Chapter 9
A DEVICE AND POTENTIAL
It had been years since Persephone had been home.
Years since she’d walked these streets. The last she’d set foot here, it had been raining, a black night, Percy’s hand tugging her south.
They’d been happy then. And that happiness had lasted for a little bit.
Not long enough. She’d buried her happiness long before she’d buried her husband.
But oddly, her happiness had returned, resurrected by an entirely different and entirely unsuitable man. She felt light, like skipping, like lifting her face to the sky and laughing.
She and Victor had found a hotel, paid for a room, and set onto the streets. She’d spent hours showing him her old haunts, all the little corners and quirks of the town where she’d grown up. But for the past half hour, they’d walked in companionable silence, arm in arm.
She knew Victor was about to speak when he pulled her closer to his side and wrinkled his nose.
“I do not like Manchester,” he said. A glamour covered his rumpled clothing but did not touch his face. His clothes appeared finely pressed and expensive, his face was handsome if a bit pinched, and his hair was tousled as if he’d just left a woman’s bed.
And he had. Her bed. This very morning.
She skipped. Just one little hop. Because she felt like it.
Heavens, was that what sparked such silliness in her? That she had been pleased and well and more than once?
By a scoundrel.
Not that her body cared.
“The air is too thick and dull,” Victor said.
“Yes. The factories make it difficult to breathe. But the city is breathing, always growing.”
“Excellent, as long as the city can breathe, I’m not worried about myself.”
“Come along. We’re almost to Mosley Street.” A brittle brown leaf blew across their path then swept up into the sky. Its fallen comrades followed after, and they stepped through the whirlwind together.
“And what is in this auspicious street?” he asked, pulling the collar of his greatcoat more tightly about his neck.
“The library right there.” She pointed to a large building with soaring Greek columns on the corner. “The Royal Manchester Institution, that way.” She pointed to her left. “Possibility. The future.” The final word produced an ominous cough, and a handkerchief appeared in front of her face.
“Use it,” Victor said, bouncing it up and down.
She held it against her nose and breathed through it, and he did the same with his sleeve.
She broke away from him and rushed toward the library and those gathered round its entrance.
As Morington joined her at the back of the crowd, she said, “This is the Portico Library. As long as I can remember, a crowd has gathered here every day to hear an alchemist speak.”
“Is that what they’re all waiting for?”
“Mm. Look! There he is.” A man appeared between two columns at the top of the steps.
“Who is he?”
“No idea. It’s a different man each day. And whomever he is, he’s always intent on selling the crowd on his newest invention. It’s a bit of a performance. I believe you’ll like it. Now shhh.” She nodded toward the steps, the man who now held a round device above his head.
Victor did as she said, his lips pursed to one side, his hands in his pockets, his legs set wide. He truly was a fine-looking man, and if she persuaded him well enough today, perhaps he might be as fine inside as he was outside.
She didn’t fear him. He wouldn’t hurt her.
His brand of sin didn’t run to violence.
In fact, his brand of sin rather… enticed her.
If he weren’t intent of desecrating graves, she might even find him…
appealing. Not just his body and face. A woman with eyes couldn’t deny those.
But his wit. And—a little bit—his wicked soul.
Naughty thought, that. Thankfully, he was set on stealing from cemeteries, so she was in no threat of falling for a man, a duke, she could never have.
She focused on the alchemist standing at the top of the library steps.
He was tall and stooped and without a strand of hair on his head.
He had the broad shoulders of all alchemists, and he held a small device aloft.
It was a collection of circles one inside the other, each one smaller than the last. They were spinning in all directions all at once it seemed.
And the alchemist was droning on about them.
She could understand him, but he spoke so slow and so dully, she didn’t want to.
“He’s a boring fellow,” Victor said, leaning sideways to whisper in her ear. “And I can hardly understand what he’s talking about.”
“Hot air balloons. They were terribly popular ten, twenty years ago, but they have fallen out of fashion. Most transcendents believe that since they cannot be accurately controlled, they’re useless for travel. So they refuse to invest in them.”
“Sound thinking.”
“Yes, but this man is saying that his new device allows the captain of an air balloon to accurately control his direction and speed.”
“Fascinating.”
The way he said it made her whip around to look at him. Yes. His face was as rapt with attention as his voice, his body listing slightly forward, as if eager to get closer. He’d meant it. He was fascinated.
“But,” she said, still watching him, “as is the case with most alchemists, he lacks a showman’s flair and an ability to communicate the science, the magic behind the device to anyone but a fellow alchemist with a similar understanding.”
“That is a problem.” Victor stroked his jaw.
She snaked her arm around his and pulled him closer.
Of course it was cold, and he was warm, and her pelisse was terribly thin.
But more than that, she… rather liked it.
The nearness to him. She’d been doing it as often as she could—touching him, leaning on him, seeking his warmth and strength.
And he’d never once pushed her away, always eagerly clasped her hand in his or nestled her into his side.
He always made himself into a place for her.
Perhaps that was why she kept doing it. In the last months of her marriage, Percy had shoved her away, and since his death, the only human touch she’d known were fleeting hugs from Sarah and the insignificant weight of holding Sarah’s babes close.
She worked for the dead, and her body was eager to connect with the living.
Starved of touch, she lapped at Victor like a thirsty cat at a puddle.
That he never questioned this, that he gave himself over to her need with such ease—likely a sign of his moral deterioration.
If so, it was saving her from a slow, cruel touch-starved death she’d not known she’d been suffering.
He welcomed her touch now, threading their fingers together, and allowing her to draw him down low enough she could speak into his ear.
Now was her time to spin the web that would catch him, turn his purpose around and perhaps his life as well.
If she snagged him now, he need not marry a rich alchemist’s daughter.
“Imagine,” she said, stretching her arm toward the crowd as if to paint a scene. “As the alchemist is speaking, you are painting.”
“I don’t paint. I’m not an artist. And why am I imagining?” He arched one imperial brow into his hairline.
“You are an artist. An artist of the glamour. Remember how good you are.” She patted his solid forearm.
“Now is no time for humility. Return to the scene. The alchemist presents his invention. And behind him you craft, out of air and light and imagination, a hot air balloon. You show it blowing out of control. You show a passenger, terrified and frightened, a captain unable to bring the balloon back to the ground. You show a tree. You show the balloon crashing, screams.”
“Dramatic,” Victor drawled.
“Precisely your style.”
He shrugged. “You’re not wrong.”
“I’m well aware. Now do attend. The scene vanishes and is replaced by another—a new balloon, a new captain and passenger.
A wind comes along for this one too. But instead of the balloon careening out of control, the captain immediately corrects its course and speed.
He is a master of the wind. And his passengers scream only in delight.
The crowd is pleased. They understand now what the alchemist was saying, and he finds investors as quickly as you were able to conjure the glamour.
And because he is so thankful to you, he—”
“Liberally greases my palm with gold.”
“I knew you were intelligent. What do you think? Here’s a perfect opportunity. Here is a sustainable future that is not built on lies and theft.”
“I see.” Victor uncurled her from his arm and took a large step away from her. “I see that even people who are not transcendents can weave their own glamours. Your story is an illusion as useless as the ones I create.”
“Victor.”
“No.”
“Yes! It is a purpose, and isn’t that what you’re looking for? It is a magic that will keep people safe. Make travel easier.”
“It is the alchemist’s magic that will do that, not mine.” He turned back toward the inn, his broad shoulders, so rigid, put panic in her heart.
She hurried after him. One hand about his wrist was enough to stop him, to turn him back around. She could not change his expression, though—frozen and hard.
Still, she must try to make him see. She held his hand in both of hers. “But the alchemist cannot do that if people do not understand him! If people cannot see the potential behind his device. You have that power. You can help. Just think of it. Let it excite you, drive you.”
“Persephone.”
“Yes?” Hope fluttered like little birds in her chest.
“Where is the cemetery?”
Flutters gone. Birds belly up, feet sticking in the air. Dead, the lot of them.
The sun was sitting behind the buildings, and the crowd at the library was dispersing. The alchemist who’d done his best to share his vision with others, trudged down the steps alone, shoulders slumped.