Chapter 8 Aurelie
Aurelie
By the time Aurelie returned to her laboratory, she was exhausted and overwhelmed. Her ribs hurt from where the massive guard
with the bad attitude had manhandled her—not that she was ungrateful he had saved her life—and she no longer had the buffer
of the lovely violet gin fizz in her system to shield her from the memory of her abysmal dinner with Miles and the Applebaums.
Mephisto emerged from a hole in the wall as she collapsed on her sofa, sporting a wayward piece of lint on one of its eyebrows.
Normally, it scuttled immediately to its bowl when she arrived, expecting dinner, but today it sniffed at Aurelie as though
she were a stranger.
“What’s the matter, little one?” she asked, holding out her hand.
Mephisto inched forward a bit, sniffed at her again, and darted away. She touched her waist with her fingertips, where the
hunter’s arm had yanked her from the street. Could Mephisto smell him on her? Was that what had the demon acting so squirrely?
She closed her eyes, and suddenly she was back in a pair of muscular arms, the scent of leather and pine flooding her memory.
She must have been more frightened than she realized, her senses heightened. Otherwise, why would she remember what the giant
smelled like?
Of the four guards, he’d caught her attention immediately.
Nearly as tall as Miles, with broad shoulders, tanned skin, piercing gray eyes, and a square jaw, he was the most imposing man she’d ever seen.
His light brown hair was cropped unfashionably short, though something about his appearance made her think this was a matter of convenience, not a style choice.
The sword that hung at his side was so large that a fully unanticipated and unprecedented giggle had burst out of her.
Aurelie Blake did not giggle. Certainly not at the sight of a man. It had been nerves and nothing else.
Well, the alcohol might also have had something to do with it.
Shaking her head at the ridiculousness of the entire evening, she stripped out of her dress and hung it up, changing into
a simple shift and a cardigan Kiara had knit her for her birthday last year. To her relief, Mephisto approached immediately,
skittering right past her to its food bowl. Either it hadn’t approved of today’s sartorial choices, or the smell of the hunter
really had caused a reaction.
She glowered at the memory of the colossus nearly trampling her when she’d stopped to fix her slipper, unable to so much as
smile when she teased him about asking for directions. Apparently, there was no room for a sense of humor in all that ridiculously
tight armor.
She twisted her hair into her customary braid, her mind returning to Daisy, the sweet redheaded guard who’d approached her
first, and the other two boys. She may not know much about how the Iron Guard operated, but it was odd that they had paid
her so much attention tonight. Had Uncle Leopold contacted them? Paid them to keep an eye on her in his absence? Yes, he worried,
but it would be almost paranoid to reach out to the Iron Guard on her behalf.
Her stomach twisted. Did they somehow know about Everard and his proposal? What if this was part of a different elaborate plot to entrap her? Were they already onto Everard and now she’d been brought under suspicion, too?
Impossible, she told herself. It was a mere coincidence that they’d been hunting the somnia outside the café. It wasn’t as if she’d planned to be there. She glanced around her desk for Everard’s proposal, hoping to
find some sign that she should accept the commission, and realized with a groan that she’d left it at her uncle’s cottage.
Pulling her coat on and trading her slippers for boots, Aurelie cut across the lawn to Leo’s house. Bonnie opened the door
before Aurelie had a chance to knock, clearly eager for an update. “Good evening, miss. How was your date with Mr. Viridian?”
Aurelie shot her a flat look. “I wouldn’t date Miles Viridian for all the cheese in creation. And I assure you, the feeling
is entirely mutual.”
“Oh, how disappointing,” Bonnie said as she ushered Aurelie inside.
“I’m fine, really.”
“I meant for your uncle. He seemed to have high hopes for the two of you.”
Aurelie waited until Bonnie went to the kitchen to make tea before rolling her eyes. What was Uncle Leo thinking? He knew
that Aurelie was introverted and awkward and entirely uninterested in Miles. Had he expected she would spontaneously develop
social skills, or a tolerance for pompous windbags, in his absence?
Still shaken from nearly being flattened by a coach, she returned to the library, where she’d left Florian’s book with Everard’s proposal tucked between the pages.
She settled into one of the large armchairs and curled up, examining the diagram again as the same concerns bubbled up.
She should say no. It was illegal. It was dangerous.
Uncle Leopold would never forgive her if he found out what she was doing, and she still had no idea how this door would help
rid Wisteria of demons.
But when she closed her eyes, she felt the burning humiliation of Miles speaking over her, the look of horror in the eyes
of all the men when she revealed she wasn’t a pretty little wallflower but a human being with actual knowledge. The guards’
immovable surety that because of her size and gender, she couldn’t possibly make it back to the university alone. And the
way all of it stretched into an exhausting future of the same doubt and coddling and stagnation.
Aurelie couldn’t help but imagine it, this thing she wanted so much she was afraid to voice it out loud. Imagine if she were the one to eradicate demons. Yes, she’d likely be lauded as a hero, which was all well and good. But far more importantly,
she’d be free to invent to her heart’s content. She’d prove to Uncle Leo that she could take care of herself. She’d show Miles
that innovation was the key to progress, that society could be so much better than his boiled cabbage of a brain could imagine.
Bonus points for the fact that she’d put that hulking brute of a guard out of a job.
That final thought filled her with such wicked glee that she was grinning like a madwoman when Bonnie walked in with the tea.
“Erm, everything all right, miss?” she asked.
“What? Oh, of course. I was just . . . thinking about . . .”
“Oh!” Bonnie gasped.
“Wha—”
“No wonder you aren’t interested in Mr. Viridian!” She smiled as though she were in on a secret. “You like a different boy, don’t you?”
Aurelie began to splutter in protest, then decided it was probably better to let Bonnie believe she was giddy over a crush
rather than maniacally planning a man’s downfall. “Thank you for the tea,” she replied stiffly.
Bonnie winked before exiting.
Sipping her tea, Aurelie forcefully turned her attention back to the proposal. The interlocking metal plates would need to
be positioned in a large square, the outer plates carved with runes, the inner plates fitting into recesses when the runes
were activated. The runes themselves were engraved into the metal in a specific order. There was no lock or handle. Or rather,
the runes themselves appeared to be what opened the door.
She had a good sense of mechanical workings from her job as a bricoleur, but she wasn’t an engineer by any means. Everard
said he could supply the materials, so mostly this would require understanding and reverse engineering the mechanisms at play
here. What she really needed was a mentor in arcane magic. Someone who could guide her without knowing exactly what she was
up to. And there was only one professor at the university with the relevant experience who would possibly be willing to work
on something this dangerous.
Mostly because he was—as Uncle Leo had once put it—off his rocker.
Professor Sheldrake was technically in the science department, but he’d long been relegated to an ancient wing of the oldest hall on campus, near the clock tower, where he worked alone on demons only knew what.
He was rumored to be one of the last remaining experts in runic alphabets, though as far as Aurelie was aware, he didn’t attend any faculty functions or hold office hours.
But he was tenured, and she was fairly certain everyone thought he’d pass on at any moment, so his presence was tolerated.
On Monday, Aurelie would pay him a little visit.
Through the window, she could just make out the lamplighter walking past, relighting an extinguished lamp with his long tool.
She smiled wistfully. The tool wasn’t unlike the Helping Hand, really. She wondered who had created it, if they’d felt the
same thrill she did when it worked. The best inventions were the simplest ones. They made life easier for multitudes of people,
didn’t require expensive materials, and could be replicated easily. To create something of such purpose . . . Aurelie knew
that was her purpose. And yet she’d been born into a world that refused to allow her to pursue it.
Except for Everard. He was the first person in her entire life to offer her a chance to do more. Be more. She knew it was dangerous, but she also couldn’t deny how lit up she felt when she thought about the project. How impossibly
tempting the prospect of a genuine challenge was.
She wished she could ask Kiara for advice. She was always able to talk sense into Aurelie without rankling her the way Uncle
Leo did. But though Kiara had diligently kept her secret about Mephisto and the lab, she couldn’t risk dragging her best friend
into something this dangerous. Not when she hadn’t even decided if she’d take the commission.
Once the lamplighter passed the cottage’s window, Aurelie began to reach for her tea again, but something stopped her. It
was little more than a shimmer at the edge of her vision, but . . .
There! A somnia. She hurried to the window to observe it. The creature was tall and thin, somewhat humanoid, though its limbs were too long