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.