by Monica Sanz
A moment passed.
Nothing.
The heaviness in her chest vanished, leaving a painful void. “Serves you right for getting your hopes up,” she whispered to herself. A hot tear spilled through her lashes and trickled down her cheek. “What did you think to find?”
Voices echoed far away—faint sighs that reached her as unintelligible murmurs. Throat dry, she pressed back against the wall, fear welding her eyes shut. The temperature in the room plummeted, and awareness pricked the back of her neck.
The second sight.
All seventhborns were not only burdened with a cursed birthright but with the dreaded second sight once they came into their full powers. While some were rumored to have premonitions of death, others even able to see glimpses of the dead, Sera had manifested neither. Now it all made sense why. This ability had been bound and locked away with her many, many other secrets. And now it was unbound.
A wheezing breeze whispered past and rustled her hair against her cheek. A tart, sickly sweet scent filled her nose and squeezed bile into her mouth. Sera hugged herself, arms pressed tight against her body. She knew exactly what it was that burned before her and willed herself to be brave. She had to open her eyes. Whatever it was, it couldn’t hurt her. Ghosts could cause no physical harm.
She clutched her wand tight. One…two…three.
Her eyes snapped open. A broken breath left her. Another one didn’t come. There was no one in her room, material or immaterial. Instead, a white fog, similar to that which hovered over the corpses’ mouths, curled out from the impressions on the table in the middle of the room. The pungent smoke spilled over the edge of the table in continuous waves that now blanketed the floor.
The twirls of white slithered toward her, ghostly fingers preceded by a thin sheet of rime. The ice crackled and splintered like breaking bones as it approached her. Whereas once she would have run or blasted the impressions into a pile of ash, she slid against the wall and held herself still as the smoke wound about her feet. The mist, cool and damp against her skin, shackled her leg now covered in gooseflesh. It rippled then, much like a taut string being pulled from within the impression. Understanding the ghostly summons, Sera abandoned the wall and followed the mist to its origin. Heaven help her if it was the wrong choice, but there was only one way to find out.
With each step closer, the room grew colder and the scent of scorched flesh intensified, as the whispers became clearer. Face contorted from the horrible smell, she cupped a hand over her mouth and nose and turned her ear. The myriad of voices were different, yet all were feminine and urgent and scared. Some shouted no, please don’t make me. Others cried, don’t do this. Most disturbing, beneath their cries, a collective of voices whispered the same thing: puppet.
She stopped a few inches away from the table and peered over the pictures. The smoke spilled out from each impression and into the room like fog rolling in through an open window. Her eyes narrowed. Through the thinning smoke, she noticed the scenes in the pictures were still the same, but unlike before, the impressions were now riddled with ciphers. She lowered her face to the pictures slowly, her breathing suspended in fear that one breath would blow the circular symbols away. The markings were everywhere, scattered over the dead bodies and on the ground.
Rubbing her fingers together, she reached out to shift aside a photo that partly shielded another.
A hand burst out from somewhere in the smoke and clamped down on her wrist. “Puppet!”
Sera screamed and yanked her hand free. The force sent her backward and, tangled in her nightdress, she tripped and slammed to the floor. Sharp pain pulsed at the back of her head that she hit on the leg of her bed. In spite of the ache, she scurried to retrieve her wand and clambered to her feet.
The fog was gone. So were the voices, the scent, and the cold. Around her, the floor was dry in spite of the frost that had covered it moments ago. Her wand trembling in her hand, she approached the impressions once more. The scenes within them remained immobile, from the bodies to the smoke, and the symbols were gone. She shoved one picture aside with her wand and shifted back.
Nothing.
She spun and eyed the spaces around her, from the shadows in the corners to those underneath the bed. Satisfied that the nightmare was over, she crashed down onto the chair by her reading desk, deflated. She searched for answers in her mind—things she had read, stories told to her by others—and nothing could explain the living nightmare she’d just experienced. She had not seen any ghosts; at least the hand that gripped her had not been cold nor pale, no.
Remembering it, she reached blindly for a paper and quill pen, sure to keep the image fixed in her mind. The hand had been thick and masculine. She shivered. No, that had been no ghost. None of the voices that chanted had been masculine.
She paused. And what of those voices? She jotted down Puppet and a question mark. What could they have possibly meant? She proceeded to write the ciphers from memory. It was a spell. Of that she was sure, but what kind of spell?
Breathless at the questions that seemed only to multiply, Sera wrote them all down quickly, her handwriting perhaps as bad as Barrington’s. Was this what he expected her to see? How could he have known she would see it—the smoke, the hand, the symbols? Perhaps it was another test…but if so, why could she see the symbols now but hadn’t been able to see them before? Why had her second sight been bound?
Pen tapping against the sheet, she shook her head. Questioning herself would not bring about anything but more questions. If she wanted answers, she would have to see Barrington, regardless of proprieties and the time.
She dressed quickly, gathered up the impressions, and hurried to the corner of the room. Chalk in hand, she lifted the rug and quickly drew out the transfer spell minus the time-altering symbol. With the impressions held tight at her chest, she hauled in a breath and aimed her wand.
“Ignite.”
7
anchors
The heels of her boots thudded on a wooden floor. Sera stumbled forward and gripped the mahogany fireplace mantel to keep from falling. She lifted her eyes, and a frown found her mouth instantly at the picture of the twin boys just above the ledge. A thin rectangular gold plaque marked the bottom of the frame, one she had missed her previous time there.
Nikolai and Filip Barrington.
Abandoning the painting, she spun to the empty room. A part of her wished Rosie would happen to come in, or better yet, Barrington himself. Though missing from the room, his aura remained in the space, a brooding yet intelligent air that seemed to linger from his things, from the books stacked on his desk to his professorial robes hung on the coat-tree at the corner of the room. Clutching hard at the impressions, Sera strode to the door. His books and robes were not the ones solving murders. She needed to find the man.
She traveled down the hall, past numerous closed doors. He could be in any of those rooms, if he was even on this floor. If he was even home! She bit her lip. Had she overstepped her boundaries in coming unannounced on a weekend? What if he sent her away, not even bothering to transfer her back to the school? She didn’t need impeccable manners to know it improper to seek him out in his home.
But he had said a witch could die in the time it took her to find what was in the pictures. Her hand tight on the photographs, she hurried to the training room. Upon not finding him there, she rounded back to the staircase and descended.
“Damn,” she muttered, reaching the ground floor. The grand stairs led down to a large parlor dominated by a round table in the middle with a vase of white flowers on top. Through an archway before her was the entrance hall. There was a closed door to her left, and to the right, an empty dining room. Two hallways stretched beyond either side of the grand staircase.
She spun in a circle and crossed her arms over her chest, mulish. “What now?”
A yelp resounded. “Miss Dovetail!”
Sera spun to Rosie, who clutched a silver tray tightly, her pallor as white as her ha
ir. “Oh, forgive me, Rosie. It seems I’m always frightening you with unannounced arrivals, but I swear I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important. Is the professor in?”
Rosie’s brows rose. She gazed down to the bottle of sherry and two tumblers beside it, and a hint of panic flashed over her eyes. “I…the Master…well, yes, but…”
The doors to the adjacent room swung open, and both women jumped. Barrington made to step out, but upon seeing Sera, he stopped short, his eyes fixed on hers unblinking. “Miss Dovetail?”
“Professor, I…” she began, but trailed off, noting his cravat was undone, shirt partly untucked, and hair tousled—more than usual. Her eyes narrowed. And was that lip rouge on his neck and collar?
Someone giggled from inside. “Dovetail? What sort of a name is Dovetail? I thought your maid’s name was Rosie.” A brunette head came into view from behind the sofa, but Barrington closed the door quickly before Sera could see the woman’s face.
He cast a glance at the grandfather clock beside the entrance hall doorway. “It’s past midnight, Miss Dovetail.”
Sera’s face burned at the gentle scolding, yet a scolding nonetheless. “Yes, I know, Professor. I wouldn’t have come, but I…” The events of the night washed over her. Unable to sort through and make sense of all that had happened, she held out the stack of impressions and her notes. “Here.”
Barrington took in the slight shake of her hands. “You saw,” he said, his irritation washed over by his interest.
The door opened behind him before she could answer. She drew back the impressions as a woman strutted across the threshold. Dressed in a purple gown that did little to hide her breasts, the woman draped herself against the doorway like a lover, her brown hair disheveled. Red and black eye paint made her wide brown eyes wider, and her swollen lips were smeared in red rouge. Sera’s cheeks warmed, her suspicions confirmed.
The woman glanced at Rosie’s tray. “Is this the sherry you promised me, Barry?”
Sera raised a brow. Barry?
“Barrington,” he said pointedly, then snatched the bottle from Rosie’s tray and shoved it into the woman’s arms and breasts. “Thank you for your help, Gummy. I’ll look into…matters and report back.”
Her red-stained lips bowed to a pout. “You mean the party’s over?”
Barrington sighed. “Rosie, can you escort Miss Mills out, please?”
Gummy gasped. “Miss Mills? Why, you haven’t called me that in ages, since before we—”
“Please, Gummy.” He went to straighten his cravat, but seeing as it was undone, he merely smoothed it down and adjusted his waistcoat. “I’ve work to do.”
She scoffed. “Work, I’m sure.” Lips pursed, she eyed Sera from under painted brows. Sera eyed her the same, cleared her throat, and looked away.
Gummy chuckled. “What’s the matter, young ’un? Never seen breasts before?”
Beside her, Rosie flushed and stuttered unintelligible words, then set the tray down on the round hall table with a loud tap. “Heavens be, Miss Mills. This way, please.”
The woman gritted her teeth. Chin high and dress dragging behind her, she followed Rosie through a doorway, the bottle of sherry in her arms like a babe.
Barrington cleared his throat and drew back Sera’s attention. He stepped aside and motioned for her to enter. “I take it the answer to my question is yes for you to come by so unexpectedly. I didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow.”
Sera blew out a breath and strode into the parlor. “Yes, well, you’re not the only one not expecting to see certain…things.”
He shut the door and said just as sharply, “Miss Dovetail, may I remind you, I am your superior, and what I wish to do on my own time in my home—”
She held up the photographs. “I meant these,” she lied. She set the impressions on the round drawing room table and her page of notes beside them. “There were ciphers everywhere, but I can’t interpret them.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Barrington murmured, perusing her notes. “Advanced cipher translations are years into Wood-level studies.”
He picked up one of the impressions. Sera spun away, not yet wanting to look at them again. She paused, caught by her reflection in the quatrefoil mirror over the crowded mantel. If her arrival hadn’t frightened Rosie, she was sure her appearance would have. The events of the night were imprinted on her; her usually fair skin was even paler and her brown eyes wide. The messy braid she’d managed with shaky hands had slipped, and now her hair tumbled wild over her shoulders. The firelight cast shadows on her face, and in the amber light, she looked haunted, scared, fallen. Had she still been in her white nightdress, she would have mistaken herself for a ghost.
“You can see it, then.” Barrington rubbed his lips, a strange sort of smile marking his mouth behind his fingers. “Fantastic.”
“It took me some time, but yes. Why did you need me to see them if any other seventhborn could have—”
“Did you tell anyone? Does anyone know you’ve developed the sight?” he asked from over the photos. “Anyone at the Academy? A friend, a teacher, anyone at all?”
“So that the Aetherium could swoop in and suggest I join their seers? Once a seer, always a seer, and never an inspector.” Part of why she’d been happy not to develop the sight was not being recruited by the Aetherium as a seer the way other Academy seventhborns had been, forced to examine crime scenes for spells by criminals but never allowed to investigate the actual crime. To have her dream stolen away? Never. “No, Professor. No one knows. It happened just before I came here. I—”
Before she could dive into her list of questions, Barrington swept up the pictures and her notes and exited the room like a man being chased. She took off behind him, up the stairs, and into a workroom beside his study. He tossed the impressions onto a long table and strode to a bookshelf, one of many in the room. The rest of the shelves were dominated by vials and instruments. A telescope was before the window in the back of the room where there were two doors on either side of the chamber, one black and one wooden.
Barrington hovered before the bookshelf, fingers drumming at his lips. “Ah, here we are.” He drew out a black tome squeezed onto the shelf and tossed it down on the table. Sera neared the workbench, sat at one of the stools, and watched him flip through the yellowed pages. Upon reading the title, she flinched.
“Necromancy?” She thought over the photos, the burned bodies next to exhumed graves, and the residing corpses. It made sense, but goodness, of all forbidden magic…
“Yes. I imagined that to be the case but couldn’t be sure—not without the full investigative notes anyway. Sadly, a friend was able to get a hold of only the impressions and a handful of reports for me, but they had nothing of importance.”
Sera’s eyes widened. “You mean these are stolen?”
He shrugged off her alarm while comparing her notes to the book. “I rather prefer borrowed from the Aetherium, and when I no longer need them, I will have my friend return them.”
Sera pinched the bridge of her nose. It was bad enough to be found dealing with anything necromancy related, but to be in possession of items stolen from the Aetherium? She sank into herself, feeling sick.
Barrington set down his pen and sat back. Small lines formed at his brow. “Well, aside from confirming the victims to be female, Aetherium inspectors also believed it to be a series of necromantic rituals gone wrong. Once a necromantic ritual has started, it must be finished. You can’t partly open a connection to the Underworld. They assumed these women started the ritual without proper training, then realized they were out of their depths but couldn’t turn back.” He shut the book heavily. “But the cyphers here are a blend of magic, white and black, and older runes coupled with newer ones. This spell was crafted by a knowledgeable magician. It will take me some time to decipher the runes and test the various combinations to uncover the spell and its purpose. Did you see anything else that could help us?”
Memory of th
e hand that gripped her flushed ice through her veins, and she rubbed her wrist. After a moment, she lifted her eyes from the ciphers in the book and realized she hadn’t answered him. But she didn’t need to. Barrington set down his glasses, clearly gaining his answer from her silence.
He leaned forward, hands clasped on the table. “We are bound under the same oath, Miss Dovetail. While our arrangement is a secret, there can be no secrets between us. What did you see?”
She stood and paced the room. “It wasn’t what I saw, but what I heard. Voices echoed in the smoke, girls—or women—feminine voices. They were sobbing and scared, and all repeated the same word: puppet.” She stopped at the head of the table, goose bumps sprouted along her arms. “I believe I heard the girls in the impressions, which is why I think the Aetherium is wrong. They all screamed no, please, don’t make us…as if they were being forced. And then there was a hand…”
Gazing at her wrist, she shivered at the memory of the phantom grip. “When I touched the photograph, the hand reached out and grabbed me. It was only for a second, and I know it’s impossible for ghosts to physically touch those of the living realm, which is why I know it wasn’t a ghost…rather a memory, only it wasn’t mine.” She turned to him, but he stared down at the table, troubled. “I know you must think I’m mad, and I admit I would think the same, but I felt it. The hand was warm and masculine.”
Barrington’s gaze grew distant. “Interesting.”
“What does it all mean?”
He rose. “It means that in hoping to solve one mystery, I’ve stumbled upon another: you,” he clarified. “What you accomplished—a summoning—is something done years into Aetherium studies, yet you managed to do it on your first try, with various spirits at once.” A small smile curved his lips. “A mystery, indeed.”
“But I didn’t try. It just happened.” She shook her head. “Did it say anything about a summoning in the investigative notes you stole—”
“Borrowed.”
