Spellbreaker

CHAPTER 24

There was something oddly familiar about the spells she chased, but Elsie couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

She disarmed an enormous weed that shot up through cracks in the concrete, grown with a temporal spell. Removed, albeit with shaking hands, a rational spell on a warehouse wall that created the illusion of a giant spider. Leapt over a gap a physical spell had created in the boards of the bridge. Disenchanted another that had fused several boards together to create a wall.

There were no dockworkers or security seeking out the cause of the noise, which worried her. Was St. Katharine’s so empty at night, or had Ogden already . . . eliminated them?

Before she followed the trail into the next warehouse, an owl swooped down at her at a strange angle from the direction of the river, and Elsie shrieked despite her need to be undetected. She wouldn’t be able to remove the spiritual spell driving the animal to attack her, so she bolted for the door and slammed it shut behind her, crowbar squeezed in her clammy right hand. The bird’s talons scraped against the door half a second later.

She raced through the warehouse, following runes scattered with a flare of insanity, some placed on the ceiling, others the floor or random places on the wall, even when the location was a poor choice for the spell. Through it all, that strange sense of familiarity nagged at her, but she didn’t have time to think about what it meant. Or the fact that she’d kissed Bacchus Kelsey while he was in a compromised position. Good heavens, what had she been thinking? At least it had only been on the cheek.

At least she wouldn’t have to face him again if one of Ogden’s spells caught up with her. Or if she caught up with the man himself and their reunion went awry. You have to risk it, she reminded herself, searching, listening, feeling, and smelling for opus spells. If she caught up to him and came out the victor . . . it would be all right. It would allow her to right her wrongs, to an extent. God knew she had to try.

She pulled apart a density alteration spell hovering midair, slightly to the left, which made the air too thick to walk through. It was the eighteenth spell she’d encountered.

Her wrists and arms itched as though bitten by a hundred mosquitoes when she pushed open the door at the other end of the warehouse. The burn of gaslight stung her eyes. The moon reflected off the nearly still river water.

And illuminated Ogden as he crouched at the edge of the dock, untying a small fisherman’s boat. A sheaf of mismatched papers—opus spells—stuck out from the collar of his paint-stained shirt.

“Ogden, stop,” she pleaded, raising one hand as though in surrender while stashing the crowbar behind her back with the other. She strode toward him, focused. Casting an opus spell required verbal activation, so at least she’d have warning. “Let’s talk about this.”

Ogden pulled the sheaf from his shirt, and Elsie paused as though he’d brandished a gun. He’d need only to whisper, Excitant, and those spells would come flying for her. “No closer,” he warned. His voice came out hoarse, and his hands shook as they held the papers. Why? Was he afraid? Ill?

“You’re sick.” Elsie dared to take another step forward. Ogden wasn’t young, but he was in good health. Yet maybe this run had overtaxed his heart. “Ogden. Cuthbert. Please. Let me take you to a hospital.”

He stood suddenly, eyeing her. She thought she felt something in the air, something like snow—

She didn’t want to stop him, now did she? Ogden was just going fishing. She had so much work to do at home. What was she doing here? Emmeline must be worried—

“Stop!” she screamed, hands flying to her head. The crowbar fell to the dock behind her. She was the least experienced with rational spells, but she sensed the quiver of one in the air between them. It dug into her thoughts, planting new ones.

I’m such a mess! I need a bath. Time to go home—

She clawed at the space before her until she found it. She’d have no luck were the thing planted on her head, but Ogden had not yet touched her. She pulled off one thread, then another. It was complex. A master spell.

Emmeline must be so worried! I must return at once!

“Ogden!” she screamed, clawing off another knot.

Go home. Go home.

No, come with me.

The sudden shift in the demands threw Elsie off balance. Now Ogden held out his hand to her, like he’d suddenly changed his mind. Like he wanted a companion. With his other hand he worked on untying the boat, opus spells shoved into his trouser pocket.

But . . . he hadn’t selected a single page. Hadn’t said, Excitant, to activate the magic.

He hadn’t used an opus page for this.

I need to take care of Ogden! I must get in the boat—

Which meant . . . he’d cast it himself.

Another thread off, another. Her own thoughts battered against the false ones. Elsie’s knees wavered.

“Come with me.” Sweat beaded across Ogden’s forehead.

It all made sense.

How scandalous that I’m out at the docks alone, at night! The spell pushed her away even as her employer beckoned to her.

Alfred. She thought of Alfred, after seeing him with his new wife. Crying on her bed. Ogden had come in and . . . everything had felt okay. Like her sorrow had simply been whisked away.

The police will know I’m involved. I should leave while I still can!

But then, You’re interrupting Ogden’s holiday! He’ll sack you if you don’t leave!

Wisps of memory surfaced between the claws of the spell. Offenses forgotten. Pain lessened. Anger subsided. Had he done all of that? Used magic to calm her each and every time?

Time to—

She pulled the last thread free, and the foreign thoughts dissipated. She gasped, collapsing to the dock. She’d been holding her breath.

That had been a master spell.

Ogden wasn’t a flimsy physical aspector. It had been a cover. He was a master rational aspector. Unregistered, just like she was.

Ogden’s nails dug into a piling on the side of the dock. He seemed to be resisting her. Like she was a magnet pulling him close. His tremors had grown worse.

“Ogden!” She ran toward him. “Stop!”

“You . . . can’t . . . have her . . . ,” he groaned.

His head flung up, but this time . . . this time she felt the rational spell coming. As if time had slowed. The rune was a fairy, unseen, but the pulse of its wing beats was unmistakable—

Her fingers flew and picked it apart. The last knot came close enough to graze her forehead, whispering something she couldn’t understand before it died.

Just like in the duke’s dining room, she’d dispensed with the spell before it could unfurl.

Even Ogden looked surprised. Something she should use to her advantage—because if he got into that boat, Elsie wouldn’t be able to get him out.

She dashed forward, lungs straining against her corset, and tackled him, her shoulder colliding with his chest. He was so much larger and thicker than herself, but she mustered enough power to knock him onto the dock and lift his foot from the boat. He tried to grapple her. She fought to pin him down, her ear pressed to the base of his open collar.

That’s when she heard it. The slightest click, like a dying cicada. The sound was so faint she might not have noticed had it not contrasted against the silence of their struggle.

A spell. A spiritual spell. And its placement . . .

Just like Bacchus.

Ogden shoved her off. She would have fallen into the river had two pilings not stopped her. She’d rolled through the spilled stack of opus spells, and many of them fell into the water, ruined.

Ogden leapt to his feet. Started toward the boat. He shook like a man riding a bull. Like he was . . . resisting.

She grabbed his shoulders; he collapsed to one knee. “It’s a pattern, Elsie,” he wheezed, eyes distant. “It’s always been there—”

His lips smacked closed. Flinging her off, he strode for the boat, his limbs still shaking.

Pattern?

Pattern.

By the grace of God, it all snapped into place. The familiarity in the runes she followed to get here. Their sporadic placement. She’d seen it before.

In his paintings.

In the tiles for the vicar.

In the way he doodled on his knee at church.

In the re-sorting of his shelves.

In the scribbles on the papers in his desk drawer.

They were all the same. They were a pattern. An eighteen-point pattern. An eighteen-point knot.

He’d been trying to tell her. He’d been trying to tell her for years.

He got one foot into the boat, then the other.

Picking herself up, Elsie bolted after him and jumped. He broke her fall. He grunted when they landed, a bench digging into his back. His head struck a thwart, hard enough that his eyes rolled back.

Grabbing the edges of his shirt, Elsie ripped them apart, popping buttons. The rune wasn’t readily apparent; it was so expertly placed . . . but she dug her fingers into the skin over his heart and sensed its song. It was wildly powerful—the strongest she’d ever encountered—but she knew the key. She knew the pattern.

She ripped it apart so roughly her nails left red trails on his skin. She started in the upper left and ended near the center. The spell screamed as it puffed away. Ogden gasped like a man come back to life. He bucked, knocking her off, and sat up, his hair mussed and his eyes wild.

Then they filled with tears.

“Elsie,” he whispered. “Finally. You’ve saved me.”

He collapsed into her lap and wept.