She glanced at his hands. What kind of criminals did he enchant? Did he have . . . other methods of seeking truth?
She swallowed.
“No need to be nervous, Miss Pratt. It’s merely procedure.” He shut the door behind him. It struck Elsie as somewhat funny that she was alone in the room with a man and it wasn’t considered improper, but the absurdity of the situation didn’t cheer her up.
“I’m Miss Camden.” She hated how timid she sounded.
“My apologies.” He stepped close to her, and despite her best efforts, Elsie tensed. What would he ask her? What are your secrets? What are you hiding? Is there any reason you should be incarcerated? “And my condolences. We’ll get this taken care of quickly.”
She nodded stiffly. Without further ado, the truthseeker placed his palm against her forehead. Did he feel how clammy it was? What if the spell didn’t take because of what she was? What if she was found out—
She felt the spell as it formed, like grains of sand dusting her skin. It rang like her ears sometimes did as it knotted together, heavy on her skin.
It dug into her soul.
She cringed.
“What is your name?” the truthseeker asked, pulling a pencil and pad of paper from a carryall.
“Elsie Camden.”
“Your age?”
“One and twenty.” She tried to think something else, like twenty-three, but found her thoughts blanked when she did.
She did not like this. Hurry up so you can take it off!
“Tell me the events that happened tonight.”
“I went to bed at ten—” Her tongue twisted, cutting off her words. “Perhaps later? Eleven?”
That spilled out just fine. Apparently the truthseeker could catch lies she wasn’t even purposefully making. How was she supposed to remember precisely when she’d gone to bed?
The aspector simply nodded.
“And I slept until I heard a clamor. I thought it was part of a dream.” She hadn’t meant to say that last part. She’d felt . . . compelled to. “I lit a candle and chased after the sound, and I found Ogden on the floor. A shadow vanished through the window. I told Emmeline to get Mr. Morgan, our neighbor, for help.”
The man nodded, focused on his notes, not on her. “And what did the culprit look like?”
“A shadow,” she repeated. “I saw nothing more. Not even where he went.”
“Or how he got down?”
She shook her head. The man didn’t seem to notice, so she said, “I suppose he jumped. He shattered a windowpane.”
“For what means does Cuthbert Ogden use his aspection?”
The questioning had taken a jarring turn, and it took her a moment to answer. “For his art. He knows very little. He changes the color of things. Softens stones. He can change the opacity of an object. That’s all I’ve seen him do.”
“He knows no other spells?”
“He struggles to learn them. Just a few weeks ago, he floundered with an intermediate spell.”
The man hummed to himself and scribbled on his pad. “Thank you, Miss Camden. I think that will be all.”
Relief fountained up like it had been pumped by the queen herself.
He moved into the hallway. Gestured with a hand. A young man—he was barely eighteen, if that—strode into her room with mussed hair and an unhappy countenance. A lad grumpy from being woken in the middle of the night. Without any semblance of manners, he grabbed Elsie’s head and wiggled his fingers across it.
The spell vanished.
Elsie took in a deep breath. Stared at the man as he stalked back out of the room. A spellbreaker. She’d never met another one before, not that she was aware. Questions bloomed up her neck and gathered on her tongue. So much she wanted to ask him! Were their methods the same? When had he realized what he was? What sort of training had he received? What work did he do? How much was he paid?
But the young man turned the corner, out of sight. Of course, Elsie couldn’t have risked asking the questions even if he had stayed.
She waited for a long moment, listening to the voices coming from Emmeline’s room. Seeing no harm in it, she rose and tiptoed to Ogden’s room. He had a salve smeared on his eye, a small bandage across his brow. The doctor must have come.
He offered her a weak smile. She sat with him until the constable returned and the truthseeker and his entourage descended the stairs to return to London.
“A few more questions for you, Mr. Ogden,” Constable Wilson said.
Ogden sighed. “I don’t know what more you can get out of me, but go on.”
Elsie patted his shoulder and left, seeking to console Emmeline—and to find out if the truthseeker had asked them both the same questions. But when Elsie arrived at Emmeline’s room, she found it empty, a single candle burning on her bedside table.
“Emmeline?” Elsie asked, crossing to the window. Shielding her eyes, she peered outside.
The maid was on the road, talking to the Wright sisters.
Elsie cursed and turned from the window, determined to silence rumor before it could take root.
Master Ruth Hill had given Bacchus two options for his mastership, both of which were master versions of spells he already knew. The first was a hardening spell, something one could use to make wood strong or metal brittle. But the master version was known as the “gem spell” because it could be used to harden rock into precious stones. It was heavily regulated by the government and required registration to learn.
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.