EDITH BLACKWOOD CAREFULLY SELECTED ONE of the cut-crystal perfume atomizers from the narrow table by her front door. Holding it in her palm for a long moment warmed the pink fluid within—just a touch; just as she needed.
I hate London, complained the demon Mercurialis in a voice only Edith could hear. Decades of familiarity with her constant, invisible companion meant she understood it in words, but its speech registered more to her mind as a series of plucks and whirs and chirps, as well as the occasional chime.
“I know,” she said aloud to the silence of her Paris flat. “I don’t like England either, but go we must. Jane Blackwood is my only niece, and I will not miss her Test. Nor could I! I agreed to give it to her and to her friend Miriam. But even more than that, I want to be there to see her progress beyond her apprenticeship. She’ll celebrate in style even if it means I must sojourn to the northern wilds of England. Otherwise, my sister will likely just let Jane stay up half an hour late as a treat. She deserves more for taking such an important step along the path to becoming a Master diabolist.” Edith’s demon agreed wholeheartedly with all of this. “And it will be good to be somewhere quiet for a few days. It’s been months since we went out without always looking over our shoulder.”
Mercurialis conceded this point too. The Occupation might be over, but the war was not; the streets of Paris were not yet safe. They hadn’t won until they’d won—and they hadn’t won. Not yet.
Edith misted herself with a few spritzes from the warmed bottle, then set it aside, picking up a long silver needle. She pricked her finger with it. As the blood beaded up, she took hold of her valise in her other hand and stepped within a slate circle set into the marble floor of her foyer. She let the welling blood drip down, and as soon as it hit the floor, pale blue electricity began to crackle all along her body, currents of lightning running up her legs, encasing her like bright vines. After a moment, they receded, save for a few extra flashes along the jet beadwork of her black dress and the black fur collar of her cape . . .
And she was somewhere else entirely: a disused kitchen in a shabby London boarding house, standing upon a slate circle similar to the one in her own apartment. The morning sunlight filtering through the dirty windows was dreary and watery, wintery and unmistakably English.
The demonic sigh in Edith’s mind sounded more like the twittering of a distant bird, but its point was clear and inarguable.
Edith was surrounded by a column of woven golden mesh that ran from floor to ceiling. Through the fine holes she could see the shape of a man sitting in a chair. She could also see the glint of the gun he had trained on her.
She had come here expecting such a welcome. Edith was a spy, and this was a spy’s gate into the UK. Protecting it was of utmost importance.
“Swift wings, swift victory,” said Edith.
“Swifter wings, swifter victory,” said the man with the gun.
Edith stepped through the door of the mesh cage, set down her valise, and rucked up the sleeve of her dress to reveal a tattoo on her forearm: a stark white equilateral triangle and, within that, a talaria—the winged sandal of Hermes. The brightness of the white ink against her black skin was itself evidence of the mark’s diabolic nature, but the group she was part of—the Young Talarians—hadn’t gotten as far as they had by cutting corners when it came to security.
The man with the gun used his teeth to pull the cork out of a phial and dribbled an oily fluid upon her tattoo. It fizzed and popped and sizzled away into silver smoke, at which point he curtly nodded once.
Edith, like most diabolists, was also a member of an international organization known as the Société des Éclairées. While the Société had long ago denounced the Nazis, their sympathizers, and their ideology, due to its worldwide nature it could not be aggressively political without causing internal problems. The Young Talarians—the group to which Edith belonged—were technically independent . . . but not forbidden from using the Société’s resources.
It was impossible to say how much the Young Talarians had done for the Allies over the course of the war. Their help had been as invisible as it was invaluable. The Nazis, of course, had their own diabolists.
Edith had been a founding member of the Young Talarians, along with a few of her closest friends—Maja Znidarcic, Zelda Lizman, and Saul Zeitz. She could not sit idly by, not being who she was. Edith had been a small child when the Blackwoods adopted her, taking her from her West African homeland after her parents had died, to travel the world with them and their daughter, Nancy—but Edith had never forgotten her roots.
“Welcome to London, Edith,” said George, lowering his Webley and holstering it. “You’re right on time.”
“Is my car waiting for me?” she asked, readjusting her sleeve. She wasn’t late, but she’d need to get moving if she wanted to arrive in Hawkshead by the afternoon, given the distance and uncertain state of the roads.
“At the garage on St. Mark’s,” he said. And then, with a complete shift in his manners, he grinned. “Good luck to the young hopefuls, too.”
Edith cocked a manicured eyebrow at George. “Young hopefuls?” she asked, conveying with her tone that it was an improper thing for him to have said. “To whom are you referring?”
George straightened up. “Sorry. It’s only that Monsieur Durand had mentioned Jane and Miriam were to undergo their Test.”
Of course it had been Patrice Durand who had blabbed! Edith frowned at George as Mercurialis quietly chuckled to itself over her consternation. When an apprentice diabolist underwent their Test, it was supposed to be a private affair. Patrice Durand and his former lover, Edith’s sister Nancy Blackwood, were estranged, yes, but he knew that Nancy had always been a stickler for the rules.
“What else did Patrice have to say about my niece, my sister, and her ward?” asked Edith, her tone icier than the streets beyond the windows of the kitchen.
“Nothing,” said George, blushing now. All his earlier cool had left him. Edith sighed—new recruits were always a bit jumpy.
“Let’s forget we had this conversation,” she said. This new evidence that Patrice had not changed, in spite of his claims to the contrary, cast quite a shadow over another reason for Edith’s visit: Edith had finally resolved to at last tell Jane who her father was, even though this was explicitly against her mother’s wishes. Jane had always longed to know, and as she had just turned sixteen a month ago, Edith had thought to give this knowledge to her as a belated birthday gift. Now, she was even less certain this was a good idea.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just use the ladies’ before I depart,” said Edith. George nodded and Edith swished by him, her heels clicking on the tile.
In the washroom she opened up her makeup bag and applied a light dusting of powder to her cheeks and some mascara to her dark lashes. Both cosmetics were specially formulated with diabolic essences to conceal her appearance. Glamour, indeed! Now, anyone who looked at Edith would see a white woman . . . unless they took a careful second look. For anyone who did, she put on a black hat with a little veil. No one wanted to look at a widow for too long—at least not here in England.
If she’d needed a better disguise, she would have drawn on the power of her demon. Mercurialis lent its host unusual power over many amusing types of illusion, changing one’s appearance being one of them. But for just a short walk along busy streets, Edith did not need to tax her resources in that manner.
George looked a bit surprised when she emerged, but then quickly recovered. “When will you be returning?”
“Within a week. Do you need a specific date and time?”
“No, ma’am. I’ll be here.”
“I promise to be in at a decent hour.” She favored him with a smile.
He returned it. “It’s not that; the gate just takes a moment or two to set up, and I wouldn’t like to make you wait.”
“It’s still faster than the Night Ferry!”
Edith was in a good mood. She was pleased to have a little shopping to do and then a nice long unbroken drive ahead of her, two things almost impossible in Paris.
Edith peeked out the door to find a light drizzle falling upon the gray paving stones of the street. She claimed an umbrella, black of course, from the umbrella stand.
“I promise I’ll return it,” she said, before stepping out into the morning gloom. Her foot immediately found a puddle.
Mercurialis sighed.