A Study in Ashes (15 page)

London, September 24, 1889
LADIES’ COLLEGE OF LONDON
2:45 p.m. Tuesday

IT HAD BEEN FIVE FRETFUL DAYS SINCE EVELINA HAD DISCOVERED
she was penned within the college walls. She’d received no word from either Keating or Sir William. The only thing that had changed was that she had received a delivery of equipment from Moriarty.

Evelina sat in her rooms, elbows on her worktable and a scatter of projects on every side. Sunlight touched the silver bracelets she wore, the buttons down the bodice of her fashionable day dress, and the implements spread out before her. There was a heavy brass microscope, a gas burner, a leather case of slides, and enough half-assembled pieces of clockwork to give a horologist fits. The clockwork had been her own project, but the rest was from the professor. He had sent the very best.

After indulging her talents in secret for so many years, it was a luxury to have a private workspace and the time to sate her curiosity. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? She had all that leisure because the rest of her life had been taken away—including Nick and Imogen. And being confined had given Evelina too much time to grieve for their loss. She was starting to feel frayed, like pieces of her were unraveling and falling away. She either slept too much or not at all, pacing her rooms until her feet ached.

Some primitive reflex warned her she was in danger of
collapsing altogether. She needed a problem outside of herself to keep her moving forward. So escape was at the top of her list, and Moriarty seemed the best tool she’d found—not a comforting thought. But while she made up her mind about him, she forced herself to concentrate on the unsolvable problem of her friend’s illness. Though different, her grief for Imogen was every bit as acute as the wrenching loss of Nick.

She’d sat by Imogen’s bedside that November night when the
Helios
had returned victorious, but Evelina had enough magic to know the young woman on the bed was just a shell. Imogen’s soul had been ripped away. Could Evelina do anything to put it back?

She asked herself that question plenty of times, but a letter had come from Baker Street yesterday—delivered by one of her uncle Sherlock’s pet urchins who’d clearly climbed over the college wall—with news that Poppy Roth had approached the detective with a view to hiring him on the case. But, Holmes went on, magic wasn’t his forte. He had promised to turn the problem over to Madam Thalassa, but apparently she was proving hard to find. Since Evelina knew both magic and the Roth family, did she have relevant data to add? Strange but true, Holmes was very nearly asking her opinion.

Her first thought was that he did well to treat Poppy Roth seriously. The girl was a force of nature. Her second was that she was on dangerous ground. It was her magic, and that of the devas at her command, that was keeping Imogen’s body alive in hopes that she would recover on her own. Evelina had set the spells in motion the night she’d spent at Imogen’s side—it was the best she could do when she had so little time. She’d tried to work from afar since, but navigating the realm of spirit was not her talent. Not even the university’s impressive archives—which had special dispensation to maintain a collection on magic and the spirit realm—had been able to help.

The difficulty was that if a true medium—even one as reputable as Madam T—went crashing through Evelina’s existing spells, things could go horribly wrong. And yet she
couldn’t take those spells away because Imogen would die. She had to explain all of this to her uncle, but it was hard when she had to smuggle letters out of the college with all the cloak-and-dagger drama of an international spy. It would be a damn sight easier if she could just fix things herself.

Her jaw set, Evelina concentrated on the surface of the worktable, the grain of it flowing through an archipelago of chemical stains and the odd crumb from her breakfast. She would make one more try before she admitted that for all her vaunted talent, she couldn’t help her best friend in the world. She let her consciousness drift, her vision going soft as she passed into a blank, rudderless state.

The odds of finding Imogen’s spirit were negligible. Without knowing where in all the possible realms of heaven and earth she had gone, all Evelina had to draw on was the long friendship that bound them together. That made for a slender thread, but it was far better than nothing.
Imogen?

There was no response, and Evelina pushed harder, broadcasting her call through the aether that connected all the realms together as blood binds the body’s organs. She could feel the tug of the bracelets holding her back. They didn’t stop her magic—their primary purpose was to confine her physically—but the silver they were made from made it clumsy, as if she were trying to repair clockwork while wearing ill-fitting gloves.

Her eyes began to drift closed, her gaze still fixed upon the table. The pattern of the wood grain melted into metaphor, outward sight changing to a landscape of the mind. She reached out again, and the sensation was like swimming in thick, warm water, every stroke a satisfying effort that sped her along. She could feel the ripples stirred by her power, and summoned more energy, digging deep into her reserves. She was still recovering from confining the blast that had destroyed the laboratory. Calling on it again so soon would drain her, but no matter. If it helped her friend, she would spare nothing to send those waves to the very ends of that ocean and beyond.

But wanting too much was her mistake. She’d gathered some of her power under the tutelage of the sorcerer Dr.
Magnus, and that dark energy was treacherous stuff—all the more so because she’d locked it away so long, afraid of what it stirred in her. But unthinking, she reached for it, ready to put everything on the line.

It bubbled up, sweet and thick as death. Evelina flinched from the contact, her bracelets making her awkward. All it took was for her mastery to slip for one hairbreadth of time and, like a serpent, it turned on her.

Evelina gasped, the sweet ache of the power splitting her in two, as if an ax had riven her breastbone. But what that sharp blade released was delicious, silken fingers delivering equal parts pleasure and pain along every nerve of body and mind. She froze, her body locked in that inhalation of surprise at the same instant her perception flew outward in a sudden burst. In that moment she encompassed so much, too much, but she indeed sensed Imogen, a quivering mote in a vast, unformed Somewhere.

Imogen!
Joy rang through Evelina, her vulnerable state making every emotion thunderously acute. She lunged for Imogen, the flicker of Evelina’s conscious energy darting out. She needed to touch Imogen, to grab her and pull her home.

But Evelina didn’t really know how, and she had lost full control of that wild, serpent strength. The lunge made her lose her inner balance, a sudden slip and fall, her mind frantically twisting to keep the power steady but fumbling it all the same. Imogen’s location spun out of mind.

Evelina’s head hit the table with a crack. It snapped her back to herself, the wood-grain pattern suddenly stark before her. “Ow!” She pressed a hand to her forehead, her stomach lurching dangerously.

And then the scattered power crashed through the room, animating the scraps of unfinished clockwork strewn across the table. Gears whirred, levers pumped and clicked and chirruped—nothing quite working because nothing was entirely finished. Most of the machines didn’t even have springs to wind them yet, but they still flailed in a mockery of life, half-formed creatures born before their time. Only
the clock on the mantel chimed a coherent protest, its careful calibration knocked askew by the marauding energy.

Damn and blast
. Evelina covered her ears at the racket, sickened by the pulse of uncontrolled power, and then had to jump up to close the valve of the gas burner when it tried to set itself alight. There was a pain behind her eyes that threatened a nosebleed, but trying to dampen the energy would only make it worse. The only way to avoid that was to wait out the maelstrom and hope no one else heard it.

Eventually, slowly, the power dissipated into hiccups of activity, and then finally nothing. She fell back into her chair, covered in perspiration that cooled until she shivered. Fright crackled like static through her body. Falling, whether it was from a tightrope or from the construct of a spell, always left her wide-eyed and prickling.

She was drained and she had failed—and it stung. Bracing her elbows on the table, Evelina pressed her face into her hands, pushing back her emotions. Now all that was left was to get word to Madam Thalassa—if Holmes could find her—and warn her about the protective magic she’d set around Imogen. She hoped the medium could find a way around it. But worse in Evelina’s mind was having to admit that she wasn’t up to the job of helping her own friend. What kind of a half-trained, ham-fisted magic user was she?

Evelina rose from the worktable, her knees still shaky, and pushed open the window, one of her silver bracelets clattering against the glass. The air was cold, but it would help to clear her head. A dirigible floated above the college rooftops, the fat red balloon as cheerful as a child’s toy in the pewter-colored sky. Behind it, the sun struggled against the thick cloud, but it was a losing battle. By nightfall, there would be rain.

Her gaze left the sky as the clock across the common struck three. She’d gone up once to look at the workings inside. They had been unremarkable, but the view of Highgate and Hampstead Heath had reminded her of all the places she was now forbidden to roam. The isolation was worst. It had been nearly a year since she’d been allowed to visit freely with friends or family and she craved contact.

Just as Keating used the bracelets, he used family affection as a weapon. He’d manipulated her into the Whitechapel escapade by threatening her uncle. Now he enforced her obedience the same way. She had to earn time with those she loved through perfect obedience—and no doubt the laboratory incident would weigh against her.

But there were the secret letters. Her gaze fell on the modest Ladies’ College library. It was open to the public on Tuesday afternoons—a concession to the township that formed part of the agreement for using the land. A man in a tweed coat was sitting on a bench outside the doors, smoking and thumbing through a book. As the last chime of the clock melted away, he opened his watch, checked it, and rose. He was in his thirties, brown haired, fit, with a mustache and pleasant, open features. Evelina knew him at once: Dr. John Watson.
Twice in one week. Something’s up!

As he stood and tucked the volume into his pocket, a dog she hadn’t seen emerged from under the iron bench and trotted at his heels. It was a water spaniel with rusty-brown spots and probably belonged to a patient who was too indisposed to walk it. The dog was perfect camouflage. With the animal in tow, Watson looked every inch a gentleman of the half-rural neighborhood, out for a pleasant stroll to the library. He wasn’t as well known as her uncle—in fact, though he was a handsome man, he had a gift for making himself utterly invisible. Nobody, including the Gold King’s Yellowbacks, would give him a second glance.

Evelina knew better, excitement mounting inside her. There would be a letter waiting for her in their secret hiding place in the library wall. Gratitude to the dear, loyal doctor burned hot within her, bringing tears to her eyes. Evelina grabbed her coat and nearly ran out of her rooms.

She reached the quadrangle and began hurrying along one of the paths that crisscrossed the green between the buildings. She pulled her coat closer, realizing that she’d forgotten to button it in her haste, and then fumbled for the gloves she knew were stuffed in her coat pockets, barely slowing her pace. Soon frost would extinguish the last of the
flowers. Already, the creepers that covered the walls were touched with red.

Hunger nagged at her, reminding Evelina that she’d drained her power. And it wasn’t just hunger for food, but for darker things. She shoved it down, cursing Magnus for burdening her with the need. Death in battle had been too good an end for him.

She reached the bench by the library, the cold feeling more like November than September. Nevertheless, she sat down on the wooden seat, scanning the quadrangle. There were people hurrying between buildings, but their heads were down against the wind. No one was looking her way. She twisted around. Behind the ornate black iron frame of the bench, there was a gap in the mortar of the library wall. Between two of the smooth gray stones, she could just make out a corner of paper. She slipped off her glove for a better grip and tugged. The bundle of pages was fat and didn’t want to move. Dr. Watson must have wedged it in with force. Swearing under her breath, Evelina turned back to the quadrangle, taking another look around. A knot of students was coming her way. She tugged again, and the paper tore.

The other girls were too close now. Evelina dropped her glove, giving herself an excuse to fumble about for it until they had gone. Then she turned, jammed her fingers into the crack, and pulled out the packet with no regard for skin or the condition of her fingernails. She slipped the pages into her pocket and started back for her rooms in a better mood than she had been in all day.

It lasted until she opened the packet and started to read.