Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“Cecily, I—oh, hello, Max,” Vesper said, poking her head around the door.
“Cecily, do you know how long Simon and his cronies plan to occupy half of the downstairs dining room? It’s only, the Gentrys have two tables booked at eight for some sort of family do, but I didn’t want to interrupt Simon’s meeting—”
“I’ll go let him know,” Cecily said, closing her notebook and rising to her feet.
“The bill is due to be read next Monday, which is perfect, if Chamberlain and I can run our stories this week.” Cecily and Will had agreed to work in partnership and publish their planned scoops in tandem, sharing the byline in each of their respective papers.
Will, too, was in discussions with the reporter at The Times whom Effie Raffles had been leaking to—a fact that was happily confirmed by the reporter, once Will had explained the situation.
“Is the information from Finlay going to be enough to go on?” Vesper asked.
“Plenty,” Cecily said. “He was only too happy to tell us, in considerable detail, about Michael Raffles’s scheme.
Apparently Raffles had originally had the idea of actually poisoning some of the drinks at various clubs, but Finlay was old school chums with Grimme-Nox—strange bedfellows—and it was Grimme-Nox who suggested tampering with the magic instead.
Figured Scotland Yard would be less likely to investigate if it was just bad magic, rather than something deadly. ”
“And Grimme-Nox’s goal was simply to damage the reputation of the other clubs?” Max asked.
Cecily nodded. “He was having financial troubles and hoped to drive business away from the other clubs and toward the Grimoire. Evidently, he’s on the hunt for a wealthy heiress to make wife number four, both to prop up his finances and hopefully give him an heir to leave the club to, so this was intended as a sort of…
stopgap measure.” She grimaced. “It’s appallingly calculated, and I look forward to no one in the magical community speaking to him for the rest of his life, once this news gets out. ”
“I can’t decide whether to be pleased we figured it out correctly or horrified that someone would attempt this.”
“I’d stick with pleased,” Cecily advised.
“Particularly when you consider that he may have done us an enormous favor, given how bad this will make Raffles and the entire Forbiddance movement look by association. I think Finlay’s hoping that, by speaking anonymously and pinning it all on Raffles, it’ll look like a single bad apple, but Simon’s optimistic that this will be the last nudge some of the MPs need to come round to his way of seeing things. ”
Vesper met Max’s eyes as Cecily left the room, George trailing in her wake. “Nicely done,” she said, offering him a tentative smile, and he matched it.
“I’ve never got to threaten someone with the destruction of their entire political career before,” he said. “It made for an interesting Monday, at least.”
“And what of tomorrow?” Vesper asked; there was something a bit dark and uncertain in her gaze, something Max didn’t understand. He, at the moment, had never felt lighter.
“Tomorrow, I have something else in mind entirely.”
The next day, Max quit his job.
He’d thought about it the entire evening; Will had shown up at Holloway’s soon after Max had, and he and Cecily had worked, heads bent together, late into the night.
Max had sat with them, poring over their notes from Finlay, marveling at the details of the plan.
Vesper had vanished at some point to see to the running of the club; the evening had only been interrupted when Hazel Thomas had shown up, Delacqua in tow, shortly before midnight, to breathlessly report that there had been an accident at Mauve’s that night—a young lady had taken a packet of spell powder and been gripped by a sudden, terrifying fever, one so high that she rapidly became delirious.
Cecily and Will had exchanged grim looks. “We can run this on Wednesday,” Cecily said confidently. “My editor already has a fact-checker at work verifying as many details as possible—and he agrees that we can’t afford to delay.”
And Max decided that he couldn’t, either. So on Tuesday afternoon, just after lunch, he walked into Raffles’s office and handed in his resignation, effective immediately.
“You cannot be serious,” she said, gaping at him as he stood before her, having declined the seat she’d offered him.
“I am, actually,” he said, feeling downright cheerful; some of this must have shown on his face, because Raffles narrowed her eyes at him.
“Ashbridge, you’re in the middle of an investigation,” she said, and Max shrugged.
“Work it out without me,” he said.
“If you think I’ll be providing a reference for you after this behavior—”
“A reference from you is the least of my concerns, actually,” he said.
And then he walked out the door.
And straight to Holloway’s.
“Ashbridge, don’t you have a job?”
Freddie was behind the bar today, mixing cocktails alongside Amir, looking entirely at ease.
Max walked to the bar. “A glass of champagne, please. I’m feeling celebratory.”
“I find this frightening.” Nevertheless, Freddie reached for a bottle.
“I’ve just quit my job,” Max announced, and Freddie’s hand slipped, the bottle nearly sliding from his grasp.
“I know men are drawn to my sister,” Freddie said, recovering his grip and reaching for a glass, “but I’ve never known her to have quite this effect on one before.”
Max accepted the glass of champagne. Freddie poured one for himself, then hesitated. Max reached across the bar and tapped their glasses together. “Cheers.” He waited for Freddie to take a sip, and then said, “I’m sorry, you know. About—”