“Where did they go?” Amelia asked herself aloud, looking around. But she was entirely alone in the corridor.
Maybe they were ghosts.Disturbed, she hugged her book as she hurried on to the sitting room and the work that awaited her there.
Chapter Thirteen
Time is not linear, it is a stack of palimpsest pages
that all too often gets shuffled in our minds.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
“We’re wasting ourtime,” Caleb declared on Saturday morning, rubbing the back of his wrist across his brow as he looked around at stacks of vintage ashtrays chattering with low-grade thaumaturgic energy on the shelves of the drawing room. “We should just transfer the British Museum to here instead.”
“You do talk such nonsense, Professor Sterling,” Amelia grumbled, although in fact she agreed with his sentiment. Sullen after yet another restless night, and with a headache gnawing at her thoughts, she had reached the conclusion that she’d be trapped in this house forever, counting spoons, shuffling through cigarette cards, too busy to even become a ghost. The rain would fall endlessly, the dust would drift around her relentlessly, and she’d be haunted by echoes of Vanity giggling until she went mad.
“You shouldn’t listen to me, then, Professor Tarrant,” Caleb snapped. But as he marched across the room to work at a cluttered sideboard, he allowed his smallest finger to brush herhand, electrifying her entire body. Amelia wanted to gasp but instead frowned at him.
“Really, young lady,” Dummersby told her with a smirk, “you ought to smile more. Men would like you better if you did.”
Suddenly the tar-stained ashtray in her hands flew to the floor near Dummersby’s feet, shattering upon impact. “Oh dear, I am so sorry!” Amelia told Sir Nigel, who looked as if he might faint at this tragedy. “It was obviously, andcompletely unexpectedly, a flare of thaumaturgic energy. I assure you that no one in this room, for example, Mr. Dummersby, was in any danger of being hit in the head by it.”
At which the museum curator choked on his pipe smoke.
“Where is the gold locket I put here yesterday?” Caleb interrupted tetchily, searching through an array of jewelry on the sideboard. “Oval, etched with roses, gold chain. I set it down right here so I could assess it properly when I had the chance.”
“Maybe it’s joined the wine goblet I was working on earlier this week,” Dummersby said. “Fine Carolingian piece, completely vanished from its cabinet.”
Crack!Lightning split the storm-dark sky outside. For one eerie second the drawing room glowed with an eldritch light that dragged everyone’s shadows into strange, distorted shapes. The historians all paused, their sudden, troubled silence born from a lifetime of studying narratives and recognizing portents.
Vanity, however, remained innocent of all but her dogged enthusiasm. “A telekinetic goblet!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands with delight.
“I hope not,” Dummersby said. “As a museum display, that would be—”
“Worthless!” Throckmorton inserted, and made brisk back-and-forth gestures by way of explanation. “Zip! Zap! Everywhere!”
“Exactly,” Dummersby agreed.
“Oh.” Vanity’s cheerfulness slumped. “If it’s not magical, who cares where it went?”
“It might be interesting in a purely historical sense,” Dummersby told her.
“I’m not interested in a goblet,” Caleb grumbled. “I want the bloody locket, and then I want to have my bloody luncheon, and then I want to go home.”
Another uncomfortable silence followed this declaration. Not only was it remarkable for Caleb to show genuine irritation, but he’d managed to precisely encapsulate the feelings of everyone in the room. Thunder rumbled across the hills as if in agreement.
Then Vanity perked up, reliably. “Maybe someone already packed it. Professor Sterling, you’re so efficient, you’re probably ahead of yourself.” Smiling coyly, she patted his arm.
“Unlikely,” Amelia said in a tone so brisk it came close to being a snarl. Snatching up her clipboard, she scanned the attached list of antiques that had been chosen for donation. She and Caleb had thus far identified seven significant thaumaturgic items and nine of lesser value, which was a remarkable haul; sometimes entire years could pass without any new discovery of magic-infused artifacts. It nevertheless made for a very short list, nowhere upon which was a gold locket. “It’s not recorded here,” she reported.
“Oh, things go missing all the time,” Sir Nigel said, and gave a flaccid laugh that soon disintegrated when he noticed everyone was staring at him. “What?”
“You’re saying that items with potentially deadly power ‘gomissing all the time’ from your custody?” Amelia inquired. “Items that unscrupulous people could employ as weapons of considerable destruction, should they get hold of them?”
Sir Nigel blanched at the degree of polite restraint in her voice. “I—I—”
“We had a mad scientist break into the museum last month, trying to steal an enchanted scarab from Egypt,” Dummersby said with a chuckle. “Even before our security staff got to him, he’d been thoroughly chewed.”
“I,” Sir Nigel attempted again, wringing his hands as if he anticipated being devoured at any moment. “I—I—”
