Aubrey said, “They were very polite.” She told Olivia the rumor she wanted Olivia to spread: “They said I didn’t stay with the police when I was bespelled—” Not that Olivia asked; she was far more interested in how large the police were, how muscular, how good-looking.
At Plimsoll’s, Aubrey hunted through last year’s broadsheets, selecting the ones that mentioned magicians and police. Olivia dropped her at home after eliciting a promise that Aubrey would tell her if the police followed up with more questions.
She found her family entertaining visitors in the front sitting room. A goateed man rose from a spindly chair as Aubrey, following the voices, paused in the doorway.
“Miss St. Clair,” he said in a pleasant, high-pitched voice. “I’m glad to see you so well.”
He’d been sitting across from Andrew, and Mother cried, “Oh, Aubrey, this is Sir Prescott from Bailey College. Andrew has been offered a place.”
Bailey College was a private boys' school in Rostand, a feeding ground for government and diplomatic posts. Mother had wrangled a private tutor for Richard and a brief stint at a girls’ day-school for Aubrey. Bailey College was quite the coup, especially considering their family’s income.
Nobody offered before I became a cat.
She eyed Sir Prescott who looked back with friendly interest.
“Andrew is a credit to your family,” said the cool voice of Richard’s intended, Gloria Cartwright.
Gloria sat beside Mother’s chaise longue in a straight-backed chair, ring-encrusted hands folded in her lap. Gloria was a slightly plump woman with a round face, the kind of woman who looked good-natured, as if she would enjoy a good joke.
She wasn’t good-natured. She was entirely humorless. Aubrey pitied Richard his betrothal.
Gloria said, “When you were out just now, Aubrey, did Olivia Clyndale or you consider it necessary for you to stop by the police station?”
Olivia hadn't had time to gossip to others about Aubrey's excursion. Likely, Aubrey had been seen entering the station—by the ladies from Merviole's, for instance, on their way to the park. The tale had reached Gloria in less than an hour. Naturally, she had hurried to Richard's side, a bulwark against Aubrey's dangerous lack of respectability.
Aubrey snapped, “I went to report a stolen fur.”
“Oh, very good, Miss St. Clair,” Sir Prescott said.
Aubrey gave him a startled look while Gloria prissed her mouth. Sir Prescott beamed.
“Very clever,” he said.
Around the parlor, Aubrey’s family relaxed, and Mother cried, “My children are all quick-witted, Sir Prescott.”
He said with a courtly courtesy adopted from the previous century, “Andrew will be a fine addition to our student body.”
He sat when Aubrey did and finished tea from Mother’s Wallaiston tea service (carefully preserved as an heirloom from their father’s side). Richard thanked him; Andrew shook his hand. Mother fluttered gratitude from the chaise longue. And all the while, Aubrey thought, He came to see me. Andrew at Bailey College is another favor—or apology. But Sir Prescott wanted to see me specifically.
Mr. Stowe was right: everyone wanted something. And they didn't even know about the claws and fangs.
She congratulated Andrew, then left him to Mother’s raptures.
She was halfway up the stairs when Gloria said softly from the hall below, “Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?”
Aubrey kept walking. It was the only way to handle Gloria. Only Gloria didn’t take the hint. She wouldn’t; Aubrey didn’t think her brain could process anything so subtle as a snub.
“Your family has suffered enough from your escapades.”
“I didn’t ask to be transformed—I don’t even remember it.”
“Some indignities are unfair. But there are ways to deal with them without causing costs to others. Every time you visit the police—”
“I went once, Gloria.”
They were in Aubrey’s room now. Aubrey stopped waiting for Gloria to leave and walked across the room to slide her shawl, covering the broadsheets, across the vanity.
Gloria pursed her lips; she obviously didn’t believe Aubrey, but she said, “Someone like David Duclaire can ‘slum’ without damaging his family’s reputation. The St. Clairs don’t have that luxury. You—people saw what happened to you.”
So much outrage for things Aubrey couldn’t remember.
“Richard can achieve great things. I want that for him.”
Aubrey almost missed the desperation in the words, the faintest stress on 'want', not a want of desire or hunger but of expectation.
How does it feel to have someone live through you? She would never ask Richard, but she couldn’t imagine he would show much patience with Gloria once they were married. For all Mother’s sycophancy, their family was not much given to subordination of will.
Aubrey said, “You bought your fairytale ending.”
She bit her lip, then. She tried, she had always tried, not to say cruel things, not to sting people with her inner sarcasm. It lurked—like her claws.
She shouldn’t be surprised that she’d actually attacked a man.
Which information Charles Stowe had conveyed without any shock at all.
Gloria’s bosom heaved.
“I wanted to marry Richard long before he got his post.”
“Except you weren’t available—” until other people's guilt made Richard’s post a reality.
Aubrey waited. Even Gloria wasn’t so limited she couldn’t see the connection between her betrothal and Aubrey’s transformation.
Gloria reddened. “They did things to you,” she spat. “Those slum magicians. Experiments. Sir James may tell people you were always with the Academy, but you weren’t. You were held by perverts.”
She flounced out, a plump shrew on dainty feet, and Aubrey locked the door, retrieved the broadsheets from under her shawl and spread them across the bed.
Police Arrest Burglar with Academy Ties! one proclaimed. Ministers Question Use of Face-Altering Formula! cried another.
She read through every article about magicians and police; most of them ended nowhere. The Academy might or might not be involved with slum magicians. The Academy might or might not be involved with smuggling. The Ministers might or might not expand police responsibilities.
And then, in a broadsheet from May of that year, she encountered an editorial by David Duclaire: “A young woman of good family, abducted by slum magicians, has been restored to family and friends. This gentle eighteen-year-old debutante was seized from Sommerville after being transformed at a high society ball. Police report a possible connection to upper nobility with Academy connections. When will our Ministers stem the scourge of bespellings that darken our fair city?”
Underneath the editorial was a political sketch: weasels, insects, and snakes slithered out of an archway; the crenellated towers behind the archway obviously denoted the Academy. At the bottom of the sketch stood a policeman with cages. The caption read: “Give our police a chance!”
The police wanted the authority to arrest magicians, even Academy magicians. Aubrey, the victim of Academy misbehavior, would be fodder for such a campaign.
She sighed. She could hardly blame the police for wanting to stop what had happened to her—But was that the only reason Mr. Stowe objected to her contacting the Academy?
She pushed up her left sleeve, studied the faint lines that criss-crossed her skin, some faintly raised.
There were more on her chest and abdomen and legs. She never mentioned them, never asked about them—even after Sir James returned her to Rostand, even when questions were all she would think of.
Experiments.
Gloria was vindictive despite the smiling exterior. That didn’t mean she was wrong.
Charles—Mr. Stowe—fretted over her claws and fangs becoming general knowledge.
Maybe it’s just as well I forgot what happened during my bespelling.
Unless I'm unable to identify those who could hurt me.
The article confirmed what Charles had said: the Academy was linked to her transformation. However much Charles balked, the Academy would have answers about its leftovers.
If Sir James did try to hurt her—well—I attacked someone once. I can always do it again.
Aubrey clicked her claws.
Continued in Chapter 13 "Visions" on November 8, 2013 . . .
© Katherine Woodbury
