12
monsters to find
Portia hadn’t run very far.
Sobbing, she shuffled down the alleyway, groping the walls to remain upright. Sera gathered her skirts and chased her down the street, reaching her in a few fast strides.
She grabbed her hand. “Portia—”
The girl wrenched her arm away and scrambled back against a brick wall, eyes wide with fear. Her skin was gray and pallid, her lips cracked and dry. Dark circles hung like half-moons beneath her eyes, and her cheeks were sunken. Even her hair hung limp about her shoulders. She was a breath away from being a walking skeleton. Sera’s heart twisted; it was like looking into the mirror two years ago. After months of having her magic drained, it had taken her double the time to gain weight and strength, and longer for the cuts to heal.
“I won’t go back,” she moaned and lifted a hand to the air. Bruises covered her arm, and on her wrists were linear burn marks as though she’d been bound. “I’ll use what magic I have left and make the Aetherium arrest me before you take me back to those men.”
Sera held her hands up in surrender. “I’m not here to hurt you, Portia. All we want is to help capture the men who took you.”
Portia tucked her bottom lip between her teeth, considering Sera’s words, but shook her head and made to turn.
“Portia, wait!” Sera hissed and glanced about the avenue. At any minute a patrol guard could pass by. She had to earn the girl’s trust so she could bring her back inside. And quickly. Pulling down her glove and lifting her sleeve, Sera revealed the trail of scars along her arm. Portia’s brow gathered, tears trailing down her deep-set cheeks. She didn’t try to run away.
Sera inched forward. “They did this to you, didn’t they? I know what you went through. My attacker is dead now, and I want to catch yours. Help us make sure they don’t drain another witch again.”
The girl’s body was wracked as she shielded her face with her hands and sobbed. Her knees buckled, but Sera caught her before she collapsed and helped her back down the alley and into the house.
Rowena was sitting now, Barrington towering over her, the very fires of hell in his eyes. Sera averted her gaze and moved Portia to the bed. The cold of night clung to her clammy skin. Sera draped one of the wool blankets over the girl.
“What did you do to her?” Rowena cried, struggling to stand. Barrington released her, and she ran to Portia’s side, glaring at Sera. “What did you do?”
“She’s here to help,” Portia whispered, her voice hoarse. She curled into herself and gripped Rowena’s hands, her own knuckles white and pronounced.
“I know this is hard for you, Portia, but can you tell us what happened? You can trust me…and him.” Sera looked over her shoulder to Barrington. His jaw was clenched tight, but he sat down and picked up his pencil.
Sera stooped next to the bed, at eye level with Portia. “Please, tell us everything.”
Portia took a few steadying breaths that rattled in her chest, her eyes filled with tears. “I was on my way back home from the bakery where I worked—I cleaned there sometimes. The baker was nice, and I was able to bring home food. These men were waiting for me, said they were from the Aetherium Seventhborn Program. I had applied last month—Rowena said I had more power in a pinky than she had. It was worth a try. When I saw them, I thought I had gotten in. One of them asked to test my reserves, and I let him. That’s when they nabbed me, said they were taking me to the Academy.” Her face contorted as she suppressed a sob.
“How?” Barrington asked. “It’s impossible for you both to be seventhborns.”
Portia reached out her arm. Sera and Barrington exchanged glances. Her seventhborn mark was fading.
“She was trying to help me,” Rowena said, smoothing down Portia’s hair. “We figured if she got into the program, even if she didn’t graduate, she could get a better job with what she learned, so we used dye and made her seventhborn mark. Had I known…”
“Pretending to be a seventhborn?” Barrington scoffed. “Are you mad?”
“No, sir. We’re hungry and desperate,” Rowena hissed, tears clinging to her lashes. “We’re not all as lucky as you,” she said, glaring at Sera. “We don’t got no fancy job and dress. They still find us and kill us, and the Aetherium pretends it never happened. Purist or Pragmatic, you’re all the same. This was our chance. But then they took her… Those bastards.”
“Do you remember where they took you?” Barrington asked.
Portia shook her head. A tear trailed from the corner of her eye, down her temple, and vanished into her matted hair. “When I woke up, I was in a room with two girls. The curtains were drawn; we weren’t allowed to look outside. But there were spells everywhere on the walls, and the men wore blue robes with a raven on the breast.”
Barrington’s grip tightened around his pencil.
“One of the girls they drained right away. They then took me and Winnie—she was a nice girl from Clewiston.”
Sera shivered. Though she’d heard Winnie’s name during the summoning, to know she was real—that she had existed and now spoke to her from death—made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
“They dragged us to a cemetery where they’d exhumed a grave and made me touch the dead body.” She trembled, hugging herself tighter. “It was terrible. They said I would help them raise the corpse.”
Barrington set his pencil down slowly. “Did they say exactly what you would do?”
“No,” she whispered, “but it didn’t work. They needed seventhborns, and I’m not. That’s when Winnie told me to run. She knew I wasn’t a real seventhborn. I’d told her. She had a bit more training and blasted them with magic, and I was able to get away. Thankfully there was a constable close by. They would’ve caught me otherwise.”
Barrington inched to the edge of his seat, his anticipation brightening his eyes. “Miss Rees, would you be able to cast out your memory of these men? I will pay for all transportation to whichever Aetherium magic province you’d like and can guide you through the spell. It wouldn’t take much magic—”
“No, no, no. No magic, no magic.” Quaking, she burrowed into her sister’s side. “No magic.”
Rowena scoffed. “You’re mad if you think we’re setting foot in a magic province again. Our condition may be no different in Fairmount, but at least those bastards will have a harder time nabbing her here. If they come for her, she can use magic, and the constables will be here at once and protect her. No, she’s told you all she can. You need to leave. I said five minutes, and you’ve had thirty.”
Barrington drew out his pocket watch. Opening it, he gritted his teeth. “Indeed we have, and yes, we need to leave.” He stuffed his watch back into his pocket, his eyes steeled with disappointment. “Can you tell us anything about these men? Anything that can help us identify them?”
Curled up in her sister’s side, Portia stared, seemingly at nothing. Sera’s heart tightened, and she gripped the girl’s hand.
“My sister is finished. Please go,” Rowena said, stroking Portia’s back as if to warm her. But Sera knew there was no warming her, not until her reserves recovered from the abuse. Even then, the chill lingered.
“Perhaps you can draw them, then, or jot down whatever you remember, whatever at all? Drop it off at Trousseau, down in the Lower District. You’ve heard of it, yes?” Barrington spoke quickly.
Rowena nodded. Barrington reached into his pocket and set a stack of coins on the small table. “You will receive triple that amount upon delivery.”
Putting on his top hat, he strode through the door. Sera squeezed Portia’s hand and hurried after Barrington but stopped and glanced back at Portia shivering in Rowena’s arms. Her hand tightened on the doorknob, a fierce ache in her heart. Never before had she wanted to be an inspector so badly. She yearned to locate her family, but now there were monsters to find.
There would always be monsters to find.
…
Sera imagined he would have dismissed her the moment they set foot outside the Rees’s hovel, yet an hour and two transfer spells later, they entered Barrington’s study and he had yet to say a word.
He slid off his cloak and hung it on the coat-tree, then relieved his pockets of his notebook and wand. Walking to the side bar, he grabbed a glass and set it down with a light tap, then poured himself a drink. He picked up the goblet and stared at the amber liquid but didn’t drink. Didn’t speak.
Sera slipped off her veiled hat and dropped it on his desk. He hadn’t even recognized that they had new information—good information, thanks to her! She shook her head. “You can’t possibly still be angry with me.”
Barrington’s grip tensed on the glass, his knuckles white. “Don’t tell me who I can and cannot be angry with, Miss Dovetail. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the superior here, and when I ask you not to give chase, you do not give chase.”
His words were glacial, sharp icicles stabbing Sera’s skin. She scoffed and tore off her cloak and thrust it on the chair beside her. “You’re unbelievable. Why can’t you just admit that I did a good job? That if I would have listened to you, our only witness may have fled, and we never would have learned what we did today?”
Barrington said nothing, transfixed by his glass of brandy and whatever thoughts crowded his head.
Heat seared Sera’s insides. “I did what was right.”
“You did what you wanted,” he said, his voice eerily calm. “Without thinking of consequence.”
Sera bit her nails into her palms. There was no pleasing him! “I did what was right, and it bothers you because you take pleasure in trying to make me feel small and worthless, just like everyone else.”
Barrington spun to her at this, his wolf eyes narrowed. “Pleasure? No, Miss Dovetail, it isn’t pleasure I feel in scolding you, but inordinate frustration. More than you can imagine. Nothing about you is small and worthless—on the contrary, you are a brilliant witch and can be a spectacular inspector, yet you continue to jeopardize your future. You ran after Portia and never once considered that an Aetherium patrol could have been right outside. What would you have said then?”
Sera’s cheeks flushed at the reproach, but she set her jaw. She hadn’t thought of that. Still she said, “I would have stalled so you could get away, then taken the blame for transferring in illegally.”
“It is not about the blame,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper. “It is about this—about us. What is the point of us working together if you will sabotage it at every turn? What I tell you to do isn’t to order you around for pleasure. It is to keep you—to keep us—alive and able to move on with our investigation. And in the end, it isn’t about us at all. It is about Portia and Winnie and Agatha and Elsie and every other witch whose lives have been cut short. They are the ones who need us to find these men.”
“They aren’t men. They’re beasts, and if we’d let Portia run away, we would have lost our chance at finding out they are targeting seventhborns.”
“I would rather lose a chance than lose you, Miss Dovetail. When I ask you to do something, above all, it is to keep you safe, and I need you to understand that. Yet you insist on drawing attention to yourself without realizing it will bring only…”
He met her stare and, seeming to remember himself, he raked a hand through his hair, squeezed at the nape, and said no more. Focused on the ground, he shook his head and paced in an aimless circle. Sera watched him, reminded of an ocean in the midst of a storm, dark and tormented. But why?
She gulped through a thickened throat, his apprehension suddenly contagious. “Will bring only what?”
Barrington stopped. “Will bring you only more trouble,” he said without looking her in the eyes.
Sera’s brow furrowed, a sense of dread settled in her belly. This wasn’t what he meant to say. “Professor?”
“I’m tired, and you have class in the morning.” He drew his wand and aimed it at her feet. “I will be in touch. Good night, Miss Dovetail.”
“But Professor—”
Blackness surrounded her, then she stumbled back onto her window seat.
“Damn it,” she whispered, sitting. Kicking off her boots, she drew her knees to her chest and stared out to the darkness as Barrington’s words and abrupt change chased one another through her mind.
Will bring you only more trouble…
She shook her head. No, this wasn’t what he’d meant to tell her. Her soul stirred with this awareness. His words didn’t match his solemnness…or had it been fear? But what could he have possibly meant to say that he’d been too scared to share?