Chapter 4 Aurelie
Aurelie
Between Uncle Leo’s urgent departure and Aurelie’s exams, the week passed like a runaway train, leaving Aurelie flailing to
keep up. She’d passed everything—just—and was grateful simply to have survived till Friday afternoon. While sleep was tempting,
she could hardly pass up the opportunity for uninterrupted tinkering this weekend. Alas, for perhaps the first time in her
life, she was woefully bereft of ideas. Crumpled pieces of paper, each representing a discarded notion, surrounded her wastebin.
Abandoning her lab for the time being, she met up with Kiara to make their afternoon rounds on campus, searching for any fallen
branches or crumbling bricks. There was usually plenty to note, as the university hadn’t had much in the way of upgrades for
the last one hundred years.
“What will you do this weekend?” Kiara asked, plucking a yellowing leaf from a low-hanging branch.
“Besides sleep? That depends. What are you doing?” It was mid-November, a time of year Aurelie enjoyed because it meant the
coming of cold weather, when she had every excuse to stay indoors and tinker in her lab. For some reason, people were perplexed
when she chose to be a hermit on a warm day.
“I have to visit my grandparents.”
Kiara’s grandparents lived several hours away by coach. Wardan was a small, quaint town that made the capital city look like a bustling metropolis in comparison. “Well, it has been a while since you visited them.”
“A year,” she said, nodding. “But I hate it there. They don’t even have gas lamps. I’ll be forced to read by candlelight every
night.”
“The horror,” Aurelie said, shuddering.
“I’ll be back by Monday. Maybe we can go off campus for a change?”
Aurelie eyed her suspiciously. “Did my uncle put you up to this?”
“Maybe . . .”
Kiara lived in an apartment in town, so it was natural for her to do things away from the university. Aurelie hadn’t realized
quite how narrow her world had become until now, when suddenly everyone seemed to want her horizons to expand.
“Just promise me you won’t try to skip out on the dinner with the Applebaums,” Kiara said, nudging Aurelie with her elbow.
“Oh, he definitely put you up to this.”
“Yes, well, he does employ two-thirds of my family.”
“I’m going!” Aurelie insisted. “Say hello to your grandparents for me. And try to have fun this weekend.”
Kiara rolled her eyes. “I’ll try if you will.”
Aurelie fished her key out of her collar and headed down the hallway toward her lab, surprised to see an object on the floor
outside her door.
It was a book, and a rather old one by the look of things. A handwritten note rested on top:
Aurelie, your uncle thought you might enjoy this book I found in the library. Looking forward to dinner tomorrow. —Miles
Aurelie glanced around the hallway, uncomfortable with the notion that Miles knew where her lab was. That he’d been here, separated from her experiments—not to mention Mephisto—by only a wooden door.
“Great Discoveries and the People Behind Them: A Chronicle of Wisterian Genius,” she read aloud. As she opened the book, her eyes slid to the inside cover where a name was scrawled, a serious offense
in the eyes of Mrs. Clearwater, the head librarian.
Florian Hawthorn. Aurelie startled. The prince who might have been king, had his twin brother not banished him. Aciano—whose descendants still
ruled Wisteria—subsequently had most of his brother’s belongings destroyed, but this one must have escaped his notice.
She flipped through the book and nearly squealed with joy when she saw that Prince Florian himself had scribbled notes in
the margins, more than a century ago. She clung to the book, her hands sweaty with anticipation, as she unlocked the door
and hurried inside. The discoveries in this book were old, but Florian’s notes could be a treasure trove of information. If
nothing else, they were new to Aurelie.
She hardly noticed when Mephisto crawled up her skirt, over her lap, and onto the desk, its long mustache trailing behind it as it sniffed the book.
It looked up at her, blinking its shiny red eyes in a way Aurelie might have described as curious.
So little was known about demons. As far as she knew, none had ever been around long enough for their behavior to be studied.
It was entirely possible that Mephisto was the oldest demon in all of Wisteria.
A moment later, it scuttled back into the shadows, hunting insects or mice, most likely.
Aurelie turned the cloth-bound cover of the book and began to read.
The first thing she noticed was how well-loved it appeared to be. There were ink smudges on some of the pages, many of which
were dog-eared or torn, as if Florian had ripped them in his haste to learn more. Aurelie understood the sentiment—at the
time, these discoveries were likely all brand-new.
One hundred years ago, Wisteria had been a hub of culture and innovation. Dignitaries traveled from all over the world to
visit the renowned university, which had produced some of the greatest minds ever known. The factories churned with productivity.
Inventors were revered for their creations. Demons were mere myths. But when King Yarrow was sickened by a foreign illness,
Wisteria was changed forever.
Crown Prince Aciano was cautious and rational, wanting to ensure the safety of Wisteria’s citizens above all else, while Prince
Florian had been ambitious and curious: enamored with the world and everything in it. He’d spent his youth traveling abroad,
returning with unnamed spices and dyes in colors so tantalizing they were reserved solely for the queen. He believed in progress,
in moving the kingdom forward through innovation. Aurelie could never admit out loud how much she admired Florian: he was
responsible for the demonic curse and was exiled in punishment, while Aciano took the throne.
It was Aciano’s grandson, King Gabor, who ruled now, though there was little difference between him and his paternal lineage.
All had been anti-progress, anti-development.
That was the second thing she noticed. As she suspected, so many of the wonderful discoveries described—a new medicine, an improvement on an existing technology, even a new species of insect—were now long-since-taken-for-granted aspects of everyday life.
All the excitement these great people must have felt, that Florian punctuated with his own ideas and exclamation points, was gone now.
And Aurelie felt the bitter sting of envy every time she turned another page.
A knock on the door startled Aurelie so badly she jumped in her seat. Who could possibly be disturbing her now? Miles would
have gone home an hour ago at least. She’d tidied up the lab earlier, so it only took a moment to scan the room and hide any
incriminating evidence.
She frowned when she opened the door and found a campus guard standing in the hallway. They never visited her, had never really
spoken to her beyond pleasantries. “Is everything all right?” she asked, a tickle of unease brushing the back of her neck.
“Right as rain, Miss Blake. Sorry to disturb you this evening, but there’s a man at the front gate asking for you. I told
him he’d need to wait till I checked with you first. Your uncle didn’t mention anything about visitors tonight.”
Aurelie worried her lip with her teeth. “What did he look like?”
“Hard to say, really. He was tall, wearing a long coat. His hat was pulled low, so I couldn’t see much of his face. Around
your uncle’s age, I’d wager.”
“Did he give a name?”
The guard nodded. “Everard. Wanted to ask you about a job.”
Now Aurelie was utterly lost. She knew of no one named Everard, and she couldn’t imagine anyone who would want to ask her about work. She was a bricoleur, for heaven’s sake. A handyperson at a university. And eighteen years old, to boot.
“Oh, and he mentioned Mr. Morel,” the guard added. “Said he knows him.”
At that, Aurelie’s shoulders relaxed. If the man was here about a job and knew Mr. Morel, it had to be related to groundskeeping.
She would tell him to come back Monday when the Morels returned. “I’ll come with you,” she said. “I have to be at the cottage
for dinner shortly anyhow.”
Aurelie pulled on her green wool coat, locked the door, and followed the guard out to the front of the university. True to
the guard’s description, a tall man in a dark overcoat waited outside the gates, a hat pulled low enough that she couldn’t
gauge his expression from here. He straightened when he noticed her coming toward him.
“Miss Blake,” he said, tipping his hat. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
Aurelie could feel the guard’s watchful eyes on her as she stepped outside through the small pedestrian gate. The gas lamps
were lit, but it was still dark enough that she couldn’t make out much beyond what the guard had already told her. “Hello,”
she said, squinting into the darkness. “I’m sorry to say I wasn’t expecting visitors tonight. You’re a friend of the Morels?”
Finally, Aurelie was close enough that she could see he was a handsome man a little younger than her uncle, his sharp cheekbones
unadorned with whiskers, his eyes an arresting ice blue.
“That’s right,” he said. “We go far back, Mr. Morel and I. May I come in?”
“I’m afraid Mr. Morel is gone for the weekend. Would you mind coming back on Monday?” Uncle Leo would probably chide her for being rude, but she had learned to trust the small, quiet voice in her head that so very rarely spoke. The one that was whispering now: Caution.
“I’m not here to see Mr. Morel,” the man said. Then, to Aurelie’s surprise, he leaned closer, his face eye-level with hers.
“It’s regarding an . . .” The word was hardly more than a breath, but it felt like a roar when it hit her. “Invention.”
Aurelie gasped, her hand flying to her open mouth.
“Everything all right, Miss Blake?” the guard called from behind her.