A Study in Darkness (58 page)

“I will not repeat that mistake,” Evelina said, sipping the wine to soothe her dry throat. “Although I am curious as to why she is …” She trailed off, not sure how to phrase what she meant.

“Volatile?” Magnus asked. “As I said, there have been incidents in the past, some more recent than I would like.” For a moment, he appeared almost chagrined. “I am sure some is the effect of continued experiments on one physical vessel. One can never quite scrub away the residue of what came before. And then there is the shortage of quality materials. In the old days a sorcerer could simply get what he wanted. Now it is all torches and pitchforks if one steps over the line. Have you heard of this Vigilance Committee in Whitechapel? Where is their vigilance when their own people are starving in the streets?”

Evelina gripped the wineglass more tightly, her fingers growing slippery with cold sweat. “What does the Vigilance Committee have to do with Serafina?”

“Nothing, at the moment.” Magnus’s smile grew tight. “But I need to be careful living in a crowded neighborhood. Things would not go well if wind of a misbehaving automaton got out. I was forced to chastise her most severely.”

“You were?” Evelina’s muscles were so tense they throbbed. “So what is this peace she keeps talking about?”

“Ah, we come quickly to the heart of the matter, and your next lesson. You will understand all.” He crossed to the door, turning the handle and letting it drift ajar. “Serafina, my lamb?”

The door creaked open, and Serafina appeared on the threshold.

“Come in,” Magnus said gently, holding out his hand.

The automaton entered, her face almost animated. “That was the last man,” she announced. “Shall I retire now?”

“You did well.” Magnus patted her hand, steering her to a chair. “Sit.”

Serafina sat. But the energetic grace of her movements bothered Evelina. Something was different. So she set down her wineglass and rose, crossing the room to put a hand on Serafina’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

But when Evelina’s hand touched the automaton, it was like plunging her hand into a lake of living power. Her magic leapt for it, a beast suddenly desperate to feed.

With a start, the doll turned to her. “What are you doing?”

Evelina sprang back as if scorched, struggling against the urge to lap it up as a cat laps cream. “What is that?”

“You’re stealing from me!” Serafina cried.

Magnus’s laugh came soft and low. “Life. There’s no going back after you’ve had a taste of it. Or don’t you remember the burning workhouse?”

She stiffened, fear turning her muscles to rigid cords. “Those were dead souls.” Or almost dead. Revulsion and hunger crashed inside her, tension aching up her spine.

Magnus lifted his wineglass. “This is nearly as good.”

“You’re like
him
!” The doll rose, inching toward the door.

Evelina rounded on Magnus. “What is she talking about?”

He shrugged. “Serafina is an amalgamation of things, but she does not have a complete soul. So, while a sorcerer may hunger for power to work magic, she hungers for her own reasons. She needs extra life to feel completely whole. That is what she calls being at peace.”

Evelina stared at the doll. “Then she must almost always be hungry.”

“That is how I made her. It guarantees that she is a good little hunter, although it is necessary to keep her on a short leash. No afternoon walks.”

Serafina’s hands closed slowly into fists. “But I am the one who dances. I bring them here. I do the taking.”

“Yes, you do, my pretty lamb,” said Magnus. “Serafina takes a bit from every one of her gentleman callers. They hardly even notice, unless they come back night after night.”

“She takes their lives?” Evelina murmured. Shock had turned her mind hard and slippery, the words sliding across it without quite sinking in.

Magnus waved his hand in an exasperated gesture. “I take in a whiff of life every night—or don’t you feel the emotion floating over the audience at each show? Haven’t you heard of the energy of live performance? I didn’t choose life in the theater for its financial reward.”

“But this?” She pointed at Serafina.

“Is a slightly stronger brew, I admit, for all sides concerned. But then, she is the star of the show, is she not? Do they not give and take the most, after all?”

“The admirers give more than jewels, then,” Evelina said, her voice sunk to a whisper.

“But they get what they want. When energy is harvested in this way, the giver of life swoons in the first embrace. He believes he has had a night of shattering pleasure, and yet rarely remains conscious long enough to unbutton his britches. It’s very tidy, you have to admit. Our swain believes he has been to paradise, and yet our darling remains pure as the day she was stuffed. If he’s a bit low on vital energy for a day or two, who is to complain?”

“It’s unconscionable.” Not that she had any great love for such men, but they were being cheated and drained, and Serafina—hungry and confused—dangled as bait.

“Why is it unconscionable?” asked Serafina, cutting across their argument.

Evelina couldn’t think how to answer. Where to begin?

Magnus filled the gap. “I made her for this. She gathers the power I need to restore myself without the necessity of sacrificing a life. Or at least without more than what the French so poetically term the
little death
.”

“Why?” Serafina asked again. “Why is it wrong?”

“Indeed,” said Magnus. “None have come back demanding their trinkets.”

Evelina swallowed hard. “No wonder Miss Hyacinth said that you didn’t do the whores of Whitechapel any favors. How can they compete with this?”

A thunderous look crossed Magnus’s face. For a fleeting
moment, he looked like a man who had been found out, and then his mocking mask fell back into place. “Enough,” Magnus said, pulling Serafina to her feet. “This squeamishness ill becomes you, Miss Cooper, if you are to learn any more lessons from me.”

More?
The very thought made her stomach roil. “The shadows are already filled with monsters. I don’t need to see more.”

He gave her a searching look. “You can see them? Then you have progressed faster than I thought.”

As much as she wanted to run from the room that instant, there was no way she could not ask. “What are they?”

His lip twitched, as if her question amused him. “They have no name. But where there is light, there is always a corresponding dark. Here the devas have fled, and these have grown bold, like any fungus when there is no light and fresh air. Only the Wraiths have ever harnessed them.”

“The Wraiths?” Those were the creatures of the Black Kingdom’s court that wore an aura of terror like a cloak.

“Indeed. They are to the Black Kingdom as the Blue Boys are to this slice of London. Once upon a time, I dwelled there and came to know the Black King and his subjects. The shadow creatures you saw are fearsome, but the Wraiths are worse. Some monsters cannot help what they are, but the Wraiths choose their lot out of a taste for inflicting horror. You do well to fear them, but that is not your only option. I can teach you to grind the Dark Kingdom’s minions beneath your heel. If you let yourself, my girl, you might almost be my equal.”

Evelina forgot to breathe. The room grew deathly still.
His equal?
The notion felt ridiculous, so far-fetched that he might have said she’d grow wings and fly to Venus. And horrible, because he was Magnus.

And yet, it stirred her curiosity. What might she be able to do? What would it feel like? Would it be the heady, cathartic rush she’d felt when she’d used her grandmother’s wand? The memory of that experience quickened her pulse, awakening her appetite so acutely that her mouth filled with water. But it wasn’t hunger for food. It was for the life buzzing
around Serafina. “By the Dark Mother,” she whispered in terror. “What have you done to me?”

“Nothing you did not ask for,” he said smoothly. “I have forced nothing upon you.”

He was right. She shrank back, as if mere proximity might grant him permission to do something else. “I’m leaving.”

“Then go. Run back to your Nick. He loves you still, I think. Little does he know what a dark cat you truly are, my kitten.”

“What are you saying?” she spat.

“Go, truly. I want you to. Then you’ll bring me your pirate and the casket, surely you know that.” He laughed at the expression on her face. “Do you think these lessons are free, dear Miss Cooper? The only question is when your thirst for knowledge—and your hunger for everything else—is going to outstrip your infatuation with a pirate and you’ll drop him on my doorstep like a cat offers a bird. Sooner or later, that will happen. I play a long game and the seeds are sown. I can let you wander the world without a leash or collar, but you’ll come around before the end. That clawing need inside you will become too great.”

“Not bloody likely.” She swallowed, though her throat was bone dry.
He’s utterly mad!

“Suit yourself,” he said, and he held his hand just over Serafina’s breast. “But the game is not over yet.”

Then he peeled down the soft, silken fabric that covered the doll’s throat, exposing a steel housing wired shut by intricate cables. Magnus took a key from a chain at his wrist and unlocked the metal case, and a moment later there was nothing where the delicate wings of her collarbone should have been. Inside was a spinning swirl of blue-black light, dizzying to the eye and crackling with energy.

Magnus raised his other hand, reaching for the humming energy. Evelina saw a dark shimmer appear between his fingers and the whirling ball. It seemed to rush upward, folding around and inside the sorcerer’s hand as he savored all that delicious life. Evelina could taste it from across the room,
could almost roll it around her tongue like champagne and feel it sparkling in her veins.

She scrambled from the room, her stomach trying to turn itself inside out. The only thing she could think of was how she was going to cleanse her soul. She had barely made it down the stairs before the urge to vomit overtook her.

A QUARTER OF
an hour later, Evelina sat in the corner of the workshop, hidden from view behind a rack of costumes. She ached all over, stomach sore and bruises tender to the touch. Shock had left her shivering and sweating by turns, as if she’d fallen ill with a fever. Evelina had come to the end of her reserves, both in body and in spirit.

The revolver was slippery in her hands, there more for comfort than deadly intent. A bullet wouldn’t kill Magnus, though it might buy her time if she needed it. She had to act, to somehow put an end to Magnus and his creation, but she wasn’t sure how. Surely a plan would come to her before … well, before it was too late. Magnus’s last words were burrowing into her like a parasite.

She couldn’t see the things with the melted heads anymore, but her skin twitched and quivered as if they tickled her with their claws, plucking at her hair and clothes. She had always been content in the dark before this, but never, ever would be again.

She heard footfalls on the stairs and tensed, ready to flee or fight. But if Magnus knew she was there, he paid no attention. He led Serafina into the workshop, her hand on his arm as if they were strolling through the park. She walked mechanically again, the extra vitality in her step completely gone. He’d taken what she’d gathered from Mr. Jeremy and the rest.

They paused at Serafina’s table, and he lifted back the sheet. “Good night, my sweet,” he said. She mounted the table, swung her feet up, and lay back.

“Good night.”

He carefully slid the pin out of her neck and put it in the slot at the side of the table. Then he covered her up and retreated
through the door. In a moment, his footfalls faded and there was silence. Someone hooted in the streets outside, but the raucous sound seemed to belong to a distant, irrelevant world. Evelina shifted, her legs cramping.

Do I destroy her now?
Evelina asked herself. It felt like murder, but what else could she do?
Can I leave even a clockwork doll at his mercy?
Serafina was more than just a machine, that was certain. But what other options were there? Helping her run away? What sort of a life could such a creature ever have?

Her debate was cut short when Serafina’s hand slid out from under the sheet and felt around for the pin. Astonishment numbed Evelina, freezing her in place.
She’s conscious even without her logic processors at work!
And Magnus didn’t know. Serafina was enough her own creature that she’d learned to lie to her creator. Instinctively, Evelina shrank down into her hiding place.

Evelina heard the pin click into place. The sheet rustled, and a moment later Evelina heard the tap-tap of dainty boot soles on the floor, the swish of a cloak being donned. Then Serafina opened the door to the alley and crept out, closing it softly behind her.
Not only a liar, but a sneaky one. What is she up to?

Slowly, Evelina rose, deeply curious. She took a few steps into the room. The candle was guttering on the workbench, throwing crazy sputters of light over her tools. But there was enough light to see the knife she had bloodied earlier that night was gone. It had been there only minutes before.

“What the fardling hell?” Evelina snatched her own coat and hurried into the alley, only to come to a halt, her breath puffing in clouds of mist around her. Serafina was nowhere in sight.