Spellmaker

Her name, Camden, Elsie, was scrawled along the top. She pulled the card out. It wasn’t very full, boasting only three article titles. But locations were listed for each, and she and Ogden quickly divided them and began their hunt. Elsie ended up in a section for Irish newspapers, and in the time it took her to find the correct one, Ogden had already pulled both English papers. Instead of moving to one of the tables near the entrance, they set the papers atop the card cabinets.

“Here,” Ogden said, pointing to an article. “It’s on the front page.”

Elsie leaned close to him, reading, Valuable Items Stolen from American Estate.

“Hmm,” she hummed.

Ogden glanced at her.

“Why would that make the front page of a London newspaper?” She pointed to the large letters spelling out the Manchester Guardian. It was dated April 5, 1887. Eight years ago.

Both of them hushed as they read the article. It was short, not even continued on a later page. And it was incredibly vague, never actually stating what had been stolen from which estate. One line was curious, however: The inquirer would gladly pay a high price for the black birds. It felt like it meant something. There was nothing else about birds in the article. The effect was jarring.

Ogden pulled out the other newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, in which Elsie’s name was printed on the second page, under a headline reading, Spiritual Aspecting Across the Pond. Again, the article was brief unto the point of meaningless. It had been published last year and had a typo in it: A shame if things were to take a Turner and end entirely.

“I could have written something better than this,” Elsie commented, flipping back to the front page.

“For such bad journalism written by a nobody—no offense,” Ogden offered, “the author, presumably Lily Merton, must have paid a good sum to have the articles put at the front. To make them more noticeable.”

Elsie pulled up the News Letter, the Irish paper, and sure enough, the article with her name was on the front. The Dangers of Intercontinental Travel, it read, the headline accompanied by a photo of a wealthy person’s home, though the photo had no caption. This article was the briefest of them all. It spoke of dangerous voyages from Boston, but there was little else of substance. It was four years old.

Elsie tapped her fingers against the cabinets. “This isn’t helping at all.”

Ogden pulled a sketchbook from the satchel at his hip. “Let’s copy them down.” He tore out a page for her and then took the Irish article for himself, going as far as to sketch out the faded photograph of the house. Elsie copied the aspecting article in pencil, reading over it thrice to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, and then transcribed the American estate article beneath it.

“There have to be more.” She carefully folded the page, not wanting to smear the graphite. “There has to be something that made him come find me. Some kind of code. Something we’re not seeing.”

“We need to look further. American newspapers, perhaps.”

Elsie shook her head. “It will take a month for a letter to reach a repository over there.”

“I’ll use the spirit line.” Ogden closed his sketchbook.

The spirit line was a messaging system developed by spiritual aspectors in the seventeen hundreds, shortly before the American Revolution. Aspectors across the sea—Iceland, Greenland, Canada—could link up with one another, casting spiritual projections that could carry news faster than a ship, or even a telegraph network.

“It’s so expensive, Ogden,” she whispered.

But Ogden shook his head. “It’s an expense I’m happy to make. You just might not be getting much pin money this month.”

Elsie let out a long breath. “I’m more than happy to contribute. Thank you.”

They returned home later than planned, as they had to stop in London to make arrangements for the spirit line. Ogden sent messages to the Library of Congress in the United States, as well as libraries in a few select European countries. Elsie winced at the number of pounds he exchanged for it; they might be eating cabbage for dinner the next few weeks. The sooner I become a profitable spellbreaker, the better, she thought.

And it seemed Irene Prescott agreed, for Elsie found a telegram from her on her bed when she arrived home. Miss Prescott wanted to meet in London tomorrow—she really didn’t heed the fact that Elsie had to work—to begin their training. There was a second message on her nightstand from the enchanted pencil. Her stomach did a little flip at the familiar penmanship.