LYNX
LYNX
WHEN SUNLIGHT STARTED TO CREEP upward on their bed, Hetty watched as Benjy traced the Shield sigil along the sheets in front of her. Once the sigil was complete, he flicked it toward the window. The curtains yanked themselves together and the room fell back into semi-darkness.
On a normal morning, Hetty would have bumped her shoulder into him and told him to go to work. When the sunlight had reached their bed, early morning had already burned away. He was late, she was late, and just lying around wouldn’t lead to anything productive. However, this morning she was content to pretend to be asleep just a bit longer.
For all the things they’d had to figure out when they married, sharing a bed was never a problem. Since their time on the road, they had grown accustomed to sleeping near the other. Sleeping close meant they’d be quicker to stir, quicker to be at ease, and quicker to make sure the other was near. Bits of this habit lingered to the extent that even now she slept better when he was at her back.
As for other things, well, Hetty would be lying to say the sleeping was always chaste. She was curious by nature, and being thrust in danger and uncertainty most of the time only added to it. When it happened it was more of a relief to put aside a lingering question that would have dogged their steps as they moved about their tiny room. It hadn’t occurred often or changed anything in their partnership. But since it had happened, it allowed her to get comfortable around him.
Comfortable to not second-guess motives or to question every word he said. Comfortable to cry into his shoulder, and to dump problems into his lap. Comfortable to admit her fears and share fragile hopes.
Comfortable that even waking up this close next to him stirred up only mild surprise.
She couldn’t remember the last time she woke tucked under his arm. Stars, she couldn’t remember the last time when she woke up next to him—most mornings he was long gone before she even stirred.
When was the last time this occurred? Winter? It got bitterly cold in their room, and they often turned to each other for added warmth. But that didn’t seem right. Last winter she’d sewn spells in their quilt to soften the chill and better hold warmth. Not winter, then? Further back?
She searched her memory. Maybe it was when he started boxing? Did the guilt make him pull away?
“Are you awake?” Benjy mumbled into her ear, his breath brushing against her cheek.
“No.”
He chuckled, and sheets shifted as he moved away. “Liar.”
“Don’t go into work,” Hetty said as she rolled over to watch him creep about the room. He hadn’t turned on the lamp, but instead conjured a small light that hovered over his head so that the bumpy map of scars on his back looked smooth and somewhat altered.
“Go back to sleep,” Benjy murmured.
“You should too.”
“I would, but I have work. Unless”—his eyes flew back to her as if her blood had seeped into the sheets—“you’re not feeling well.”
Hetty playfully coughed into her hands. “I think there might have been something in that river. I don’t know if I’ll make it.”
Benjy leaned back over the bed and pressed the back of his hand against her forehead. Hetty abruptly stopped coughing as she stared up at him, her skin prickling at the intimacy of his touch.
“You don’t feel any warmer than usual . . .” he said, and their eyes met for a long moment. “Then again, I’m not a healer.”
He slipped away from her again. “I have to go to work,” he repeated, mostly to himself. “If I don’t show after being absent for the past two days, I’ll lose my job.”
“Lose your job?” Hetty exclaimed. She sat up, nearly throwing off her covers, more than wide awake now. “After all you done for him?”
“It’s me who’s taken advantage of Amos’s goodwill, not the other way around,” Benjy remarked as he shrugged on his shirt. “He always held my job for me during our trips south.”
“And all you had to do was bring every member of his family to freedom,” Hetty grumbled. She got off the bed, absently tugging her nightgown around her as she turned on the lamp.
Light spilled into the room, illuminating Benjy’s somewhat amused smile.
“It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing? You do all the work at the forge. You’re the reason it’s still open! Then there are all the odd jobs he just hands over to you, followed by complaints when you can’t get your work done. I would have left ages ago.”
“Yes, but Amos is absent enough that I can use the forge to work on little projects of my own. Though I suppose I could find work at other places. Maybe even do something different.”
“Something different?” Hetty asked. “Do you mean carpentry? Or mason work?”
“Something vastly different.” For a moment, Hetty thought that this would be the last word on the subject, but then he added: “When you first pressed Oliver into putting on funerals, I wasn’t keen on the idea. Oliver is an embalmer. Everything else is additional work for him, including pretending to be nice to people. Him doing funerals meant we had to help. After doing it a few times, I found I don’t mind making arrangements. The settling of the church, the arrangement of the services. Helping give people some peace and allow others to grieve. It’s quiet work and it’s a job that needs doing.”
Hetty smiled. Those words were an echo from the past, and rang as true now as they had back then. “And someone must do it.”
“I like working at the forge,” Benjy continued, “but I only stayed because one of us needs steady work. But there are other possibilities out there. For me. For you.”
“I can find work quicker as a dressmaker,” Hetty protested. “I can even open my own shop.”
“You could, but I’m keen on a change. It’s just a thought.” Benjy smiled. “Nothing more.”
As he said that, Hetty could see herself, see them, standing in a cellar. There was a body on the table, and there was a casket, and the old man lying there was greatly mourned. But his death, while unexpected, was only the natural end to a long life.
Just a thought, he said. But what a wonderful thought it was.
“I would advise you to stay here and rest,” Benjy said. “There is nothing that pressing you need to take care of at this moment.”
“Rest,” Hetty huffed. “When there is so much to do? I saw Alain Browne at the excursion but did I tell you I saw Geraldine selling her wares on the street? She told me that Alain lied. But I don’t know if that’s true or if she was just trying to distract me from the wares that I will certainly be throwing out again.”
“Distract you.”
Benjy moved toward the mantel. He lingered there for a moment, before moving things aside. Tucked behind her box of old pins, the little plant of Moonleaf, and his collection of books was the vial that Penelope had given to her earlier this week. The one Hetty had shown Geraldine, who claimed to never have laid eyes on it despite the label being in her own hand.
He turned it over in his hand. “Your interactions with her always lead to confrontations. You complain about her, tell stories about—”
“To warn people!”
“And such stories get told elsewhere. Do you think you just happened upon this vial by chance? After all the dust you kicked up about her potions, she wouldn’t just have them out. This only ended up in your hands because someone came to Penelope’s shop. And it’s this specific potion.” He pointed to the label, which spoke of promises that any person wishing to bear a child would hope for. “Would you have given this a single thought if this was wart remover? The only thing missing is a tag with your name on it. Someone was trying to get your attention.”
“This was bait,” Hetty said.
“Not bait.” Benjy shook his head. “A distraction. Maybe not by this Geraldine woman, but by someone who wants you to focus on this instead. Especially when . . .” He twisted open the cap and poured some into his cupped hand. Clear liquid trickled into his palm, a world of difference from the amber liquid that Hetty had seen before. “It’s water.”
“You sure?”
“Positive,” he said. For a moment she feared he would move to prove his assertion, but instead he dried off his hands with a handkerchief. “This is a fake, and I bet this isn’t the only one. Otherwise, tales of people becoming dreadfully ill would have reached your ears.”
“It is a clever distraction. I wouldn’t have checked the bottle.”
“That’s what they gambled on.” Benjy put the empty vial back onto the mantel. “With this I’m not sure if the Brownes’ involvement is an accident or on purpose.”
“I could go around to see them. This only adds to my questions.”
“I want to go with you.”
“But you have to go work.”
“Precisely.”
Hetty snorted, sensing the other sentiments contained in that single word. “I will not go,” she said in the end, “but I will not stay here all day. I have another case to work on.” Hetty went to the dress she’d made for Maybelle’s daughter. She smoothed the fabric as she gave it one last glance. “The dress is nearly done, and it’s the perfect excuse to find out what Penelope or her cousins were able to find out about Judith.”
“That doesn’t sound too dangerous.”
“Worried about me?”
He went quiet for a moment, weighing and disregarding each word before he selected the perfect one. “Only the right amount.”
Benjy left then, leaving Hetty to make her last fixes to the dress. Reaching into her sewing kit, her fingers brushed against the cool metal of Charlie’s pocket watch.
So that was where it went. She forgot all about it.
She opened it, and flipped it shut like she had seen Charlie do so many times to punctuate his words.
Charlie always had it with him, so why did he not have it the day he died?
Was it forgotten, or left on purpose?
Maybe there was something about the astrolabe. Hetty had disregarded the astrolabe side since it wasn’t broken like the clock, but Charlie was up to a number of things they did not know at all. Could the astrolabe lead them to the answers they sought? At any rate, it was worth it to show Benjy, especially if she could persuade him to leave the forge early.
She had little doubt it would be a hard task. He had made it clear he preferred to be with her if she started following leads for this case. And in that she was in perfect agreement.
When Hetty arrived at Maybelle’s shoe shop with the wedding dress and little christening gowns carefully wrapped up, the windows were dark. She peered inside for a bit until she spotted a handcrafted Closed sign posted on the door. Not wanting to linger, she debated making her way toward Maybelle’s home before she remembered there was a better option.
A few streets more brought her near the herbalist shop. At this hour, the tiny space was quite empty, with only Penelope seated at the stool at the counter as she sorted through a batch of dried plants. The shelves on the walls were laden with herbs, the more common ones near the door. Moving inward the selection increased in rarity, level of poison, and magical properties, culminating with the deadliest of herbs behind the counter. Penelope claimed the latter were kept under lock and key, but Hetty doubted they were actually kept in the shop at all. This was the only herbalist shop that openly displayed its magical wares. Other shops had been burned down in the past by angry white mobs who’d gotten twisted up about brewed magic. But this shop, with wards put in place by Hetty and a bell forged under Benjy’s hammer, was protected in numerous ways.
“Morning.” Hetty held up the bundle in her arms. “I come bearing gifts.”
Instead of looking pleased, Penelope let the herbs slip from her fingers as if a ghost had walked through the door.
Hetty sighed. “Which one of your cousins was at the excursion?”
“Clarabelle,” Penelope rasped. “She told me about what happened.”
“Whatever she told you is a gross exaggeration.”
“You fell into the river! You could have drowned! I should have been there. I bet they didn’t have proper healers there.”
“It would have been worse if you had. You would’ve gotten caught in the blast with me. I’m sure I would convince you to be in the bicycle race as well.”
“But I would have been there. I should have taken Isaac Baxter’s offer.”
Thinking of her last encounter with Baxter, Hetty said, “No, best you didn’t. Nothing around that man seems right.”
“Is that why you were at the excursion?” Penelope asked. “Because of Baxter? Do you think he murdered Charlie? I hope he did—then we can be rid of him!”
“I don’t like him either,” Hetty said, “but that’s not reason enough to accuse a man.” Hetty leaned against the counter, staring down at the herbs, before another question rose up in her mind. “Do you think Clarabelle can tell me more about the members of the E.C. Degray club?”
Penelope shook her head. “She wouldn’t tell you anything interesting. Her husband is barely involved.”
“Too bad—the only other people I know are George and Clarence. And they’re not options.”
“Why not Clarence?”
“After all that happened at the excursion, he’s probably not keen on talking to Benjy.”
“Why not? Is he on the suspect list too?”
“He’s more a stand-in to be honest to represent someone who might fit the profile of the murderer. He and Eunice have connections to Charlie and Marianne. But I can’t think of any good motives, no more than George and Darlene. Although I did ask Clarence a few questions, but for some reason he didn’t seem keen on talking about certain details while Eunice was around. So I had Benjy whisk her off. Which nearly made things worse, since Clarence was going to chase after them.”
“You’re fine with that?” Penelope asked. “You dislike Eunice.”
“For reasons that have nothing to do with Benjy.”
“What a strange thing for you to say.” Penelope placed deliberate emphasis on each word. “Why is that?”
Caught by surprise, Hetty was still stammering out excuses as Penelope smirked.
“I knew something happened! You were acting so strange the other night. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but now I know. You’ve fallen in love!”
Hetty’s mouth fell open at this declaration, and for a few moments no words came to her. She felt stripped bare, exposed, even if it was with kindness and genuine delight.
“Don’t you dare deny it,” Penelope went on. “I can see you searching for the words, and it won’t convince me at all! I’ve known you for a very long time, and I knew you’ve been lying to yourself nearly as long.”
“Lying to myself !” Hetty grabbed these words, puffing up in indignation. “Of all the ridiculous things you have said it’s—”
“True.” Penelope’s eyes danced even as she came closer and closer to the blunt edge of Hetty’s temper. “You convinced yourself you married him because of silly gossip, being proper, and whatever excuse you dredged up, anything other than the fact you actually liked him.”
“I wouldn’t have married someone I didn’t like!”
“No, you’d only marry someone you couldn’t imagine your life without.”
Penelope stood back as she said this, with the firm, calm gaze of someone who had spoken a truth that no twisting words could alter.
“I wanted him part of every story that could be told of my life,” Hetty admitted, “and these feelings ruin things.”
“Ruin what? There are flowers that bloom after years of lying dormant, and they’re beautiful.”
“And those last for how many days?”
“Well, good thing you’re not flowers. Are you afraid of telling him?” Concern drifted into Penelope’s features. “I never seen you look so scared.”
“It’s easy to be brave when you have someone you trust at your back,” Hetty replied.
“But you do—you have me! He breaks your heart, I poison him, and we run off and join a traveling show. You’ll have to learn to take care of my plants, but you’re very bright and I’m sure you’ll pick up on things.”
For all the good cheer sprinkled in those words, Hetty knew Penelope was every bit sincere. Poisoning might not occur, but the rest, the rest Hetty knew was a promise that would not be forgotten. A promise Hetty’s sister would have made in a heartbeat.
“Thank you,” was all Hetty managed to say.
“It’s too early for that.” Penelope waved a hand. “Oh, and if you need something to get your mind off the troubles of your heart that isn’t related to murder, I have just the thing. I was invited to a tea. It was going to be a poetry reading, but after Charlie’s death . . . Well, the hostess thought you might like to come.”
A hostess that Penelope had gone out of her way not to name, Hetty couldn’t help but notice. That pointed to a few likely suspects, some that she would rather avoid. She also assumed the event would mostly consist of gossip without even a whiff of card games or anything exciting.
“Must I come?” Hetty whined.
“I would appreciate the company,” Penelope said, “and it would be fun.”
It would not be fun. It was far more likely to be an utter waste of time. Yet there was no way she could refuse such a simple request.
“What time is it tomorrow?”
Penelope eagerly rattled off the details.
“That gives me the morning.” Hetty patted the dress. “The shoe shop might be open then.”
“Maybelle’s out of town,” Penelope said. “Is this the dress?”
“And the little gowns for her baby. I finished it all.”
“Already?”
“It was quick work. Maybelle has done me a good turn many times in the past with the information she brought. I hoped to have news from her today. You did ask her about the missing servant?”
“Her and the rest of the family. While you were running around at the excursion, Annabelle, Rosabelle, and I made surprise deliveries of a few basic herbs to families throughout town. Eventually that generosity loosened a few tongues, but only one told us anything useful. This man said he worked for a household where a woman named Judith was turned out about a month ago. The official word was theft of candlesticks and silverware, but whispers spoke of the woman teaching Sorcery. Her employers chose to get rid of her quietly.”
Hetty shook her head. “How kind of them. Considering how far a scandal could reach. Do you know anything about the people she supposedly taught?”
“Only that it was a small number—more people were accused about knowing Sorcery than having actual talent. It’s actually quite a common thing in households that hire on servants. I asked about where Judith taught her lessons. But all I found was a song.” Penelope sang a few bars, stopping only when Hetty expelled a slight gasp. “You know it?”
“It was one of those songs for warning,” Hetty said. “Sometimes when collecting passengers, conductors would be drawn near a plantation or a farm. If there was trouble, someone would start singing to warn us of the way to go. Not everyone could make the journey, but they always helped in the small ways that they could—provide us with food, warnings, even distractions.”
“And songs,” Penelope added.
Hetty turned over the tune in her mind. She had collected songs as they traveled in the interest of comparing them. Her favorite was the one about the People Who Flew. In the song, slaves dropped hoes in the fields and sprouted wings, escaping to new horizons. The slaves’ names referred to safe houses or landmarks nearby. Other songs varied from location to location, and once you knew one, it was easy to tease out the meaning of the others.
The song Penelope had heard laid out directions, but there was a line about a bag of flour that didn’t make any sense.
Just as she was about to give up, she saw an answer, as plainly as if Benjy had stabbed a pin into their map.
“Is something wrong?” Penelope asked.
“Not at all. You just gave me a bounty of information.”
“It was helpful?”
“More than that,” Hetty assured her. “And that was clever: Giving people herbs, they’ll remember the gift more so than the person doing the giving.”
“I may not get directly involved in your cases,” Penelope replied, “but I do listen to all your stories.”
“Give your cousins my thanks,” Hetty said as she pushed away from the counter. “With your help I might be able to find this woman after all!”
“Be careful,” Penelope called as Hetty slipped out the door.
The song thrummed through Hetty like the steady beat of a drum. It led her through the familiar streets, making them appear foreign and strange in her rush.
These were songs used to help avoid capture and guide others to freedom, and so it was fitting they were guiding people once more. Guiding her to find a person who seemed to have all but vanished.
Hetty arrived outside of the dry goods store with a swaying sign showing a stack of flour bags. The store was filled with people, but luckily Hetty was more interested in what was upstairs. Slipping around the building, she climbed up a set of stairs to the upper level.
No lights showed in the window, but Hetty reached for the door anyway, knocking once, just to be polite. She waited, but heard nothing, as expected.
There were wards on the door, but they were stacked together using the same sigil. She shook her head and she broke through it. This was the work of someone who knew the basics. Laying spells out like that was no different than using just one, and hardly made it stronger.
The makeshift classroom was quite bare. No desk or tables, just a few scattered chairs and a chalkboard propped against the wall. The only light in the room came from the closed shutters of the window and hardly helped. As her eyes adjusted to the near darkness, she spotted a few empty boxes stacked in the corner. Their edges were dulled and they had marks on the sides as if they’d been tossed about. The only thing that stood out to Hetty as unusual, though, was the strong smell of lavender.
Perfume? She saw no flowers resting in a vase.
She followed the scent, going deeper into the room. As she passed a door, the band at her neck roared into life. Leo burst forth from its stitches to rest at her side. The lioness, whose midnight blue fur shimmered with stars, craned her head at Hetty. Hetty could almost swear she saw a glimmer of annoyance in the pitch-black eyes of the star-speckled creature.
Manifestation of her spells rarely happened without her will, and only ever did when she encountered bold magic. “I know I was careless.” With a wiggle of her fingers, Hetty directed the lioness to lie in wait of any other surprises.
Hetty directed her focus on the door. In the shimmering light, a cacophony of colors splashed along it.
The contrast between this sophisticated skill and the pitiful effort on the classroom’s door raised the hair off her neck.
One enchantment would be trouble. Two or three, a minor inconvenience. But there were more than a dozen splashed there, and she had no idea if they were protections, alarms, or something worse.
Still, she’d come too far to turn back now.
Hetty set Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Scorpio at each corner of the door. The sigils glowed with golden light, creating a protective barrier that would keep any destructive magics from spilling elsewhere beyond the door frame. With the power of the simpler Arrow, she sliced at the sigils on the door, breaking them bit by bit as she swung her hands from side to side. When her sigils fell apart, she merely set them once again.
She wished Benjy was with her.
His skill with the delicate work of taking things apart was second only to his ability to remember how to put them back together. Hetty knew she was leaving behind a great deal of evidence that she’d been here. Or if not that, then attracting attention as she worked. She was also growing steadily worried about what might lie behind the door.
No one warded a door this securely when running away. Anything that was of value went with you when you fled. No, someone else had done this. There could be a trap inside. Or a dead body.
There probably was one of both, knowing her luck.
The last sigil came undone with a hiss, the magic turning into mere wisps. As the magic faded, the door swung open. Hetty braced herself for any surprises and the smell of decay, but no particular odor—or person, for that matter—jumped out at her.
Warm light poured into the rooms with enough strength that she needn’t create any light of her own. For this, Hetty was grateful. She didn’t want any trace of her magic found here after she’d left.
With care, she walked inside. The room was clean. The wall had a large water stain and the rug was threadbare, but it was generally neat and well cared for. It was only slightly bigger than Hetty’s own room, but the few pieces of furniture here were of poor quality. A cot shoved in the corner, with a nightstand and a dented bowl atop it. On the table was a stack of books—school primers like the ones that George and Darlene used with the younger set of their students.
Not just like them. She had bound enough to know they were the same.
As Hetty reached for the closest book, the light in the room shifted. As the panes of light moved to show the rest of the room’s contents, Hetty forgot all about the primers.
In fact, she forgot nearly everything, as she stared at the wall. It was not spotted with any water stains, but something was there. Something drawn. No, something carved in the wall. A star sigil.
It was Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, the cursed sigil whose presence promised that nothing good ever followed.
Hetty stepped toward it, her hand rising of its own accord. As if touching would prove that the sigil was real and not just some nightmare come to life.
She was seeing threads being attached to pins on the map in their room. Pins that connected the clues, the suspects, and points of interest related to Charlie to a single pin that altered everything.
Judith Freeman.
A woman teaching Sorcery who had gone missing around the same time that Charlie died. Who might have taught at her friends’ school. Judith might even know the nameless man they found—could he have been one of her students? Judith could have ties to the political club, or Geraldine’s dodgy brewed magic. Or any number of things. Who knows what was connected and what was coincidence? This was a large city, but their community was tight and close. Chance could explain everything, but her gut was telling her that chance didn’t deserve that much credit.
The floorboards creaked behind Hetty.
In the open doorway stood a young woman—her surprise turning to fear in the blink of an eye.
Hetty took only a single step forward, and it was enough to send the figure scurrying.
The door slammed shut, but the magic that sealed it might have been paper. Hetty ripped the door open and ran.
She got out in time to see the woman hurtling down the stairs and dashing into the streets.
Hetty watched as the woman’s skirt fluttered around a corner—then shook her head before setting off in the opposite direction.
People were so predictable.
When fleeing they retreated in the same direction they came from, keeping along familiar sights and streets.
Easy to follow, especially when the person in pursuit knew the streets backwards and forward.
A few right turns later and Hetty jumped into the path of the fleeing woman. Hetty braced herself, drawing Canis Minor into the air. The binding spell snapped shut around the woman, flattening her arms against her sides as her legs locked together. The woman yelped and fought, until she finally spat swears at Hetty.
“Hello,” Hetty said as the woman writhed against the magical constraints. “Is there a problem?”
“Why are you following me!”
“Why did you run?” Hetty countered. “In my experience, people typically only run when they’re up to no good.”
“They run when they see trouble. Or when they’re being threatened.”
Hetty snapped her fingers. There was a flash of light and the woman staggered backwards to the ground. Although the woman stayed there, Hetty didn’t let herself relax, keeping her eyes vigilant for any sign of sudden movement.
“I like to ask you a few questions about a woman named Judith.”
The woman lifted her arm, but Hetty grasped the wrist. She twisted the woman’s arm until a long, spindly twig fell to the ground.
A wand.
It was to be expected, but somewhat pathetic all the same. Hetty did not expect that Judith or her students would be grand masters of the craft. Studying magic in secret is hard, and it was far easier to get caught than it was to actually learn anything.
The stranger clutched her arm to her chest but made no move to snatch up her wand or try anything else just as unwise.
“Were you about to use this on me?” Hetty asked. “If so, you’re a bigger fool than I thought. Don’t you know who I am?”
The woman lifted her chin and stiffened, an action revealing her to be younger than she first appeared. “A busybody.”
Hetty pulled at the band around her neck to reveal her scars, letting the crisp daylight show them in all their garishness. A sign of her past, a token of her strength. “I’m Henrietta Rhodes, and when I ask a question, I always get an answer. Who is Judith? You know her. Don’t lie to me. You wouldn’t have come when I disturbed the wards if you didn’t. I advise you to stop protecting her.”
“If you got caught using Sorcery,” said the woman, “it’s your own fault.”
“I don’t even know the first thing about it.”
The woman blinked. “Why are you looking for her then?”
“I’m worried about her,” Hetty said, and found it was not exactly a lie. Finding that mark on the wall changed the entire case, and not for good. “Her sister asked me to look for her.”
“She has no sister. You’re a liar!”
Hetty picked up the twig. When her hands brushed along the wood, Hetty thought she would feel a rush of power, feel something special that made it taboo to anyone who wasn’t deemed worthy to even touch one.
Instead, she only felt foolish.
The woman stepped backwards even as Hetty handed the wand back to her.
“Believe what you want, but the truth will not change. If Judith comes around, let her know that her sister is looking for her. And if she’s worried it’s a lie, send her to me.”
“How will she find you?”
“Speak my name and the wind will carry it to my ears.”