Spellmaker (Spellbreaker Duology #2) - Charlie N. Holmberg Page 0,10

the docks with Elsie. In between, he recalled nothing but a handful of impressions: running through the dark, feeling stone beneath his hands, experiencing the confinement of a cold, starless place. A spiritual aspector could not erase his memory—only a rational magician could do that. But she could most definitely make it hard for him to recall what he had been doing, especially in the shadows of night.

Cuthbert had mulled over the puzzle pieces almost constantly this last week. He’d filled up an entire sketchbook with half-finished charcoal drawings. He’d even dreamed about his escape, and while he of all people knew dreams couldn’t be trusted, he’d sketched the dreams first thing upon waking, even before using the water closet. And so he was fairly certain Merton had guided him to a cemetery, sepulcher, or crypt, although that didn’t narrow things enough, given there were a multitude of them in London.

Were Merton here, he could rip the information from her mind himself. She couldn’t manipulate him again without touching him, and he was constantly on guard. A deep, damaged part of him wanted to seize her every thought, force her into a puppetlike state, rip apart her secrets and sorrows and drown her in them. Make her suffer as he had suffered. And yet, when he thought of Merton, he thought of Elsie, and that made him tuck away his anger and his hatred and focus on the task at hand. Because she was in prison, yes, but it was more than that. Despite being tied in with Merton from the start, Elsie made him want to do better, be better. She was the closest thing to a daughter he’d ever had. She’d been with him longer than Emmeline, and as a child, no less. She’d unknowingly brought bondage to him, but in the end, she’d also been his salvation.

She’d been a pawn, too. Cuthbert couldn’t dwell on vengeance until she’d had her liberation as well.

Merton’s London townhouse was the first place he went after seeing Elsie, and the space was entirely empty, without even a skeleton staff or housekeeper to look after it. She wasn’t to be found at the Spiritual Atheneum, either. Cuthbert didn’t want to give himself away by asking after her, so he broke his rules and dived into the minds of anyone who might know, pushing past goals and desires, complaints and crudeness, searching for any mark of his enemy. No one had seen her since the dinner at Kent just before his liberation.

Cuthbert could only hope it meant Merton saw him as a threat and sought to save her own hide, not that she was moving on to another portion of whatever mad plan she wanted to unfurl. How many spells did one person need? And what did she intend to do with them all?

Rubbing a hand down his face, Cuthbert dropped onto a bench in Burgess Park, considering. Thanks to a decade of church hopping, he knew which cathedrals and the like had crypts. Which had cemeteries large enough to hide away Merton’s secrets. Were it Cuthbert, he wouldn’t stow away his treasures at a large or frequently visited place, not where they could be discovered. It had to be something out of the way, but not so out of the way that he couldn’t retrieve them swiftly.

Closing his eyes, he replayed the night of his escape in his head. He was sure he hadn’t gone north, not at first. Would he find his way better if he mimicked the conditions of that night? If he searched in the dark, instead of the light?

Light. He’d been moving toward the light, hadn’t he? The moon rose in the east . . .

He needed to find the place now. Before Merton figured out they were on to her and ransacked the place herself.

Rising, he left the park and paid his way onto an omnibus. He’d asked around for the oldest churches and gravesites near East London. His eyes scanned the streets as he rode, as though he could spot her among the throngs of people.

He pulled his hat low when he reached the first village on his map, small enough that he might be seen as a stranger. He did not have a large repertoire of spells, given that those he knew had been gathered and adopted illegally, but those he did have were potent. He hopped from mind to mind, learning his way through the streets and alleyways as he did. He found the