Aubrey found she was gripping the seat cushion. Sir James raised his brows.
“We aren’t going to the Academy proper,” he said just before the carriage turned off the main road into a drive shadowed by thick trees. “This is a meeting place for the Academy’s alumni.”
The carriage stopped before a low stone lodge full of curtained windows. Sir James came around the back of the carriage to help Aubrey descend. She walked past him up shallow steps through the lodge doorway into an airless vestibule.
“I'm sure you would like to freshen up, Miss St. Clair. The footman will show you where to go,” Sir James said.
A footman stood at the foot of a staircase with a single landing. Aubrey walked forward, her fingers brushing the vestibule's wall, its wallpaper's raised texture. The footman preceded her up the stairs (he didn’t know Aubrey could claw his neck). She followed his narrow back down a hall that ran along the front of the lodge. He stopped before an open door and turned to watch her, coolly impervious. She slid past him into a large chamber. The door snapped shut, clicking sharply.
Locked in. The fear in her gut expanded, a supple bubble enclosing a vanishing pit.
Just some questions. Then home.
Furniture packed the chamber: a canopy bed; small tables piled with glass and china knick‑knacks; plush, squat chairs. Opposite the bed, heavy red velvet drapes covered a series of windows.
Beyond the bed was a tiled washroom. Aubrey bathed her face and brushed her hair. Returning to the bedchamber, she heard male voices in the vestibule. She edged around the bed to brush aside a corner of the drapery. Below her, gentlemen in brocade frock coats mounted the outside steps, stopping to smoke or exchange words. Academy alumni gathering.
Aubrey watched the roving men though narrowed eyes.
Will they dare the kitten in its lair?
Her claws unsheathed, and she glowered at them. She sheathed them quickly as the door opened. Sir James loomed in the entrance.
“Ah, Miss Carlisle. We'd like to speak with you downstairs.”
Men filled a long parlor on the ground floor. Smooth faces with enigmatic eyes turned towards the door as Aubrey entered.
“Sit, please,” Sir James boomed at her back, and she sat abruptly in a small-backed chair facing the gathered men; they leaned against walls, sat in armchairs and on settees.
There was no woman present—no chaperone or doyenne; not even a maid—and Aubrey twitched; the bubble inside her expanded. She had never taken chaperones seriously: after all, a young lady could evade one if she really wanted to. But Sir James had promised Mr. Stowe: a woman would be present, then Aubrey would be taken home.
Does a word to a policeman even count in his mind?
But if he lied about the chaperone—
“Miss St. Clair, we congratulate you on your reversion to human form. Your transformation has been much talked of.”
The needle thrusts, pulls. Flesh tears.
“Was it an Academy prank?” Aubrey said.
The men in the front row exchanged glances. Behind them, men leaned towards each other, muttering.
“Were the responsible students punished?”
The mutters gave way to a strained silence.
Sir James said cautiously, “We weren’t sure until recently that the spell hadn’t simply deteriorated like usual.”
“We don’t know now,” said a lanky man in the first row.
“This is Aubrey St. Clair.”
“So the potion worked—for a few minutes. That does mean it plunged the girl into feline hell.”
“It was still cruel,” Aubrey snapped, surprising the gathered men.
She wasn't behaving like a demure debutante. But she was familiar with this type of Academy student, who adopted smothering skepticism regarding any and all topics.
“I did transform,” she added.
“One out of twenty drinkers.” The lanky man shrugged. “About average. The potion-makers were aiming for 100%.”
“If more people had changed, maybe the Academy would have helped me sooner.”
His voice and face those of a deeply mortified man, Sir James said, “Your family will be compensated for their distress.”
You give your word?
Aubrey wasn’t so lacking in debutante skills to ask that question.
The lanky man said, “When you were transformed, did you think, know yourself?”
“At first.”
“Then—?”
“No.”
“Exactly. The spell deteriorated—like spells always do.”
“Come now, Stevenson,” a standing blond man said. “Miss St. Clair's transformation lasted longer than any recorded transformation to date. You have to admit that.”
“The potion was supposed to create talking beasts, Jacobs. It created one non-sentient cat. So she turned back—” He shrugged. “They always do.”
“Eight months later?”
“For which there is no proof. Nullius in verba.”
“She was found by the police,” Sir James said with faint testiness. “This is hardly some elaborate ruse.”
It would be better if it was a ruse. Oh, yes, Aubrey could say, I left the country for six months. I went to Ennance to see the great gardens there. I only returned recently. I got off the boat, snuck into Kingston’s slums, then ran pell-mell through the marketplace chased by a money-grubbing slum rat.
Utterly ridiculous. Better to simply say as little as possible. She certainly wouldn’t be showing these men anything.
Sir James said, “Where did you revert, Miss St. Clair?”
She hesitated. Mother had told people that Aubrey was resting in the country because a daughter running loose through Kingston—even as a cat—would damage any family’s reputation. A daughter who spent a week, maybe more, in the company of a slum magician would destroy it.
And yet Kev Marlowe deserved punishment: jail, deportation, ruin.
“In the house of a slum magician,” she said. “Kev Marlowe. I escaped immediately.”
Another exchange of glances. Scanning the faces, Aubrey saw embarrassment, consternation, and, in Stevenson’s case, a kind of resigned triumph.
“The police will love that,” someone muttered.
“Mr. Marlowe is not attached to the Academy,” Sir James said stolidly.
Near the door, a goateed gentleman with a high voice said, “Yet he reportedly supplies students with prepared mixtures.”
Sir James glared.
“There is no proof that any Academy student has ever used such a person, Sir Prescott.” He turned his glare on the room, converting it to an affable grimace. “The Academy regulates itself.”
Sir Prescott said, “Perhaps. But Mr. Marlowe’s connection with other, uh, parties is also a concern.”
The blond man, Jacobs, laughed; he said, his voice dripping with amused condescension, “I doubt Lord Simon cares about dumb beasts.”
Everyone glared at Jacobs, and Aubrey’s claws nudged her palms; she could feel the fangs’ tips against her lower gum.
She frowned at Sir James, said through stiff lips, “You told Mr. Stowe that Lord Simon wouldn’t be here.”
Sir Prescott answered: “Lord Simon is temporarily barred from all Academy buildings, Miss St. Clair. He will not be making an appearance.”
What are you not saying?
“I would like to ask my questions now, Sir James,” Sir Prescott said.
“Mind games,” Stevenson muttered, but hitched his chair sideways, so Sir Prescott could slide into the center of the first row; bemused, Aubrey watched him settle a writing desk, complete with paper, fountain pen, and bottle of ink, across his chair's arms.
“Miss St. Clair,” he said in his high but pleasant voice. “I am Sir Giles Prescott, Dean of Bailey College at Rostand and a member of the Academy’s Board. I want to test your state of being.”
“I’m no longer a cat.”
“I know that. But you were bespelled for a long time—much longer than any subject I’ve met so far. What are the long term effects of being bespelled? Are people more intelligent afterwards? Less? Is their learning affected? What are the emotional ramifications?”
I mistrust people.
But that ramification was rooted in Kev’s experiments.
Which Aubrey was not going to mention.
Sir Prescott began with questions about history, geography, and literature. Aubrey had never had a governess or tutor, but her brothers had taught her to read and Mother had sent her for three months to a ladies’ school—not the poshest; Aubrey had taken lessons with shopkeepers’ daughters and the daughters of government clerks, but education was education. Besides, she read newspapers. She had no difficulty answering Sir Prescott’s questions about current and even historical events.
“Good, good,” he said after each answer.
The questions became progressively stranger: If a monkey bit a tiger, would the tiger bite a rabbit? How many stars would fit into a hat on a mountain top? Would a king's crown and a queen's crown and a prince's crown fit into an emperor's sleeve?
The tiger would bite the monkey, she said. Only one star would fit into the hat. No, she didn't think the crown would fit unless—unless the emperor was very wise.
Stevenson fidgeted. Jacobs looked on with cool superciliousness. Some men yawned. A couple of rattlers at the back began a low argument about smuggled herbs.
“Good, good,” Sir Prescott said. “Thank you, Miss St. Clair.”
“You’re welcome,” she said sincerely.
He hadn’t asked about her transformation or her claws or her fangs. As far as Aubrey was concerned, he was the most considerate person she’d met since her reversion—even if he, too, had an agenda.
“Dinner, gentlemen,” Sir James said and stood with the bounce of a big man released from a cramped position.
“Would you care to join us, Miss St. Clair?” Jacobs said.
A flicker of unease stirred the group. Someone coughed. Sir James looked blank.
“Yes,” Aubrey said. “Thank you.”
She sat beside Jacobs at a long table in a low-ceilinged dining room. No one had bothered to change. Many of the gentlemen smoked although not any of the ones near her. Footmen moved loosely through the swinging doors.
Jacobs talked to her about art and music and plays with exaggeration politeness—as if she were a debutante.
I am. But she wondered what he would say if she asked him what he thought about police jurisdiction over magicians. Or his opinion of the new government of ministers. Or his opinion of trade with slave-owning Suvaginney.
She gave herself a mental scold. She would be enduring this type of conversation soon (once I get home) at garden parties, maybe even balls. She might as well practice.
“Tisani is the greatest violist in Wallaiston, don't you think?”
At the far end of the table, Sir James and Stevenson pushed back their chairs, napkins dropping negligently to the floor. They went out talking, Stevenson's hands dug into his pockets, Sir James stooping.
“I don't know,” Aubrey said and got to her feet.
She needed to confront Sir James, to ask about his promise to take her home. She'd answered enough questions. She would answer more only after he delivered her to her family.
Jacobs rose quickly. A few of the nearest men made desultory motions upwards, but most merely glanced at her and returned to their conversations.
“I'm tired,” Aubrey told Jacobs.
“Would you like to rest in the sitting room? The smoke in here is rather dense.”
“No.”
“I will escort you to your suite.”
A paunchy gentleman on Jacobs's left muttered, “Damn social butterfly” of Jacobs or of Aubrey, Aubrey couldn't tell.
She wanted him, all of them, to stop bothering her, to just let her go where she wanted when she wanted.
The Academy was supposed to be my route home.
She said, “I know where my suite is” and smiled widely, showing all her teeth.
She shouldn't have succumbed. The men nearest her quieted abruptly. Someone whispered, “Fangs” and that whisper went round the table. Men half-stood in their seats, leaning to stare at Aubrey
Jacobs said, “Woah. You—” and she backed away from outstretched hands, chin lifted.
“Not so temporary,” a youngish gentleman said.
“Not at all,” Jacobs said, his condescension twisting into pleased satisfaction. “Oh, Lord Simon would like to meet you.”
“I’ll rip your eyes out first,” Aubrey said, panic stirring (the bubble swelled).
“Can you?”
“I ripped Dmitri Marlowe’s face.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Why should you?” another man said. “What are you doing helping Lord Simon anyway, Jacobs?”
“He's more powerful than any of us—”
“Sycophant.”
“Have you ever altered time? Pulled up forgotten memories?”
“Parlor tricks. Damn useless.”
Aubrey edged towards the door as more men joined the argument, voices rising. Jacobs was staring at her over the heads of his combatants, and she knew that look; she’d seen it in Kev’s face.
“Lord Simon brings us into bad repute.”
“Without power, we’re circus performers. Lord Simon does real things—”
“Her transformation was real. He didn’t do that.”
“The philter was hardly original. The students used one of Lord Simon's bases.”
“Abandoned work. He has no interest now in transformation.”
“Retention.”
“It’s the potions’ formulas, not their targets that make the difference.”
“He doesn’t agree—”
Aubrey reached the door. A few men snatched at her, and she held up her hands, claws unsheathed. They gasped, bringing all eyes to her end of the room.
“Come here,” Jacobs bellowed, and she fled—
Down the hall to the parlor. The door was open. Inside, Sir James and Stevenson faced Sir Prescott.
“Waste of time,” Stevenson was saying.
“Not from my perspective, Mr. Stevenson,” Sir Prescott replied. “A pleasant girl.”
“I say send her home.”
“We will require another day at least, Stevenson.”
“While Jacobs lavishes the girl with his attentions?”
“Jacobs is quite trustworthy.”
As long as a girl doesn’t have claws and teeth.
Aubrey ran for the front door, opened it. Dusk was descending. The sky was gray-blue mixed with purple.
“Miss,” a footman said behind her. “Miss—you need to come in.”
The drive weaved away from her under the trees.
“Miss.”
She turned. Sir James, Stevenson, and Sir Prescott had come out of the parlor. Beyond them, men gathered in the dining room door, staring, staring. She raised her claws. She hissed, showing her fangs, and had the satisfaction of seeing even Stevenson gape.
Continued in Chapter 7 "Reminders" on September 27, 2013 . . .
©
Katherine Woodbury
