Spellbreaker

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.