The sylph’s implication was all too clear to Aurelia. Grace Foster would do anything to keep her husband from knowing about her past indiscretions—would pay anything. Aurelia would probably never have to work another day in her life.
“Would you like to know the secrets of the city’s great men, the names and addresses of their mistresses?” the sylph whispered. “They would pay you, too. Oh, and they’d deserve it, every single one. Things will be like they used to be. You’ll be rich without having to go back begging for your inheritance.”
Try as she might, Aurelia couldn’t look away from the Elemental. How had she even managed to run away the first time? She couldn’t remember. Her mind swam, and she could feel it slipping.
“I can show you corrupt politicians and businessmen,” the sylph said. “They’d be all too happy to pay you to keep their secrets.”
“Secrets. Endless secrets. The city is lousy with them,” Millie had said.
Words formed on Aurelia’s lips. “If you know so much,” she said, “then tell me where my sister is.”
The sylph looked pleased. Its voice wound through Aurelia’s ears, echoing in her skull. “Your sister sleeps under the dirt in a potter’s field on Hart Island. She’s not alone, though. The grave is full of bodies, and she was six months quick with child when she drank her last drop of laudanum.”
Tears formed in Aurelia’s eyes. She clung to the pain in her chest, and used it to form a single word.“Stop.”
The sylph swirled in blessed silence around her. Across the room, Alice shifted in her mother’s arms, moaning through her unconsciousness.
Aurelia took a deep breath. “Stop,” she said again, in a much calmer voice. “Do you swear the Pact with me?”
In an instant, the sylph’s malevolence evaporated, and it retreated to fold its arms across its chest like a sullen child. “Your sister was more fun.”
“Do you swear it?” Aurelia asked again.
The sylph threw its head back and laughed—not the malevolent trill from before, but happy, clear laughter. It rushed forward and, surprisingly, kissed Aurelia’s forehead. The kiss felt like the caress of a fogbank. “What a merry chase you have given me! Yes, we will swear the Pact with you, and I shall haunt you no more. Farewell, Aurelia Weiss—until you summon me again.”
It turned and swooped away, flying into the hearth and up the chimney, stirring the coals to briefly blaze into life—then fade back down again.
• • •
Aurelia was folding a dress when she heard a knock at the door.
“Come in,” she said.
Grace Foster opened the door, took two steps in, and paused. “Packing?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Aurelia replied. She smoothed the dress and laid it down in her chest.
“You already have another position elsewhere?”
“No, but I don’t imagine you want me staying.” Not with what I know.
Grace twisted the ring on her finger. “Miss Weiss, you are the first person since . . . him . . . that I have been able to talk to about this.”
Aurelia sat on her bed. Normally she would have remained standing, but she was too weary to bother with formality at the moment.
“Robert and I were supposed to be married,” Grace went on. “When he died, and my parents learned I was early with child, they acted quickly and had me married to Ellis Foster.” She stood silently a moment, gazing into the distance. “And Ellis, bless him, never asked too many questions. My mother coached me, told him the baby was early, even though she weighed a full eight pounds and popped out fat as a Christmas goose.”
“It’s my experience that men don’t want to know about how the babies come about,” Aurelia said. “They just like the part at the beginning.”
Grace laughed. “Too true,” she said, pulling up the only chair in the room and plunking down in it. “She has her father’s eyes. We told Ellis she inherited them from my long-passed grandfather.” She smiled and shook her head. “I didn’t think she’d also have Robert’s . . . talents.”
“Mrs. Foster, you should know that I don’t care,” Aurelia blurted. Grace raised a brow at her, and Aurelia quickly said, “I mean, I don’t care in the sense that I won’t use it against you. All I care about is that Alice is healthy and . . . aware of her talents.”
“But not her heritage,” Grace said. “Not yet, at least. Ellis is a good man. I have grown to love him, even if I will never be in love with him like I was with Robert. But I don’t know how he would cope with finding out his darling daughter is not his, and his wife came to him as sullied merchandise.”
Aurelia nodded. “Did Robert ask the Elementals to reveal themselves to you?”
Grace made a soft noise. “Is that what he did? All I know is that after he learned I was with child, I began to see them. I never understood why. Honestly, I was happier when I was—er—blind. I certainly can’t control them like you.”
I couldn’t, either, until a few hours ago, Aurelia thought, and then wondered if Robert had had a premonition of his fate. And how he’d done what he’d done. She’d only heard one story of a nonmagical person seeing the Elementals, and that had involved one of the old British Isles spirits.
Grace twisted her rings. “I know dosing Alice with that horrible stuff isn’t the best way to make those—things—go away.”
“If you let the salamanders come to her,” Aurelia said, “they can heal her.” Grace’s eyes widened. “She wouldn’t be as sickly. She could easily quit that dreadful syrup with their help.”
“Would they hurt her?”
Aurelia shook her head. “No.”
“I don’t know these things, Miss Weiss. I see a fiery lizard, and all I can think is that my daughter needs to be protected from it. Not invite it into her bedroom!”
Aurelia chuckled. “Well, I can tell you now that you can’t run away from them. I’ve been trying for years. What your daughter needs is a teacher.”
Grace regarded her. “She needs a governess, too.”
Then she smiled, and Aurelia found herself smiling back. “Well,” she said. “I guess I should unpack.”
• • •
“Miss Weiss!” Alice said excitedly, pointing to the enormous contraption. “We must ride it!”
The Columbian Exposition had opened with much fanfare, but for all the amazing architecture and exotic goings-on, the thing that had most captured Aurelia’s attention had been a giant steel monstrosity towering over two hundred feet in the sky.
She wasn’t the only one. Alice wanted to climb into one of the great cars: at least a dozen sylphs and zephyrs danced excitedly around the Wheel, unseen by the throng of Exposition attendees.
In fact, now that she allowed herself to summon them, Aurelia realized that between the skyscrapers and the wind coming off Lake Michigan, Chicago had much for the Elementals of Air to love. The wide use of electricity at the Exhibition also seemed to entertain them. The Ferris Wheel made them positively giddy.
She paid fifty cents each for Alice and herself, and they climbed into the car, taking seats on the far end. The sylphs swarmed as they lifted up, the car shuddering and swaying, the metal groaning. Aurelia smiled, and Alice, being a child, got to wave and giggle back at the Elementals without anyone looking at her sidelong.
Someday, she’ll need to go through her own test, Aurelia thought. And I’ll be here, Providence willing, to get her through it.
And maybe someday she’d leave and find another young girl who needed the instruction of an Elemental Master.
Maybe in ten years.
Maybe fifteen.
The choice was hers when to stay or go.
The car shuddered and rose to its apex. It wasn’t quite flight, but it would do. Aurelia closed her eyes and leaned into the wind.
Bone Dance
Rosemary Edghil
l
and Rebecca Fox
It was pouring rain when Captain Frederick Wentworth left the club. He’d planned to stay at least another hour, and he might have done, if the evening’s only annoyance had been George Cliburn holding forth yet again on the great triumphs of modern science.
Cliburn was a minor Water Magician and a moderately talented alchemist, but he fancied himself a Naturalist, and was prone to holding forth at considerable length—and long past the point when his audience had lost interest—on the writings of Huxley and Darwin and their colleagues, though of late he’d become rather obsessed with Robert Louis Stevenson’s lurid tale of Jekyll and Hyde.
But tonight Cliburn had left early, pleading personal business, and discussion had turned to the story buried in the back pages of the Police Gazette, a publication not normally welcome within the walls of the club—though somehow, Frederick thought, the copies I bring with me do not lack for readers.
“Come now, Frederick, you can’t possibly believe that penny dreadful rot is true,” Sir Henry said, taking a sip of his brandy. “If I believed everything I read, I’d be afraid to leave my house.”
“True or not, don’t you think it’s worth investigating something so . . . unusual?” Frederick asked.
Major-General the Earl of Chawleigh snorted. “If the Council stepped in every time a rabid dog bit some drunkard in Whitechapel, we’d have no time for dealing with real threats. I’ll bet you half a crown this ‘Wolf of Whitechapel’ business is nothing but gin and idleness. You know how those people are.”
There were nods of agreement around the room.
“Superstitious, the lot of them,” Sir Henry agreed. “Irish—and worse.”
“It killed a woman,” Frederick protested, more sharply than was really politic. “According to the report it gutted her and left . . . what was left . . . lying in the middle of the street.”
“People ought not let their boarhounds run loose,” Lord Chawleigh said firmly. “I’m sure it will find its way back to its kennel presently.”
“And what if it’s a real problem?” Frederick asked. “Our sort of problem?”
“Oh!” Lord Chawleigh said, as if something had suddenly occurred to him. He gazed around the room. “Captain Wentworth is afraid this Wolf of London is going to bite his Goose Girl!”
Frederick stormed out of the club with the sound of laughter at his back.
After a few blocks, his temper cooled enough for him to realize he’d left his umbrella behind. He was weighing the prospect of a sodden journey home against another encounter with Chawleigh’s cronies when the gnome dashed out of the alleyway just ahead. The Earth Elementals didn’t care for London—too many cobblestones and too few growing things—so the sight of one here brought him up short.
Squat and fat, with hair the color of moss, the gnome’s voice was the hiss of gravel sliding down a slope. “Come, Earth Master,” it said. “Something’s happened.”
• • •
Creatures with names didn’t belong in cages.
Bounce knew that the way he knew that barges brought rats. The way he knew the sun came up over the river every morning. The way he knew how to shake his prey by the neck until it died.
Bounce had a name. A real name. A name given by Smell-Gives-Bite when Bounce was just a pup.
The other creatures here had names, too.
“Percy,” said the Raven, “from the Ravenmaster.”
“Bright Eyes,” said the cat, “from Tinker Tom.”
“Jingo,” said the monkey. “I picked it myself.” Monkeys were impatient creatures. That was no surprise. They were the closest cousins to Man.
They were all here in the dark and the damp together. Bounce and Percy and Bright Eyes and Jingo.
And the bear.
Bounce was sure the bear had a name, too, but no one had asked. His very smell turned Bounce’s bowels to water and left him whimpering. If he’d been free, he’d have run from the bear as fast as he could. But none of them was free, so Bounce tried to ignore the bear as best he could. It was really the only thing he could do.
Bounce wasn’t sure how long he’d been here when Badstink Man brought the Girl. She was sleeping. Bounce didn’t think she was dead because she didn’t smell dead, and because Badstink Man threw her into another cage and locked the door before he clomped back up the stairs to wherever he went when he wasn’t here.
• • •
Frederick wasn’t really surprised when the gnome led him to Whitechapel, but he really wished the little Earth Elemental had waited until daybreak. After weaving a small glamour about himself, he offered up a silent prayer to remain unmolested. At least it was raining; even villains liked to stay out of the wet.
Frederick knew this area rather better than he liked. He’d been coming here for going on four years now, hunting what Sir Henry and Lord Chawleigh and the rest of that lot insisted was nothing but a phantom, a figment of his overheated imagination.
“You heard from a cart horse there’s another Animal Speaker in Whitechapel!” Henry had laughed, slapping his knee. “Next thing we know you’ll be getting the news from the pigeons instead of reading the Times!”
The men at the Club might poke fun, but Frederick knew someone had been Speaking with the animal denizens of Whitechapel for the last few years, and it certainly wasn’t him. He’d wondered from the beginning if it might not be Claire Prentiss’ daughter. A little girl, the animals said, who shared her food even if her own belly went empty.
“Here,” the gnome said, pointing down the alley.
There was a faint taste of Water Magic, like the last streamers of dawn fog, and a smell of sulfur. Over that, the feeling of something utterly Wrong. Twisted. Frederick shivered involuntarily. If he’d been a dog, his hackles would have gone up instantly.
“The Wolf?” he asked the gnome.
“Worse,” the gnome said in his loose-gravel voice. “The Poison Master took Her.”
Frederick didn’t know who the Poison Master was, but he didn’t have to ask whom the gnome meant. There was only one Her in Whitechapel the Earth allies would care about enough to bring word of to him. His Goose Girl.
“I am sorry, Earth Master,” the gnome said. “She did not want to be found before. But now she must be found.”
“Then take me to her!” Frederick whispered. His neck prickled with the sense of dark forces of the human sort—cutpurses and bully boys and hugger-mugger—lurking in the shadows, and his skin crawled with the Wrongness in the alley.
“I cannot,” the little Earth Elemental said apologetically. “The Poison Master hides behind his magics. But there is one here who might be able to find where he dens.” The gnome motioned to something lurking in a doorway, and Frederick tensed.
But what emerged from the shadows was a puppy of indeterminate color, all soaked, matted fur and heaving ribs. He limped along on three legs. One ear was chewed away, and the other lay flat against its skull in fear. It looked as if it might be a little terrier.
“Don’t hurt. Don’t hurt . . .” The mind-whisper was faint and desperate.
“I won’t hurt you,” Frederick said in a low voice, squatting down and holding very still. “Friend,” he Spoke in his mind.
Warily, the little dog slunk closer. Frederick carefully held out his hand. “I won’t hurt you,” he said again.
The puppy sniffed his fingers and whined. “Danger,” the puppy whispered. “Wrongthing. Took her away. Took her away.”
“Do you know where?” Frederick asked. His thighs were starting to ache from squatting, but he held himself still.
“Smell gone,” the puppy said, tucking his tail tightly between his legs. “Too much rain. Smell gone. The Girl gone.”
“Maybe you’ll be able to find the smell again when it’s not so wet,” Frederick said. “Will you let me help?”
I have to find her, Frederick thought desperately.
• • •
Bounce did not expect the Girl to talk. As a general rule, Men didn’t. They made plenty of noises with their mouths, but they didn’t have names, and they didn’t talk. So when the Girl asked Bounce where she was, he was shocked clear down to the tip of his stumpy little tail.
He wished he could tell her, but he didn’t remember how he’d come to be here in a cage in the dark. All he remembered was Badstink Man, and the others who had been here before Bounce came disappearing one by one. First all the mice, and then Long Toes the pigeon and her mate White Feather, and then the three-legged cat named Sharpteeth, and finally Black Joe, who had been a guard dog before he woke up in his little cage. Now Bounce and Percy and Bright Eyes and Jingo and the bear were the only ones left, and Badstink Man had stopped feeding them when he had taken Black Joe away.
He had no answers for the Girl, but he could ask her the one question that mattered: “What’s your name?”
“People call me Cinder,” the Girl said. “But it isn’t a real name.”
That was too bad, Bounce thought. People should have names.
• • •
Bertrand was at Frederick’s side with a large towel and a look of tolerant amusement not thirty seconds after the night footman ushered him through the front door of the Wentworth townhouse. Despite the opinions of certain visitors, Bertrand owed his uncanny ability to appear just when he was needed not to any Gift, but to whatever instinct it was with which God blessed superlative valets.
“Best I take care of that coat of yours at once,” Bertrand said, proffering the towel. “If you will forgive me for mentioning, it has a certain . . . air . . . about it, sir.”
“Wet dog,” Lady Mina pronounced, coming into the white-tiled foyer on the heels of the night footman, her maid behind her. “With a hint of open sewer.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. She was wrapped in a green silk dressing gown; clearly she had been preparing for bed when curiosity got the better of propriety.
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