early messages come directly from Ogden’s mind, or from Merton’s?
Ogden walked through just then, using a cloth to wipe paint off his fingers. Elsie straightened in her chair—it was good to see him working again. He’d been so beside himself since the docks.
Ogden dropped an opened telegram envelope on the table. It was crinkled, as though it had been rained on and left to dry. “From Kelsey. Says Master Hill is recuperating and expected to recover.”
Elsie unfolded the note and checked for herself. He must have meant the message for everyone, or he was away from his enchanted pencil. “That’s good news.”
“Oh dear, Master Hill.” Miss Prescott set down the rabbit’s foot. “What a relief that she pulled through.”
“Indeed,” Ogden agreed. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
He slipped away as Emmeline came in with a tea tray.
And then Elsie . . . sensed something.
She paused, catching her breath. A physical spell . . . and yet she didn’t see the glimmer of the rune anywhere. She couldn’t explain how she felt it, exactly, but it had happened before, with the siphoning runes on Bacchus and the duke. It was as if . . . something within her had sniffed it out. But this one was farther away, like something caught on the wind.
Ogden was capable of physical spells, of course, but none that were this strong.
“Miss Camden?” Miss Prescott asked.
Elsie shook herself. “Thank you, Emmeline. I’ll pour it.”
Emmeline nodded and stepped into the kitchen.
Picking up a teacup, Elsie turned it over, half expecting to spy a rune glimmering against its bottom. But there was nothing. Nothing on the tea tray, or the table. Just an inkling that she couldn’t place.
“One moment.” Elsie stood. “I think I heard the door.”
“I’ll help myself.” Miss Prescott reached for the teapot.
Elsie slipped away, down the hall and into the studio. A canvas was set up in the corner, base paints streaking across it, drying. No spells on them.
Thunder rolled. A ways off, a horse whinnied.
Uncomfortable, Elsie returned to the kitchen, unsure whether the sensation was actually getting stronger or her own mind was magnifying it. She barely heard Miss Prescott ask after her welfare.
Hadn’t Bacchus said a physical aspector had attacked Ruth Hill?
Without excusing herself, Elsie hurried up the stairs, grabbing the handrail to propel her steps faster. She noted with surprise that her feet were silent on the last three steps. They made no sound at all. Nothing did.
Her heart surged into her throat. She shouted Ogden’s name, but her voice was sucked away by a spell. Running, Elsie burst into his room just as his bed slid across the floor of its own volition, pinning him to the opposite wall.
And there, just inside the window, stood a gray-clad figure, dressed to match the storm but dry as a wood fire, his hand outstretched.
Elsie screamed soundlessly.
This wasn’t a staged attack arranged with Nash. This was real.
And what person could Merton want dead more than the master rational aspector who knew her secrets?
Grabbing the closest thing to her—a tin pitcher—Elsie threw it across the room as hard as she could. The instant she released it, she saw a glimmer in the air a few feet in front of her, about nose height: the sound-dampening spell. At the moment it benefited her as much as it did the assailant, for the man had neither heard nor seen her. The pitcher flew true, colliding with the side of his skull.
Clutching his head, the assailant whirled around, his face, save for his eyes, covered. Beyond him, Elsie could see Ogden was yelling something at her, but she could no more hear him than she could anything else.
She bolted forward and grabbed the spell, pulling apart its fibers—
“—do it!” Ogden bellowed as the spell came apart. An invisible fist slammed into Elsie and threw her back. Had she not been even with the doorway, she would have struck the wall, but her feet touched down where the hall started and she merely stumbled down onto her backside, bruising her tailbone.
“Ogden!” Elsie screamed. “Do something!”
“There’s a barrier!” he shouted back, then groaned.
Leaping to her feet, Elsie rushed inside. The bed was pushing hard against Ogden’s thighs, pinning him to the wall. The intruder came toward him with a knife.
Elsie’s progress slowed like she was walking through pudding. The spell hung between her and the aspector. She wormed toward the rune, movements painfully sluggish, and finally reached it and yanked it apart, tumbling forward as gravity reoriented itself.
The assailant raised his knife. Elsie had no weapon, no spells, save the one tucked securely in her corset.
But she would not let any harm come to Ogden. So she ran at the gray-clad man and jumped on his back, wrapping both arms around his neck.
The man danced back, trying to fling her off. His spell must have been one of concentration, for the moment Elsie leapt on him, Ogden shoved the bed back and jumped up and over it, bolting across the room to help her.
“Remember, there might be a compulsion spell on him!” Elsie shouted, letting go of the man when the knife point sailed for her arm. Ogden grabbed the intruder’s wrist and twisted it, but the other man formed a fist with his free hand and collided it with Ogden’s teeth, forcing him to release his hold. In the same movement, the curtains came alive over Elsie’s head. The aspector grabbed the edge of them and elongated them, stretching them beyond their woven limits, enchanting the fibers to grow.
That was when Elsie noticed the gun tucked into the man’s waist. A thorough way to murder someone, especially if they couldn’t hear his approach.
She leapt for it. The man twisted, flinging the former curtain toward Ogden. Elsie missed the firearm and fell into his legs instead. She grabbed his knees. They both toppled over. Elsie grappled for the gun, and this time she got her fingers around the handle and tossed it across the room. Then, snaking around the man’s legs, she felt for a spell. Tried to listen for the hum of the eighteen-point spiritual spell that had been Ogden’s parasite for so long. Did she detect it on his torso, or were her ears ringing?