Chapter 11
Everything about the parlor had the feel of a bad dream—Celia had these often enough.
The one that happened most took her back to the halls of Rosewick.
In the nightmare, her ancestral home stood empty.
No art bedecked the walls, no rugs hid the floorboards’ ancient grooves.
Celia wandered through too-big rooms, rooms that never seemed to end, trying to find a door that might let her out, but every time she reached the exits, they opened into her father’s chambers, revealing the four-poster bed where he’d died, where, in the nightmare, his body still lay, stripped completely naked.
There was nothing to cover him with. Nothing for Celia to do but stand and watch as maggots began eating away at William Sinclair’s cold blue skin.
He rotted all the way to the bone before she woke, her nightgown sweat through, her mother snoring gently behind the chipped lacquer folding screen.
There was no waking now.
No running either.
Celia stood rooted to the spot as she watched Everett whip out his knife. Ironically, the blade was another one of her father’s artifacts. Forged from steel and star fragments scrounged out of the ground at Tunguska. It didn’t just stab.
It decimated.
Its magic splintered bones until they resembled all those snapped fir trees in the snowy reaches of Russia.
Not a weapon that should be in the hands of a man as rash and uncaring as Everett.
Celia wanted to rip the knife out of his fist, but she was too far away.
All she could do was scream. The sound caught Ezra’s attention at least. He turned with the practiced speed of a soldier, just in time to catch the blade in his sternum.
Time stopped.
Time stopped.
Time stopped.
Celia’s scream never seemed to end. She could see the hilt buried deep in Ezra Bright’s chest—the knife’s magic was beginning to pulse through the muscles she’d admired mere hours ago.
And then.
Time stuttered. It looked as if some person hiding behind Ezra had lit a match, only the fire was in his eyes as well, burning away any resemblance he had to a threadbare scholar. He’d transformed into something far more powerful.
Far more deadly.
Suddenly Everett’s knife was free. Celia supposed he could have pulled it out—only the blade was bloodless and the attacker’s arm was moving in a most unnatural way.
Breaking, Celia realized. His fingers snapped back, then his wrist, followed by an awful right angle in his radial bone.
Everett didn’t even have time to scream.
His shoulder wrenched out of socket, and then his collarbone caved in.
The knife fell from the magician’s mangled fingers when he collapsed to the floor.
His elbow was bent backward—the in-between sagged loosely, as if it was only skin holding him together.
“HOLY FUCK!” Hugo Pratt stole the words right out of her mouth.
Time caught up with itself as the rest of the people in the parlor started screaming.
Sequins streaked every which way as Bright Young Things sprang from their chairs.
A few more sat still, too stunned to move.
Celia found herself fighting to reach the mantel, nearly tripping over a huddled Vincent Cain as she drew close to Everett’s twisted form.
More fuel for her nightmares… but she wasn’t about to leave the Tunguska dagger lying about for some other shit-stain magician to steal.
She wasn’t about to leave Ezra Bright either.
The light had gone out of his eyes, but he was still standing.
A neat slit sat in his shirt where the knife had struck, but as far as Celia could see, there was no wound.
It was as if the blade had simply bounced off his skin…
He pawed at the spot, horror creeping into his features as his gaze fell onto what was left of Everett.
His pupils expanded, not gold, this time, but black.
He started muttering something that Celia could not hear.
It was hard to hear anything over all this damned screaming.
Even Hugo was still at it, clutching his hands to his chest and fumbling with his signet ring.
Shit.
He was going to call for backup. She and Ezra needed to get to the potting shed before he did; otherwise they’d be stuck in the wide-open countryside, hunted like foxes.
Celia grabbed Ezra by the elbow. He looked down, startled, as if seeing her there for the first time.
“No!” The scholar yanked his arm back, stumbling into the fireplace.
Ashes scattered everywhere. He watched them fall on Everett with a haunted expression.
“Don’t! Don’t touch me!” Another step away and he bumped into Biz, who was as white as a sheet but no longer bound to Hugo’s whims by her shadow, thanks to Vincent’s punch. “I’m not safe!”
“You can wallow in self-loathing when we get to London!” Celia didn’t mean to snap, but the whole room was frayed and, again, she’d never been known for her patience.
“The cat’s out of the bag, Ezra. If you don’t come with me now, the Order will find you and they’ll put you on display next to the Fabergé eggs.
” Or worse, but she wouldn’t say that aloud, not while Biz and Vincent were listening.
The bullet-heir looked a bit less peaky than his fiancée. Adrenaline ruddied his cheeks. “She’s right, Bright! You need to get out of here before the authorities are called. I can drive us back to London. I know people there. People who can get you out of the country quickly—”
“I know people too,” Celia broke in. “And I guarantee you their methods are quicker.”
It was getting easier to hear, she realized.
The parlor had cleared out, with the exception of Hugo, who was watching the quartet by the fireplace warily.
Their window to escape was closing. She drew her locket from her décolletage and snapped the filigree cover open.
Sunlight spilled out, dazzling enough to make the fledgling magician shield his eyes.
My cat’s out of the bag too. Cats everywhere, she thought, a bit frantically, as she reached for Ezra’s hand once more.
The scholar shirked back, but there was nowhere else for him to go. Celia had him cornered against the fireplace.
“I don’t care if you’re dangerous, Mr. Bright.” She glanced at his bandaged palm; the clue was crumpled, but still there. “Neither do they. They’ll come for it. And you.”
The Order would find that treasure, if she and Ezra didn’t.
They would find Celia and wipe her memory.
They would find Ezra and do even worse.
The scholar followed her gaze, his pupils constricting. Did he understand? Celia thought he might. She thought perhaps he’d reach out and entwine his fingers in hers, but instead he simply nodded, dark hair feathering the sides of his face.
They ran without another word, a nonverbal agreement that seemed to extend to Vincent Cain and the stunned fiancée he towed in his wake.
When the quartet passed the dining room, Biz made a small exclamation at the sight of the pyramid.
She’s starting to remember the Seek and Find.
It made Celia think of the first time her father had let her remain Enlightened—not long after he’d found her kicking at the lid of his steamer trunk.
Colors looked more brilliant. The sun shone brighter.
The sky appeared higher and the ocean deeper.
(There were about a dozen new shades of blue to show its waves.) Everything was terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure.
Anything could happen.
Anything.
She supposed the experience would be more malevolent for Biz.
Nights at the Seek and Find were more than just cocktails and koi pools—it was easy hunting for men like Hugo and Everett.
If you could steal a woman’s memories, then you could steal so much more…
and while Celia had done her best to play guardian angel, most of the Bright Young Things in her circle still bore scars.
Marks from cursed jewels, cigarette burns, and infected blisters from dancing too hard, too long.
Hugo loved watching girls like Elizabeth Ellington sparkle and bleed—her smile mirroring his while she shimmied holes through the bottom of her Mary Janes.
Celia had never known when to step in, lest she overplay her hand.
She realized now—now that she saw the pain of all those endless dances play out on Biz’s face—that she’d taken comfort in the flappers’ forgetting.
She hadn’t saved much of anyone.
Time to make up for it, she thought as they ran across the strip-striped back lawn.
Vincent and Biz were already slowing them down, her heels getting stuck in the soft soil.
Ezra doubled back to help his sister, as she wrenched herself free with a most unladylike oath.
Celia felt like swearing too. They’d never make it to Egypt at this rate.
They wouldn’t even make it out of the Cotswolds…
But there was no fog creeping through the gardens, thank goodness.
And no Order members blocking the path to the potting shed.
Celia only had to skip over a single croquet mallet and push past a few broken pots to reach the adjoining portal.
Never had she been so glad to inhale lungfuls of London’s soot-stained air.
Safe.
The doorway led to the Pratt family’s other garden—their oasis in the gray city.
Once Celia and the others scaled the ivy-covered wall, they could disappear.
They didn’t even have to go very far… After their move to Bloomsbury, the Sinclair women had become all but invisible to the Mayfair set.
Their flat was just nice enough to knife Celia’s chest whenever she awoke—it always took her vision a moment to clock the cracks in the ceiling, the peeling edges of the parrot-covered wallpaper, the mold that lurked beneath.
No matter how many hours she worked at the dress shop, these things would remain.
They’d be safe from the likes of Hugo there.