And much closer to Bacchus.
Ignoring the warmth climbing up her neck, she said, “The other is from Seven Oaks.”
Bacchus, his expression slack, turned the letter over and ran the pad of his thumb over its seal. “So it is.” He handed it to her.
“It’s addressed to you.”
“I know you’re curious.” He offered her a weak half smile.
Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Elsie broke the seal and opened the letter. It was brief, the penmanship fine. She glanced at the bottom. “It’s from the duchess.” Then she read slowly.
“Oh.”
Bacchus quirked an eyebrow. “Oh?”
She read to the end of the letter, then set it on her lap. “The duke feels terrible about what happened.”
He leaned his chin on his fist. “So she’s said.”
“He took off the siphoning spell.”
Bacchus straightened in his seat. “What?”
She held out the letter to him, but he didn’t take it. “It says he canceled the new one. The one he got after I broke your end. She says they’re going to take what life will give them.”
Now Bacchus did take the letter, and looked it over. “I’m . . . surprised” was all he said.
Elsie drew a hand down the length of his back. “How are you doing?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure.”
A scream pierced the air, and something shattered.
Elsie shot to her feet. “Emmeline!” She ran for the door, Bacchus close behind her. She nearly toppled down the stairs for how swiftly she took them.
She swung around into the kitchen, seeing first the broken pieces of a serving tray littering the floor, then Emmeline pressed up against the wall, wide eyes staring at the far corner. At a person. No, an astral projection. But the one casting it was so far away it was little more than a wisp of a ghost. No discernable facial features, smeared colors of brown, gray, black, and peach.
Elsie’s stomach hit the floor, and her throat constricted. She managed to croak, “M-Merton?”
“I’m not familiar with him,” a gravelly male voice replied, as though he were speaking through a wall. But more importantly, he spoke with an American accent.
A chill passed over Elsie’s everything.
He’d come.
Master Quinn Raven.
“It worked,” Elsie whispered.
The image shifted. “You’ll have to speak up.”
She stepped closer, and Bacchus’s hand found her shoulder, stopping her. Turning to him, she said, “A projection of him can hardly hurt us.”
Bacchus’s mouth thinned to a line, but he nodded, and Elsie crossed the room, ceramic shards cracking under her shoes.
“My name is Elsie Camden. I’m the one you met in Juniper Down.”
“Yes, I know,” he barked, still garbled, but there was nothing to be done about that. “You said you didn’t pen them, but now they’re everywhere. Explain yourself.”
“I didn’t pen the originals. That was Master Lily Merton.”
Raven didn’t answer right away. “Isn’t she the one who just died?”
“She faked her death. We checked the opus.”
Behind her, Bacchus said, “Do you know her?”
“Vaguely.” He offered nothing else.
“Merton is the one who wrote those articles, goading you,” Elsie went on. She needed to relay as much information as she could, as quickly as possible, given Raven’s obvious lack of patience. They needed him as an ally. This moment meant everything. “She bespelled my employer for nine years to control him, and he controlled me. She’s been murdering aspectors for their opuses. And searching for you, apparently.”
Raven spat something that sounded like a curse, but it was too garbled to determine which one he’d chosen. “First she tried to buy me; then she tried to goad me, threaten my acquaintances.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was strained. “So many of them are books now. Never thought she’d go for Alma.” He cleared his throat. “I had to put an end to it.”
That’s why he had finally come, then. Why he had tracked down Elsie. Turner and the others, they were people he knew. Merton had forced him out of hiding in the cruelest way possible. “Why does she want you so badly?” Elsie tried.
He snorted, or so Elsie thought he did. “Why does anyone want me? They want what I know! Years of research, thrown in the fire. You whisper it to one person and the entire community dogs you. They stopped when I ‘died.’ All but one.”
“Please,” Bacchus said. “We’re trying to find her. To stop the madness.”
“But we don’t understand why,” Elsie added. “The opuses . . . She must have been trying to lure you out, and strengthen herself in the process. But to what end?”
“And why should I trust you?” Raven’s voice was like chipping mortar. “You’re goading me just as she has. You’ll use me, too.”
“I’m a spellbreaker!” Elsie snapped. “You know that. I showed you!”
“But the others.”
Elsie glanced over her shoulder. Bacchus nodded. Emmeline just stared at Raven openmouthed, like he truly was a ghost. “We’ve no spiritual aspectors here,” she said. “I’m with Master Bacchus Kelsey of the Physical Atheneum and our maid. My employer is Cuthbert Ogden, also of the Physical Atheneum.” He clearly didn’t trust them, and it wasn’t likely to win them any favor that Ogden was an unregistered rational aspector.
“How do you know that matters if—”
“It’s a spell, isn’t it?” Elsie interrupted. “That’s what she wants from you.”
Raven hesitated. “Do you want me to be impressed?”
“I want you to be my ally.” Her anger was rising. “Do you think you’re the only one who’s suffered?”
He was silent a moment.
Elsie pushed, “Don’t you want it to end, too?”
He let out a loud sigh. “You are a pestering woman.”
Bacchus said, “Come here in person if you don’t believe us. Cast a truthseeking spell.”
“I’m not so foolish.” He paused. “I know Miss Camden was truthful in Juniper Down.”
Emmeline chirped, “Then y-you’ll help us?”
The projection groaned. Shifted slightly to the right, slightly to the left. Either the magic was wavering or Raven was struggling to stand still. “It’s a contagion spell.”
Elsie furrowed her brow. “What?”
“A contagion spell. I discovered it.”
Bacchus shook his head. “Spells cannot be discovered. They have been set in stone since their creation.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a fool, boy,” Raven snapped. “Spells are like any form of knowledge—they can be forgotten. Who knows how much magic died with our ancestors, swallowed by history? I found evidence of it twenty years ago.” He paused, then added, “If you’re churchgoers, I expect you’re familiar with the mass-blessing spell.”
Indeed, Elsie was familiar with mass blessings. Often spiritual aspectors assigned to a church cast them at the end of a sermon to help the congregation feel good about their decision to worship. Often it was a blessing of peace, a facsimile of the feeling bestowed by the Holy Spirit. While a blessing of peace by itself was a novice-level spell, a master spiritual aspector had the ability to cast it in such a manner that it would affect a small crowd, letting the blessing carry through multiple persons the way the flu would.
“I found evidence that there was once a spell that acted similarly, but with health. Something that might cure a pandemic. A journal from the time of the Black Death. I devoted my life to researching it. To finding old works, retranslating them, putting the missing pieces together. And I found my answer. But it surprised me.
“The spell is not specifically a cure—rather, it’s a master contagion spell. Like a plague. A spell of exponential growth that doesn’t stop after thirty heads. Only the very strongest aspectors could hope to cast such a thing.”