Spellbreaker

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 recently 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.”

The shaking. The stalling.

“And he, in the end . . . he wanted you, too.”

Elsie pressed her lips together. That explained the contradictions in the rational spell he’d put on her. It was Ogden telling her to go home and this spiritual aspector’s influence telling her to come with him. The Cowls wanted Elsie now, just as they’d wanted her when they’d taken her from the workhouse. How utterly ironic, for them to finally pull her into their fold. After years of Elsie pining for their approval. A few days earlier, Elsie would have readily joined them. She would have done so blindly.

That must have been why Ogden had told her about the St. Katharine Docks in the first place. Because he knew that’s where he’d go if his controller ever decided to pull him from Brookley.

“I haven’t openly fought it in so long,” Ogden went on. “I wanted to appease him. I tried to make my efforts subtle. Thus all the churches.”

Elsie straightened. “That’s why we hop from cleric to cleric?”

Managing a weak smile, he said, “I wanted to study the spiritual aspectors. I wanted them to see me. I don’t know. I was fishing for anything. It took me years to figure out the rune without him noticing. And years to tell you.”

“Without him noticing,” she finished.

He nodded.

She hugged herself. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

“You couldn’t,” he interjected. Now he reached forward, pulling one of her hands free and holding it between his own. “But I knew you were the only one who could free me. If I had left on that boat, I would never be free. It took years for me to learn the rune without him noticing. I gave you every clue I could. He realized it, in the end. But I would rather die fighting him than live as his puppet.”

Elsie’s thoughts flew back to Juniper Down, to the strange man who’d held a gun to her head. He had been a spiritual aspector. “The person controlling you wasn’t American, was he?”

“What?”

She described the man in detail. She thought again on his mention of articles, but she still hadn’t figured out what he’d meant by that. So much had happened she hadn’t yet found time to consider it.

Ogden released her. His forehead wrinkled. “I . . . I don’t remember. I know I saw him that first time. But the spell forbade me to think on it, and after so long, I can’t recall. I don’t think so. But this American knows something. What was his name?”

“I don’t know.” Failure tasted sour in the back of her mouth, but she stiffened. “But you could draw him, Ogden. I could describe him to you, and you could draw him.”

His eyes brightened. “Yes.” He smiled. “Yes, Elsie. I will.”

“Well, it’s quite the misunderstanding!” Emmeline crowed. Elsie had never seen the young maid so angry. “To have them chase you like that!”

Emmeline stirred the pot of jelly like she was beating a rug, but she’d accepted the tale easily enough. Elsie and Ogden had both since cleaned up. Elsie thought of the police, the docks, the spells. And she thought of Bacchus. Of his seat beside her in the small hospital room, his low voice, his hand engulfing hers. When was he leaving for Barbados? Elsie hadn’t even asked. He could be setting sail even now, for all she knew.

She thought of his cheek beneath her lips, which made her face burn. Foolish woman, she thought, breathing around a rusted spike in her chest. God save her, it shouldn’t hurt this much. Maybe Ogden could smooth this sensation away from her, too. And yet . . . she wasn’t sure she wanted it gone. It was too soon to tell.

That night, after Emmeline had turned in and things felt more or less normal, Elsie dressed down to her nightgown and robe. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she unfolded the opus spell she’d taken from the dock.

She couldn’t read it in full. Barely in part. But she didn’t need to—she could cast this spell without any knowledge. Without any drops. She traced her fingers over words she recognized: Memoria, perdita. Memory, lost. The word oblivio made her think of oblivion. She’d have to get a Latin-to-English dictionary, but she was almost certain this spell was one of forgetting. The faded red ink told her it was a rational spell, which leaned to her theory. And judging by its length, it might even be a master spell. From whom, she’d never know. But seeing the way Ogden had wept and trembled on that dock . . . Maybe it would come in handy. She hoped not, but she couldn’t convince herself to do away with it.

She folded it carefully and slid it beneath her mattress—a temporary hiding spot until she thought of something better. She braided her newly washed hair over her shoulder and crept to Ogden’s bedroom. She didn’t bother knocking; he was expecting her, sketch pad, pencils, and charcoal spread across the foot of his bed.

She shut the door and sat on his trunk. Without waiting to be asked, she began describing the American.

“It will take a few tries.” He started with the shape of the head and the narrow jaw Elsie remembered. “I won’t influence you one way or another. Just tell me what you can remember.”

“He was about your age. Tanned. Traveled,” she offered. “His eyes were close set. Long hair. His hairline started . . . here.” She touched her crown. “And there was a peak.”

It took Ogden longer to draw than it did for her to describe. She looked over his shoulder every now and then, offering suggestions.

After nearly an hour, Elsie asked, “Where did you keep the opuses, Ogden? We should find a way to return them.”

His attention never left the sketch. “I didn’t. He took me somewhere, before the docks. I don’t quite remember it. Somewhere dark and wet. A sewer, or maybe a sepulchre. I grabbed spells almost at random to defend myself before moving on.” He slowed. “The mind and the spirit are interesting things. Separate, yet interlocked. Perhaps, if I can get my hands on the right library, I could study their boundaries for myself.” He resumed sketching.

Elsie nodded, considering. Replaying last night’s events in her thoughts. How Ogden, or his puppet master, knew to flee still confused her, but she didn’t want to distract Ogden with questions, especially ones he likely wouldn’t be able to answer. So she watched him draw instead. The sketch was beginning to come alive. It didn’t look quite right, yet Elsie couldn’t explain how without the American standing in front of her. As Ogden filled in the brow, however, he paused.

“This isn’t him.” He set the pad of paper on his lap. “I know it’s not him.”

Elsie rolled her lips together and took the pad in hand. You’re a pawn, he’d said. Which meant he wasn’t.

“It was worth a try.”

“The eyes . . . The eyes aren’t right.”

Elsie stood. “You remember?”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Ogden rubbed his head. “I can almost . . .”

Elsie set down the pad and paced the room, thinking. She pulled her robe close around her. It was almost summer, but the room felt cold. Was it worth it to light the fire?

The fire.

She paused. “Ogden.”

He glanced up.

She met his tired eyes. “It was a woman who took me from the workhouse. A woman with a”—she closed her eyes, picturing it—“a receded chin.”

He froze a moment. “A woman,” he whispered. He held still as a grave, focus shifting. A moment passed. He stiffened suddenly and picked up his pad and charcoal. He sketched in a frenzy, drawing, shading, then shaking his head and ripping the page free, only to start anew. “A woman. I can see it. A woman . . . Yes . . . Almost . . .”

He started with the chin, adding lines around it. He jumped from that to outlining the hair around the face. No style, no hat, no pins. And a forehead. He began a thick eyebrow, then smeared the lines with the side of his hand and redrew them thin. He sketched the eyes, paused. Looked away and let his fingers draw from memory.

“Something like . . .” He added a heavy lid and a brow that looked almost Russian.

A chill ran through Elsie’s body. “God save us.”

Ogden turned toward her. “You recognize her?”

Mouth dry, Elsie nodded. The woman was older now, and the picture was incomplete, but she knew that face. And she understood why Ogden had known when to flee.

“She’s the one he was looking for,” she said, words barely more than a rasp. “The American. She’s in London. Her name is Master Lily Merton.”