Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
“You’re quiet,” Caleb said on the carriage ride back to Mistfield. “Dreading facing Mary?”
Ugh. Mary. Emmy’s head pounded from too many hours in the sun, and she could not wipe away the lingering taste of Oliver’s
mouth. “You assume Jimmy hasn’t let her go.”
“He wouldn’t.” Seeing Emmy’s look, he sighed. “Okay, fine. He wouldn’t mean to.”
They would know soon enough. “What did the chancellor want with you?”
“To interrogate his staff.” Closing his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “He gathered them and accused someone of
stealing. I told him the guilty party.”
So the chancellor was beginning to make use of Caleb’s magic. “Was he pleased?”
“Exceedingly.”
“Then why do you look miserable?”
“Because the guilty party was a scullery maid, the lowest paid of all the kitchen staff, and she was taking stale food the
cook had told her to toss. Now she has no income.” He opened a tired eye. “And thanks to your constant badgering about the
inequities of the lower class, I cannot stop wondering if her family will have enough to eat. I can’t even walk through Mistfield
without contemplating the value of the Fontaines’ things, wondering how many mouths a goddamn gold candlestick might feed.”
Emmy couldn’t hide her smile. “You sound like a labor rights activist.”
“I know,” he moaned, burying his head in his palms. “It’s disgusting.”
She patted his arm. “If you find out her address, we can give her money.”
“We could send Mary, now that she knows the truth.” He lifted his gaze. “I’ll read her mind, but one way or the other, we’re
going to have to let her out of that room.”
Emmy nearly quipped that they could kill her, but Caleb had only recently stopped looking at her like she was feral. “Then
let’s hope you like what you hear.”
Although he looked as though he might press the issue, he fell silent for the rest of the short ride home. It was not until
they climbed the grand staircase and were nearly at Emmy’s door that he spoke again. “Just let me do the talking, okay?”
He was trying to protect Mary, mistaking Emmy’s carefulness for cruelty. But she only nodded and, with her heart in her throat,
opened her bedroom door.
To a raucous party.
Mary was clapping and singing while Jimmy was dancing on Emmy’s bed. It was a tune the organ grinders had played on their
accordions back home, filling the streets with boisterous song all summer long.
“Are you drunk?” The disbelief in Caleb’s voice echoed Emmy’s own.
With a gasp, Mary straightened.
Jimmy stopped dancing, too, though he still grinned like a proud fool. “You were gone six hours. We had to entertain ourselves
somehow.”
“I don’t drink,” Mary said hastily. “Oh! But we figured out what the bracelet does!” Before Emmy could protest, Mary picked
it off Emmy’s vanity and tossed it to her.
Emmy dodged out of the cursed thing’s way just in time.
“It’s some sort of truth conjury,” Jimmy explained. “You can’t fib while you’re holding it.”
Emmy stared at the deceptively pretty bangle at her feet. It hadn’t just made her say things; it had made her do things.
Her lips. Jack’s throat. That traitorous prickling heat crept back up her neck.
Plucking it from the rug, Caleb examined it. “I’ll try.”
“Call yourself Paxton Fairchild,” Jimmy said.
“My name is Caleb Alton. Oh!” He gaped at the bracelet.
“We think it lowers your inhibitions,” Mary explained. “It makes the truth come out.”
Lowered inhibitions—that was a relief, because it made sense. Drunk people had lowered inhibitions. And drunk people threw themselves at other people like cats in heat.
Jimmy nodded toward Caleb. “Try to tell another lie.”
“I’m twenty-one years old. Chocolate cream pie is my favorite food.” He stared at the bracelet. “My God, I can’t lie.”
“Do you really hate me?”
“Not at all. In fact, I think you’re one of the kindest, most handsome—” Caleb dropped the bracelet and backed away, his face
as bright red as his hair.
Well, that was interesting. Jimmy stared at Caleb as if he, too, could not believe his ears.
Careful to use a handkerchief, Emmy plucked the bangle off the floor. “The conjury will wear off if we keep using it.”
And they needed it strong. Grace might have been full of secrets, but she’d just given them a way to make her reveal them.
A slow smile spread across Emmy’s cheeks. Grace’s recklessness might be their gain.
“I have something to say.” Stepping forward, Mary took the truth bracelet from Emmy and slipped it on her wrist. “You might not remember me, but we debuted at the same ball. We didn’t speak—you were glued to Miss Montgomery most of the night—but your pa introduced himself to mine, in the back.
He was so proud of you, he practically beamed all night. ”
Emmy felt Jimmy’s concerned stare, but she kept her head high, her face unaffected.
“You made gold.” Mary’s voice was soft, awestruck. “At first, I was envious, but you were smiling at your pa and no one else.
It was so sweet—”
“That’s enough.” Emmy tried to sound stern, but her voice betrayed her.
“I just need to say this once.” Mary chewed her bottom lip. “When they shot him—”
Emmy stalked toward the door, but Jimmy, of all people, blocked her path. “Just hear her out,” he murmured.
Traitor. But Emmy could not bring herself to push past him.
“I was right there,” Mary continued, her expression pained. “Right behind you. The way you tried to get to him . . . the way
you fought them, even though the guards had you outnumbered six to one . . . I have prayed for you so many times, without
realizing that it was you.”
All three of them were watching Emmy like splintered glass about to shatter. She could not crack. But she also, at this moment,
did not trust herself to breathe.
Of course she remembered Mary from the debutante ball. Her scarlet hair in pinned braids. Her impressive conjury, and the
way Grace had dismissed it.
The quiet, shameful satisfaction Emmy had felt when her own applause had been louder.
Mary’s gaze fell to the floor, and she fidgeted with her silver ring. “You were the best one of us, by far. You deserved the patronage. But Miss Montgomery took it from you. And the Society let her because she’s a Montgomery.”
With the bracelet, Mary could not lie, but Emmy’s gaze cut to Caleb’s, just in case.
His brow creased with effort, he gave her a tight nod.
“If you think we can stop them from hurting more people, I’ll help.” Mary took Emmy’s hands in hers. “I’ll use my invisibility
to spy on her.”
Emmy whipped toward Jimmy, ripping her hands from Mary’s. “You told her?”
“She’s on our side, Ems. This is a good thing, isn’t it?” He shrugged. “Think how much better our odds are with an invisible
spy.”
That headache pounded against her skull. Now there were four people who could betray her. Four too many.
“So can I stay?” Mary asked, wide-eyed. “Will you let me help?”
Never had Emmy needed Jack to be here more than she did now, with the three of them staring at her like she might kick a puppy.
At least he grasped that revenge was not some sort of social club, but a matter of life and death.
“If you tell a soul”—Emmy kept her voice as sharp as she could manage—“all our lives are at risk. Including yours.”
With a squeal, Mary threw her arms around Emmy, too quickly for Emmy to resist. “I won’t let you down, miss.”
Emmy wanted to believe her, she truly did. And that was precisely the problem.
Letting Mary return home that night felt like signing her own death sentence, but what choice did Emmy have? If Jack were
there, he might have had the gall to insist she stay, or at least sent Caleb after her to ensure she didn’t run right to the
triumvirate. But Caleb and Jimmy had put their collective feet down: You have to trust her.
Working with other people was absurdly difficult. She had to bury her better instincts, again and again.
With a new chink in her armor, Emmy woke throughout the night, her ears attuned to any signs of trouble.
When she finally managed to sleep, she dreamed of Grace.
How she’d slipped Emmy notes during the most boring lectures.
How she’d given her and Papa the most thoughtful gifts at Christmas, though she hadn’t a penny to her name.
How she’d made Emmy’s grudges her grudges, slipping rotten tomatoes into the knapsack of a boy who’d teased Emmy about her too-small shoes.
She’d been a fierce and fervent friend. Until she hadn’t.
Emmy was in that liminal space between dreams when she heard a distant crash.
Her feet were on the floor in an instant, the knife from under her pillow firmly in her hand. She froze, waiting for Jack
to burst into her room like he always did, but her wall remained solid. He was still with Oliver, then.
The hushed voices were louder in the hall. Emmy followed them down the darkened stairs.
Another crashing sound, like someone had thrown the pots and pans in the air. Emmy hurried to the kitchen, then skidded to
a halt in front of its swinging doors, where the housekeeper stood with a few other staff members, all in their nightclothes,
her face tense with concentration as she erected a wall of air.
“Miss Fairchild!” she exclaimed upon seeing Emmy. “I’m terribly sorry for the noise; I was trying to block it, but— Is that
a knife?”
Emmy glanced at her hand. “I . . . thought it was an intruder.”
“It’s Mr. Fontaine. He came home and insisted on making himself something to eat. We tried to help, but . . . he’s rather
stubborn tonight.”
“Stubborn!” exclaimed a younger girl, a kitchen maid, perhaps. “He’s drunk!”
Emmy’s heart sank. “Let’s have a look.”
At her nod, they opened the kitchen doors.
A footman was extinguishing black flames on a pan over the stove, while two other staff members were attempting to clean what
looked like spilled rice and broken eggs. And on the long butcher block sat Jack, a pile of peanuts beside him. “Ah, Winnie.
Hungry?”
“What are you doing?”