The second was a state-changing spell, the most basic form of which a novice could learn with water. It did essentially the same thing a stove did: change water to gas. Or the opposite—change water to ice. The more powerful the spell, the more easily a person could change the state of any given matter. The more stubborn the matter, the more intense the spell. This master-level spell would not only allow him to bend more materials to his will—it would also allow him to skip a step with many. Turning water vapor directly to ice, for example.
Bacchus chose the latter spell.
He sat in Master Hill’s private parlor, which, while small, was elaborately decorated almost to the point of untidiness. The wallpaper was roses and red stripes of varying sizes, accented by hibiscus; the carpet was cream; the furniture covered with baubles and books, Russian eggs, and Brazilian ceramics. Either Master Hill was very well traveled or she kept well-traveled merchants very rich.
He was capable of writing the Latin for the spell himself—he was capable of so much now that the life wasn’t being siphoned out of him—but he did not protest when Master Hill took the brush to his arm, a vial of blue ink held delicately between her aging fingers. Bacchus had rolled up his sleeves for the purpose, and Master Hill’s brushstrokes were professional and small. Not once did she make a mistake, and she paused just briefly to tuck a stray piece of graying blonde hair behind her ear. Bacchus read each word as she traced it down his arm, memorizing the incantation. After he absorbed the spell, he would no longer need the words to perform the magic, but he might want to teach it to another aspector or perhaps keep a record of how the spell was achieved. It was generous of her to let him watch; it was not unheard of for spellmakers to be blindfolded when receiving a new master spell in order to keep it valuable.
When Master Hill finished and most of the ink had dried, she handed him so many drops he could barely hold them all. Drops he’d paid for himself, but that didn’t matter. He’d been prepared to spend much, much more on the ambulation spell he no longer needed. They glowed vibrantly, brighter than candles. Bacchus still remembered being nine and having his father, who was not a spellmaker, place a single drop in his hand out of sheer curiosity. It had lit the room, and within the year, he’d been registered with the London Physical Atheneum.
Master Hill then held out an old book to him so he could read the spell aloud, but he didn’t need it. He had already committed the words to memory.
“Versandus naturam. Mutandus viam. Natura versat. Via mutat. Ultimum finemque. Per et intus. Supra et sine. Ultimum. Finem. Audi potentiam meam. Flecte voluntatem meam.
“Muti.”
The drops in his hands glittered and vanished, leaving him with an empty fist. Simultaneously, the ink absorbed into his skin like it had never been there at all. A surge of warmth coursed through him as the spell wrote itself into his internal opus, forever a part of him. Even in death.
“Thank you.” Bacchus lowered his arm and let out a stiff breath.
“You’ve earned it, Master Kelsey.” Master Hill had a knowing grin on her face. “I am glad you returned to us.”
Master Kelsey. That had a pleasant ring to it. Bacchus stood, feeling a little taller. Feeling . . . indestructible. He rubbed his hands where the drops had been. No trace of them remained. Even after all these years, he still thought it odd how the universe simply claimed its payment in exchange for sorcery.
“Here.”
He glanced up. Master Hill held out a candle. It was nearly used up, enough for a quarter hour’s worth of light, perhaps. White wax and a burnt wick.
He accepted it. “Is the morning light not to your liking?”
Ignoring his question, she strode to the nearest window and opened it, then bid him to follow. “You show great restraint. Most of my pupils jump to use their new magic the second the ink is absorbed.”
He smirked. Glanced at the candle. Tightened his grip on it.
“If you would hold your hand outside,” Master Hill continued with an amused tilt to her mouth. “Ice to steam is one thing, but most solid matter becomes rather . . . animated when forced into a gaseous form. And we must always account for temperature.”
Bacchus nodded. Physics was one of the required courses aspectors of the physical discipline had to study. Leaning out the window, Bacchus outstretched his arm. He noted that Master Hill took several steps back.
Thought moved so much faster than speech. A person could think a hundred things in the time it took for him to utter a single word. With time, Bacchus would be able to think this spell even faster than he already did.
The candle exploded in his hands, sending a flash of searing heat through his hand and up his arm. Enough for him to yelp and drop the inch of wick still clasped in his fingers. He’d admittedly pictured the candle simply puffing away. Saying the magic was “animated” was a vast understatement.
He also understood why Master Hill had insisted he try out the ability on something so small. The candle’s scent lingered in the air as its molecules drifted away. Rose petals and lavender.
It smelled a little bit like Elsie.
Master Hill switched places with him and pulled the panes closed. “How does it feel?”
He flexed his hand. The burns weren’t severe, but would smart for the next hour or so. Could he perform the feat with gloves on, or would that serve only to vaporize his gloves? “Amazing. Thank you.”
“There is a ceremony, of course.” She stepped away from the window and the sounds of the city beyond it. “But you don’t seem one for pomp and circumstance.”
“I am not.”
She cupped his larger hands in her pale, small ones. “I admonish you, then, not to stop here. Continue achieving. Advancing. Fulfilling your potential, because I see a great deal of it in you. There are many in the world who will try to stifle it, because of jealousy or because they think it is not the way of things, but they are wrong. You and I are more similar than you might think, Bacchus Kelsey. And while it may not be your goal to join the Assembly of the London Physical Atheneum, you should always have a goal. Do you understand me?”
She had such a maternal look to her face, such insistence in her pale eyes. Bacchus wondered after her background. In England, as with most countries, only women of fine breeding had the opportunity to become aspectors. Women who already had a step up in life. He found himself very much wishing to know her story.
“I do. And I believe you have much more to teach me, magic aside.”
She smiled, patted his hands, then released him. “I do, if you’ll hear it. I’ll ring for tea.”
She moved to a bellpull on the wall. Bacchus crossed the parlor, looking over the simple but refined decorations on the mantel. A large mirror hung above it, allowing him only to see himself from the chest up. He’d wound his hair back tightly, and from the front, it almost looked like he wore it short, like Englishmen did.
Turning from the mirror, he strode toward the more comfortable furniture. Master Hill had set him up in a hard chair in the corner of the room for the spell. He found an upholstered chair beside a table that had three days’ worth of newspapers gathered in a stack, the newest at the top. A familiar word caught his eye, and Bacchus leaned forward to read the headline.
The Bandit Strikes Again! Workshop in Brookley Latest Target.
“This is why you don’t talk to the Wright sisters!” Elsie spat, throwing the day’s paper on the dining table. “Sixpence says they’re the ones who went squealing to the press.”
“Elsie.” Ogden’s voice was firm but tired. He leaned over his lunch of kidney pie, supporting his head with one fist.
Emmeline, a little taken aback, said, “Well, isn’t it exciting? To be in the paper? Our names are not mentioned, besides. You shouldn’t be so upset.”
Thank the Lord our names aren’t in it, Elsie thought as she dropped hard into a chair and jabbed a fork into her own slice of pie. Elsie was supposed to be invisible. Unextraordinary. Useful to the Cowls. She wouldn’t
stay invisible for long if people started taking an interest in her place of work.
“They embellished the lot of it,” she griped, shoving the pie into her mouth. The pastry was warm and flaky, and it dissipated some of her frustration. “They say just enough to stir the imagination, so people think it’s some grand tale. And neither the constable nor the truthseeker confirmed the attack was related to the opus-stealer’s crime spree!”
The reporters had made Ogden out to be some fascinating specimen on par with Viscount Byron and the baron. With their luck, people would start claiming his prices were too high, since he apparently had so much money to sit back on.
She glanced at Ogden, feeling a sudden stab of unease. What if she was wrong? What if it was more than she thought, and the would-be thief came back to finish what he’d started? The thought of losing Ogden was too much for Elsie. She would crumble to nothing were he ever taken from her. He was the closest thing to family she had.
Pulling away from the destructive thoughts, she added, “I’ll talk to the glazier and get the pane replaced as soon as possible. And the locks changed.”
“Thank you.” Ogden sipped a cup of tea. “I think that would be for the best.”
Elsie managed to be amiable for the duration of luncheon. In truth, Emmeline was hard to stay angry at—she was like the little sister Elsie never had. Or rather, the little sister Elsie could not quite remember. Her siblings were vague shadows on her memory; most of what she knew of them came from Agatha Hall, whose memory wasn’t terribly sharp, either. One would think a girl of six would remember her family and what they were called, but for some reason Elsie just . . . couldn’t. Something about that time, somewhere between waking up in the Halls’ home and sitting in a row of other children at the workhouse, was broken. Dark and dense and heavy in her mind. She did think she had a brother named John, or perhaps Jonathon. Of course, John Camden was such a common name she had never been able to find any leads. Sometimes Elsie wondered if her family was a fancy she’d invented out of loneliness and the Halls had merely played along until they tired of it.
Finished, Elsie helped Emmeline clear the table until a customer came. She spoke with him—yes, Ogden did do busts, and yes, he was the one from the paper—and organized a few things, placed Ogden’s work orders where he could see them, and set off for the glazier. It was a standard-sized pane the intruder had broken, so she didn’t need to deliver measurements. The glazier would come tomorrow morning to fix the window. And the blacksmith, who also knew locksmithing, would come by that evening to evaluate their security.
“Oh, Miss Camden!” crooned a canary-like voice as Elsie started back home. She knew the voice well; she’d eavesdropped on it many times when she didn’t have a novel reader to occupy her. Now, however, it made her cringe.
Alexandra Wright. And her sister, Rose, right behind her.
Elsie’s body tensed like her bones had turned to vises. She couldn’t recall a single time she’d heard either woman actually say her name, let alone speak to her. Elsie preferred to remain invisible, just as the Cowls did. And right now, she wished to be a cat that could turn tail and clamber up a drainpipe.
Unfortunately, magic did not work that way.
The sisters approached with suspiciously wide smiles and beady eyes. “We’re so dreadfully sorry for the break-in! How horrid! And so fortunate that no one was hurt.”
Elsie glanced down the road, toward the stonemasonry shop. “Not badly, at least,” she said.
“Emmeline was not specific at all, poor thing.” The two exchanged a look that was supposed to appear concerned, but their acting wasn’t up to snuff. “Surely the perpetrator didn’t go through your room as well? How frightening!”
Something hot boiled at the base of Elsie’s throat. “Yes, very. Too frightening to speak of. If you’ll excuse me.”
She pushed past the duo.
“Oh, but Miss Camden! We’re simply trying to console you as any loving neighbor should—”
Elsie kept walking, lengthening her strides until she practically ran. Perhaps it was rude, but she didn’t mind being rude to rude people. They’ll forget me and move on to someone else by next week.
She’d have to warn Emmeline to stay away from them.
Arriving home out of breath, Elsie barely had time to hang up her hat before Emmeline, sleeves rolled to her elbows, popped out of the kitchen and said, “Elsie, I’m to send you to the sitting room as soon as you’re home. We have a guest. He arrived not ten minutes ago!”
“Oh?” She touched the sides of her hair, smoothing down loose strands. “A customer?”
Emmeline shook her head, eyes wide. “He is quite the sight! Straight from the Americas, I’m sure!”
Elsie froze while her stomach slapped against the floor.
When she moved again, it was to bound up the stairs.
Her limbs buzzed with energy as she approached the door to the sitting room, which was slightly ajar. She quickly shook out her skirt and smoothed back her hair. The door hinges squeaked when she entered. Both men in the room looked over, though Bacchus had to turn around in his chair to do so.
A surge of excitement swept through her middle. Bacchus. Here. In her house. He looked so radically out of place Elsie wondered if she’d hit her head fleeing from the Wright sisters and this was the wishful creation of her unconscious mind. She was terrified and gleeful at the same time, similar to how she felt when reading the climax of a good book. Except this was much more visceral. This was real.
What are you doing here? she almost blurted, but the double time of her heartbeat created a blessed disconnect between her thoughts and her mouth.
“Elsie, your good friend Master Kelsey dropped by to see if we were all right,” Ogden explained. “That paper has certainly circulated the news quickly.”
Master. Had it happened already? Cold disappointment tempered the storm in her stomach. But—
He’d come to see if she was all right? Didn’t that mean he cared about her welfare? It wasn’t yet evening—how quickly had he ridden over after hearing the news?
Desperate for a moment to think, she stumbled, “Would you, uh, like some tea?”
“Emmeline’s taking care of it. Come, sit.” Ogden gestured to a chair. He didn’t appear angry, only puzzled. “Master Kelsey says you met in the market?”
Elsie’s gaze flitted like a fledgling sparrow from Bacchus to Ogden, to Bacchus, to the mantel, to Bacchus, and back to the chair he occupied. By the time she reached her own seat, she’d investigated everything in the room, and Master Kelsey a dozen times over. “Yes, when I went to get those paints.” Truth. Her mind spun through everything that was safe to share. She sat. Tried to read Bacchus’s expression, but he was so bloody good at hiding his thoughts all she got was stoic curiosity, if such a thing existed. “You’ve tested, then?”
“It was not so much a test as a formality of my acceptance, but yes.” His English accent was crisp, flawless. His green gaze swept over her quickly. Elsie checked her posture.
In reply she said, “We are generally unharmed, though as you can see, Mr. Ogden took the brunt of the attack.” Ogden’s eye was a nice mix of yellow, red, and violet, and it would only be darker tomorrow. Remembering herself, she added to Ogden, “The blacksmith will be here tonight, the glazier tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” he said.
Turning to Bacchus—it was unreal to have him sitting there, in their sitting room, looking so normal, so present—she asked, “How is the duke? Mr. Ogden, I don’t know if Mr.—Master—Kelsey told you, but he’s staying with the Duke of Kent. Apparently he was good friends with Bacchus’s late father.” She was talking too fast.
Master Kelsey. Master Kelsey. She certainly wouldn’t get used to that. And the more she dwelled on it, the smaller their sitting room seemed, the plainer her dress became, the simpler her life, her interests, and her employment. One word, one title, had done all that.
She hated it.
“He
did mention it, yes.”
Emmeline stepped in then, carrying the tea service. She set it down, but Bacchus politely declined, and Elsie waved her cup away, stomach too tight to accept so much as a sip. Ogden, however, took his, sugar and cream and all.
“The duke is unwell,” Bacchus finally answered as Emmeline departed, looking over her shoulder every fourth step. “I often forget how old he is, how mortal.”
“Oh no.” Elsie leaned forward. “Not terribly ill, is he?”
Bacchus shook his head. “A temporal aspector came by, but the duke is seventy already, so he could only do so much. The outlook is rather dim.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” Ogden set aside his tea. “I imagine you are close to him.”
“Will you stay?” Elsie asked. Then, realizing how pleading the words sounded, she added, “I-In Kent, I mean. For the duke’s convalescence.”
He nodded. “Of course. But I did not come to share my grievances, only to ensure you were dealing well with your own.”
Ogden replied, “Journalists will embellish any story to make it sell. It was a by-the-books failed robbery, I’d say.”
“I agree with you, about the journalists.” Bacchus folded his hands together. His sleeves seemed more fitted, as did the shoulders of his frock coat. Goodness, was it possible for the man to get even larger now that the siphoning spell wasn’t sucking his strength away? “But you are an aspector, and if your attack is related to the other crimes, it could be a serious matter.”
Ogden chuckled. “Then the culprit is indeed getting desperate.”
Bacchus seemed to consider this.
“And you?” Elsie tried, still struggling to discern his state of mind. “You’re well? Outside of the duke’s health?”
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