“Please hurry,” Pretoria complained, clutching her scarf about her throat with one hand. The other hovered, concealing us in a bubble of skewed time. “The cold gives me such a headache.”
A few lights peeked out from windowpanes and curtains as we approached Maddeson’s building, but there was no one to question us when Perry swung the front door open. The building was, to all appearances, empty, and my hope waned. But if Maddeson was not here, we would look elsewhere before conceding that Baffin had already found him. His home. The museum island.
Pretoria kept her sorcery flowing as we passed by study parlors and closed office doors.
Even if we had not had Pretoria’s magic to conceal us, we did not look out of place on the university grounds. We were all styled as students, Pretoria and I in skirts, shirtwaists, vests, and trim jackets, and Perry in a tweed suit with a satchel at one hip. The satchel, rather than containing books, held the bullets, binoculars, lockpicks, and various other tools of his and Pretoria’s trade. I had a satchel as well, though mine was empty in anticipation of the artifact.
“This is it.” I pointed to Maddeson’s door. Light seeped beneath the barrier and I grinned in satisfaction. “He is here.”
Perry took the lead, resting his fingers on the handle and meeting his wife’s gaze. “Ready?”
“Ready,” she affirmed.
Perry swung the door inwards. Electric light poured around Pretoria’s skirts as she strode into the room, skewing time afresh with an effortless crook of the wrist. I followed next, hands ungloved.
The office looked the same as the last time I had stood here; the shelves packed with books, oddities, and treasures strewn about and the carpet beneath our careless boots depicting a fine Eleshi motif.
But it was not Dr. Maddeson at the desk.
“I assume you are not the professor,” Pretoria said, sounding more than a little disappointed. She dropped her hands and the room sunk back into the proper flow of time.
A gangly young man shot to his feet. His chair toppled and his pen rolled, trailing ink across the paper he had been scrawling. He noticed the pen at the same time as me and lunged forward, snatching it up before it could stain an open book.
“Who—” the young man asked, clutching the pen like a talisman. I recognized him as the one who had brought me tea, on my last visit. “Who are you?”
Pretoria crossed the room slowly. “Someone who is very disappointed to find you instead of Dr. Maddeson.”
Behind us, Perry pulled a pistol from the back of his trousers and rested it pointedly against his thigh.
“I am his research assistant!” The young man reared back into a bookcase, his eyes now flicking between the three of us. His gaze focused on me as I approached the shelves beside him. “I know you. You’re that secretary! Oi—do not touch that!”
“Where is Maddeson’s research on the Entwined?” I demanded, pointing to the newly empty shelves where his notes had been. I looked from him to the rest of the room, but though there were stacks of books and papers in numerous locations, none of them seemed right.
My stomach sank. The answer seemed clear, though I needed confirmation before I accepted it. Baffin had already been here, and he had taken both Maddeson and his research.
“Where is the professor?” I asked.
The boy seemed, at this point, to forget his tongue.
Pretoria sighed, straightening and pulling one of her hatpins free. It proved to be a fine dagger, which left an equally delicate sheath in her hat with its twin.
Pretoria tossed the blade casually into the air and froze it in a skew of time between her and the assistant. “Hear me, young man. You find yourself in the company of the very finest mages in Harrow. All Adepts, the lot of us. You can see for yourself what I am. The mousy one, she is an Eventide. And that handsome fellow there with the gun? Well, I shall let you learn for yourself what he is.”
“Where is Maddeson?” I repeated. “And his research?”
“Mr. Maddeson went to the museum! The Grand!” the young man rattled out. “With a police detective. Said he needed to identify an artifact of some kind.”
I stilled. “A police detective?”
“Yes!”
“Detective Supford?” I tried, bewildered though I was.
“That’s him.” The assistant lit up, as if I had thrown him a lifeline.
“What artifact was he required to identify?” I pressed.
“A Landsdown Trove artifact,” the young man said. “Of Incarnate stone.”
