“Alice. Look at me, Alice.”
I blinked and tried to turn my head away from the stab of light which assaulted my face. I found that I could not. Something was holding me in place upon the lumpy bed and pillow. A man in a doctor’s coat stood by my bedside, a square of pale yellow cloth in his hand. My heart strained within my chest, emitting frantic and erratic beats underneath a thin shift of a gown. Utter terror.
“You’re out of humor. Your control of your power is incomplete. ’Tis my fault, really.” The man moved to adjust something by my side. I could feel a strap tighten on my wrist, and I knew without hardly realizing it that my other arm was similarly pinioned. I opened my mouth to protest.
“No, no.” The doctor’s finger came to rest upon my lips. “We need you calm, lest we have another accident.”
He turned away, speaking to someone else, someone I could not see. “Double this time, Hales. Anything less appears to be useless. I’ll be watching her should anything go wrong. This is no longer inoculation. This is transformation.”
He turned back to me, demanding, “State your name.”
Alice. Was that it?
“Age?”
I don’t remember.
“Do you know where you are? Do you know why you are here?”
At this, I shook my head as best I could, now feeling the strap held across my forehead and a tangle of wires that tumbled down past my neck and shoulder. My lack of actual responses prompted a frown from the man. He seemed to hesitate in his purpose. My frantically hammering heart found new cadences. The moment stretched for eternity.
I rolled my eyes around as best I could, seeing, at last, the other white-coated man, dingy tile walls, and a table full of large glass and metal jars with more wires sticking out. The doctor leaned in to place a gag in my mouth, some strange yet horridly familiar thing that tasted of leather and wood. My ears began to buzz, my skin prickle.
“On my mark. Now, Hales.”
And then an explosion of pain. Lots and lots of pain.
Myra had the sense not to scream. But then, she had clamped shut her jaw so hard that her teeth hurt. Alone within her bedroom in Grafford House and with no recollection whatsoever of how or when she had gotten herself there. All Myra knew was that she was shaking with the memory of the most horrible dream she had ever had and that she was now safely back within her own mind.
“Dream or vision?” Myra whispered her question to the darkness and slid from the bed. She did not want to know. Just as she could not bear to stay lying down after what she had just experienced. “No, not me. Alice.”
Breath catching, Myra had trouble saying her sister’s name aloud.
But it hadn’t been her Alice. It hadn’t. Her sister simply felt different to Myra on some unnamable level. A coincidence then? Or confirmation that what Myra had just experienced while abed was nothing more than fears working their way through her psyche?
Sitting in a chair by the hearth, Myra tried to remember the man who had hurt her, the doctor, and found that part of the memory already fast fading from her mind. Strange. And more proof that whatever she had just thought she had seen was likely the product of an overactive imagination.
Yes. Yes it had to be. She remembered now the mark upon the doctor’s hand, a strange reddish design of lines, like lightning but also reminiscent of the tattoo found upon the would-be-assassin they had questioned in Grafford House’s cellars.
Every fear of hers had rolled together into one horrid nightmare. Relief swept through Myra at the conclusion. It prompted a new series of tremors, and she rose to look for her wardstone. No sense taking chances now. As she approached the bed, her ears buzzed and her skin prickled. Magic.
Some emotional outburst somewhere in the house.
Myra listened with her Empathy, sorting the threads. Aidan and James. The former was likely getting his dressing down at last. She reached for her robe, tugging slippers onto toes that protested in the chilled late-night air. But curiosity was fast warming her soul. That and her steadfast ability to remain aloof from the sparks of anger that drifted through the house, tugging at her magic. That itself was a heartening discovery and one that merited further exploration.
Which is what she told herself as she padded to the door, pocketing her wand and ignoring the other voice in her mind. The one that warned her of the impudence of sneaking about at night like a burglar.
She paused, considering. Laurel. Laurel had not looked well. Myra’s heart found its excuse. With James being most concerned with Laurie’s health, it was only right that Myra check into the source of this most worrisome midnight outburst from him.
Again, Myra’s dream rose to haunt her. So what if the woman whose pain she had experienced wasn’t her Alice? She was somebody and deserving of their help, having connected with Myra’s gift as she had. This woman, this Alice, must be a mage like them, yes?
If she was real. Of this Myra still could not be certain. And she lacked the details she would require in order to tell the team. Where was this happening? Was it even happening? Who was the man in the white coat? With such clear electrical power at his disposal, how could M.I. even attempt such a . . . Was it even a rescue?
Myra knew nothing. To tell them would be to confess her deepest fears. Truths of her soul she had managed to hide from even the likes of Aidan. To tell James would be to have him force her back into the connection. She had done it before. She could do it again. Especially as Myra had more control than ever over her gift.
“It was a dream and nothing more,” Myra reassured herself through gritted teeth and continued onward. Real people simply did not do that to one another.
Clutching her wardstone tight, lest a stray wisp of her own anxiety give her away, Myra crept towards the disturbance she had felt from upstairs. Warded off as she was, she had to rely upon other clues. An easy task, considering the raised voices emanating from a study at the far end of the hall.
“. . . Even if she’s somehow his, she herself doesn’t know,” Aidan said.
“If that is the case, we can turn her. Use her ourselves. If there’s anything to salvage, that is,” James replied.
“You’re not using her and then casting her off. Like she’s some sort of soldier. She’s not you, James. She has only the barest understanding of magic, her gift, the life we live.”
“Barest understanding, bah. Talent she has and more control than she lets on; Myra is learning fast, and I’ll not hear you covering it up with your careful truths,” James scoffed. “You have read the truth of her, you who talks of whiffs of guilt in the bouquet of her emotion—or whatever flowery ways you like to put it, and it’s up to me to determine what we do with that knowledge. An agent died—”
“Three agents. My team was there, too.”
“—An agent of the Crown, on soil and in an op that was not under my control,” James rolled over Aidan’s interjection, incensed. “Nevertheless, I have to answer the fallout. Nevertheless, I have responsibilities. Before you insult me, truth-teller, you tell me how I really feel. Look into my eyes, and tell me to my face that I don’t care what happens to her, to you.”
If Aidan gave an audible response, Myra could hear not hear it.
“That’s exactly right.” The quiet intensity of James’ rejoinder had the knell of finality about it, and fearing discovery, Myra clutched her little white stone to her chest and turned to flee from disconcerting truths and into deeper darkness.
She ran smack into a wizard. Benjamin. He smirked. “Gee, I take it that thing works?”
Stammering, Myra tried to work up an excuse that did not sound as guilt-ridden as the blush spreading its heat across her cheeks.
“You’re a bit of a sneak, aren’t you, Myra.” Benjamin eyed her sorry state with more silent laughter, softening as he noted the tears which threatened to drown her eyes. “Come, Thales, you do realize that makes you more ‘one of us’ than ever, right? What is it you think we do here? Sneak. Spy. It’s disreputable work and why mages were picked for such work in the first place. It’s not respectable. It’s not genteel. But it can be wonderful.”
Myra studied her toes, imprisoned in their warm slippers.
“Come. Let us to the kitchens.” Ben offered an arm. “Rule one of sneaking: have a good excuse ready for the moment you’re caught. I, for one, am fond of a late night repast.”
Grateful, Myra looked into Ben’s eyes. She caved. “You do the cooking.”
Her weak joke was rewarded with a grin. Rakish, but still soft as the kindness by which he had rescued her from her faults just then. It was a strange sort of way to be a gentleman. Altogether too sure of himself, too bold. And simultaneously gentle. Myra hadn’t known that such could be attractive in a man. With Benjamin’s constant posturing to Aidan, it was hard to spot this side of him save for in the dark of night with the lamps turned down.
Myra’s early judgment of him had been precipitous. Like the gaslight, Ben’s spark was tempered differently than Aidan’s. He was not hard like the rest. Not loud, not scary, not overly flirtatious, even. She was sure that he was aware of his handsomeness, of course. But it was to his credit that he did not wield it as a weapon, as Aidan was wont to. Benjamin was, in fact, borderline apologetic about it.
Alarm bells rang in Myra’s head, herald to more blushing, stammering, and awkwardness. She felt Benjamin step back from her, allowing her the space needed to collect herself and meet him when ready. He truly did know a frightening amount of things.
The bravado was warranted. No mussing of the hair required.
She followed him down the hallway, stopping at his whispered, “A shortcut.”
With that, Benjamin whipped out his wand and made a sign over the paneled wall. A person-sized, rectangular portion shifted to the side. Darkness yawned beyond.
He held out a hand, as if sensing Myra’s apprehension. It was then that she realized she had stopped clutching the wardstone in her pocket. Her fingers clasped his, and he drew her forward into the hidden passage.
“You’ll need better control over your magic if you’re to use this shortcut on your own. It’s not an advanced trick, but it is something,” he explained, whisking the door shut behind them. Myra and Benjamin were left to inky blackness. “Now. I’d like you to take this next spell from my mind, Myra.”
Benjamin’s wand sparked a pinpoint of light, dulled so as to not task their eyes in the pressing dark.
“But I don’t—”
Ben’s finger pressed against Myra’s lips. “None of that. It’s my turn for a lesson now. Call it the price of snooping about and listening in on the conversations of the Misters James and McIntyre.”
He moved off further down the narrow passage, and Myra hurried behind so as to stay within the edge of his wand light. And then the light vanished!
“Ben—” Myra hastily swallowed her exclamation, fumbling for the little white wardstone. For she could feel a rioting of emotion outside of herself. She had to block it off. She must hide.
The point of light reappeared several feet off. It illuminated a corner and Benjamin beckoned. Angrily, Myra caught him up.
“This isn’t a game, Thales. You learn or you get hurt.” Venting his own angry whisper, Benjamin bent close and pointed with his wand. A steep stairwell fell away from them not three feet off. “When I say to try to do something, you do it. That’s how the team works.”
“From what I can see, your team is hardly that!” Myra’s whispered retort cut the close air.
“How dare you.”
“How dare I? When I overhear James talking like I don’t matter. Or Aidan who only tells the truth because he has no other choice. Or you who—” Myra had the sense to bite off her last accusation. They had arrived in the kitchens. She dutifully ducked to follow Benjamin out of a short door that he had opened via his magic.
“Or me who what, Myra?” Benjamin leaned back against the sink edge. “Me who uses my skills to keep the people I love alive and well? Me who would see everyone—even ords—safe from the likes of Addair and his men?”
“Alive . . .” That word Myra stuck on. She couldn’t get past it, try as she might. And so her legs buckled.
“Shit.” Benjamin leapt forward, throwing his arms about her waist so that Myra did not fall.
“Sorry,” she croaked. Why was it so hot all of a sudden?
Benjamin managed to drag a stool over to Myra for her to sit.
“Okay. So you’ve made your point.” Divested of his burden, he crossed his arms, frowning. “Now what to do with you.”
“Do?” New fear shook her, and with it, Myra managed to meet his gaze, pleading.
“You’re not cut out for this. Not fighting it at every turn. What we do, you have to come to in your own time. And not merely because you’ve no other choice.” Benjamin knelt before her. “Listen to me, Myra. I won’t ask you to repeat hearsay. But whatever James has said, he has said it with love. Aidan I cannot speak to. Him I trust because I have to. You are right on that count. But James? James I trust with my life.”
“But—”
Benjamin rose, not bothering to hide his look of contempt. “For someone whose gift is empathy, you’ve a shocking lack of it, Myra.”
That did it for her then. Angered, Myra put out her palm wherein rode the wardstone. “May I?”
He looked from the little white rock to her face and back to the rock, curious. She let the stone fall into her lap and then hit him with every emotional strand that she could grasp. She explained to him without words her fear, her utter terror, over the powers that M.I. commanded. She gave him her sorrow and her guilt. Lastly she gifted him with her hope, the feeling that she had come home at last. Her broken hope born of feeling that she belonged but might yet prove unwelcome in the end. Or abandoned. Left in some dark place, after they got what they wanted from her.
She said, “Nobody has ever fully understood how I feel. Understood and—”
“And remembered,” he completed. Benjamin rose and frowned. “You’re drowning. Drowning in your gift and don’t know which rescue to trust, having been offered too many false promises.”
Myra nodded. “Every step forward feels like the wrong one. You say that your James James acts out of love. Whereas my regard keeps me from making any move whatsoever lest I . . .” She waved a hand, indication as best she could of her invasion into the lives, the heads and hearts, of those around her.
Benjamin dragged over a second stool and perched upon it. After a long pause he ventured, “Yeah, well, at least use of your gift doesn’t make corpses walk around.”
Myra wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry for him. The weak joke seemed, to her, to indicate both as perfectly acceptable reactions.
Benjamin slid his gaze sideways. “So why do you trust me?”
Myra opened her mouth to argue the point. But she had forced the truth of her emotional turmoil upon him. This knowing that he hadn’t the ability to forget it, that his shared experience with her would remain as fresh and vibrant, as painful and poignant, even as time passed. She said, “Because, as you’d said, I need to try.”
Benjamin considered her response before nodding and rising. “Come. I think we’ve pretended through our late-night excuse long enough to have sidestepped both James and Aidan on our return to our rooms. And, Myra? Thank you. For not avoiding me altogether.”
By the time he had escorted her to her room, Myra had learned the trick of lighting her wand directly from Benjamin’s massive store of memory and knowledge. A small beginning, but at least she had a light in the dark.