Spellbreaker (Spellbreaker Duology, #1)(70)

“S-Studio.” Emmeline gawked. “What’s happened?”

But Elsie couldn’t bear to delay. She hurried to the studio, Emmeline on her heels. Ogden was standing, his painter’s smock half-untied.

Fear blanched his face. “What’s wrong?”

Elsie practically leapt at him, grabbing his upper arms in her hands. “I got a message from Juniper Down! Someone is looking for me! Ogden, it must be my family!”

He gaped at her and let out a long breath. “You’re sure?”

Emmeline squealed.

Elsie smiled. “Who else would go to that out-of-the-way place and ask for me by name? Please, I’ll do anything, but let me go. I must leave immediately. I’ll take the train, make it as far as Reading—”

He worked his mouth. “You just heard of this?”

Fishing out the telegram, Elsie handed it to him. He read it, and as he considered, Elsie passed it to Emmeline.

“This is incredible.” Emmeline grinned. “Oh, Elsie, you’ve waited so long!”

“I’ll pay for temporary help,” she said to Ogden. “Whatever you need—”

Ogden, somewhat baffled, shook his head. A small smile played on his lips. “That won’t be necessary. If you leave now, you can be on a train before nightfall.”

Elsie laughed and kissed Ogden on the cheek. “Oh, thank you, thank you. Goodness, I need to pack.”

Emmeline chirped, “I’ll get your laundry off the line,” and ran from the studio.

Elsie darted to the stairs, taking them two at a time up to her room. Pulling her valise from beneath her bed, she laid it open on the mattress and rummaged through her wardrobe. She liked to take care with how she packed for a trip—especially a trip of an undetermined amount of time—but all she could think of was getting to Juniper Down.

They’d wait for her. Surely they’d wait for her! We’ve waited this long, what is another day? And she could do it in a day if she slept on the train and in the cab. Only a day between herself and her family! Who was it? Her mother? A brother? She dared not hope it would be all of them.

Emmeline came up shortly with Elsie’s laundry, which was mainly underthings. Thanking her, Elsie folded what she thought she’d need and crammed it into the valise. Just as the valise was getting full, Emmeline returned with a cloth-wrapped parcel.

“So you don’t get peckish.” She set it in Elsie’s hands.

“Oh, Emmeline, thank you.” She straightened. “I’ll need my savings passbook.” Money for the train ticket, the travel . . . and she had no idea who had come for her. What if they were destitute and needed help? “Ogden!”

“He just stepped out! To the post office, I think, to inquire about replacing you for the week.”

“Of course.” She barely registered the remark. God help her, she had so many questions and no time to think them.

“I’ll get you some more cheese.” Emmeline hurried back down the stairs, her footsteps eager. Elsie followed after her as far as Ogden’s bedroom, which she entered unabashedly. She used to clean it, after all.

“Passbook, passbook,” she whispered, looking over his sparse furniture. He kept all their savings passbooks in here, often added to them himself, out of generosity. Elsie hadn’t needed to use hers for quite a while. Where is it?

She moved to his desk and opened the top right drawer, searching through the pens and papers within. Several had large scribbles on them, connecting random dots. Something about the drawings seemed almost familiar, but she couldn’t think of why. They lacked Ogden’s usual artistic eye.

The drawer beneath it held various bottles of blue aspector ink, and the third was filled nearly to the brim with old ledgers. In the left drawers, she found receipts—had he given those to her to document yet?—framing tools, and old letters.

Bother. She retrieved his key from beneath his bedside table and went to the cupboard where he kept his drops, opening the door and sorting through the contents of the locked cabinet. No passbook. Where on earth could it be? She needed to get to London before the last train left, or she’d waste an entire day—

Locking up the cupboard, she returned to the desk and checked its drawers once more. She rifled through receipts, lifted ledgers. Pulled open the drawer of inks and pushed them forward and back. Nothing.

She closed the drawer hard and heard a chink! Fearing she’d broken a bottle, she opened it again, ready to find a blue mess staining the wood. But the bottles were fine.

She shut the drawer again, the chink! sounding again, but a little softer this time. She paused. It didn’t sound like glass hitting glass . . . so what was it? Not her passbook, certainly, but curiosity had her opening the drawer again. Nothing but ink bottles, one nearly empty, three full, one half-full. She shifted the drawer back and forth, hearing the high-pitched chink! even though the bottles were not hitting one another.

She shifted each vial, one at a time, until she found one in the back that was empty. It looked half-full, but upon closer inspection, the glass had been tinted blue halfway up the bottle. She shook it, hearing something rattle beneath the glass. What on earth?

Uncorking the thing, she turned it over, and a long, metal-tipped stamp fell into her palm. What purpose would Ogden have for hiding a seal—

She stopped breathing when she saw the image at its end. A bird foot over a crescent moon.