The Serpent's Shadow

Chapter Five

PETER sat—carefully—on the single chair facing the doctor’s desk, in a room that appeared to serve as study, initial consultation room, and office. The doctor studied him, her expression as serene as a bronze Buddha, and just as unreadable. He decided to show a bit more spine than he had for the past few moments, and studied her as well. Neither of them broke the silence; only the usual street sounds filtered in through the glass of the window facing the street—footsteps, hoofbeats, voices, and the occasional cough and chatter of a motorcar.

One day all our hansoms are going to be replaced by those wretched autos, Peter reflected, as a particularly noisy vehicle chugged by, drowning every other noise as it did. And on that day—perhaps I’ll move to the Isle of Man, or of Wight, or the Scillys—or some place equally remote. God, how I hate those things!

As he continued to gaze unabashedly at the doctor’s face, taking in the nuances of her features, he became more and more certain that his first guess about her parentage was correct.

Eurasian, no doubt. With the surname “Witherspoon” there wasn’t much doubt which parent was the English one; the only question was—how on earth had this woman, of mixed blood, managed to become a doctor? The task was difficult enough for an English girl! Who had sponsored her and given her the necessary education? The London School of Medicine for Women?

No, that surely wasn’t possible; she looked too young. She must have begun her studies in her teens, and the London School wouldn’t take a girl that young.

I don’t think that I would care to stand between her and something she dearly wants. I would probably find her walking over the top of me to get it.

The office revealed very little of the doctor’s personality, other than the fact that she—or her servants—were fanatically neat. Bookcases lined the wall behind her except for a space where a door broke the expanse, bookcases polished until they gleamed and filled with leather-bound volumes. Her desk, spartan and plain, held only pen, pencil, paper in a neat stack, an inkpot, and a blotter. There was one small framed print on the wall behind him, but he didn’t dare turn around to look at it, not with those black eyes fixed on him. Printed wallpaper might be Morris; he wasn’t sure; it was warm brown, yellow, and cream, exactly the colors he’d expect from an Earth Mage.

Nothing on the desk to help—no pictures, no trinkets. And nothing with writing on it. So she was the kind who put her patients’ records out of sight before they even left the office. A careful woman; a wise woman, given what she’d implied about her last client.

Ah, but what he sensed, now that he was within the enclosure of her protective magics, made him long for fifteen minutes left alone in this—or, indeed, any—room in the house. It wasn’t just the force of her personality that left him a little stunned, it was the strength of her magic. Strangest of all was that she wasn’t using it. She was certainly old enough to have learned as much as he about the arcane; certainly powerful enough—but the magic she had invested in the walls was held together mostly by the main strength of that power. If those spells had been put in place by an Elemental Apprentice, they’d have fallen apart before the mage turned around. She had taken a bit of this, a bit of that, and a heavy dose of willpower to create protections that were effective in their way, but with all the grace of a pig in a parlor, and all the symmetry of that poor bloke they called “The Elephant Man.” This was patched-together, mismatched, unaesthetic, ugly magic, and not the elegant creation she should have been able to weave. This, he would bet his soul, was not a clumsy, inelegant, or inept woman. This was not by her choice; she’d done what she could with instruments flawed and warped.

But there was one little bit of nice work there—tangled in among the rest, like a shining silk thread running through a skein of ill-spun yarn, was a whisper of magery Peter would dearly love to learn to cast himself.

Turn your eyes aside, it whispered to those beyond the walls who looked with the inward eye and not the outward. There is nothing here to interest you, there never was, and never will be. Seek elsewhere for your quarry; it is not here.

Peter couldn’t fathom it, and didn’t know where to begin a conversation with this woman. As it happened, he didn’t have to.

“Well, I would judge, Mr. Scott, that no one sent you here from one of the many well-intentioned religious organizations who are trying to ‘save’ young ladies like Sally without any plans for providing her with an alternate source of income,” the doctor said at last, leaning forward slightly and resting her weight on the arms laid across the top of her desk.

Peter didn’t bother to ask her how she knew that; anyone with her potential would have intuition so accurate she might just as well be able to read minds.

Besides, it didn’t take Conan Doyle’s fictional detective to read a man’s personality from his outward appearance.

And to put the cap on it, I didn’t storm in waving a Bible either.

“My leg is dodgy,” he offered, in hesitant truce. “Just not as bad as I made it out to be. Nobody’s been able to do anything for it.”

Now she leaned back, a slight frown crossing her face. “I wouldn’t think they would be able to,” she replied. “But you, sir, are not my usual sort of patient, and you would not have heard of me or my office from any of my usual clients. I would like to know why you appeared on my doorstep today.”

Peter wasn’t a Water Master for nothing—and now that he was inside the lady’s boundaries, her unseen friends in her fountain had no qualms about tossing him just the bit of information he needed.

“Fleet Clinic,” he said shortly—and knowing that his appearance, a bit down-at-heel though it was, put him a great deal more than a touch above those who stumbled into charity clinics, he added, “Used to be a ship’s captain on the India route. I ran into one of my old lads looking better than he had in ten years, and the old boy told me about how you fixed him up. Thought I’d look you up and see if you had any notions about the knee.” Now he shrugged. “Reckoned it couldn’t hurt to see, eh? Worst you can do is tell me what every other sawbones has.”

As he’d hoped, the charity clinic where she worked was probably so overwhelmed with poor working men and women that she’d have seen dozens of sailors among her patients since she set up practice, and wouldn’t remember any particular one. She lost her frown, and her expression became one of skepticism rather than suspicion.

“And you have no objection to being treated by a woman?” she asked.

He gave a short bark of a laugh. “I’ve got no objection to being treated by a Zulu witch doctor if he could do something with this knee,” he retorted, with honesty that finally won her over. He was pleased to see a faint smile cross her lips, and the intelligent amusement he’d sensed lurking beneath her stern surface showing in her eyes.

“In that case, Captain Scott,” she said, plucking her pen from the inkwell and holding it poised over the paper, “why don’t we begin at the beginning? Just what happened to that knee to make it turn against you, and when?”

Maya used her note taking to conceal some observation of her possible patient of a very different sort—for there was something of Power about him, and that had surprised her so much that for a brief time she had been unable to do more than stare at him.

Another woman might have found him unremarkable in any way whatsoever. He certainly wasn’t handsome, not by any stretch of the imagination. His dress was neat and clean, but no finer than that of any other man in her working-class neighborhood. Sailors always ended up with a commonality of features, given the beating their faces usually took from the elements, and Peter Scott was no different there. His face could easily have been sculpted from ancient, withered leather, and though the chin was firm and the brow was high, his mouth set in lines that suggested more smiles than frowns, there was little in the ruin of it to show if he had been handsome in his youth, or otherwise. Only a pair of remarkable green eyes, an emerald color with a hint of blue, peering at her from among a nest of wrinkles caused by much squinting against the sun and storm, served as any sort of distinguishing feature. He’d had the good manners to remove his cap, which he held easily in hands that were relaxed—but why did they remind her of the paws of an equally relaxed and well-fed tiger? His hair, some color between yellow and brown, had begun to sport a streak of gray here and there. Not a young man—but not an old one either.

Then there was the scent of magic…

Magic! Here, in London! She would have been less shocked, had she hailed a cab only to find a camel and not a horse between the shafts.

What was he doing here? If he was a mage, surely he could do as much for his own ailments as she!

Is he looking—for me? That thought made her hand shake for a moment, so that she inadvertently blotted her notes. She exclaimed over her “clumsiness” and took the opportunity offered in repairing the damage to swiftly check her defenses.

They were intact. And although this man brought to mind the well-fed and sleepy-eyed panther—yes; panther, and not a tiger—she did not think she was in any danger. Not directly, at least, and not at this moment.

“Stand and walk for me,” she ordered, both to study his movement, and give herself time to think. “How much pain does this afflict you with?”

“What a reasonable man would expect—not that my friends would ever accuse me of being reasonable,” he replied, with a quick lift of his brow, inviting her to share the joke, and another glint of sapphire in the green of his eyes when he turned to look at her. “When the weather’s fine, I get along all right; when it’s foul, so’s the knee and my temper both. And when it storms—”

For a moment, the briefest of moments, Maya saw the panther extend his claws and show a gleam of white teeth.

“—when it storms, then God help the man that crosses me.”

Then the panther pulled in his talons, hid his fangs, and became the sleepy cat again. Peter Scott smiled, shrugged, and invited her to share his little “joke.”

Except—it was no joke. And I do not think it was a rainstorm he was referring to.

“Please, take a seat again,” Maya gestured. “I wouldn’t care to be the one to put you or your knee to the test of that.”

She tapped the feathered end of her quill against her cheek as she considered him. Dared she take him as a patient? Prudence shouted “No!” This man could be—was—dangerous. He’d shown that side, however briefly, and she had no doubt that he had done so deliberately, calculatedly. He had Power.

And it was that power that made him so tempting, so very, very tempting.

“You must learn the magics of your father’s blood,” Surya had said, so many times, when Maya had begged for the least, the littlest hint of instruction. “It is that which flows through you, and not the magics of mine.” And now, here was a mage of her father’s blood…

Presented, oh so conveniently, so very opportunely—

A trap? Or a gift? How was she to tell the difference?

She had not asked for a sign, but one arrived on its own two feet to give her the answer she needed.

No part of the house was forbidden to Charan, although he seldom ventured anywhere but the conservatory, her bedroom and, occasionally, the kitchen. Yet, with no warning, no prompting, no hint whatsoever, the door—which must have been improperly closed, creaked slowly open. And there, clinging to it with his tiny hands, his great, solemn eyes fixed on the stranger, was Charan himself.

“By Jove!” Scott exclaimed, with as much pleasure as surprise. “A Hanuman langur!”

He was still seated, but leaned down so that he no longer loomed over Charan’s head, and extended a hand. “Hello there, my fine fellow!” he said, in a coaxing tone that had none of the overly hearty tones of someone who is feigning interest in an animal or child. “I don’t suppose you speak English, do you? My Hindu’s a bit rusty. Would you care to come and make my acquaintance?”

Charan tilted his head to the side, then let go of the door and dropped to all fours, making his leisurely way to the stranger while Maya watched in mingled trepidation and astonishment. It looked as if Charan liked the newcomer—but Charan could be as duplicitous as any street brat, and was equally capable of pretending to like someone just so that he could get near enough to sink his fine set of fangs into the extended hand.

Peter Scott, if he knew enough to know what Charan was, surely knew that as well. But he didn’t move, either to pull back, or to extend his hand further. And he didn’t make any of the silly noises people often did to reassure the monkey. He didn’t smile—wise, since the baring of teeth was a sign of incipient battle among those of Charan’s ilk—but he did blink, slowly, and make a faint, clucking sound.

Charan sat down, just within reach. He contemplated the extended fingers, then raised his great, sad eyes to Scott’s face and locked gazes with him.

Then with the greatest of casual ease, as if he had known Peter Scott all of his life, he put his tiny hand gravely into Peter’s large one.

Peter gently closed his hand around Charan’s. “I am pleased to meet you, sir,” he said, and only then did he look up at Maya while Charan waited trustingly at Peter’s feet. “Since he and I don’t share a language, I don’t suppose you could tell me what his name is, could you?”

“Charan,” she replied, and before she could say more, Peter immediately returned his attention to the monkey.

“I am glad to meet you, Charan,” he said, releasing the little paw. “My name is Peter. Would you care to join me? I’m afraid your protector has only provided a single seat, but you can use my good knee, if you wish.”

Now Scott straightened up, and at that signal, as if he had understood every word—which, all things considered, he might very well have—Charan leaped up onto the correct knee, and balanced himself there quite as if he belonged.

“I haven’t seen a Hanuman langur since my last trip out,” Scott said softly, and ventured to scratch Charan’s head. Charan closed his eyes and leaned into the scratching fingers, his face relaxed into a mask of bliss. “By heaven, he brings back memories! I know that a lot of the sahibs thought they were filthy little nuisances, but—well, I like them. I like their cheek, and their cleverness. So—” he faltered a moment, then looked squarely up into her eyes. “So few people take the trouble to bring a pet from abroad home with them; one sees the poor things wandering forlorn so often, in every land there is, not excepting this one. It speaks a great deal for you that you did not take that ‘expedient’ answer, Doctor, when you moved to our island.”

She had noted that the longer he spoke, the less he sounded like a working man, and the more like a man of some education.

If this isn’t a sign—“Antoine de Saint-Exupery,” she said, a last test, and he nodded.

“ ‘Many have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it,’ ” he quoted, with a kind of reverence most reserved for the words of the Bible, “ ‘You remain responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.’ ”

She let out her breath in a soft sigh. “I believe—perhaps—I can help you a little, Captain Scott. But it will take time and patience.”

“Patience—so long as it isn’t storming—I have plenty of, Doctor,” he replied, looking down at Charan, who had decided that a man so adept at scratching must be equally adept at cuddling and had moved into the crook of his arm. “As for time—” He looked up, and a faint smile answered her shake of the head at Charan’s boldness. “As for time, however much I have, it is not being spent well when I’m driven out of temper, is it?”

She had to laugh, for between Charan and this man’s undeniable charm, she had been won over, entirely against her own judgment and will. “Very well, then, Captain Scott. If you will follow me into the examination room—and yes, Charan, he will carry you—” she added, as Charan opened one eye resentfully at the prospect of being forced from his comfortable “nest.”

“—I will make some more specific tests, and see just how much I can improve that temper of yours.”

Peter Scott left Doctor Witherspoon’s office knowing that however much he had managed to charm the doctor, she had entranced him that much again, and more. There being no further patients waiting, he had met the doctor’s entire menagerie, been invited to what was clearly her true sanctum, a conservatory worthy of a horticulturist, and taken a cup of tea with her in her conservatory. Somehow, over the course of a mere two hours, he had become her friend. He sensed both that she did not boast too many friends, and that it was not a gift she was inclined to extend too readily.

He had in his pocket a packet of herbal powders, a small box of pills, and a prescription to be compounded at the apothecary at the end of the street. And he thought—although it was difficult to be certain—that during the course of the time when he had sat upon the examination table, pants leg rolled up absurdly to disclose a rather unattractive, hairy shank, when she had manipulated his knee, she had done something more to it than simply prodding and poking.

Earth Magic was healing magic, and even the untaught Earth Master could heal by sheer instinct. If she had sensed his power, she would not have been too eager to reveal her own…

Untaught. She knows that she’s a mage, but she’s untaught. That’s the only answer. But how, how, how had that come about? She had grown up in India, a land swarming with mages both real and charlatan. How had she missed finding a Master to take her as an Apprentice?

Then, as he paused in front of the apothecary, he could have struck himself for his stupidity. Of course no mage of India would take her as apprentice, or priestess, or anything else! Her mixed blood would have made her of no-caste; no less than the English, those of the high blood of India shunned the Eurasians. She was ranked with the street sweepers, the Untouchables; no Brahmin would ever teach her, no guru take her for his disciple, not even an old street babu accept her as his chela except on terms no woman of spirit or sense would agree to.

My God, my God, what a waste! He entered the dark and redolent apothecary shop and wordlessly handed his folded piece of paper over to the old, skull-capped man behind the counter. That, and the mezuzah at the door told him that the doctor looked after yet another outcast here.

“Bad knee, or is it elbow or shoulder?” the old Jew asked, perching a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose to peruse the prescription.

“Knee,” Scott replied. “Broke it in a storm at sea; went to the deck and hit it on a brass fitting.”

“Ah. Never set right, then.” The old man turned and began pulling ingredients from little drawers, muttering to himself as he worked—and sometimes adding a comment over his shoulder to Peter.

“This’ll be what ye’re to start on after ye finish what she give ye,” he said once. And then, a little later, “No opium, no laudanum; she don’t believe in that, no. I’ll be giving ye two bottles and ye mind, ye look at the one, ‘twill only have seven doses. And ye’ll be gettin’ no more from me without she gives ye a new ‘scrip. That’ll be for the bad nights, the stormy nights, when the pain takes ye. One of those, mind, for th’ night. No more.”

“Why?” Peter asked, surprised.

“Hemp,” the old man said abruptly. “There’s them as calls it hashish. ‘Twill let ye sleep, but if ye misuse it, there’ll be no more getting of it from her or me.”

Well! Well indeed! There were doctors who handed out prescriptions containing opiates, laudanum, cocaine, and hemp as if they were no more dangerous than sugar pills. Peter had often considered a little hemp when the pain became too great, but he had feared it as well, for he did not know how much was enough, and how much would leave him with a craving he could not, as an Elemental Master and a member of the White Lodge, afford to have. Pain was preferable to a weakness that could all too easily be exploited. In fact, he doubted that he’d use those pills more often than once a month, and then only when he was not only within protections, but physically guarded.

“I understand your caution—and hers,” he said, with a little nod of respect that seemed to amuse the old man.

A bit more work produced a pair of stoppered brown bottles, both holding pills, the second, as promised, holding no more than seven. Peter paid his bill and pocketed the bottles. Then, with another genial nod and a tinkle of the bell over the door, he left the shop.

There was no doubt in his mind, after a walk of a few blocks, that Doctor Witherspoon had improved his knee. It was just a trifle, and perhaps no one else would have noticed it, but an Elemental Master knew himself completely, inside and out, and this Elemental Master noticed a subtle improvement in his weakest physical point.

It wasn’t so much that there was less pain—that could have been chalked up to the weather. It was that it no longer made that aggravating click it was wont to do, every third or fourth stride.

Now, pills and attention and the warmth of the doctor’s hands, and even the determination of his own mind to sense an improvement could account for the loss of a little pain. The mind played an abundance of tricks, even on an experienced mage. But nothing in the power of persuasion was going to make that clicking go away.

He had a great deal to think about, and since he always thought better on his feet, he let them take him back through the varied neighborhoods until he reached one where cabs were thick upon the ground, and his gradually-assumed, confident, man-about-town air got him one without the least bit of difficulty.

He also climbed into the passenger compartment without difficulty; more evidence of the doctor’s work. “Exeter Club,” he ordered shortly as the cabman peered down through his hatch for orders, and sat back in a seat still smelling faintly of the cigar of its last occupant, to finish his thoughts.

She’s hiding from something, or trying to. Something occult. What in heaven’s name it could be, he had no clues. But if she had been hiding from something that wasn’t arcane, she certainly wouldn’t have the all-too-visible profession, the prosperous establishment in a slightly shabby street, or be spending part of her time doing charitable work at the Fleet Clinic, which had to be in one of the worst areas of London. Physical danger to her there would pass unnoticed in the general nastiness of the neighborhood.

It was clear, clear as the crystal sphere he kept in his own sanctum, that he didn’t have nearly enough information about her to even make an educated guess as to what it was she was hiding from. But much as he found her a pleasant, highly intelligent, potential companion, and much as he would like to further their acquaintance, duty came before pleasure, and his duty was to first report to the Council and then to get back to his own shop. The lovely doctor could wait; he had a higher loyalty to the White Lodge and the Lodge Master that came before any considerations of a stranger. He also had a business to take care of, if he wished to continue eating and enjoying his current all-too-material lodgings.

The cab stopped directly in front of the club, which in the light of day was hardly distinguishable from the ordinary upper-class townhouses on either side of it. Enjoying the fact that he could, he took the stairs two at a time, earning himself a raised eyebrow from the daylight version of the Dragon of the Door.

“Good morning, Cedric. Been to see a new sawbones,” he said by way of explanation. “She’s done me a world of good. You ought to have a look in on her.”

“I think not, sir,” Cedric replied with his usual dignity. “I don’t approve of these woman doctors. It’s unnatural, sir.”

Peter laughed, when he considered just what Cedric guarded from the intrusions of the outside world, and gave him a mocking little salute as he passed within.

The Council would not be meeting at this moment, of course, but Lord Alderscroft seldom left the premises. Rather than keeping a house in town, he kept a luxurious little set of his own rooms here, and as a consequence, needed only his own personal man, for all his other needs were attended to by the servants attached to the club. Peter sent his card up to Alderscroft’s rooms with the cryptic message, “I’ve found what you were looking for,” scribbled on the back, and it was a matter of moments before a boy came down with an invitation to dine with His Lordship in one of the private rooms.

The boy conducted him to what was less a “room” and more of a silk-papered alcove done in unobtrusive mellow blue, a pair of overstuffed leather chairs tucked in beneath a sturdy mahogany table. It earned the name of “private” because of a pair of blue-velvet curtains that could be drawn across the entrance to conceal the diners within, but so seldom were that there was a hint of dust along the top edges of the heavy velvet bands that tied them back to either side.

Alderscroft was already there but, from the presence of the waiter beside him, had not yet ordered. “Pork cutlet and new peas, Jerry,” Peter said as he slid into the unoccupied seat. “Have to get back to the shop before that replacement Almsley conjured up for me frightens off all my customers.”

Alderscroft chuckled, recognizing the joke for what it was, and said only, “Wellington and the rest, Jerry,” before turning his attention to Peter. The waiter vanished with the discretion of all of the Club servants, leaving behind only a decanter and a pair of glasses. It was too early by Peter’s standards for a whiskey, and Alderscroft never touched the stuff so far as Peter knew, but toying with quarter-filled glasses made their conversation look casual and ordinary, should anyone unexpected come past them. Alderscroft poured, and they both toyed, neither raising the glass to his lips.

“Your source… isn’t what any of us expected,” Peter said, in a quiet voice that only Alderscroft’s ears would be able to pick up. “I’m not sure what to make of her.”

“Her?” Alderscroft’s mustache twitched.

“Her. Doctor Maya Witherspoon. Eurasian, and a physician and surgeon.” Quickly, he passed over every scrap of information that he’d managed to glean, both openly and arcanely, from the moment he’d passed through the surgery’s front door. Alderscroft didn’t interrupt him a second time; he sat back in his chair, with his eyes fixed on Peter, until the narrative, what little there was of it, was over.

At that point, with the Club’s usual impeccable timing, Jerry appeared with their luncheons. Neither of them said anything until after Jerry had finished arranging the plates to his satisfaction, and whisked the decanter and covers away.

“A pretty little puzzle,” Alderscroft said at last. “One wonders what brought her here, when her—race—as well as her profession would have been more acceptable in her own homeland, or on the Continent.”

“She’s a British citizen; her father was an Army surgeon. She has every right to be here,” Peter countered, covering his annoyance.

“As you say. Still. Why here? She’d go unremarked in France, or even in America.” Alderscroft paused for a few deliberate bites of his luncheon, as Peter wolfed down his own food in a matter of moments. “And why now? And why, in the name of heaven, is she so abominably trained, as you claim she is?”

“I can’t answer any of that, my lord,” Peter replied, but did note with sharp irony the annoyance that Alderscroft had expressed over Maya’s training—or lack thereof. Alderscroft might not like the idea of female mages, Adepts, or Elemental Masters, but he liked the idea of potential going to waste even less. “Perhaps her mother’s people refused to train a half-breed, even a powerful one. There’s no doubt that she knows something of what she is, but I very much doubt she knows the extent of her potential.”

“I’d like to learn the trick of that hiding business she’s worked out,” Alderscroft grumbled under his breath. “Damnation! If she just wasn’t a woman—”

“She’s an Earth Master, or will be, and I suspect she’s going to be one whether or not she gets formal training. You yourself were the one to tell me that the magic makes a Master or a madman, and given that she’s forced her own way through medical training, I rather doubt she’s so weak-willed as to go mad,” Peter retorted, his tone acrid enough to cause Alderscroft to give him a sharpish glance. And since Alderscroft was treating him as an equal—for once—Peter decided to push the issue. “For God’s sake, my lord, bring her in. Let one of us train her; she’s the only Earth Master, or potential Earth Master, in the whole of London! Fire or Water could give her the basic grounding; it would be easy enough to pass her on to someone of her own Element when she’s ready for full initiation—we could use her here—”

“She’s not our kind, Scott,” Lord Alderscroft interrupted. “Her magic isn’t ours; the magic of East and West don’t mix, never can, and never will! The Eastern mind can’t understand the Western; live as long as I have, and you’ll never doubt that for a moment!”

“But—” Peter started to object further, but saw from the stubborn expression on Lord Alderscroft’s face that he would make no dent in the old boy’s prejudices. “Well, she’s doing no harm, and isn’t likely to, magically, at least. As for her medical practice, I didn’t bother to inquire, but since she’s donating time to the Fleet Clinic, she apparently is fully enough acquainted with Christian charity to hold with the rest of the Christian virtues.”

The heavy irony of his last sentence was—possibly—lost on Alderscroft. When the old man got that ponderously ruminative look on his face, one never knew how much he was taking in and thinking about.

“I will grant you all of that, Scott,” he finally answered, as Peter chased a pea around his plate impatiently with his fork, with no intention whatsoever of eating it. “All right, then. We’ll leave this lady doctor of yours to her charities and her patients. She won’t be causing us any trouble, at least.” Alderscroft finally put his focus back on Peter, and chuckled. “And you are impatient to get back to your business, I know. Well, thank you, Scott. Well done, as usual.”

“My pleasure, sir,” Peter replied, even though it had been nothing of the sort, and took his leave of the Head of the Lodge and Council before he could make any more remarks that would not—at the very least—be polite, nor politic.

But he as he waited for Cedric to hail a cab, then climbed into the conveyance, he found that he had fallen prey to a mood of resentment, and for once, it wasn’t on his own behalf, but on a stranger’s. Had she been fully white, had she been a man, Alderscroft would have had her brought into the fold and properly taught immediately. Had she even been of other than mixed blood, he’d have sent word to one of the Earth Masters who lived outside London—probably one of the ladies he wouldn’t let into the Lodge, the Council, or the Club, but had no trouble in calling on for help. But no. No, with the double damnation of mixed blood and the incorrect sex, Maya Witherspoon must languish untaught, or struggle along on her own. And if, as Peter suspected, she was hiding from something…

How long can someone self-taught hold out against any enemy? It must have been someone in her homeland; why else flee all the way to Britain, and why choose the most populous city in Britain in which to hide? Here she can make alliances, obviously is making alliances, among the only people who have eyes and ears everywhere, and weapons to help protect her. He thought about that thrown-away comment concerning “her patients’ friends.” There was no doubt that she’d earned a bodyguard of sorts among the half-honest and the fully criminal, and given Alderscroft’s attitude, indeed, the attitude of nearly every “British gentleman” toward “her kind,” well—he could only grant her mental congratulations.

But Alderscroft didn’t say anything about me helping her, if I can, he suddenly realized, as the cab came to an abrupt halt in traffic. I’ve no doubt he would have, if it had occurred to him that I’d dare, but he didn’t. By God, he didn’t, and I’ll be damned if I let him have a hint that I’m going to!

The sudden resolution erased his sour temper, and he almost laughed out loud, which would have probably puzzled the cabby. Oh, Peter, you dog, you were looking for an excuse to see more of the lady anyway, and you know it—

Oh, yes, he knew himself too well to deny that. He’d walk half across London in a screaming storm just to take tea with her again.

Well, now he had a reason to see her, a good one, a solid one, a reason that any real gentleman would applaud, if said real gentleman could be persuaded to see past his own pigheaded prejudices.

Now all I have to do is find a way to broach the subject. All! Now he did laugh, at his own foolishness. “Pardon me, Doctor, but I can’t help noticing that you’ve been using a bit of magic, and I thought I’d offer—offer—”

Offer what? Good lord, how am I to put this without offending her or making her think I’m a madman and having that heathen warrior of hers throw me out on the street?

Well, deciding how to put his “offer” to her ought to keep his brain spinning for the rest of the afternoon, at least. And perhaps by the time he’d managed that, he would also be able to figure out how to make it clear—in the most polite of fashions—that teaching her magic wasn’t the only thing he had in mind in seeking her company.

Oh, what fools we mortals be! he thought, alighting at his own shop. What fools, indeed.

Nevertheless—he happened to have a new stock of incense just in, and a handsome statue of Ganesh, the elephant-headed Indian god reputed to be the remover of all obstacles. So—and only because the customers liked the hint of sandalwood in the air when they came to examine his wares—and only because there was a fine receptacle for such offerings at the foot of the statue—Lord Ganesh’s serpentine trunk breathed in the airs of sacrifice that afternoon, while Peter helped ladies with more money than taste select “exotica” for their parlors.

After all… sometimes even unfamiliar magic worked, East and West could meet in harmony, and there was never any harm in asking someone for a bit of a favor.