Spellbreaker

After Elsie finished logging Ogden’s receipts the next morning, she wrote and folded a letter, put on her nicest hat, and strode into town with a basket on her arm and Emmeline’s shopping list in hand. She headed first toward the church, which was at the other end of Brookley’s high street. The farmers from the nearby town of Clunwood often set up there to sell their goods, and Elsie was in the mood for a walk. The clouds had parted to reveal a brilliant morning sun, while a subtle breeze kept the air from getting too warm.

Elsie took on a pace neither brisk nor leisurely, and allowed herself to wander from one side of the road to the other, glancing into windows as she went, both shops and homes. Elizabeth Davies, she noticed, had her fine china out on the breakfast table. What was the occasion? The glazier was working on something rather large that did not look like a window. Was it an elaborate bowl, or some sort of chandelier? Elsie couldn’t tell, and preferred to speculate over asking. It was better for everyone that she go unnoticed, besides.

A familiar gasp sounded just to Elsie’s left as she turned away from the glass shop. A smile pinched her cheeks. None other than Rose and Alexandra Wright were passing by, their hats extravagant and their satin skirts brushing the ground. They were the banker’s daughters and terrible gossips. Even now, they had their heads pushed together, mumbling to each other. They really should be ashamed of themselves.

Stepping around a wagon, Elsie trotted up behind them, straining to listen.

“He was a baron?” Rose asked, fingertips to her bottom lip.

“Not just any,” chirped Alexandra, “but the very one who visited here not two summers ago.”

Rose gasped. “The squire’s guest?”

“And,” Alexandra’s voice lowered, “it happened right in his own bed.”

Rose shook her head. “But it might not be murder. You can never be sure with their type.”

Elsie nearly stumbled as she kicked her own heel. Murder? And a baron! It was as if her novel reader had come to life, although crime was much easier to stomach in fiction. Her mind quickly unraveled the rest of the sisters’ words.

Never be sure with their type.

Had the man been an aspector? When an aspector of any type or talent died, he did not become a corpse to be buried like everyone else. Magic changed aspectors. When they perished, their bodies morphed into opuses. Spellbooks of all the enchantments they had learned in life. Granted, spellbook wasn’t an adequate term. The form they took varied depending on who the aspector had been as a person. Though Ogden was a weak aspector with very few spells under his skin, he, too, would transmute into an opus when he passed. Elsie had always imagined he’d become an elaborate, if small, stone tablet.

The stonemason had no spouse and no children—for reasons Elsie suspected but never said aloud—so she wondered if he would bequeath his opus to her or Emmeline. Usually a spellmaker’s opus became the property of his or her atheneum, a safety precaution lest dangerous spells fall into unscrupulous hands, but she couldn’t imagine the London Physical Atheneum caring about a small, novice spellbook.

That was the special thing about opuses—anyone could cast a spell from an opus. Ogden had told her about it. The person could just rip out a page and say, “Excitant,” and the spell would cast itself (if the opus was not composed of pages, they could run a hand over the spell instead). They could be used in such a manner only once, for the page or engraved spell would vanish afterward, but it made opuses priceless.

And yet, Elsie didn’t think she could ever bring herself to cast Ogden’s opus spells. She’d likely just treasure it and keep it close, reminding her of the good years they had spent together. By all means, Ogden was the closest thing to a father she had.

Focus! she chided herself, daring to step close enough that she almost trampled the women’s skirt trains.

“Then he vanished splendidly.” Alexandra’s voice took on a mocking tone. “Murdered, I tell you. And his opus stolen. Even the newspaper speculates it. Perhaps he was kidnapped, but who could lug a grown man down so many floors without leaving a witness? The opus could have been carted off with no one the wiser.”

A man hurried across the street, one hand on his hat to keep it from flying off. “Misses Wright! I have a question regarding your father—”

The two women paused, and Elsie quickly sidestepped to avoid running into them. She walked as far as the carpenter’s home before glancing over her shoulder, but the conversing trio didn’t pay her any mind.

She certainly hoped the baron would turn up someplace unexpected. To think of someone being killed in his own home, his own bed . . . Elsie shuddered at the thought. Even members of the upper class didn’t deserve such a fate. And yet she knew she would check Ogden’s newspaper the moment she got home, to glean any additional details.