Spellmaker

She bolted forward and grabbed the spell, pulling apart its fibers—

“—do it!” Ogden bellowed as the spell came apart. An invisible fist slammed into Elsie and threw her back. Had she not been even with the doorway, she would have struck the wall, but her feet touched down where the hall started and she merely stumbled down onto her backside, bruising her tailbone.

“Ogden!” Elsie screamed. “Do something!”

“There’s a barrier!” he shouted back, then groaned.

Leaping to her feet, Elsie rushed inside. The bed was pushing hard against Ogden’s thighs, pinning him to the wall. The intruder came toward him with a knife.

Elsie’s progress slowed like she was walking through pudding. The spell hung between her and the aspector. She wormed toward the rune, movements painfully sluggish, and finally reached it and yanked it apart, tumbling forward as gravity reoriented itself.

The assailant raised his knife. Elsie had no weapon, no spells, save the one tucked securely in her corset.

But she would not let any harm come to Ogden. So she ran at the gray-clad man and jumped on his back, wrapping both arms around his neck.

The man danced back, trying to fling her off. His spell must have been one of concentration, for the moment Elsie leapt on him, Ogden shoved the bed back and jumped up and over it, bolting across the room to help her.

“Remember, there might be a compulsion spell on him!” Elsie shouted, letting go of the man when the knife point sailed for her arm. Ogden grabbed the intruder’s wrist and twisted it, but the other man formed a fist with his free hand and collided it with Ogden’s teeth, forcing him to release his hold. In the same movement, the curtains came alive over Elsie’s head. The aspector grabbed the edge of them and elongated them, stretching them beyond their woven limits, enchanting the fibers to grow.

That was when Elsie noticed the gun tucked into the man’s waist. A thorough way to murder someone, especially if they couldn’t hear his approach.

She leapt for it. The man twisted, flinging the former curtain toward Ogden. Elsie missed the firearm and fell into his legs instead. She grabbed his knees. They both toppled over. Elsie grappled for the gun, and this time she got her fingers around the handle and tossed it across the room. Then, snaking around the man’s legs, she felt for a spell. Tried to listen for the hum of the eighteen-point spiritual spell that had been Ogden’s parasite for so long. Did she detect it on his torso, or were her ears ringing?

The man threw back an elbow, hitting Elsie square in the breast before throwing her off. Quick to his feet, he spun away as Ogden ripped the curtain rod from the wall.

Wincing, Elsie barely had a moment to stand before the floor came up around her shoes, holding her in place. Then the attacker held out his hand, and Elsie recognized the shape and glimmer of the rune before the magic even started.

Wind.

Elsie lifted her hands just as the rune burst toward her in a hurricane-sized torrent, ripping paintings off the walls and books from the shelves.

It stopped the moment it met Elsie, her fingers tearing the magic apart.

And the aspector’s eyes . . . they weren’t surprised at all. They were . . . nothing. Like they weren’t his.

He was Merton’s puppet, for sure.

He sent out the gust again, even stronger than before. Oddly enough, the spell holding Elsie to the floor helped her keep her footing as she broke the rune, just as she had with Nash’s lightning. The aspector didn’t let up, but continued casting, again and again and again, a continuous loop of torrents. He threw pens and papers around the bedroom, but the projectiles only rustled Elsie’s hair and clothing as she untied each and every one. If anything, it got easier—the rune never changed.

A shot rang out, opening up a wide gash in the gray-clad man’s arm before embedding itself in the wall. Ogden. Ogden had reached the pistol.

The wind stopped instantly, and the man ran back for the window, liquefying it as he passed through, the glass no different from the pouring rain save for how it steamed against its frame.

Elsie bolted to the window, looking into the town. She couldn’t see him—

But she did spy someone in her peripheral vision, and when she turned toward the doorway, Miss Irene Prescott stood there, eyes wide, her mouth a perfect O.

Elsie froze. How long had she been standing there?

Behind Miss Prescott, Emmeline ran for the stairs.

“Em, stop!” Elsie shouted. “Don’t call the police!”

The maid paused, unsure. They couldn’t call the police, not again. Certainly Ogden would be able to clear the way, but the more people involved, the trickier it became. They couldn’t risk any more suspicion on either of them.

“I couldn’t get in,” Ogden murmured, picking himself off the floor. “He had a barrier on his mind, another’s rational spell. I couldn’t read his thoughts, learn who he was, nothing.”

“Ogden,” Elsie hissed, and he turned to see their witnesses.