The Raven Spell (Conspiracy of Magic #1)(32)

As though mocking his concern, the arriving train rumbled to life inside the tunnel, sending a small tremor to shake the ground beneath his feet. The infernal beast hissed and sparked as it rolled forward, finally emerging in a cloud of black smoke like some medieval dragon brought to heel.

The train rattled to a stop in front of the platform. Edwina led him to a hard wooden seat in a third-class car at the back before the carriage chugged off through the dark. His hand itched to remove his pocket watch as shadows flickered in the dark outside the window. As nonchalantly as he could, he opened the timepiece and flicked the lever on the side, pretending to consult the hour as he leaned toward the window. His seatmate wasn’t fooled.

“It’s some sort of astrolabe, is it not?”

Ian checked the carriage to see who might be listening, but there were only three workingmen seated in the rows ahead of them, each with his nose buried in his newspaper—legs spread, heads down, postures relaxed. Behind them a young woman in a plaid shawl sat embroidering a filthy handkerchief, squinting at her stitches in the smoky carriage light. She wore fingerless gloves yet no hat atop her simple bun. None of their fellow travelers seemed to have taken any notice of anyone else but themselves.

“It does have that ability, aye.” He tipped the watch so she could see the flywheel whirring around almost as if it floated above the face of the clock. “But the wheel is measuring the static electricity in the air.”

“Whatever for?”

“The presence of manifestations.”

Her eyes rose from the watch to meet his. “You mean ghosts?”

“Aye, it can sense those, but it’s mostly attuned to pick up vibrations of auras like ours, and sometimes even the residual energy of a spell if the magic was strong enough.”

He demonstrated the different settings on the instrument and how they measured for the presence of supernatural beings within fifty paces, including themselves. The arrows on the face of the watch both pointed toward Edwina with alarming insistence, as her aural spectrum overshadowed Ian’s. He gave the instrument a shake to see if it would reset. When it didn’t, he closed the watch up, stowed the instrument back in his pocket, and uttered a slight “humph.”

“I did recently cast a spell,” she said, adjusting her shawl as she tried to reassure him. The train shuddered to a stop at the next station, and two of the men departed the coach. “Do the officers of the Witches’ Constabulary carry such gadgets?” she asked when the car rolled forward again.

Such a curious and clever woman.

“They wish. No, this is an Elvanfoot invention. A gift. Though I’ve no doubt they’ll try and get their hands on the ingenious devices one of these days.”

Ian felt Edwina’s mind whir at the mention of Sir Elvanfoot. Naturally, she knew who he was. Every witch in the isles knew who the great wizard of the north was. Not everyone had known the man had a son, however. Sadly, the son’s talents with magic had proved mediocre at best, relegating him to an unremarkable life in his father’s shadow. Until later, when he’d run off to the city to become a stage magician in a music hall variety show. Oh, he’d inherited a decent amount of talent for the craft. Enough to impress an audience of dozy mortals willing to pay good money to watch a string of average tricks, but in the north, he would never have been able to fulfill the expectations one held for the son of Sir Elvanfoot. And now, of course, the unfortunate fellow was missing.

Ian checked again to see if anyone was eavesdropping and noticed the young woman in plaid had tilted her ear ever so slightly in their direction. Her eyes no longer concentrated on her stitches but rather stared down at the floor without moving. He lowered his voice and leaned in close enough to Edwina’s ear to make a blush rise in her cheeks.

“He gives lectures on magic in the summer,” he explained. “Sir Elvanfoot, that is. That’s how I met him. He’s an acquaintance of my father’s, so he came to me when he suspected his son had gone missing. That and I’m the only private detective investigating the supernatural outside of the Constabulary in the whole of the isles who could locate George without alerting the authorities and making a mess of it in the papers.”

“My father spoke of meeting Sir Elvanfoot once before as well.” She peered ahead as if watching for something outside the window, despite the darkness of the tunnel. “I dare say we may have more in common than we might have first imagined.” The train slowed and she gripped the back of the seat in front of her. “This is where we get off.”

Out of habit, he opened his pocket watch for a quick sweep of the end of the tunnel. Forewarned was forearmed. He stood to let Edwina out of the seat they’d shared so she might disembark before him. Once she was out the door, his spectrometer spun toward the young embroiderer in plaid. She looked at him and moaned, revealing a face with sunken eyes and shriveled skin. The young woman gagged and retched on the seat beside her before dissipating from the car.

“Damn cholera,” he whispered and shut the timepiece again, satisfied the decades-old ghost was the only other supernatural entity lurking in the train tunnel with them.

Back at street level, Edwina led him through the crowd of passengers coming and going in ten different directions. Nothing about their surroundings struck him as familiar until they exited the station. Outside, the bustle of the East End echoed in his ear, as recognizable as it was loud. The sound of heavy-footed horses hauling wagons collided with the clamor of men going to and from work, some shouldering ladders, some carrying buckets, and others walking with parcels tucked under their arms. Newspaper hawkers competed for customers, while women and children sold posies for a penny in the street. As they walked, the call of goods for sale proved as common as a tip of the hat and a “pardon me” when passing a stranger.