Spellbreaker

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  But . . . he hadn’t selected a single page. Hadn’t said, Excitant, to activate the magic.

  He hadn’t used an opus page for this.

  I need to take care of Ogden! I must get in the boat—

  Which meant . . . he’d cast it himself.

  Another thread off, another. Her own thoughts battered against the false ones. Elsie’s knees wavered.

  “Come with me.” Sweat beaded across Ogden’s forehead.

  It all made sense.

  How scandalous that I’m out at the docks alone, at night! The spell pushed her away even as her employer beckoned to her.

  Alfred. She thought of Alfred, after seeing him with his new wife. Crying on her bed. Ogden had come in and . . . everything had felt okay. Like her sorrow had simply been whisked away.

  The police will know I’m involved. I should leave while I still can!

  But then, You’re interrupting Ogden’s holiday! He’ll sack you if you don’t leave!

  Wisps of memory surfaced between the claws of the spell. Offenses forgotten. Pain lessened. Anger subsided. Had he done all of that? Used magic to calm her each and every time?

  Time to—

  She pulled the last thread free, and the foreign thoughts dissipated. She gasped, collapsing to the dock. She’d been holding her breath.

  That had been a master spell.

  Ogden wasn’t a flimsy physical aspector. It had been a cover. He was a master rational aspector. Unregistered, just like she was.

  Ogden’s nails dug into a piling on the side of the dock. He seemed to be resisting her. Like she was a magnet pulling him close. His tremors had grown worse.

  “Ogden!” She ran toward him. “Stop!”

  “You . . . can’t . . . have her . . . ,” he groaned.

  His head flung up, but this time . . . this time she felt the rational spell coming. As if time had slowed. The rune was a fairy, unseen, but the pulse of its wing beats was unmistakable—

  Her fingers flew and picked it apart. The last knot came close enough to graze her forehead, whispering something she couldn’t understand before it died.

  Just like in the duke’s dining room, she’d dispensed with the spell before it could unfurl.

  Even Ogden looked surprised. Something she should use to her advantage—because if he got into that boat, Elsie wouldn’t be able to get him out.

  She dashed forward, lungs straining against her corset, and tackled him, her shoulder colliding with his chest. He was so much larger and thicker than herself, but she mustered enough power to knock him onto the dock and lift his foot from the boat. He tried to grapple her. She fought to pin him down, her ear pressed to the base of his open collar.

  That’s when she heard it. The slightest click, like a dying cicada. The sound was so faint she might not have noticed had it not contrasted against the silence of their struggle.

  A spell. A spiritual spell. And its placement . . .

  Just like Bacchus.

  Ogden shoved her off. She would have fallen into the river had two pilings not stopped her. She’d rolled through the spilled stack of opus spells, and many of them fell into the water, ruined.

  Ogden leapt to his feet. Started toward the boat. He shook like a man riding a bull. Like he was . . . resisting.

  She grabbed his shoulders; he collapsed to one knee. “It’s a pattern, Elsie,” he wheezed, eyes distant. “It’s always been there—”

  His lips smacked closed. Flinging her off, he strode for the boat, his limbs still shaking.

  Pattern?

  Pattern.

  By the grace of God, it all snapped into place. The familiarity in the runes she followed to get here. Their sporadic placement. She’d seen it before.

  In his paintings.

  In the tiles for the vicar.

  In the way he doodled on his knee at church.

  In the re-sorting of his shelves.

  In the scribbles on the papers in his desk drawer.

  They were all the same. They were a pattern. An eighteen-point pattern. An eighteen-point knot.

  He’d been trying to tell her. He’d been trying to tell her for years.

  He got one foot into the boat, then the other.

  Picking herself up, Elsie bolted after him and jumped. He broke her fall. He grunted when they landed, a bench digging into his back. His head struck a thwart, hard enough that his eyes rolled back.

  Grabbing the edges of his shirt, Elsie ripped them apart, popping buttons. The rune wasn’t readily apparent; it was so expertly placed . . . but she dug her fingers into the skin over his heart and sensed its song. It was wildly powerful—the strongest she’d ever encountered—but she knew the key. She knew the pattern.

  She ripped it apart so roughly her nails left red trails on his skin. She started in the upper left and ended near the center. The spell screamed as it puffed away. Ogden gasped like a man come back to life. He bucked, knocking her off, and sat up, his hair mussed and his eyes wild.

  Then they filled with tears.

  “Elsie,” he whispered. “Finally. You’ve saved me.”

  He collapsed into her lap and wept.

  CHAPTER 25

  Ogden was still incoherent when the police arrived. Elsie had managed to get him out of the boat, but he lay on the dock like a scared child, trembling.

  When Elsie saw the lights of the oncoming officers, she balled up the remaining spells and pushed them into the river, where they sank out of sight. All except one. She’d picked up enough Latin to understand its purpose. Its importance. This one she folded tightly and slipped into her bodice.

  “We were wrong,” she said after they swarmed her. “He was just a pawn. Abel Nash used him as a scapegoat.”

  The words made her think of the American in Juniper Down. He had been right. She had been used as a pawn, too.

  But whose? And how had the American known? Who was he?

  The police questioned her. She asked after Bacchus and, seeing their confused looks, told them where to find him and to please hurry. She ached to lead them there herself, but Ogden . . . She couldn’t leave him, not like this. Relief that he was not entirely the villain she’d feared him to be warred with the anxiety about what all this might mean. She gave vague, tired answers to the policemen’s questions. Then she demanded Ogden be taken to a hospital.

  Before they left, Ogden whispered, “I’ll take care of the truthseeker.”

  The words echoed in her ears. But of course—a master rational aspector could easily make a truthseeker believe he’d already performed his interrogation. He could make him believe anything. That must have been part of the plan when the burglar—Nash?—broke into their home. The attack must have been an attempt to allay suspicion, engineered by the spellmaker who had controlled Ogden.

  Elsie stayed with Ogden at the hospital. Waited in the corner as the same truthseeker from before entered, got a blank look on his face, and left. He told the officers Ogden was innocent—that he’d run only because he was scared. Nash had worked alone. The events of the night were just as confusing to Miss Camden as they’d been to everyone else.

  That much was true.

  Elsie wasn’t sure what to believe.

  Fatigue dragged on Bacchus like wet clothes, but he trudged through the small hospital regardless, following the directions the attendant had given him. The melody of an old parlor song his nursemaid used to sing played in the back of his thoughts. The burn on his leg from his fight with Abel Nash was a dull ache, and he still picked bits of rock and sediment from his hair. The police had taken pickaxes to his prison while they waited for a spellbreaker to arrive. It would have been a quicker job had Bacchus told them where to dig to get to the rune. But then he’d have to explain how he knew, and that wasn’t possible. Not if he wanted to keep Elsie safe.

  Bacchus Kelsey very much wanted to keep her safe.

  He found the room. The door was cracked an inch. Knowing Elsie’s preference for privacy, he wondered if the doctor had re
cently been in and failed to close the door after him. Mr. Cuthbert Ogden lay on a narrow bed in the center of the small room, sleeping, looking as though he’d aged ten years. Elsie sat in a chair next to him, elbows on her knees. Her hair was unkempt from the horse ride and the fight. The police had given Bacchus an overview of what had happened, though he’d rather hear Elsie’s account. He suspected there was much the police didn’t know.

  He realized he hadn’t been as quiet as he’d thought when Elsie started and turned around. As he pushed open the door and stepped out of the shadows, she jumped to her feet, wavering a little—she must have been exhausted. She rushed to him, and Bacchus readied for an embrace, but she pulled up short at the last moment, looking unsure. Instead she clutched his forearms.

  “I’m so glad you’re all right,” she whispered, glancing back to Mr. Ogden.

  Turning his arm around so he could take Elsie’s hand, Bacchus asked, “And you? Are you hurt?”

  Shaking her head, Elsie stifled a yawn. “No. Nothing rest won’t cure.”

  “Then you should rest. I’ll watch him.”

  A tired half smile tugged at her lips. “No. I need to stay. I need to be here when he wakes up. The travel, the fight . . .” Pulling from him, she moved to shut the door, then crossed to the far side of the room, by the window, gesturing for Bacchus to follow. When they were significantly out of earshot of any passersby, she whispered, “He was just like you, Bacchus. Had a spell I couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear. I don’t know for how long . . . I didn’t think a spell could be placed so secretly. They must have made him use his magic to steer me away.”

  Confusion niggled at him. “His magic?”

  She chewed her lip a moment. Glanced out the window. “He’s a master rational aspector, Bacchus. Has been this entire time. Unregistered, like me.”

  The confession drove back some of his fatigue. “You’re sure?”

  She nodded. Touched her bodice, then dropped her hand. “I’m sure.”

  Bacchus looked to the unconscious man on the bed. He never would have guessed. Rational aspectors . . . they were closely monitored, more so than any other alignment, because of the types of spells they could enact. Were Elsie to be discovered, she might luck out with imprisonment. But Mr. Ogden would be executed immediately.

  “You have my word that I’ll not share it,” he murmured.

  “I know you won’t.” She smiled softly, and Bacchus’s chest tightened. For her to trust him so readily, after the way their relationship had started . . . it was significant.

  Reining in his thoughts, he asked, “Who placed it? What spell?”

  “A spiritual spell. One that controlled him.” She shifted closer, warmth buzzing between them. “It’s the most masterful spell I’ve ever encountered. Even more so than the siphoning one. I never would have untied it in time had he not whacked his head and given me clues.”

  “Clues?”

  She waved the question away. Another time, then. “I don’t know who placed it. We won’t know until the true culprit behind the opus crimes is caught. He was so confused, Bacchus.”

  She picked at the seam of her sleeve. Bacchus took her hand once more.

  “Do not blame yourself for your involvement,” he whispered. As soon as he spoke the words, she glanced away. He squeezed her hand. “You have a strong sense of justice, Elsie. You genuinely thought you were doing good. Had you suspected otherwise, you never would have helped . . . What did you call them?”

  “The Cowls. I thought they were . . .” Her voice shrunk. She swallowed. “They used my sense of justice against me. If they hadn’t made me feel like I was doing something important, I might have been too scared to break the law.”

  Raising his free hand, he put the knuckle of his first finger under Elsie’s chin and lifted her face so she’d look at him. “Do not disparage yourself for having courage.”

  She looked away, then back. She was so close. If he wanted to, he could lean in and—

  He pulled his hand away. “What can I do?”

  She took a moment to think. Glanced at their linked hands. “I know you’re exhausted, Bacchus, but—”

  “Name it.”

  “Just stay, until he wakes.” She squeezed his hand back. “Just . . . stay.”

  Ogden was released the next morning. Bacchus used his own funds to hire the carriage back to Brookley. Their parting had been so bleary, so sleep deprived, that Elsie could barely remember it. But it had gone . . . well. She would be content if not for the myriad questions still plaguing her. How would they explain this to Emmeline? She and Ogden would have to work on their story together.

  After she got answers.

  Elsie waited only long enough for the horses to pull forward before she said, “I need to know what that spell was.”

  Ogden, who looked haggard, rested his head in his hands. “A spiritual spell. I don’t know how it works. You would think mind control would be rational, but this was more than that. It went deeper.”

  “Who was controlling you?” Elsie ignored a bump in the road that jarred the carriage.

  His hands looked limp between his knees. “I don’t remember. He didn’t want to be known. But it’s been . . . a decade, Elsie. I can’t remember exactly . . . The aspector didn’t want me to know. It’s mud. But.” He hesitated and looked at her.

  Her heart cracked down the middle. “But it must have happened when I entered your life.”

  The American’s words whispered inside her head, You’re a pawn.

  He nodded, looking sick. “Elsie, the spell was there, but he couldn’t control every aspect of my life. He couldn’t control my thoughts. I think of you as a daughter. I . . .” He swallowed, and Elsie pinched herself so she could focus on a physical pain rather than the anguish blooming inside her. “I was hiring. He must have noticed me after I took you on . . . then realized what I was.”

  “A rational aspector,” Elsie said, then cleared the forming lump from her throat. “A master rational aspector.”

  He nodded. “I was very careful with my spells. I made you think the drops only glowed faintly. I miswrote the spells on my arm so I wouldn’t absorb them.”

  “Your physical spells—”

  “Those were real.” He rubbed his hands together. “I learned those before ever meeting you, for my art. I made sure you saw only those. I did what I had to, what he wanted me to, to keep you from figuring it out.”

  She shook her head. Why control Ogden and not her? Then again, the Cowls had come into her life when she was a child . . . They’d been her savior, her religion. One didn’t need a spell to sway the heart of a desperate little girl.

  A chill bloomed between her shoulder blades and coursed down her limbs. She was the one who’d fled to the stonemasonry shop from Squire Hughes’s household. She had led the Cowls right to Ogden. They had learned his secret, and made him a prisoner.

  Had Elsie stayed put, he would never have been their victim.

  Oh, if only the carriage would swallow her whole. She pressed her hand to her chest, as though she could force her heart to stay in one piece by the pressure of her palm. A decade. A decade of having his will usurped by another, all because Elsie hadn’t wanted to scrub dishes for a pompous nobleman.

  Put it away. She tried to bury the realization deep. She needed to get all the pieces in place before she let them fall apart. Put it away, for now. But God help her, the anger hurt.

  “Why did you not register?” Her voice was a harsh whisper, despite there being no way their driver could overhear. She needed to push on, to save her despairing realizations for another time. “Why have you pretended to be what you are all this time?”

  He shook his head and leaned back in his seat. Stared at the crack of window between the door and the curtain.

  “Ogden, I deserve to know.”

  “You do.” His fingers dug into his knees. “I’m a liberal thinker, Elsie. Always have been. I used to be on the parish council, even.”

 
She nodded, recalling that bit of history. She focused on it, to keep herself from darker thoughts.

  “Did you know all registered aspectors, spellbreakers included, must report to the queen whenever summoned? To work on whatever she needs? To go to war if she demands it? The idea that I could sway a political ratbag with the power of my mind, without him ever realizing it, was intoxicating. At one point, I believed I could sway all of them to create just laws, my laws, and never get caught. And then, the idea that I could convince someone to love me . . .” His voice choked, and his hand went to his neck as though he could fix it.

  Elsie pressed her lips together, her own throat tight. The folded opus page beneath her bodice poked her collarbone.

  A full minute passed again before he continued, “You might have noticed. I don’t love the sort of people I’m supposed to. When I started on this venture, I was young and foolish. I didn’t respect the will of others. But don’t worry. Life has a way of teaching us wisdom, when we’re ready for it. I didn’t get into too much trouble.”

  Elsie leaned forward and touched the hand still on his knee. “I don’t blame you.” She understood the desire to feel wanted, needed.

  Ogden sighed.

  “I never detected it before,” she said.

  He lowered his other hand from his neck to his heart. “You rarely got close enough. Even I knew it was well hidden. And when he was watching . . . I could make you not see it. Do it quick enough that you wouldn’t sense the spell.”

  Hadn’t she suspected as much? With his ability, he could turn her mind away from its presence, pluck the memory right from her brain. How often had that happened? Had she connected her work for the Cowls to the opus crimes before, only to have that knowledge washed away? How many times had she heard the song of the spiritual spell on Ogden’s person, only to forget its tune completely?

  “Then how do I remember now?” She couldn’t face the other questions yet. “How did I get it off you?”

  Ogden shook his head. “He was worried. Stressed. Elsie, I was fighting him as hard as I could.”