She felt herself adjusting—what choice did she have?—to the scars (which didn't fade as quickly as she wanted), the oddly scented alcove, the gloomy parlor. The evasive men.
Every morning, Kev asked her questions over breakfasts of thin toast and slightly rancid kippers. They sat at the parlor's small round table, the only sturdy piece of furniture in the room. Kev would lean his elbows on the faded covering, notebook and fountain pen ready.
“You remember being a cat?”
“I remember jumping. That was marvelous, so right, so—” “Coordinated,” Dmitri said from the divan.
“Yes, and I was much warmer, all the time warm, not like now—”
Dmitri kindly dropped a blanket about her shoulders. Aubrey tried not to flinch.
“Could you hear better, see, or smell better?”
“Yes. No. It depended.”
“How long did you remember things—as a cat?”
She didn’t know. Her memory placed her at Lady Bradford’s ball, then under the stoop, then—nothing. Just brief lucid moments: hiding under the chaise longue in the family drawing room, spitting and scratching in a bag.
“Does my family know where I am?”
“Yes. We sent a messenger. Yes.”
No, said a small clear part of Aubrey’s mind. But why would Kev lie?
At least she hadn’t changed again. She was still human. She disliked how relieved that made her feel, as if simply not being cat was enough, as if she should be grateful to Dmitri and Kev because she'd changed back in their care and hadn’t changed again. But who was she to say that they shouldn’t have the credit for her restoration?
I’ll make a pretty speech when my family comes to collect me. I’ll be suitably grateful.
Once Kev finished his questions (for that day), Aubrey would retreat to her alcove. She’d stacked the boxes and books in a corner, borrowed a blanket from the parlor to reinforce the curtains. It wasn’t home. It would never be home. I’ll be leaving soon. But at least it was more bearable. She would sit and read the tattered broadsheets—Dmitri had told the truth about how long she'd been away; the broadsheets covered politics and court cases from the previous fall—or skim through the books which were mostly history tomes about long-dead magicians.
Kev spent afternoons in a chamber on the other side of the storage room—My lab, he called the chamber. His lair, according to Dmitri.
Dmitri was everywhere. Unlike Kev, he slept on the side of the parlor where a dim hallway led to the outside door. Aubrey went into the hallway once; Dmitri met her, smiling and patient as he motioned her back into the parlor.
“I wasn’t going to leave,” she told him, which was true.
She was beginning to loathe Kev’s so-called home, but at least, she was safe here. She was sure that Kev was a magician—not Academy-trained maybe, but being any kind of magician would explain why her family had given her into Kev’s care. His questions were just questions. She was human. The scars would fade. She would go home.
Except surely her family would have pick someone more respectable to look after Aubrey. If Kev was not Academy-trained . . . slum magician was the term used by Academy students, a magician who worked outside Academy rules. Magicians could not be accused of committing illegal acts—no one was going to answer for transforming Aubrey—but even Academy magicians denounced the behavior of slum magicians.
“Those degenerates need a police force,” an Academy student had told Aubrey at a party (Lady Bradford’s party? all the parties blurred together). “Not the rest of us.”
“Slum magicians and Lord Simon,” another student had muttered, but the first snapped, “That would open the door too far. The police should get rid of the riff-raff instead of pressuring the government to persecute the rest of us.”
Aubrey thought, Right now would be a good time to get rid of the riff-raff.
She stood in the empty parlor, listening for Dmitri and Kev. Today was different from the past few days. The part of her mind that questioned whether two beaus truly fought a duel over Margaret Wilton (as they bragged) or whether Clara Trelawery’s necklace might have been stolen by a guest rather than a footman—the part of her mind that stepped back and observed things and people was claiming ascendancy despite the tight fear in her gut.
She padded to the parlor’s papered window and lifted one corner of the oilskin. The bubbled glass was grimy, and she rubbed it. She could make out a dirt road, sloping roofs—
“He doesn’t care,” Dmitri said in the hall to the storage room, and Aubrey froze, pressed against the window. “He thinks transformation is a dead end.”
He was facing the storage room; his voice was aimed away from Aubrey.
He continued, “You’re obsessed with the so-called great man. We’d be better served selling the girl.”
Further away, Kev began talking quickly, fervently. Aubrey could hear the jerkiness of his voice, if not his words. She edged away from the window and was back in her alcove before Dmitri stomped across the parlor to the outside hall.
Sell the girl. Dmitri could not have meant her.
Unless—ransom?
She felt almost relieved. Ransom explained why no one had come for her yet. Once it was paid—
If her family could pay. They had some investments, but not enough to manage a large, single amount. That was why Mother hauled Aubrey and her brothers from Sommerville to Kingston to Rostand every season, pursuing opportunities, connections.
Mother’s connections might help.
Or the police—
But the newly organized police operated exclusively in Kingston. Aubrey had been taken from Sommerville, changed in Sommerville—
I’m in Kingston now. I’m no longer a cat. The police would help a human girl get home.
Except nobody knew she was here unless Kev contacted her family, and Aubrey couldn’t rely on that possibility. Dmitri might want to ransom her. Kev—
Aubrey didn’t want to consider what Kev wanted.
* * *
She still sat in her alcove, tucked against the wall when the parlor door to the outside hall swung open.
“I’ll get him,” Dmitri said, his tone borderline insolent.
“I’m sure you'll retrieve him excellently,” said a thin, rasping voice.
An aristocratic voice, and a tunnel of brightness flowed from the clear part of Aubrey’s mind. One of Mother’s connections. She whirled off the bed and stepped through the alcove’s curtains.
A thin, elderly man idled by the open parlor door. He was like a caricature of an aristocrat—patrician nose, dark eyes—only no aristocrat had such deep, cruel lines about his mouth, such harsh shadows beneath his eyes.
Aubrey hesitated. The elderly man glanced at her, and his gaze sharpened.
“Scullion or guest?” he said.
Mother trusted aristocrats—Our kinds of people, she called them. Knights were obsolete, a relic of the last century, but aristocratic noblesse oblige still existed, even if Rosaia had exchanged its royal family for a ministers’ cabal.
Truth was, Aubrey’s family were closer in rank to ministers than aristocrats.
She said, “I’m Aubrey,” pushing the words passed the spasm in her throat.
“Are you? Or one of Kev’s little phonies?”
Kev seemed to explode into the room.
“Lord Simon,” he cried, and Aubrey fell back, sucking in her breath, her hands clutching the curtains.
“A complete reversion,” Kev babbled, arms flailing. “The spell lasted.”
“It deteriorated first,” Lord Simon said. “I suppose you’re going to claim this is the girl from the ball.”
“Aubrey St. Clair. She was found under the stoop.”
“A cat was found. A cat was obtained by you from the family. A cat—”
“Reverted. In my storage room. She was a cat.”
Lord Simon snorted. “You’ve been trying for years, Kev, to convince me that you can create lasting philters.”
“This one—”
“I tolerate you because you will try things Academy officials balk at. But I don’t like to be diddled.”
“People at the ball saw her change—”
“That potion wasn’t even yours.”
A sly glance. "I heard it was yours originally.”
“Academy labs never throw anything away. If I left it there, I obviously lost interest.”
Kev crept closer. “I know, I know. You want to know why she retained the spell. There were signs—internally—”
Lord Simon’s face altered, heavy eyes lidding. He searched out Aubrey’s shape between the alcove’s curtains, eyes sweeping up and down her body.
Will you help me get home? she’d planned to say. Now, the tightness in her chest said, Don't ask, and her mind—which had been so sluggish of late—whispered that he was no more trustworthy than Kev or Dmitri. She was smarter than the typical debutante. She knew better than to presume she could trust a noble, noblesse oblige or not.
He said in a soft voice with curled edges, “So, girl, were you a cat?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Kev gasped in furious indignation.
He cried, “You—you said you—”
Aubrey made herself shrug, and the brightness in her mind expanded. This was the Aubrey she used to be—before. Their family maneuvered amongst people higher up the social scale than themselves; Aubrey knew—had known—how to stay on the right side of a complex social contretemps.
No one is your friend here.
Lord Simon snorted. He pivoted towards the door. Kev scrambled after him, a hand on his arm. Lord Simon looked down at that hand, eyes glinting. Kev was clearly too distressed to notice.
“I have more research to do,” he pleaded.
Lord Simon’s eyes flicked towards Aubrey.
“By all means, keep up the experiments,” he said in the same soft voice as before.
Kev was beaming when Lord Simon left. Aubrey wanted to retreat into the alcove. She wanted Kev to stop smiling. She wanted this all to end. She wavered by the curtain.
She said, “You operated on me.”
He flushed. “We opened up a transformed cat.”
“I remember,” she said. “I dream,” fiercely.
Only, that confession pleased him, and she braced herself against his rising excitement.
“Then you were sentient,” Kev said. “Partly sentient. There are a few components left—I’ll figure them out—”
“Have you?” she said. “Figured out anything?”
His voice rose belligerently: “How can I with the equipment I’ve got and no funds. The Academy is so stingy—”
“You kidnapped me.”
“Your family gave you to us.”
“They wouldn’t.”
Kev reddened. “Why shouldn’t they? Lord Simon wants my research. You heard him.”
Keep up the experiments.
Not with me. I don’t belong here.
“I’ll just go,” she said, stepping towards the door.
She didn’t believe her own threat. She wanted to. She wanted to believe she would stroll out into the arms of a rescuer: an Academy student, even a policeman. But Kingston was large; the police were few. And she might not be anywhere near the Academy or places Academy students visited. If she got out, she might not know where to go. She’d never traveled about Kingston alone. Single ladies didn’t.
“Don’t you dare,” Kev hissed, truly angry now. “I’ll chain you up.”
She whispered compliance, hating herself. Why couldn't this just be over?
A long pinch, a pull like a breath, only breath came sort and hard, a stuttering hiss.Aubrey stayed in her alcove the next day. No one fetched her. Dmitri and Kev spoke occasionally outside the parlor, their voices muffled and toneless.
“Careful. Keep the stitches even.”
“Does it matter? We’re going to open her up again.”
“You some kind of sadist? We don't want inflammation. It will make surgery harder later on. Do it right.”
Chilled, shaved skin held together by hot fingers, a bitter pinch and pull, sharp and wicked, and she could not wake until it was over.
She crept out in late evening. Dmitri was slumped at the table, glass in hand.
Twisting his head, he grinned, said, “Thought of joining you in there, but Kev said, 'No, no, no.'” He wagged a finger.
She began at that moment to hate Dmitri.
She’d never hated anyone before. She often thought people silly or self-important or easily influenced. But she didn’t hate.
Dmitri pulled a doleful face. “Kev told me Lord Simon visited. So now you know what a terrible situation you are in.”
She flinched. She had thought once how nice it would be for a man, an attractive, ardent man, to like her but not like this: pity mixed with contempt.
She moved forward slowly. His hand shot out, and she skipped back.
He said, slurring his sneer, “I guess I'm not good enough. Rich enough.”
“My family isn't rich.”
“Big house in Sommerville—”
“—rented—”
“—and posh clothes: ooh, la, la. We should have asked for money.”
“That's not what Kev wants.”
“Oh, no, not Mr. Research-for-its-own-sake. You haven't figured out your scars?”
Prick and draw. Blood spilling, matted fur.
Her body numbed. The fear stretched.
“Experimentation, little girl. Ex-per-i-men-ta-tion. Uncle Kev pulled—”
—and draw.
“—you all apart. Legs and ribs and arms—”
“Shut-up, shut-up.”
“—and all the pretty parts.”
She couldn't move. She opened her mouth and hissed—hissed like a cat—mouth open, lips drawn back from straight sharp fangs.
Continued in Chapter 3 "Mementoes" on August 30, 2013 . . .
©
Katherine Woodbury
