Chapter Thirteen
The club immediately descended into pandemonium.
There were several dramatic shrieks—one from close enough that Max’s ears rang for several seconds afterward—and a woman at a nearby table slumped dramatically into the arms of the man next to her, though Vesper’s muttered “honestly” made him suspect that the lady’s distress might not have been entirely genuine.
Grenoble, predictably, was making a bit of an idiot of himself—loudly demanding to know what drink the unconscious man had been consuming, gesticulating wildly, but doing nothing whatsoever to deal with the body slumped at his feet.
Max was up in an instant, cutting through the crowd; moments later, he was crouching on the floor, reaching out to check for a pulse. Finding a fairly strong one, he exhaled; dealing with an unconscious body was a considerably less alarming prospect than reckoning with a dead one.
“Is he alive?” came Vesper’s voice from behind him; he hadn’t even noticed that she’d followed him, though he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Yes. I don’t suppose you have smelling salts?” He didn’t look at her as he spoke, his attention still focused on the man before him, who gave no sign of stirring. His breathing was shallow, his face very pale. “Or can someone telephone a doctor?”
Vesper was uncharacteristically silent for a prolonged moment, and Max glanced over his shoulder at her. “What is it?”
“Well… it’s just. I’ve some Mackleworth’s Rapid Revival.”
Max met her eyes; he was familiar with the potion, as it had been commonplace before Forbiddance. He had found some in his mother’s medicine cabinet once, even though his parents generally shied away from the use of any magical products.
Max moved back to allow her to press closer to the man on the floor. She rummaged in her beaded clutch and extracted a small gold vial that she unstopped. “Can you hold his mouth open?”
Max didn’t bother with his scruples. Instead, he leaned forward, pinched the man’s nostrils closed, and—when the man gasped through his mouth—tipped his head back slightly, allowing Vesper to pour a small, shimmering splash of a purple liquid between his lips.
Within a few seconds, the man’s eyelashes were fluttering, even as he choked a bit on the potion.
Max clamped a hand over his mouth. “Swallow it,” he said, leaning forward to speak directly into the man’s ear, and after a few more moments of coughing and spluttering, the man opened his eyes and met Max’s gaze directly.
“Ashbridge?” he asked, blinking in confusion.
Vesper’s head whipped around so fast it was amazing she didn’t injure herself. “Do you know him?”
And it was only now, at this close proximity, that Max realized he did: it was Devon Finchley, whom he’d known both during the war and later at Cambridge.
They’d served in the Royal Army Service Corps together in France; Max liked Finchley.
His family was posh and wealthy and had once been magical, though these days were merely magic sympathizers, but for all that, Finchley was a decent chap.
Max reached forward and helped Finchley into a seated position. “Are you all right?”
Finchley nodded slowly, wincing and clutching at his head as soon as he’d done so. “What happened?”
“We were rather hoping you could answer that question,” Vesper said, and Finchley’s gaze slid to hers, his eyes widening.
“It’s Miss Holloway, isn’t it?” He glanced back at Max. “Ashbridge, I didn’t realize you ran in these circles.”
“Ashbridge contains hidden depths,” Vesper said, and Max chose to ignore the very skeptical expression that Finchley, even in his weakened, confused state, managed to summon in reply. “What potion did you drink?” she added, her tone a bit more urgent now.
Finchley’s brow wrinkled. “I—I don’t know. I was speaking to a very pretty girl and she had a potion—said she didn’t want the rest of it, and asked me if I’d like to finish it.”
Max and Vesper glanced at each other, but were able to ask Finchley no further questions, as his friends intervened at this point; someone tossed his suit jacket onto his lap, preserving what was left of his dignity.
Finchley seemed only at that precise moment to notice that he wasn’t wearing any clothes, and turned a brilliant scarlet; in short order, he was ushered away to the toilets, where he could get dressed.
Edward Grenoble, meanwhile, was still blustering like a fool. “… can’t account for someone not being able to handle his potions, I suppose!”
Next to Max, a woman with mousy hair and a feathered headband frowned. “I say, Grenoble—isn’t this just what happened at Holloway’s and at Plenus Venter?”
“Not in the slightest,” Grenoble protested, looking offended at the comparison. “Those were clearly bad potions—Finchley here just overdid it.”
“I don’t think so,” chimed in another man; he had brown skin and was wearing an immaculately tailored suit and tails in a rich burgundy color. “That was only his second potion—he has an early morning tomorrow and said he wasn’t going to drink too much.”
Max could tell that Grenoble was growing more irate by the moment. “Don’t be absurd—this was just a mishap.”
“But it’s the third—no, fourth—in the past fortnight,” the woman said, her frown deepening. “It happened again at Plenus Venter last night.” Max glanced at Vesper, startled, and she nodded grimly back.
She stood on tiptoe to murmur in his ear, “Hazel told me at lunch today. Apparently it happened after we left.”
This was growing serious, Max thought, faintly alarmed. Holloway’s on Friday—then Plenus Venter last night, and Grenoble’s tonight.
The woman with the feathered headband seemed to be thinking along similar lines. “If there’s something going wrong with the magic at three different clubs now, then I wonder if we should be drinking potions at all.”
“I don’t think there’s any cause to panic,” Vesper said quickly.
Grenoble, for once, seemed inclined to agree. “Just so, Vesper. In fact, I think the thing that would settle everyone’s nerves right now is”—he pitched his voice louder, to be certain that everyone in the vicinity overheard—“a free round of potions for everyone.”
Whatever misgivings the assembled crowd might have had in the wake of recent events were evidently not strong enough to outweigh the promise of free magic, and there was a veritable stampede for the bar.
Vesper wasted no time in approaching Grenoble, who was watching the crowd swarming his bartenders with a slightly pained expression—no doubt calculating how much money that peacekeeping measure had just cost him.
“Edward.” Grenoble glanced down, looking startled to see that Vesper had materialized at his side. “Do you still prepare your potions on-site?”
He scowled at her. “I don’t think that’s any business of yours.”
“For the love of—” She reached out and poked him in the arm. “Don’t be dense, I’m not trying to steal your trade secrets. I’m trying to work out how this could have happened.”
He gazed at her petulantly for a long moment, rubbing at the spot on his arm where she’d prodded him, then nodded reluctantly.
“It’s just too much of a faff to do it elsewhere—especially given that it needs to be done every night, if we don’t want the flavors to go off.
” He glanced over at Max now, catching him eavesdropping, and his scowl reappeared with a vengeance.
“I say, Vesper, I don’t think you should be discussing this in front of”—he dropped his voice to a dramatic stage whisper—“a mundane.”
“Don’t be an ass, Edward,” Vesper said, her voice as sharp as Max had ever heard it.
“I’ve realized why the name Ashbridge sounds familiar,” Grenoble continued, undeterred. “Don’t you work for the Home Office in some capacity?”
Max met his eyes without flinching, then gave a sort of disinterested shrug. “What of it?”
“You don’t see why I might be a bit suspicious, to find you lurking here in my club?”
Vesper reached back to seize Max’s hand; he twined his fingers through hers, drawing her toward him so that her back—all that bare, soft skin, so much of it on display in her skimpy gown—pressed against his chest. “I promise, your club isn’t the main attraction this evening.”
Grenoble’s eyes narrowed at the sight of them standing together so intimately. “Right. I suppose she is a good enough time to make you forget whatever principles you thought you had.”
Max stiffened at that, dropping Vesper’s hand, but she stayed him with a hand on his forearm. She glanced over her shoulder at him—one quick, unspoken word: Don’t.
She turned back to Grenoble. “Don’t be a boor—and stop trying to provoke Ashbridge. Did you see the girl Finchley was speaking to?”
Grenoble shrugged. “Awful lot of girls here tonight, Vesper.” He sounded smug, as if he labored under the impression that he was the reason for their presence.
Despite being unable to see Vesper’s face at the moment, Max could feel her disdain. “The girl he was speaking to before he collapsed,” she pressed. “She’s evidently the one who gave him the potion he drank just beforehand.”
Finchley himself reappeared just in time to hear this, now fully clothed and holding a glass of water. “Who was this?” Grenoble demanded.
Finchley took a seat at an unoccupied table, still looking a bit pale. “She was a brunette. Curly hair. A mole just beneath one eye, lovely long eyelashes—quite pretty.”
“And you’d never met her before?” Vesper asked.
“What’s this all about, Vesper?” Grenoble asked, stepping a bit closer to her before pausing at whatever he caught sight of in Max’s expression.
“I’m just trying to piece together what happened—here, and at Holloway’s.”
Grenoble’s expression turned so condescending that Max was tempted to punch him.
“Vesper, darling. I think you’d better leave this to others to sort out—I’ll have a word with my father.
Perhaps we can convene some sort of meeting with all the families.
I don’t think you need to worry about this, though. ”