Chapter 5
By the end of breakfast, Ezra Bright was exhausted.
There was not enough coffee in this restaurant—nay, the entire world—that could keep him from sloughing back to Mrs. Davidson’s boardinghouse and collapsing on a pile of cross-stitched pillows.
Alas, he had an appointment at the tailor.
It seemed rather trivial, to go picking out outfits, after he’d walked through a mirror where women dressed themselves in flowers, but it wasn’t as if he could use this excuse on Vincent.
The other young man practically pulled Ezra to where the Hispano Suiza was idling on the curb outside the Windmill.
It looked even sleeker with the morning sun winking off its chrome.
“In you go, Bright!” Vincent called out as he opened the door. “I’m dressing you in decent clothes if it’s the last thing I do!”
Ezra couldn’t help but glance over his shoulder at where Celia stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by several other feathered friends.
She seemed transformed: giggling with the girls as they gossiped.
Sunlight was snapping off her sequined dress, highlighting even the slightest movement.
One hip jutted out as she twirled that black boa idly around her arm.
So easy. Too easy. Seeing her like this, Ezra couldn’t help but wonder if he’d imagined it all.
Even the mud scattered by Biz’s dress had vanished from the car’s leather. “Where is your fiancée?” he asked Vincent after he took his seat.
“Sleeping soundly, I expect.”
“How do you look so awake?” Ezra mumbled.
There were no dark bags under Vincent’s eyes.
His face was free of lines—no pillow marks or long years here.
He looked timeless, in the cream-tinged light.
The man’s smile held a history, though. “There’s this enchanted elixir called coffee, my friend.
Should we pick up another cup before our appointment?
You look like you’ve just fought your way out of the underworld. Very Orphean.”
Ezra’s muscles tensed at the verbiage. Enchanted.
Did Vincent know about the mirrors? Or was he just talking in that hyperbolic way of his?
The latter seemed likely. The Cains were not a noble family, despite their fortunes.
They had no castles to their name. No OBEs either.
They’d emerged from the war—not as knights but as the operators of a very successful munitions company.
Bullets had bought this car… not stolen Egyptian amulets.
Ezra felt only marginally better about this.
In fact, when it came down to it, he did feel like Orpheus. He understood now, why the hero had looked back over his shoulder. Was any of it real? The mirror, the glittering fog, the leopard-skin suits, dead men screaming in his face, George, or the wings he’d worn…
He stared down at his tweed sleeves. There was no sign of the golden feathers, but the fabric did seem more holey than before.
“I’m not used to such parties, is all,” he said as the car glided forward. “Is it like that every night?”
“The dancing, yes. The diamonds? Well, I can’t say I give those away every day.
” Vincent shook his head and tilted his knees toward Ezra’s side of the car, to get a better look at him.
“You took me by surprise last night, Bright. During all our time together you never once mentioned the Ellingtons.”
No, the wounds had been too fresh when he’d first stepped foot on Oxford’s lawns.
Disappear. Lord Blackwood’s order had seemed easy enough to follow there, where undergraduates all wore the same dark gown.
Vincent, however, somehow set himself apart even in the drab garment.
Ezra had noticed the young man the moment he entered their Introduction to Hieroglyphics lecture—late, but with such a smile that the professor did not note the infraction.
He’d slid onto the bench beside Ezra, and suddenly everything felt brighter.
Crisper. The scratch of pens on paper. The late-summer sun peering through the high windows.
All at once the world held promise again.
He’d forgotten that feeling—the thrill of it—until last night. And now, sitting on the clean leather seats with London streaking past their windows. Vincent’s knees were still tilted toward him. His gaze held a gravity.
Ezra could feel himself falling, again.
“Has Biz talked about me?” he hazarded.
“Stories were swapped,” Vincent said playfully. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell her how hard we studied together…”
Ezra couldn’t help but glance at their driver.
There was no way the man could know what Vincent was really referring to: two boys bent over their books, reading nothing.
Fingers edged together. Then hands. Then more.
It had been a dangerous game, out in the open, where any scholar might step out of the stacks and find them, together, but Vincent had never been the cautious type and Ezra had just survived a war.
What more damage could a little love do?
Plenty, now that Biz sported a ring on her finger.
Ezra’s own legs pressed into the Hispano Suiza’s door panel. The position wasn’t comfortable—not with the metal handle digging into his thigh. “Clearly we didn’t study hard enough, if you’re still mistaking the Eye of Horus for Ra,” he said.
“Did I?” Vincent sighed. “Damn.”
He couldn’t help but smile at this. “You’re lucky I was there to keep the treasure hunt going.”
“It was quite the spot of luck, wasn’t it? Though I’m sure Biz would have sorted my mistakes out eventually.” The other young man shifted as he said this, so that his knees were no longer angled in Ezra’s direction. “She’s had more than enough practice.”
“How long have you two been together?”
“Nearly a year.”
Not as long as us. Ezra exhaled. His own legs settled back to their original position. Not that that means anything.
“After the lovely amethyst spew of the flying nuns, we started attending parties together. It made things rather more fun—with her on my arm I didn’t have to spend every bloody minute batting away brainless women trying to become Mrs. Cain.
I swear, they were worse than biting midges.
” Vincent chewed absently at his lip. “And Biz, well, she’s a peach.
Sweet and sour and a bit of a mess once you get past the first bite. ”
“She’d kick you in the shins for saying that.” At least, the twelve-year-old girl would. Ezra had to admit he had no idea what Biz would do now if she was seated between them.
“All a part of her charm.” Vincent let out a little laugh.
“Do you know, that first morning at Thornhill she cursed me for following her own drunk instructions? Didn’t stop her from giving me more—she put on a fresh layer of lipstick, sat in the least moldy armchair, and ordered me to make her an omelette. ”
“Moldy?” Ezra frowned at the term.
“The house is a bit past its prime,” the other man said delicately. “I kept expecting Miss Havisham to appear, but I found mummies in the basement instead. Can you imagine? Oh, well, of course you can. You grew up there.”
It was Ezra’s turn to gnaw his lip. The basement of Thornhill had been forbidden to him as a child.
Normally he wouldn’t have minded—his trek downstairs always ended at the kitchen.
But there were a few times, when munching on a cheese cream puff, that Ezra noticed a locked door at the end of the corridor.
None of the staff ever set foot in there.
Nor did any of them seem to notice that the room beyond sometimes pulsed with a brilliant golden light.
He’d written it off as seeing things.
Yet, what had he been seeing?
What was Lord Blackwood hiding down there?
Mummies?
Magic?
And why, oh why, hadn’t he let Ezra in?
“There’s a reason I never mentioned the Ellingtons at Oxford,” he told Vincent slowly.
“What? They have skeletons in their closets too? Pray tell.”
No, not skeletons. Though it was hard to forget the white gleam of the shards from George’s head. The way the bones of the Germans had twisted and snapped. As comfortable as they were with each other, Ezra knew he couldn’t share such things with Vincent.
“I met Lord Blackwood in Egypt. My mother worked for him as a guide in the Valley of the Kings—he was nice enough. Whenever I came to a dig site he’d give me peppermints and say how much I reminded him of his son, George.
” More than a hint, looking back. Ezra preferred not to, however.
These memories were rusty, halting. “One day my mother disappeared into the desert and never returned. I waited for her, but when our door finally opened, it was Lord Blackwood who walked in. He didn’t explain much—only said something about guardianship.
I soon found myself at sea. I’d never seen so much water in my life…
and then here in England, where it never seemed to stop raining.
I cried a good deal, in the early days. I missed my mother, but it made Lord Blackwood angry whenever I talked about her, so I found other ways to keep her close.
There was this one story she used to read to me, about a sleeping queen who held the earth together with her dreams…
I used to pretend that she was buried under this ancient oak at Thornhill.
It became a game that George and Biz and I played. ”
“Your wishing tree!” Vincent broke in. “Biz showed me the stump.”