A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(6)
“Unbusheling. A revelation of magic.” Miss Morrissey looked apologetic. “Perhaps I’ll fetch that tea?”
“Tea,” said Robin with relief. “Just the thing.”
Fifteen minutes later they’d demolished the pot between them, as well as a plate of shortbread. Robin had learned that Adelaide Harita Morrissey had sat the competitive exam to work for the General Post Office, then was poached out of a junior supervisory role by Secretary Lorne himself, because her grandfather was a member of his club and had dropped her name right when Lorne was digging around for someone—“Like me,” she finished, through biscuit crumbs. “Like Reggie—Mr. Gatling.”
“You haven’t any . . . magic?”
“Not a drop,” she said cheerfully. “All went to my sister. Now, let’s get you properly settled in.”
The position of Assistant in the Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints, Robin discovered, was a bewildering mixture of intelligence analysis, divination, and acting as a glorified messenger boy. He was to comb through complaints, letters, and hysterical newspaper stories, working out which of them might represent real magic. Anything suspicious he was to collate and pass on to the liaison. Courcey.
In exchange, Courcey would tell him of anything upcoming that might be noticed by ordinary people, or that the magical bureaucracy thought it necessary for the Prime Minister to know. At two o’clock on a Wednesday, Robin would deliver a briefing.
To the PM. In person. It was quite mad.
One of the hurricane piles on the desk was mail; some was addressed to Gatling by name, and unopened. Those letters directed to the office itself had been gutted with a letter opener then conscientiously re-stuffed.
“I’ve been doing most of it for weeks, really,” said Miss Morrissey, running her finger along the furred edge of an envelope. “Reggie rather dumped me in the midden, even before he disappeared. He’s been running all over the country. Chasing reports, so he said. He was acting like he was on the track of something very important and mysterious, but I thought he was just bored.” She turned the ring on her second finger, pensive. “He’s never been very suited to sitting patiently behind a desk.”
“You do realise this has all been an absurd mistake,” said Robin. “How am I supposed to pick what’s—your lot—and what’s sheer nonsense? I’ve not grown up with this. I’ll be stabbing in the dark.”
Miss Morrissey’s look may as well have accused Robin of tipping her back into the midden.
Robin weakened. “But I’ll help as much as I can, of course. Until Courcey talks to his Minister and gets this all ironed out. Until someone suitable can take my place. I’m sure it’ll only be a few days.”
It was raining when Edwin left the Home Office. A smell of petrol fumes rose from the wet streets, cut with damp wool and something rich and startlingly organic, like a bed of soil freshly turned. Edwin noticed it with the part of his mind that held him back from stepping in the paths of carriages and motorcars. The rain tapped gently on his hat and coat, and beaded the leather of his briefcase.
He was on a street corner when he stopped, hand abrupt and white-knuckled on the wet metal of a lamppost, and took a few deep breaths with his eyes closed.
He should have stayed in the bloody room. Leaving a complete stranger alone in the wake of an unplanned unbusheling, even in the hands of a girl with as much common sense as Adelaide Morrissey, was foolish. And Edwin Courcey wasn’t a fool. It was the one thing he had to pride himself on.
He certainly couldn’t congratulate himself on his pluck. Given even a morsel of courage, he would have made an attempt to know Reggie better. He would have taken Reggie up on the offer to tag along on that useless ghost-chasing trip to North Yorkshire a month ago. Or even offered to meet Reggie for drinks, or a show, or whatever it was that thousands of young men did with their friends.
Maybe then Edwin would have some idea of the fellow’s haunts, beyond his home address. Edwin hadn’t been able to wrangle any details out of Reggie’s landlady since the first day he’d been there. Mr. Gatling had not been home, as per the usual pattern. Mr. Gatling was going to find himself behind in the rent if he didn’t show himself someday soon.
Which left Edwin with this. He’d been avoiding it, but today he didn’t have much choice. The word replacement rattled inside his skull. This wasn’t another of Reggie’s irresponsible jaunts. If Reggie had been replaced, then someone had given up on expecting him to return.
The walk to Kensington took nearly an hour, and the rain neither vanished nor intensified to the point where Edwin would have surrendered and hailed a cab. His destination was a house in Cottesmore Gardens, a forbiddingly crisp concoction of gleaming windows and washed brick. The Gatlings’ butler took Edwin’s name and had barely vanished with it for a minute before Anne Gatling appeared. She beckoned Edwin into the front parlour and paused in the doorway to raise her voice down the hall, flicking a stream of raw red sparks from her fingers, clearly a private signal between sisters.
“Dora! It’s Win Courcey!”
“Edwin,” said Edwin.
Anne blew the last sparks from her fingertips and came fully into the room. She couldn’t have been many years off thirty and was only recently affianced, despite sharing in her family’s impeccable dark good looks. Having the unmagical Reggie as a brother was a count against the Gatling girls, in their circles; who knew if their own power could be trusted to breed true?