Chapter Eight
The following evening found Max standing at a corner on Marylebone High Street, hunching his shoulders against a nip in the air and wondering somewhat warily what the evening held in store.
He was, after all, a representative of His Majesty’s government, headed into a hotbed of illegal magical activity with only Vesper Holloway to act as his guide.
There was a tap on his arm, interrupting these somewhat dark thoughts. “There you are!”
He turned, and Vesper was standing before him on the street corner, her blond hair gleaming in the light of the streetlamps and the passing motorcars. She wore a red velvet cape and a matching hat.
“You’re fifteen minutes late,” he informed her, and instead of apologizing, she smiled.
“I knew you would be one of those sorts of men,” she said, and then, without another word, reached out to link her arm through his before setting off down the street.
Despite the fact that it was a Sunday, Marylebone was bustling, light and music and laughter pouring out of open doors all around them, motorcars inching past on the crowded streets.
A decade or two earlier, there would have been people spilling onto the pavement from the various restaurants and clubs, clutching packets of spell powder in their hands or visibly under the temporary effects of some spell or other.
Now, however, they were more circumspect, and the merriment that surrounded them showed no blatant signs of being magical in origin, for all of Max’s suspicions.
“Here we are,” Vesper said, coming to a halt so abruptly that Max’s shoulder jostled hers as their linked arms forced him to stop as well.
She was standing in front of what at first glance appeared to be a brick wall, but she took a step forward, tugging Max along with her, and he realized a moment later that it was merely a very well-cast spell; before him was a nondescript wooden door, and above it an illuminated sign reading MAUVE’S in letters that sparkled in a way he felt certain had to be magical in origin.
He arched a brow, willing himself not to be impressed. “Spellwork?”
“Spells—good ones, powerful ones, proper ones, like we used to be able to cast—don’t wear off for centuries,” Vesper confirmed.
He noticed a slight note of wistfulness in her voice; the fact was, for all his irritation about the magical families blatantly flouting Forbiddance laws right beneath the government’s nose, the magical world was still a shadow of what it once had been.
Their potions and powders and elixirs were impressive, but nothing compared to the ability to cast spells by hand, to the powerful magic that had once been commonplace in this country.
“Is there a way to… tell?” he asked, a bit uncertain. “If something’s been bespelled, I mean.”
She nodded. “You know the sheen around the hairline when magic is consumed?”
“Yes. Always seemed like a bit of a weakness with magic, actually.”
She frowned. “How so?”
“Well. It makes it pretty obvious that someone’s eaten or drunk something, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said patiently. “Almost like a guardrail.”
It was his turn to frown. “A guardrail,” he repeated.
“Think about it—it makes it safer. If someone’s been bespelled to change their appearance, you’ll know it—or at least you’ll know that they’ve done something.
It’s not very specific, of course, and it doesn’t tell you what sort of powder or potion they’ve consumed, but you know that something magical is occurring.
So if you’re in a circumstance where you’re feeling suspicious, it can alert you that magic’s being used, even if you don’t know what sort. ”
“I,” he began, and then fell silent, considering. He’d always thought of magic as a sneaky, underhanded sort of thing—a way of cheating the natural order, so to speak.
“It’s helpful for women, too,” Vesper added, almost as an afterthought.
“Why do you think we like checking our appearances so much? If you’re out for a drink with someone for the first time, you can pop to the toilet and make sure he hasn’t slipped anything into your drink when you weren’t looking—unless you’re already drinking something magical, of course.
” She shrugged. “It’s not foolproof, obviously, but it feels…
honest, I suppose. If you’re going to use magic, it feels like there should be a sign of it somewhere, don’t you think? ”
It was a view of magic that Max had never considered before, one that he didn’t quite know how to reconcile with his feelings on the matter. And now clearly wasn’t the moment to work it out.
“Anyway,” Vesper continued, waving her hand as if to dismiss the conversation, “there are signs sometimes, if a physical item has been enchanted. If it’s painted, there’s usually a bit of a glittery sheen at the end of a brushstroke, for example.
With a wall like this, it’s trickier to tell, but sometimes, if you catch it out of the corner of your eye, you might notice the faintest layer of shimmer.
” She turned to look up at him with a single raised eyebrow.
“Now, if you’re done asking questions, are you ready to actually go in?
” It felt like a dare somehow. He tucked her arm more firmly against his side and reached out to seize the brass doorknob and tug the door open.
“After you,” he said and, with a slight incline of his head, ushered her inside.
Mauve’s was… feminine, with its blush-pink walls and delicate chaise longues and spindly-legged tables.
Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and the resulting light was soft, rosy.
Romantic. There were waiters—male and female alike, all attired in rather dashing black coats and bow ties—quietly making their way around the room, bearing trays of burnished silver, piled with cocktail glasses, goblets, and pearlescent envelopes, each sealed with a distinctive bright pink wax heart, that Max suspected contained spell powders.
“Well, Ashbridge, what do you think?” Vesper asked, from where she had drawn to a halt a few feet ahead.
“It’s very… pink,” he offered, and she laughed.
She wasted no time in shedding her coat, and Max closed his eyes for a brief moment at the sight of her, shoulders bare but for a few feathers, shimmering in a gold sequined frock that ended in another festoon of feathers just above her knees.
She handed her coat off to a cloakroom attendant, Max following suit, and then turned back to face him.
“Shall we find somewhere to sit first?” she suggested. “I’d like to take a look around, see if there’s anyone I recognize here tonight before we do anything else.”
“Do you know the owners?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Everyone knows Genevieve Colton.”
He frowned, the name worrying at the edge of his mind.
“Her husband was Horatius Colton,” Vesper prompted. “Who owned The Spark?”
Ah, yes. A newspaper baron who’d died decades prior; he’d owned the storied magical newspaper beloved by the Marylebone families, which was more or less the bane of Max’s existence, obsessed as it was with reporting on the mistakes and mishaps of various employees of the F.L.E.A.
, Scotland Yard, and any politicians who supported Forbiddance.
“Genevieve’s quite colorful,” Vesper informed him, lowering her voice as if worried that the lady in question might pop out from behind a chaise longue at the sound of her own name.
“Ever since she was widowed, she’s had a never-ending string of affairs with actresses and lady artists—the club used to be called Colton’s, but she renamed it after a lover who died in a tragic mushroom-foraging accident. ”
“I’ve always said fungi are dangerous.”
Vesper blinked at him. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a sense of humor buried in there somewhere, Ashbridge.”
“Only very deeply.”
“Genevieve’s friends with my grandmother—a terrifying woman,” she said with a shudder. “Grandmama,” she clarified, seeing Max’s inquisitive look. “Not Genevieve.”
“I can only imagine,” he murmured, and Vesper narrowed her eyes at him.
“However,” he added, before she could make up her mind whether or not to take offense, “if you know her, perhaps you might convince her to open up a bit? Could you ask her if there’s been a blonde lurking around the club lately, or if she’s ever left her workroom unattended while mixing spell powders?
Perhaps you could…” He trailed off, realizing that Vesper was regarding him with an expression of disbelief.
“What is it?” he asked, reaching up uncomfortably to straighten his tie.
“You cannot be serious,” she stated quite firmly, as though to will this to be true.
“About which part?”
“All of it.” He had the impression that had they not been in a crowded nightclub she would have thrown her hands up in exasperation.
“Is this your idea of a stealthy undercover operation? You may as well slap on that badge of yours and climb up onstage and announce to the entire club what you’re doing. ”
“And I suppose you’ve a better idea?”
“We’ve only been here two minutes, so let’s perhaps give the illusion that we’re out and about having a good time before we start interrogating the staff like… well, like…”
“Like F.L.E.A.s?”
“Precisely. Let’s find a table.”
She hooked her hand around his wrist and proceeded to lead him deeper into the club, which was busy enough but not entirely packed. Based on the number of people they’d passed on the street while walking here, he’d expected more of a crowd.
He mentioned this to Vesper, and she smiled at him. “They keep a list.”
“A list?”
“Of living people who’ve been given the address.
Every time Genevieve tells the address to someone, she enters it into this enormous ledger she has in her office.
It’s enchanted to never allow more than a set number of names in the ledger at once; when someone dies, or moves away, or simply falls out of favor, the name is removed, making room for a new one. ”