The bubble burst through Aubrey’s skin. She felt fur unrolling across her arms and legs and face. She pulled desperately at its edges (the police are downstairs; Charles came to fetch me), and it subsided into her gut while Kev stared, his expression a mingling of fear and rapture.
“You can change. I knew it. I knew I was right.”
Aubrey flung herself towards the smoking room door and immediately fell forward, legs locked in place. She glared at Kev as she pushed upright, trembling against frozen limbs. He held a sphere in a shaking hand; yellow potion bubbled from it, sending up a fine mist that crawled across the floor and swirled about Aubrey’s legs.
“You have to stay,” Kev said. “I have more questions.”
“I won’t answer.”
“You are the only sentient transformation—ever.”
“Not fully sentient. Ask the Academy.”
Her legs were loosening; she could wiggle her knees.
She said, “Let me go. You saw what I did to Dmitri.”
“He was a brute.”
“You experimented on me.”
“But he didn’t care what happened to you. I did. I do.”
“Sure you care—all the way here. Have you ever made an original potion?”
Kev gasped, outraged, hand falling completely to his side. Aubrey leaped to the door on freed legs, pulled it open.
Kev pursued her, crying threats, entreaties.
Aubrey stopped at the landing balustrade and looked down into the hall. Sir James, massive and phlegmatic, stood directly below her; Lord Simon and Charles faced each other at the center of the hall. Beside the outside door stood the two policemen she’d met that morning and between them—
“Dmitri,” she hissed.
“—release the information,” Charles was saying. “Dmitri feels no loyalty to you, to anyone. He will talk about your involvement with slum magicians.”
“Should I be quaking? The police do not concern themselves with accusations of magic.”
“They do with kidnapping and assault. Dmitri was seen attacking Miss St. Clair. He will go to jail or be deported.”
By the door, Dmitri grinned. Of course he would bargain away Lord Simon, even Kev, for leniency.
I don’t want Kev to get leniency.
“What are you asking for, Mr. Stowe?”
“Aubrey’s return home,” Charles said.
Lord Simon shrugged, the shadow of that motion lifting into the rafters.
“I would hate to disappoint the Academy.”
“Their needs or your reputation, Lord Simon. Dmitri’s claims will find credence with the ministers.”
“And police authority will be expanded—oh, well played, Mr. Stowe.”
Charles said, “The ministers will hesitate to extend that authority if you act promptly and send Aubrey home.”
“I can do better. I can remove the spell entirely.”
“No,” Kev whispered; Aubrey’s hands clutched the banister.
Life without the bubble, without fangs or claws. Life the way I was supposed to live it.
“Is that possible?” Charles said, brow creased.
“I can restore her to the girl she was—not entirely, of course. Age is age. But the spell can be removed.”
“Wait—” Sir James said.
“And with it, her allure to people like Kev Marlowe.”
And to the Academy.
On cue, Sir James said, “The Academy would still like to question Miss St. Clair—”
“No,” Charles said. “Aubrey will no longer be questioned.”
“Agreed,” Lord Simon said. “There is a caveat. Miss St. Clair—Aubrey—will not only lose her fangs and claws; she will forget what happened to her.”
Charles looked up then towards the landing; he had heard Aubrey's his. Kev retreated into the shadows as Charles's eyes met hers.
“She will be returned, unbesmirched, to the bosom of her family,” Lord Simon continued. “A sweet debutante.”
His tone said that he doubted Aubrey had ever been sweet. Dmitri laughed and was cuffed by a policeman.
While Charles looked at Aubrey and said nothing.
“All her pain and suffering gone,” Lord Simon said.
Which is what Aubrey wanted, what was owed her. Except—
“Do you want this?” Charles said to her. “Assuming you can trust him, do you want to forget?”
She descended the stairs, ignoring Kev’s muttered pleas (“No. Stay. A few more questions. I was so close.”). Dmitri whistled a cat-call, and she glared at him.
“Your scar looks good,” she said.
“Bitch.”
“A female cat is a molly,” she snapped back. “I hope they hang you anyway.”
She walked across the hall to stand in front of Charles. He set a hand on her shoulder.
“Do you want this, Aubrey?”
“I want to stop being afraid.”
“Dmitri will be deported. To some place like Suvaginney. He’ll be gone.”
“Kev is here.”
Charles’s gaze flicked upwards, moving towards the darker shadows of the landing.
“Leo,” he said, and one of the policemen ran up the stairs while the other gripped both Dmitri’s arms.
“He isn’t here,” Leo called down.
Charles spun towards Lord Simon.
“You know what he did to Aubrey.”
“I know what I’ve been told.”
“You keep company with a man like that—and she’s supposed to trust you?”
“The removal potion is entirely safe. If you want a test subject—” Lord Simon glanced towards the door.
Dmitri swore and began to fight against his escort who subdued him.
“But then, Dmitri wouldn’t be much worth to you without his memory. And Dmitri hasn’t taken any potions that I know of.”
“The removal potion counteracts the original potion?”
“Yes.”
Charles glanced at Sir James. “Have you heard of this counter-potion?”
“Lord Simon has developed many potions without Academy sanction.”
“I have not given the Academy any of my latest formulas. Hence, my banishment. Not,” Lord Simon added to Aubrey, “because they objected to my methods.”
“No,” she said. “They are liars and degenerates. I don't trust you either. If I can retain spells, why would you ‘cure’ me?”
“Perhaps I find the fact of retention more interesting than the woman.”
“I think it would be a very good thing to be found uninteresting by you, Lord Simon.”
“She has claws,” Lord Simon said conversationally to Charles, who nodded, brow still furrowed. “Miss St. Clair, this is not a complicated choice. You were unfairly bespelled. Drink my potion and your policeman will return you home.”
Sir James said officiously, “The Academy will return Miss St. Clair to her family.”
Aubrey looked at Charles. He was studying the heavy wooden floor, arms folded now, eyes hidden from her, from Lord Simon, from everyone.
“What do you think?” she said.
Gray eyes rose, studied her face.
He said slowly, “The police can try to protect you.”
“Forever? From such as these?”
Make the decision, she wanted to beg him. I can’t trust my own choices now. I gave myself to the Academy like a little fool.
She was still facing him when she felt the nick against her neck. Charles shouted. Aubrey thought, Stupid to turn my back on a noble like Lord Simon.
She slumped, and Charles caught her. He was shouting near her ear, so his voice should have been loud, but it came from far away, a tinny, echoing voice:
“What did you do? What is that?”
“There is more than one way to deliver a potion, Mr. Stowe. She is unharmed as you will see yourself in a few minutes.”
She was fading, disappearing—not even enough of her left to search for the bubble.
I don’t want to give it up. I don’t—
“A nice long sleep and then, normality,” said an echoing voice while Charles cradled her against his shoulder, and that meant something, something she was also losing—
“I have all I need,” Lord Simon said, and inside Aubrey, the bubble collapsed.
Continued in Chapter 10 "Rumination" on October 18, 2013 . . .
©
Katherine Woodbury
