wore. She pulled the covers up around her chin, remembering what Stanton said about San Francisco burning down every ten years. She sincerely hoped the city wasn’t due for another big conflagration; being cast naked into the street would be almost as embarrassing as walking through the lobby of the Excelsior in a buffalo coat.
At nine the next morning, Emily waited for Stanton in the palm-fronded lobby. Wearing her best poplin dress—which Mrs. Lyman had sewed for a trip Emily and Pap had taken to the Nevada State Fair a couple of years back, and which had sustained the rigors of travel admirably in the bottom of Emily’s canvas bag—she felt able to hold her chin up to all the finery that surrounded her. The dress had a tight bodice that buttoned up the front with jet-black buttons, close-fitting sleeves that terminated in little pleats of black satin at the wrists, and a narrowish, simple skirt. Flounces draped across the rump were Lost Pine’s nod to the bustle, which, according to Ladies’ Repository, “Dame fashion decreed as de rigueur for the well-turned-out miss.”
When she finally saw Stanton walking toward her, she noticed that he, too, had shed his coating of trail dust. He was freshly barbered, and his suit had been neatly brushed and pressed. The black eye that Dag had given him back in Lost Pine had already faded to a pale streak of yellow that stretched across the top of his right cheekbone. He looked astonishingly stiff and sturdy, as if he were cut from pasteboard.
“You look like a banker who never says yes to a loan,” she said.
“And you look like a schoolmarm who never says yes to anything,” Stanton replied, offering her his arm. “Shall we?”
They walked out of the hotel onto Kearny Street. It teemed with activity, carriages parading up and down the cobblestoned street and horses shouldering their way along the thoroughfare. On both sides of the street, vast shimmering seas of plate glass framed unimaginable commercial glories. It was all Emily could do not to stop every five feet to stare at some novel treasure. One window, draped with velvets and satins, displayed an array of hats. Another window held a half dozen chalk heads, on which were arranged huge masses of gleaming hair. The window of Grandmother Myrna’s Mystic Emporium featured fabulously colored magical charms and talismans, including a swag of tiny lights, each no larger than Emily’s pinkie nail, sparkling in shifting colors of blue and gold and red. As Emily paused to stare at the charms in the window, the tiny lights dimmed and flickered, going dead as embers drenched in a bucket.
Stanton put a hand firmly on her elbow and impelled her forward.
“Come along, or we’ll have Grandmother Myrna to answer to,” he said. “Goodness knows how many magical applecarts you might knock over, walking through a commercial district with that stone in your hand.”
They took a horse car to California Street—a broad avenue of imposing commercial buildings, monuments of shining white stone decorated with fluted colonnades, plaster ornaments, and heroic statuary. The building they stopped in front of was stark by comparison; its face was of smooth black marble, and only a collection of small, raised gold letters gave any indication of what a visitor might find behind its bright red door:
Mirabilis Institute of the Credomantic Arts, San Francisco Extension Office.
The lobby of the building was as simple and stylish as the exterior. High ceilinged, red walled, its only decoration was a long row of gold-framed portraits of sober-looking gentlemen. Emily looked at each of the dour faces as they passed. The sound of her heels clicking on the highly polished black marble floor seemed an insult to their collective dignity.
They came to a small reception area, where a pale thin clerk sat hunched over a ledger book, making careful notes with an ink pen. When he heard Emily and Stanton approach, he looked up with odd apprehension.
“Good morning.” Stanton presented a crisp white card, making sure the gold of his ring flashed in the young man’s face. “My name is Dreadnought Stanton. I am a Jefferson Chair, assigned to the eastern region of the state. I must see Professor Quincy on urgent business.”
“I’m … I’m terribly sorry, but the professor is not in today.” The young clerk looked anxiously between Emily and Stanton. “Perhaps, Mr. Stanton, if you’d like to make an appointment to call early next week …”
“Next week?” Stanton fixed the man with an imperious