tell him.”
“Your secret is safe with me. For the moment.”
“You went to see Richardson?”
Ethan looked around, to make sure that they weren’t overheard. “Aye. I needed to know if he acted today under the influence of a conjuring.”
Her brow furrowed. “And did he?”
“Not that I could tell, no.”
Kannice took a long breath. “Well, I’m glad. I prefer to think that he’s cruel and heartless. If he had been … controlled in some way, if there was a conjurer out there making him do something that terrible, I’d be truly frightened.”
“As would I,” Ethan said. He didn’t tell her that he was frightened; that while he had found nothing, he was convinced this was because the conjurer had hidden his spells too well. Again, though, he should have known that he couldn’t dissemble with her, not about this. Not about anything, really. It was one of the reasons he loved her.
“What is it you’re not telling me?”
He glanced back at Diver again, then scanned the somber faces in the tavern—anything to avoid looking her in the eye.
“Ethan?”
“Today, before Richardson fired at Chris Seider and young Gore, I felt … something.”
Her eyes widened. “And by something you mean…?”
“Aye, a spell. I felt one as well last night, just before one of Sephira’s men attacked a lad who had done nothing to provoke him.”
Kannice brushed a strand of hair from her brow. “And Sephira’s other man—the one who conjures—he had nothing to do with this?”
“No. He sensed it as well, and at first, all but accused me of bewitching his friend.”
“Could it be a coincidence?”
“I suppose,” Ethan said.
She smiled, though the crease in her forehead remained. “You’re humoring me.”
“I’m not. I’m casting about for answers. If anything, what I’ve seen and learned thus far points to all of this being coincidence, as you say.”
“But?”
He shrugged. “But I don’t believe it is. Probably I’m imagining things.”
She ran a hand down his cheek. “I’ve not known you to imagine things of this sort before. Why would you begin now?”
“I don’t know. My spells are telling me one thing: that no one used a conjuring to make Richardson fire into that mob. But my heart and my head, not to mention Uncle Reg, are telling me something else.”
Kannice’s cheeks went white. “Uncle … You mean your … your ghost?”
“Aye. He tells me that there was another shade like him there today, watching all that happened. He’s as sure as I that someone cast a spell.”
“And you trust him.”
Ethan could only nod. He did trust Reg, in all things. But he couldn’t help wondering if the old ghost was wrong about the specter he saw on Middle Street. It wasn’t that Ethan doubted the figure had been there. Rather, he wondered if Reg had been too quick to conclude that it wasn’t a shade he had seen before.
Moments earlier, in Richardson’s gaol cell, Ethan had been so sure that his revela conjurings would show a residue of Nate Ramsey’s power—a brilliant aqua hue that to this day still haunted Ethan’s nightmares—that he had flinched as he cast the spells. During that one horror-filled week in July of the previous year, Ramsey had both tormented and tortured him; the captain had come very near to killing him. Ethan didn’t know if Ramsey was alive or dead; he had no reason to believe that the man had played any part in the events of the past day. But Ethan’s fear of him ran every bit as deep as his fear of prisons—he had never thought that he could possibly be so frightened of one man. Then again, Ramsey was no ordinary man. He was a conjurer of exceptional ability. He was also vengeful, vicious, cruel, as unpredictable as the New England weather, and utterly mad. Knowing that he might one day return, and anticipating that day with dread, Ethan had spent the past several months learning new conjurings and honing his spellmaking as he had not since he was a boy, new to his power. And even so, he knew that he remained utterly unprepared for a new confrontation with the man.
“There’s still more to this than you’re saying,” Kannice said. “I can tell when you’re keeping things from me.”
He shook his head. “It’s nothing. I—This has been a long, difficult day.” He could tell from the way she regarded him that his denials hadn’t convinced her. “When I know more, I’ll tell you more. Right now I’m certain of nothing.”
“I understand. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry…”
Ethan