Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

He pulled a piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket, unfolded it, and thrust it out. Tobias took it. It was a sheet of ordinary writing paper, but the words upon it were cut from a newspaper and glued into a single sentence. Tobias read it, and then reread it: Bite me and I will sting you in the fullness of time. The spirits so decree .

Sting. Time. It was a clever reference to the brass bug. His first impulse was to snicker, but he got that under control before he spoke. “This is a threat. There’s nothing psychic about it.”

Keating gave him a withering look. “I know that much. But I gave this to Holmes immediately, along with the envelope it came in. He had an answer within the hour. The newspaper these words were cut from was printed on the same date as a meeting of a prominent parapsychological society. And what’s more, that meeting was at the same hotel on the same night as the last whispering of Baskerville activity.”

“Baskervilles? You are quite serious?”

“You heard me. Holmes confirmed it.”

“And none of this has to do with the actual Baskerville family in Devonshire?”

“No,” Keating said, annoyed. “We’ve investigated them a dozen times. Sir Charles is as prosaic as they come, and his adopted son is no more than an idler. We’re speaking of the political movement.”

“And you think the political Baskervilles are in league with tea-leaf readers?” Tobias asked, trying to keep the disbelief out of his voice. “They must be desperate.”

Keating shrugged. “You know what they say about strange bedfellows.”

Personally, Tobias loathed magic—deeply—but there were many prominent men who did not. Nevertheless, true rebels would choose bombs and bullets for an attack, not a deck of tarot cards. “This has to be nothing more than a political statement. How great a threat is it?”

Keating refilled their glasses. “You’ve heard of Madam Thalassa, haven’t you?”

“I’ve seen notices for her performances. She talks to the dead, I believe?”

“So she claims. She’s been in hiding since she caught our attention, but now she’s frequenting these psychical salons.”

Keating took a sip of his drink, his expression between derision and anger. “Salons that are in the same time and place as my sworn enemies. She spoke at the one connected to the Baskervilles. Apparently the spirits predicted my assassination within the year.”

Whisky caught in Tobias’s throat. “Good of them to inform you.”

“There are too many questions here. Too many coincidences.” Keating set down his glass, his voice a sudden frost. “Holmes suggested I look in on a society run by one Miss Barnes, a spinster nurse. She has requested Madam Thalassa’s presence at her next gathering. Word has it that she will come.”

There was a long pause. “And?” It didn’t sound like Holmes to give anyone up to Keating, but Tobias wasn’t going to raise the point. The detective was up to something.

“I want the medium taken prisoner.”

The room went perfectly quiet, Tobias’s own breath the loudest thing. His arm throbbed, nausea hovering at the back of his throat. “You do?” he asked stupidly, distracted by a fresh wave of pain.

“Whether or not she had a role in the abomination’s attack on Westminster, I don’t allow disrespect to go unpunished. One way or the other, I mean to see her dead.”

Tobias felt as much as heard the rage in Keating’s tone. It was neither hot nor cold, but something else, like the potential disaster he’d seen in the bubbling green distiller. It was an explosive force under pressure and just looking for a way out. An edge of fear pulled details into sharp focus and Tobias could see every fold in the white linen wrapping his arm, every crease and shadow on the pasted letter before him. Madam Thalassa is just an old, angry woman, but he doesn’t see anything but the fact that she won’t bow down . “How do you mean to find her?”

“Evelina Cooper.”

Involuntarily, Tobias clenched his fist, and then gasped as the gesture pulled at his burn. Keating laughed long and low.

Tobias chose to let the threat fall unacknowledged. “Why Evelina?”

“Why not? She’s my prisoner at my disposal. She understands magic.”

My prisoner . Tobias shifted on the hard chair. Bastard .

His own feelings for Evelina were a snarl. He had loved her. The question was whether he still did. He’d never seen a single sign of Evelina’s magic, and never tasted it on her lips. Bloody hell, he’d wanted to marry her. But learning she was one of the Blood had turned his stomach. Unfortunately, even that couldn’t completely purge her from his system. A person didn’t just stop loving as if a switch had flipped.

“But she is at college, isn’t she?”

“Indeed. She just blew up the laboratory.”

“She what?” Tobias’s lungs froze with panic. “Was she hurt?”

“No, it seems she needs a bit of excitement to keep her occupied.”

Tobias’s mouth had gone dry. “Why would she hunt down one of her own kind?”

“Because Evelina is mine to do with as I please.” Keating narrowed his eyes. “And I please to make her your responsibility.”

“Mine?” Tobias jolted upright, but this time didn’t even notice the pain. “What do you mean?”

Keating shrugged. “From now on, you will be the one to look in on her. Chaperone her if needed, deliver my orders, and make sure that she does what she’s told. If I tell her to hunt, you’ll make it happen.”

Confusion turned his thoughts to soup. Clearly Evelina was getting dragged into a larger game, and so was he. Somehow this medium and Holmes were involved as well, and the only reason Keating seemed to be oblivious to it was that he was distracted by so many other threats.

Or maybe the Gold King was just changing the rules. Not so long ago, Keating was threatening dismemberment if Tobias ever looked at Evelina again. Now he was throwing them together. “Are you sure I am the best choice for this?”

“Why not?” His amber eyes were predatory as they searched Tobias’s face. “Because now that you have taken my daughter to wife, Evelina Cooper means nothing to you anymore. Or am I mistaken on that point?”

“Of course not,” Tobias replied, bleaching the syllables of any meaning. That didn’t stop the maelstrom inside him, since his indifference was an utter lie. He had never stopped wanting Evelina, even when he had driven her away. Why open this wound? Why fetter me to a woman I can’t have? Why try to smash what little accord Alice and I have built? Because, even if he wasn’t sure that he loved Alice, she deserved the best of whatever he had to give.

“There is a war coming,” Keating said. “I need to know who plans on obeying my orders.”

“You’re testing my obedience?” Tobias snarled, forgetting his mask.

Keating pushed the whisky bottle in Tobias’s direction, his smile that of a man who’s just checked the king. “What other reason is there for anything in this world? Take it from me, boy, what hold you have over other people is the only currency that really buys anything.”

See enclosed report. I’m terribly sorry. I wanted you to know before you heard elsewhere. S.

London, September 25, 1889

LADIES’ COLLEGE OF LONDON

3:55 p.m. Wednesday

EVELINA HAD READ THE NOTE SHE’D PULLED FROM THE LIBRARY wall several times already. She had been expecting something else—a request for information, or an opinion about something from the magical realm. Sometimes it was a question Holmes wanted her to slide into a conversation she had with Keating, never letting on who wanted the answer. She’d become her uncle’s direct line to the Steam Council—or at least one of them—since she’d become the Gold King’s prisoner. Keating liked dropping ominous bits of news, presumably to keep her afraid. Anything credible she passed on via the library wall. Playing informant gave her a sense of purpose beyond her life as a caged pet.