PEGASUS

8

MYSTERIOUS NOTES WITH URGENT PLEAS were not unusual. Hetty had them pressed into her hand while crossing busy streets, stumbled across them in job postings, had them slid to her across the bar at a saloon they visited on special occasions. She had once received a note coded in a bouquet of flowers. That one had been her favorite, although she had needed Penelope’s help with identifying the flowers to discover its true meaning.

This scribbled note was a bit cleverer than the others. The mark only activated when she touched it, which meant the magic didn’t leave even the faintest trace of residue. While that was clever, if a bit overdramatic, there was no name attached to it. The place to meet the writer was obvious. The advertisement was for a goods store in town, and the scribbled numbers were tomorrow’s date with a time marked right underneath it.

And there was something else. A crescent moon scrawled in the corner.

Hetty’s eyebrows lifted.

The crescent moon was her mark, and it noted sensitive cases that needed a delicate touch. A sun drawing would have made a case Benjy’s, and would lead to places shrouded in vice and ruin.

Hetty was still studying the paper as she pushed open the door to their room. She swished her fingers to form the simple jutting line of the Canis Minor sigil. Distracted as she was, she had already finished the spell before she realized the lights were already on.

Instead of lights bursting to life around her, she was thrown into darkness.

“Hetty!” Benjy called. “You need to pay attention!”

“Sorry,” she said, but before she could reverse it, Pegasus flew into the lamps, the discharge of magic lighting the glass orb inside. There it would bounce inside the glass until it faded or they disrupted the charm. Although Benjy had made them, he hadn’t yet patented their design. These two lamps were the only ones that didn’t catch on fire after three uses. After months of tinkering with glass, three small fires, and turning her favorite dress into ash, Benjy hadn’t figured out how to bottle lightning twice.

“You are usually not home this early,” Hetty said as she shut the door. “Did you manage to—” She stopped and pointed to the cradle at Benjy’s elbow. “That doesn’t belong here.”

“Of course it doesn’t.” Benjy studied the edge of his knife before striking it against a stone. “This is kindling.” He nudged the cradle and it rattled like a set of bones. “Although I couldn’t set it on fire even if I wanted to. Did you eat yet?”

Hetty hadn’t. On the table was a plate kept warm by an array of spells. She ate dutifully, even the forsaken collards, for she learned a long time ago never to turn down freely given food.

As she ate, Benjy continued to sharpen his knife in measured strokes.

“My boss’s daughter is having a baby. He purchased this cradle and asked me to carve enchantments into it.”

“Amos asked you for another favor? You should have said no.”

“You’re sewing christening gowns.” Benjy nodded at the tiny pile of baby clothes in a basket on the floor.

“Penelope’s cousin Maybelle asked me to sew protective charms into the hems. I only agreed because she offered to pay.”

Hetty looked over to her husband expectantly, but he didn’t meet her eyes.

“Benjy,” Hetty said softly, “what have I told you about taking on things out of the goodness of your heart?”

“It’s just a little fix,” he replied. “I only brought it here because I wanted your opinion on what charms to use. The ones I know wouldn’t be quite right.”

There was enough truth in those for Hetty to take his explanation at face value. Although Benjy often pounded spells into the things he made and mended at the forge, his work was different from hers. His spells were the forest to her trees. Where her protection spells would protect a person directly, his spells were focused in broader scope around the person.

Hetty drew a sigil into the air, and a gust of wind picked up one of the little gowns and sent it in Benjy’s direction. “Use this one as a guide.”

Benjy held up the gown and brought it close to study the star sigils she’d hidden in the hems. “You’re not going to show me?”

“Show you?” Hetty echoed. “I thought you liked figuring things out on your own?”

“Not always,” he said, but his tone was rather strained.

Hetty waited for him to continue, but when he said nothing more, she took the opportunity to move the conversation to a more interesting territory.

She held out the advertisement. “This was in the post.”

Benjy’s eyes darted along the paper.

“A plea for help,” Benjy said, shrugging. “No mystery there, other than how you would meet this person when you’re working at the shop.”

“No trouble. I quit.”

Benjy didn’t even blink.

“What’s your reason this time?”

“An enchanted dress. The work was perfect, but the only thing wrong was me. I did everything I was asked, but the clients and Mrs. Harper had complaints. I decided I didn’t want to listen anymore.”

“I suppose that’s fine,” Benjy said as he lined up the stitches of the little gown against the wood.

“What about rent?” Hetty asked, surprised at this quiet reaction. “I won’t get my last wages.”

“I’ll take care of it. You worry about that note. That woman must be very desperate to go through all that trouble. It’s your case to solve. Keep your focus on it.”

Hetty found herself nodding until she recalled the last time he had encouraged her to pursue a case without his assistance. She’d solved it without issue, but the case he took on without her ended up with him locked up in a lighthouse.

“I don’t have to take this on,” Hetty said, watching him very closely. “Small cases can become distractions that could limit my time in making inquiries about Charlie’s murder.”

“I never said a word about that.”

“But you aren’t keen on me getting involved. Even though you suggested that I confirm Alain’s story.”

“I did,” Benjy began, and then deftly avoided the trap she’d laid for him. “What new insights did you discover?”

“Alain’s story about looking for the water pump is true. The pump at his home was broken, and it’s been broken for weeks without Charlie doing a thing about it. Geraldine said something about him exchanging words with Charlie, but it might have been a lie, since he never mentioned it before.”

“His wife is the one selling dodgy brewed magic.” Benjy hooked a thumb along one of his suspenders, as he nodded along. “So there’s a good chance they’re both liars and you can trust nothing they said.”

“Although the broken pump is just one reason for murder. The building is in poor shape, worse than it has been in the past. Or maybe I never noticed. I can’t believe Charlie let the place get into such a state. It makes me want to take the money they’re collecting for Marianne and give it to those poor tenants.”

“What did you tell Marianne?”

“Not a word about the sigil. I should have, perhaps.” Hetty frowned. “She thinks he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Charlie left early from a dinner party last night.”

“Why?”

“Marianne didn’t put it to words, but I suspect they argued.”

“Were they having trouble?”

“Marianne would never admit it, even if Charlie was having an affair. Especially to me. She likes the façade she put together far too much.”

Benjy’s face twisted and Hetty forgot her petty annoyances with Marianne as she recognized his expression.

“You believe Marianne might have something to do with his death?” Hetty asked.

“Do you?” he countered. “You neglected to mention her reaction to the news.”

“She was devastated,” Hetty replied, sharper than her words merited. “I didn’t think such an obvious fact needed to be mentioned. She all but sobbed on my shoulder. I don’t think she’s involved.”

“I need a better reason than that to discount her,” Benjy said. “Not,” he added hastily, “that I don’t trust your judgment. But in this particular case I think it’s clouded.”

Hetty stood up from the table, bristling at each offending word. “How kind of you to say that.”

She started to cross the room only to be stopped by a gentle tug on her arm.

“Hetty, I didn’t mean—”

“What did you mean?”

At the snap of her words, Benjy let go but didn’t retreat. He stood there and replied in a measured tone, “You tend to discount people for very odd reasons.”

“Odd reasons,” Hetty echoed, stepping forward as her anger raised the volume of her voice. “I believe Marianne couldn’t have killed Charlie. She loved him. How is that odd? The oddness is the circumstance! Marianne loved Charlie. If she killed him, it would have been a passionate move done in a moment of distress. She would not take the time to carve symbols into his chest and then deposit the body in an alley. Nor would she take care to dress him in a drunk’s clothes. Marianne would have stabbed him in the neck or the chest and probably been too startled to think about what to do about the bleeding body on her floor.”

“What about magic?” Benjy prompted.

“That requires thinking.” Hetty curled her left hand into a fist, raising it high. “Especially when Marianne can’t work even the simplest spells quickly! A knife, on the other hand, doesn’t require thinking to make its mark!” She made to swing her hand down, but Benjy caught her wrist.

They stood there, locked in this oddly intimate pose. There was no knife in her hand, or murderous intent in her heart. But in the moment he touched her wrist, she remembered the knife he had once given her.

It fit her left hand perfectly, and instead of a tool it was an extension of herself.

He had given it to her knowing she didn’t trust him. When his words of assistance in helping find her sister were met with suspicion. Back when his touch on her arm got the knife’s tip pressed to his throat.

At some point it all changed. But he never took the knife from her, even when it almost cost him an eye.

“I think you proved your point.” Benjy released her wrist. “Though you forget he was stabbed in the back first. It must have been two knives.”

Although he faced her as he spoke, his words weren’t meant for her. Benjy’s gaze had gone beyond her to study their map, his mind whirling as if powered by clockwork pieces.

Benjy was smart in a way Hetty did not have words for. It was something greater than the books he read, or his ability to craft something out of metal. It was in how he saw the world, not just for what was there but what it could become. When things fell apart, he saw how the pieces moved back into place. He figured solutions to problems that hadn’t occurred yet.

Benjy tried to explain it to her once, and she did her best to listen, but Hetty never fully grasped it. In a way, she didn’t need to. People saw the world in a hundred different ways. Benjy’s view was no better or worse than any others.

So when he got quiet and lost in his thoughts, Hetty just settled and waited for him to come back to her.

“If there are two knives,” Benjy resumed, “It could complicate things. Two means another person. We can’t know for sure.”

“Oliver would, if he found different marks. I will make time to see him tomorrow. I have plenty of it now.”

“What did you do once you quit the shop?”

“Nothing much.” Hetty sat back down at the table and began to pull out the pins that kept her hair in place, grabbing most by touch and chance. “I stopped by to see Mrs. Evans on the way home . . .”

As Hetty tied down her hair for bed, she outlined the conversations and events of the evening. Benjy made all the little comments she knew he would make, including scowling at the mention of the burial society.

“We’re not doing that,” he grunted as he focused on the map. “How can you enjoy living if you’re saving for death?”

“I think it’s about peace of mind.”

“You want to join, then?”

“Of course not. I just realized I don’t have a plan if you died before I do.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Those simple words unraveled a knot in her chest crowded with more fears than she realized. Fear—not of death, but of the loss of the many moments that would follow.

She had lost so many people over the years. She couldn’t do anything about those losses then, but she could do a bit more to prevent losses now.

“I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Hetty replied airily.

She dropped a bent hairpin into his hand.

He started, clearly not expecting the small gift. His reaction tugged a small smile out of her. “Can you put this on the map for me?” Hetty said. “I think this mysterious note is going to be quite interesting.”