“If you wail one more time, Mother, I’ll stuff my gloves in your mouth.”He didn’t have gloves, had left off wearing them once he’d started his apprenticeship.
“—eeeeeeem.”She sniffled, seemed to be winding up for another good crack at busting his eardrums.The hand she wiped across her lower eyelids trembled, and the pale-pink glove she wore came away streaked with tears.
“Damn,” he mumbled.“Mother, it’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad?Apollo!You look just like one of those brutes.No gloves.Skin streaked with soot.And oh”—she snatched up one of his hands and worried over his fingernails—“look.Short and blunt and torn.They don’t even shine anymore.”
“Alchemists don’t shine, Mother.They smolder.”
She sniffed, pulled herself up tall, apparently healed from her fit of sorrow.“You used to be so beautiful.”
He leaned against the nearby wall and crossed his arms over his chest.“It’s lovely to see you, too, Mother.How long has it been?Six or so months?”
She clutched his lapels and yanked him closer, until they were nose to nose.“Come home, Apollo.”
He was damned tired of being tossed about by his clothing today.He shook his mother off.“I am going home.As soon as we’re done with this little reunion.”
“A little hovel somewhere in East London.No, Apollo.You don’t belong there.You belong here.Diana has said you may stay.”
“I’m not living here.”
“Then at least give up on this foolish little hobby.You can’t truly mean to become an alchemist.They’re so…” She eyed him up and down.“Dirty.”
“I do mean to become an alchemist.Apologies for disappointing you so.”
“But it’s so dangerous.Why, just last year our dear Diana was almost murdered after she married that Royal Alchemist fellow.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose.“Because I am the one who almost murdered her.”
She slapped his arm.“Pshaw.You would not have.You were just a trifle upset, which is understandable, considering…”
God, he hated that look of pity.“If you’re scared of anyone it should be me, a useless transcendent without a single ounce of magic in my bones.”Without, even, a soul.
“No, no.It’s the alchemists, dear.Why, just today another young lady has gone missing.You may know her—Temple Grant’s sister.It’s where I’ve just come from.Dear Diana called upon me for gossip.”His mother pulled herself up tall.If she’d been a chick, her feathers would have ruffled with pride.
If Apollo were a chicken—and he most likely was—his feathers would have ruffled, too.But for an entirely different reason.“Missing, you say?”
“Oh yes.Abducted from right in front of her own home.The cook or someone like that saw it with her own eyes.”
“Did she?”
“See?You must return home this very evening.East London is so dangerous.If a girl who’s lived there her whole life?—”
“I believe she lives in Hampstead Heath.Hardly East London, that.”
“—can come to such an end, then a helpless young lad like you, innocent and?—”
“Mother.”
She stopped talking only to look at him with eyes rimmed by glinting tears.
He took her hand and patted it.“I’m not returning here.”
“But cook will have made a lovely meal.Beef.Asparagus.Diana has left all your grandfather’s wine, and?—”
“No.”
“We’ll get you new clothes and”—she withdrew her hand from his embrace—“gloves.And we’ll?—”
