HERDSMAN

3

BENJY WAS QUIET WHEN they finally put the strange fires, secret tunnels, the Duvals, and everything else behind them.

Retreating to a broody silence, Benjy remained unresponsive to Hetty’s few attempts at pleasant conversation. In the end, she fell into her own silence, thinking not just of Sarah Jacobs, but the circumstances around the case. The incident was the first official work they’d had with the Vigilance Society. The one in which Hetty had been properly introduced to Darlene, though they would not become good friends until years later. Not to mention the work that cemented the partnership she had developed with Benjy. Which was an odd thing to say, since they had already traveled together along a dangerous and difficult road. But ferrying Sarah Jacobs and all that followed turned what had been a question into the beginning of their adventures together.

Benjy went to where they’d left their bicycles leaning against a pole. With a flick of his fingers, the spell making the bicycles an uninteresting sight went away. He wheeled them both as he walked back toward her, gently pushing hers ahead.

“Why didn’t he ask about his father?” Benjy asked abruptly. “Why bother asking for stories when there was a better use of his time?”

Used to these outbursts that were often interjected into unrelated conversation, Hetty merely shrugged. “Why would he ask us?”

“He knew who we were from the moment he saw us.”

“I doubt that,” Hetty began. “He said​—”

“He said a lot of things. The most important bits were near the end, when he was looking for answers from us.”

Hetty placed her hands on her bicycle’s handlebars but did not mount. “You’re saying three different things at once. Tell me so I can follow.”

“Valentine Duval knows who we are and that we looked into his father’s death.”

“I don’t remember him coming to our door asking for help. Or even meeting him at his father’s funeral. How did you know about him?”

“I pay attention to such things,” Benjy said without malice, and he went back to his brooding.

Hetty let him be. There would be plenty of time to find out what exactly was on his mind, and answer his lingering questions.

Hetty swung up on her bicycle and led the way home.

The house on Juniper Street was a narrow building inlaid with beautiful dark red brick. The shutters around the windows were a dark blue, and the rooftop was flat enough that Hetty could set up her telescope on it. Their home shared its front steps with the house next door, and the postboxes acted as a dividing line. There were a few bushes out in front, with a sign for their funeral home poking out. As theirs was the end unit, access to the backyard was through the gate that opened both to the street and to the narrow alley that ran behind the line of row houses.

They’d owned this house for a couple months now, and spent quite a bit of time renovating it to their tastes, from the smallest nail in the floorboards to the cream-colored paint that now graced the main rooms. Still, whenever Hetty approached it and saw faces in the windows and heard conversation trickling to the streets, she felt like a guest coming for a visit.

“Why are there people in our house?” Hetty asked as she skidded to a stop in the middle of the street.

“Are we doing a play tonight?” Benjy asked.

About once a week they gathered with their friends to put on a play. What that play was varied in both scope and scale. Sometimes it was a full production with costumes and props, and other times they simply read favorite fragments of different plays. Either way, the plays were always performed with great enthusiasm. The gatherings were really about spending time together. Although Hetty wasn’t a fan at the start, she enjoyed the evenings they put on plays very much, even when she’d rather come home to peace and quiet.

“We never picked one last time,” Hetty reminded him. “Oliver wanted us to do the play he wrote, and George was against it on principle, and​—”

“Everyone argued all night. I remember that part. Not sure that explains why they’re here so early. They usually come around after sunset.”

“Because they have keys,” Hetty grumbled.

“That was your excellent idea,” Benjy said with some glee. “You argued strongly for it when I disagreed. But if you want me to, I can get rid of them.”

“It won’t be easy.”

“Doesn’t hurt to try. I’ll put the bicycles up​—”

“No.” Hetty grabbed his handlebars, nearly toppling off her own bicycle as she did so. “I’ll do it!” she said. Before he could reply, she added, “I’d rather do this than deal with them. And you’ve always been better at shooing people out without magic.”

“It’s a gift.” Benjy shrugged, easily taken in by the compliment.

As Benjy headed for the front door, Hetty slipped through the gate, leading the bicycles into the back. After sliding the bicycles into their spot behind the house, she went to the far corner of the yard and poked at the shed hidden under a thick veil of her magic to see if the spells had been disturbed or not. Assured they hadn’t, she turned to the house and spotted the curtains in the kitchen shifting aside. Within moments, the back door opened and Penelope skipped out.

Penelope’s hair was twisted and held in place with a butterfly hairpin. She wore a plain white blouse and a dark skirt, both of which had a dusting of dirt and smelled of wildflowers. She also wore a belt that had a few dangling pouches tied to it, which meant she had come right from the herbal shop she worked at. Penelope liked fancy clothes, and liked even more dressing to show off her fuller figure, which she couldn’t do when wearing an apron.

“About time you showed up,” Hetty’s best friend declared with a grin. “We were all getting dreadfully bored waiting for you. We even talked about bullying Thomas into fixing us dinner as the afternoon came to an end.”

“I wish him the greatest luck with that, since there isn’t much. But if it was that boring waiting for us, maybe you should rethink showing up when we aren’t here?”

Penelope placed a hand against her chest in feigned offense. “I was in the garden most of the afternoon! Everyone else just showed up on a mere whim.”

While both bits were unsurprising, Penelope often came after work to tend to the garden. The backyard was in theory Hetty’s to design to her liking, but she’d just handed the whole thing over to Penelope to manage. Half the yard had been tamed under Penelope’s gentle hand into a tidy garden​—​although her friend refused to say if any poisons would bloom there. Questions on the subject received a wry smile but no firm denials. The other half was enough space for them to actually use the yard for entertaining and other amusements. There was even a metal bench where Hetty often sat feeding the birds. What lay in the far corner protected by her wards was a secret for now.

“Is Sy here?”

Penelope shook her head at the mention of her cousin. Penelope had several cousins living in Philadelphia. While Hetty had little love for a few of them, there were some she rather liked, and Sy was among that number. The young man had apprenticed under Benjy at the blacksmith’s shop. However, when Benjy lost that job earlier this year, Sy had quit in solidarity. Though, truly, it was for the best. Sy had many talents, but being a blacksmith was not one of them.

Though Sy wasn’t working for Benjy anymore, he often acted as their assistant even when they couldn’t pay him anything more than a good meal and a story.

“Sy’s coming around tomorrow. He’ll be bringing”​—Penelope lowered her voice​—​“the boxes.”

“The boxes” was the term they agreed on using in case Benjy was around to eavesdrop.

When he was fired from his blacksmith job, Benjy had been running the place on his own, as the owner left all the work and responsibilities on Benjy’s capable shoulders. His work and talent were what brought customers in, and with Benjy no longer there, his old employer found very quickly just how loyal customers were. With outstanding debts to pay, the shop had quietly closed at the start of the month, with the owner selling off equipment. Hetty had waltzed right in, unbeknownst to Benjy, and bought everything that she could.

She couldn’t bring everything home, however. If she had, Benjy surely would have discovered it and spoiled the surprise before it was ready. That was where Sy came in. What Hetty couldn’t handle herself, he hid for her.

“He can’t come soon enough,” Hetty lamented. “Do you know how hard it is to keep a secret from my husband?”

“You kept secrets before.”

Hetty scoffed. “But he knew about the existence of the secrets and played along to amuse me. I want to take him by surprise, just once!”

“Well, you’re not going to if we stay out here any longer,” Penelope laughed.

Entering her kitchen, Hetty stopped short at the sight of three cauldrons merrily brewing away on her stove. The one on the left held familiar medicinal smells from Penelope’s signature healing salve. The other two set off plumes of purple and blue respectively. Those were also familiar, but were less welcome.

“Did I say you could brew up potions in here?” Hetty asked.

Penelope thought for a moment before she grinned. “You never said I couldn’t!”

Hetty tried to glare, but it was a futile effort. Hetty had had a sister once. Esther: an expert in herbs, a devoted healer, and the dearest person in Hetty’s life. They had lost each other when they escaped to find freedom. While Hetty would never reunite with her sister, Hetty had a fair idea of what Esther could have become in Penelope, as her friend had slipped right into the role with surprising ease.

Penelope was kind when Hetty was not, prone to excitement when Hetty was unimpressed, and more forgiving than Hetty would ever be. Hetty had other friends that were better listeners, but Penelope was the only person Hetty could speak to candidly and be completely unafraid of what would follow.

“I suppose it’ll be fine. We do use up a great deal of healing salve.” Hetty glanced at the table. Unsurprisingly, the basket held the elemental pistols Penelope had recently crafted. “Will you be leaving those here?”

“Of course.” Penelope picked up one of the pistols. Though it looked like a regular gun, instead of firing bullets, it fired magic. There was a glass orb on the back that held the potion that fueled it. The only one that worked was the ice pistol. The rest Penelope had varying success with, to which Hetty’s kitchen could bear witness.

Penelope shook the pistol gently so the purple liquid in the orb canister swirled around. “I made some modifications. The kickback when the wind element is activated isn’t as bad as it was ­before.”

“I’d like to try it. But not inside.” Hetty pointed to a small dent in the kitchen door.

Penelope pouted. “That was an accident.”

In the past few months a number of “accidents” resulted in something being set on fire in the cellar, the backyard, the kitchen, and once in the hallway​—​although that last incident was Benjy’s fault. Though Benjy was not an alchemist like Penelope, his interest in tinkering with magic, metal, and machines led him to be a willing partner in Penelope’s experiments. And as long as they didn’t burn down the house, Hetty wasn’t about to stop her two favorite people from spending time together.

Leaving the kitchen behind, Hetty nearly bumped into Darlene in the hallway.

A mixture of contradictions, Darlene was both practical and imaginative, stubborn and easily persuaded, mousy but with the courage of a lioness. On the outside she was a model example of the new ideal that was growing in their community​—​married, with a baby, and a husband who provided for the household. However, a closer look revealed that Darlene had adopted her daughter, that George took on an equal amount of time in childcare duties, and that Darlene was currently working outside the home as an artist’s assistant.

She never begged for dresses like Penelope, but slyly showed Hetty a dress design and presented a challenge to Hetty of turning it into reality. Such a dress was one Darlene wore at the moment, a pink so dark that it was the color of wine, with delicate lace along the collar and sleeves that had buttons so Darlene could easily slide them upward.

“Ah, I wondered where you were!” Darlene pushed up her round spectacles as she looked at Hetty. “Where have you and Benjy been?”

“He didn’t say?” Hetty asked.

Darlene shrugged. “He stepped in and got swallowed up into a conversation about tonight’s entertainments. Oliver is trying to get Benjy to box in tonight’s match.”

“Won’t say there’s betting involved,” Penelope added, “but there probably is.”

“Probably.” Hetty nodded. “Why are you here? It’s Tuesday, and we don’t usually have plays on Tuesdays.”

“I came looking for Penelope,” Darlene started, but then just as quick she stopped without saying a word more.

As this was never a good sign, Hetty prompted, “Looking for Penelope to . . .”

“Go see a medium,” Penelope cheerfully supplied.

“Just where will you find a medium?” Hetty asked.

“In New Jersey.”

“There’s a traveling show that arrived with an assortment of attractions. We’re going this evening,” Darlene explained. “It looked interesting.”

“More than interesting!” Penelope declared. “I don’t know anyone dead I’d like to talk to, but according to the poster I saw, Eudora Mason can summon all sorts of ghosts during her séances. Famous people, pirates, queens, even presidents!”

“I know all about this sort of nonsense.” Hetty’s words came bristling out, dimming their smiles. This was the first time she had heard about such a trip, which sounded like it had been planned for some time without her. “These spirits only seem to visit the drawing rooms of the white and wealthy!”

“Don’t be like that, Hetty,” Penelope said. “And it’s not a white medium. She’s Colored like us.”

“As if that makes it better. Only fools call upon ghosts!”

“I’m not trying to! The only ghosts are the ones that the living let linger.”

“If you think that, why are you going?”

Penelope shrugged. “To observe how she is fooling all these people.”

“And if she’s not a fraud?” Hetty asked.

Penelope waggled her eyebrows. “Won’t it make an interesting story?”

“We’ll make sure to tell you all about it,” Darlene said.

“Why would you do that?” Hetty asked. “Can’t I come along?”

Her answer was only silence and guilty looks.

Hetty struggled to keep back her bristling complaints. Being told things last was happening more often these days, and it seemed that since Hetty moved she only heard about the tedious little things in her friends’ lives instead of the things of greater interest.

“We didn’t think you’d want to come,” Penelope admitted.

“I do want to come! I will come. When are you leaving?”

“Soon,” Penelope said.

“Good,” Hetty grunted. “Come find me before you go.”

Leaving them, Hetty went to the study to take a calming breath before she sought out the rest of her friends.

Although her home was a palace compared to the room she had lived in the past few years, it was smaller in a different way. Their bedroom was in the attic, and the second floor held four other bedrooms, though only one was a guest room. The rest acted as storage for various odds and ends.

On this level, they used the kitchen and the study for their personal use, leaving the rest of the ground floor and the cellar for the funeral home. In the parlor she would greet people who came for funerals and conduct all other manner of business. The dining room was set up to show off caskets.

Their study was tucked into the back of the house, and most of their waking hours were spent in the room. Benjy had widened the doorway to get his piano in, and it was a good thing he did, for it was often moved in and out of the room. The study was the only room besides their bedroom that had a rug reaching from wall to wall. A small couch was their main seating, and a couple chairs were nearby to be pulled in as needed. The desk where Hetty worked on the accounts had a new­fangled typewriter on top of it. Several lamps were tucked here and there around the room. A couple of Penelope’s plants rested on the windowsill; the purple flowers brightened the room and were definitely not poisonous. Benjy had built bookshelves into the far wall from floor to ceiling, with plans to add more shelves around the room when the need arose. Hetty had laughed at such ambition, but since the end of spring, they had books on every shelf, and the topmost level was packed tightly. While Benjy might think his growing library the center focus of the room, for Hetty it would always be the map.

With colored thread dangling from her old sewing pins, the map marked various places across Philadelphia related to odd incidents and small mysteries they were working on. Their usage of the map was simple. Unrelated incidents got different colors, while pins used for a single case were unified by color. They also had a rule about removing pins when a case was settled.

Although it took the death of Raimond Duval for them to finally define what a settled case was.

Where there once had been a pin for the house fire that took Raimond Duval’s life, there was now a large, slightly jagged hole in the map.

Hetty ran her fingers around the torn edges.

Benjy had ripped it out when they finally put the case aside. He hadn’t yelled, he hadn’t raised his voice, but his opinion was clear. This case was over because there were no leads, no matter how they felt about its conclusion.

But was the case truly over?

They had met Valentine Duval. In their short conversation he’d made sure to communicate several things. He hinted that the fires that had torched his neighbors’ homes were as deliberate as the other fires around town. He talked about his father in depth, in a way that went beyond conversation with mere strangers. He also brought up Sarah Jacobs. That was an odd topic to speak on, even if he had once worked for the Vigilance Society. Even odder for him to ask for the story about something that happened so long ago.

While this was a troubling thing, what drew Hetty’s attention was the tunnel. A tunnel that should not be there, with hexes left behind in the house.

She should have asked for more information about it when they spoke. Valentine knew about it; he made sure to communicate that to them. But what he knew about the blockage in the tunnel, the connection to the hex, or anything else remained a mystery.

Next time she saw him, Hetty decided as she stuck a pin with bright green string on Valentine’s home, she would most definitely ask.