palm against her forehead. Did he feel how clammy it was? What if the spell didn’t take because of what she was? What if she was found out—
She felt the spell as it formed, like grains of sand dusting her skin. It rang like her ears sometimes did as it knotted together, heavy on her skin.
It dug into her soul.
She cringed.
“What is your name?” the truthseeker asked, pulling a pencil and pad of paper from a carryall.
“Elsie Camden.”
“Your age?”
“One and twenty.” She tried to think something else, like twenty-three, but found her thoughts blanked when she did.
She did not like this. Hurry up so you can take it off!
“Tell me the events that happened tonight.”
“I went to bed at ten—” Her tongue twisted, cutting off her words. “Perhaps later? Eleven?”
That spilled out just fine. Apparently the truthseeker could catch lies she wasn’t even purposefully making. How was she supposed to remember precisely when she’d gone to bed?
The aspector simply nodded.
“And I slept until I heard a clamor. I thought it was part of a dream.” She hadn’t meant to say that last part. She’d felt . . . compelled to. “I lit a candle and chased after the sound, and I found Ogden on the floor. A shadow vanished through the window. I told Emmeline to get Mr. Morgan, our neighbor, for help.”
The man nodded, focused on his notes, not on her. “And what did the culprit look like?”
“A shadow,” she repeated. “I saw nothing more. Not even where he went.”
“Or how he got down?”
She shook her head. The man didn’t seem to notice, so she said, “I suppose he jumped. He shattered a windowpane.”
“For what means does Cuthbert Ogden use his aspection?”
The questioning had taken a jarring turn, and it took her a moment to answer. “For his art. He knows very little. He changes the color of things. Softens stones. He can change the opacity of an object. That’s all I’ve seen him do.”
“He knows no other spells?”
“He struggles to learn them. Just a few weeks ago, he floundered with an intermediate spell.”
The man hummed to himself and scribbled on his pad. “Thank you, Miss Camden. I think that will be all.”
Relief fountained up like it had been pumped by the queen herself.
He moved into the hallway. Gestured with a hand. A young man—he was barely eighteen, if that—strode into her room with mussed hair and an unhappy countenance. A lad grumpy from being woken in the middle of the night. Without any semblance of manners, he grabbed Elsie’s head and wiggled his fingers across it.
The spell vanished.
Elsie took in a deep breath. Stared at the man as he stalked back out of the room. A spellbreaker. She’d never met another one before, not that she was aware. Questions bloomed up her neck and gathered on her tongue. So much she wanted to ask him! Were their methods the same? When had he realized what he was? What sort of training had he received? What work did he do? How much was he paid?
But the young man turned the corner, out of sight. Of course, Elsie couldn’t have risked asking the questions even if he had stayed.
She waited for a long moment, listening to the voices coming from Emmeline’s room. Seeing no harm in it, she rose and tiptoed to Ogden’s room. He had a salve smeared on his eye, a small bandage across his brow. The doctor must have come.
He offered her a weak smile. She sat with him until the constable returned and the truthseeker and his entourage descended the stairs to return to London.
“A few more questions for you, Mr. Ogden,” Constable Wilson said.
Ogden sighed. “I don’t know what more you can get out of me, but go on.”
Elsie patted his shoulder and left, seeking to console Emmeline—and to find out if the truthseeker had asked them both the same questions. But when Elsie arrived at Emmeline’s room, she found it empty, a single candle burning on her bedside table.
“Emmeline?” Elsie asked, crossing to the window. Shielding her eyes, she peered outside.
The maid was on the road, talking to the Wright sisters.
Elsie cursed and turned from the window, determined to silence rumor before it could take root.
Master Ruth Hill had given Bacchus two options for his mastership, both of which were master versions of spells he already knew. The first was a hardening spell, something one could use to make wood strong or metal brittle. But the master version was known as the “gem spell”